A Political Interpretation of Plato's Protagoras and Gorgias

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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

Self-Deception and the City: A Political Interpretation of Plato’s Protagoras and Gorgias

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the

School of Philosophy Of The Catholic University of America

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Mary Elizabeth Halper

Washington, D.C.

2019 Self-Deception and the City: A Political Interpretation of Plato’s Protagoras and Gorgias

Mary Elizabeth Halper, Ph.D.

Director: V. Bradley Lewis, Ph.D.

Sophistry and rhetoric possess the disturbing power to appear to be precisely what they undermine. Sophistry passes itself off as education even as it subverts genuine ethical and intellectual formation; rhetoric looks like a particularly compelling form of communication even as it subverts the possibility of seeking truth in speech. This dissertation begins with the claim that Plato wrote his Protagoras and Gorgias to treat of this disturbing power and its political consequences. I argue that the Protagoras and the Gorgias, as representative treatments of sophistry and rhetoric, should be read together in order to gain insight into the genuine art of politics, of which sophistry and rhetoric together form a subversive imitation. First I undertake an exegesis of the Protagoras and the Gorgias, both as individual dialogues and as a composite whole. Then I present systematic and philosophical arguments to support my central thesis, which emerges from my interpretations and is supported by my thematic investigations. This thesis asserts that self-deception isan inherent feature of political communities, whereby political communities both must rely on the efficacy of appearance and cannot acknowledge this very reliance. This feature in turn explains the possibility and power of sophistry and rhetoric within those communities. Ultimately, I use the self-deception thesis to defend the possibility of a unique political good—-a good that remains susceptible to the subversions of sophistry and rhetoric but also one that is capable of resisting them. This dissertation by Mary Elizabeth Halper fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in Philosophy, approved by V. Bradley Lewis, Ph.D., as Director, and by Cristina Ionescu,

Ph.D., and Antón Barba-Kay, Ph.D., as Readers

V. Bradley Lewis, Ph.D., Director

Cristina Ionescu, Ph.D., Reader

Antón Barba-Kay, Ph.D., Reader

ii To my son David, the wonder that keeps the stars apart.

iii Contents

Introduction 1

Truth and Politics; True Politics ...... 1

A Political Reading of the Protagoras and Gorgias ...... 4

Hermeneutic Principles and Argumentative Structure ...... 8

Plan of the Work ...... 10

Part I The Dialogues 12

Chapter 1 Protagoras 13

Introduction ...... 13

Entering the Dialogue: 309a–317d ...... 23

The Teachability of Virtue: 317d–320c ...... 39

Protagoras’s Great Speech: 320c-328c ...... 43

The Unity of Virtue: 328c-334c ...... 56

Interlude: 334c-338e ...... 66

Interpreting Simonides’s Poem: 338e-348c ...... 73

Courage: 348c-351b ...... 91

Wisdom, Pleasure, and Power: 351b-358d ...... 99

Courage, Again: 358d-360e ...... 108

Conclusion: 360e-362a ...... 113

Chapter 2 Gorgias 116

Introduction ...... 116

Opening Scene: 447a-448c ...... 122

iv Gorgias & Socrates: 448d-461d ...... 126

Polus & Socrates: 461b-481b ...... 155

Callicles & Socrates: 481b-505d ...... 180

Socrates: 505d-527e ...... 214

Part II The Argument 241

Chapter 3 Protagoras & Gorgias & Politics 242

A View of the Whole ...... 243

A Problematic Politics Revealed ...... 267

The Self-Deceptive Nature of the City ...... 279

Chapter 4 Sophistry & The City 292

Introduction ...... 292

Civic Education and Sophistry ...... 301

The City’s Susceptibility to Sophistry ...... 311

The City’s Resistance to Sophistry ...... 321

Chapter 5 Rhetoric & The City 330

Introduction ...... 330

The Practice of Justice and Rhetoric ...... 338

The City’s Susceptibility to Rhetoric ...... 348

The City’s Resistance to Rhetoric ...... 356

Chapter 6 The City & Philosophy 369

The Central Claim & Planes of Consideration ...... 369

Consequences of the City’s Self-Deception ...... 385

v Acknowledgments

I must express my profound thanks to my director, Professor V. Bradley Lewis for his thoughtful attention to and precise guidance of this work. In addition, I must thank myreaders, Professor Cristina Ionescu and Professor Antón Barba-Kay, who offered insight and encourage- ment along the way. Each member of my committee deserves my gratitude for their patience, professionalism, and sincere passion while shepherding their student through this final stage of formal education. They were each a midwife in their own way.

Many more deserve my gratitude: the Dean of the School of Philosophy, Dr. John Mc- Carthy, for his inspiring honesty as well as his dedication to the students under his charge; the professors of the School of Philosophy, for their exemplary commitment to the contemplative life; and my fellow graduate students who constituted the community on which I relied and from which I derived much intellectual sustenance. I am especially grateful for the support and en- couragement graciously and perpetually given by my parents, Kathleen and Robert, and by my siblings, Anna, Evan, and Wolf. Of course, for my own family, which came into being alongside this dissertation, I can express only feebly the preponderance of my gratitude; without my ever-patient husband, Aaron, and my dear son, David, there would be nothing that follows.

vi Introduction

Truth and Politics; True Politics

Politics is a problem for truth.

The converse of this claim—that truth is a problem for politics—is a commonplace. There is a Yiddish proverb to this effect: “One lie is a lie; two lies are lies; three lies are politics.” Indeed, the fraught relationship between politics and truth has been noted repeatedly. For some this situation presents an opportunity: consider Machiavelli’s prince who is to imitate the fox’s deceitful cunning as much as the lion’s courage.1 For others it is a woeful but ultimately inescapable effect of forces beyond the realm of politics: consider Augustine’s resignation in the face of the dark- ness of social life.2 For no one is it surprising that politicians are deceitful and that even those with the best intentions succumb to the shadows that suffuse the political realm. Beyond these uncontroversial if lamentable observations, deeper and more disconcerting is the problem that politics poses to truth. The power of politics seems to render truth itself shamefully feeble or altogether useless. There is an abiding sense that the truth about what is good, noble, or just should determine the norms that govern human life lived together. Yet all too often what holds sway in politics is what is believed, not what is. One reaction tothis situation is to cede to politics all the power it seems to grab, to subordinate truth entirely to the coercion of politics.3 Truth thus becomes nothing but a production of political power. The extreme opposite of this reaction is to double down on the power of truth and insist that rational discourse will prevail, provided that we are sufficiently careful to keep that discourse scrubbed

1. See Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (University of Chicago Press, 1998), 69.

2. Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, Book XIX, chapter 6: ”In his tenebris vitae socialis, sedebit iudex ille sapiens an non audebit? Sedebit plane.”

3. Representative of this severe position is Michel Foucault, a position prepared for by Machiavelli’s verità effetuale, and before then, I would argue, by the sophists of Socrates’s time. See Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, ed. and trans. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 109–133; Machiavelli, The Prince, 61.

1 2 clean of ambiguity, equivocation, or irrational appeals to emotion.4 In making politics pristine, though, this response also impoverishes it, barring it from metaphor, genuine political feeling, and even, one might say, beauty. Over these unsatisfying poles still hangs the question Hannah

Arendt put perfectly: “Is it of the very essence of truth to be impotent and of the very essence of politics to be deceitful?”5 With this dissertation I argue that the practice of true politics—a practice Socrates claims to attempt and uniquely so—is a different kind of response to the problem politics puts totruth.

This response immediately differs from the extreme that concedes all efficacy to power andre- serves none for truth. For if there is such a thing as true as opposed to counterfeit politics, then there must be some crucial role that truth plays in the practice of politics. This crucial role, I argue, manifests itself in the common good. The common good is the polestar for the practice of true politics. It is the end in service to which it becomes possible to discern between genuine and pseudo politics, between a practice that supports human thinking, loving, and living together and a practice that hollows these out from the inside. This common good is unique to the political realm, and in this respect it demands that its context be truthfully apprehended. That is, true politics must be grounded on a true answer to the question: “What is the city?” The central thesis of this dissertation is that self-deception is an essential feature of the city and one that necessarily conditions the practice of true politics. With this answer, there arises a resistance to the other extreme of the positions above: resistance to a conception of the political that is or can be fully transparent.

What does it mean for the city to be inherently self-deceptive? It does not mean that the city is barred from pursuit of its true good. It does mean that this pursuit is essentially and

4. Representative of this view is Jürgen Habermas (see Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Commu- nicative Action, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen and Christian Lenhardt (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), 43–115), who is perhaps preceded by Hegel and his insistence that the actual is the rational (see G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, trans. Alan White (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2002), 8–9.

5. Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” in Between Past and Future (Chicago: Penguin Books, 2006), 223– 259, 223. 3

existentially open to dissembling corruption. For the city to be self-deceptive means that though its convictions about what is good, noble, or just may be governed by truth, it cannot be wholly

honest with itself about the truth-status of those convictions. The city’s self-deception is a case

of thinking that it knows what it does not know—a frequent occurrence in Plato’s corpus. The

city thinks it knows what is good, noble, or just—and in so thinking it reveals an abiding care for truth—but it cannot acknowledge, let alone concede, that it only thinks it knows these. The city

cannot acknowledge this point about itself because it must always appear to be authoritative on

these matters. Because it must always take itself to be authoritative, it can never countenance

the possibility that it merely seems to be authoritative. In sum, the city both relies on appearance

and cannot acknowledge that reliance. In this way, the city’s care for truth is attenuated—though not abolished—by its self-deception.

I also contend that this conception of the city is the one disclosed by a joint reading of

Plato’s Protagoras and Gorgias. Sophistry and rhetoric, as presented in these dialogues, are threats

to the possibility of true politics, not only by denying the reality of a common good but also using the city’s opacity against it. Sophistry and rhetoric assume that the city is where power makes

truth, where speech is merely the medium of manipulation, and where the only reasonable goal

is self-preservation and advancement. In order to combat these claims, an alternate conception of

the city is needed, one that can accommodate the unsettling success of sophists and rhetoricians.

I argue that the self-deceptive character of the city explains both why the city is susceptible to the subversive machinations of sophistry and rhetoric and how the city nevertheless retains the power to resist them.

My answer, then, to Arendt’s question is this: it is in the essence of politics to be deceitful, but it matters what is the character of that deceit. And it is not the essence of truth to beimpotent, at least not ultimately; though it is also not the case that truth everywhere prevails. This answer makes for a position besides opportunism and resignation and between cynicism and idealism.

The practice of true politics fixes its sight by the reality of the common good andmanagesthe deceptions that undermine its possibility, even if it can never fully eradicate them. On the basis 4 of the self-deception thesis, this dissertation argues for the legitimacy of this practice of politics, both as a faithful representation of Socrates’s task in the course of the Protagoras and Gorgias and as a cogent position with respect to the problem between truth and politics.

In the remainder of this introduction I prepare for my argument by making a preliminary case for the choice of these two dialogues, describing my hermeneutic principles and the structure of my argument, and outlining the contents of the dissertation.

A Political Reading of the Protagoras and Gorgias

With a corpus as careful and rich as Plato’s, there are bound to be many fruitful combi- nations of dialogues. Indeed, one may say that there are interesting intersections between any two dialogues. These intersections may be profoundly illuminating or delicately delightful. They may be allusive or thematic, sparse but central or saturating and nebulous, ambiguous or obvious. One may even go so far as to say that it is a worthy, if consuming, goal for a reader of Plato to understand the interplay of all his dialogues. The scope of this dissertation, however, is more constrained and specific: a joint interpretation of Plato’s Protagoras and Gorgias. In what follows I present several particular reasons to support this pairing. I make a preliminary case both that these dialogues are profitably read together and that they are profitably read as dialogues about politics. Of course, the final case for such a paring will be the success of the interpretations themselves, but preparation for these interpretations is useful and appropriate to an introduction.

What does it mean, however, to read two dialogues together? And what does it mean to claim that they should be read together? To this latter question, it should first be said that this claim does not mean that these dialogues remain opaque to the reader that considers them in isolation, nor that they are incomplete in themselves. Rather, the claim is that something can be seen when the two dialogues are read in light of one another, something which otherwise remains obscure. The whole made from these dialogues offers insight into puzzles only partially addressed in each of the individual dialogues. To the first question, then, to read two dialogues together is to read them as contributing to a greater whole. This whole informs the interpretation 5 even as it unfolds through the interpretation of its parts. The single whole is present in away before, in a way throughout, and in a different way after the completion of the interpretations of the individual dialogues. The interpretations I offer in the first two chapters are initially framed and thoroughly guided by a vision of the shared venture in which the two dialogues are engaged.

There are good reasons to see these dialogues as sharing a venture—some are prima facie reasons for the pairing, but others are internal to the dialogues. The prima facie reasons are not conclusive but do add weight to my overall case. First, the eponymous characters share a number of similarities: both Protagoras and Gorgias enjoy an impressive reputation for being experts in their respective practices of sophistry and rhetoric; both understood and practiced their work as specifically political; and both put their reputation to work in the political realm. Protagoras was known to have a close relationship with Pericles, and Gorgias was sent to Athens on a diplomatic mission from Leontini. These similarities support both pairing the dialogues that bear theirname and reading these dialogues with a view to politics.

Second, the dialogues themselves have earned similar criticisms for lack of unity. The Protagoras, though its primary conversation is mostly with the titular character, touches on a smattering of seemingly disparate topics: a question about education, a myth about the generation of cities, an argument for the unity of the virtues, an excursus into literary criticism, an argument for calculative hedonism, and a reduction of courage to wisdom. The unity of the Gorgias is more dubious. For the bulk of that dialogue, the titular character is silent and the conversation veers far and frequently from the ostensible subject of rhetoric, ranging over a number of subjects from art and power, to justice and suffering, to natural law and pleasure, to death and judgment.

My interpretation of these dialogues alleviates the difficulty of the individual dialogues’ unity by fitting them in a greater totality.

Finally, some structural elements of the dialogues also support pairing the dialogues. Though the exact dramatic dates of the dialogues are undetermined (and perhaps intentionally obscured), the general time-frame of each puts the Protagoras towards the beginning of Socrates’s 6

“Socratic” career and the Gorgias towards the end of this life.6 Furthermore, if one takes the dialogues as poles of a continuous whole, the central conversations with non-Athenian experts

are book-ended by conversations with Athenians youths (Hippocrates and Callicles) who have

political aspirations and seek to benefit from association with Protagoras or Gorgias.

The strongest support to my joint interpretation is the schemaat Gorgias 464b-466c. In that schema Socrates situates the true art of politics (composed of the arts of legislation and

justice) as imitated by the counterfeit arts of sophistry (which impersonates the art of legislation)

and rhetoric (which impersonates the art of justice). Presumably, then, sophistry and rhetoric, at

least insofar as they attempt to be political, jointly impersonate true politics. Though several of

the dialogues depict Socrates engaging in conversation with sundry sophists, the Protagoras is the only conversation with a sophist that is explicitly about political education. Protagoras claims to

be an expert in teaching political excellence, which includes, I argue, determining how the next

generation of citizens will receive and establish the laws of their city. I take the Protagoras to be

not only a dialogue with a sophist and about sophistry but also, and more specifically, a dialogue about sophistry as it would replace the art of legislation. Similarly, the Gorgias is the most obvious

contender for the dialogue about political rhetoric.7 From this perspective, that is, taking rhetoric

as an impersonator of the art of justice and therefore of true politics, the discussions of justice

and the nature of politics are nowise out of place in the dialogue.

I take this schema, proposed by Socrates, to indicate both Socrates’s motivation for conducting these conversations and Plato’s overarching plan for these two dialogues. Following the

schema, sophistry and rhetoric together constitute a calibrated negation of true politics. Conse-

6. See Laurence Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic: A Study of Plato’s Protagoras, Charmides, and Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 19–21, and Catherine Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Co- herence of the Dialogues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 215–217 and 532–535 for the suggested timing of the dialogues.

7. The Phaedrus, ostensibly the other obvious candidate for a dialogue about rhetoric, explicitly takes place outside of the city’s walls. See Seth Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) for a striking treatment of the Gorgias and Phaedrus in light of one another. 7 quently, these two dialogues, one on sophistry and one on rhetoric, together give the negative, inverted image of the practice of true politics. The image of true politics that comes to light isthe one I stipulated above and for which I argue in the dissertation, namely, a politics that contends with an inherently self-deceptive city. It is not a view of politics that is sketched out in leisurely conversation with interested and interesting young people; it is a view of politics that is snatched from the clutches of its conniving and seductive enemies. It is not a view of politics that sets out ab ovo its governing structures; it is a view of politics that manages the in medias res messiness of an inherited battleground. The politics that comes to light from these dialogues is therefore also distinctive among Plato’s “political” dialogues. The distinctive practice of politics indicated by the negation of sophistry and rhetoric is no conceptual framework devised by a would-be master-planner; instead it surrounds, informs, compels, resists, impinges on, and results from the actions of citizens as citizens, and of citizens already at work in a living city.

Consequently and perhaps most controversially, my approach rejects reading these dialogues as conflicts between philosophy and sophistry or rhetoric. I address the precise nuances of the relationship between Socrates’s attempt to practice genuine politics and his devotion to philosophy in the final chapter of this dissertation. For now, let it suffice to sketch thedominant differences between these two practices. First, though I am concerned to preserve the powerof truth in my account of true politics, I must emphasize that the role of truth in true politics cannot be identical to role truth plays in the practice of philosophy. If the philosophical life is moved by the unceasing striving after truth, never resting with truth as tainted by appearance orwith only a partial view of the whole, then it clearly cannot be the same as the political life—even the life devoted to the practice of true politics. These practices can intersect, as I argue they doin

Socrates, but they have fundamentally different postures towards truth. Philosophy searches for being to the exclusion of seeming; politics must dwell always with a mix of being and seeming. True politics is true, on my account, by virtue of its devotion to a real, common good, but this common good is always refracted by the contingencies of the community for whom it is a good, and it is essentially conditioned by the self-deceptive character of any political community. No 8

one with a life-constituting love of philosophy could stand to live only a political life. But for true politics to have any hope of success, those who live a political life must also live an examined life.

In these dialogues, sophistry and rhetoric as dual impersonators of the art of politics are

primarily opposed to the practice of politics and not the discipline of philosophy. When Socrates

engages with the eponymous sophist and rhetorician, he does so on behalf of the politics they undermine, not on behalf of his own philosophical life (at least not directly). Together these

dialogues indicate the demands and restrictions of that kind of politics. Nevertheless, it is a

philosophical task to discern what these dialogues indicate. In the next section, I outline how

this dissertation conducts that philosophical task.

Hermeneutic Principles and Argumentative Structure

As I indicated above, one of my hermeneutic principles is to approach the two dialogues

as forming a larger interpretive whole. Another of my principles is to remain sensitive to these

dialogues as artful dialogues. At this point in the history of scholarship on Plato, I do not need to

rehearse the arguments for the benefits of this approach.8 I should, however, indicate what I take this approach to include and what are its specific consequences. In the course of this explication it

will also become clear how my interpretive principles influence the dissertation’s argumentative

strategy.

I subscribe to a fairly strong version of what has been termed “logographic necessity.”9 By

this I mean that I assume a maximum of intention in the composition of these dialogues. I believe

8. For such a case see Gerald Press, “The State of the Question in the Study of Plato,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 34, no. 4 (1996): 507–532 and his update, which indicates that my approach is broadly tolerated if not accepted: Gerald Press, “The State of the Question in the Study of Plato: Twenty Year Update,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 56, no. 1 (2018): 9–35.

9. For its Platonic root, see Phaedrus 264b. For a more contemporary comment on this principle, see Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 53: Logographic necessity is “the necessity which ought to govern the writing of speeches; every part of the written speech must be necessary for the whole; the place where each part occurs is the place where it is necessary that it should occur; in a word, the good writing must resemble the healthy animal which can do its proper work well.” Strauss continues: “The proper work of writing is to talk to some readers and to be silent to others.” 9 that Plato wrote these dialogues with the greatest care, and that his care commands a similar care from his readers. The characters of the dialogues, their behaviors, deeds, and motivations; what they say and to whom they say it; the dramatic setting and framing of the dialogues; the organization of the conversations within the dialogues; the different modes of speech employed at different times by different characters; what is made explicit and what is left implicit—all these deserve attention. This mandate for diligence is compounded by the subjects of the dialogues: sophistry and rhetoric operate by ambiguity, equivocation, and implication, and Protagoras and

Gorgias are both famously intelligent and crafty men. Consequently, my exegesis of the dialogues adopts a high level of discrimination. Yet my exegesis, though exacting, is not exhaustive; I self- consciously set a limit to the depth of detail I address. This limit was required by the restrictions of time and space and was guided by my concern for the overall project.

My interpretations and the argument they support were also guided by a conviction that, in addition to being dialogues between the interlocutors, Plato’s dialogues are intended to initiate a dialogue between the reader and the text. The dialogues are not meant merely to be excavated but also to be engaged with. They are meant to inspire and reward philosophical reflection on the reader’s part, a philosophical reflection that develops out of a dynamic interplay between consideration of the text itself and contemplation about its form and content. When interpreting these dialogues I continually asked: what is being conveyed by this whole? in what cosmos does this dialogue make the most sense? This interpretive stance informs the structure of my argument as a whole. Thekindof argument I offer is neither deductive nor inductive, but is rather what may be called abductive.

I do not deduce my argument about the self-deceptive nature of the city from a speech or set of speeches within the dialogues; nor do I project it from the cumulative details given in the dialogues. Instead, I attend to the background conditions that would cause the dialogues to unfold as they do. My argument therefore works at a level beyond careful literary reading, though one thoroughly grounded in such a reading. This kind of argument demands a persistent fidelity to the text as well as rigorous philosophical reasoning about the phenomena they disclose. And 10 these dual demands mutually inform and constrain each other. With this form of argument, I move with some confidence from what is said in the dialogues to what Plato intends bythem.

Plan of the Work

Given the nature of my argumentative strategy, it is crucial that each chapter performs a particular function. The first two chapters present my exegesis of the dialogues. This exegesisis necessarily determined by and anticipates the argument that follows; nevertheless, I give reasons internal to the dialogues for how I approach them. I begin with the Protagoras both because it is prior in dramatic time to the Gorgias, and because sophistry impersonates the prior political art of legislation. This art—better described as the art of establishing law—concerns the education of the young so that the laws of the city retain their authority and integrity. The art of justice, on the other hand, presupposes this situation and concerns what must be done both to preserve these laws and to redress their violation. Therefore, the first chapter is an interpretation ofthe

Protagoras and the second chapter is an interpretation of the Gorgias.

The third chapter serves a transition from exegesis to argument. In that chapter Itake stock of what comes to light by virtue of reading these dialogues as a single and sustained philosophical venture. I focus particularly on the development of Socrates’s character over the course of these two dialogues. I also reflect on the character of Callicles, identifying him as a culminating figure: he is representative of the kind of citizen that results from successful sophistry and rhetoric. With these two reflections in place, I move to ask: “What is the nature of the city such that Callicles can dwell (even succeed!) in it and that Socrates feels compelled to defend it?” I then answer this question with my thesis that the city is inherently self-deceptive. To conclude the third chapter, I outline this thesis and make a case for its explanatory power.

The fourth and fifth chapters deepen my defense of the self-deception thesis byconsider- ing how it explains the political function of sophistry and rhetoric in particular. Mirroring the order of the first two chapters, the fourth chapter argues that the city’s self-deception accounts for both its susceptibility and resistance to sophistry, and the fifth does the same with respect to 11 rhetoric. In the fourth chapter, I argue that the art of legislation is best understood primarily as a kind of civic education, and I develop my account of how sophistry endangers that education.

I then employ the self-deception thesis to explain why civic education is open to such a danger and how it is nevertheless possible that civic education genuinely strives for the city’s common good. In the fifth chapter, I expand on the art of justice in the city and develop myaccountof how rhetoric endangers the city’s practice of justice. I again employ the self-deception thesis to explain why this practice is open to such a danger and how it is nevertheless possible for the city’s practice of justice to preserve its common good.

The sixth and final chapter reflects on the foregoing whole of the dissertation atafurther remove. In that chapter I return to the question of how the two halves of my dissertation interact, that is, how the exegesis and argument mutually inform and support each other. I argue for the philosophical cogency of my self-deception thesis and I more explicitly ground that thesis in the form and content of the dialogues. From this elevated perspective I then take up the tension between politics and philosophy. I address in what way Socrates’s practice of true politics is philosophical and in what way it cannot be. I also explore the tension between Plato’s depiction of Socrates in this intersection of politics and philosophy and Plato’s own confrontation of the intersection by writing the dialogues in which Socrates dwells; in other words, I consider the correlation and contention between philosophical politics and political philosophy. In the end, then, I return to the relationship outlined at the beginning of this introduction: the relationship between true politics and the truth about politics. Part I

The Dialogues

12 Chapter 1

Protagoras

Introduction

”Whence?” is the first word of Plato’s Protagoras.1 Socrates is asked this question by an unnamed companion, but we must ask ourselves this question as well. This initial question suggests that we should enter the dialogue by questioning the context of the dialogue. The first word, indeed, the first question of the dialogue echoes in the first words of the titular character.

Protagoras first speaks to ask the question of whether the conversation with Socrates shouldbe in private or in public. Identifying the context of a conversation is crucial to understanding the standards to which it must be held. In Protagoras’s case, the standards of a private conversation will differ from those of a public exchange and mistaking which standards apply can be disastrous.

In the reader’s case, also, a disastrous misapplication of standards awaits those who assume the wrong context. Yet we are warned by both the frame dialogue and the recounted dialogue with the major interlocutor that we should begin with the question of the dialogue’s context.

My interpretation of the dialogue begins as the dialogue does, with the question of context. This is not the obvious claim that context is significant for the interpretation ofaPlatonic dialogue. Rather, I take my bearings from the question of context. For this dialogue in particular, there is a question on what terms it takes place, who is on what side, and what are the stakes.2 Not only is it not clear what and whether there is a primary and orienting theme—there are a number of strong candidates—but also there is an issue of intentional obfuscation. Protagoras’s

1. All textual references will be to James A. Arieti, “Plato’s Philosophical Antiope: The Gorgias,” in Plato’s Dialogues: New Studies and Interpretations, ed. Gerald A. Press (Rowman & Littlefield, 1993), 197–214. All translations are my own, though I learned much from Robert Bartlett, Protagoras and Meno (Cornell University Press, 2004).

2. Another way to ask these question is: where is the dialogue coming from, and where is it going? Formu- lated thus, it seems that both backward and forward thinking will be required from the beginning in order to interpret the dialogue. The reader must be both epimethean and promethean in his approach to the dialogue. Christopher Long, “Crisis of Community: The Topology of Socratic Politics in the Protagoras,” Epoché 15, no. 2 (2011): 361–377 makes a similar point, also emphasizing the issue of context and the circularity of the dramatic situation.

13 14 admission that he is a sophist is couched in an admission that there has been and there may yet be good reason for the sophist to obscure his intentions. Indeed there are a number of good reasons to suspect that sophistry is inherently self-misrepresentative.3 There are also several admonitions to caution, from Socrates to Hippocrates and from Protagoras to Socrates. My interpretation of the dialogue thus begins and continues in a mode of cautious awareness of context. As mentioned, the dialogue affords an array of possible primary and orienting themes. The themes of method, ethics, and education have each found a number of proponents in scholarly commentaries on the dialogue. although nearly all scholars find the Protagoras to be concerned with distinguishing sophistry from philosophy, a point which I take up below. In the group who take method to be central are Francisco Gonzalez, who grounds the difference between the ethical positions of Protagoras and Socrates in their respective methods, sophistic speech-making versus genuine dialogue;4 Eugenio Benitez, who similarly identifies philosophical discourse as ethical ar- gumentation, whereas sophistic displays have no intrinsic relation to the ethical commitments of its speaker;5 and, taking a different tact, Vasilis Politis who sees the Protagoras as primarily concerned with a methodological thesis that establishes the necessity of beginning with definitions.6 In the group who locate the central antagonism on the issue of ethics are Marina McCoy, who claims that Socrates’s and Protagoras’s methods are all but indistinguishable with the result that only their ends are what differentiate them,7 and Terrence Irwin, who finds the Protagoras to be the vehicle for some of Plato’s experimental arguments meant to buttress and perhaps unify

3. See the Gorgias 465c-d and the Sophist 235c-d.

4. Francisco Gonzalez, “The Virtue of Dialogue, Dialogue as Virtue in Plato’s Protagoras,” Philosophical Papers 43, no. 1 (2014): 33–66.

5. Eugenio Benitez, “Argument, Rhetoric, and Philosophic Method: Plato’s Protagoras,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 25, no. 3 (1992): 222–252.

6. Vasilis Politis, “What Do the Arguments in the Protagoras Amount to?,” Phronesis 57 (2012): 209–239.

7. Marina McCoy, Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 15

different tenets of so-called Socratic ethics.8 In the group who identify education as the primary source of conflict are Tucker Landy, who asserts that the first purpose of the dialogue istoprotect the philosophically promising youth from the intellectual complacency of sophistry,9 and Larry

Goldberg10, Patrick Coby11, and Laurence Lampert12 who all see Socrates engaged in the project of somehow educating the sophist himself. Most influential for the account that follows is Robert Bartlett’s essay on the Protagoras where he describes Socrates as engaged in protecting political pedagogy from the corrupting influence of Protagoras.13

Of these possible themes the most obvious candidate for a unifying and organizing theme is that of education. Discovering the nature of and determining the value of the education Pro- tagoras offers is the explicit reason Socrates and Hippocrates go to see him. In the same breath as his admission that he is a sophist, Protagoras identifies his activity as educating the young, an identification he never revises. The difficulty with maintaining that education the primary topic of the dialogue is that the dialogue itself seems to diverge even wildly from this initially explicit concern. Questions about the unity of the virtues, hedonism and ἀκρασία, andwisdom and courage constitute the bulk of the dialogue and seem, at least on the surface, to be primarily ethical issues. The discussion concerning methodology, which occurs at a critical moment when the dialogue threatens to dissolve, and the impressive interpretation of Simonides’s poem, which occurs as the result of the foregoing methodological discussion, seem to have little to do with education but also cannot rightly be dismissed from an adequate interpretation of the dialogue. The selection of any one theme over the others will run into the same difficulty. My responseto

8. T. Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

9. Tucker Landy, “Virtue, Art and the Good Life in Plato’s Protagoras,” Interpretation 21, no. 3 (1994): 288– 308.

10. Larry Goldberg, A Commentary on Plato’s Protagoras (New York: Peter Lang, 1983).

11. Patrick Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment (London: Associated University Press, 1987).

12. Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic.

13. Bartlett, Protagoras and Meno. 16

this difficulty is to confront it head on. My interpretation takes up the theme of education infull consciousness that it must unify the other, seemingly unrelated moments of the dialogue, and in

full confidence that it can do so.

Despite differing on which of these themes is the central one, nearly all scholars assume—

though none have explicitly argued—that Protagoras and Socrates fall on either side of the theme as representatives of sophistry and philosophy, respectively.14 While it seems undeniable that

Protagoras represents sophistry in the dialogue, it is not so clear that Socrates acts as a rep-

resentative of philosophy. In fact not only does Socrates never explicitly identify himself as

philosopher—as, for example, Protagoras does explicitly identify himself as a sophist—but there

is no conclusive textual evidence that we should identify Socrates as acting and speaking as a representative of philosophy. The word philosophy, or the verb form to philosophize, appears

only five times in the dialogue.15 The term is never applied to Socrates’s actions or speeches,

by Socrates himself or by anyone else. In every case, Socrates uses it in description of someone

else, never as a description of what he himself is doing or is concerned with. He uses it once to describe Callias’s desire that he, Socrates, stay and continue his conversation with Protagoras,

though there is no elaboration on how or indication that Callias is particularly different from any

of the others, including the sophists Hippias and Prodicus, who also desire the conversation to

continue. The putative love of wisdom Callias displays is one shared by the company and byother

sophists, so it seems unlikely that Socrates here alludes to his own practice. The other four uses occur in Socrates’s speech about the Spartans as exemplary lovers of wisdom. Whatever Socrates

means in that speech—and it seems quite likely that he ascribes philosophy to them ironically—it

14. A notable exception to this otherwise ubiquitous view is Michael Gagarin, “The Purpose of Plato’s Pro- tagoras,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 100 (1969): 133–164, who instead argues for a basic continuity between the views advanced by Socrates and those by Protagoras. Gagarin and I agree that most scholars approach the dialogue wrongly in assuming an antagonism between sophistry and philosophy, but where Gagarin sees continuity, I still see antagonism, though an antagonism between sophistry and traditional civic education.

15. These appearances are at Protagoras335d, 342a, 342d, 342e, and 343b. 17

is at least clear that he is not describing an activity in which he himself participates.16 The understanding of philosophy as it is explicitly used in the text is certainly no clear antagonist to sophistry.

Beyond the explicit mention of philosophy, there are other obvious lacunae. A number of features by which we usually identify Socrates’s practice of philosophy are missing. For example, Socrates’s famous “what is [it]?” question does not appear as the initial question in a quest for definitions; instead, he pursues questions of quality, such as, whether virtue is teachable, whether it is one, and so on.17 There are two instances where Socrates asks a question of the “whatis.

. .” form: once at the beginning and once at the very end of the dialogue. In the first instance at Protagoras 312c4-5 Socrates asks Hippocrates “What is a sophist?” Hippocrates quickly runs out of answers,18 but despite the remaining perplexity Socrates does not put the same question to Protagoras—who purports to know who are the sophists and by implication what is sophistry.

The end to this line of questioning, at least as a pursuit of a philosophically rigorous definition of sophistry, is more swift and disappointing than most others. The other instance is an indirect question at the close of Socrates’s conversation with Protagoras. At 361c Socrates claims that he would like to go back through the conversation starting with the question “what is virtue” and then inquire whether it is teachable. This is evidence more for the claim that Socrates did not conduct the conversation in a philosophically adequate way than for the claim that Socrates is engaged in something like his usual practice of searching for definition. In fact, despite the many

16. The only scholar who attempts to make the case that the described Spartan philosophy isgenuinely comparable to Socratic philosophy is Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 92–94. The basis of his case is the supposed shared esotericism of Socrates and the Spartans; but precisely because esotericism is the ground for his claim, Lampert cannot show any overlap in content. Consequently, Lampert does not attempt to align other features of Socrates’s philosophizing with his description of Spartan philosophy.

17. Instead of taking these questions as a sign that the dialogue is not concerned with a philosophical search for definitions, Politis, “What Do the Arguments inthe Protagoras Amount to?,” 223 ff. tries to make the case that this departure from beginning with definition is what makes the Protagoras essentially a cautionary tale aboutpoor method. This approach is reductive and does not adequately address the richness of the dialogue’s dramatic structure or the complexity of its characters.

18. Some 15 lines later at 312e5 Hippocrates admits that he cannot complete the definition of the sophist. 18 methodological asides, Socrates never emphasizes the need to begin with or even end up at a definition.

Other hallmarks of Socratic philosophy are missing or only very faintly present, such as an emphasis on an erotic pursuit of truth or wisdom, a call to replace opinion with knowledge, or even an exhortation towards critical self-examination.19 Nevertheless, much effort has been spent to show how Socrates’s speeches and deeds in the Protagoras do align with and contribute to a primarily philosophical purpose. If Socrates is here speaking as a proponent of philosophy, then he seems obligated to the positions he expounds in the dialogue as his own philosophically considered positions.20 This latter point causes much consternation among commentators especially regarding Socrates’s porous arguments for the unity of the virtues, his acrobatic interpretation of the Simonides poem, and his unsettling promotion of calculative hedonism. Those who wish to distance Socrates from these positions must instead shoulder the onus of explaining why he is sometimes authentic and sometimes ironic. An additional difficulty for this approach is the danger that these sorts of explanations turn ad hoc. I believe much of effort has been misspent because of the faulty assumption that Socrates is here a proponent of philosophy and consequently that the positions he promotes are philosophically authentic. My argument is not that these difficulties are insurmountable, but that they are the price of assuming the Socrates is acting and speaking as a proponent of philosophy. Since there is nothing in the text that binds us

19. Regarding the conspicuous lack of eroticism, Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment 22-25, suggests that Socrates’s erotic striving for wisdom is hinted at as an alternative to “anorexic” sophistry, but he admits that this relationship to wisdom is not developed within the dialogue itself.

20. Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues, 217-228 seems to strike a middle ground on this point. She begins her treatment of the Protagoras with the claim that “Socrates was trying to persuade [Protagoras] to join him in a philosophical investigation” (217). Yet, she interprets the arguments of the dialogue as primarily negative (she thus avoids the problems of defending Socrates’s seemingly un-Socratic positions) and the project of the dialogue as oriented more towards “discouraging his young companion (as well as, perhaps, the other Athenian youths gathered in Callias’s home) from studying with the sophist” than towards “examining Protagoras’ argument” (223). Zuckert’s interpretation, brief though it is, presents a powerful case that Socrates “achieved the most immediate goal of his visit; he had discredited the sophist sufficiently in the eyes of his young friend to preserve his soul from possible corruption” (228). The case is so powerful that one wonders why she posits, though doesnot support, the claim that Socrates aims at persuading others to join him in a philosophical investigation. 19

to accept this position, and assuming it raises a number of interpretive difficulties, I submit that this assumption should be reconsidered.

Rather than a pitched battle between sophistry and philosophy, the context I propose is

a confrontation of the education provided by the sophist (here promoted by Protagoras) and the

education provided by the city by means of its citizens and its customs and laws (here defended by Socrates). On my reading, Protagoras’s peddled wisdom is a subversion of the general education

in citizenship provided by all to all. Socrates contends with Protagoras’s proposed education

of the young, politically-viable citizens of Athens not so that these citizens instead will become

philosophers but so that they may still have a chance of being good citizens. Socrates does not

offer the philosophical life as an alternative to the sophist’s vision of how to live; insteadhe defends traditional civic education from the danger sophistic education poses. Socrates steps

into the conversation in order to defend rather than promote, for he sees what is truly at stake in

Protagoras’s sophistry, namely the common good of the city and subsequently the possibility of

good citizens. The context of the contest between Socrates and Protagoras is philosophy onlyto the extent that it is political philosophy.21

The counterpoint education to Protagoras’s sophistic education is traditional civic education. The end of this education is ultimately the common good of the city. By this education,the citizens develop political virtues, not so that they be expert politicians but so that they be good citizens of the πόλις, citizens who can participate in the common good. The citizen’s excellence is both determined by and determines his role as a part of and participant in the city and its common good. Traditional civic education does not come about through the activity and expertise

21. Goldberg, A Commentary on Plato’s Protagoras, Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment and I share in the view that Socrates combats sophistry on behalf of the city, but both Goldberg and Coby see Socrates as offering his own philosophical position in sophistry’s stead. Likewise, Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic argues, in the context of his larger project, that Socrates’s project is primarily political. He claims that Socrates makes a political correction to Protagoras’s sophistry, though for the sake of making the pursuit of intellectual enlightenment a safer enterprise for those with intellectual tendencies rather than for the protection of the city. On my view, Socrates addresses sophistry and Protagoras in the political sphere because that is where sophistry is most dangerous to the city, but rather than attempt to substitute sophistry with philosophy, Socrates instead attempts to expose sophistry so as to prevent it from subverting the traditional civic education of Athens’s most promising youths. 20 of a single teacher, but rather through a common endeavor, informed by custom and law and enacted by all citizens for all citizens. This education comes about at the hands of fathers and mothers, nursemaids and pedagogues, fellow citizens and even by the city’s customs and laws.

The content of this education is what is commonly recognized to be the just, fitting, orlawful things, what is in a way already and always at work in the happenings of the city—though not necessarily fully and ideally functioning as such. Its content is uncontroversial and indicative, making use of clear cases or paradigms of virtue. This education is not the same as the education the citizen will require in order to take up a trade or manage his household, rather, it constitutes an informing and constraining context. Political excellence must be comprehensive, for it aims at the thriving of an internally heterogeneous community precisely as a whole. In turn, education in that excellence, as provided by the city, must thus be comprehensive, and it can be comprehensive because it is common, because both its responsibility and its purpose are shared by the political community.

Sophistic education instead of being grounded in and oriented toward the city’s common good instead assumed a distinction between nature and convention whereby all stability and shared reality is divided from convention and endowed to nature alone. The customs and laws of the city can therefore make no true claim to reality. In turn, the common good that these customs and laws seek to establish and sustain can be only a fiction. The only good that has any reality is the good that a man may make for himself, his own good. It is for this good, namely, the individual good that sophistic education educates.22

Though, on the sophistic view, the common good is a mere fiction, it is nevertheless a widely believed fiction, a fiction for which men are willing to fight and die and kill.Sophis- tic education therefore cannot openly educate for the individual good exclusively. Protagoras’s particular way of concealing the nature of sophistic education is by openly presenting it as a simple extension of civic education. Sophistic education pretends to supplement traditional civic

22. I will revisit and make more thorough arguments for these claims in chapter 4. 21 education, but since their purposes are so opposed, sophistry necessarily subverts it. Sophistic education is presented as a refinement of what the city teaches, a mere further cultivation ofthose naturally endowed with political gifts, which in no way contradicts or contravenes the city’s education, even as it actually does so. In this way, Protagoras can retain for sophistic education a comprehensive look that parallels civic education, without also thereby giving up his role as a single and specific educator with peculiar and private knowledge. What this amounts to,however, is the education of particular students, namely the ones who can afford it, to pursue their own good while seeming to promote the common good of their city.

Again, Protagoras is well aware that this purpose of sophistic education must remain concealed in order to be practicable. His participation in the dialogue is therefore constrained by self-preservation, manifested on the one hand in his attempt to attract students, which requires that he reveal something of the true appeal of sophistic education, and on the other hand in his care not to reveal too much, lest he be driven from the city or worse. Protagoras’s motivation for engaging in conversation lies primarily in attracting students. Most immediately and explicitly, he converses with Socrates for the sake of gaining Hippocrates as a student. Additionally, when

Protagoras first addresses Socrates, Socrates is also surrounded by Alcibiades and Critias, both of whom would be fine additions to Protagoras’s coterie. Protagoras thus first sees Socrates asa potentially helpful intermediary, a local sort of sophist who may be willing to share his students.

In an effort to impress not only the potential students, but also Socrates, Protagoras keepsthe discourse public, welcoming the other foreign sophists to look on as his makes his display. Later, after it becomes clear to Protagoras that Socrates is not as helpful as he may at first havesupposed,

Protagoras is kept from abandoning the conversation and thereby evading the looming threat to his reputation on account of the entreaties (and perhaps threats) of the surrounding potential students. The prospect of gathering students is what moves Protagoras throughout the dialogue, and the care with which he must do so is what constrains that movement.

Socrates’s motivation, on the other hand, is not so clear. That he is antagonistic to the sophistic education Protagoras presents is readily apparent, but what motivates this opposition and 22

his way of opposing Protagoras are less obvious. In line with his opening conversation with Hip- pocrates, his task certainly includes submitting sophistic education to a thorough examination;

he attempts to lay before Hippocrates, and the other potential students present, what is presup-

posed by and follows from a sophistic education. As the conversation progresses, the fronts upon

which Socrates chooses to advance his ἔλεγχος and the manner in which he conducts his examination indicate that he is neither neutral with respect to the claims of sophistic education nor

does he advocate for a philosophical education as a possible antidote. If Socrates were a disin-

terested party, merely concerned with negating sophistry, there are, for example, more obvious

routes of criticizing Protagoras’s Great Speech than pursuing Protagoras’s position on the unity

of the virtues. On the other hand, if Socrates were interested in promoting a positive philosophical position against the sophistic one, then we would expect better, less defensive arguments.

Socrates’s mode of operation seems to be to reveal the very aspects of sophistic education which

Protagoras attempts to conceal.23 And he pursues this task of revelation because of the very

thing that caused Protagoras to conceal those aspects of sophistic education, namely, the danger of sophistry to the city.

If his goal is to reveal the nature of sophistry’s adverse effect on the city, Socrates must take

care about the way he pursues this goal. He must be careful of Protagoras’s caution.24 If he were

to accuse sophistry outright of undermining the city’s education, Protagoras could easily deny the

23. If this is Socrates’s strategy, that makes good sense of the fact that he frequently sounds very much like a sophist himself—a fact that has frequently beleaguered and intrigued commentators, such as McCoy, Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists, 71–75; Gagarin, “The Purpose of Plato’s Protagoras,” 161–163; and Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 132–133. Consider also the long-running controversy over whether the hedonism developed by Socrates later in the dialogue is a genuinely “Socratic” position. On my reading, Socrates assumes the voice of sophistry only to say more than sophistry would like said, thereby revealing the nature of sophistry and its danger to the city while, admittedly, potentially concealing himself.

24. Again, if Socrates wished to simply overturn sophistry in an attempt to completely eradicate it from the city, he could righteously and easily make enemies of Protagoras. But if he wishes to make sophistry to reveal something of itself, he must keep Protagoras talking, if not in a continuously friendly manner. Benitez, “Argument, Rhetoric, and Philosophic Method: Plato’s Protagoras,” 231–233 also identifies the revelation of sophistry as the unifying motivation of Socrates’s rhetoric. Goldberg, A Commentary on Plato’s Protagoras, 67–73 also gives a nuanced account of Socrates’s irony, but he does not say with clarity what constrains Socrates’s irony besides establishing a distinction between the sophist and the philosopher. 23 accusation and in turn deny Socrates the possibility of a conversation on the grounds of offense. To illicit from this immensely clever man what he is trying to conceal, Socrates must be yet cleverer. Socrates must use Protagoras’s desire to attract students against his desire to preserve his concealment; he plays Protagoras’s two goals against one another. But just as Protagoras’s concealment is constrained by these two goals, so also Socrates’s oblique tactics are constrained by his goal. This interpretation will treat any stipulated irony on Socrates’s part to beinservice of his ultimate goal, namely, to indicate the way in which sophistry is a danger to the city.

In sum, this interpretation takes the issue of the context to be decisive for understanding the dynamics of the dialogue. The motivating question of this interpretation is where to locate the driving force of the dialogue. I contend that what drives the dialogue is the place that sophistry attempts to make for itself in the city. The point of the dialogue is to demonstrate that sophistryis dangerous and that its danger resides precisely in its relation to the city. Central to the dialogue is the attempt to clarify the true context of sophistry—that it carries political ramifications and that these political ramifications cannot be ignored even as much as they are concealed. What is at stake in this conversation is not merely the fate of one man’s soul, but the fate of a generation of citizens and the generations that follow them. Within this context, then, I begin my interpretation.

Entering the Dialogue: 309a–317d

The Protagoras begins with three entrances which fruitfully contrast with one another, but which all prepare for the ensuing conversation between Socrates and Protagoras. The first is the entrance of Socrates to the company of an undisclosed number of companions. It is composed of a frame conversation which immediately confronts the reader. There is no introductory narrative or scene-setting, merely an exchange of speeches between a companion and Socrates. The secondis the entrance of Hippocrates into Socrates’s home which initiates the movement to converse with

Protagoras. This second entrance is comprised of a narration by Socrates of young Hippocrates entering his home in the early hours of the day, and a conversation between himself and this 24 young man which prepares for the conversation to be had with Protagoras. The third entrance is the entrance of Socrates into the home of Callias and into the conversation with Protagoras which will continue for the rest of the dialogue. It is comprised of another rich narration by

Socrates and an introductory conversation with Protagoras. The narration sets a detailed scene of Callias’s home replete with sophists and their followers; the conversation is a preparation from Protagoras himself, though less explicitly, of the dialogue to come.

The latter two entrances contrast significantly with the first. The narration oftheseen- trances are profuse with detail, providing a rich setting for and introduction to the conversations— a richness that continues throughout Socrates’s recalling of his encounter with Protagoras. I suggest that this abundance of detail in Socrates’s narrated entrance is meant to contrast with the dearth of detail in the initial frame. With this juxtaposition, the reader’s attention is drawn to what is not said in the first entrance. In this way the dialogue begins in an implicit vein, which prepares the reader to be sensitive to a level of implication sustained throughout the dialogue and resulting in as much richness as the explicit narration.The latter two entrances also contrast with one another, both with respect to the described action and with respect to the conversations they contain. In the action, the second entrance occurs as the scene ascends into daylight and the characters move from the dark indoors into the brighter outdoors; the third entrance is cast as a descent into the underworld of Hades and the characters move from out of doors to indoors.

In the second entrance, the conversation is straightforward and earnest, almost comically so; the third entrance conversation begins with a strategic self-consciousness of how to present itself.

This contrast also draws the reader’s attention to the role of implication; attention mustbepaid not only to what is said and not said, but also to how it is said.

First Entrance: 309a–310a

There is much that is merely implied in the first entrance. The first speaker of thedialogue is identified as a “companion,” yet it eventually becomes clear that there is more than one person, 25 and very likely more than one companion, present.25 Furthermore, in the first few lines the speaking companion intimates that the conversation is private. He guesses that Socrates has just come from hunting Alcibiades, and hints that there may be something inappropriate to this since

Alcibiades is on the cusp of manhood, already starting to grow a full beard. The companion admits that Alcibiades is still beautiful, but this beauty is immediately contrasted with the possibility of an unseemly relationship as Alcibiades is a man. This gesture toward the unseemly possibility appears to be a discrete, though perhaps jocular, warning. The companion makes his comment

“speaking just between ourselves [ὥς γ῾ ἐν αὐτοῖς ἡμῖν εἱρῆσθα]” (309a), which at first seems to indicate that the comment is made for Socrates’s hearing alone. When we find later that there are more companions than the one speaking, we wonder if the suggestive comment is perhaps not a friendly, private caution but a public teasing. Not for the last time, the question of speaking publicly or privately comes into view.

The site of this tension between public and private as well as the tension betweenan evident beauty and an insinuated unseemliness is Socrates’s relationship with Alcibiades. Al- cibiades, of course, is himself a figure of historical tension, whose impolitic exploits loom above the dialogue, but within the dialogue he is one of the most politically promising young citizens of Athens. As much as he may be the target of Socrates’s hunt, he is also paradigmatic of Pro- tagoras’s target audience. And the suggested inappropriate relationship that Socrates may have with him contrasts with and therefore points toward the possibility of the more encompassing and more inappropriate relationship the sophist may have with the young citizens of a city. The

25. We know there is at least one slave, but it seems unlikely that he comprises the “us” to which the initially speaking companion refers when entreating Socrates to relate his encounter with Protagoras. Also, the fact that the slave’s seat is offered to Socrates implies that their meeting occurs indoors, though this is never explicitly said.And finally, it is not clear whether this is the meeting for which Socrates was late at the end of the dialogue andtowhich he refers in the middle of the dialogue. Yet, it is not impossible that this is the very meeting Socrates mentions; John S. Treantafelles, “Socratic Testing: Protagoras 310a-314b,” Interpretation 40, no. 2 (2013): 147–174 makes a compelling case that these are precisely the people Socrates claims he had been planning to meet. Nevertheless, the abruptness of the entrance indicates a happenstance meeting, the companions never comment on Socrates’s lateness, and if Socrates did have some business with these men, this business is not so urgent that it precludes him from relating the whole of his encounter with Protagoras and then some. Ultimately, there is much left unsaid in this first entrance. 26

question of the sophist’s relationship to the young is on the stage, since Socrates deftly handles the insinuation by quoting Homer, who will be on the list of crypto-sophists that Protagoras cites.

Just as Socrates, though, allegedly forgot about Alcibiades in favor of Protagoras, so too

the companions’s attentions shift abruptly to hearing of Socrates’s conversation with thesophist

from Abdera.26 This shift occurs by means of beauty and wisdom. The companions assumethat Socrates could forget about Alcibiades only in favor of someone more beautiful. Socrates does not disappoint, naming Protagoras as the more beautiful because he is the wisest. The commensurability of wisdom with beauty will be another issue that lurks behind the upcoming conversation.

Being the wisest does not mean being the most beautiful, it seems, only more beautiful. The companions seem to be convinced that Protagoras is the wisest, but they remain silent as to whether that entails his beauty. Regardless, they are eager to hear what Socrates heard and said while with Protagoras.27

Socrates’s ascription of superlative wisdom to Protagoras can be taken as straightforward or ironic. The ironic reading is the easiest28 one. On this view, Socrates may be drawing attention to Protagoras’s failing in wisdom by ascribing to him a superlative status in wisdom. Or perhaps

Socrates is drawing attention to the nature and purpose of wisdom as a theme in the upcoming

dialogue by disingenuously attributing superlative wisdom to Protagoras. Whatever the purpose

26. Though Socrates nearly forgot about Alcibiades, and the companions seem to forget about himtoo, we should not forget both that Socrates conversation with Protagoras may be for Aliciabiades’s benefit (see Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 177, n. 83; and Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 124–130) and that if it was for his benefit, he did not seem ultimately to benefit.

27. Their eagerness also indicates that these companions are uninformed of the intellectual goings-onof Athens, even more than Hippocrates. ibid., 25, takes this to mean that the companions are meant to represent the general, Athenian public, more interested in the titulating gossip of Socrates’s love affairs than in the latest news of the intelligentsia. Treantafelles, “Socratic Testing: Protagoras 310a-314b,” 153, makes a case that the unnamed companions are a “privileged audience,” representative of the powerful few instead of the general public. I think the ambiguity of the audience’s socio-political status is intentional, but what is most relevant is that Socrates relates in an even more public manner what is a semi-private conversation between himself and Protagoras. The frame conversation provides yet another layer of publicity to the dialogue and prepares the reader to be sensitive to the issue of the public and the private and perhaps the question of what is common.

28. See for example, Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 27; Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlight- enment, 24. 27 of the irony, the point is that Socrates does not sincerely think Protagoras is the best with respect to or has the highest degree of wisdom, understood as that after which the philosopher strives. On the other hand, some scholars take Socrates’s attribution here to indicate an ultimate olive branch between Socrates, standing in for philosophy, and Protagoras, standing in for sophistry. This reading claims that there is enough overlap between what Socrates pursues and what Protagoras professes that Socrates sincerely identifies Protagoras as very wise, or even the wisest.29

A middle path is to take Socrates to be unironic with respect to Protagoras’s superlative status, but to be ironic about what he means by naming Protagoras as the most σοφός. By calling Protagoras σοφώτατος, Socrates may be saying—sincerely—that Protagoras is superlative in whatever makes a sophist, that he is most of all the sophist. On this reading, Socrates is signal- ing that Protagoras is the paradigmatic sophist, that of all the sophists to appear in the dialogue,

Protagoras best represents the true nature of sophistry. Consequently, what was previously the question of a commensurability between wisdom and beauty now transforms into a question of the manipulability of beauty or nobility by sophistry. The one who is most of all a sophist will appear more beautiful because a sophist most of all takes care of how he appears. As we will soon see, the draw of Protagoras’s appearance in Athens lures Hippocrates despite Hippocrates’s own admission that he would be ashamed to become a sophist. The appearance of the sophist seems to be split from his being along the lines of beauty and ugliness, and the beauty accruing to his appearance is enough to overcome the ugliness of his being. Protagoras’s appeal survives even a secondhand recounting, as Socrates’s companions express their interest, even delight, in hearing what Socrates said and heard during his association with Protagoras. Yet, Socrates does not straightaway recount his encounter with Protagoras.

With his narration, he makes the companions wait to encounter Protagoras, just as he will make

29. Gagarin, “The Purpose of Plato’s Protagoras,” 135 represents this position in its most extreme form; McCoy, Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists, 57 notes Socrates’s friendliness towards Protagoras; and A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work (New York: Dover Publications, 1926), 288 mentions with some approbation “worthy modern critics” who find no satire in Socrates’s account of Protagoras. 28

Hippocrates wait. Socrates’s conversation with Hippocrates is in some way a preparation to meet Protagoras, not only for Hippocrates but also for his companions and for us the readers.

A Second Entrance: 310a–314c

Socrates’s narration and Hippocrates’s speeches reveal aspects of Hippocrates’s character

that indicate both why he requires some preparation before meeting Protagoras and how he can be prepared. Hippocrates has just returned to Athens after retrieving a runaway slave, which

suggests that he may in fact need some improvement in managing his household matters.30 He also meant to tell Socrates about it, but forgot because something else came up, indicating that he can be somewhat impulsive. Then again, though he was frustrated to be so late informed ofPro- tagoras’s presence in Athens, he recognizes that it would not do to go straightaway to Protagoras. He undertakes immediately to see Socrates, but then restrains this urge with a certain level of forbearance, recognizing the lateness of the hour and his need for sleep. Yet, this forbearance does not hold out until daylight. These points paint a picture of an excitable young man, butone who can be influenced by thinking things through. These two aspects of Hippocrates explain, on the one hand, why he is drawn to Protagoras

(and indeed to what kind of young men Protagoras appeals), and on the other hand why Socrates would have any concern for him. Hippocrates is emblematic of the sort of young man Protagoras attracts inasmuch as he is thumotic. He is beginning to assume household and political responsibility and he is keen to do well on both fronts. Not only does he wish to succeed, but he seems to expect excellence. Socrates describes Hippocrates as both courageous and excited. The root of the second descriptor is πτοία, or terror. The abstracted form here primarily refers to the gid- diness that follows on the heels of extreme fright. Of course the issue of the relation of fear to courage will be a significant question later in the dialogue, but here I suggest these two adjectives together indicate that Hippocrates is motivated to seek eagerly what he fears he may lose out on,

30. Improvement in managing household matters is included in Protagoras’s initial characterization ofwhat he teaches: Protagoras 318e–319a. 29

namely, standing in the city. There is urgency in Hippocrates’s desire to see Protagoras because he himself is in an urgent situation, namely, the zero-sum game of politics, wherein the extent

to which he does not excel is the same extent to which he fails. This sense of urgency is empha-

sized when Socrates, in response to Hippocrates’s story of how and why he came to Socrates’s

home in the early morning hours, jokingly asks if Protagoras has done Hippocrates some wrong or committed some injustice against him (310d). Hippocrates responds thathe has been harmed,

since Protagoras alone is wise, yet he does not make Hippocrates wise. The kind of good that

Hippocrates seeks to gain from Protagoras is the sort whose absence is equally harmful as its

possession is beneficial. Furthermore, Hippocrates indicates that it is only just for him togain

the wisdom Protagoras has, that this excellence or virtue is somehow his due. Protagoras attracts the sort of young man who thinks that he has some claim to excellence in the city and that this

claim must be zealously pursued and defended. Hippocrates is therefore motivated by θύμος.31

Hippocrates’s θύμος does not completely eclipse his thoughtfulness. Though he in some

way believes he is owed what Protagoras has, he recognizes that this will not ensure his success in gaining it. Despite his eagerness, he does not immediately pursue his end, but pauses to give some

thought to how best to achieve that end. It is this moment of thoughtfulness that induces Socrates

to accompany him to Protagoras. Socrates senses that there is a possibility for Hippocrates to be

reflective not only about how best he may achieve his end but also about what his best endreally

is. This possibility prompts Socrates not simply to send Hippocrates off to Protagoras, normerely to introduce them, but to examine what Protagoras offers. Indeed, without this dual condition that

Hippocrates has some share of thoughtfulness and that this thoughtfulness needs safeguarding

from his own θύμος, it is unclear whether Socrates would ever have visited Protagoras. Though

it seems that he knew of Protagoras’s arrival right away, Socrates was not right away moved to

31. Both Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 25 and Gonzalez, “The Virtue of Dialogue, Dialogue as Virtue in Plato’s Protagoras,” 36–37 identify Hippocrates’s impetuosity with an erotic nature. The ethical/political character of Hippocrates’s concern with Protagoras indicates a thumotic motivation rather than an erotic, where one would expect some mention of Protagoras’s beauty as the impetus of Hippocrates’s impetuosity. See Ronna Burger, “The Thumotic and the Erotic Soul: Seth Benardete on Platonic Psychology,” Interpretation 32 (2005): 57–76 for an articulation of the sense of θύμος I use here. 30 see the renowned sophist. That Socrates speaks with Protagoras not on his own account butfor the sake of Hippocrates indicates again that Socrates does not engage with Protagoras on behalf of philosophy, but on behalf of those young citizens who seek out Protagoras’s education.32

Hippocrates recognizes that he needs more than money and eagerness, that he needs an introduction. Socrates also recognizes that Hippocrates needs an introduction, albeit one that takes the form of a preparatory discussion. Citing both the still very early hour, and the fact that

Protagoras is frequently found indoors, Socrates suggests that it would be better to wait a while before setting off (311a). In the meanwhile, Socrates engages Hippocrates in a discussion aimed at preparing Hippocrates to think more carefully about what he is aiming at in his pursuit of an education from Protagoras. The first round of exchanges serve to separate sophistry fromthe arts (τέχναι), masters of which educate for the sake of making another master in that art. At first,

Hippocrates cannot articulate the difference between sophistry and, say, medicine. Accordingly, he finds himself pressed into admitting that the only reason one would seek an education froma sophist is in order to become a sophist. Hippocrates blushes at this admission (312a), though it is not immediately obvious at what he is blushing. He admits that he would be ashamed before his fellow Greeks to become a sophist.

But it becomes clear right away that Hippocrates knows that he is not seeking Protagoras in order to become a sophist. He wants to be educated by a sophist, not become one. Even though he is not quite capable of articulating the distinction required, it seems as though Hippocrates could easily escape the shameful situation by simply asserting that it is not his intention to become a sophist. He could have said something like, “I don’t quite know what the difference is, but I know it’s not the same as being educated by a doctor, because I know I don’t want to be a sophist.” He does not blush because he’s been found out to want to be a sophist. Rather, his blush indicates

32. Socrates does not suggest himself as an alternative teacher but instead directs Hippocrates back to his elders for his education (Protagoras 314c–314d). As Goldberg, A Commentary on Plato’s Protagoras, 75, points out, immediately after making this suggestion, Socrates and Hippocrates leave to visit Protagoras. While Goldberg takes this to mean that Hippocrates requires a “more vivid form of persuasion,” I take this to mean that, even though Hippocrates is not prime material for a philosophical education, his traditional civic education is nonetheless worth preserving and presently at risk. 31

that as certain as Hippocrates may be about not wanting to become a sophist, he is not so certain that there is a way to learn from a sophist without becoming something of a sophist. Hippocrates

comes right up to a moment of self-reflection, and though Socrates’s next distinction saves him

from answering this question for himself—whether it is possible to learn from a sophist without

becoming one—it remains a question that needs to be asked. Socrates’s saving distinction is between learning an art for the sake of becoming an expert

practitioner of that art and learning from an art for the sake of “general education (παιδεία) as

befits a layman and a freeman” (312b). It seems that Socrates’s earlier examples of the doctorand

the sculptor were deliberately chosen to highlight one side of this distinction, and therefore were

perhaps chosen to prompt Hippocrates to the edge of this self-reflection and to open the question on to which side sophistry really belongs, if any. The examples Socrates gives of learning

from experts for the sake of παιδεία are of a citharist and a physical trainer. Presumably Hip-

pocrates has had his fair share of physical and musical training, but now is no Olympic athlete

or celebrated cithara player. So, by the force of these examples and the general sense of παιδεία, Hippocrates asserts that this is the sort of instruction Protagoras. What exactly παιδεία is has

yet no substantial answer, but in the following exchanges, as Socrates and Hippocrates attempt

to clarify the vagueness surrounding sophistry, something of παιδεία also becomes clear.

Socrates continues the conversation by asking if Hippocrates really knows what he has

agreed to, if he knows what he is about to do in seeking Protagoras. If Protagoras is offering instruction as part of παιδεία, then Hippocrates is about to “entrust [his] own soul to the care

of a man who is, as [Hippocrates himself] says, is a sophist” (312b-c). Παιδεία seems to include

offering one’s soul to the care of another. The citharist’s or the physical trainer’s contribution to

παιδεία are obvious enough not to cause alarm, but who the sophist is and what would be his

contribution is yet unknown and to that extent is worrying. Even by this time, Hippocrates has grown more cautious; he claims that he thinks he knows what a sophist is. His caution is well- placed as his answer is neither illuminating nor soothing. The subsequent examination of in what matters the sophist is an expert reveals that the sophist’s expertise remains vague. Somehowthe 32

sophist’s expertise concerns speaking, but about what this speech is supposed to be Hippocrates cannot say. Though Hippocrates was certain that the instruction the sophist offers contributes to παιδεία, he cannot say with equal determinacy how.

Socrates again emphasizes that this lingering vagueness remains a cause for concern.

Even more important than the care of one’s body is the care of one’s soul, and Hippocrates is now about to hand over his soul to an unknown fate. Moving from Hippocrates’s willingness to spend his own and his friends’ wealth to gain Protagoras’s instruction, Socrates identifies the sophist as a kind of peddler. This scenario allows Socrates to present more clearly the danger to which Hippocrates may be submitting himself. The sophist claims that his wares nourish the soul, that they enable the soul to grow useful or beneficial. The sophist’s wares are lessons, or things that the soul learns (μάθημα).33 As such they are even more dangerous than other wares, since the only way to acquire the sophist’s wares is by learning them, that is, by integrating them into one’s soul. Other wares can be acquired and then examined before being ingested. An expert, like a doctor, can examine them and rule whether they will be beneficial or harmful. Unless, Socrates claims, one is an expert in what pertains to the soul, there is great risk in acquiring the sophist’s wares.

Further reflection on this argument shows that the cases are not as distinct astheyfirst appear. Previously, the doctor’s art fell into the camp of arts in which one seeks instruction in order to become an expert. In seeking the advice of a doctor, one already recognizes that he himself is not an expert in that art and so must rely on the expertise of the doctor. But if one does not know how the doctor knows what he knows, then he takes the doctor’s advice in a state

33. This claim need not imply that any sophist have a set of recognizable doctrines. It is perhapsmore appropriate to consider this as referring to the curriculum of a given sophist, for example, studies of nature (like Hippias) or studies of linguistic distinctions (like Prodicus). See G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 37–41 for a treatment of the variety of such curricula. Even with this treatment, Kerferd goes on to analyze what we may properly call doctrines, including “Protagoras’s Man-Measure doctrine” (104–108). I am a proponent of not identifying sophists by their promulgation of particular doctrines; this makes it too easy for them to slip the noose, and, on my understanding, it is just their slipperiness that characterizes them. I will argue later in this chapter and in this dissertation, that sophistry is committed to certain presuppositions, but these need not—or, in fact, cannot—be promulgated openly. 33 of ignorance. So even in relying to the expertise of the doctor, there is some risk. Presumably the doctor has some sufficiently good reputation that justifies trusting him, a reputation whichis borne out in whether one remains healthy after taking his advice. But now the doctor’s position and Protagoras’s do not seem so different, for Protagoras too has quite a reputation and stakes this reputation on his students’ benefiting from his instruction. Perhaps the sophist is closerto the doctor after all, and his art may be the sort that one cannot learn without becoming somewhat a sophist himself.

Socrates’s preparatory conversation with Hippocrates does little to settle what kind of art sophistry is or in what the sophist is an expert. Sophistry seems to defy the categories Socrates has given so far. Nevertheless, the conversation has succeeded in preparing Hippocrates and the reader to be cautious about sophistry, to recognize the persistent ignorance surrounding it, and to be ready to consider whether and how sophistry may or may not be beneficial. Socrates’s success in preparing Hippocrates is apparent in the fact that they linger outside Callias’s door in order to finish a conversation they had begun on the road. Socrates has tempered Hippocrates’s thumotic eagerness with dialogue, such that when Hippocrates finally does enter Protagoras’s company, his θύμος is quieted enough to listen to the conversation unfold.

A Third Entrance: 314c-317d

Socrates’s narration becomes lush and allusive as describes his and Hippocrates’s entrance into Callias’s house. First, he and Hippocrates encounter a eunuch at Callias’s door. According to Socrates, the eunuch overhears the conclusion of their conversation and infers that they are sophists. Socrates suggests that the eunuch’s annoyance has more to do with the number of sophists and the burden they place on his domestic duties than with the fact that they are sophists.

But then, in order to gain admission to the house, he asserts that he and Hippocrates are not themselves sophists. There is a level of humor here, in the cheeky house servant—a eunuch no less—and in the fact that he mistakes Socrates for a sophist. But with the humor comes an anticipation of what waits for Socrates. The eunuch has heard Socrates converse and still, or 34 perhaps therefore, identifies him as a sophist. This eunuch, by virtue of his being aeunuch, clearly lacks manliness or courage, but he also seems to lack the wisdom to discern between sophists and philosophers.34 In this moment we have an anticipation of the question of the unity of the virtues; perhaps the eunuch could not have the wisdom to discern between sophists and non-sophists because he analytically cannot possess courage.35 On the other hand, the eunuch’s misidentification prefigures Protagoras’s own assumption that Socrates is a sort of sophist—which in turn raises the question of Protagoras’s wisdom to discern his own kin.36 Finally, there is also a rehearsal of the distinction which remains in question from the previous section: Socrates is only able to enter not as a sophist but as someone interested in speaking with sophists. Perhaps

Socrates can engage with sophists and not become one himself, but if that is the case, we must ask what permits him to do so.

Socrates describes his entrance into Callias’s home with rich detail, giving a clear picture of the position and activity of each sophist along with their groups of attenders.37 In this description there are also a number of allusions to Odysseus’s descent to the underworld. Callias’s house is thereby identified with the house of Hades. The shades of the underworld lack thepower of speech, indicating that home of Callias is not a place for living speech, for dialectic. Two of

34. The word for courage (ἀνδρεία) has as its root the word for man (ἀνήρ). That a eunuch isonewithout his manhood playfully suggests that he is, by definition, without manliness as well.

35. See note above.

36. See Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 37–43, for an account of the extent to which Protagoras assumes Socrates is one of his ilk and the way in which he is and is not mistaken in this assumption.

37. Socrates’s first impression of each sophist suggests a number of interesting points. Socrates doesnot say what Protagoras is speaking about but describes the orderly movements of his followers. This may indicate that is it not so much the content of Protagoras’s teaching that concerns Socrates as the actions it motivates in his followers. Socrates also does not say what Prodicus is speaking about, but not for lack of desire to listen, rather because Prodicus’s words are obscured, in part due to the depth of his own voice. Despite the likelihood that Prodicus is speaking about distinctions between words, his speech is unintelligible. Socrates does relate what Hippias is speaking about, namely, matters pertaining to nature and the things above. As Bartlett, Protagoras and Meno, 70, points out, this discussion of nature anticipates the distinction between nature and νόμος that Hippias will explicitly make later, but which already is implicitly present: “foreigners with their foreign ways mix easily with the best of Athenian society or its youth. . . . In the unconventional and even decadent atmosphere created by the profligacy of Callias, it would seem that the hold of the merely homegrown ways or customs (nomoi) is loosened considerably.” 35 the sophists, Hippias and Prodicus, are identified with denizens of the underworld, Heracles and Tantalus respectively. Mention of the renowned dead may remind us of Achilles’s lament that he would be the lowest slave among the living than the most powerful among the dead; there is dubious value in being well-known among the dead. In contrast, Protagoras is identified with

Orpheus. Orpheus, unlike Heracles and Tantalus, is not among the dead whom Odysseus encounters, yet his foray into the underworld famously fails. The identification of Protagoras with

Orpheus serves to distinguish Protagoras from the other sophists; Protagoras—and perhaps his brand of sophistry—is alive in a way not available to Hippias and Prodicus.38 The identification also suggests, however, that this peculiarity is not enough to enable him to lead his entourage from the realm of the dead. The implicit identification of Socrates with Odysseus reinforces the possibility that Socrates is uniquely capable of returning from this land of the sophists.

Socrates then relates that, before he approaches Protagoras, he engages in a short conversation with Alcibiades and Critias who have also entered Callias’s home. For a brief moment,

Socrates looks very much like the sophists he has just finished describing: carrying on a discussion while surrounded by some notable Athenian youths. Protagoras, it seems, first sees Socrates precisely in this situation, approaching with his own coterie of potentially lucrative students.

Given that Socrates never introduces himself, yet Protagoras addresses him by name (316c5), we may suppose that Protagoras has at least some previous awareness of Socrates’s reputation or physical description. Protagoras certainly does not respond to Socrates as an antagonist to sophistry. Far from being defensive, Protagoras boasts both of his occupation and of his own, unique approach to it. If Protagoras sees Socrates as his local counterpart, something of a sophist himself, already with a little following, then it makes perfect sense that Protagoras shows offin hopes that Socrates endorse Protagoras to his own students.

38. I will say more clearly how their sophistry differs when addressing the speeches of Prodicus and Hippias at 337a–338b. In particular, Protagoras’s sophistry is specifically political and therefore at least imitates the kindof intellectual activity that is needed ot sustain the life of a city. 36

Protagoras’s entrance to the dialogue prepares us for the complexity that he maintains throughout his participation in the dialogue. Indeed, his first words prepare us. He asks Socrates whether he wants to speak in private or in public. Straightaway, we see that Protagoras is aware of and sensitive to how he appears to others. Instead of asking what Socrates wishes to talk about, Protagoras asks something by which he is able to ascertain both the kind of conversation Socrates seeks and in what way he should comport himself. Presumably, he would alter his mode of conversation depending on Socrates’s choice of context. Yet, to the contrary, he concludes his first extended speech with a sort of boast that he has long adopted the method of openly admitting to being a sophist and publicly practicing his sophistry. With this claim of transparency, it seems that he would not have adjusted his comportment relative to speaking in private or in public after all.39

Perhaps, though, Protagoras merely wishes to show deference to Socrates. He does seem eager to get on Socrates’s good side. He praises Socrates for his forethought saying that it was correct for him to think ahead for Protagoras’s sake. But it turns out that Socrates was mistaken in being wary for Protagoras’s sake. Protagoras has been openly practicing sophistry for many years without incident, and therefore he seems not to need the precaution of conversing privately, though he does admit to taking other precautions. While Protagoras’s speech shows that

Socrates’s concern is in fact misplaced, Protagoras does not explicitly rescind his initial praise.

Protagoras’s praise of Socrates depends on the dangers that accrue to sophist, such as ill will and hostile plots. It would seem that the sophist must possess some measure of courage to publicly declare himself a sophist and thereby subject himself to these dangers. There have been sophists, according to Protagoras, who from fear of these dangers conceal their sophistry. But there is a risk that the concealment could fail, and the danger compounded in being caught in the lie. Protagoras therefore wisely takes the better precautionary measure of admitting that heisa

39. But even this claim to publicity is not quite as it seems. Recall that Protagoras keeps mostly indoors, not out in the agora, say. And we only see the speech spoken in the semi-private and reasonably safe space of Callias’s home; it is far from certain that Protagoras would give the same speech in front of a random audience. Perhaps this is one of the other precautions he admits to taking. 37 sophist. What first appeared to be an act of courage is now seen to be a calculated move toavoid danger. We thus have an anticipation of the arguments concerning courage and wisdom later in the dialogue.

With the very reasonable claim that in order to escape danger by escaping detection, sophists conceal their sophistry in other crafts and practices, Protagoras puts himself in the position to claim quite a number of prestigious Greeks as cryptosophists. He thereby provides himself and his occupation with an impressive pedigree. Yet the move by which he gains this rich tradition, namely by claiming them as concealed sophists, is the very point on which he differs from these other sophists. Like them, he is a sophist, unlike them, he admits to it and therefore suggests that he may be even wiser. All these points indicate that Protagoras is more than capable of balancing implications with subtlety and skill. Altogether, Protagoras’s speech implicitly presents him as courageous yet wise, polite and pleasant yet independent, heir to a tradition yet surpassing it. Furthermore, the speech exemplifies the peculiar brand of sophistry Protagoras has brought to Athens. While he does not take the same precautions as the other sophists by concealing his identity, he does admit to taking other precautions. The very speech he is giving is one such precaution. Protago- ras mentions two aspects of sophistry which are grounds for suspicion: that it comes between the young and their conventional education and that it has heretofore concealed itself. By pointing to the deception of the other sophists regarding their public admission of sophistry, Protagoras simultaneously earns the trust of his audience and shifts the grounds for suspicion to rest solely on the issue of concealment. He implies that concealment is the only reason there has been any concern about sophists. He thereby diffuses any suspicion of himself by admitting that thesus- picious have good reason to be suspicious—just not of him, since he is open about his sophistry.

This way of easing the concern of the suspicious allows him to keep the other ground oftheir suspicion, namely, sophistic education of the young. In warning his audience that sophists deceive, he gains for himself the tint of truthfulness while deflecting from the possibility that he too 38

comes between the young and their traditional education. Protagoras brings sophistry out of its past concealment and takes it public, but he does so precisely to effect of a subtler concealment.40

Socrates reaction to this speech is noteworthy. This speech, which was crafted at least in part to diffuse the usual suspicion, arouses Socrates’s suspicion. Socrates relates that hesus- pected that Protagoras wanted to make a display before the other sophists (317c). By actively including the other sophists in the conversation, Socrates elevates Protagoras as paradigmatic sophist, the primary representative of sophistry in general. But what prompts Socrates to go along with Protagoras, to enlarge the conversation from the question of one young man’s education by one sophist to the question of sophistry and education itself? I suggest that in this moment of suspicion, Socrates commits to the whole dialogue. He suspects both that Protago- ras’s sophistry is representative of the true nature of sophistry and that this true nature poses a real and urgent danger to the city.41 Protagoras’s sophistry is especially dangerous because it seems benign and may even accrue a semblance of legitimacy. In going public, Protagoras puts sophistry on the same footing as conventional civic education. Sophistry is no longer only for those interested in the minutia of le mot juste or those fascinated by the far-away movements of the stars.42 Sophistry is no longer a specialization merely to be tacked on to a general civic education by those so inclined. Sophistry now is comprehensive, like civic education, but—as

Protagoras’s “great speech” will soon state explicitly—unlike civic education which aims to make good citizens, sophistry aims to make some citizens better than others. It makes into a special-

40. Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 39–41 grounds the need for esotericism in the difficulty of balancing the interests of the powerful few with the unenlightened Many, both of whom, for different reasons distrust the wise. While Lampert makes a compelling case, he does not address the inter-generational dynamic of civic education, a dynamic that cuts across his categories. I think it even more helpful to identify the powerful few as precisely the current powerful men, namely the fathers of the youths whom Protagoras is presently attempting to persuade, and who should be the most interested in the good education of these youths.

41. This accurate suspicion is what enables him to speak with a sophist and not become one; heisattuned to the subversive subtext of the sophist’s speeches and actively tries to uncover that subtext. As I argue later in this dissertation, this accurate suspicion is also what puts Socrates in the initially unique position of practicing genuine politics by this refutation of sophistry.

42. The former find their guide in Prodicus; the latter in Hippias. 39 ization precisely what should be common, namely, good citizenship. With this recognition of the implications of Protagoras’s claim and at the moment when sophistry pretends to reveal itself,

Socrates commits to its real revelation.

Thus stands Protagoras, ready to recruit his students by revealing just enough ofthetruth of sophistry, and Socrates, ready to counter by revealing more of sophistry than Protagoras would want. These are the postures of the two main interlocutors at the close of the last of the entrances, and this is the context for the conversation between Socrates and Protagoras. The company has been collected and the scene has been thoroughly set for the conversation that will constitute the remainder of the dialogue.

The Teachability of Virtue: 317d–320c

This section advances the dynamic between Protagoras and Socrates as they begin their public discussion. On the one hand, Protagoras’s public speeches balance his desire to recruit students with his desire for safety. The greatest enticement to his would-be students is the very same as his greatest source of danger. On the other hand, Socrates’s public conversation presses on the seam of Protagoras’s subtle balance. Ultimately, Socrates deftly maneuvers the conversation so as to situate Protagoras’s claims in the realm of politics and on the question of civic education.

What Protagoras Teaches: 317d–319a

Before their newly enlarged audience, Protagoras asks Socrates to rehearse his initial question. Socrates does not quite obey. In this rehearsal, Socrates does not say explicitly the goal of (at least Hippocrates’s desire for) sophistic education, namely, renown in the city. He restates that Hippocrates desires Protagoras’s company, but not why. Instead it is up to Protagoras to say why, and he gives a more vague answer than Socrates’s initial formulation suggested. Rather than confirming that he will furnish Hippocrates with the means by which he may secure the public reputation he seeks, Protagoras claims, without qualification of respect or scope, that he 40 will make Hippocrates “better” (318a). This claim opens the way for Socrates to perform another rehearsal. Now he rehearses his conversation with Hippocrates, this time one-sided and with different examples, concerning what sophistry purports to teach. In response to Protagoras’s claim, the question of what sophistry teaches now includes in what respect sophistry improves its students. Protagoras then implicitly repeats his previous, explicit claim that he is unlike any other sophists. Protagoras distances himself from other sophists and the specificity of the arts or disciplines they profess by claiming a comprehensiveness for his profession.43 Protagoras claims to teach “good counsel (εὐβουλία) concerning one’s own affairs—how he might best manage his own household—and, concerning the affairs of the city, how he might be the most powerful in carrying out and speaking about the city’s affairs” (318e–319a). His students are improved both privately and publicly because good counsel is effective in both realms.

Further reflection reveals a different possible aspect of comprehensiveness. Good counsel is also comprehensive in that it is beneficial regardless of the kind of household or polity inwhich one puts it to use. Protagoras does not teach Athenian good counsel, but he teaches good counsel to Athenians as well as to Abderans. This good counsel can be so comprehensive because itaims at an individual’s good. The good counsel Protagoras teaches enables his students to become most powerful in the city, not for the sake of the city but for their own sake. It seems that a different sort of judgment is required to decide if one should be the most powerful in the city, that is, if doing so or being thus would best serve the city. This aspect of comprehensiveness in turn allows the education Protagoras offers to exceed conventional boundaries. His teachings are goodfor any citizen, regardless of that citizen’s city, as his eager response to Socrates’s follow-up ques-

43. Among the ways other sophists “maltreat” (λωβῶνται) the youth, Protagoras names calculation, astronomy, geometry, and music. This list does not seem to be anything strange, however; in fact, it seems to enumerate exactly that learning that any citizen and free man requires. Since Protagoras cannot be speaking of the basic education sought by the average citizen, especially with his directed dig to Hippias, he must mean that the other sophists press their students further in these disciplines than they have any use for, and in this way mistreats them. Yet, at the end of his great speech, Protagoras will admit to something very similar, saying that he only extends the education already executed by all for all. The difference, we must suppose, has to lie in the utility of Protagoras’s teaching. 41

tion indicates. Protagoras offers an education that operates at a level analogous to nature. Justas fire burns the same in Athens and Sparta, presumably Protagoras’s teaching would makeAthe-

nians and Spartans better. Behind sophistry’s claim to teach citizens good judgment in general

is sophistry’s claim to know politics in general; that is, sophistry is independent of any regime.

Sophistry improves its students precisely as individuals and with respect to their power in the city; this is the πολιτίκη Protagoras professes. But what Protagoras professes to profess

is the art of making men good citizens. This open profession not only lets linger the plausible

interpretation that such an education would include consideration of the city itself, but even

invites such an interpretation. Yet Protagoras’s speech includes an ambiguity about whether the

city’s good need ever be considered except as an instrument or obstacle to one’s own power. Socrates’s next line of questioning pushes on exactly this front by considering the city of Athens

in its particularity.

Whether It is Teachable: 319a-320c

Having shifted, with Protagoras’s implicit blessing, the question of sophistry’s power into the political realm, Socrates raises a further political concern. In its barest formulation, the question of whether πολιτίκη can be taught looks like an epistemological question.44 I suggest instead

that Socrates frames the question as primarily a political question.45 There is a real question asto whether Protagoras’s teaching is compatible with Athens, and this is really the question Socrates is advancing. The question for Protagoras is not so much whether he possesses the sheer capacity to profess as he does, but more whether he can do so and remain safe.

44. See, for example, Landy, “Virtue, Art and the Good Life in Plato’s Protagoras,” 292; C. C. W. Taylor, Plato, Protagoras (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 71–74; and Richard Kraut, Socrates and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 285–307.

45. For readings that note the political dimension, see Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 43–47; G. B. Kerferd, “Protagoras’ Doctrine of Justice and Virtue in the Protagoras of Plato,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 73 (1953): 42–45, 42; Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 49–52; and Joseph Cropsey, “Virtue and Knowledge: On Plato’s Protagoras,” Interpretation 19, no. 2 (1991-92): 137–155, especially, 139–140. 42

Socrates introduces his objecting question by first asserting the wisdom of the Atheni- ans. This emphasis on particularity, on Athenian wisdom, is meant to contrast with Protago- ras’s immediately preceding claims of trans-conventional comprehension. Socrates then offers two counterexamples to the claim that what Protagoras claims to teach is teachable. The first is grounded on Athens’s polity, that is, on the democratic structure of the city. The counterexample Socrates offers is that the Athenians recognize no expert in πολιτίκη as they do in the handicrafts.

The implication seems to be that if πολιτίκη were teachable like the Athenians recognize artsto be, then there would be experts—excellent citizens who make other excellent citizens. Rather, in the dearth of experts and expert teachers, Athenians listen to any of their citizens concerning political matters, under the assumption that any citizen is in principle capable of πολιτίκη. We are left with the consequence that if πολιτίκη—contrary to the current Athenian opinion—were in principle able to be cultivated by teaching and only Protagoras, or perhaps some other sophist, is capable of teaching it, then the only impediment to the entire Athenian citizenry becoming excellent is Protagoras’s fee. If Protagoras continues to assert the teachability of πολιτίκη—and his capability to teach it—then he is in effect saying that only the rich can achieve political excellence.

Protagoras’s assertion of his own skill is at the same time a denial of Athens’s egalitarianism. So it turns out that, at least in one crucial respect, sophistry is not as regime-independent as Pro- tagoras’s initial claim suggested: sophistry may promise success in any regime but, in this case, at the expense of the regime’s own success. The second counterexample focuses on the private and raises the even more particular issue of Pericles. Pericles is clearly the most powerful man in the city—the very thing Protagoras claims he can teach his students to be. But Pericles did not learn his political excellence from Pro- tagoras. Furthermore, Socrates asserts, Pericles does not seem able to educate his own children in this political excellence. So if πολιτίκη is teachable (which Protagoras asserts) and Pericles is excellent (which Athens seems to assert), then Pericles should be able to and certainly would, if he could, teach this excellence to his sons. But Socrates denies this consequence, so either this political excellence isn’t teachable after all or Pericles is not excellent. If Protagoras continues to 43

assert the teachability of πολιτίκη then he is in effect denying that Pericles is excellent andin turn denying that the Athenians have enough wisdom to recognize excellence.

Protagoras is thus uncomfortably stuck between denying Athens’s principle of equality

and denying Athens’s recognition of superiority. Neither option is safe. Of course he also cannot

get out of it by pointing out the tension between these two Athenian positions; that too would be unsafe. Socrates has put Protagoras between a Scylla and a Charybdis that he cannot openly

acknowledge. In response, he chooses the cover of myth as the opening mode of his next and

great speech.

Protagoras’s Great Speech: 320c-328c

Protagoras converts his being cornered into a chance to display his skills and make a play for increasing the number of his students. His purpose is less to tender an airtight response to

an epistemological claim against the teachability of virtue than to craft a persuasive response to

the political claim against his sophistry. In this speech, Protagoras attempts both to avoid the

unsafe situation Socrates has put him in and to appeal to those in the audience who may become his students. Protagoras thus speaks at two levels, for two audiences. At the level of safety, his

speech is soothing to those who seek to safeguard traditional civic education. And at the level of

seduction, his speech is a siren song to those seeking self-advancement. A third level, however,

must be discerned. The audience at this level is Socrates, who is neither a reactionary preserver

of convention nor a revolutionary subverter of it. Socrates hears the two levels of Protagoras’s speech, the overt and the covert,46 but he also hears the implications of both these speeches and

46. Other commentators who find various levels in and audiences for Protagoras’s speech include Goldberg, A Commentary on Plato’s Protagoras,51–56; Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 69–70; Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 50–51; Clyde Lee Miller, “The Prometheus Story in Plato’s Protagoras,” Interpretation 7, no. 2 (1978): 22–32, 27; and Alfredo Ferrarin, “Homo Faber, Homo Sapiens, or Homo Politicus? Protagoras and the Myth of Prometheus,” The Review of Metaphysics 54, no. 2 (2000): 289–319, especially 303–319. Gagarin, “The Purpose of Plato’s Protagoras,” 139–142 and Kerferd, “Protagoras’ Doctrine of Justice and Virtue in the Protagoras of Plato,” 42, attempt to make a case for a univocal and coherent reading of Protagoras’s speech, but their interpretations achieve this sort of unity by undervaluing its rhetorical depth and consequently forcibly eliding elements of the speech. Other scholars who do not subscribe to the multi-audience interpretation but who recognize the peculiar and possibly 44 their manner of presentation. In this section, I will try to delineate these three levels, first in the myth and then in the succeeding account.

Speaking for Safety

The fathers and the elders of the city, the ones from whom Socrates asserted Hippocrates should seek counsel, the ones whom Protagoras identified as the (erstwhile) enemies of (dangerous) sophistry, comprise one of Protagoras’s audiences. Protagoras’s aim in addressing this audience is to convince them that his sophistry is indeed safe and that he is no threat to them, their function in the city, or their civic traditions. He achieves this end by composing a vision of humanity as fundamentally dependent on divine favor and as ultimately awarded that favor.

Protagoras’s myth traces man’s development as the needful beneficiary of divine providence. Through this development, man improves from his unfortunate poverty of natural powers and protections to his status as chosen protector of Zeus’s special wisdom. In this culminating stage, the audience is invited to identify themselves as the functionaries of Zeus47 inasmuch as they take on the responsibility for preserving the Jovian dispensation. Man begins in a needful state because Epimetheus, the forgetful brother of the forethough- tul Prometheus, does not preserve a share of natural powers or protections for mankind. Before man is finally formed, Prometheus rectifies this oversight by robbing the gods of their divine crafts. His theft is later punished, though Protagoras assigns the blame not to the act of stealing but to his brother, Epimetheus. These arts of Hephaestus (presumably the handicrafts) and Athena (presumably the disciplines Protagoras attributes to his sophistic counterparts) enable man tolive or to have a life; they also constitute a share in the divine. Man’s “natural” endowment is divine.

It also differs from the natural gifts of the other inhabitants of the world in that this initialshare in the divine is not equally distributed among mankind. Unlike the case of the porcupine, where

contradictory elements of the speech include Taylor, Plato: The Man and His ,Work 243–247, Cropsey, “Virtue and Knowledge: On Plato’s Protagoras,” 140–142, and McCoy, Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists, 74–77.

47. Or, if they hear it with an allegorical bent, they may find themselves identifying with Zeus himself. 45 every member of his kind bears quills, only some men have propensity to carpentry, some to medicine, perhaps even some to statesmanship.

Even this uneven distribution of the divine share is enough to prompt an apparently species-wide commitment to piety, as the first acts of the newly endowed mankind are to build altars to and statues of the gods. Only after these pious acts does man start to provide for himself by creating speech, shelter, and sustenance. Man’s first activity is directed to the gods. The ability to survive depends on kinship to the gods, so it follows, perhaps naturally, that the first step in surviving is to show due deference. The stolen crafts suffice to establish man’s unimpeded survival, but his divine share does not suffice as protection against those naturally more powerful, namely, the wild beasts. Man’s threat comes from outside, from nature, and his salvation comes again from a divine endowment to the powers of his soul.

Humanity’s difficulty is diagnosed as its inability to form cities. Men live scattered, easy prey for the beasts, because when they try to live together injustice abounds. Now, Zeus himself intervenes, fearing the complete destruction of humanity. The Jovian contribution to mankind is not an assortment of skills distributed some to some. Zeus gives mankind right (δίκη) and respect

(αἴδος) so as to provide order to cities and unifying bonds to friendship.48 Zeus’s providence provides man with the power to do what they previously proved incapable of: to found cities. In this way, Zeus’s gift fulfills man; man’s previous share in the divine is provided a proper placefor flourishing and man is thereby perfected. And since these gifts are distributed—at Zeus’sbehest and by Hermes’s hand—so that “all have a share” (322d), they are perfective of mankind precisely as a species. Protagoras cites Zeus’s donation as the reason for the Athenians’—apparently well-

48. Translating δίκη as right could be controversial among those who would hear it smack of liberalism; still, I believe it apropos and it is possible to resist hearing the offending tone. Perhaps a more significant charge is a possible tone-deafness in translating αἴδος as “respect” instead of “awe” or “reverence” or another term that more clearly captures the term’s religious connotations. I chose respect in part because it can stretch to the more strongly religious senses (though, admittedly, in contemporary parlance the word has been drained of most ofits lurking religiosity—then again, few words have not succumbed to such a fate), and in part because it can also bear a more terrestrial sense. This latter aspect is a boon to my interpretation because I believe that the fathers andextant powers listening to this speech hear themselves (as well as the gods) as the proper recipients of this universal posture. Nevertheless, staying attuned to the pious valences of this term is helpful and to that end Robert Bartlett, Sophistry and Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 36 is helpful. 46 founded—practice of tolerating political advice from every man. The common share in right and respect grounds the Athenians’ belief that it is proper for everyone to have a share in political virtue, of which Protagoras explicitly mentions justice and moderation. The gift of right provides the basic foundation of order: excellence and doing well are superior to defect and wrong-doing.

The gift of respect provides the common recognition of this order: praising excellence and doing well and blaming defect and wrong-doing. Both gifts are necessary for the generation and continuation of cities, and neither will suffice if only a few share in them. Therefore, these giftscome with an additional contribution, a law from Zeus that anyone incapable of sharing in them must be killed as an illness to the city.

Having primed his audience with this pious story, Protagoras begins his more direct confrontation with the issues that incited the speech. The myth provided the framework of generally distributed right and respect. These appear to be mutually dependent conditions of the political realm and of political excellence, which include justice and moderation explicitly.49 Everyone has a claim to political excellence, so it is necessary that political excellence be respected by everyone. Political excellence is recognized as necessary for the city, so everyone should claim it. By grounding political virtue upon these two mutually dependent and generally distributed conditions, Protagoras humbly reveals to the (older) Athenians the source of the opinions which seemed to result in the unteachability of virtue; this revelation in turn reveals that the Athenians already actually do believe that virtue is not only teachable but that they in fact teach it—and rightfully so.

The dependence of the city on right and respect prompts the Athenians (wisely) tobelieve all men capable of political virtue. Athenian emphasis on equality is thus well-placed—justified either by divine dispensation or by political necessity, depending on how literally pious one hap-

49. Piety was also explicitly mentioned as the first effect of man’s initial and unequal share in the divine. Human wisdom and courage are not explicitly mentioned in the myth. Yet, Zeus is said to have political wisdom, which then one may suppose man shares in through the Jovian contribution. Courage may also be supposed to be part of the Jovian contribution inasmuch as the art of war is a part of the political art. Altogether, this audience can hear all the major virtues either explicitly accounted for or just as well as. 47 pens to be—and it supports rather than conflicts with an understanding of political virtue as teachable. Now that the Athenians know why they believe all men are capable of political virtue, they see that they must already believe that virtue is teachable. Protagoras reinforces this perspective by pointing to punishment. The practice of punishment seems to be justified onlyif citizens are able to be improved in their political virtue. Though Protagoras does not say so explicitly, he implies that the Athenian practice of punishment is indeed justified. Since everyone should rightfully aim for and should respect political excellence, the failure do so is justifiably punishable. The notion of punishment justifies the claim of the teachability of virtue, butthe practice of punishing is justified only bythat very claim. Athenian wisdom, initially evoked by

Socrates, acts as the axiom to ground this circle of justification. Athenians are wise both in their punishing and in their belief that virtue is teachable. It does not matter that they depend on each other, because both are consequent on Athenian wisdom.

A new aspect of the teachability arises in light of punishment, that of the responsibility for teaching. Protagoras now confronts Socrates’s second objection, which he restates as the problem why good men do take care to find their sons teachers in other disciplines, but cannot make them more virtuous than anyone else seems to be able to. The implication now seems to be that if good men cannot take effective responsibility for their own sons’ education, no one can.

To answer the implication, Protagoras announces that he must use an account or an argument, no longer a myth. Yet the new account he gives repeats the principles he has already used, the foremost being that all citizens must lay claim to the political virtues. Protagoras answers the question of who is responsible for teaching the virtues that are believed to be teachable by the same principle. According to this principle, the select company of the good men, to which

Socrates initially alluded, now elides with the general population, just as the highest of political excellences are now generally expected from all by all. Because all must learn, all must teach. It is not that no one can teach virtue; rather, everyone does. The responsibility for education of the youth is as diffuse as the conditions for that education. Every citizen, parent, nurse, attendant, and law does and must contribute to the education of the new generation of the citizenry. 48

Protagoras identifies a remaining difficulty concerning the issue of why some of theyoung still turn out poorly. His solution to this explicit difficulty in turn prepares for a resolution of

the implicit remaining difficulty, namely, what is Protagoras’s role in the now shared project of

educating the young in political virtue. His answer is this: though the conditions of right and

respect are generally distributed, they need not be distributed to everyone to the same degree. That a share in virtue is equally necessary for all does not imply that all necessarily enjoy anequal

share. By way of an analogy with less-than-talented flute players, Protagoras stresses that what

is important is that those with even a minimal degree of virtue are much better off compared to

the wretches who (per impossibile) do not share in the virtues through right and respect. This possibility is not so obvious, Protagoras suggests, because the Athenians are already so well off with respect to virtue. Protagoras implies that they are as rife with it as with the Greek language.

If the Athenians could not see before why virtue was teachable, it is only because they are all already such good teachers of it.

The possibility of minimal degrees of virtue implies the possibility of higher degreesof virtue, and here, finally, is where Protagoras may be helpful to the city. For those students who possess the talent or drive, Protagoras can advance them just a little bit more than their older citizens, parents, nursemaids, attendants, or even their laws could. Protagoras’s sophistry is merely a supplement to the worthy and already well-executed project of traditional civic education; his sophistry is completely continuous with its principles and its purpose. Ultimately, his fee is a natural product of the education he continues. His students know already the value of virtue and so see the worth of even the slightest increase in it. Nothing could be a more natural ally to the noble project of civic education than sophistry, and to suggest otherwise is to imply that

Athenian education itself may not be so noble. Thus Protagoras provides safety for himself and his skills. He meets Socrates’s objections by showing the Athenians to themselves in myth and in argument, by voicing what they already believe but may not have yet articulated. By this tactic, he also insinuates that Socrates’s objections are therefore incompatible with the true vision of Athenian civic education inasmuch as they suggest that Athens’s egalitarianism and its 49 reliance on excellence are at odds. In this way Protagoras dismantles the force of the dilemma that Socrates’s objections presented by assuring his audience that he sees no conflict between

Athenian equality and excellence—and neither should they.

Speaking for Students

Protagoras’s other audience listens to his speech with a thumotic ear. Instead of approaching Protagoras and his claims with the cautious wariness of their fathers, the young men whom

Protagoras wishes to entice as students are hungry to excel in the city not necessarily protect it from new and perhaps subversive opinions. These ambitious youth are listening for indications that Protagoras will be able to provide them with the skills to turn their desire for power into actual power. Indeed, Protagoras indicates that he knows not only what his potential students want but also what they must do to achieve their goals. To this end, in his myth, Protagoras presents a vision of man which resonates with and gives articulation to what this audience already believes about themselves—or at least what they secretly suspect about themselves. In his subsequent account, Protagoras clarifies the conditions under which this newly articulated self-understanding can thrive.

The myth begins with a detailed and delightful account of the distribution of natural aides to the other species which serves to throw more sharply into relief man’s own natural destitution.

Epimetheus’s eponymous characteristic, his after-thoughtfulness, seems to affect only man. He shows impressive solicitude and careful planning with all the other kinds; man alone is an af- terthought. At the time when mankind must come into being and assume his residence upon the face of the earth, he has nothing by which he can protect himself from the rest of nature, which has already been so well-endowed. Man’s initial nature is thus impoverished, and his poverty is potentially fatal. Epimetheus’s plan for the distribution of natural endowments implies that nature is itself antagonistic, that each kind must have some offensive or defensive characteristic or strategy in order to survive. Thus, man’s poverty is perplexing, both to Epimetheus whohas 50

used all the endowments and to Prometheus who can discover no more. Mankind’s existence looks likely to end even before it begins.

Prometheus, being unable to find sufficient survival features elsewhere, resorts to stealing

gifts for man from the gods. But man’s hero—to the extent that he has one at all—isnotan

unambiguous savior, for it was because Prometheus gave in to his brother’s request in the first place that man needs his help at all. Furthermore, Prometheus, it turns out, is unable to steal

the wisdom of Zeus, that is, political wisdom, which it seems he would have stolen—instead of

or in addition to the technical wisdom of Hephaestus and of Athena—had he been capable.50

Even man’s salvation—stolen at the last second—is second-rate. Man does receive the capability to preserve himself, but the status of man’s preservation is ambiguous. It is not clear if man’s ability to survive is natural or rightful. Nevertheless, the gifts of technical wisdom and fire do empower man to preserve himself. So one thing is clear, whether or not man’s preservation is by nature or by right, it is that for the sake of which he possess his capabilities.

These capabilities enable man to provide for his survival. All of its effects and products, therefore, can also be understood to be for the sake of survival. Men believe in and build altars to and images of the gods for the sake of survival. This point is given an implicit justification later when Zeus intervenes on mankind’s behalf. Allegedly, he does so because he fears the destruction of the race; but why would Zeus, who previously did not care whether man was well- endowed, now be concerned for the continuation of the species? Protagoras’s students perhaps then recall that man’s stolen survival skills prompts him to piety, and it is this piety, which man alone supplies, that in turn prompts Zeus to save mankind a second time. Protagoras’s students here receive a handy genealogy that allows them to take a critical stance towards piety—and later all the virtues mentioned in the speech.

50. It is unclear whether Prometheus fails at procuring what Protagoras implies is a superior wisdom because he himself lacks the wisdom to avoid its guardians or because he lacks the courage to confront them despite their ferocity. Both these virtues (wisdom and courage) are significant for Protagoras and for Protagoras’s students, as will be shown. Perhaps Protagoras is suggesting that he is the salvation that Prometheus was not—and perhaps Socrates picks up on precisely this claim when he later describes Protagoras’s sophistry as possessing salvific power (365e). 51

On the heels of their belief in the gods, men also develop articulate speech and names by means of their art. Again, the effects of the art seem to be for the sake of which the artitself is: survival. Men speak to one another and devise a system of names in order to continue their life. This understanding of belief in the gods and speech is confirmed when, in the same breath,

Protagoras tells of men inventing housing, clothing, bedding, and nourishment from the earth (probably farming) by means of their arts. These inventions are clearly for the sake of surviving.

This list is meant to echo the natural housing and clothing of some kinds of animals mentioned earlier, except man’s comes about through invention, but in both cases these features are for survival. A further point surfaces from the comparison of these concrete effects of the arts and the belief in the gods and speech. Just as cloaks keep warm the backs of the better and worse alike, so also, it seems, speech and piety are tools for living, not living in a certain way. Thus, piety is practiced for the sake of preservation, not out of respect for the gods, and speech is contrived for the sake of survival, not for the pursuit of truth.

Protagoras’s would-be students hear yet another aspect to this account of man’s initial salvation. As will be explicitly confirmed later, though is not completely unclear now, the wisdom of the technical arts are not equally distributed. Aptitude in the arts is not found equally among men, nor does it need to be. Some experts can suffice for the beneficence of many: not everyone needs to build his own bed. So man has in common only his needfulness; the skills to overcome this needfulness are not possessed in common but individually and unequally. As the story of man’s travails continues, it turns out that even the Promethean gifts do not suffice for survival. The Promethean gifts are adequate for nourishment but aredeficient to defend against destruction from the wild beasts. Prometheus’s eponymous characteristic of forethoughtfulness fails men again; even Epimetheus knew that nature was violent. Since men lack both natural defenses and the art of war, they band together in an attempt to form cities. Man must live together in order to combat the external threats of wild beasts, but they cannot live together due to the internal threats of injustice. When men band together, they commit injustices because they lack the political art, so they again scatter. It seems then that the political 52

art would be the fitting solution to man’s difficulty, and indeed, at this moment Zeus appears ready to intervene. Already Zeus’s political wisdom has been mentioned, and now Protagoras’s

listeners may expect to hear that Zeus therefore bestows upon mankind his special gifts. Yet, not

only does he not dispense political wisdom, he does not even provide the political art. Man does not receive the solution to suffering injustices, for that solution was the political art. Whatman does receive is the ability, not to eradicate injustices, but to endure them.

Zeus’s two gifts enable men to found lasting cities that do not dissolve in thefaceof injustice. The gift of right provides the possibility of rectifying injustice and the giftofrespect provides the incentive to avoid committing—or at least getting caught committing—injustice. Men still act unjustly, but now they can be punished for it, and they know that they will be, if they are caught. For this audience, these gifts are not twin pillars of political stability upon whichmen may build illustrious cities, but they are twin constraints on the bastard nature of man to provide for his survival. Their equal distribution is a result more of Zeus’s own political wisdom thanof his providential generosity, for these gifts can be effective as constraints only if they are accepted and demanded by all, or nearly all.

Protagoras does not say—and precisely this audience hears him not say—that men have

been given the political art, nor that every man has been given political virtue. Rather, men

have been given conditions which enable them to expect political virtue from every man, and

to act on that expectation. The equal distribution of right and respect does not make aman virtuous but does make it reasonable for any citizen to believe that every other citizen should

have a share in political virtue. As Protagoras continues, this audience hears an emphasis on

all men’s believing that every man shares in justice and the rest of political virtue (323a5). It is

this belief that matters for the preservation of the city, not the actual practice of virtue. Hereit

becomes clear that the conditions of right and respect are not biconditional. Protagoras signals an asymmetry between these conditions by noting that everyone recognizes it as madness to admit

to being unjust, even if one is unjust. A public admission of injustice is presumably worse than

merely the act of injustice, for the former adds madness to the error. But this claim opens up an 53 asymmetry between violating right and violating respect: it is possible to violate right without violating respect. The expectation of the city is that all must say that they are just, whether they are or not. So if one can appear publicly pious, just, and moderate well enough, it will not matter whether one actually is just or moderate. What their fathers hear as deference to a collective respect for law and virtue, this audience hears as a suggestion for the possibility preserving the protections of the city without sacrificing the promotion of their individual power.

Prior to political life, man is all but absolutely abandoned to the violence and hardship of nature and is therefore accountable only to himself for his survival amidst that violence and hardship.51 The advent of political life alleviates some of that hardship and protects against some of the violence, but it does not dislodge man’s ultimate end of survival. For the sake of the ease and safety that the city provides, a man may have to appear accountable to others for his actions, but this needs be only an appearance if that man is savvy enough about his survival.

Protagoras’s myth tells of the gods’s failure to provide for men and the consequent need for men to provide for themselves. Protagoras’s subsequent speech tells how he can provide what the providential gods—both Prometheus and Zeus—could not: Protagoras at last provides political wisdom, political art.

At this point, Protagoras has appealed to a vision of mankind which marks man as generally needful, but perhaps individually capable of advancing his station in life if given the needed art. Protagoras continues with his implicit advertisement for this very art by emphasizing the importance of appearing just. Presumably his art will allow those who have the aptitude to do so to take advantage of the asymmetry between appearing just and being just. He begins by recognizing what is at stake if this art is not well-learned. Punishment awaits any man who commits injustice and cannot conceal it. Punishment is justified because any man, presumably, can avoid

51. Bartlett, Sophistry and Political Philosophy, 36-38 takes this feature to be the central upshot of Protago- ras’s speech. Bartlett takes this emphasis on the isolation and difficulty of our natural state to account laterfor the sophistic conception of courage as the ability to press on despite the constant set-backs. We disagree on this understanding of courage, which I address below, but we share the conviction that the root of the sophistic virtues is in this harsh conception of man’s natural state. 54 it through practice and teaching. While their fathers may hear in this a justification for their own practice of teaching civic virtue, these would-be students hear the possibility of another sort of teaching which could enable them to avoid punishment altogether. Even within his treatment of punishment, Protagoras again pushes the asymmetry of appearing just and being just: a man is punished not for the sake of rehabilitation but for the sake of deterrence. Even punishment is for the sake of appearance.

In dwelling on punishment, Protagoras also begins to develop the two virtues that comprise Protagoras’s contribution to the lives of his students. While the political virtues—justice, moderation, and, presumably, piety—arise from the generally distributed Jovian gifts, wisdom and courage are not so generally distributed. These virtues belong to Protagoras’s education and therefore are unequally distributed, as was the Promethean distribution of aptitude for the arts.

Protagoras’s wisdom is a political wisdom, and he teaches a political art by which his students may become powerful in the city. Protagoras’s political wisdom does not require possession of the political virtues, only how to imitate them. But a failure in this imitation has dire consequences. Undertaking to acquire this art or wisdom, therefore, calls for courage—a virtue not heretofore mentioned explicitly.52 Courage is thus the antecedent condition for pursuit of Pro- tagoras’s political art. It belongs, albeit inchoately and without direction, to those bold enough to advance themselves as best they can. What this spirited youth lack is only the wisdom of how to direct their daring. Wisdom and courage have thus been subtly separated from the other, “political” virtues.

This separation works especially throughout Protagoras’s rebuttal of the first of Socrates’s objections. In response to the Athenian denial of political expertise, Protagoras shows that because the Athenians expect political virtue equally from all men, craftsmen and statesmen alike, they already believe political virtue to be teachable. But by making the argument in this way,

52. The need for courage was perhaps alluded to in the myth when Protagoras mentions that theartofwar is a part of the political art. But if courage should be connected with the art of war, then surely man did not have and was not given courage, for man neutralized the threat of the wild beasts not by going to war but by banding together. 55

Protagoras is also showing his eager, younger audience that political virtue is not only common in the sense of being equally distributed but common in the sense of being vulgar. To say that

everyone has, or can have, political virtue is also to say that something else must be required

to rise above the rest. The separated virtues of courage and wisdom are these distinct anddis-

tinguishing virtues. Courage is as unequally distributed as the technical arts in the myth—that is, it is distributed only among those with aptitude—and Protagoras will distribute his political

art only to those few with the nature to receive it. These virtues are elite, correlated excellences,

precisely not the product of the general civic education, but something more and something more

valuable.

As Protagoras proceeds with his rejoinder to Socrates’s second objection, he builds for this audience a vantage point from which they may feel themselves superior to their fathers.

While praising the education received from the elder generations and the law, Protagoras simul-

taneously shows its limitations. This traditional civic education is of children, and implicitly, for

children, and its means resembles those means used to manage slaves. Traditional civic education, according to Protagoras, proceeds by rote memorization, brute habituation, and unthinking

obedience to the law, which Protagoras passes off as respect for the traditions of the city andits

laws. Protagoras’s praise of this education is therefore qualified praise. Traditional civic educa-

tion is beneficial for those who would be as children and slaves, whereas Protagoras’s education

is for those few who would be men, and moreover, free men of the city.53

After Protagoras ends his speech, Socrates admits to his companions that he did notrec- ognize it as the end. He stares at Protagoras, “bewtiched” and thinking that Protagoras will say something more he wishes to hear (328d). What more does Socrates’s expect Protagoras to say?

Why would he think Protagoras had more to say? Perhaps this is meant to suggest that Pro-

53. The alignment of sophistic education with liberal education has been prepared for at many placesin the dialogue: from Socrates’s first suggestion that what the sophist teaches is a kind of παιδεία, to Protagoras repeated emphasis that his form of education is superior because it does not compel (ἀναγκαζεῖν) his students. It also anticipates Socrates’s later depiction of the sophist’s art as a salvific art. See Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 46, for a characterization of the sort of freedom Protagoras’s sophistry presupposes. 56

tagoras has been signifying more than he has said. Indeed, Socrates’s fascination is especially understandable if he has heard three speeches in one: the cautious speech catered to the power-

ful few, the fathers; the candid speech directed to the eager youths; and the single speech which

is both cautious and candid, the speech that at once conceals and reveals the purpose and pre-

suppositions of sophistry. After recovering from his bewitchment, Socrates first addresses Hippocrates—and thisis

the last time Hippocrates is mentioned—to thank him for being the catalyst for this meeting. This

gratitude confirms the previous claim that Socrates was not a priori interested in speaking with

Protagoras but does so to protect and benefit Athens’s youths. Socrates continues in this veinof gratitude. Previously, Socrates asserts, he believed that good men become good not through hu- manly care, but now he has been persuaded. But persuaded of what? Has Protagoras convinced him that virtue is teachable? I suggest that what Socrates previously believed is that the laws, understood not as mere human contrivances, were the primary means by which good men become good. The elders, in their capacity of protecting and instilling the laws, were the ones towhom Socrates suggested Hippocrates go instead of the sophist. After hearing Protagoras’s speech,

Socrates sees that the laws promoted by the elder generation are not enough to preserves themselves or to protect civic education. Protagoras’s speech has persuaded Socrates that these laws now need human protection precisely from the view that they are mere contrivances. Socrates is now convinced that a human intervention is needed in order for the laws to be effective educators. Socrates’s task of exposing sophistry has gained a new urgency.

The Unity of Virtue: 328c-334c

Having prompted Protagoras into a display of his sophistry, Socrates begins in earnest to unravel that display so as to reveal the danger this sophistry poses to the city. Socrates’s project now takes the form of an inquiry into the unity of the virtues. Given how this moment in the dialogue has troubled scholars, I should reiterate that, on my view, Socrates’s “arguments” are not 57

installments of positive philosophical positions.54 On the contrary, these arguments constitute a strategy whereby Socrates can expose the sophist without estranging him. From the implications

provided by Protagoras’s Great Speech, Socrates here begins to trace the political ramifications

of his sophistry.55

Why Socrates Asks This Question: 328e-329c

One of the initially bewildering points to consider is why Socrates asks this question at this moment. Protagoras has just concluded a complex and masterful speech blending myth and argument in a impressive response to Socrates’s previous objections that the political virtue Pro- tagoras claims to teach is thought to be unteachable. Yet, Socrates does not resume his objections,

54. For representatives of the view that Socrates here presents his own doctrines see Taylor, Plato, Protago- ras, 109–135; Irwin, Plato’s Ethics, 79–81; Gregory Vlastos, “The Unity of the Virtues in the Protagoras,” The Review of Metaphysics 25 (1972): 415–458; Terry Penner, “The Unity of Virtue,” Philosophical Review 82 (1973): 35–68; Bernd Manuwald, “The Unity of Virtue in Plato’s Protagoras,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 29 (2005): 115–135. Denis O’Brien, “Socrates and Protagoras on Virtue,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 24 (2003): 59–131 offers a critique of these scholars (of whom he takes Vlastos and Penner as representatives) by claiming that the questions of how the virtues are unified remains an open one, but his critique does not reach beyond the argumentative level ofthe speeches to consider why the argument is not definitive. My approach answers this question and thereby allays the concern that Socrates gives bad or incomplete arguments.

55. Many other interpreters have also taken their lead from the dramatic context of the dialogue. Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 72–73, notes the rhetorical function of these arguments, but does not argue for much more than that they serve to show that Protagoras does not really understand virtue. Lampert, How Philos- ophy Became Socratic, 70–79, like the commentators mentioned in the previous note, believes Socrates to be offering a positive position, but thinks that this position is not a straightforward philosophical thesis but rather an esoteric teaching concerning how the wise man ought to present himself concerning virtue. One problem with this approach is that Protagoras did present a politically salutary vision of the virtues in his speech—or at least one valence of that speech. If Lampert takes Socrates to be critiquing the valence of the speech wherein he presents the disunity of the virtues, then Lampert assumes an audience generally more discerning than many academic specialists. C. H. Kahn, “Plato on the Unity of the Virtues,” in Facets of Plato’s Philosophy, ed. W. H. Werkmeister (Van Gorcum, 1976), 21–39 and George Klosko, “Toward a Consistent Interpretation of the Protagoras,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 61, no. 2 (1979): 125–42 take the arguments to be reactive instead of positive, as I do, but they identify Socrates’s motivation as purely agonistic, that is, to beat Protagoras at his own game. Scott R. Hemmenway, “Sophistry Exposed: Socrates on the Unity of Virtue in the Protagoras,” Ancient Philosophy 5 (1996): 1–23 presents an interpretation which closely resembles the one I offer here, inasmuch as he argues that Protagoras’s sophistry and its claims concerning human nature and, consequently, virtue are that to which Socrates’s arguments are directed. He too recognizes Protagoras’s distinction between what Hemmenway calls the “demotic virtues” and the “elite virtues,” and identifies these as the most proximate target of Socrates’s arguments. Hemmenway’s interpretation and mine diverge on the point that mine seeks to situate these arguments in light of the issue of civic education. For example, his distinction between the “elite” and “demotic” virtues does not go on to identify the former with the potential innovations of the youth and the latter with the traditional requirements of the laws. 58 nor does he pick up on any number of the prima facie controversial or innovative claims that Pro- tagoras makes in his speech. Instead, Socrates fixates on a “small obstacle”—the question ofhow the virtues are unified (329b).

Socrates here refers to Protagoras’s brief, almost peripheral claim concerning what is the one thing in which all citizens necessarily share in order for there to be a city. Concerning this one thing, Protagoras says, as the first in a long list of conditions: “For if there is [this one thing], and this one thing is not the art of carpentry or smithing or pottery, but justice and moderation and being pious—altogether that one thing I call the virtue of a man . . .” (324e-325b). Protagoras continues to list more premises for the conclusion that it is absurd to think that good men do not teach this one thing to their sons. At the close of his myth, Protagoras identifies justice and moderation as belonging to the political virtue that the Athenians expect from all citizens. These virtues presumably arise from the double gifts from Zeus of right (δίκη) and respect orshame

(αἰδώς). Later he includes piety among the political virtues, but he never explicitly mentions wisdom or courage.56 What man is given is reason to believe that all other men are capable of and therefore can be held accountable for possessing political virtue. In the myth and in the subsequent account,

Protagoras delicately distinguishes between these “political virtues” of justice, moderation, piety, on the one hand, and wisdom and courage, on the other. This subtle distinction is made through omission. He never mentions wisdom and courage as part of man’s virtue at any point in the whole speech—Socrates has to bring them up in the course of asking about the unity of the virtues.

Despite the explicit omission, Protagoras implicitly includes wisdom and courage as belonging to “small advancement” in the political art that he alone can supply. He earlier claimed that he teaches good judgment εὐβουλία in private and public affairs, so that his student may have the

56. Again, Protagoras does mention political wisdom in the myth, but only to note that Prometheus was unable to obtain it due to the ferocity of Zeus’s guards. Prometheus settles for the technical skills of Hephaestus and Athena as gifts for mankind. And when Zeus steps into supplement with his own providence, he explicitly does not give man any of his political wisdom. Reference to courage in the myth is only oblique, the nearest reference occurring when Protagoras notes that the art of war, by which man may have been able to withstand the fearsome wild beasts, belongs to the political art, which, again, man is never given. 59 greatest power in the city for speaking and acting. If the sophist makes his students wise, this is their wisdom: to know how to be powerful in the city. And those to whom this sort of knowledge would appeal are those who already hunger for such power, those who want their stake in the political realm—those whose spiritedness could easily be self-identified as courage, given the proper prompting. I take Protagoras’s “dog whistle” sales pitch in his great speech to provide just the needed prompting to those who are predisposed. Under Protagoras, they can understand their own thirst for power as a courageous impulse—albeit some kind of private courage57

The political virtues are the virtues that hold the city together, the virtues that mustbe— or at least must be believed to be—available to all men, and must be—or at least must seem to be—possessed by all men. The wisdom that Protagoras teaches enables men to take advantage of this necessary belief and this sufficient seeming; they need only the courage to run the riskof being found out. The political virtues provide for the safety and surety of the many; Protagoras’s virtues promise power to the skilled few who would—and can afford to—wield them.

How Socrates Asks the Question: 329c-330b

Socrates’s question about the unity of the virtues is meant to reveal Protagoras’s implicit distinction between the “political virtues” and the virtues he cultivates. As noted before, Socrates cannot simply accuse Protagoras of making an illicit distinction, for Protagoras could reasonably deny it and then deny Socrates the opportunity of making his case by simply concluding the conversation. Socrates must draw attention to the distinction without attracting Protagoras’s attention and while maintaining a congenial conversation with Protagoras. He does sobypro- viding plausible sounding ways of unifying all the virtues that eventually entail a position that

Protagoras cannot openly countenance. Importantly, these arguments must sound innocuous up

57. This private courage will later be opposed to public or civic—or noble—courage at Protagoras 359a-360e. Bartlett, Sophistry and Political Philosophy, 221, also believes Protagoras to appeal to a sense of courage unique to sophistic students. Like Bartlett, I derive what I take to be the relevant sense of courage from the sophist’s understanding of human nature. Where Bartlett sees the bleakness of human nature calling for a courage topersist despite man’s abandonment, however, I see this bleakness as providing a reason to depart from the post facto and conventional impositions of law and virtue. 60

until the point where Protagoras can answer only by revealing too much. Protagoras must not notice that his credibility as a sophist who is safe for the youth is in danger until saving it directly

conflicts with his appeal as a powerful sophist to those very youths.

Before beginning his arguments, however, Socrates lays the groundwork to ensure that

Protagoras stays engaged in the conversation. His initial flattery serves to heighten Protagoras’s awareness that he is before an audience and, in turn, Socrates uses that awareness to establish a

dialogic method for dealing with the upcoming question. This is not the last time that Socrates

will use praise of Protagoras’s power with speech to set the method, though in this first instance it

is most effective. Protagoras, happy to play–or perhaps even be—the gracious benefactor, tacitly

agrees to answer Socrates’s question in the way Socrates’s wants—at least for now. Again, the question Socrates asks concerns how the virtues are unified and he offers two options: are they unified as different names for the same thing or are the unified aspartstoa whole? Given Protagoras’s need for the possibility of distance between certain virtues and others, he opts for the latter. If the virtues are parts of a whole, and even better, differently functioning parts of the whole, then there is possibility of some few men leaving behind the virtues of the city for the virtues of self-promotion while nevertheless preserving the necessary facade of political virtue. Thus Protagoras elects, at Socrates’s suggestion, to liken the parts of virtue topartsofa face, then immediately abandons this analogy to admit, again at Socrates’s suggestion, that some parts function in absence of others. Protagoras certainly cannot admit that in having one virtue someone necessarily has them all, for then his already courageous students would have no need to learn his wisdom. Protagoras mentions with de facto glibness that many are courageous but not just or just but not wise. Though Protagoras speaks here more honestly than he may realize, he does not seem to think that he has exposed himself overmuch; he is claiming only what many people already believe and surely any would have difficulty denying. Protagoras believes himself to be well within the comfortable limits of common opinion in claiming that the different virtues have different powers. He lacks the foresight to see where Socrates is leading him. 61

First Argument on Piety and Justice: 330b-332a

Socrates first elicits an agreement from Protagoras that not only is justice some thingbut that it is also just.58 Protagoras agrees that justice is just and piety is pious. Combining this agreement with Protagoras’s earlier claim that the virtues are not such as each other, Socrates then presses Protagoras into a dilemma. Either justice is such as the pious and piety is such as the just, or justice is such as the impious and piety is such as the unjust. Socrates implicitly excludes the possibility of a spectrum of similarity.

Protagoras’s response is telling: he is willing to admit that justice is pious and piety, just, though he believes there is a further distinction to make. But then, he says, “What difference does this make?” (331c)—Protagoras is ready to admit the (near) identity of justice and piety, for they are parts of political virtue, and it seems conventionally sound if not expedient to make this admission. His agreement must be somewhat limited, though, for he must save himself some room to get out of extending the argument to the other virtues. But Socrates does not allow Protagoras this limited assent. He pushes Protagoras to speak his full opinion, and Protagoras begrudgingly obliges—to a point. In introducing some subtlety to the notion of similarity, Protagoras simultaneously undermines his conventional position on the unity of the political virtues.

Socrates’s choice of justice and piety and his strategy of arguing from similarity begins the push to extremes. The choice of justice and piety prompts Protagoras to overcommit himself.

Protagoras certainly cannot be seen to be saying that justice is impious or piety unjust, but he also cannot completely comply with the track of the argument. The use of similarity also seems, at first, to provide enough flexibility for Protagoras to maintain his overt conventionalism and his covert exceptionalism. But that flexibility ends up constraining Protagoras, for he cannot say explicitly what kind of similarity he finds between the virtues. At the close of the first argument,

58. Note that what has become the fraught issue of self-predication does not seem to be an issue at all for Protagoras. 62

Protagoras holds an uneasy and imprecise position between the extreme positions of complete identity or inseparability of all the virtues and their wholly exclusive independence.59

Second Argument on Wisdom and Moderation: 332a-333d

The next argument makes Protagoras’s position even more precarious. Socrates seeks to identify moderation—one of the political virtues—with wisdom—Protagoras’s special purview. This argument more directly threatens Protagoras’s unspoken position on the virtues. But Socrates begins rather benignly by setting “foolishness” (ἀφροσύνη) as the contrary to wisdom. IfPro- tagoras were instead to say that the opposition of wisdom is instead ignorance, then he would be able to avoid Socrates’s upcoming logic of opposites. Perhaps because Protagoras is already wary of delving into too much detail, he does not quibble over whether there is a more contrary notion to wisdom. Perhaps he assents because the wisdom he teaches is in fact contrasted with foolishness more than with ignorance.

Through the next steps, Socrates builds Protagoras’s assent piecemeal, asking questions to which Protagoras must agree. What else could Protagoras say when Socrates asks whether being moderate entails acting correctly and helpfully? Or that one acts moderately by means of moderation? Protagoras certainly cannot say that one may act correctly, not out of moderation, but to avoid charges of immoderation—in other words, because it would be foolish not to act moderately. Protagoras therefore must agree that acting foolishly is contrary to acting moderately. As Socrates presses through the argument, introducing the notion that each has but one contrary, Protagoras cannot respond that sometimes acting immoderately is foolish and sometimes acting moderately is foolish, for to do so would expose his wisdom as the skill by which one can discern when and when not to act moderately. Ultimately, the distinction Protagoras would use to dissolve the argument is one he cannot use. For Protagoras’s wisdom is what enables one to seem moderate without being moderate—to act moderately, not out of moderation but out of

59. This strategy of pushing Protagoras towards extremes he cannot hold accounts for why it seemsthat Socrates’s so-called conclusions are stronger than his arguments can sustain. 63 machination—yet Protagoras cannot admit that this is a possibility, much less a chief benefit of his wisdom. Protagoras is pushed, not by Socrates’s sophistry, but by his own, to agree—albeit with great reluctance—that moderation and wisdom are both contraries of foolishness. Never- theless, he never says explicitly that wisdom and moderation are one or agrees to Socrates’s explicit formulation of that conclusion. He responds with silence and, apparently, some sign of unwillingness, for Socrates must prompt him to continue the inquiry.

Socrates’s argument has introduced a level of complexity to Protagoras’s covert doctrine of the distinction between the virtues, but has simultaneously denied him the opportunity to situate that complexity. Protagoras must not explicitly disavow the coincidence of moderation and wisdom for the sake of his public security, but Protagoras also cannot controvert the occasional coincidence of immoderation and foolishness without undermining the wisdom he professes to teach. What remains is a tacit assent to the identity of moderation and wisdom.

Third Argument on Moderation and Injustice: 333c-334c

The next argument gets off to a rocky start and never finishes. Socrates begins byasking if it is Protagoras’s opinion that some unjust person is moderate because he commits injustice.

The phrasing of this question allows Protagoras to resume his dual message of safety andof persuasion. It is, Protagoras notes, commonly observed that the unjust man acts moderately in acting unjustly, though Protagoras is himself ashamed to admit such (333c).60 On the one hand, it seems that Protagoras is decrying the shamefulness of the common opinion that moderation and injustice coincide; on the other hand, he is acknowledging their coincidence and warning caution in getting caught pursuing it. Yet, Socrates does not allow Protagoras to enjoy this momentof comfort. He turns the focus to the argument, the speeches about injustice and moderation, rather

60. This coincidence of shame and safety, initiated in Protagoras’s Great Speech, will continue throughout the dialogue, and its significance will become more and more obvious. 64

than whose speeches they are. In doing so, he forces Protagoras to speak in a unified voice, the voice of the argument, and Protagoras at first declines.61

Protagoras is especially reticent because the previous argument emphasized the similarity, or rather, unity of moderation with wisdom. If the operative sense of moderation here is “good sense,” then he again is stuck without recourse to the necessary distinctions. Indeed, Socrates makes this explicit, after cajoling Protagoras to engage in the conversation again (333d). At this point, Socrates identifies moderation as “being sensible” which he in turn identifies as“de- liberating well” (εὖ βουλεύεσθαι)—which is exactly the “good judgment” (εὐβουλία) Protagoras originally defined as his political art. Socrates continues along this line of reasoning whereby moderation is unified with wisdom and now looks to be unified to justice. This course setsup the argument for Protagoras to finally admit that not only may the just man be unwise, butthe wise man is, by virtue of his wisdom, unjust. Of course this claim would be disastrous for Pro- tagoras to admit. With some desperation, therefore, Protagoras breaks from the line of reasoning by pouncing on Socrates’s attempt to identify what is good with what is advantageous. Withan oath to Zeus, Protagoras asserts that even if they are not advantageous to human beings, he still calls some things good.

Socrates describes Protagoras at this point as battle-ready and riled up for a fight (333e).

Protagoras has recovered the vantage point of a familiar sophistic stance on the qualified good, but his aggravation causes Socrates to take caution.62 Socrates knows that he is nearly touching the nerve that could stop the conversation before its proper conclusion. On my reading, Socrates here strategically backs off from the argument. Instead of pushing the argument, Socrates asks

Protagoras to elaborate on the distinction, a distinction which Protagoras can make with delicacy and without danger. Protagoras jumps at the opportunity, returning to the comfort of his longer

61. As will be more clearly emphasized later after the poetic interlude (see Protagoras 348a), it is vital to Socrates’s project of exposure that Protagoras not be allowed to disown his λόγος.

62. For a treatment of “sophistic relativism” and its pervasiveness in Greece, see Kerferd, The Sophistic Move- ment, 83-86. 65 speeches, feeling himself on the solid ground of the qualified good. He is rewarded for his well- spoken speech with applause, but this does not undo his awareness of his just survived brush with danger.

Protagoras has begun to see that speaking with Socrates may be more perilous than he first perceived. When Socrates tries to continue the conversation, Protagoras neutralizes Socrates’s previous strategy of using Protagoras’s awareness of his reputation against him by citing his reputation as his reason to resist Socrates’s request (335a). At this point, Socrates must turn explicitly to the audience in order to pressure Protagoras. They will return to the question ofthe unity of the virtues later in their conversation, finally discussing the only virtue not mentioned in these initial arguments, namely, courage. But when they return to this topic, they are not in the same positions. Protagoras will not see conversation with Socrates as an opportunity to advertise while looking magnanimous; he will be more vigilant and less concessive. Socrates, because he must be more direct, must therefore also be more crafty—primarily pursuing problems internal to Protagoras’s pedagogic program in order to reveal its political threat. These initial arguments for the unity of virtues are better understood as strategic arguments against Protagoras’ undisclosed position on the disunity of the virtues than as peculiar arguments for Socrates’s own position. Their shape depends on the balance that Socrates must strike between pressuring Protagoras to answer while not pushing him out of the conversation, and the balance Protagoras must strike between protecting his safety in public and persuading his potential students in private. On my reading, these arguments contribute to revealing sophistry’s true threat and the true target of that threat. Protagoras’s view of the sophistic virtues of wisdom and courage is that these enable their practitioner to use the other, political virtues in order to advance his own political power. Protagoras’s education replaces traditional civic education and, in turn, the end of the common good is replaced with the aim of individual power. 66

Interlude: 334c-338e

Before resuming the argument concerning the unity of the virtues, the dialogue between

Socrates and Protagoras faces disintegration. With Protagoras refusing to continue in the mode of a conversation, and Socrates consequently threatening to leave, the conversation is saved by the intervention of the audience. This interlude occurs at the center of the dialogue and features the voices both of the surrounding, potential students of Protagoras and his fellow sophists. At the heart of the dialogue then, in the midst of a seemingly tangential conversation about how to have a conversation, we are brought back to why this conversation must occur and therefore to the need for such care about the way it is conducted. Sophists and their would-be students hold the center of the dialogue, and sophistry as education again presents itself as the primary theme, the theme to which everything else must be related.

Protagoras’s Stance & Socrates’s Strategy: 334c-335c

Socrates finds that his previous strategy of playing on Protagoras’s reputation has reached its limit. After Protagoras’s lengthy speech on the qualified good, Socrates attempts toreturn the task at hand, namely, trying to draw out the true nature of sophistry. Socrates claims a mental disability, namely, forgetfulness, which he then illustrates by likening it to a physical disability, namely, deafness. He tries to prompt Protagoras into resuming the conversational mode by playing up Protagoras’s skill while publicly diminishing his own. But Protagoras does not rise to the prick of his reputation as before. He has become too wary of Socrates, too aware that Socrates is a competent opponent in a conversational competition.

But for Protagoras, the stakes are higher and with greater consequences than if the issue were merely losing an eristic skirmish, which, it seems, is how the audience perceives the problem. Though it is not clear how much Protagoras thinks Socrates is intentionally trying tooutthe true purpose of his pedagogic program, it is clear that Protagoras is no longer willing to continue in conversation with Socrates. I contend that Protagoras is more concerned with being exposed than with losing a battle of wits and words; though both are costly, the former outcome carries 67 a much higher risk. Nevertheless, presenting himself as being unwilling to lose an eristic debate is not only a believable cover but also a partially accurate one.63 With a half-truth on his side,

Protagoras refuses to return to the dialogic mode, first citing the insufficiency of short responses, then questioning who is to set the terms of sufficiency. As Protagoras plays up the new dynamic of debate, Socrates again tries to placate, referring to Protagoras’s renown for being able to give the briefest of responses. But Socrates finds that it will take more than a playful pricking ofhis reputation to prompt Protagoras to reengage, for Protagoras explicitly cashes in on the dynamic of debate by raising the issue of how he received his reputation in the first place. It certainly was not by letting his opponent set the terms of the debate.

With his appeal to the persuasive power of Protagoras’s reputation nullified, Socrates must find another means by which to continue the conversation. He does not immediately seek to curry favor with the audience, but his threat to leave in fact does open the question to those present of whether they wish to see the conversation continue. The question now before the reader, and perhaps the audience internal to the dialogue, is whether Socrates is in fact a “sore loser” or whether he is merely willing to seem so in order to continue his complex and delicate task. I suggest that Socrates here makes a gamble. He honestly does not want to continue if it means Protagoras will continue to give long speeches of questionable relevance to Socrates’s questions. In that case, the “conversation” will consist of an exchange of designed doctrines, and Socrates will only be helping Protagoras with his advertising. Yet, Socrates also does not feel that he has sufficiently disclosed the true nature of sophistry; there is work left todo.That he has already done a fair amount of work to expose sophistry is evidenced by the audience’s unwillingness to let the conversation end. They have some notion that there is a fight brewing between these two, though they may not be exactly clear on what that fight is over. Socrates relies upon the audience’s sense that more is left to be said not only to prevent him from actually leaving

63. It is a cover to which he reverts, though in a different way, at the true end of the dialogue; see 360e. Pro- tagoras’s strategic decision to misdirect the context of the argument may be why some see the present conversation as, in fact, little more than an eristic exchange. 68

but also, ultimately, to allow the conversation to continue in the way he requires. His strategy for achieving this end is to present his own appearance before the audience for the worse, and to

represent the audience to themselves in such as way as to ensure Protagoras’s participation.64

The Power of Appearance: 335c-336e

The first to intervene is Callias who, as Socrates narrates, grips Socrates’s handwithone hand and his cloak with the other. This physical action, and one of the last few narrative insertions

from Socrates, foretells Callias’s internal division. Literally on the one hand, he is the gracious

and sophisticated host wishing to maintain his gathering of illustrious and entertaining guests, on

the other, he is a thumotic youth unwilling to compromise and determined to get his way. What

he professes, though, is an invocation of pleasure and a solicitation of Socrates to gratify his and his guests’ pleasure. Socrates in turn identifies this desire for pleasure as a love of wisdom,65 and claims that because of Callias’s love of wisdom he would gratify his desire for pleasure. This

64. Among the interpreters who comment on this interlude, there is a consensus that here Socrates must confront a crisis, but there is also disagreement over the character of that crisis. Both Francisco Gonzalez, “Giving Thought to the Good Together: Virtue in Plato’s Protagoras,” in Retracing the Platonic Text, ed. John Russon and John Sallis (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2000), 113–154, Jonathan R. Cohen, “Philosophy is Education is Politics: The Dramatic Interlude in the Protagoras,” Ancient Philosophy 1 (2002): 1–20, and Long, “Crisis of Community: The Topology of Socratic Politics in the Protagoras,” 366–368, cast Socrates in a positive light, claiming that his insincerity is instrumental to a good end. For Gonzalez, this good end is the promotion of genuine dialectic among a community of good-seekers; for Cohen, it is to clarify the interdependence of political community, education, and philosophical methodology; for Long, it is to preserve the dialogue that supports a transformative community of learning. Goldberg, A Commentary on Plato’s Protagoras, 143, and Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 94–96, both take the interlude’s primary purpose to be further demonstration of the difference between Socrates’s philosophical rhetoric and Protagoras’s sophistic rhetoric. Vincent Tafolla, “Community and Constraint: The Crisis at the Heart of Plato’s Protagoras,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 48, no. 2 (2015): 162–185, on the other hand, does not shrink from recognizing the disconcerting aspects of Socrates’s behavior, claiming that the kind of community that Socrates pursues here is one of force and manipulation. It seems to me, though, that Socrates’s behavior is disconcerting only on the condition that one takes Socrates to be the representative of how the philosopher, as such, should act (as Gonzalez, Cohen, and Long seem to do). While my interpretation may be initially less satisfying because less immediately indicative of the ever-interesting character of Socrates as paradigmatic philosopher, it does avoid the troubling possibility that Socrates’s actions actually prohibit a dialectical community from commonly pursuing some good. Pace Tafolla, I believe Socrates’s actions are meant to preserve the possibility of that community, not in each instance promote its actuality, and as I will argue later in this dissertation, this act of preservation calls for a more complex philosophical/political act than representing philosophy as such.

65. He thereby supplies a foretaste of what he will later reveal is the sophist’s wisdom. Callias’s sense of wisdom, as indicated by his housing of so many sophists, is already thoroughly informed by the sophistic sense of wisdom. 69 gratification is conditional, though, on Socrates’s sheer ability to do what is requested. Underthe present conditions, he says, he cannot possibly do as Callias wants because he is prohibited from doing the only thing he can. Socrates then states baldly the terms he desires for the conversation: that Protagoras answer briefly and with relevance.

Socrates suggests the image of racing against notoriously fast runners to account for his desire for Protagoras to answer briefly, but not for the further term of providing pertinent answers. Socrates uses the image of himself trying to keep up with runners in their prime in a way that explicitly paints an unflattering image of himself, but also one that presents the excellent run- ner as a ridiculous competitor—ridiculous because few would wish to watch such a competition.

This image is selected to emphasize to the audience how unpleasant, or at least uncompelling, it would be to watch a race that was in no way a close call. With this image, Socrates has turned

Callias against himself before Socrates even makes his point. Callias responds by appealing to justice: it cannot be just, in a competition, to expect one to hobble himself unnecessarily. But

Socrates has already made this point hollow: it may not be just, but it is the only way to make it entertaining or pleasant to behold. Callias is therefore torn between his appeal to justice and his desire for pleasure.

Alcibiades jumps in at this point, detecting the fissure in Callias’s position. With a pun on

Callias’s name, Alcibiades makes it clear that he thinks the issue is not justice but rather beauty.

He ultimately claims that Socrates holds the more equitable position, but he says this only after raising doubts about the truth of Socrates’s claims to disability. What motivates Alcibiades is a desire to behold a worthy spectacle. He intimates that the best way to achieve this spectacle is to let Socrates play out his feigned slowness. So truth too is sidelined for the sake of the beautiful spectacle. Alcibiades accepts as true and identifies as equitable or reasonable whatever affords the most beautiful result. And this is not the last time Alcibiades sides with Socrates in the name of beauty.66 Alcibiades is not called a lover of wisdom for his love of beauty, but Socrates does

66. See Protagoras 348b. 70 seem taken with his speech, for he admits that he is unsure who spoke next but believes it was Critias.

Critias next addresses the assembly as a voice of compromise, fitting for a future politician.

He invites the other two sophists to weigh in on the issue. Perhaps here we see a preview not only of the fact of Critias’s political designs, but also of the character of those designs. For even though Socrates asserted and Protagoras defended the democratic and Athenian practice of not seeking expert opinions in political matters (and as this dispute carries the veneer of a issue of justice, it does seem to be a political matter), Critias’s only contribution is to defer to the expertise of

Prodicus and Hippias to resolve the matter, albeit under the guise of a common endeavor. Critias thus indicates that he is less than wholly committed to Athens’s democratic principles. With this implicit recession from Athenian democratic principles, the conversation turns to the other sophists in the company.

Appeal to the Sophists: 336e-338e

Prodicus’s speech touches on the most significant themes thus far mentioned in the dialogue and some yet to come: wisdom, beauty, deception, and pleasure. Prodicus manages to unite all these complex and puzzling issues in one, brief speech. Yet this unity is wholly unilluminating and unsatisfying. The distinctions he makes do not serve to clarify the matter or to benefit anyone who would try to. He emphasizes the need to discern between the wise and the unwise, but does not mention how to do so. He finds beauty in disputes but not quarrels, yet says nothing about how to achieve the one and avoid the other. He mentions that deception should be eschewed but does not say how to identify the truth. And finally, he distinguishes between pleasure of the soul and pleasure of the body, but he does not order one before the other and relates neither to any concern for better or worse. Prodicus’s sophistry confuses the means for the end. His dedication to precision in speech precludes him from using speech however he must in order to achieve his end. The concealing and persuasive power of speech escapes Prodicus even as Protagoras takes full advantage of it. 71

Hippias, on the other hand, does not have Prodicus’s deficiency; he is willing and able to use speech to manipulate a situation, though perhaps not as skillfully as Protagoras, as is

evidenced by his somewhat clumsy attempt to insert himself into a place of power within the

conversation. Hippias’s deficiency less concerns method than content. Hippas’s speech brings

up explicitly a central theme of the dialogue: the distinction between nature and convention/law. In this speech, Hippias shows a preference for nature, even going so far as to call law a tyrant.67

What Hippias misses is that if law is a tyrant, then he certainly should not say so openly. Hippias assumes a shared preference for nature among the company—a claim circularly supported by his claim that like is by nature akin to like—and a shared disdain for law, where he locates force.68

Even while making this identification of law with force, he ultimately fails to see or adequately estimate the power of convention and its unavoidable position in, or imposition on, the conversation. In this way, Hippias falls short of the full notion of sophistry incarnated in Protagoras.

While Protagoras’s sophistry certainly relies upon a distinction between nature and law, Pro- tagoras knows better than to broadcast this. In fact, sophistry flourishes precisely by relyingon an unspecified, even unreflective, desire for the natural while managing and manipulating the conventions that inevitably abide.69

As Hippias continues his speech, it becomes clearer that he himself does not truly understand the crucial distinction he voiced, despite being praised for his speech and his suggestion.

After asserting the priority that ought to be given to nature and its order, he suggests thatanex- ternal arbiter be appointed (himself, of course, as the obvious—too obvious—candidate). He first uses nature as a standard to be achieved and maintained, then admits that the natural tendencies of each speaker must be lawfully curbed to meet that standard.

67. In his own practice of sophistry, Hippias also shows demonstrates a preference for a curriculum in “natural philosophy.” See Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement, 66–69, 114–115.

68. Generally, force is contrasted with law or νόμος; see Xenophon, Memorabilia I.2.43. Even in the hands of the less than subtle Hippias, this treatment of nature, law, and force is an indication of how sophistry manipulates the distinction between nature and law. See my treatments of Callicles in chapters 2 and 3 of this dissertation

69. The greatest example of this is Protagoras’s Great Speech itself. 72

Socrates thus echoes Hippias’s initial claim that it would be shameful to flout the impresses of nature when he voices his opposition to appointing an umpire. Socrates’s argument against the appointment begins on solid enough natural ground: they should not appoint someone inferior to arbitrate over someone superior, for it would surely be a perversion of nature for the superior to be governed by the inferior. His next claim, which eliminates the possibility of appointing someone similar (presumably similar in stature), seems inadequate, for in saying that the supposed arbiter is similar in stature, which is to say is at least not inferior to Socrates or Protagoras, is not to say that they would have similar opinions as Socrates or Protagoras.

Socrates must be assuming Hippias’s earlier principle that like is by nature akin to like. But as

Socrates has claimed, and will soon reiterate, Protagoras is clearly the superior, so the arbiter would have to be similar to Protagoras and therefore have opinions similar to Protagoras. So ultimately Socrates’s argument is not that an arbiter of similar status would be redundant, but that this arbiter would side with Protagoras and therefore would not resolve the problem. The reason an arbiter was even suggested was because Protagoras’s admitted superiority does not immediately guarantee that his preference be followed. This argument subtly informs Hippias ofhis problem while excluding his proposed solution. Socrates’s argument indicates the problem with letting nature rule the conversation—Protagoras’s superiority would invalidate any attempt ata shared venture. So it is clear that there needs be some intervention of convention. Yet Socrates’s argument also indicates the problem of that conventional arbitration residing in the hands of one man—again, it would preclude a common venture. The alternative solution Socrates proposes addresses both points. The recommended reversal of his position as questioner and Protagoras’s position as answerer suggests that Protagoras’s acknowledged superiority must be suspended for the sake of the conversation. And the appointment of the company in common as the arbiter of the conversation avoids the problem of conventional “force” being concentrated in one man’s hands.

In the end, Socrates’s speech demonstrates the “force” of convention that Hippias mentioned. For everyone agrees so much with Socrates that Protagoras feels compelled to accept the 73

solution. By the end of the interlude, Socrates has managed the power of appearance such that he succeeds in his ultimate aim of preserving the conversation with Protagoras. Socrates has suc-

ceeded in engineering the now generally apparent desire to continue to watch the conversation.

The purpose of the interlude was to set a constraint—admittedly a methodological constraint—on

the conversation, but only for the sake of that conversation. Socrates’s ultimate aim is to keep Protagoras in conversation. In a way, it does not matter what Protagoras and Socrates speak

about. As the previous section made clear, no topic of a conversation between Protagoras and

Socrates is completely safe, which is to say completely without the possibility of revealing some-

thing about the nature of sophistry. As long as Socrates is talking with Protagoras in the present

company, he is achieving his goal.

Interpreting Simonides’s Poem: 338e-348c

The conversation must continue so that Protagoras can continue his quest to acquire more students and Socrates can continue his quest to uncover the true nature and consequences of

Protagoras’s quest. But the conversation cannot continue in the way it has. Protagoras must confront the danger Socrates poses to his enterprise, but must do so without entirely abandoning that enterprise. Socrates must respond at the new level of his conversation with Protagoras, now that Protagoras realizes that Socrates has discovered and could potentially reveal the duality of his discourse. On the other hand, Socrates must, while responding to a more aware Protagoras, yet evade or exploit that awareness to achieve his own end. The turn of the conversation to poetry allows for both Protagoras and Socrates to handle this new veil of complexity.70

70. Recently more and more scholars have treated this literary excursus as meriting philosophical reflection. At the time of their commentaries, Goldberg, A Commentary on Plato’s Protagoras, 175–210, and Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 98–126, were alone in their extended treatment of Socrates’s poetic criticism. Goldberg takes the moment to be a masterpiece of Socrates’s ironic playfulness by which he effects a refutation of Protagoras’s mode of discourse and introduces themes later explored in a more philosophically direct way. Coby also takes the moment to be Socrates’, inasmuch as he routs Protagoras in their ongoing battle while indicating his own philosophical credentials. Dorothea Frede, “The Impossibility of Perfection: Socrates’ Criticism of Simonides’ Poemin the Protagoras,” The Review of Metaphysics 39, no. 4 (1986): 729–753 and Marina McCoy, “Socrates on Simonides: The Use of Poetry in Socratic and Platonic Rhetoric,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 32, no. 4 (1999): 349–367 offer similar lines of interpretation, explaining the mode of literary criticism as rhetorically motivated and the content as philosoph- 74

The Purpose of the Poem: 338e-339e

It is initially unclear both what is Protagoras’s purpose in proposing an interpretation of the poem and what is Socrates’s end in not only accepting but embracing this course of the conversation. Nevertheless, in the first round of exchanges what each one’s purpose cannot be

does become clear. Neither Protagoras nor Socrates are interested in demanding or performing anything like genuine literary criticism.71 The interpretation of the poem is a vehicle for a distinct

project; it is not an end in itself. Protagoras’s lack of interest in an interpretation of the poem

itself become especially clear when he appeals to common wisdom and not to claims internal to

the poem (which are nevertheless available) when contesting Socrates’s interpretation. In turn,

Socrates’s lack of interest becomes clear in his initial linguistic interpretation of the poem, which supposedly attempts to make the poem coherent yet does so in such ways that face almost imme-

diate, albeit different, contradictions internal to the poem. So if the purpose of the introduction

of the poem is not an understanding of the poem itself, what is it?

Protagoras’s identification of “what pertains to poetry” (338e) as the greatest oravery great part of man’s education is helpful to answer the question of Protagoras’s purpose. But the

importance Protagoras places on it only serves to confirm that understanding the poet’s work

for its own merit cannot be Protagoras’s interest. Inasmuch as a student’s education, at least ac-

cording to Protagoras’s pedagogy, concerns ultimately his own advancement, the interpretation

of poetry can be only instrumental to that end. Being able to make other men’s words say what one wishes—especially if those other men are traditionally revered—seems a very great power

ically genuine. Franco Trivigno, “Childish Nonsense? The Value of Interpretation in Plato’s Protagoras,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 51, no. 4 (2013): 509–543 argues that the interpretation is a parody, meant to argue against literary interpretation as a viable method of education. Nearest to my approach, Bartlett, Protagoras and Meno, 76–79 and Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 85–97, take the interpretation to be a continuation of the same argument between Socrates and Protagoras, in which both Socrates and Protagoras advance their positions. For both interpreters, this argument concerns the unity of the virtues, and what the wise must (and must not) say about it. Again, my approach to the poem centers on the issue of sophistry and education and Socrates’s continued project of exposing the danger sophistic education poses to the city.

71. Pace Frede, “The Impossibility of Perfection: Socrates’ Criticism of Simonides’ Poem inthe Protagoras” and McCoy, “Socrates on Simonides: The Use of Poetry in Socratic and Platonic Rhetoric.” 75 indeed. Now it remains to be seen how Protagoras uses what the poet says to convey his own intention.

According to Protagoras, there are two aspects to an education in what pertains to poetry: the first is to know when a poet does and does not speak correctly, and the second istoknow how to account for what the poet says when questioned. Protagoras goes on to favor the former avenue of critique, suggesting that style and not content is what matters, if not in all cases, at least in this relevant one. Protagoras also claims that he and Socrates will in fact be discussing what they were discussing before, namely, virtue, but now within the realm of poetry. Protago- ras’s challenge to Socrates is either to admit that Simonides does not speak correctly or else to show how Simonides does not contradict himself in his criticism of Pittacus. The problem that Protagoras presents to Socrates through the poem is the problem of one wise man publicly contradicting another wise man; Protagoras uses the poem to convey to Socrates the foolishness of this contradiction.

Protagoras is not concerned with the content of Simonides’s poem, for a deviation in content does not pose any significant harm to the project of sophisitic education itself; Hippias and

Prodicus are Protagoras’s competition, not his enemies. Protagoras is far greater concerned with how those deviations are presented, how speech about wisdom and virtue is conducted in public.72 This concern has been clear since Protagoras first appeared in the dialogue, with hispraise of Socrates’s carefulness in asking whether the conversation should happen publicly or privately, followed by his praise of his own ability to speak publicly about such matters while preserving his safety. Precisely because his message pertains to the issue of public speech, Protagoras cannot explicitly tell Socrates that Socrates must be careful in his public presentation of questions about wisdom. Protagoras therefore uses the poem to warn Socrates that Socrates is endangering the project for everyone and making himself looks foolish in the process.

72. See Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 85, for a similar argument concerning the purpose of the section, namely, that the motivating issue is a “wiser sance towards the wise.” Lampert, however, does not consider that Protagoras may just as well be trying to educate Socrates about how the wise ought to conduct themselves. 76

Protagoras cleverly picks Simonides to be the messenger for this message. Protagoras mentioned Simonides previously in his list of crypto-sophists, those who hid their sophistry in other crafts. So Simonides belongs to that class of wise men who are not as wise asProtagoras with his skill of educating without needing to hide. Like Simonides then, Socrates is lacking in wisdom—a lack to be remedied only by Protagoras’s instruction. Protagoras thus confirms his earlier two claims about the poem, namely, that it is an expression of education and that it concerns the same issue of virtue. Protagoras uses the poem and its interpretation as an opportunity to educate Socrates, and virtue is precisely the point on which Socrates needs education. Socrates is being foolish and therefore must learn more about wisdom. With the poem, Protagoras aims to teach Socrates that it is wise to acknowledge the difficultly of becoming good and that it is not wise to antagonize other wise men about wisdom in public.

This message and educational program implies that Protagoras does not grant thepos- sibility of a conception of wisdom that radically differs from his own. Despite the earlier confrontation, Protagoras seems to assume still that he and Socrates are engaged in essentially the same enterprise. Protagoras does not seem to entertain the possibility of a different kind of wisdom. In recognizing Socrates’s cleverness, he recognizes a kindred spirit who could be resisting the project only out of ignorance—or whose ambition to topple another wise man must be dis- ciplined.73 Protagoras is trying to educate Socrates, trying to show him how he can and should use his intelligence to further the ends of wisdom—that is, his own ends—instead of defending the city and its virtues at the expense of the excellence and efficacy of his own wisdom.

In response to this, Socrates claims to his audience that he is at first “dizzy and woozy .

. just as if [he’d] been struck by a good boxer” (339e). He also admits that he turns to Prodicus and the linguistic analysis approach in order to earn himself some more time. If I am correct and Socrates has understood Protagoras’s message to be this coded admonition concerning how sophists should treat one another, then these responses are neither mystifying nor dismaying.

73. This sort of ambition is not the same displayed in an eristic skirmish. Protagoras senses thatSocrates could give away the whole game, not merely prevail in a battle of wits and words. 77

Socrates admits to needing to buy time, and he does so by focusing on distinctions between words. Socrates does need time to respond not only to formulate a response to the substance of

Protagoras’s message, but also to figure out how to do so within the context of his own inter-

pretation of the poem. Protagoras’s message also may rightly bowl Socrates over, for Protagoras

assumes Socrates must be, if not actively engaged in, at least in principle tolerant of the sophistic project. Socrates must face this image of himself as a sophist and, in some sense, wonder if it is

the case. One of Socrates’s very first questions in the dialogue concerned whether it is possible

to listen to and learn from a sophist without becoming one oneself. Socrates has indeed listened

to Protagoras and has even admitted that he has learned from him. In his treatment of the poem,

Socrates must therefore craft not only a response to Protagoras, but also an account of himself and his role in the conversation.

Linguistic First Pass: 339e-342a

Socrates, in an admitted attempt to stall, begins his interpretation with an appeal toProd-

icus to assist him in saving Simonides from Protagoras’s charge of self-contradiction. Socrates request begins with a claim of duty; it is Prodicus’s duty to come to Simonides’s aid because they

are both citizens of Ceos. Prodicus, with his citizenship and his already demonstrated “musi-

cal” skill of distinguishing between senses of words, is the clear choice for an alliance (340a–c).

Socrates embellishes his petition for Prodicus’s help with an allusion to a failed alliance from

Homer’s Iliad, indicating that Socrates is aware that his temporary strategy will not succeed.74 Despite the hinted-at failure on the horizon for this particular path of interpretation, it nevertheless plays a role in Socrates’s overarching strategy.

Socrates first attempts a reconciliation between Simonidies and Pittacus by claiming that

Pittacus is in fact claiming something different from Simonides. The difference between thetwo claims rests on Simonides’s use of γενέσθαι and Pittacus’s use of ἔμμεναι. First Socrates secures

74. See Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 100-102, for a detailed treatment of this allusion as well as Socrates’s use of both Homeric and Hesiodic references. 78 the distinction between the words with an endorsement from Prodicus, then he seals the consequential difference in claims by a reference to Hesiod. The result of the this strategy isthat

Simonides says that it is truthfully difficult to become good (presumably because acquiring virtue requires if not practice and commitment, then finding a worthy teacher and being able to provide adequate compensation), and Simonides’s criticism of Pittacus is that, having once acquired virtue, it is not difficult to remain good. Simonides, therefore, does not contradict himself, and

Socrates finds correlative evidence for this claim in Hesiod’s Works and Days.

Protagoras does not accept this interpretation. Interestingly, he refuses the interpretation not on the grounds that it clearly does violence to Simonides’s intention. We find later that, right after disagreeing with Pittacus, Simonides claims that “God alone would have this privilege,” where the privilege is to be (ἔμμεναι) good. If Simonides were really claiming that it is easy to be, in the sense of remain, good, then his very next line would not make sense. For then Simonides would be saying both that it is easy, presumably for anyone, to be good and that this privilege belongs to the god alone. Socrates knows this and yet makes the argument anyway; Protagoras knows this and yet appeals to common opinion, not the poem itself.

Instead, Protagoras says that Socrates’s attempt to help Simonides out of his contradiction comes at the price of committing Simonides to a greater error. Socrates is therefore a “laughable physician” who, in trying to heal his patient, actually makes his patient worse (340e). The error, Protagoras claims, is that, under Socrates’s interpretation, Simonides would be asserting that virtue is “something so paltry to possess, when it is the most difficult thing of all [to possess].”

In making this claim, Simonides would show great ignorance, since he would thus controvert

“the opinion of all human beings” (340e). Protagoras’s response provides two revelations: the first, already mentioned, is that he is not interested in understanding the poem on its ownterms; the second is that Protagoras holds or at least is ready to defend the claim that virtue is difficult to acquire, and therefore he is in agreement with the substance of Simonides’s initial claim.

This understanding of virtue fits with what we have seen of Protagoras’s views on virtue. For

Protagoras, wisdom and courage are difficult to acquire and develop; the one wishing to acquire 79

these virtues would therefore require an education from a teacher. The relevant sense of being good here, a goodness which is great and difficult to gain and maintain, is not the goodness ofthe

average citizen, educated from birth to be just, temperate, and pious. Being good in the sophist’s

sense is a challenging task that demands special guidance; it obviously does not include in any

meaningful way the common project of education provided by the city. Socrates’s response to Protagoras’s criticism is to push on with Prodicus’s “divine wis-

dom” and to distinguish yet another set of terms (341a). Using the example of the usual use of

“terrible” (δείνος) to be emphatic (as in, “he is a terribly wise man”) or descriptive (as in, “terrible

war”), Socrates asks Prodicus if “difficult” (χαλεπόν) supports the same variance in the Ceandi-

alect. Prodicus admits that “difficult” can mean “bad,” and Socrates concludes his second attempt to acquit Simonides on a linguistic point. Now Simonides is criticizing Pittacus for his dialect,

not his declaration. Again, the immediately subsequent line shows clearly that this cannot be Si-

monides’s meaning, or else he claims that the god’s privilege would be something bad. Yet, again,

Protagoras appeals to the generally accepted sense of the word “difficult,” the sense that “the rest of us mean,” namely, it is not easy and it comes about only with much ado (341d). And again

this view of goodness coheres with Protagoras’s earlier understanding. Instead of appealing to a

wisdom beyond Protagoras’s experience, Socrates backpedals by claiming that Prodicus must be

joking. He then shows that he knew all long about the line that could have destroyed both of his

attempts at linguistic salvation. It is necessary to note here two lines of action that Socrates does not take. The first

is that he does not call upon Prodicus to distinguish between the two words for “good” in the

poem. Simonides uses the more common and more general ἀγαθός and Pittacus uses the more

poetic ἐσθλός. Yet, Socrates does not avail himself of this obvious difference between the claims.

Why not? I suggest that Socrates recognizes that now is not the time to push the difference between being generally good (ἀγαθός) and being noble or brave (ἐσθλός).75 Before the end

75. Citing examples from Homer and Hesiod, Henry Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Ox- ford: Clarendon Press, 1940) gives “of persons, brave, stout; noble” as the first subentry of the first entry for ἐσθλός. 80 of the dialogue, he will again return to the issue of the role bravery or nobility play in being good, and he will even gesture towards the possibility that bravery (in the sense of courage) may detach from nobility (in the sense of beauty). The possible difference between these two words it too important to bring up at this point, however. The context of linguistic analysis is not the venue in which Socrates can make the claims he wants. Socrates must wait until the dialectical conversation resumes before he can adequately address goodness and nobility or bravery.

The second line of action Socrates from which conspicuously refrains is to return tothe dialectical discussion of virtue he had wanted to keep up before Protagoras backed out. Now, twice, Protagoras has remarked upon generally accepted claims concerning virtue outside the purview of the poem, giving Socrates ample opportunity to question Protagoras along these lines and to resume thereby their earlier discussion of virtue. Yet, Socrates does not abandon his task of interpreting Simonides’s poem. Why not? There is something yet undone that Socrates must do with his interpretation of the poem. There is some account that must be made now andin this context. There is something left for Socrates to say within the lines of Simonides’s poem, something which Protagoras begrudgingly consents to hear and which Prodicus and Hippias both enthusiastically encourage.

Lacedaemonian & Other Wisdom: 342a-343c

Socrates’s present tactic is to revise the history of wisdom in Greece in order to set up a foil to Protagoras’s earlier cryptohistorical account and then, ultimately, to Protagoras’s enterprise itself. In doing so, Socrates effects a reversal of Protagoras’s point in bringing up the poem.

Socrates therefore prepares for his interpretation of the poem not by dissolving Simonides’s contradiction, but by contextualizing it. In the process he clarifies the kind of wisdom at stake inthe conversation and thereby prepares for the remainder of the dialogue.

Certainly, for the most part the terms are synonyms, but if Socrates had gone to the length of distinguishing connotations across dialects, one would assume that this sort of hairsplitting would not be beyond him either. 81

Though Socrates begins his account with a claim about where philosophy is most abundant and more ancient, it should be noted immediately that this reference does not grant licence to identify what Socrates describes as philosophy with what Socrates does. In fact, many of the practices he describes conflict, at least prima facie, with his own philosophical practices.76 I therefore take Socrates’s aim here not to be to represent philosophy as an alternative to sophistry, but to re-present an approach to wisdom that differs from Protagoras’s sophistry on fundamentally political grounds. The first sign of this latter aim is that Socrates speaks first ofphilosophyin terms of its location in two Greek cities; the second indication immediately follows with the claim that in these two cities are the most abundant number of sophists. On this understanding, the love of wisdom is bound to a political space; indeed throughout the majority of Socrates’s speech, he refers to the general citizenry of Lacedaemon as possessors of wisdom. Another fairly immediate point that supports my view of the conflict is that Socrates also right away contrasts the practice of these wise people versus “those who Protagoras was saying are sophists” with respect to wisdom (342b). In the rest of his introductory speech, Socrates continues to develop points which no longer explicitly but nevertheless undeniably contrast with Protagoras’s account of sophistry, both his own sophistry and what belongs to his earlier list of outed sophists. First, Socrates claims, the Cretans and Spartans deny that they are wise and pretend to be without learning. They do this so as to obscure the source of their supremacy among the Greeks. The image they project to the rest of the Greek world is that they are superior due to their courage rather than their

76. Socrates does not shy from discussing philosophy in public or amid strangers, though it is an open question how much of this public speech contains esoteric meaning. Socrates also does not intentionally hide his quest for wisdom behind a pursuit and public practice of courage, though, of course, his courage is noted in several places in the dialogues. Finally, Socrates does not exclusively engage in the practice of pithy philosophical sayings, as evidenced by his current lengthy speech, though, again, there are several quotable Socratic aphorisms. More problematic for the view that Socrates is here describing philosophy in itself and as it ought to be: it would be difficult to combine with this view aspects of Socrates’s philosophical practices that are commonly considered crucial, namely, the emphasis on erotic love, the methodology of elenchus, and his personal and continual commitment to Athens. Frede, “The Impossibility of Perfection: Socrates’ Criticism of Simonides’ Poem inthe Protagoras,” 740, urges the reader to resist the urge to “read any Teifsinn into this banter,” though she admits that elsewhere Plato’s approbation of Sparta may be genuine. McCoy, “Socrates on Simonides: The Use of Poetry in Socratic and Platonic Rhetoric,” 354, dismisses Socrates’s reference to the Spartans as Socrates “clearly poking fun at the Spartans.” 82 wisdom. Furthermore, they have been supremely successful in their concealment, as evidence for which Socrates points to the “Laconizers”—those who imitate all the physical trappings of the Spartan life (342b). When the Lacedaemonians are tired of concealing their wisdom before foreigners, they simply kick the foreigners out. Like the Cretans, they do not allow their youth to travel to other cities during their formative years. They thus take precaution both to avoid dispersing their wisdom to other Greeks and to prevent other Greeks from diluting their wisdom.

Straightaway the differences are clear between these wise men and the ones Protagoras mentioned as well as Protagoras himself. In the first place, these Lacedaemonian wise men conceal their wisdom entirely; that is, they conceal both the content of their wisdom and that they are wise at all. On the other hand, prior to Protagoras, sophists did not hide their wisdom, only that they were sophists, by presenting their wisdom in other forms of craft. And Protagoras hides neither the content of his wisdom nor that he is a sophist, but rather hides what are the assumptions and consequences of his wisdom. The Lacedaemonian wise men use their courage to conceal their possession of wisdom; Protagoras’s sophists use craft to conceal their wisdom because of their lack of courage, and Protagoras uses wisdom itself to conceal even better his own lack of courage. Rather than glory in the wisdom which grants them their superiority, these

Lacedaemonian wise men wish to conceal the true source of their wisdom, keeping foreigners from their cities and keeping their youth from foreign cities. Protagoras’s sophists travel all over

Greece, trumpeting their reputation and hawking their wisdom (in whatever form they hide it)— on account of which, they frequently run into problems with the families of the youths they educate. Or, in Protagoras’s case, the sophist builds his reputation precisely on the grounds that his wisdom consists in part in the ability to avoid this very problem, even while advertising and working throughout Greece. Finally, the Lacedaemonian wise men execute this elaborate concealment as a matter of political prudence; Protagoras and his fellow sophists are compelled to their deception as a matter of personal safety. Lacedaemonian wise men conceal their wisdom for the sake of the city; Protagoras’s sophistry conceals its relation to the city for the sake of itself. 83

It is thus a political difference between the wisdom of the Lacedaemonians and the wisdom of Protagoras that grounds the differences in their representations. The wisdom of the Lacedae- monians, as just mentioned, is a political power, used for securing prosperity and superiority for one’s city. Any deception concerning their wisdom is externally impressed and civically motivated. The wisdom of Protagoras is a personal power, used to gain students who wish to advance their own personal power. This reliance on students requires a reputation, and this reputation dictates a concern for the danger it brings. Deception is therefore demanded by a necessity internal to his wisdom and grounded in a certain understanding of nature and convention. As Hippias mentioned earlier, the itinerant sophists of Protagoras’s lineage are citizens of nature, not citizens by law. Being without a law or a city, their wisdom cannot be the sort Socrates ascribes to the Lacedaemonians. Moreover, this foundation of Protagoras’s and the crypto-sophists’ wisdom is one to which they cannot openly admit, not because it may diminish their renown, but because it will endanger their lives. The sophist is able to move from city to city, educating citizens ineach how to be the most powerful, only because nature is the true bond of the sophist, and law is at worst tyranny and at best fiction. In fact, the basis of this education for the sake of political power is precisely this understanding of the relationship of nature and law. If the city’s conventions and laws are no more than a fantasy forced on the many by their need to get along for the most part, then not only is it permissible for wisdom to consist in the manipulation of those conventions and laws for one’s own natural power, but it is also impossible for this wisdom to achieve anything like Socrates’s description of Lacedaemonian wisdom, with its orientation toward the good of the city itself.

Socrates thus succeeds in showing Protagoras that another understanding of wisdom is possible—a possibility Protagoras previously did not seem to acknowledge. But it is available only if one disowns the unspeakable heart of Protagoras’s wisdom, namely, the invidious distinction between nature and convention. Socrates’s demonstration concludes with a further piece of evidence contrasting the Lacedaemonian wisdom belonging to the seven sages with the wisdom of

Protagoras’s sophists. After alluding to the difference in the content of these two kinds ofwis- 84 dom, Socrates emphasizes the form of the presentation of this wisdom. With outright praise of brachyology, which “can be uttered only by a perfectly educated human being” (343a), Socrates claims that he mentions this methodological difference in order return to Simonides’s poem and its treatment of Pittacus (now known to be one of the seven, Spartan-adoring sages). Pittacus’s

“to be good is difficult” was just one of these pithy and private sayings, which, presumably, can only be understood by one already perfectly educated or already wise. Simonides, one of these lately-come sophists who loves the honor of wisdom, takes advantage of the brevity and obscurity of this saying in order to set himself up as a superior wise man.

Along with the possibility of at last resolving the contradiction within the poem, Socrates’s account of Simonides’s motivation also functions as a demonstration of Protagoras’s self-contradictory approach to the poem. Now Protagoras is shown to be censuring a wise man (that is, Simonides) from history for the sake of his reputation, that is, censuring him for doing the very thing Pro- tagoras is now doing. Beginning from an implicit condemnation which initially aligned Socrates with Simonides, Socrates has effected a reversal which reveals Protagoras and his wisdom in the same condemnable position as Simonides.77 With this reversal, Socrates begins in earnest his task of interpreting the poem, though, again, not as an earnest poetic critic.

The New Wisdom: 343c-347a

As Socrates ostensibly embarks on his final interpretation of Simonides’s poem and its claims about virtue, he covertly reveals the claims Protagoras’s sophistry makes about wisdom, its place, and its power. In this final part of what may be considered his own “Great Speech,” Socrates discloses the kind of wisdom that Protagoras’s understanding of man and the city implies. In the guise of interpreting Simonides and his new wisdom, Socrates actually addresses Protagoras’s new wisdom. All the claims Socrates attributes to Simonides concerning wisdom, virtue, andthe

77. See Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 111, for a list of similarities between Protagoras and Simonides. One similarity Coby does not comment on, but is worth mentioning in light of my political reading, is that Simonides is the reputed tutor of the tyrant Heiro, while Protagoras is, in the dialogue, attempting to tutor future tyrants, for example, Critias; see Xenophon, Heiro. 85 good for man, should be taken to apply to and be implied by Protagoras’s position, or rather, Socrates’s understanding of that position.78 It was not enough to draw a contrast between the ancient wisdom of the private, Lacedaemonian-loving sages and the novel wisdom of the public sophist; now Socrates aims to draw out the content of this latter wisdom, albeit constrained by his own sense of caution. Socrates begins with a detailed grammatical critique of the first strophe, a critique that quickly becomes a reconfiguration of the poem. The purpose of the first step in this convoluted renovation is to set up the first lines to be undeniably a critique of Pittacus’s saying in justthe way Socrates asserts. In this way, Socrates explains the presence of a particle, which he claims is otherwise puzzling (343c-d). Second, Socrates shifts the modificand of “truly” so that it applies to the statement “it is difficult to be good” as opposed to “good” strictly. That is, Socrates bypasses the possibility that the poet may entertain a distinction between merely seeming good and truly being good. Raising a distinction between “those who are truly good and others who are good but not truly so” would appear “naive” and “not characteristic of Simonides” (343d-e). That is, not only does the poet not care to make the truth of goodness an object of comment, but doing so would make him seem naive or would be unbecoming of his reputation for wisdom. Whatever is the wisdom of the poet, it does not concern finding the truth of goodness. Socrates gives up,for now, his grammatical reconstruction of the poem because he has achieved with the opening lines what he needs in order to continue. Now, the poem is exclusively concerned with combating the perceived wisdom of others, and the wisdom contained in the poem itself is not concerned with what is truly the good for man but instead its task is to say what is and is not in man’s power.

78. I agree with the interpretation of Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, ibid., just to the extent that the only way to make sense of and find some design in Socrates’s interpretation of Simonides is toassume that he is really speaking of Protagoras. My interpretation diverges from Coby’s in that I do not find Socrates genuinely defending any of the positions he raises in this context. Goldberg, A Commentary on Plato’s Protagoras, 177, helpfully suggests a more nuanced view, claiming that Socrates uses his “construction of Simonides” as a mirror to Protagoras rather than a substitute. I agree with Goldberg and will argue that the whole of Socrates’s efforts here are concerned with revealing the particular kind of sophistic wisdom Protagoras presents, and its particular dangers. I will hereafter speak of “the poet” whereby I mean the amalgam of Simonides and Protagoras which is thetargetof Socrates’s critique. 86

The first product of the poet’s wisdom is that Pittacus’s claim is false because itisnot difficult but rather impossible to be good; in fact, what is difficult (but possible)isto become

good. Socrates then draws from the lines a view of human nature which echoes the anthropol-

ogy described in Protagoras’s Great Speech. Even for those who achieve some goodness, “it is

not possible not to be bad/ whom unmanageable misfortune brings down” (344c). Socrates claims that it is not the unskilled (ἀμήχανον) but the skilled (εὐμήχανον) that fortune can bring down,

and by this distinction he recalls the insufficiency of Prometheus’s technical gifts. A great storm,

a harsh season, or wild animals can interfere with the efficacy of the arts—and not only cando

so but inevitably will do so. Man is beset on all sides by attacks to his attempts at goodness, that

is, his attempts to use his knowledge. But by associating these already good ones, whom alone fortune can lay low, with those who work the technical arts, Socrates also indicates the sense in

which these good ones are good. They are good because they are most capable of surviving. As

the technical arts were for the sake of survival, so too the goodness of those susceptible to misfor-

tune seems to be concerned exclusively with survival. Survival and its echo, self-advancement, resurface as the ultimate end for knowledge or wisdom.79

As Socrates continues, he makes this association between goodness and knowledge of

the technical arts even clearer. What makes a man good is acting well, but what makes acting

well possible is knowledge. Again, only technical examples are used: “What goodness of action

makes a physician good? It’s clear that it is learning how to tend to the sick” (345a). The wisdom of the good is technical knowledge, and being deprived of this knowledge alone constitutes bad

action. Misfortune is revealed to be nothing but a disruption in the practice of one’s knowledge.

A great storm renders the skilled sailor’s knowledge inapplicable and therefore renders the skilled

sailor ignorant of that for which he had acquired his skill. A severe enough storm makes even

a skilled sailor ignorant of how to survive the sea. It is worth reiterating at this point that, though these claims—namely, that knowledge is the necessary and sufficient condition of doing

79. Indeed, at Protagoras 344e Socrates describes the one who is brought down by misfortune as skilled, wise, and good, without attempting any distinction between these terms. 87 good/faring well and that ignorance alone accounts for doing bad/faring ill—sounds familiarly Socratic, the knowledge Socrates speaks of here is the knowledge that Protagoras offers to teach.

It is knowledge of how to cope with the vicissitudes of life, not knowledge of the truth of goodness.

That is, it is a technical knowledge, a craft for how to get ahead in the world,nota desideratum of philosophical investigation. The poem continues with its disapprobation of Pittacus by addressing the issue ofpraise and blame itself. As mentioned in the previous section, praise and blame are especially crucial to the new kind of sophist whose wisdom is more public than that of the Spartan-loving sages.

The poem itself is an attempt to earn praise by blaming another. Furthermore, the claims previously made about the good and wise man (that is, the technically knowledgeable man) carry implications for how praise and blame function. The first of such implications is that thepoet cannot be praising those who do nothing shameful willingly or intentionally (ἑκών). It follows from the just established understanding of good and bad action that nothing bad, or shameful, can be done intentionally. The sole source of bad action is ignorance, and acting in ignorance excludes the possibility of acting intentionally. Socrates therefore insists that “intentionally” must be modifying the poet’s act of praise (345d–e).

The division of who is the object of intentional praise and who is the object ofcompulsory praise also follows from of the presently adopted function of praise and blame. The poet intentionally praises the man who does nothing shameful; but since the poet has also claimed that it is impossible for there to be a man who never does anything shameful, there must be another way of praising. In order to escape this threat of contradiction, Socrates interprets the poet to make a distinction between the way of praising that the good employ and the way of blaming that the wicked employ. The good man (now also identified with the noble man) is compelled topraise when he is alienated from his parents and fatherland or any other such thing. The source of his compulsion is himself. His wisdom compels him to praise in order to survive in his estranged state. Here Socrates alludes to the image of the itinerant sophist. On the other hand the wicked man not only allows himself to blame but seems to enjoy blaming his parents and his fatherland 88 for his estranged state, emphasizing their wickedness in order to avoid being blamed for his own wickedness.

This interpretation becomes clear on the condition that the notion of wickedness atplay is precisely the ignorance of how to survive and succeed. The one who sees the wickedness of his father and fatherland—a wickedness now understood as ignorance of how to promote one’s own survival and success—can survive only if he compels himself to praise and is doomed if he allows himself to blame. The difference between the good man and the wicked man hereis only that the former has the knowledge of how to compel himself to praise once he recognizes others’ wickedness, whereas the latter lacks this knowledge and therefore is compelled bythis recognition to blame. And this knowledge of when and how to compel oneself is just the sort of wisdom Protagoras offers those courageous and ambitious youths who are dissatisfied with their place in their city. Protagoras teaches the same lesson in the Great Speech, namely, that justice is necessary for the city and therefore it is necessary to learn how to relate to and manipulate it, that is, to learn how to praise it. According to Socrates, the poet uses this distinction between compelled and uncompelled praise to emphasize that he does not blame Pittacus lightly or with delight, since he rarely blames at all. It seems, then, that for the poet there is only one condition for blame that the good man accepts, and that is when another withholds praise until an unmeetable standard of goodness is met. In other words, the new wise man—now the good man—blames only those who insists on too absolute a standard of goodness, and these are only the old wise men. By promoting an unrealistically high standard, Pittacus speaks falsehoods about the greatest things, so the wiseand good and noble man must blame him. No mention is made whether Pittacus is being purposely

(or willingly) deceptive in disseminating these falsehoods, or if he does so out of ignorance. If the former is assumed, then the poet is open to self-contradiction inasmuch as it would be a case of intentional wrong doing—which he had claimed to be impossible. If the latter is assumed and he takes Pittacus to act from igorance, then the poet’s basis for blame is undermined, andagain he is subject to self-contradiction. Ultimately, the context which was conjectured in order to 89

dissolve a contradiction between a couple lines of the poem implicates the entirety of the poem in a contradiction with even more crucial consequences.

The new contradiction of the poem, which I have argued applies to Protagoras, arises from

the new wisdom and its claims about the good. Furthermore, the contradiction threatens Pro-

tagoras’s project, for to resolve it would necessitate revealing more about this new wisdom than he can safely do. In the Great Speech, Protagoras’s strategy for dealing with this contradiction

was to make the move Simonides does not, namely, to praise instead of blame. In Protagoras’s

case, the too absolute standard of goodness is the standard publicly claimed by the city with

its expectation of unified virtue, but Protagoras cannot safely criticize the city for its standard

even though his wisdom entails the fracturing of virtue into many. Instead, Protagoras publicly and by self-compulsion praises the city; privately but intentionally he indicates how to use this

self-compulsion to increase one’s power in the city and therefore fare well.

As Socrates’s interpretation reveals, the less troubling contradiction is the open one,

namely, the contradictory folly of one wise man criticizing another, which both Simonides and Protagoras commit. The more troubling, more pervasive, and more central contradiction isthe

hidden one, namely, the contradiction between the new wisdom and the demands of the city.

Just as there is a deeper contradiction in Simonides’s treatment of Pittacus, Socrates shows the

deeper contradiction between Protagoras’s wisdom and its political context.

Return to Dialogue: 347a-348c

Socrates has succeeded both in using the poem to reveal Protagoras’s wisdom and in indicating to Protagoras that he is just as exposed to being tested in long speeches as in dialogue, if not more so. Even though dialogue with Socrates about virtue carries its own dangers, Pro- tagoras is no safer hiding his position amidst poetry. Socrates attempts to make this last point to Protagoras with a quick meta-critique of poetry.

Before the dialogue resumes, Hippias attempts again to insert himself into the discussion by offering his own interpretation. Alcibiades heads him off, using a claim of justice againinpur- 90 suit of beauty and pleasure. Alcibiades reminds everyone of the deal that prompted Socrates’s interpretation of the poem.80 Questioning and answering must resume, either Protagoras questioning and Socrates answering, or Socrates questioning and Protagoras answering. Socrates expresses his lack of preference for the direction of questioning and his willingness to continue investigating with Protagoras, but does make one request adamantly. Socrates asks that the company cease speaking of what pertains to poetry.

He supports his request by likening speaking of poetry to listening to flute girls in a symposium. Whereas Protagoras had initially claimed that speaking cleverly of what pertains to poetry is the greatest part of man’s education, Socrates here claims that men speak of poetry when they lack education enough to speak to one another in their own voices and with their own speeches. These claims do not quite contradict, since Socrates’s claim is set in the contextof a drinking party. When the occasion is one of leisure, when efficacy is no issue, speaking of poetry indicates a lack of education rather than its possession. If Protagoras’s initial claim about the significance of poetry is to stand, then the relevant context for Protagoras’s claim is onewhere something is at stake, when the use of one’s education has practical consequences. In that context, speaking of poetry is not low or base, but effective. According to Socrates, a symposium of educated gentlemen will forgo poetry in order to question one another, and such a company will eventually forgo the drinking party in order to keep up this questioning. If Protagoras keeps up his resistance to dialogue, he is thus faced with a dilemma: either the issue is a matter of expediency instead of leisurely investigation, or he is denying that he is in the company of educated gentlemen, each adequate to test each other and himself. Neither claim is safe to imply.

Despite the force of this dilemma, Protagoras still hesitates to rejoin the conversation on these terms. His hesitation is unsurprising as Socrates’s intermediate speech has indicated that

80. Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 98–101, takes Alcibiades’s intervention as confirmation that Socrates’s true audience is the ambitious youth and that Socrates is succeeding in replacing his own form of education for Protagoras’s. While it may be likely that Alcibiades is the intended beneficiary of Socrates’s conversation with Protagoras, this evidence does not necessarily support the reading that Socrates is here offering his own form of education or a philosophical education. It should be noted that Lampert is inspired to this emphasis because of his unique views of the role the Alcibiades I plays in the project of philosophy becoming Socratic. 91 the new context demands the identity of one’s speeches with one’s own voice; that is, what is said from now on will be understood as Protagoras’s own position.81 Protagoras’s proclaimed forthrightness will now be put to the test. This new condition gives Protagoras so much pause that Alcibiades again intervenes, stating with bolder explicitness what Socrates has only implied, namely that Protagoras’s reputation in the eyes of the present company is on the line. Alcibiades, tacitly accepting the new paradigm of conversation, asks Callias if he thinks Protagoras is acting nobly in refusing to state whether he will continue on such terms. Protagoras’s shameful silence especially grieves Alcibiades for it prevents another conversation from taking place, presumably a conversation Socrates can conduct with someone else. So Protagoras must submit himself to be tested by Socrates or else admit himself to be bested by Socrates. Note that this concession would not be to superficial eristic debate; Protagoras would have to admit to being defeated byapene- trating and specific attack on his own reputed expertise. Since the latter is certainly destructive of the reputation his wisdom requires to sustain itself, Protagoras complies with Socrates’s terms.

We see that the shame which, Socrates supposes, pushes Protagoras to rejoin the conversation is the same shame which belongs to a man who lives or dies by how others perceive him. As will become clear later, the counterpart to this shame is only the appearance of nobility.

Courage: 348c-351b

Having secured from Protagoras a reluctant agreement to submit to questioning, Socrates begins by trying to set Protagoras at ease with praise and assurances. Socrates assures Protagoras that he is questioning Protagoras only because he wants to understand what he is investigating and that he can do so best with Protagoras’s help. Citing Homer again (“Two going together, and the one observed before the other”), Socrates insists that he needs Protagoras in order to

81. See Charles Griswold, “Relying on Your Own Voice: An Unsettled Rivalry of Moral Ideals in Plato’s Protagoras,” The Review of Metaphysics 53, no. 2 (December 1999): 253–307 for a detailed discussion of Socrates’s argument here and its implications for the character of Protagoras going forward. 92

ratify what he observes on his own.82 I suggest that the perplexing matter that Socrates wishes to investigate is sophistry itself, which is why he cannot do so adequately without Protagoras’s involvement. Although Socrates used the interpretation of Simonides’s poem to clarify the nature of Protagoras’s sophistry, he here indicates that until Protagoras speaks his sophistry into being, only so much clarification is possible. While Socrates’s need of Protagoras is genuine, his praise of Protagoras may be less than fully willing.83 Protagoras can certainly give unique insight both into what is reasonable for a decent man to investigate and into virtue in particular, for sophistry masquerades as the former and subverts the latter. Socrates here reminds us why Protagoras is especially well-suited tobethe paradigmatic sophist and therefore the primary target of Socrates’s questioning. For Protagoras claims to be both good himself as well as able to make others good; he openly declares this and declares himself a sophist; finally, he asserts that his ability to teach deserves compensation. If

Socrates is to reveal the nature of sophistry, he must do so with Protagoras or not at all.

The Turn to Courage: 348c-349e

Socrates returns to his investigation into the unity of the virtues, posing to Protagoras again the question whether each virtue has some particular being with its own power, or do the five names refers to one and the same thing. Socrates reminds Protagoras of hisprevious position, that the virtues are like parts of the face, each with its distinct power. Socrates also reminds everyone how this position met with difficulty, then suggests that perhaps Protagoras now wishes to take up a different position and even that perhaps Protagoras’s initial position was not a genuine one.

82. See Homer, Iliad 10.224 for the reference, and see Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 102–103 for an in-depth analysis of the scope of this Homeric allusion.

83. Socrates’s explication of unwilling praise in his foregoing interpretation is especially apt here. Socrates and Protagoras are by no means in a easy relationship; yet, unwilling praise is precisely what is called for when the members of the relationship are estranged. Here Socrates acts as the wise man who compels himself to praise in order to survive in a strained relationship. 93

Protagoras does not openly concede that he was mistaken before, or even that he assumed those positions strategically. Yet, he does now admit that all the other virtues are reasonably comparable to one another, save for courage. Recall that Protagoras covertly proposed a disunity of the virtues such that the virtues required for a sophistic education (wisdom and courage) were separable from the virtues required for citizenship (justice, moderation, and piety). In the previous round of arguments, Socrates had implicated wisdom with the civic virtues as well as the civic virtues with one another. Protagoras had not been willing to concede that wisdom belonged among their number then, but now he surrenders wisdom to the civic virtues. I suggest that Pro- tagoras does so, not because he was persuaded by Socrates first arguments nor because he was persuaded by new arguments, but rather because the intervening interpretation of the poem has convinced him that speaking safely of wisdom is no longer an option with Socrates. Socrates’s interpretation of the poem centrally concerned the kind of wisdom the sophist has; but this exposure of his wisdom is more dangerous for Protagoras than conceding its connection to the political virtues. Having been deprived of speaking safely of wisdom, Protagoras falls back on the only still safe virtue: courage.

If Protagoras can mark some independence for courage (which, of course, he must use his wisdom to accomplish and which, therefore, can also mark some independence for wisdom), then he can preserve the distinction between the virtues integral to his project. Protagoras reengages with Socrates with a new purpose. Now he seeks to secure his students by appealing to a sort of courage that his students sense not only lies outside the scope of their heretofore traditional civic education, but also runs counter to it. This courage is compatible with a lack of justice, moderation, piety, and even learnedness—though it is only learnedness, understood properly, which can possibly assist in directing courage toward a beneficial end.

Socrates’s strategy here and for the rest of his conversation with Protagoras is to show the connections between Protagoras’s understanding of the virtues. Because Protagoras considered the political virtues in the way he does, he must also have a certain understanding of his own wisdom. The wisdom itself he professes to share, but his own understanding of this wisdom,he 94 prefers to keep secret. Socrates endeavors to show, with these final arguments, that Protago- ras’s understanding of wisdom has consequences for his understanding of courage. Ultimately and as presaged by his interpretation of Simonides/Protagoras, Socrates will show that, given

Protagoras’s conception of wisdom, his conception of courage will eventually collapse under contradiction.

The Argument and Its Purpose: 349e-351b

In this first argument about courage, Protagoras attempts to isolate courage fromthe other virtues, while leaving open the possibility that it may benefit from knowledge. For his part, Socrates attempts to reveal Protagoras’s understanding of what courage and wisdom areby uniting the two. First, Protagoras asserts that courage is altogether incomparable with the other virtues, claiming as evidence the cases of those who are quite courageous and yet very much not possessors of the other virtues. After admitting that this point is worth investigating, Socrates then offers Protagoras a proposed category for courage, namely, the bold (θαρσαλέος). Protagoras happily takes this point and elaborates, claiming that the courageous are “even eager in the face of things the many fear to approach” (349e). Again, Protagoras’s appeal to the kind of “courage” his students possess is operative here. The eagerness of his young students to advance toward fearful things (for example, abandoning traditional virtues) is what sets them apart from the many.84 The courage of Protagoras’s young students is precisely the sort that is apparent only as madness. When this sort of courage works with the help of knowledge, it does not appear to be courage at all because the relevant knowledge is precisely how to seem as though one is not abandoning traditional virtues, that is, how to seem noble. When this sort of courage works without the help of knowledge—that is, when one openly acknowledges his injustice, immod-

84. Or rather, their eagerness is what these youths would like to think sets them apart from the many. Again, Protagoras appeals to the understandable tendency of man to attribute that which he most prizes in himself to a noble nature rather than to a quirk of chance or mere convention. 95

eration, or impiety—then courage does appear but only as madness, as Protago ras has already claimed in his Great Speech.85 Protagoras himself therefore asserts, in response to Socrates, that virtue is wholly noble.

Because of this unique slant on the conception of courage, Protagoras in turn appeals to a conception of the noble, which must differ from the conception generally held by the cityand therefore held by the many. Yet, Protagoras must also be careful to remain enough within the common understanding of nobility so that he does not seem mad himself. Protagoras’s attempt to navigate these two tensions accounts for his moves throughout the remainder of this argument as well as the dialogue. He is committed to the position that proper knowledge can only benefit the inherent courage found in his students, so he avers Socrates’s examples and concludes that “the knowers are bolder than the non-knowers” (350a) and that those who act on their boldness without knowledge are madmen. He further indicates that if those madmen were considered courageous, then courage would be a shameful thing.

By this association with madness, Protagoras indicates that he takes shame to be a sort of disregard for how one appears before others and therefore for one’s own good. In his Great

Speech, Protagoras asserted that it was madness to claim to have skills that one does not have, not out of a respect for truth, but out of a respect for the fact that how one appears to others is bound with his good. Likewise, therefore, it is madness to admit one’s injustice. If someone were to dive into a well having had no previous experience or training and perhaps, therefore, an inadequate appreciation of the dangers involved, he would generally be considered stupid and bold. He would therefore qualify as a madman under Protagoras’s account of madness. A consequence of this position is that acts of courage must be concerned with how they will appear.

In fact, it seems to be just this concern that renders the act noble and courageous or shameful and mad. So while the many may not be or be able to be courageous, they do have some say in what counts as courageous inasmuch as they figure into one’s assessment of what is shameful.

85. See,Protagoras 323b. 96

Socrates builds from Protagoras’s responses an argument that results in the conclusion that wisdom is courage. The validity of Socrates’s argument has been frequently questioned.86 I suggest, however, that Socrates’s argument not only does not effectively argue for the conclusion that wisdom is courage but also that by this failure it does achieve its true purpose of redirecting the conversation to the issue of wisdom. The reading that takes Socrates to be attempting to construct a valid argument forthe conclusion that wisdom is courage fails on two fronts. It fails differently whether it reconstructs

Socrates’s argument to be already valid or whether it admits that Socrates does fails to achieve this validity. The validity of Socrates’s argument, if it is going to be valid at all, is based onthe convertibility of the courageous with the bold; Socrates’s argument is valid only if the courageous are bold and the bold are courageous. Now, at this point, the interpretation divides between one that claims that Socrates does not commit this illegitimate conversion and one that claims he does. The former must admit that Socrates simply fails in his attempt to construct avalid argument. So, though Socrates does wish to construct a valid argument here, the argument simply is not valid.87 This avenue satisfies only if one is content to admit easily that Socrates lacksthe adequate logical skill to detect the failure of his argument. The latter line of interpretation takes

Socrates to be constructing a valid but ultimately unsound argument, for Socrates’s (now valid) argument founders on Protagoras’s immediate and legitimate criticism of the false conversion.88

Furthermore, and more troubling for this view, Socrates himself seems not only to acknowledge but even to emphasize that the courageous and the bold are not coextensive. Just before the conclusion of his argument, Socrates restates Protagoras’s claim about the overly bold, namely,

86. Taylor, Plato, Protagoras, 149–159, M. J. O’Brien, “The “Fallacy” in Protagoras 349d–350c,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 92 (1962): 408–417, and Roslyn Weiss, “Courage, Confidence, and Wisdom in the Protagoras,” Ancient Philosophy 5, no. 1 (1985): 11–24, all take the argument to fall short of logical validity in different ways; see Weiss, 11–12 for a helpful organization of the different scholarly approaches. See alsoDavid Wolfsdorf, “Courage and Knowledge at Protagoras 349E1-351B2,” Classical Quarterly 56, no. 2 (2006): 436–444 for a review and critique of these positions.

87. See, for example, Taylor, Plato, Protagoras, 159.

88. See, for example, Wolfsdorf, “Courage and Knowledge at Protagoras 349E1-351B2,” 442-444. 97 that by being bold and ignorant they are not courageous. It is difficult to square this statement with the position that Socrates in fact maintains that boldness is biconditional with courage. To take the argument in this way, therefore, one has to admit that preserving the logical validity of the argument opens Socrates up to obvious criticism.

A second approach denies that Socrates is attempting to construct a valid argument for the stated conclusion. In this camp range scholars who make this claim out of favor to Protagoras and those who do so out of favor to Socrates. The former cast Socrates as ineffectually trying to trip Protagoras up or trick him.89 The latter typically suggest that Socrates real quarry is acovert teaching on wisdom and/or courage.90

My reading adopts the second approach and sides with those who favor Socrates. But instead of trying to offer his own teaching on wisdom and courage, I suggest that Socrates usesthe argument in its overly strong form to direct the conversation and Protagoras back to the issue of wisdom. Earlier, I claimed that Protagoras abandons wisdom to be grouped with the other virtues because he was convinced by Socrates’s interpretation of Simonides’s poem that wisdom was no longer a safe topic to discuss—Socrates showed too much awareness of Protagoras’s real wisdom to converse safely about it in public. Protagoras therefore evades discussing his understanding of wisdom by emphasizing courage. Socrates’s true aim in this argument is not to show that wisdom is courage but to engage Protagoras in a discussion of wisdom, and furthermore, to get him to admit that a discussion of courage requires this discussion of wisdom. Had Socrates aimed openly for this seemingly less ambitious goal, Protagoras could have easily evaded that end just as he masterfully handles the present argument. The argument is engineered to show that Protagoras believes that there is some relationship between knowledge and courage and thereby to open a path to a discussion of the nature of that knowledge with Protagoras.

89. See, for example, Gagarin, “The Purpose of Plato’s Protagoras,” 154–155.

90. See, for example, Weiss, “Courage, Confidence, and Wisdom in the Protagoras,” who claims that Socrates’s real thesis is that wisdom is the source of knowledge. 98

Protagoras admits that there is a special relationship between a certain kind of knowledge and courage not only in the argument but also in his critique of the argument.91 He admits that he would call boldness without knowledge not courage but madness, though he implies that he would call boldness with knowledge (and perhaps something else) courage. His critique of Socrates’s argument refines this point by an analogy. Just like boldness and courage arere- lated but not identical, power and strength are not identical, though they are related. Protagoras nowhere in his rebuttal discusses how power and strength are related, but he again admits that wisdom somehow augments power. In fact, wisdom is the only possible candidate for relating strength and power that Protagoras mentions, even as he insists that the power gained by wisdom is not identical with strength. Though the exact relationship of power and strength is still underdetermined, Protagoras moves on to explain the difference between power and strength. Power comes about not only from knowledge but from other sources as well, such as spirited anger

(θύμος) or madness; strength, however, comes about only through nature and the proper nurtur- ing of bodies. Extending the analogy to boldness and courage, boldness can develop through art (taking the place of knowledge), spirited anger, or madness, while courage comes only through a dispensation of nature and proper development through care and attention.

Ever advertising, Protagoras does not miss a chance to appeal again to his would-be students. His appeal is double, both to identify the impulse they feel with noble courage over potentially base boldness and to recall to them that this natural courage nevertheless requires nurture. But the nurture this courage requires is just the kind of education Protagoras promises. Protago- ras therefore takes care to say that knowledge is separate from courage, even while he unites the development of courage with his educational program. In this way, Socrates has made Protago- ras a willing participant in a new discussion about wisdom, and in particular the kind of wisdom

Protagoras professes to possess and preach. Protagoras has even sown the seeds of the terms of

91. It should be noted that Protagoras’s critique is apt, if we assume that he thinks that Socrates is trying to make a valid argument. It should also be noted that allowing Protagoras to feel some boldness himself in catching up a logical error is a shrewd move on Socrates’s part, if Socrates is indeed attempting to direct the conversation subtly. 99

the new discussion. While denying that boldness and courage are convertible, Protagoras has revealed that he does see art, knowledge, and wisdom as convertible, at least in a certain case.

What Socrates will next try to show is that thi certain case is precisely the case of Protagoras’s

own wisdom.

Wisdom, Pleasure, and Power: 351b-358d

Socrates seems to shift abruptly away from the argument about courage, but closer read-

ing reveals that nearly all the elements of the argument Socrates now pursues have already been

introduced by Protagoras. The appearance of suddenness may remain, but the new line of argu-

ment should not be surprising. Socrates’s introduction of pleasure serves as the consolidating

center around which he will unify and expose Protagoras’s positions on the sophist’s knowledge/wisdom/art, the virtues, the good, the noble, and human power with respect to all these.

I understand these arguments to be continuous not only with what immediately precedes but

also with Socrates’s consistent project throughout the dialogue, namely, to reveal the nature of

sophistic education.

A Safe Hedonism: 351b-355e

Socrates initially poses his question about the pleasant and the good in terms of a fully lived life, and Protagoras initially assents. It is not until Socrates states the claim in more abstract terms that Protagoras prevaricates and attempts to introduce a distinction between noble pleasures and other pleasures. Instead of immediately pursuing this distinction, Socrates aligns Protagoras’s resistance to identifying the pleasant things with the good things with the many, who call some pleasant things bad and some distressing (or painful) things good. But before Pro- tagoras can respond, Socrates reformulates his question in even more abstracted terms; he asks if the pleasant things, insofar as they are pleasant, are good. In other words, is pleasure itself good? He also adds to this reformulated presentation of the pleasant, the caveat “unless something else arises from it” (351c). 100

With these opening questions, Socrates lays the groundwork for an ultimate coincidence between Protagoras and the many on the issue of the pleasant and the good. The evocation of the many here is ambiguous. It could refer to the uneducated, undistinguished masses, “the crowd.”

But in democratic Athens, “the many” can also be shorthand for the authoritative power in the city. This ambiguity accounts for the tension in Protagoras’s response to the conversational presence of the many. There is an obvious reason why Protagoras would resist an overt connection between his position and the general opinion of the many: Protagoras’s livelihood depends on elite clientele. Protagoras advertises that an education from him is exceptional; his consumer persona stands on his uniqueness. If the wisdom Protagoras sells is only an embellished common sense, then his marginal appeal disappears. Nevertheless, Protagoras cannot wholly abandon all concurrence between his position and that of the many. We know from his Great Speech that he has to present his education as a slight improvement on the education that all provide to all.

His safety depends on not alienating the many, or at least on avoiding provoking their fear at his new teaching. That Protagoras tailors his next response around a consideration of safety is therefore to be expected. Not only in the present circumstance, he claims, but also with a view to his whole life, the safer response to Socrates’s question is that not all pleasant things are good. The hinted at less safe response might be an admission that the pleasant in itself is good or that his position about noble pleasures is identical to the many’s position that pleasant things are good unless something else arises from them. These responses may not be safe to admit, but Socrates will show that both follow from Protagoras’s understanding of the good, which is represented by the safe response he does give.

By evoking safety in his response to the issue of pleasure, Protagoras echoes of his first speech about public and private speaking as well as the mythic anthropology of his Great Speech, where safety is always correlated with self-advancement. In Protagoras’s initial speech, his boast of safety would be no boast at all if he were not attempting to do something that would otherwise not be dangerous. In the Great Speech, man’s advancement (into the world, into the possession 101 of arts, into the habitation of cities) is continually imperiled. Man’s quest for safety goes hand in hand with his quest to overcome his given condition, to advance himself. The issue of safety is therefore intimately connected with how Protagoras understands the ultimate good, both his own and for man.

In the context of the present claim, Protagoras’s safety must be considered on two fronts, the public and the private. He must consider his public safety amidst the present party, which is tantamount to considering both his potential students as well as their potentially dangerous parents. The publicly safe way to adhere to hedonism is by making a distinction between noble and shameful pleasures. For his students, he still promises pleasure as integral to living well; for their parents, he warns that not all pleasures are good (for example, shameful pleasures), but only noble pleasures are good. Yet this distinction between noble and shameful, according to Protago- ras’s use of it in the preceding argument concerning courage, is nothing more than a concern for how one appears. And this concern for appearance has been the balance of concern for self- advancement and concern for safety. The noble pleasures are the pleasures whose indulgence do not endanger one’s appearance before the many, before one’s fellow citizens; the noble pleasures are the pleasures which may be safely enjoyed. And what is safe must be understood in terms of what either contributes to or does not impede one’s acquisition of power for self-advancement.

Protagoras must also consider his private safety, namely, the safety of his life as whole.

The privately safe way to adhere to hedonism is by considering the whole of one’s lifewhen determining whether a present pleasure is noble (that is, safe) or not.92 As indicated in his Great

Speech, for Protagoras the ultimate goal of man is self-preservation, the minimization of danger and the maximization of safety. A dangerous pleasure is a pleasure that may bring about pain, either as a physical and therefore private consequence or as a shameful and therefore public consequence—both endanger one’s self-preservation. Dangerous pleasures must be forsaken for safe pleasures, pleasures whose indulgence carry little to no risk for painful repercussions. The

92. This is why Protagoras does not resist Socrates’s initial formulation of the question, that is,whenthe claim is situated in the context of having come to the end of one’s life. 102 self-advancement which one must keep safe from danger seems to be, therefore, nothing other then the acquisition of power for pleasure.

Therefore, implicit in Protagoras’s abjuring from unsafe hedonism is his conviction ina hedonism that is more subtle but safer and thereby more robust.93 In this identification of man’s

ultimate good with pleasure, we see connected Protagoras’s conception of man’s nature, nobility, political virtue, and his wisdom. Socrates’s shift to pleasure seems sudden and surprising only

because he has finally revealed enough of Protagoras’s positions to show at last how Protagoras

has to understand the good. Indeed the task ahead for Socrates is, on the basis of this web of

Protagoras’s positions, to reveal that Protagoras must adhere to this “safe” hedonism, that is,

to reveal that this understanding of pleasure must be Protagoras’s understanding of the good.94 Protagoras, enveloped in his safe response, does not foresee Socrates’s strategy. Indeed, from

Protagoras’s perspective, Socrates seems to be an unsafe, that is, an open hedonist. Protagoras therefore graciously allows Socrates to proceed, perhaps thinking that he is walking the plank of his own demise.

93. In making this claim, I side with the interpreters who find Socrates’s argument to be ad hominem as opposed to a presentation of an authentic “Socratic” position. For interpreters who give varying accounts of the argument as an ad hominem see J. P. Sullivan, “The Hedonism in Plato’s Protagoras,” Phronesis 6 (1961): 10–28; Donald J. Zeyl, “Socrates and Hedonism: Protagoras 351b-358d,” Phronesis 25, no. 3 (1980): 250–269; Roslyn Weiss, “Hedonism in the Protagoras and the Sophist’s Guarantee,” Ancient Philosophy 10, no. 1 (1990): 17–39; and Marina McCoy, “Pro- tagoras on Human Nature, Wisdom and the Good,” Ancient Philosophy 18 (1998): 21–39. For those who argue that Socrates is genuinely arguing for hedonism here in some fashion, see Taylor, Plato, Protagoras, 161–170; Irwin, Plato’s Ethics, 85–92; Michael Morris, “Akrasia in the Protagoras and the Republic,” Phronesis 51, no. 3 (2006): 195–229; Panos Dimas, “Good and Pleasure in the Protagoras,” Ancient Philosophy 28 (2008): 253–284; and Jessica Moss, “Hedonism and the Divided Soul in Plato’s Protagoras,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 96, no. 3 (2014): 285–319.

94. Whether or not Protagoras is aware of this entailment is an open question. That he does not register any surprise at this self-revelation is not definitive evidence for either that Protagoras was already aware ofthe consequences of his position or that he disavows Socrates’s argument. Socrates here outlines the only understanding of the good that is consistent with Protagoras’s understanding of man and wisdom; but Protagoras has done nothing to indicate that he is interested in the project of outlining a consistent conception of the good. In other words, what Socrates will portray is only a necessary consequence of sophistry’s self-presentation; it has no necessary bearing on sophistry’s self-understanding. 103

The Sophist’s Wisdom; the Sophist’s Power: 355e-358d

Socrates’s project in the upcoming arguments is to show that the sophist’s claim of power for his wisdom can be underwritten only by a hedonistic conception of human good. He employs several devices to pursue this end. The most obvious device is his use of “the many” asanin- terlocutor, at first as a foil to Protagoras’s position but gradually as a witness to thesophist’s conception of the power of knowledge. Socrates’s strategy is to show that the many’s position on incontinence, that is, their position on the power of knowledge is inconsistent with the position Socrates ascribed to them previously about the identification of the good with the pleasant.

Socrates convinces the many of their error concerning knowledge and power by convincing them of a hedonistic conception of the good, namely, the safe hedonism of Protagoras. Using the many as his interlocutor enables Socrates to expose Protagoras under the guise of representing Pro- tagoras.

Socrates deftly uses this device right away. He begins by openly expressing his aimtoex- pose Protagoras, but even as he asks Protagoras his pointed question, he immediately suppresses any sense of attack by restating his question in terms of what the many believe. Any uneasiness that may have pricked Protagoras at the thought of being exposed is instantly quelled. Socrates sets up Protagoras against the many and on an issue that in no way (obviously) endangers Pro- tagoras’s appearance. The question concerns the power of knowledge. The many claim that knowledge does not have power over other elements that may prompt men to action. Socrates asks if Protagoras shares this opinion with the many, or if he believes knowledge to be both noble and powerful, with the consequence that “if in fact someone knows the good things and the bad, he won’t be overpowered by anything so as to do anything other than what knowledge bids him to do” (352c). Far from being endangered by Socrates’s question, Protagoras takes the opportunity not only to affirm that Socrates has represented his opinion but also to acknowledge that 104 holding any other opinion would be shameful, which is to say, unsafe.95 Protagoras’s educational program rests on the promise of the power of knowledge; to deny this now would endanger not

only his livelihood but perhaps also his life.

Here is the most sincere claim Protagoras has spoken; here is the basis of his whole project.

If there is anything in his self-presentation from which Protagoras can never divest himself, it is his claim that knowledge is powerful. And it is matched by a most forthright response from

Socrates: “What you say is noble and true” (352d). It is both necessary for Protagoras’s safety

(that is, it is noble) to affirm the power of knowledge, and it is true (that is, it reveals the principle

of sophistry). Here is one appearance that necessarily correlates to the sophist’s reality. He must

present himself in this way or he could be no sophist. Socrates immediately follows up this remark by reminding Protagoras that the many dis-

agree with him and maintain the reality of incontinence as the overpowering of knowledge.96

Protagoras resists Socrates’s concern for the many, first claiming that the many make many incorrect claims. When Socrates enjoins Protagoras to help him persuade the many of their error and teach the truth about knowledge, Protagoras resists further, and understandably so. Why should Protagoras teach the many for free what he otherwise charges the elite few much to learn?

Furthermore, why should Protagoras run the risk of arousing the anger of the many? Socrates incentivizes this public education project by asserting that he thinks the topic to be related to

Protagoras’s previous claims about courage. The issue of shamefulness still fresh, Protagoras cannot decline the continued inquiry without undermining both what he had earlier claimed

95. Note that Protagoras continues to disregard any potential distinction between knowledge and wisdom and—one may suppose, by considering Socrates’s introduction of the term without comment from Protagoras— prudence (φρονήσις).

96. On this iteration of the claim, Socrates emphasizes pleasure and pain amongst the sundry motivations for human action. 105 about courage and what he has just asserted about the power of knowledge.97 Protagoras must confront the error of the many if he is to keep the business of the few.

Socrates first reduces to pleasure and pain alone the previously diverse possibilities of

what overcomes knowledge. With this initial step, Socrates begins a line of reasoning that results

in a further reduction; base or wicked pleasures are wicked only because of consequential pain or lack of pleasure, and good pleasures are good only because of consequential further pleasure

or lack of pain. Socrates thereby dismantles the many’s very first claim that there is a distinction

between good and bad pleasures. There is no other standard or end but consequential pleasure

whereby pleasures are distinguished. In other words, the distinction between good and bad plea-

sure is a distinction between present pleasure or lack of pleasure and consequential pleasure or lack of pleasure.98 Protagoras twice agrees that the many are incapable of believing otherwise.

Socrates then reveals that this reduction is the necessary first step in dismantling the

many’s conviction that the reality of incontinence is a sort of being overcome by pleasures.99

97. Socrates even alludes to Protagoras’s potential shame by mentioning that he will proceed with his investigation in a way that will “most beautifully make manifest” the issue (353b).

98. This emphasis on the consequential aspect of a given pleasure or pain recalls to the readerthe Promethean motif, the benefit for man to be forward-minded.

99. The purpose and construction of the argument concerning incontinence is another contentious point amongst scholars. Most interpretations focus on the source of the claimed absurdity, presumably motivated by the assumption that Socrates is here defending an authentic Socratic thesis, namely, that no one does wrong willingly. For examples of this approach, see, David Gallop, “The Socrates Paradox in the Protagoras,” Phronesis 9 (1964): 117–129; Gerasimos Santas, “Plato’s Protagoras and Explanations of Weakness,” The Philosophical Review 75, no. 1 (1966): 3–33; Gregory Vlastos, “Socrates on Acrasia,” Phoenix 23 (1969): 71–88; M. Dyson, “Knowledge and Hedonism in Plato’s Protagoras,” Journal of Hellencis Studies 96 (1976): 32–45; George Klosko, “On the Analysis of Protagoras 351b-360e,” Phoenix 34 (1980): 307–322; Terry Penner, “Socrates on the Strength of Knowledge: Protagoras 351b-357e,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 79 (1997): 117–149; David Wolfsdorf, “The Ridiculousness of Being Overcome by Pleasure: Protgoras 352b1-358d4,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 31 (2006): 113–136; Justin Clark, “The Strength of Knowledge in Plato’s Protagoras,” Ancient Philosophy 32, no. 2 (2012): 237–255; and A. G. Callard, “Ignroance and Akrasia-Denial in the Protagoras,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 47 (2014): 31–79. These scholars generally do not consider the argument in the context of the whole dialogue. For commentators who do consider the the argument’s rhetorical place, see Goldberg, A Commentary on Plato’s Protagoras, 254–277; Weiss, “Hedonism in the Protagoras and the Sophist’s Guarantee”; Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 141–153; McCoy, “Protago- ras on Human Nature, Wisdom and the Good,” 35–37; D. Russell, “Protagoras and Socrates on Courage and Pleasure: Protagoras 349a ad finem,” Ancient Philosophy 20 (2000): 311–338; Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 111–117. My interpretation of the argument is unsurprisingly wholly determined by my interpretation of the dialogue as a whole, but I should reiterate that I do not see Socrates defending a positive philosophical position, let alone anything 106

According to the many’s account of incontinence, though a man knows the good or the bad things, he does or does not do them on account of being overcome by pleasures. This understanding of incontinence collapses into a laughable incoherence with the elision of the good with the pleasant, as Socrates shows first by substituting “the pleasant” with “the good” and “the painful” with “the bad,” then by using the reverse substitution. These substitutions yield the ludicrous case of someone doing bad things because he is overcome by good things or doing painful things because he’s overcome by pleasant things. Knowledge of the good things is therefore robbed of its power precisely by the good things—and this is absurd.

At several moments, Socrates reiterates that the many can exempt themselves from the argument if only they can state that the good is something other than the pleasant. But each time he either explicitly says or continues to assume that they cannot. The question thus arises: why cannot the many offer any other possibility for the human good? I claim that this questionis answered if we take Socrates’s representation of the many to be a device for revealing the position of Protagoras. Beginning with the many’s distinction between good and bad pleasures, Socrates implicitly suggests that Protagoras’s distinction between noble and ignoble pleasures is similarly subject to his critique.100 This distinction must be dismantled if the many’s understanding of incontinence is to be defeated; but their thesis is overcome only so that they may be convinced of Protagoras’s conviction of the power of knowledge. The argument for Protagoras’s necessary position on the power of knowledge requires Socrates’s first argument against the many. So while it may be the case that the many merely cannot think of another human good besides pleasure, it is the case that Protagoras must name no other human good besides pleasure—on pain of sacrificing his one needful claim.

like an authentic “Socratic” thesis. On my interpretation, it is also not unusual, but, in fact, it should be expected that the sophistic position appears almost exactly like a position another wise man may hold.

100. This implication is confirmed at the end of the argument when, in summation, Socrates gainsthe general agreement that the actions that lead to living pleasantly and free of pain are noble and that the noble deed is both good and advantageous (358b). 107

Substituting good with pleasure carries a more insidious implication that the good things do not simply deserve to win over the bad things. To address this point, Socrates goes on to argue that the good/pleasant things do not deserve to overcome the bad/painful things (and vice- versa) unless they are greater or more numerous. “Being overcome” is now understood as taking greater bad/painful things in place of fewer good/pleasant things. Socrates reduces all qualitative differences between pleasures (and between pains)—including the quality of proximity—to asheer quantitative difference. The result for the many, Socrates claims, is that they cannot butchoose the greater and more numerous pleasures and the smaller and fewer pains. Protagoras again agrees that the many cannot do otherwise.

Though the many may be mistaken about why men choose bad things even while knowing the good things, that this seems to happen still requires an explanation. That is, though Socrates

(and Protagoras) may have persuaded the many that their belief that knowledge is not powerful is incoherent, they have yet to educate the many about the truth of how knowledge is powerful.

Socrates introduces the art of measuring pleasure to serve just this purpose, for this art bears significant—even salvific—power. With his account of this measuring art, I believe Socrates makes his final move to reveal Protagoras’s understanding of knowledge/wisdom and its connection with hedonism.

Socrates concedes that proximity, though in no way constitutive of a difference between pleasure themselves, nevertheless contributes to misleading appearances. The true conflict in the incontinent man is not between the good and pleasure but between false appearances and accurate measurement. Measuring the good things is the relevant way of knowing the good things. This measuring may be defeated by false appearances, so an art—a governing knowledge, a wisdom—is needed to prevail against the power of appearances. This art of measuring pleasure and pain provides salvation, Socrates claims and Protagoras agrees (356e). It saves man from being confounded by appearances and on that account doing bad things or failing to do the good things. This intriguing description keys into the sophist’s concern with safety. Inasmuch as this measuring art saves man from the danger of incurring consequential pains, it seems to be 108 precisely the kind of knowledge by which Protagoras protects himself, by which he preserves his safety.101

This hint is brought to explicit fruition almost immediately. Socrates claims without resistance that this art is also a kind of knowledge. Though he mentions in passing that he(and

Protagoras and perhaps the many) will investigate later what kind of knowledge it is, he is emphatic that it is exactly the same knowledge to which Protagoras must have been referring earlier when he spoke of a superior and indomitable knowledge. What the many describe as knowledge being overcome, Socrates now explains as simply the lack of this knowledge, that is, a specific sort of ignorance. And it is this ignorance for which Protagoras (and the other sophists) are the curing physicians, the rehabilitating teachers.102 As Socrates concludes this argument, he makes it undeniably clear that the art of measuring just is the wisdom sophistry claims to teach. Contrary to the best efforts of some scholars,

Socrates is certainly not here defending hedonism nor proposing a definition of wisdom simply. Socrates has built this embedded conversation with the many to demonstrate what is the sophists’ wisdom if their wisdom is to be powerful; moreover, he has demonstrated that this power presupposes pleasure as the ultimate human good.

Courage, Again: 358d-360e

Though Socrates has succeeded, in my view, in exposing the sophist’s wisdom, heisnev- ertheless not finished conversing with Protagoras; he instead returns to the question ofcourage. Given the role that safety plays in the sophist’s conception of the human good, however, it should

101. It is worth considering whether and how this opposition between the power of appearances and the art of measuring is an indication of the internal contradictions of the sophist. My reading of the dialogue thus far has claimed that Protagoras seems to understand his contribution to the education of the youth to be, at least in large part, the ability to manipulate appearances. Perhaps the opposition Socrates suggests indicates that the sophist’s success, that is, his effective use of the measuring art, amounts to a nullification of the power of appearances precisely bythe deployment of power over appearances.

102. That Socrates now includes the other sophists by name and explicitly claims that they haveashare in this knowledge supports my claim that he is here exposing not a personal quirk of Protagoras’s practice, but a feature of sophistry as such. 109 not be surprising that Socrates should take up again the question of courage, exactly where danger and safety most obviously figure into the question of virtue. Having made Protagoras consistent with himself on the point of powerful wisdom, Socrates now shows the price of this safe consistency: an inconsistency on the point of noble courage. Having supposedly brought about a rapprochement between Protagoras and the many on the question of knowledge, Socrates now hints at a deeper rift between Protagoras and the city itself on the question of courage.

Ignorance, Intention, and Eagerness: 358d-359e

Socrates reapproaches the issue of courage by explicating what courage must be, given the preceding argument about knowledge and pleasure. He first summarizes the findings ofhis

(and Protagoras’) argument against the many, stating explicitly much of what has been implied: the pleasant actions are the noble actions are the good and advantageous actions; no one chooses the worse when they know the better; “being overcome” is nothing other than ignorance; and, in fact, all wrongdoing is only ignorance. Socrates then resurrects the question of what man does or cannot do intentionally. Because bad things are chosen only out of ignorance, no one intentionally chooses the bad things. Socrates then endeavors to show that the things that are chosen on Protagoras’s understanding of courage are just the sort of bad things that no one can choose intentionally. Intentional action thus links Socrates’s immediately preceding argument with Protagoras’s previous argument concerning courage, and sets up the failure of the latter.

Socrates gains Protagoras’s and Hippias’s agreement on a common characterization of fear and dread: they are some expectation of something bad. Socrates gains this agreement in contradistinction to Prodicus’s anticipated then confirmed dissent that fear and dread have different meanings. Socrates insists that this difference does not matter and proceeds withthe assertion that what does matter is whether any human being intentionally advances towards things he fears when it is possible for him to advance towards things he does not fear.103 Socrates

103. The possible distinction between fear and dread does not matter here because Socrates isconcerned with what any human being would do, regardless of whether they have Prodicus’s skill with linguistic distinctions. 110 continues with the claim that, on the basis of what they previously argued, it is impossible for for a human to intentionally advance towards things he fears. To this everyone agrees.

On this foundation, Socrates turns explicitly to Protagoras’s earlier characterization of courage, calling upon Hippias and Prodicus to hold Protagoras to account. He first recounts

Protagoras’s answers leading to the characterization of the courageous as bold and even eager.104 Now Socrates asks Protagoras: for what are the courageous men eager? it is the same things for which the cowards are eager? Protagoras must assert that they are not the same.

Next, Socrates asks whether the cowardly advance towards things they feel bold about, and the courageous towards the terrible things. With this question, Socrates assaults Protago- ras’s argument on two fronts. The first half of the question, whether cowards advance towards the things they feel confident or bold about, actually critiques Protagoras’s previous argument not on the basis of the arguments just given, but on more general grounds. This begins the theme of forcing Protagoras to retreat from the more generally recognized features of courage and cowardice. The second half of the question, whether the courageous advance towards the terrible things, sets up Protagoras’s account to fail under the argument Socrates has just given and to which Protagoras had assented. It is little wonder, then, that Protagoras now identifies thispo- sition with what people generally say. Protagoras’s first account of courage now looks to bean account the many would have given, and an account that the now sophistically educated many

(as well as Protagoras) must ultimately abandon. When Socrates pushes Protagoras to say for what the courageous are eager, Protagoras admits that new argument demonstrates that it is impossible for them to be eager for the terrible things. Socrates continues to push, getting Protagoras to agree that no one advances towards things he believes to be terrible. Finally, Socrates shows that Protagoras’s earlier assertion that

104. Protagoras 359b-c: “ἠρόμην δ᾽ οὖν τοῦτον εἰ τοὺς ἀνδρείους λέγοι θαρραλέους: ὁ δέ, ‘καὶ ἴτας γ᾽,’ ἔφη.” Socrates also brings up Protagoras’s very first answers about the unity of the virtues, only to say that this accountis not the one with which he is presently concerned. This mention of the unity of the virtues does remind the readeras well as the present audience, that Protagoras had eventually adjusted his answers to those questions, which reminder anticipates Protagoras upcoming reformulation of his account of courage. 111 the courageous and the cowardly are not eager for the same things can no longer stand: the cowards and the courageous both advance towards the things they feel bold about. Protagoras cannot abide this answer for two reasons. One reason is that his appeal to his would-be students rests on their self-identification as courageous men, not merely calculative men and certainly not as equivalent with cowards. The second reason is significantly more troubling for Protagoras; so far Protagoras has not been willing to controvert such an obvious conventional opinion about such a basic element of political life. Indeed, this seems to be just the sort of dangerous claim

Protagoras has boasted of avoiding. Protagoras therefore retreats to a more concrete and political counterexample of the courageous and the cowardly: the courageous are willing to go to war and the cowardly are not. While this counterexample does provide Protagoras a footing to combat the movement of the argument, it also locates him in an explicitly political context. In what follows, Protagoras’s wisdom will be shown to be in conflict not only with what he previously claimed courage tobe, but also, and more importantly, with what the city requires courage to be.

A Conflict of Nobility: 359e-360e

Socrates relentlessly pushes Protagoras to continue to follow the reasoning dictated by his understanding of wisdom. Protagoras’s responses become less and less personal. Since there is no room to sever himself from the account, he instead tries to recede into it; rather than agreeing, he responds about what the account demands or does not allow. Despite this tactic, it becomes increasingly clear that the sophist’s conception of wisdom carries consequences for the other virtues, consequences which prove to conflict not only with conventional conceptions but also with politically necessary conceptions. This conflict is especially clear in the case of courage and its nobility. When Protagoras asserts that it is more noble to be willing to go to war, he draws upon the city’s conception of the nobility of courage. Courage enables a man to risk his life for his city, to put the good of his city before his own safety. The nobility of courage is a nobility of 112 self-sacrifice. The good that an act of courage protects is the common good of the city, notthe privately enjoyed advantage of the individual.

The conception of courage that arises from the argument not only conflicts with thiscivic conception of courage, but does so by appropriating the notion of nobility. The argument proceeds with the reminder that they have already agreed that the noble is equivalent to the good and beneficial. The good and beneficial now are seen to be such only as regards the individual. If pleasure is the ultimate human good, then that good cannot possibly be a shared one. Pleasures are private to the individual, so it is only the individual’s good that can be considered here. But on this conception of the good, even cowards will go willing to war, if going to war is noble as

Protagoras and the city claims. Protagoras cannot claim both, and Socrates continues to show just how opposed to the city the sophist’s wisdom is.

The argument compels Protagoras to identify the difference between the courageous man and the coward in terms of noble and shameful fear and noble and shameful boldness. This nobility and shamefulness are dependent upon the man’s knowledge of the terrible things. The coward’s fears are shameful because, out of ignorance, he fears that which will not harm him; his boldness is shameful because, out of ignorance, he pursues that which endangers his safety.

Conversely, the courageous man knows exactly what to fear and what to advance towards because he knows what will and will not endanger his safety, what will and will not ultimately yield maximum pleasure. Sophistic courage is a calculating courage whose fundamental function is to avoid danger.

Protagoras’s reluctance to answer grows throughout the argument, which is understandable, given the mounting perils his replies incur. There are two dangers here, but one is much worse for Protagoras than the other. The first danger is that Protagoras must recant his previous claims about courage. But more dangerous for Protagoras than back-pedaling is linking sophistic wisdom with this calculative courage. An understanding of the virtues as the manifestations of sophistic wisdom with the end of pleasure is consistent with a safe and powerful life within the city—that is, for all the virtues except courage. With the political virtues of justice, moderation, 113 and piety, it is possible to maintain their appearance while disdaining their reality—and indeed this is necessary for the sophist’s safety. The power of the sophist’s wisdom enables just this balance between safety and pleasure. Courage, however, defies this balance.105 To seem to be

courageous, especially in circumstances of war, has just as real an effect on one’s safety as truly

being courageous does. One cannot merely seem to go off to war courageously without actually putting one’s life at risk. In the case of courage, the pursuit of one’s individual goodasunder-

stood in terms of the sophist’s safe hedonism is clearly incompatible with even the appearance

of defending the city’s common good.

This defense of the city’s common good, precisely to the possible exclusion of theprivate

good of the individual’s pleasure or lack of pain, grounds the nobility of courage in the eyes of the city. The self-sacrifice of the soldier makes his courage undeniably noble. Not onlyisthis

conception of courage incompatible with the sophistic conception, but the sophistic conception

requires that the city’s conception be considered no more than the folly of ignorance. The sophis-

tic education of wisdom and its consequential education of all the other virtues has been shown to be at best subversive and at worst utterly destructive of traditional civic education.

Conclusion: 360e-362a

Protagoras’s last attempt to deflect the full exposure of his wisdom and its political im-

plications is to admit defeat in a different battle. Protagoras casts his response as a mere gratifi-

cation of Socrates’s love of victory. He thereby distances himself from the true contest between sophistry and the city over education, though he does so at the expense of granting Socrates

victory in the contest between two wise men. In reply, Socrates again emphasizes that he is

in search of understanding rather than using his understanding to win a battle. As evidence

that there is still much to be understood, Socrates cites the reversal that seems to have occurred between himself and Protagoras. Socrates invokes an image of their speeches speaking for them-

105. It was no accident, therefore, that Socrates did not attempt to address courage in his initial arguments concerning the unity of the virtues, or that he responded to Protagoras’s turn to it in the way he did. 114 selves and thereafter laughing at Protagoras and Socrates for contradicting themselves: Socrates for first arguing against virtue being teachable and now arguing for virtue being knowledge,

Protagoras for the converse.

This image of the laughing speeches complicates the prima facie image of the dialogue as a contest between Protagoras and Socrates, and therefore undermines Protagoras’s attempted deflection. The speeches, separated from their speakers, now laugh at their speakers, butnot at themselves. This emphasis on the speeches suggests that the audience’s focus should beon the speeches as a whole and what they reveal. I have argued throughout that it would be a systemic misreading of the dialogue to focus on Protagoras and Socrates as if in their mouths lies a monolithic representation of sophistry and philosophy. It takes both Socrates and Protagoras to reveal the nature of sophistry because its nature is to be elusive.

Socrates points to this nature of sophistry in his final exchange with Protagoras. Recall- ing and playing with the notions of eagerness and advantage, Socrates entreats Protagoras to continue their conversation from the beginning so as to make clear whether virtue is teachable. He even invokes the fore-thinking of Prometheus against the bafflement of Epimetheus in his claim that gaining clarity on this matter would be advantageous for his whole life. Of course, the mention of Prometheus’s foresight prompts the question whether, if Protagoras had foreseen this conclusion to his conversation with Socrates, he would have in fact begun it. Protagoras’s foresight now prevents him from granting Socrates the clarity he seeks. For sophistry to be made clear is for sophistry to run considerable risk while losing considerable power.

Protagoras’s final speech of the dialogue is praise for Socrates, for his eagerness andforhis wisdom. We must wonder whether this praise is unwilling praise, necessitated by considerations of safety. Regardless whether his praise is willing or unwilling, Protagoras makes it clear that he is unwilling to gratify Socrates by continuing the conversation. Socrates in turn claims that he stayed only to gratify “the noble Callias”—the pun on Callias’s name ultimately emphasizing the role that the noble has played throughout the dialogue. 115

Whether or not Socrates did justice to the beautiful or noble, it is clear that he leaves unsatisfied with the status of the question of virtue. There is more to determine regarding thekind of virtue that Protagoras claims to teach, that is, regarding πολίτικη. Yet Socrates does not press here as he has done before. He leaves to recount this story to the companions of the first lines. The dialogue looks to be a closed circle, but one that also seems incomplete. Why does not Socrates, if not continue to push Protagoras to converse, then at least say more explicitly and pointedly the consequences of the sophist’s wisdom? Why does he not even mention Hippocrates, let alone make it absolutely clear to him the kind of virtue that belongs to the followers of Protagoras?106

If there is more to be done, why does Socrates not do it?

Socrates does not continue the conversation because, while there is more to understand regarding πολίτικη, there is no more he can reveal of it from Protagoras. A benefit of my interpretation is that it accounts for the incompleteness of the dialogue. While much has been uncovered concerning the nature of sophistry and its role in the city as subversive of traditional civic education, sophistry’s implications for the city must remain incompletely disclosed because it is part of a larger whole. Not all pupils of sophists becomes teachers of sophistry—some become sophistic citizens. Because the education that sophistry provides is surely radically degenerative of the city’s education, there is a further threat of sabotage to the city in its practice of its civic powers. In other words, the question remains: what happens to the city once the students of sophistry come into the fullness of their civic responsibilities? Uncovering this threat requires a confrontation with rhetoric. The Protagoras seems incomplete because, on its own, it is incomplete. Not until it is coordinated with the Gorgias, will they both provide a complete, though inverted image of the true art of the city, of πολίτικη.

106. Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues is right to point out that Socrates’s use of the first person plural at 362a indicates that Hippocrates, at least, also leaves with him. Nevertheless, there isenough of an ambiguity that the reader can rightfully question just what is the status of sophistry versus traditional civic education in the estimation of these young Athenians. Chapter 2

Gorgias

Introduction

“War and battle” are the first words of Plato’s Gorgias.1 They are spoken by Callicles, a younger Athenian with whom Socrates has arguably one of the most antagonistic interactions of the entire Platonic corpus. The conflict between Socrates and Callicles is the culmination ofa series of escalating conversations. Though it is clear that the tone of the conversations become increasingly combative, it is not so clear what could be a unifying theme through these conversations. The initial question of the dialogue concerns the nature and power of rhetoric—but the more embattled conversations seem to touch on this theme only obliquely. In this interpretation,

I take the initial concern to be the concern throughout the dialogue, despite what looks to be a later divergence from this topic. It is possible and, moreover, fruitful to read the Gorgias as an extensive and progressive inquiry into and refutation of the kind of rhetoric that Gorgias teaches, Polus defends, and Callicles hopes to practice.2

First it is necessary to consider what belongs to this kind of rhetoric.3 Most interpretations of the dialogue recognize that the rhetoric of the Gorgias is specifically a political rhetoric,

1. All references are to the Greek text of Eric Dodds, Plato, Gorgias. A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). All translations are my own, though I was guided in the by Joe Sachs, Plato: Gorgias and Aristotle: Rhetoric (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2009).

2. This kind of rhetoric is the kind to which I refer by “Gorgian rhetoric” or, frequently, “rhetoric” simply. It should be noted that I am not interested in making historical claims about how rhetoric was in fact practiced or whether Gorgias or Polus as historical figures are fairly represented in the dialogue. My concern is the dialogue itself, and I proceed with full commitment to understanding rhetoric as disclosed by the speeches and deeds of characters presented in Plato’s dialogue.

3. Mark McPherran, “Socrates’ Refutation of Gorgias: Gorgias 447c-461b,” ed. Rachana Kamtekar, Oxford Students in Ancient Philosophy, Virtue and Happiness 2012, 13–29 gives a set of lucid descriptions of not only what could be meant by rhetoric in the Gorgias but also what other scholars have estimated is meant. As I note below, his own treatment of Gorgias’s rhetoric suffers from a significant oversight.

116 117 a rhetoric that works in and on the city.4 These interpretations take the interlocutors Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles to give voice to different aspects of this political rhetoric in response to

Socrates’s inquiries and provocations.5 More controversial is the character of Socrates’s challenge to political rhetoric. Is Socrates offering an alternative to political rhetoric, and if so, is this alternative itself an iteration of Gorgian rhetoric, where Gorgias’s rhetoric is a supplement to Socrates’s practice?6 Or is Socrates trying to transform Gorgian rhetoric and thereby instantiate a new kind of rhetoric—the elusive “beautiful rhetoric” to which he refers at 503a?7 Or is Socrates

4. The location of the dialogue; the participants, and the suggested time frame, in addition tothevery content of the conversations, all indicate that it is political rhetoric under consideration. The dialogue takes place within the city walls, unlike Plato’s Phaedrus, which is also about rhetoric but takes place notably outside Athens. The titular participant is visiting Athens for a diplomatic mission on behalf of his city, Leontini. ThePeloponnesian War is the surrounding and permeating context for the conversations; see Arlene Saxonhouse, “An Unspoken Theme in Plato’s Gorgias: War,” Interpretation 11, no. 2 (1983): 139–169 for evidence of this point. Finally, the content of each participant’s speeches are rife with examples taken from politics past and present, domestic and foreign, specific and general.

5. Scholars who pay special attention to the political dimension of the dialogue include Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus, 5–102; Devin Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues, 538–560;Christopher Long, Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy: Practicing a Politics of Reading (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 40–66; andTae-Yeoun Keum, “Why Did Socrates Conduct His Dialogues Before an Audience?,” History of Political Thought 37, no. 3 (2016): 411–437. There are some scholars who take the moral psychology ofthe Gorgias to be a, if not the, central theme of the dialogue; representative of this group is Jessica Moss, “Shame, Pleasure, and the Divided Soul,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 29 (2005): 137–170, Jessica Moss, “The Doctor and the Pastry Chef: Pleasure and Persuasion in Plato’s Gorgias,” Ancient Philosophy 27, no. 2 (2007): 229–249, Gabriela Roxana Carone, “Calculating Machines or Leaky Jar? The Moral Psychology of Plato’s Gorgias,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 26 (2004): 55–96. There are also some who focus on the “typically Socratic” moral claims/paradoxes of the dialogue (for example, no one does wrong willingly, and it is worse to do than to suffer in justice); representatives of this group are Roslyn Weiss, “Oh, Brother! The Fraternity of Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Gorgias,” Interpretation 30, no. 2 (2003): 195–206 and Lorraine Smith Pangle, Virtue is Knowledge: The Moral Foundations of Socratic Political Philosophy (Princeton: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 44–80. Pangle does suppose these moral claims to ground a political philosophy, but grants logical and dialogical priority to the moral claims.

6. This seems to be the position of Gabriela Roxana Carone, “Socratic Rhetoric inthe Gorgias,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 35, no. 2 (2005): 221–241, Alessandra Fussi, “Socrates’ Refutation of Gorgias,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 17, no. 1 (2002): 123–154, Eric Buzzetti, “The Injustice of Callicles and the Limits of Socrates’s Ability to Educate a Young Politician: The Injustice of Callicles,” Ancient Philosophy 25, no. 1 (2005): 25–48, and Weiss, “Oh, Brother! The Fraternity of Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Gorgias.”

7. This is the view of Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, with the additional point that Socrates is also attempting to win Gorgias to his side. Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus 5–8, also suggests this approach, but remains ambiguous about its value. Chris Rocco, “Liberating Discourse: The Politics of Truth in Plato’s Gorgias,” Interpretation 23, no. 3 (1996): 361–385, explicitly resisting closure, deftly traces 118 opposing political rhetoric on behalf of philosophy in an attempt to claim dialectic as the only legitimate use of speech?8

A point of agreement for nearly all interpretations of the dialogue is that Socrates presents philosophy as the alternative to rhetoric. Thereafter the interpretations differ—sometimes significantly— from one another on the points of what is meant by “philosophy,”what can be meant by “rhetoric,” and the necessity, possibility, or impossibility of a coincidence of these two. Nevertheless, for these commentators, the lines of battle are consistently drawn between “philosophy” and “rhetoric,” and they take politics to be originally aligned with rhetoric and therefore opposed to philosophy.

The evidence for this approach is tempting, foremost of which is the methodological opposition of philosophical dialectic with political rhetoric and the explicit opposition of Callicles’s narrowly self-interested political life with Socrates’s life dedicated to philosophy.

My interpretation draws the lines of the conflict that motivates the Gorgias differently.

While it seems undeniable that Gorgian rhetoric occupies one side of the enmity, I think it less certain that philosophy occupies the other. The methodological opposition between philosophical dialectic and political rhetoric is more porous than may first appear.9 The opposition between

Socrates’s way of life and Callicles’s requires more subtlety to contextualize, but with Socrates’s own startling assertion that he is engaging in a practice of true politics, we should be wary of too quickly identifying his goal within the dialogue as the promotion of a philosophical life in place of a political life. On my reading, the primary struggle of the dialogue occurs between the rhetoric of Gor- gias, on the one hand, and the practice of justice by the city, on the other. The battlefield, so

the ambiguity between Socrates’s speech toward truth and Gorgias’s speech toward power; for Rocco, noble rhetoric remains eternally but productively elusive.

8. Representative of this position isCharles H. Kahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983): 75–121

9. See Carone, “Socratic Rhetoric in the Gorgias” who clearly articulates the problems with too simply opposing Socratic dialectic to rhetoric. She nevertheless attempts to resolve the problem by developing a “Socratic rhetoric” from the dialogue. In other words, her resolution of the difficulty remains within the given categories; my own interpretation attempts to understand the principles of the category of rhetoric. 119 to speak, is the exercise of power in the city, and speech is the crucial element of the contest. Power is a necessary feature of politics. Men’s bodies must do the work of the city and die for its causes, but these men’s souls must first move if the city is to be a true city and not aloose union of tyrants and slaves. The movement of men’s souls that yields the actions of their bodies is the fundamental form of specifically political power. There must be at least the semblance of a distinction between persuasion and force in order for political order to obtain. This distinction between persuasion and force is most important in the political fora where speech directed toward the recognition and achievement of justice is most necessary. Consequently, if Gorgian rhetoric, which undermines the distinction between persuasion and force, were to usurp the authority of justice in these arenas, then the city’s ability to pursue and practice justice would be imperiled. So it is on behalf of this civic practice of justice in the assembly, the council, and the law-courts that I believe Socrates opposes Gorgian rhetoric.

Admittedly, it is not obvious that this is the conflict of the Gorgias. This interpretation will show that assuming this to be the real point of contention unifies the otherwise seemingly disparate speeches that comprise the dialogue. Over the course of Socrates’s conversations with

Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles, Socrates gradually reveals how rhetoric contests the exercise of power in the city otherwise reserved for the practice of justice and thus reveals the danger that rhetoric poses to the city and to the souls of men. The ones to whom Socrates directs his revelation are the surrounding Athenian audience who stand to be most benefited from the refutation since they found rhetoric appealing enough to attend Gorgias’s display.10 Socrates’s chief purpose is to show to these Athenians the threat posed by the kind of rhetoric Gorgias practices and thereby to protect the city and its practice of justice. This purpose in conjunction with the constraints of the circumstances explains his conduct throughout the dialogue and consequently unites the

10. It is on this point of the target audience that my own interpretation and the one offered by Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias differ. Though our interpretations are similar in that we see Socrates engaged inthe project of critiquing rhetoric as it is used and while developing a nobler rhetoric, Stauffer takes Gorgias to be the primary beneficiary of Socrates’s re-education in rhetoric, whereas I take the Athenian audience to be the intended beneficiaries. In this respect, I find support for my interpretation in Keum, “Why Did Socrates Conduct HisDialogues Before an Audience?” 120 seemingly disparate moments of the dialogue. These constraints are determined in part by the nature of rhetoric and in part by the nature of the city.

First, Socrates’s strategy to reveal the nature of rhetoric is constrained by the nature of rhetoric itself. Socrates must always remain conscious that his speeches opposing rhetoric can themselves easily appear to be a form of rhetoric. Given this possibility, a dilemma arises for those who would have Socrates attempt to substitute philosophical dialectic for Gorgian rhetoric. The surrounding audience either is or is not already capable of distinguishing between philosophical dialectic and Gorgian rhetoric. If they are not already capable, then Socrates runs the risk of eliding philosophical dialectic with Gorgian rhetoric. This elision is probable given that both ways of using speech are supposed to play the same role, that Socrates never provides a systematic differentiation between the two, and that very frequently Socrates prima facie uses speech in the ways the rhetoricians do. Ultimately, if the audience is not already capable of distinguishing between the two, then Socrates’s speeches and deeds in the dialogue seem to doom any attempt to distinguish them for the audience. On the other hand, if we assume that the surrounding audience is already capable of distinguishing Socrates’s seeming rhetoric/genuine dialectic from Gorgian rhetoric, then we must also assume that the audience members are all philosophers at least in

potentia. I find this assumption to be too burdensome and without basis in the text. Myinter-

pretation avoids this dilemma by not positing that Socrates’s goal is to substitute philosophical

dialectic for Gorgian rhetoric. On my reading, Socrates’s tactic cannot rely on the condition that his audience of name-

less Athenian citizens is philosophically primed. Rhetoric is a danger to these Athenian citizens

precisely as citizens; the response to this danger must therefore also be one accessible by these

citizens precisely as citizens.11 This constraint of being available to citizens as such necessitates

11. John Wallach, The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 180, on the basis of nothing but a vague contrast with the Protagoras claims that the “The Gorgias particularly concerns the critical and ethical underpinnings of political leadership—not citizenship in general.” With a more pedagogic angle, but with just as little supportive evidence, Eric Voegelin, “The Philosophy of Existence: Plato’s Gorgias,” The Review of Politics 11, no. 4 (1949): 477–498 makes a similar claim, asking “Who will form the future leaders of the polity . . . ?” to introduce his article on the Gorgias. There may be evidence 121 that Socrates’s strategy be primarily negative, primarily refutative. To oppose Gorgian rhetoric with something that also looks like rhetoric would suggest that the battle is between opposing rhetorics on equal footing, instead of the battle being to uproot a pathological form of rhetoric.

The true rhetoric that Socrates eventually introduces can come only after the danger ofGorgian rhetoric has been revealed.12 Accordingly, a second constraint to Socrates’s strategy is provided by the nature of the city. For any city unified by a common good, justice is a concern of the whole city;butfor democratic Athens, where the question of rule is always a question of self-rule, it is especially the case that each Athenian citizen bears responsibility for the practice of justice and for its preservation. Socrates’s revelation of the danger of rhetoric must be one both intelligible and inspirational to the citizens of Athens. His goal is not to persuade the Athenians to do as he wishes, but to put them in a position to do wish for their genuine good. Because his end is to prompt self -reflection, he must give the Athenians every opportunity to see for themselves the threat rhetoric poses. A direct pronouncement of the danger will not suffice, for the audience must be allowed to bring themselves to see the danger to themselves.

Within these constraints, Socrates works on a single and continuous project throughout the dialogue. His project is to expose the danger rhetoric poses to the practice of justice for the purpose of empowering the Athenian citizens to protect this practice. This commitment to the city’s self -improvement coupled with his uniquely insightful diagnosis of the pathology of

for such a claim within the dialogue, but this evidence is not obvious enough to warrant its immediate assumption. Furthermore, this approach fails to account for several moments of the dialogue, most crucially the lack of authority in Socrates’s “true political art.” For an excellent case in support of the significance of the audience—and by extension the issue of citizenship—in the dialogue, see Keum, “Why Did Socrates Conduct His Dialogues Before an Audience?”

12. The nature of rhetoric constrains Socrates’s response in another way, not only in how rhetoric presents itself to those whom it would seek to sway, but also in its being. Because, according to Socrates’s understanding of rhetoric, rhetoric is an impersonating knack whose only artfulness is to pass itself off as a true art by imitating the genuine art of politics, rhetoric cannot be either confronted or restrained by a direct means—its nature is too slippery. I take this to be Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus argument: “The mistakes in the reasoning of the Gorgias are not Socrates’ mistakes but the very mistakes of rhetoric that demonstrate its spuriousness. The Gorgias is the positive print of an etiolated negative. It captures forever the ghost of justice ” (7). This may also explain why Socrates’s conversations grow increasingly confrontational as rhetoric growsless and less able to hide itself. 122 rhetoric in the city constitutes Socrates’s attempt to practice of the true political art.13 He is not peddling his own philosophical produce, and he is not on the prowl for students. He is saying what his beloved philosophy tells him to say, and what philosophy compels him to say is, in this case, constitutive of his peculiar πολιτική.

Opening Scene: 447a-448c

Wisdom and Power: 447a-447d

The Gorgias begins abruptly. There is no frame, no setting the stage, no description oftime, place, or persons.14 Whatever else may be claimed about the context of the dialogue, urgency seems to be an undeniable feature. On my interpretation this urgency concerns the fate of the future of Athens. The Athenian practice of justice is most endangered by the kind of rhetoric just displayed—indeed, most endangered precisely because rhetoric functions so pervasively in day- to-day Athenian politics.15 Just before the dialogue begins, Gorgias has finished his exhibition;

Socrates arrives too late for the display of rhetoric but not too late to display its nature to the

Athenian audience who, as it later becomes clear, lingers to watch Socrates confront Gorgias. In a way Callicles’s greeting of Socrates is right and in a way wrong. There is a war, but it has not just now ended; indeed, it has just now begun. Callicles’s greeting also reveals his understanding of the rhetorical display that has just ended. For Callicles, rhetoric is a weapon to be used in a battle. Socrates’s response, wherein he

13. To preview, because the end of Socrates’s attempted political art is the self-improvement of the city, the analogy between the genuine practice of justice and medicine extends as far as diagnosis but not as far as treatment. Socrates cannot outright heal the city; he must somehow empower the city to heal itself.

14. This sudden entrance provides a wealth of implications, however, as the first exchanges not onlysetthe tone but also allude to much of the content of what follows. See James Doyle, “On the First Eight Lines of Plato’s Gorgias,” Classical Quarterly 56, no. 2 (2006): 599–602. Fussi, “Socrates’ Refutation of Gorgias” argues that these dramatic features contribute to the general sense of bitterness to the dialogue because they subvert our expectations and leave us ill at ease.

15. Josiah Ober, “Power and Oratory in Democratic Athens,” in Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action, ed. Ian Worthington (London: Routeledge, 1994), 85–108 power and oratory; see also Rocco, “Liberating Discourse: The Politics of Truth in Plato’s Gorgias,” 374, for a similar sense of the stakes and the significance on the conversation. 123 likens the missed demonstration to a feast, anticipates the connection between the struggle for dominion over others (war) and the base satisfaction of bodily desires (feast).16 Without much resistance and again in a way indicative of his understanding of rhetoric, Callicles concedes to

Socrates’s description of Gorgias’s display. When Socrates next blames Chaerephon for his tar- diness, we must wonder if there is another sense in which Chaerephon is responsible for keeping Socrates from rhetorical displays. While Chaerephon may have kept Socrates in the agora on this occasion, we should remember that in a way he is responsible for Socrates spending much of his life talking to his fellow citizens in the agora. For it was Chaerephon’s question to the Delphic oracle which prompted Socrates’s investigation into wisdom, where it might be, and who might possess it.17 But Socrates does not come to Gorgias in search of wisdom. He comes to ask about power.

It is, therefore, significant that we are explicitly told that Socrates leaves his proper place, the agora, to meet Gorgias at Gorgias’s proper place—the place where displays are made. What- ever war Socrates may wage on rhetoric, it is fought on rhetoric’s soil and, we may presume, therefore makes use of the terrain. In what follows, Socrates will not hesitate to make use of rhetorical tools, nor even will he refrain from making a display or two.18 Socrates comes not to

bring Gorgias to the agora, nor the agora to Gorgias. He does not come for his own wisdom nor

to make Gorgias wise. Rather, he comes on behalf of what is represented by the agora, that is,

he comes in service to Athens. Though the battle may be fought on soil foreign to Socrates, itis nevertheless a war for the very heart of Athens.

16. Saxonhouse, “An Unspoken Theme in Plato’s Gorgias: War” points out that though, this opening exchange projects an image of Shakespeare’s Falstaff, Socrates’s action in the course of the dialogue belies this initial comparison. It turns out that, I believe, that Falstaff is much nearer Callicles’s “naturally” just man—ever pursuing pleasure while ever avoiding harm and never shamed by convention.

17. See Apology 21a. Josiah Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule, in Political Dissent (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 194, n. 72, makes this observation.

18. See Carone, “Socratic Rhetoric in the Gorgias,” 224–233, for a critical assessment of these similarities. 124

Socrates resists both Chaerephon’s attempt to “cure” the situation by asking Gorgias to give another display and Callicles’s potentially condescending extension of hospitality. Instead, he immediately asks for a dialogue and explicitly states what he hopes to discover from Gorgias.

Socrates wants to know the power of Gorgias’s craft and its true nature. Callicles’s response—

“There’s nothing like asking the man himself” (447c)—initiates a theme which will recur significantly throughout the dialogue and which colors the rest of the opening scene.

Speaker and Speech: 557d-448d

The remainder of the opening scene illustrates the possibility and the problem of divorcing speaker from speech. Socrates initiates this illustration by prompting Chaerephon to address

Gorgias on his behalf. In doing so, Chaerephon rehearses a familiar Socratic line of questioning: identifying a man by the craft he practices.19 Before the questioning can begin, however, Polus inserts himself in place of Gorgias. Chaerephon, clearly keeping in the Socratic vein, asks if Polus would answer better than Gorgias. Polus, perhaps equally in keeping with the Gorgianic attitude, responds: ”What does that matter, as long as it satisfies you [ἐάν σοί γε ἱκανῶς]?” This response suggests that there is no better or worse, there is only what works. For the rhetorician, efficacy is the ultimate standard.

Yet Polus is unable to meet even his own standard, for he concludes Chaerephon’s line of questioning with an unsatisfying response to the question of what craft Gorgias has. Polus’s answer to this question is unsatisfying in part because of his reliance on the better and worse. He fails to answer sufficiently, much less better than Gorgias, precisely because he says onlythat

Gorgias is the best. With far more words and clauses than would suffice (ἱκανὼς),20 Polus’s an-

19. This is the inverse of the line of questioning Socrates raises with Hippocrates in the beginning ofthe Protagoras where he tried to identify the craft in terms of the man. In both cases the use of this strategy andits insufficiency highlight the resistance of both sophistry and rhetoric to being categorized in the same way asthecrafts that have a concrete and recognizable function toward the common good of the city. Voegelin, “The Philosophy of Existence: Plato’s Gorgias,” 477–478, hangs much on the formulation of this question as a question of existence.

20. Dodds, Plato, Gorgias. A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary, 192, calls Polus’s style here “Gorgian to the point of grotesqueness.” 125 swer seems to be a studied evasion of a simple question—the answer to which seemingly every student of Gorgias should know. Polus may not be Gorgias’s best student, but he is paradigmatic of Gorgias’s students. In his commentary, Dodds believes that Polus does not follow the leading examples provided by Chaerephon because he has not had enough practice in dialectic. I would say rather that it is because he has too much experience with rhetoric. In his meatless, “mannered disquisition,” Polus actually does reveal something of the knowledge that Gorgias may be supposed to have.21 Polus’s answer itself suggests that to answer the question “what is rhetoric?” with rhetoric is to conceal more than reveal; rhetoric knows how to hide in plain sight.

In this exchange, it is clear from Chaerephon’s initial confusion and his continued clumsiness that he is imitating Socrates—and that he is not completely comfortable doing so. When Polus interjects to act similarly on Gorgias’s behalf, it is less clear that there is an imitation.

Although it is obvious that Polus wishes to speak on Gorgias’s behalf and after the manner in which Gorgias has instructed him, he does a better job imitating Gorgias than Chaerephon does

Socrates—and the better the imitation, the less it appears to be an imitation. The exchangebe- tween these ersatz interlocutors highlights the possibility that a speaker may speak speeches that are not his own, that what he expresses need not be immediate or direct extensions of the workings of his soul, that who he is may have nothing to do with what he says. This possibility is raised as a potential necessity in the case of the rhetor. The splitting of speaker and speech opens a space for the rhetor to escape—and this space is one that the rhetor must always leave open. In the case of the rhetor, there may truly be nothing like asking the man himself, for the man himself may never answer that asking, instead always receding behind his speeches which need not be properly his.22

21. Dodds, Plato, Gorgias. A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary

22. In fact, both the rhetoricians, Gorgias and Polus, are accused of not meaning what they said. Polus thinks Gorgias does not really believe that he teaches the just and unjust things; Callicles thinks Polus does not really believe it is more shameful to do than to suffer justice. Whether or not these denials would have saved them from their refutation is a matter I discuss below, but for now it is worthwhile to point to division of speaker and speech that will continue to surface. 126

Gorgias & Socrates: 448d-461d

In the face of the possibility that he may never get genuine speech from the rhetor,

Socrates re-enters the conversation by insisting that he speak with Gorgias himself and not his student. The reason Socrates gives for his insistence is that Polus, though finely equipped with speeches, is less capable at communicating through speeches (διαλέγεσθαι).23 But there is another reason Socrates seeks a dialogue with Gorgias and will not settle for one with a substitute.

For, as Socrates’s first question of their dialogue suggests, who Gorgias is and what rhetoricis seem to be inextricably connected questions.24

Strategies

Socrates and Gorgias adopt different and opposing strategies for their dialogue. Though Socrates has shown no interest in Gorgias’s usual displays, it is clear to Gorgias that Socrates wants to put on some display. In response, Gorgias is gracious and patient, perhaps because this is not the first time in his travels that he has encountered a well-known local intellectual whois looking to use a run-in with the famous rhetorician to shine his own reputation. I suggest that this is indeed Gorgias’s impression of Socrates, and Socrates does not give him much reason to adjust this impression. Consequently, Gorgias is for the most part confident and playful, taking his conversation with Socrates as a not too serious opportunity to make a case for his craft and his own reputation.25 Regardless of the stakes, a rhetorician can never forget the audience, and

23. This preference for dialectic or dialogue can be an indication that Socrates means to oppose ittorhetoric. It could also be an acknowledgement of what just previously became painfully clear—namely that rhetoric itself cannot be trusted to reveal the nature of rhetoric.

24. Voegelin, “The Philosophy of Existence: Plato’s Gorgias,” 477, notes the significance of this formulation of the question: “This opening move dominates the whole dialogue. The substance of man is in question, nota philosophical ‘problem’ in the modern sense.”Yet, Voegelin himself does not give much attention to the man, Gorgias.

25. Many have noted the congenial tone of Gorgias and Socrates’s conversation, especially compared to subsequent conversations. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 37, and Weiss, “Oh, Brother! The Fraternity of Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Gorgias,” 200, take this tone to be indicative of the possibility of a collaboration between Socrates and Gorgias and their respective “crafts.” 127

Gorgias never forgets that he is still in the midst of an audience and, moreover, an Athenian audience. The fact that Gorgias allows Socrates to take the lead and to set the terms, thoughnot without a show of resistance, is a calculated concession to his surroundings. It is not Gorgias’s last concession to his Athenian conversation partner.

Socrates’s goal, on the other hand, is ultimately to expose the threat that rhetoric poses to the practice of justice in his city. This goal is complex inasmuch as this project must be executed in such a way that the Athenian audience not only can understand what Socrates is trying to show them but also can distinguish Socrates’s display from the rhetoric they just witnessed. Socrates therefore also never forgets that he is amid his fellow citizens. Since his goal is complex, his strategy is accordingly multi-tiered. Socrates tries to expose the power of rhetoric by exposing Gorgias to the consequences of that power. Because Socrates is attempting to ensnare the speaker by means of his own speeches, the exposure of Gorgias’s power must happen without Gorgias’s being aware.26 Consequently, we must remain aware of the difference between what Socrates allows Gorgias to think he is doing and what he is actually doing with the conversation. The first question establishes a unity of speech and speaker. Then, by showing thatthis unity is problematic for rhetoric in a way that cannot be the case for the practice of justice,

Socrates shows the problematic combination of this kind of rhetoric with the practice of justice.

The practice of justice in the city depends upon there being a unity between the justice ofthe judge and the justice of the judgment. Ideally, the justice of just judgments should be an extension and instantiation of the justice in the souls of the citizens who render these judgments. It certainly and unsettlingly can be the case that unjust men make just judgments, and itispre- cisely because of this possible divide that rhetoric can make its claim to power.27 But it is crucial

26. It is not enough that Gorgias be shown up. Socrates is not interested so much in winning as in Gorgias “losing” in a very specific way, namely, losing by means of the very thing that it supposed to grant him power,that is, losing by means of rhetoric. In effect, Socrates is trying to turn rhetoric against its master in order to display the danger of rhetoric. For this reason, I disagree with the interpretations that too narrowly construe the refutation of Gorgias as ad hominem (for example, Kahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias”). Socrates wishes to refute Gorgias precisely as a master rhetorician, not on account of the idiosyncrasies of his situation and character.

27. The moral and epistemic neutrality of rhetoric will be one of the key features Socrates exposes. 128 for the sustainability of the practice of justice in the city that this divide be rare and disconcerting. The two products of the practice of justice—just men and just judgments—must remainin principle—though perhaps not in every instance—unified. The task Socrates sets for himself is to show that the power rhetoric gives to the speaker to persuade concerning the just and unjust things is essentially separable from the speaker’s understanding of the just and the unjust things. Socrates conducts his dialogue with Gorgias in order to demonstrate this disconnect between the power and the understanding that belongs to rhetoric as well as the danger this disconnect poses to the city’s practice of justice. Socrates’s strategy to achieve this end without

Gorgias noticing is to present himself attempting to limit and then undermine rhetoric’s claim to power. In response Gorgias elaborates on and emphasizes rhetoric’s power.28 Then, in the final moments of the conversation, Socrates shifts to question the claim rhetoric makes concerning its knowledge of what its speeches concern.29 In doing so, Socrates puts Gorgias and his craft in a perilous situation and thereby extracts from him an admission that contradicts not only what he had previously intimated about rhetoric’s power but also his own well-known position that he does not teach virtue.30 This admission in turn exposes the decisive limitation of rhetoric’s power vis-à-vis the practice of justice in the city.

Distinguishing Rhetoric from Other Crafts: 448d-452e

Going forward, we must continually consider both Socrates’s and Gorgias’s perspective of the conversation. Regarding Socrates’s perspective, my interpretation will maintain two levels of

28. James Doyle, “The Fundamental Conflict in Plato’s Gorgias,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 30 (2006): 87–100 and James Stuart Murray, “Plato on Power, Moral Responsibility and the Alleged Neutrality of Gorgias’ Art of Rhetoric,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 34, no. 4 (2001): 355–363 both note that rhetoric’s claim to omnipotence is crucial for the refutation of Gorgias, though they differ on the details of that refutation.

29. Terence Irwin, Plato Gorgias (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 126–128 and McPherran, “Socrates’ Refutation of Gorgias” are competent representatives of those who take Gorgias’s claim to know and teach the just and unjust things as the lynchpin of his refutation. As I argue below, I believe Socrates presses Gorgias into these claims not to refute Gorgias but to demonstrate the fraught relationship between the master rhetorician and his rhetoric.

30. See Meno, 95c. 129 analysis, attending to how Socrates conducts his conversation with Gorgias and how he communicates with the Athenian audience. Socrates has two concurrent goals in the opening round of exchanges with Gorgias, one concerning the rhetor himself and one concerning the presentation of rhetoric to the surrounding audience. These goals are not strictly parallel; Socrates’s objective regarding Gorgias contributes to his intention regarding the larger audience. Socrates asks Gor- gias about the similarity of rhetoric to other crafts—and in doing so seems to attack the powerof rhetoric—in order to highlight for his audience the crucial dissimilarity between rhetoric and the other crafts concerning the the role of knowledge in rhetoric. It seems to Gorgias that bydistin- guishing it from other crafts Socrates is attempting to limit rhetoric, and Socrates maintains this appearance in order to draw out the problem with rhetoric’s limitlessness. Although Socrates’s dual purposes do intersect, it is important to note that Gorgias does not recognize their intersection. If Gorgias does take note of the fact that Socrates is up to something with the audience, it seems that Gorgias thinks Socrates’s intention to be not much different than his own, namely, to win the conversation by showing up the other interlocutor. Three moments at the very beginning seem to confirm Gorgias’s impression that there is a contest between him and Socrates and that this contest concerns the power of rhetoric. First, Socrates raises the notion of an attack on rhetoric as he transitions from his brief exchange with Polusto his conversation with Gorgias (448e). Additionally, Socrates pressures Gorgias to commit that the conversation should proceed in the mode of his choice, that is, by means of brief answers to Socrates’s questions (449b).31 Finally, after prompting Gorgias to name his craft (“rhetoric”) and title (“rhetor”), and before extracting from Gorgias a promise to limit his speeches, Socrates

31. We should note, and Gorgias probably did note, that Socrates restricted the length only of Gorgias’s answers and did not suggest any such limit for his own questions. It is also worth noting that Gorgias for the most part abides by his commitment, rarely giving answers longer than their correlative questions. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 24, offers as a probable explanation that Gorgias abides by the brief answers condition because“heis aware that the difference between rhetoric and the other arts is not unproblematic for rhetoric.” He then suggests that this problem is that “the rhetorician must give the impression that [justice and injustice] are his primary concerns, although his deepest concerns or the true objects of his attention are the souls of his listeners and the effectshis speeches will have on them.” I agree that this is the problem for the rhetorician, but Stauffer and I disagree about the consequences of this problem for the potential salutary conversion of Gorgias’s kind of rhetoric. 130 asks one additional question of Gorgias. This question concerns Gorgias’s power to make other men into rhetors (449b).32 Therefore, as the conversation begins, Gorgias anticipates with some justification that rhetoric and its power are in Socrates’s agonistic sights.

Gorgias’s impression that Socrates is targeting rhetoric’s power is again confirmed when

Socrates first compares rhetoric to the humble craft of cloak-weaving. In turn, Gorgias expertly uses to his advantage the agreed upon restriction to short speeches. Gorgias resists the alignment of rhetoric with the other crafts and thereby the supposed limitation of rhetoric by only minimally saying what rhetoric is. That is, the fact that Gorgias does not pick up Socrates’s line ofanalogyis not logical obstuseness on Gorgias’s part but rather an effective refusal to give in to the impression of rhetoric his opponent is trying to cultivate. To counter the limitation of rhetoric’s power, Gorgias adopts a strategy of saying as little as possible about rhetoric. In declining to givemore specification than is explicitly demanded, Gorgias allows the power of rhetoric to loom largein the imagination of the audience.33

As Socrates proceeds to compare rhetoric to an array of crafts, rhetoric comes to light as both like and unlike the different classes of crafts in different ways. In order to follow Socrates’s plan, it will be crucial to note in what ways rhetoric is and is not similar to the other crafts. This is not a mere logical exercise for Socrates; these examples do significant work to reveal the nature of rhetoric. The first round of comparisons emphasize the productive aspect of rhetoric. Even though the question he puts to Gorgias is more general, namely, asking about what (περὶ τί τῶν ὄντων) rhetoric is knowledge, Socrates compares rhetoric to weaving and to music, explicitly drawing attention to what each of these crafts produce. The original formulation of thequestion

32. Gorgias’s response to this question of his power—“That is what I advertise, not only here, but elsewhere”—reminds of the oft claimed distinction between nature and convention. Fire burns the same inAthens and Sparta though their laws and their understanding of justice differ. Apparently, Gorgias’s power is more like fire than like justice, or perhaps more like Callicles’s later description of natural justice than like the justice of Athens. Readers of this dissertation should note the similarity between rhetoric and sophistry concerning apparent regime- independence.

33. Irwin, Plato Gorgias, 118, notes a positive spin on Gorgias’s brevity: “[Gorgias’s] conception of rhetoric in public life is helped by some unclarity about moral and political knowledge.” 131 thus asks for specification of the knowledge that the rhetor claims to have. Socrates’s technical examples answer in terms or production: knowledge of the production of cloaks/melodies.

On this model, Gorgias’s answer of “about speech” seems to answer the question “knowledge of what?” and the analogy between rhetoric and the productive crafts seems to break down. Gorgias does not say that rhetoric is knowledge of the production of speech. Instead he says it is knowledge about speech simply. In line with his strategy of resisting Socrates’s attempted specification of rhetoric, Gorgias demures from giving the analogical answer and opts for a more general but nevertheless adequate reply.

As the exchange progresses, however, this general reply becomes ambiguous when Gor- gias admits that rhetoric makes men powerful at speaking and at understanding (φρονεῖν) the things they speak about. It seems that rhetoric is a productive art after all; it produces powerful men. Socrates uses a comparison to the medical craft to induce this specification from Gorgias, but again the analogy to the craft breaks down almost immediately. For instead of focusing on health as the obvious product of the medical art, Socrates instead claims that the medical art also produces powerful men—men powerful at speaking about and understanding illness. Socrates proceeds similarly with the craft of gymnastics, though in this case the skewed presentation is even more obvious. If gymnastics can be said to make men powerful, one expects it to make men powerful in body. Yet Socrates claims and Gorgias agrees that instead it makes men powerful in speech. In these cases, Socrates distorts the crafts to seem more like rhetoric.34 Even with this distortion towards similarity, Socrates suggests a significant dissimilarity between these crafts and rhetoric. Socrates sketches his strange account of the medical and gymnastic crafts supposedly to prompt further specification from Gorgias. The strangeness of claiming that the medical and gymnastic crafts are also about speech prompts reflection onjust this relationship of the crafts to speech. In the case of medicine and gymnastics, it seems they

34. This pair of analogs, of course, anticipates the schema of genuine and pseudo-crafts that Socratescon- structs at 464b-466a. This anticipatory presence in turn supports the view that the schema is Socrates’s considered opinion. 132 are about speech only insofar as the knowledge constitutive of their craft is communicable. If medicine is about speech, it is about only the speech that is grounded in the practitioner’s knowledge of medical things, and this speech is only for the sake of communicating that knowledge.

Even after Gorgias finally states explicitly what rhetoric’s speeches are about, it remains unstated whether these speeches are related similarly to knowledge. Gorgias does not address this analogy or its possible failure when he distinguishes rhetoric from these other crafts, which have been shown also to be about speech. Instead he distinguishes rhetoric from the other crafts in terms of the quantity of speech involved in their constitutive knowledge. On my reading, Gorgias does not recognize that rhetoric’s claim to knowledge is being obliquely undermined because he is focused on promoting the expansive power of rhetoric. Rather than narrowing the scope of rhetoric by saying more exactly saying what its speech is about, Gorgias limits how much the other crafts use their speeches. Gorgias’s totalizing claim even drops the mention of knowledge, addressing rather the practice and achievement (κύρωσις) of rhetoric (450b). This mention of the κύρωσις of rhetoric especially anticipates Gorgias’s primary concern, since he will later claim that rhetoric’s power enables it to rule over the other crafts.35 Even at this moment, though, the progression from describing rhetoric as knowledge about speech to describing it as working through speeches (διὰ λόγων) suggests that the presently occurring dialogue between himself and Socrates also falls under the purview of Gorgias’s particular craft. Furthermore, this claim that the entirety of rhetoric’s practice and achievement is through speech expands the power of rhetoric by seemingly removing the limitation of labor. Not everyone may have athletic or musical talent, not everyone may have the manual skill to weave finely or to tend carefully to wounds, but everyone can speak. Gorgias distinguishes rhetoric from these other crafts in such a way that it looks to be universally achievable. Itspoweris limited neither in its practice nor by its possible practitioners.

35. Κύρωσις is derived from κῦρος meaning “supreme power” or “one invested with authority.” 133

Gorgias’s continued resistance to specifying rhetoric leaves open further comparison to other crafts. Socrates now introduces a new class of crafts, crafts that seem to be likerhetoric in that their activity and achievement occurs through speeches. This superficial similarity again suggests deeper dissimilarities. Socrates even puts a sharpness to the point of the similarity and dissimilarity by distinguishing between Gorgias’s “actual words” (τῷ ῥήματι οὕτως) and what he wants to say about rhetoric. The rhetor’s ῥήματι about rhetoric differ from his intention. Fol- lowing this point, I suggest that we too should be prepared to discern any differences between what Socrates says about the crafts and what he wants to convey by his descriptions. Aspre- viously with medicine, Socrates’s description of these crafts—arithmetic, logistic, geometry, and checkers—is dubious in itself.36 For one, his claim that the entirety of their activity occurs through speeches discounts the role speechless action plays in geometrical construction and in playing checkers.37 Also, as Benardete points out, it does not seem necessary for the counter or calcula- tor to rely on speech for his counting or calculating; the sense of “speech” operative here seems to be stretched to include silent reasoning.38 Taking Gorgias’s claim strictly that rhetoric is the craft that works entirely through speech seems to distort rhetoric by making it nearly identical to arithmetic. Yet taking Socrates’s description just as strictly seems to distort these crafts by making them seem more like rhetoric.

Two other elements of the foregoing discussion now drop out, revealing further dissimilarities. One element is the consideration of productive power. The comparison with arithmetic, et alia, strains the already questionable similarity between rhetoric and the other crafts insofar as they both produce others capable of speaking about and understanding the subjects of their crafts. For arithmetic, say, the power to make others arithmeticians seems at best a secondary

36. See Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and ,Phaedrus 14-15.

37. Strictly speaking these crafts could proceed without the activities of physically drawing lines or moving pieces, and so forth, but then they would also proceed in an unnecessarily difficult manner, so difficult that many who otherwise would be able to engage in these crafts would be excluded.

38. Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and ,Phaedrus 14-15. 134 capacity of the craft. Additionally, with these crafts, a distinction between speaking aboutand understanding the subjects of their crafts seems especially dubious. Indeed, the issue of understanding the things the craft is speech about also drops out, presumably because understanding is included in speaking about. Whereas previously speech mediated the knowledge that constituted the craft and the subject of that craft, now speech seems to consume the former entirely. The discussion proceeds only in terms of craft and speech. With the introduction ofwhatmaybe called the theoretical crafts, that is, crafts that are obviously wholly constituted by knowledge, the explicit mention of knowledge disappears.

Gorgias does not seem to notice this lack as Socrates presses him to specify what the speeches of rhetoric are about. Socrates again gives several example answers to prompt Gorgias. These examples are telling. Socrates replaces geometry and checkers from his previous listof crafts with astronomy. Now the list of crafts seems more obviously like a list that comprises the education of a free man.39 In the course of giving these examples, Socrates also anticipates

Gorgias’s eventual political answer by having the way he gives the example answers echo the way one drafts amendments in the people’s assembly. Even in his elaboration of these theoretical crafts, Socrates does not leave the practical far behind, thus indicating sotto voce another dissimilarity between these crafts and rhetoric.

Despite the next and more precise formulation of the question (“What is that among the beings which these speeches used by rhetoric are about?”), Gorgias still evades giving a specific answer (451d). In his resistance he resorts to what looks like the very move for which Polus was chastised: Gorgias seems to praise instead of identify. He says that rhetoric’s speeches are about the greatest and best among human matters but does not say what these matters are. Yet,

Socrates does not chastise Gorgias; rather he states impersonally that this response is disputable.

By noting that the claim is disputable, Socrates expects Gorgias to defend his praise of rhetoric, and he thereby gains the position to inquire after what Gorgias takes the greatest and bestof

39. Compare Protagoras 318e. 135 human matters to be. Despite his efforts to resist saying more than he needs to, Gorgiashas made a substantial claim that now requires support.

Socrates continues the impersonal tone of his dissent by conjuring three rivals to Gorgias’s claim: the doctor, the gymnastic trainer, and the moneymaker. These rival claimants arise from a popular drinking song—popular enough that Gorgias has also heard it—which names health as the highest good, followed by being born beautiful, and finally by honest wealth.40 Of course, the medical and gymnastic crafts—the crafts related to beauty and health—have featured inthe discussion previously, although then they were distorted to seem more like rhetoric. Now they reclaim their proper production, the medical craft produces health and the gymnastic craft produces men fair and strong in body. In representing themselves more accurately, they not only take up an oppositional position toward rhetoric but they also destroy the similarity that pressed

Gorgias to identify rhetoric more with the theoretic crafts.

These fictional practitioners seem to acknowledge the order described in the song.The money-maker, however, disdains both the other crafts and their purported hierarchy, challenging Gorgias and the other craftsmen to show that their crafts produce a greater good thanhis.On this point, Gorgias and the money-maker are similar since Gorgias too claims for this craft an ultimate status. This similarity is reinforced by the repetitive line of questioning with the fictional craftsman, which sounds very much like the preceding inquiry with Gorgias. These similarities anticipate a further similarity between Gorgias’s craft and the craft of money-making. Money is possessed exclusively. The possession of money differs from the possession of health ora beautiful body inasmuch as possession of these need not depend on or detract from anyone else possessing them. The distribution of what Gorgias claims is the greatest good also bears this exclusive quality. For Gorgias will soon say that the greatest good is freedom for oneself and

40. The full quatrain lists a fourth good: being young in the company of friends. In his notes,Dodds, Plato, Gorgias. A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary, 200, mentions that this final good was omitted because it cannot be produced by a craft. With the acknowledged popularity of the song, this omission may have been obvious, thus suggesting to the audience the question of the compatibility of rhetoric and human community. 136 rule over others, and it seems that one gains freedom for oneself only to the extent that he rules others.

In these final answers, Gorgias abandons his tactic of resisting specification and pivotsto the opposite approach. He commits to a magnificent description of rhetoric’s power, asserting that not only does rhetoric produce truly the greatest good but that this good is also the cause of freedom for oneself and rule over others. He even volunteers an illustration of this power, saying that rhetoric enables one to enslave the doctor and the trainer and to appropriate the product of the money-maker.41 Gorgias has abandoned the circuitous answers in favor of explicitly expansive claims for rhetoric. He also abandons all reference to knowledge and understanding which was initially included in the inquiry into rhetoric; instead he focuses solely on rhetoric’s power. Earlier at 449e, Gorgias agreed that he made men powerful at speaking and at understanding what he speaks about; now he claims he makes men powerful at speaking and persuading others.

As will become more obvious in the next movement of the discussion, this persuasion is itself only an exchange of power. The epistemic elements of rhetoric have entirely receded, replaced by claims of power.

At the end of this first stage of their discussion, Socrates has advanced but not methis goals. By comparing rhetoric to the other crafts, Socrates has provoked the audience to consider the ways in which rhetoric contrasts with these other crafts, particularly vis-à-vis its epistemic elements. Simultaneously, Socrates has provoked Gorgias to claim for rhetoric an expansive realm (namely, political things) and extensive power (namely, comprehensive rule). This claim intro-

41. Fussi, “Socrates’ Refutation of Gorgias,” 126–128, and James Doyle, “Socrates and Gorgias,” Phronesis 55, no. 1 (2010): 1–25, 18–20 (contra McPherran, “Socrates’ Refutation of Gorgias,” 20–22) point to this claim to substantiate the view that the (near) omnipotence of rhetoric is crucial to the kind of rhetoric Gorgias practices. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 27, perhaps in an effort to save the possibility of redeeming Gorgias later, emphasizes the rhetorical reason for this claim, thereby distancing himself from saying that this is Gorgias’s authentic opinion, or even one necessitated by his craft. Going even further, Weiss, “Oh, Brother! The Fraternity of Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Gorgias,” 201, would have us see in this boast not something essential to rhetoric but particular to Gorgias’s character and to his aim of “selling” rhetoric as the power-craft—a characteristic balanced by his potential collaboration with his doctor brother, Herodicus. This too rosy view of rhetoric too quickly dismisses as advertising the darker parts of rhetoric while it promotes rhetoric’s promise. I address the point below as well, but in light of Gorgias’s answer here, I will only note that to repudiate the threat of tyranny responsibly requires more than pointing to the times when tyranny is not so bad. 137 duces an ultimate contrast between rhetoric and the other crafts: rhetoric is the craft that rules all other crafts and is ruled by no other craft. With this final contrast, the possibility thatrhetoric works without knowledge or without concern for knowledge becomes all the more crucial.

Distinguishing Persuasion in Itself: 452e-456a

With Gorgias’s disclosure as to “the whole business” of rhetoric, both Socrates and Gorgias shift tactics (453a). While on the face of it Socrates seems to continue his strategy ofcomparing of rhetoric to other crafts, I suggest that Socrates’s personal admissions, which pepper this arc of the conversation, are a better indicator of his goals. Socrates is still engaged in the project of exposing the problematic nature of rhetoric, but Gorgias’s identification of rhetoric’s power as persuasion in political gatherings opens an opportunity to address a further and related problem. This problem, namely the role persuasion necessarily plays in politics, requires more thanreac- tionary response; Socrates reserves the possibility of a needful persuasion even as he reveals the dangers of Gorgias’s rhetorical persuasion.

At first blush, Socrates seems to make only one pertinent distinction, namely, between convictional and instructional persuasion. The distinction between these two persuasions occurs along the lines of knowledge; convictional persuasion yields belief without knowledge and instructional persuasion yields knowledge. Furthermore, it seems that instructional persuasion cannot fulfill the role required of persuasion in political gatherings. There is no indicationof irony or error when Socrates claims that the just and unjust things could not be taught to such a large mob as a jury or an assembly in such a short time as a trial or meeting.42 But if the requisite

42. This inability for the crowd to genuinely learn anything of justice is frequently taken as a serious criticism Socrates levels against democracy in particular and politics in general. As a representative of this positions, see Wallach, The Platonic Political ,Art 189, “Plato has delegitimized the potential authority and virtue of both the demos and the politicians who presume to lead them on their behalf.” To the other extreme, Irwin, Plato Gorgias, 119, denies the generality of the claim and asserts that Socrates, or some other political expert, could overcome these accidental constraints and, in fact, teach the crowd about justice. The latter optimism fails on textual grounds—Socrates gives no reason to assume that he is or thinks of himself as an expert, let alone an expert in teaching justice to a crowd. For an interpretation of the Apology that is sensitive to this issue, see V. Bradley Lewis, “Plato’s Philosophical Politics,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 32, no. 1 (2017): 169–190 The former pessimism has textual basis but, I suggest, would benefit from a more subtle reading of the context. If knowledge, in an epistemically 138 persuasion is not instructional, must it be convictional of the sort Gorgias professes to command? If Gorgianic convictional persuasion is the only possible persuasion, then there seems to be no room for anything but political pessimism. Power to the exclusion of truth or of care for truth seems to be the only option; the common good cannot be defended.

But this is not the only option. Indeed, I claim that there is another kind of persuasion on offer. This other kind of persuasion is a kind of convictional persuasion but does notshare the preoccupation with having one’s predetermined opinion prevail in the souls of others. This kind of persuasion does not crowd out the possibility of self-governance and common endeavor; this kind of persuasion resists the reduction to sheer manipulation and therefore the reduction to force. In this kind of persuasion, self-reflection mediates between the persuader and the persuaded. The result is not knowledge but it is a way to form beliefs that can sustain adesireto know. Furthermore, by virtue of mediating self-reflection, it breaks the division between the few initiated experts and the ignorant crowd, for this kind of persuasion falls within the capacity of every citizen. Indicating and instantiating this alternative, though again only implicitly, are among Socrates’s goals in the next exchanges.

While Socrates engages in this new goal, he also maintains his design to prompt Gorgias into revealing more about the nature of rhetoric, the scope of its power, and the implications of that power for the possibility of politics. Gorgias, for his part, has committed to an explicit and expansive claim of rhetoric’s power and now elaborates on that claim. He is so content to let the conversation dwell on rhetoric’s power that he does not mind Socrates’s repetitive rehearsal of the comparison of rhetoric to the other crafts. He then agrees to all of Socrates’s suggested elaborations of rhetoric’s power. This development culminates in Gorgias’s longest speech ofthe dialogue which includes the starkest statement of rhetoric’s power.

robust sense, were the sine qua non for legitimation, then Socrates could declare victory for himself with Gorgias’s admission that rhetoric requires no such antecedent knowledge. Yet, Socrates is concerned with the function of power in absence of knowledge, which indicates that there may be more than one way for power to function in absence of knowledge. 139

Keeping these themes in mind, let us return to the text. Socrates first indicates the incompleteness of the claim that rhetoric crafts persuasion (453a). But before he begins his inquiry again, he reflects on the discussion itself by revealing something about himself. Socrates claims that he has persuaded himself that he is someone who engages in speech with another from a desire to know. The anacoluthic quality of the sentence serves to jostle the audience intocon- sidering the act of speaking itself and the way Socrates is conducting his speech. It is possible to read this claim as a sort of excuse for what Socrates’s potentially annoying persistence in asking for details of rhetoric. I agree that these remarks are anticipatory, but what they anticipate is his distinction between kinds of persuasion, not his continued antagonism of Gorgias. Socrates here offers himself as an example of a kind of persuasion that resists dividing between theper- suader and persuaded: Socrates persuades himself. This paradigm of persuasion unites Socrates’s awareness of his own production of his belief with his self-reflective desire to know. Socrates is aware that he is forming a belief about himself, and that belief is that he desires to know what his and Gorgias’s speeches are about. Socrates’s persuasion of himself results in a posture towards persuasion from others, namely, one informed and governed by a desire to know.

Socrates thus proceeds with the discussion at one level by pushing rhetoric’s power to persuade towards its breaking point and at another level by prompting his audience to consider an alternative form of persuasion. In these dual movements Socrates distinguishes not only convictional persuasion from instructional persuasion, but also Gorgian convictional persuasion from the model of persuasion Socrates instantiates. The latter distinction takes place primarily in Socrates’s reflective comments on the status and direction of the conversation. After hefirst introduces the notion of this alternative persuasion, he highlights some of its features (453b-c).

The first is an admission of ignorance—a recognition of a lack of clarity in the face ofasuspicion.

He suspects what Gorgias means by persuasion from rhetoric but nevertheless will ask him to state it explicitly. He pursues this perspicacity not for the sake of antagonizing Gorgias but for the sake of the discussion, or more precisely, so that the discussion will be a fitting means for his desire to know what is discussed. Likewise, the citizen who follows Socrates’s model, when 140 faced with a decision in the jury-courts or in the assembly, should not proceed on the basis of suspicion but should, to the extent that he can, seek clarity.

After this reflective interjection, Socrates resumes a comparison of rhetoric withother crafts in order to confirm his suspicion that rhetoric produces persuasion about the justandthe unjust things. The distinction with which we have been concerned arises in the course ofthis comparison. With an example that suggests a genus/species division, Socrates then moves to identify persuasion production as a genus that includes other forms besides rhetoric. One such persuasion-producer is teaching, for which Socrates chooses arithmetic as the prime example

(453e). In this example, as we may expect from the way arithmetic showed up previously, arithmetic persuades about the even and the odd when it teaches. The possibility that some persuasion is necessary when teaching rhetoric itself only negatively arises. Teaching arithmetic (and thereby producing arithmeticians) consists, at least in part, of persuading them of the even and the odd. This example thus anticipates Gorgias’s claims about what he does and does not teach, yet Gorgias himself does not anticipate this connection. Again, still focusing on the power of rhetoric, Gorgias elaborates on rhetoric’s power to persuade about all the just and unjust things in the various political fora.

Here Socrates suspends the conversation momentarily again to make an anticipatory defense of the way he conducts his questioning, this time appealing to the good order of the discussion. Orderliness is thus presented as another feature of the modeled persuasion.43 This order seeks to prevent habitual guessing and premature concluding, both of which would be disastrous when attempting to render a good judgment either in a jury-court or an assembly. Following assumptions to their conclusions also belongs to this good order. All of these elements figure into how a citizen ought to generate his beliefs about matters of justice in the city.

43. As will become clear later, orderliness has a broader scope than the needed civic persuasion inasmuch as it is also connected to the internalization of laws. See Gorgias 506d-508b. This is a significant intersection between the art of justice (counterpart to the pseudo-art of rhetoric) and the art of legislation (counterpart to the pseudo-art of sophistry), an intersection that I discuss at length later. 141

Before proceeding with his questioning, Socrates again secures Gorgias’s agreement as to the rightness of this way of proceeding. Thus assured, Socrates resumes his inquiry about persuasion, first making the distinction between convictional and instructional persuasion, then identifying the kind of persuasion done in law-courts as convictional persuasion. Socrates distinguishes between convictional persuasion and instructional persuasion in terms of what they produce in the ones being persuaded. Instructional persuasion brings about learning in its audience and ultimately yields knowledge. Convictional persuasion produces in its audiences a conviction without knowledge (τὸ μὲν πίστιν παρεχόμενον ἄνευ τοῦ εἰδέναι). The distinction between instructional and convictional persuasion therefore falls along the line of knowledge.

There are other differences between convictional persuasion and instructional persuasion, some of which Socrates will soon suggest, but Socrates chooses knowledge to be the first and the fundamental dividing line.

Socrates thus implies that the presence or absence of knowledge accounts for other features of these kinds of persuasion. These kinds of persuasions have set realms of conduct determined by whether or not knowledge is possible in those realms. It is not that the rhetor in particular cannot teach the juries about the just and the unjust things—no one can teach juries about the just and unjust things.44 This is because knowledge of so great a matter as the justand the unjust things cannot be produced among so many jurymen in so brief a time as a trial.45 The circumstances prohibit knowledge and therefore determine the kind of persuasion that is appropriate; moreover, these circumstances are constitutive of, not merely accidental to, these political

44. Weiss, “Oh, Brother! The Fraternity of Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Gorgias,” 203–204, cites this universal disability as a sign that Socrates is not targeting rhetoric for its failure to teach. This claim certainly neutralizes a position like Irwin, Plato Gorgias, 119, who claims that “Socrates assumes that there might be political experts, who have knowledge about what is just and unjust, and that rhetors are not those experts.” This claim in itself does not, however, provide positive evidence that Socrates is potentially friendly toward Gorgias’s rhetoric, pace Weiss.

45. Given Socrates’s conscientiousness to proceed in his conversation justly, we should perhaps wonder about the justice of trying to perform instructional persuasion on a jury or an assembly. It seems possible that such an attempt would be not only ineffective but also unjust in that it demands what cannot be given. If thisisso,we have further reason to seek for another form of persuasion. Since, instructional persuasion cannot be substituted for Gorgias’s rhetoric, another form of persuasion is need if there is to be a just alternative. 142 fora. Convictional persuasion is the only appropriate persuasion when it comes to persuading a large number of people about such great matters in a brief time. But it does not follow that

Gorgias’s rhetoric is the only way to effect such persuasion.

The ease with which Gorgias accepts Socrates’s claim that the rhetor does notteachin- dicates that Gorgias either does not perceive an accusatory tone in the claim or does perceive such but does not care. I suggest that Gorgias so easily accepts this claim because he takes it to limit the power of instructional persuasion while liberating rhetoric’s power. Gorgias sees it as a boon to the power of rhetoric that it can work without relying on knowledge. Here we get an initial glimpse of how rhetoric’s neutrality underpins its claim to power.46 It is left ambiguous whether the rhetor has knowledge (or can have knowledge) of the just and the unjust things; this question need not be decided in order to claim that the rhetor can wield his power where knowledge cannot find purchase.

These ambiguities echo in Socrates’s next long speech as he turns from the jury-courts to the assembly, from matters most explicitly about justice to matters of the administration of the city. Socrates even signals that attention should be paid to these ambiguities by prefacing his speech with an admission of obscurity and impotency: Socrates claims that he does not quite have the power to thoroughly understand what he is saying. Socrates is split between his understanding and his speaking, which is surely the initial posture of many a citizen, unacknowledged though it may be. He continues in the conversation to unite precisely that split—his desire to know overcomes his lack of power.47 This ambiguity is echoed in the character of Gorgias as both an instructor of other rhetors and a practitioner of non-instructional rhetoric. Another ambiguity arises in the first explicit mention of the surrounding audience, who, on one level, must consider themselves as both potential receptive learners and potential active practitioners. Yet,

46. This purported neutrality is epistemic, as noted by Doyle, “Socrates and Gorgias,” 20. It will becrucial for the argument how this epistemic neutrality is connected to the moral neutrality of Gorgias’s craft.

47. This provides yet another feature of the modeled persuasion, a persuasion determined by adesireto know and a concern for truth, not a persuasion from or to power—at least not primarily. 143 on another level—a civic level—they must consider themselves as sometimes members of juries or the assembly—the ones in whom persuasion is produced— and as sometimes the defendant, accuser, or adviser—the one who is attempting to persuade. Finally and most immediately thereis an ambiguity between the function of the craftsman’s knowledge within his craft and the function of the craft within the context of the city. In his long speech, Socrates sets up a civic situation in which the business of the city demands a choice of craftsman. He is skeptical that the rhetor would advise the city onsuch matters. The reason the rhetor will not advise is because no advice seems needed. Thechoice is presumably so obvious that the assembly requires no one to convince them of anything; they will simply choose the best craftsman for the occasion. Socrates does not dwell on the question of how the assembly will know who is the best craftsman. Perhaps who is the best is obvious as well, for Socrates moves on to cases where advice concerning a particular craft-product is required. When there is a question about how to build walls or equip harbors, then the advice of the craftsman, who is master of the relevant craft, will be heeded, not the rhetor. But thereisan ambiguity concerning the kind of advice the master craftsman might give. If Socrates means just what he says, then the advice will concern only the knowledge of the requisite craft. Socrates presents a situation in which the question of what the city needs has already been answered: it needs, for example, a ship-builder to equip the harbor. In the example, the remaining choices concern which ship-builder should advise and how to follow that ship-builder’s advice. But Socrates means more than what he says. What he has not said but what must also be considered is the initial choice about which the assembly must deliberate.48 This initial deliberation of the assembly does not essentially concern the knowledge that belongs to the specific

48. I take Socrates’s examples of ship and wall-building as evidence that he is very well aware of the cases when rhetoric is most effective. He has entirely anticipated and perhaps even provoked Gorgias’s references to Themistocles and Pericles as political advisers to the city. Gorgias does not offer an example of generalship, the other craft Socrates explicitly mentioned. On this front, we readers should perhaps think of the debate between Nicias and Alcibiades and the Athenians’s subsequent disastrous deliberation concerning the Sicilian expedition. See Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Book 6, chapters 9-14. See also Saxonhouse, “An Unspoken Theme in Plato’s Gorgias: War” for a nuanced and compelling description of how the Peloponnesian War permeates and Thucydides’s account of it echoes throughout the Gorgias. 144 crafts. In this context, questions of wall-building are not questions merely about wall-building; they are also and ultimately questions about the welfare and preservation of the city, its citizens, and the principles of its regime. The relevant question is not who is the best craftsman orhow best to conduct a craft. The relevant question is what is best for the city. On this question, the best wall-builder’s knowledge of how best to build a wall is, at best, ancillary. So a new question arises, although it is not explicitly asked: who is best equipped to answer the question of what is best for the city?49 Just as this question is implied, Socrates calls attention to Gorgias and his relationship to the audience. Socrates even gives voice totheaudi- ence’s supposed silent thoughts: “You [Gorgias] must suppose that when you’re being questioned by me, you’re also being questions by them [the surrounding Athenians]: ’What will be in it for us, Gorgias, if we join up with you?’” (445d). In doing so, Socrates points towards an answer to the relevant question by prodding the audience to self-reflection. When it comes to determining what is best for Athens, the Athenians citizens are the ones who must answer.

Socrates provokes the audience to self-reflection along two levels, resulting in two interpretations of the shame that Socrates claims prevents the audience from voicing their own thoughts. The most obvious level concerns the audience as both potential students of Gorgias and potential masters of Gorgias’s craft. Along this level, the would-be students are ashamed perhaps because they have already to some extent committed to learning from Gorgias before learning what effect it may have on their50 city. Thinking of themselves as both students and practitioners of rhetoric prompts another level of self-reflection. The surrounding Athenian cit-

izens must consider themselves not only as possible persuaders, but also as those who may be

persuaded. Socrates’s foregoing allusive examples to Themistocles and Pericles confirm that the

49. This question is similar to the one raised inthe Protagoras, although there the question was posed in an explicitly democratic context. Even though Athens’s democratic regime is not mentioned here, it cannot be forgotten. Consequently, I do not think it correct to assume on this discrepancy thatthe Gorgias is more concerned with political leadership than with citizenship, pace Wallach, The Platonic Political ,Art 189.

50. We should remember here Socrates’s warning to Hippocrates about sophistry being internalized before it could be evaluated; see Protagoras 313c–314b. This may be one of the ways sophistry and rhetoric get mixedup with one another, as Socrates mentions later at Gorgias 464c. 145

Athenian citizens can occupy both termina of the activity of rhetoric. The shame preventing them from cross-examining Gorgias, then, may reside in acknowledging that they too may yet or have already comprised the unteachable crowd whose convictions seem to be mere playthings of the accomplished rhetor.

Yet this very self-reflection about their shame raises the possibility of resisting thestate of affairs that prompts this shame. This self-reflection allows the citizen to see his beliefsas ultimately in his own hands, to consider himself responsible for his own beliefs concerning what is best for his city.51 For this attentive citizen, then, learning about Gorgias’s craft need notmake him an aspiring manipulator of other citizens’ beliefs. It can instead enable him to recognize when such manipulation is at work on him. There is now a new question: whether advisers such as Pericles and Themistocles convinced their fellow citizens by rhetoric or whether their fellow citizens were convinced by the genuine benefit for the city. Once this question suggests itself, rhetoric’s power becomes visible in a new way—in a way that undermines that very power. To the attentive citizens, when Socrates speaks for them, it does not sound like a plea forGorgias to expand further upon rhetoric’s power. Instead, Socrates’s questions are critical, self-reflective questions: What happens to us if we follow Gorgias, if we allow rhetoric to be the way our beliefs are formed regarding not only the just and the unjust things but also all matters concerning the city’s well-being?

From Gorgias’s response, it is clear that he hears in these questions an invitation to say more about rhetoric’s power. Gorgias’s elaboration now to the attentive citizen sounds more and more unsettling, but from Gorgias’s perspective the conversation remains an advertising opportunity. Gorgias does not detect the sea change that he audience has undergone. Perhaps because of his eagerness to promote the power of rhetoric, Gorgias also does not register, at least not explicitly, that Socrates does not agree with his suggestion that Pericles and Themistocles

51. Lest this citizen sound too much like an enlightened man (aspiring to Kant’s “sapere aude!”, say), this responsibility is not a starting point accruing to each individual by virtue of his individuality, but a reflective achievement attained only in a communal context. 146 persuaded the Athenians with rhetoric.52 Socrates may not agree that all of Athens’s advisers prevail because they are rhetors, but he does not deny that rhetoric can have this power. Indeed, I

believe Socrates is genuinely amazed at the power of rhetoric as Gorgias describes it—even calling

it preternatural (δαιμονία). Emboldened by Socrates’s seeming concession, Gorgias then launches

into his longest speech. As Gorgias begins his speech with a boast of the control rhetoric exercises on all other powers, we should keep in mind the parameters of inquiry Socrates has established

by pointing to Gorgias’s dual role as instructor and practitioner. In the next movement, we see

Gorgias’s speech divide along these lines and this divide threatens incoherence.

At the close of the second movement, Socrates has continued his organized exposure of

the problem of knowledge in rhetoric in no small part by inducing Gorgias to expand on the power of rhetoric. He has also and importantly elevated the audience’s attention to reflective

but also is not wholly commanded by Gorgian rhetoric. This persuasion is one that Socrates has

modeled by his methodological asides. This persuasion calls for the recognition and clarification of suspicions, an orderly progression that does not rest on guesses or snatches at too-quick

conclusions, a commitment to cross-examination despite possible shame, and finally a search for

belief intimately related to a desire to know.53

52. See Gorgias 517a: “If [Pericles, Themistocles, and others] were rhetoricians, they weren’t using true rhetoric . . . or the pandering sort either.” From this claim, it seems that Socrates is allowing for another kind of rhetoric as well, perhaps one not nearly as noble as true rhetoric but also not so shameful as pandering rhetoric. Perhaps this rhetoric is nearer the one Gorgias himself practices, as opposed to the one that Polus desires, for example.

53. To anticipate and clarify: I believe that the desire to know that functions so essentially in this new possibility of civic persuasion is not and cannot be the same erotic desire for truth that prompts Socrates to be a lover of philosophy. This persuasion must work within the political fora and therefore within the attendant circumstances. There is a practical limit to this persuasion, both in the sense that there are limits to time and depth ofinvestigation available, and in the sense that the persuasion must culminate in an action: the defendant must be acquitted or convicted, the ships will be built or will not be built. Consequently, the desire to know in this persuasion is crucially motivational and normative but still subordinate to the needs of the city; it cannot be an unceasing striving for truth that remains essentially open to further and further investigation. 147

Distinguishing & Unifying Speaker and Speech: 456a-461b

The third movement culminates in a return to the issue of rhetoric’s relationship with knowledge, which relationship ultimately undermines its previous claims to power. Gorgias’s speech initiates this movement and is comprised of dual claims. In the first half he comments on the production of persuasion and in the second half on the production of persuaders. The first half is praise of persuasive speech, and the second half is a defense for producers of persuasive speakers. These halves do not fit together unproblematically, and this ill fit leads Gorgias atlast to his refutation.

Gorgias’s speech begins by capitalizing on the momentum granted to rhetoric’s claim to power by Socrates’s admission that rhetoric’s power seems demonically great. Gorgias follows up on his claim that it is the rhetor’s advice which prevails, but he now shifts away from the political and returns to the domain of the crafts, in particular, medicine. The opening line of Gorgias’s speech confirms about the crafts what has thus far only been hinted at: Gorgias understands the crafts primarily in terms of power.54 Consequently he can claim that rhetoric rules all the crafts because it can capture the totality of power.55 As evidence for this claim, Gorgias appeals to an example from his own experience. The example indicates the superiority of rhetoric’s power over the other crafts precisely because it is not constrained by the requirement of knowledge. It is by rhetoric alone that Gorgias persuades the intransigent patient;56 rhetoric without knowl-

edge of the other crafts empowers the efficacy of the other crafts. While this claim certainly releases rhetoric from the toilsome requirement of knowledge, it also raises a frightening possi-

54. Gorgias 456a: “If you only know the whole of it, Socrates, that [rhetoric] has practically all powers gathered up for itself. [εἰ πάντα γε εἰδείης, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὅτι ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἁπάσας τὰς δυνάμεις συλλαβοῦσα ὑφ᾽ αὑτῇ ἔχει.]”

55. There is, admittedly, a clear counterexample to Gorgias’s claim, namely, that rhetoric cannot persuade those who are not ignorant, that is, the truly knowledgable, against their knowledge. Hence, Gorgias includes the qualifier ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν,as “ it were all powers.”

56. Perhaps the audience, still in a reflective register, discerns another possibility between following the doctor’s order because one knows the medical art and following it because one is persuaded by the rhetorical art. The patient who acquires a belief out of a desire for truth may need neither Gorgias’s rhetoric nor medical knowledge in order follow the medical advice. 148 bility. Gorgias’s example assumes that he persuades the patient of what his brother or any other doctor recommends, but there is no guarantee of this fraternity between rhetoric and medicine.57

Rhetoric’s power, untethered by knowledge, could just as easily—if not more easily!—convince the patient to follow the opposite of the doctor’s orders. I believe that Gorgias is sensitive to this unsaid possibility, for he quickly returns to the political realm of the Assembly where the stakes are winning favor by speeches and not losing lives. Yet, the unsaid possibility now echoes in the realm of the political—for the speeches of the political fora also concern life and death—perhaps less immediately than medicine but more comprehensively.

Gorgias seems to sense that he has overextended rhetoric’s power, for he shifts to a defense not only of rhetoric but also of himself as a producer of other rhetors. He begins his defense by comparing rhetoric with other crafts, specifically competitive crafts.58 Using an analogy to

combative competitive crafts, Gorgias asserts that the possession of power does not necessitate

the use of it. Gorgias claims that the boxer should not use his craft to “strike, wound, or kill

his friends” just because he has learned to (4456d).59 Gorgias’s does not commit himself to the claim that the boxer or the rhetor should never use his craft for harm, only that possession ofthe

craft does not suffice for its harmful use. The craft is neutral, supplying of itself “nomorereason

[οὐδέν τι μᾶλλον τούτου ἕνεκα]” for its ill use than for its just use. And because the craft does

not necessitate its ill use, its ill use does not necessitate blaming the teacher of the craft. Gorgias

distinguishes between speaker and speech in the cases of the student and the teacher to such an

57. I believe that Weiss, “Oh, Brother! The Fraternity of Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Gorgias,” 201, too blithely co-opts Socrates’s silence about Gorgias’s example as a sign of his approval. It could also be the case that Socrates does not push the ominous character of the example because Gorgias becomes aware that he himself may have pushed rhetoric’s power too far to be safe.

58. As noted above, Gorgias understands the crafts primarily as modes of wielding power and he understands the most powerful of the crafts as competitive. So inasmuch as rhetoric governs all the other crafts, allcrafts are subject to competition; see Gorgias 456b-c.

59. The addendum of “friends” here implies that it may be permissible to strike, wound, or kill enemies. Or, in the case of rhetoric, it may be permissible to convict one’s enemies. No mention is made about using rhetoric to protect one’s friends. Indeed, I argue below that Socrates will say that friendship is impossible for the one who lives according to the political principles presupposed by rhetoric. See Gorgias 507e. 149 extent that blame cannot cross the rift. Base students do not imply the baseness of either thecraft or the master craftsman; the fault remains entirely in the students’ faulty characters.

If this were all Gorgias claimed, an argument perhaps could have been made against the teacher of rhetoric on grounds of negligence or the irresponsible transmission of his craft, but such an argument would have been tendentious at best. It is Gorgias’s assertion of the just intentions of the rhetorician (that is, the teacher of rhetoric) that seals him into a contradiction.60

Twice he asserts this, once by extension in the analogy of rhetoric to other combative crafts at

456e1-3 (“for these [master craftsmen] passed on their craft to be used in a just manner [ἐκεῖνοι

μὲν γάρ παρέδοσαν ἐπὶ τῷ δικαίως”]); and again explicitly about the rhetorician at the end of his speech, 457b7-c1 (“for he [the teacher of rhetoric] passed it on for just use [ἐκεῖνος μὲν γάρ ἐπὶ δικαίᾳ χρείᾳ”]). Gorgias insists on this point not merely because of the idiosyncrasies of his situation, namely, being a foreign teacher during a time of war. He is driven to it by the very nature of rhetoric, for Gorgias knows all too well the suggestive power of rhetoric.61 He must guard against even the appearance of negligence, for an inadequate case for his offense does not serve as an adequate defense. He must insist that the teacher of rhetoric intends its just use, not only for his personal safety but also for the very possibility of effective rhetoric.62

60. I will make clear exactly how this is the crucial claim below when I address Socrates’s refutation of Gorgias. Briefly, the contradiction resides in the impossibility of it being simultaneously true that some studentsuse rhetoric unjustly, that rhetoric’s power consists in making one’s intentions reality, and that the teacher’s intentions are only for its just use. This view of Gorgias’s central inconsistency does not turn on a personal vulnerability of Gorgias (as Kahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias,” 84, has it), nor on Gorgias’s claims to knowledge (which, as John Cooper, “Socrates and Plato in Plato’s Gorgias,” in Reason and Emotion (1999), 29–75, 47, notes, would have to belong to rhetoric a such in order for the inconsistency to hold on those grounds). Gorgias’s inconsistency is an inconsistency that belongs to rhetoric proper, but not on account of any knowledge claims it makes. Rhetoric must present itself as both powerful and salutary, and this incompatible self-presentation is the true heart of Gorgias’s inconsistency. To the extent that this inconsistency is not the one Socrates explicitly draws out but does involve Gorgias as a teacher of rhetoric, I agree with Doyle, “Socrates and Gorgias,” 18-20.

61. I return to this self-defeating character of rhetoric more thematically in chapter five of this dissertation.

62. I make this argument in greater detail in chapter five. For now, I offer as support the comments Moss, “The Doctor and the Pastry Chef: Pleasure and Persuasion in Plato’s Gorgias,” 241-242, makes concerning rhetoric’s essential inability to to gainsay popular morality. I can hardly imagine a more popularly moral position than that one should intend justice. 150

Socrates does not expose Gorgias’s contradiction, though it is clear that he immediately recognizes it.63 Instead of calling Gorgias out on this disharmony, he reflects again on the conduct of the conversation. In doing so, he recalls the divide between instruction and conviction and again hints at a third option that neither attains to the best nor sinks to the worst. Thebest case of speech between people, it seems, is a dialogue comprised at least in part by definitions in which mutual learning and teaching occurs.64 This best case is not easy, says Socrates, though the source of the difficulty is not named. The cause ofthe worst case of speech between people is clearly identified, however: the worst happens because of the characters of the speakers. In this case, the speakers are severe, mistrustful, accusatory, jealous, and insulting. The end result is shame on the part of the speakers and annoyance on the part of the audience. Socrates raises these cases in order to contrast them to the present case. While Socrates explicitly denies that he desires the worst case, he also does not admit or even suggest that he desires the best case. Instead, he again describes his own character, again invites Gorgias (and the audience) to identify with it, and again, I claim, identifies a hallmark of the alternative kind of convictional persuasion. At this point it is helpful to reiterate that Socrates presents himself as an example not qua philosopher but qua Athenian citizen. The goal is not the best case of

human speech absolutely, but the best case that can be expected among a group of citizens called

to make a judgment. The stated goal for the present speakers is to find pleasure in being refuted,

that is, to prefer and moreover to enjoy the loss of false opinion over the success of one’s own opinion. To persuade oneself of something in the way Socrates describes is not to believe what

one wants but to want to believe what has withstood refutation. In other words, one is not

persuaded of a belief because it is his own, but he makes it his own because he finds it worth

believing after subjecting it to scrutiny. By dint of this aim, this kind of persuasion can layclaim

63. See Gorgias 457e: “It seems to me you’re now saying things that don’t quite follow from or harmonize with what you said at first about rhetoric.” I address below why Socrates does not follow up on this contradiction.

64. This is the closest we come to a description of a pristine, ideal dialectic. It is not, however, whatisinfact occurring nor is there any indication that it could occur. Furthermore, Socrates does not indicate what characters are required for this kind of speaking, perhaps because no such characters are present. 151 to a probity essentially absent from rhetorical persuasion and a practicability essentially absent from instructional persuasion.

Even though Gorgias claims to be the same sort of character as Socrates describes himself to be, he clearly does not desire to be confronted with the contradiction Socrates mentions. He is not persuaded of the pleasure in being refuted. His appeal to the preference of the audience is a weak attempt to avoid the refutation, which weakness is due not least to Gorgias’s ignoring that fact that the audience is enjoying the conversation. Chaerephon, articulating the sentiment expressed by the θόρυβος or clamor of the Athenian audience, and Callicles, invoking his own superlative pleasure, implore Gorgias and Socrates to continue.65 With a final push from Socrates,

Gorgias admits that it would be shameful for him to be unwilling to continue, citing his previous advertisement as the source of his shame. He said before that anyone could ask him anything; to refuse to answer now would be too blatant a reversal. In the end, then, he acquiesces to the wishes of the audience.66

The action of the dialogue at this point indicates the role that the division of speakerand speech plays in the argument. Gorgias had first united the speaker and his speech by claiming that through his speech the rhetor can make his own opinions prevail. He then separated the craft of speaking from the speaker in his attempt to save the rhetorician from being taintedby the harm potentially done by his students. The action at this moment shows the dubitability of both claims. In one way, Gorgias is divided from his speech as it is clear that he no longer wishes to continue the conversation; in another way, Gorgias is united with his speech as it is clear that he cannot deny the wishes of the crowd.

What can be Gorgias’s thoughts as he resumes his conversation with Socrates? Socrates has told Gorgias that he sees a contradiction in Gorgias’s speeches so far. This contradiction is

65. On the political function of θόρυβος from audiences, see Keum, “Why Did Socrates Conduct His Dia- logues Before an Audience?,” 415–416.

66. Here, despite all his putative power, Gorgias does not do what he wishes—a fate the subsequent interlocutors, and the tyrant, share. See Gorgias, 468d-470c. 152 between rhetoric’s power and the rhetorician’s justice.67 Given that there are students who use rhetoric unjustly, it cannot be the case both that through rhetoric’s power the rhetorician can convince anyone to do anything and that the rhetorician intends his craft only for just use. Perhaps it is because Gorgias feels that he can defend himself against an open accusation of injustice that he decides to commit to the defense of rhetoric’s power. Perhaps he even feels relief as Socrates seems not to take up the contradiction the between rhetoric’s power and the rhetorician’s justice, and therefore he easily—almost cheerfully—agrees that rhetoric’s power requires no knowledge of the crafts it overpowers in order to overpower them.

Socrates does take an oblique tack in his cross-examination of Gorgias. He goes after neither the rhetorician’s claim to power nor his claim to just intentions. Instead of forcing Gorgias to reverse one of his previous claims, the argument forces Gorgias to make a claim, namely, a claim to knowledge.68 After establishing the power of rhetoric over other crafts and the basis ofthis power in ignorance, Socrates asks about the epistemic basis for the power of rhetoric concerning the just and unjust, the beautiful and the shameful, the good and the bad. Gorgias is compelled to say that he will teach and therefore must know about such things, otherwise he undermines his claim to intend his craft for just use. For he cannot intend what he is ignorant of.

With this admission, Socrates returns the conversation to the power of rhetoric and again to a comparison with other crafts. He constructs an analogy in support of the claim that“each one who has learned each [craft] is the sort of person his knowledge turns him into.” (460b). The analogy is weak and obviously so, but this obvious weakness is part of Socrates’s strategy. There are many ways to dismantle the analogy. It could be easily claimed that knowing about carpentry

67. Murray, “Plato on Power, Moral Responsibility and the Alleged Neutrality of Gorgias’ Art of Rhetoric,” 361, points out that rhetoric’s claim to omnipotence occludes its claim to moral neutrality, let alone moral soundness. His analysis, however, focuses only on dismantling Gorgias’s “blame the students” defense.

68. As evidenced by the numerous scholarly disputations over Gorgias’s refutation, if this is the claim by which Gorgias commits to a contradiction, then some interpretive elaboration is required to make clear just what is that contradiction. See Doyle, “Socrates and Gorgias,” 11-18 for an analysis and critique of representative views. Again, I agree with Doyle’s conclusion that the contradiction in Gorgias is prior to his knowledge claims, though we disagree about the source of Gorgias’s confusion. He takes the root of Gorgias’s confusion to be an underdeveloped account of his own beliefs (20), whereas I take it to be the very nature of the rhetoric he represents. 153 may make one into a carpenter but that he is not therefore always doing carpentry. Likewise, it could be easily claimed that knowing justice does not entail acting justly. Or, the analogy could fall apart of the point of dissimilarity that when one learns of carpentry, one does not learn also of its opposite, but both just and unjust things are learned about in this case. None of these escape routes are available to Gorgias, however. Gorgias cannot say that his student, having been instructed about the just things, will not always do justice or will sometimes do the unjust things he has also learned about.69 This is because Gorgias’s instruction is part of Gorgias’s persuasion and

Gorgias’s persuasion is all-powerful. If Gorgias’s rhetoric is truly powerful—powerful enough to persuade a patient to submit to a painful medical procedure—then this rhetoric should also be capable of persuading any student of rhetoric to use it justly. Gorgias is compelled to say that his students will always be just, otherwise he undermines his own claim to the power of rhetoric.70

The contradiction between Gorgias’s justice and his power has not been and will notbe refuted. Instead, Gorgias’s admission that he will teach the just and the unjust things to his students doubles down on the disharmonious position. Socrates eschews the more straightforward confrontation and pushes the point of the rhetorician’s claim to knowledge and consequently his claim to teach what he knows in order to pursue a more precious quarry. Though Socrates has stated baldly that the greatest evil is to have false belief about these matters, he does not actually refute any of Gorgias’s beliefs.71 He alludes to the contradiction at the end of his conversation with Gorgias but only to dismiss it by trading on an ambiguity. He thought that Gorgias was not

69. Contra Irwin, Plato Gorgias, 126.

70. It would be quite foolish for him to aver that his craft can make men powerful at having their opinions prevail, but to deny himself that same power to prevail over his students. Consequently, either Gorgias’s power fails or his intentions towards justice fail.

71. Only Gorgias’s conditional claim, “if a student uses rhetoric unjustly, then his teacher ought not be punished,” could be said to have been proven false, for Gorgias’s position now entails that if a student uses rhetoric unjustly, his teacher should be punished. I think it more accurate, however, to say that this claim has been proven trivial, since it has been demonstrated that the protasis will never obtain. Gorgias’s present position actually entails that if a student uses rhetoric unjustly—which will never happen because Gorgias will teach him about justice and he will consequently become just—then his teacher should be punished. Granted, denying that there are unjust students of rhetoric is an obvious falsehood, as the character of Polus will soon make absolutely clear, but it is a falsehood not acknowledged here. 154 harmonious with himself, but now he has discovered that Gorgias and he are in agreement that the rhetorician is powerless to use his rhetoric unjustly—although Socrates will soon argue that there is no power to commit injustice.

In the end, Socrates presses Gorgias on none of his dubitable claims—but why? I suggest that the false belief that Socrates is truly after is neither that the rhetorician cannot be as powerful as he says, nor that he cannot be as just as he says. Instead, Socrates aims to refute not the rhetorician but his rhetoric. In fact it is precisely through the rhetorician’s compulsion to save himself from refutation that Socrates is able to reveal the false claim of rhetoric. This false claim concerns rhetoric’s compatibility with the practice of justice in the city. As this claim is only implied, so also its refutation cannot be direct.72 Socrates has arranged it so that Gorgias can purchase the appearance of the compatibility between rhetoric and the city’s justice only at the price of making it clear that this is merely an appearance. The rhetorician is left defending a craft which has ultimately abandoned him.

Rhetoric’s omnipotence has left its practitioner powerless. Rhetoric is supposed to rule its audience absolutely, but the audience’s impression of Gorgias shackles him to a claim he otherwise would not make. In the end, rhetoric destroys the unity of speaker and speech. The use of rhetoric terminates in the eventual powerlessness to say what one truly believes. I believe this is because rhetoric appropriates speech meant for the common good and tasks it for the exclusive individual good, a good that must be understood in terms of competition.73 I do not claim that the audience understands the cause of Gorgias’s conundrum or of rhetoric’s incompatibility with the city’s practice of justice. I do claim that Socrates has vividly presented this incompatibility and the

72. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 37-38, takes the fact that Socrates “never delivers the final blows that one would expect if he were trying to discredit Gorgias” as evidence that Socrates is not engaged in a “larger project aimed at exposing the sophists as teachers of injustice and protecting the young from the dangers of sophistic education” (37). While I agree that Socrates never delivers this final blow, in contrast, I note both that 1) he does not need to since it is clear to all that Gorgias, the supposed master of speech, has gotten tangled in his speech, and 2) the dialogue is not over and neither is Socrates’s project of discrediting rhetoric.

73. I make this case more extensively throughout this chapter as Socrates exposes more and more of the nature of rhetoric. 155 resulting quandry. For the less thoughtful among the audience, there is now a shade of suspicion upon the facade of rhetoric’s power; for the more thoughtful, there is a urgent suggestion of the danger of rhetoric to the practice of justice.

Polus & Socrates: 461b-481b

Polus’s intervention threatens to obscure the work that Socrates has done by means of his conversation with Gorgias. His speech both hits some marks and misses others, and he does not seem aware of which is which. Polus is the living reality of the image of rhetoric Socrates will soon provide. He operates without sense or self-awareness yet he threatens to succeed all the same.

Polus rightly recognizes that Socrates does not really believe what he has just said about rhetoric, namely, the assumption that “rhetoric, which always makes speeches about justice, could never be an unjust thing” and that “the rhetorician is powerless to use his rhetoric unjustly or to wish to do injustice” (461a). On the other hand, Polus does not detect the gravity of Gorgias’s situation, asserting instead that Gorgias has assented to these claims that no one believes out of a desire to save face.74 Much more than Gorgias’s reputation is at stake if he fails to make these concessions— yet Polus seems unaware of the danger, choosing to expose his master’s lies in order to save the craft about which he lied.75 The excuse he grants his teacher is that Gorgias here actsjust as anyone would (461c), but this excuse undermines the very reputation that it is intended to save, for Gorgias has staked his renown on being exceptional, on being better than just anyone.

Immediately after bluntly exposing his teacher’s falsehood, Polus then accuses Socrates ofcoarse

74. There is a question among scholars whether Polus’s diagnosis of his teacher’s fault is accurate. Kahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias,”83, agrees that it is shame that drive Gorgias into contradiction, but disagrees with Polus’s account of that shame, since Polus says “anyone” would admit what Gorgias does but Kahn claims that Gorgias in particular felt the need to make the fatal claim. Cooper, “Socrates and Plato in Plato’s Gorgias,” 46, denies Polus’s diagnosis outright, claiming that shame in no way motivated Gorgias’s claim. Doyle, “Socrates and Gorgias,” 18-23, gives a more nuanced position that grants that Gorgias may be shamed but warns against too easily assenting to Polus’s authority. I agree with Doyle that we should be wary of Polus’s ability to diagnose his teacher; moreover, I argue below that Polus projects the source of Gorgias’s shame from his own underdeveloped sense of rhetoric’s capacities.

75. Polus thinks the failure belongs to his teacher and is rudely occasioned by Socrates’s meddling; he does not for a moment suspect that the failure may be due to the nature of rhetoric itself. 156 manners! Polus is a blundering mix of intention and execution. He is a compact instance of what Socrates will soon expand when he gives his own account of rhetoric. In Polus, we find a man who does not agree with himself and does not actually do what he seems to want to do.

Socrates makes of this impatient Polus a patient of sorts, for Polus—more clearly than his teacher—bears the symptoms of rhetoric. Socrates thus presents his etiology of rhetoric in his conversation with Polus, rather than with Gorgias. But Socrates’s goal is not only to heal Polus but also to condemn rhetoric. Using Polus as the key witness against his own “art,” Socrates puts rhetoric itself on a sort of trial. He proceeds by dividing what rhetoric collapses and uniting what rhetoric cleaves. In this way, Socrates uses his conversation with Polus not only to reveal more of the nature of rhetoric but also to indicate the extent of the implications that rhetoric bears for the practice of justice.

An Image to Reveal the Reality of Rhetoric: 461b-466a

In the course of the discussion, Socrates will use Polus to reveal the reality of rhetoric and thereupon condemn it. He does so by crafting an image of rhetoric, a true image thatis confirmed by Polus himself. Though he previously dismissed the young student for thesakeofa discussion with his teacher, Socrates engages with Polus now for a number of reasons. The first is that Socrates’s discussion with Gorgias has, as Socrates will admit, revealed nothing of what

Gorgias really thinks about rhetoric. Gorgias has put on a show of rhetoric. Though Socrates has alluded to rhetoric’s nature in his conversation with Gorgias, the nature of rhetoric has yet to be essentially exposed. The second reason is that Polus’s attempt to save rhetoric, evenatthe expense of his rhetoric teacher, may be effective if left unanswered. Polus claims that it isthe personal shame of Gorgias that brought the conversation to this point, and Polus’s excuse for his teacher may indeed undermine Socrates’s aim of displaying something of the nature of rhetoric.76 Socrates consents to converse with Polus primarily for the sake of the Athenian audience who

76. Indeed, I have already mentioned many scholars who, though perhaps disagreeing with Polus on the particulars, nevertheless agree that it is the man and not his craft that is refuted. 157 still surrounds the speakers and who may believe Polus’s defense. Socrates thus undertakes to uncover the deeper problem between rhetoric and justice embedded in Polus’s response. As the dialogue proceeds, Socrates discerns, discloses, and ultimately attempts to dismantle Polus’s motivation for defending rhetoric.77

Polus’s motivation for defending rhetoric against absurdity and weakness is rooted in his commitment to justice. Polus’s sense of justice is thoroughly conventional and unreflective, and it is this sense of justice that accounts for all of his responses to Socrates.78 In Polus’s mind, rhetoric must be powerful and rational, otherwise justice becomes impotent and absurd. Polus relies on this reasoning in order to account for exactly what Gorgias was forced to denounce: the success of unjust men. By Polus’s lights, it is undeniable that unjust men not only get away with their injustice but also gain happiness by it. Polus promotes the efficacy of rhetoric in order to reconcile this truth about unjust men with any power or rationality for justice. The use of rhetoric by unjust men—not any inherent weakness or incongruity in justice—accounts for their flouting of justice. There is a reasonable cause for the limitations of justice and thatcauseis rhetoric. Socrates’s suggestion that rhetoric is incompatible with justice threatens to undo what power justice does have, for that power is guaranteed only by rhetoric’s power. Polus’s indignant response to Socrates is not born from a protectiveness of his teacher. Rather, Polus is righteously indignant; he takes Socrates’s attack on rhetoric to be an attack on justice.

77. Many scholars who address Socrates’s refutation of Polus pay too little attention to the dramatic context of the conversation and the character of Polus this context reveals; see most notably Gregory Vlastos, “Was Polus Refuted?,” The American Journal of Philology 88, no. 4 (1967): 454–460, Gerasimos Santas, Socrates: Philosophy in Plato’s Early Dialogues (London, 1979), and Irwin, Plato Gorgias. This strict focus on the logical structure of the argument has inspired a scholarly reaction that overcorrects by admitting that Polus’s refutation is narrowly ad hominem, but instructively so; see Kahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias,” 82–84, and Richard McKim, “Shame and Truth in Plato’s Gorgias,” in Platonic Writings/Platonic Readings, ed. Charles Griswold (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 44–47. Scholars who find a rich middle ground between these extremes include Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias,64–73, Christina Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, in Prudes, Perverts, Tyrants (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 64–78, and R. Bensen Cain, “Shame and Ambiguity in Plato’s Gorgias,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 41, no. 3 (2008): 212–237; my interpretation falls in this middle ground but will differ from these scholars in ways I note below.

78. See Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 85, and Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 74 for corroboration and explication of Polus’s conventionalism. 158

Socrates responds to Polus’s interjection with a hint at what he intends to use Polus for: as sons correct fathers, Polus will correct his and Gorgias’s representation of rhetoric. Yet, Socrates sets conditions to Polus’s correction: Polus must restrain his speeches in length, and he must be willing to answer when asked. Polus agrees to both conditions without negotiation and abides by them throughout his discussion with Socrates. Despite these concessions Polus is still a trouble- some conversation partner. Even as Socrates gives his first account of rhetoric as an artless knack

(ἐμπειρία)79 for gratification and pleasure, Polus demonstrates the aptitude of this description by too quickly clinging to associations. Polus glimpses at connections and then instantly gratifies his glimpses by articulating them. On the one hand, this makes Polus the ideal candidate to reveal candidly the reality of rhetoric, on the other hand, it makes him difficult to manage.80 In the midst of comparing rhetoric to haute cuisine (ὀψοποιία), Socrates drafts Gorgias to help restrain his student (462d-464b).81 He prepares for his call upon Gorgias by voicing his hesitation in giving his own account rhetoric, lest Gorgias think Socrates is poking fun at him.

Even in declaring his intention not to poke fun at Gorgias, he notes that he is unsure whether Gorgias would rankle at the upcoming description precisely because Gorgias’s account of rhetoric remains unclear. Gorgias so much failed in making his own art clear that Socrates does not know whether Gorgias would contest not calling it an art at all. Even so, by signalling his hesitancy to gall Gorgias, Socrates can be somewhat assured that whether or not Gorgias is galled, he will not withdraw himself from the conversation nor shelter his student. Socrates in fact neutralizes this potential impoliteness so much that when he asks Gorgias to intervene for his unruly student,

79. There is a long-acknowledged difficulty in translating ἐμπειρία. I prefer “knack” because of theemphasis this translation places on a knack’s resistance to self-reflection and explanation. “Knack” does miss another relevant characteristic of ἐμπειρία, namely, an unreflective sensitivity to circumstances cultivated by experience. “Experience” is the other favored translation for the term. See the entry in Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon.

80. Polus’s name means “colt.” I address his thumotic personality below.

81. The term ὀψοποιία is variously translated as ”cookery,” (Irwin) ”pastry cooking,” (Moss, et al.) or”cooking tasty food” (Sachs). I have chosen haute cuisine, despite the contemporary sense that it is truly an art, because of its emphasis on style and pleasure over substance and sustenance. ὄψον first refers to meat but later signifies any relish added to a meal; see again the entry in Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon. 159

Gorgias does. Gorgias takes over for his student briefly, perhaps offering himself as an example to Polus just as Socrates had offered himself as an example to Gorgias.82 With Gorgias mediating,

Socrates is able to elaborate on his second account of rhetoric: rhetoric as a simulation of a part of politics.

Socrates unites his two accounts of rhetoric as a knack for gratification and as a simulation (εἴδωλον) of a part of politics within a complex schema. In order to build this doubled schema of arts and their simulations, Socrates secures two distinctions. The first is a distinction between body and soul. The second distinction is between seeming and being. These distinctions intersect with the notion of a good condition, which Socrates later distinguishes, though less sharply, into health and beauty. The result is an interrelated array of four real arts which minister to thisgood condition of the body or of the soul, and their correlative simulations. Rhetoric is a simulation of the practice of justice (δικαιοσύνη)83 just as haute cuisine is a simulation of medicine. Haute cuisine pretends to know the best foods for the body, and rhetoric pretends to know the best judgments and actions for the soul.

82. This is one of the more compelling pieces of evidence that Gorgias has turned friendly towards Socrates’s cause. See Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 55-58, Long, Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy, 55, and Nicolás Parra, “Friendship and War: True Political Art as the Alliance of Philosophy and Rhetoric in Plato’s Gorgias,” ideas y valores 61 (2012): 59–83 for claims about the potential friendship between rhetoric and philosophy. My understanding of Gorgias here and as the dialogue continues is that he is curious to see Socrates in action. I do not believe that he approves of Polus’s explanation of what has transpired between himself and Socrates, and so feels no allegiance to protect his student from Socrates’s refutation. The sense I have of Gorgias is that he is set in his rhetorical ways, well assured of his reputation, and interested primarily in not getting into too much trouble. He does not see Socrates as a true threat to his person, and even if he does detect Socrates’s purpose in trying to expose rhetoric to the surrounding Athenian citizens, it seems that he is not concerned with Socrates’s success. I think it possible that Gorgias is genuinely interested in hearing what Socrates thinks about rhetoric, though not as probable that he will be convinced by Socrates’s account. Keum, “Why Did Socrates Conduct His Dialogues Before an Audience?,” 433-435, offers a fascinating and convincing argument for Gorgias’s interventions after his own refutation, claiming thatthere is a transformative effect of being an audience member party to a refutation and such a transformation hasoccurred in Gorgias. The refutation of another is compelling, and Gorgias is therefore interested in seeing the others fare against Socrates’s arguments concerning rhetoric now that he himself does not have to occupy the uncomfortable position opposite Socrates.

83. I take δικαιοσύνη to mean the practice of justice as opposed to justice the virtue. The fact that this term refers to the care of the soul that brings about its good condition as opposed to simply its good condition supports my sense. Furthermore, taking δικαιοσὐνη as the correlate of medicine, it makes sense that restoring health to the body will find its psycho-political correlate in restoring justice to the city and in the soul oftheoffender. 160

Socrates supports this distinction between being and seeming, between false and genuine arts, by returning to his first characterization of rhetoric and haute cuisine and the distinction between a knack and an art. Rhetoric is not a genuine art because it has no rational account (λόγος) about the nature of what it presents or about how it makes its presentations whereby it can say what is the cause of each (465a). As Gorgias already explicitly acknowledged, rhetoric persuades about what it has no knowledge of. I believe Socrates is further elaborating on rhetoric’s ignorance: it is ignorant both of what it speaks about and of how that speech is effective. It has no account of why it is successful when it is successful, because it lacks an intrinsic and rational order. Consequently, rhetoric can only pretend to be an art. It is parasitic upon the need for the true art—the art of the practice of justice—and the order that true art brings; furthermore, it inserts itself into that needful role by flattering impersonation.84

This schema is not simply a categorizing tool. Socrates uses the arrangement toachieve a dual purpose: first, of undermining Polus’s understanding of his own “craft,” and, second,of resisting the dismissal of Gorgias’s account of rhetoric as limited merely by the person of Gorgias. With the characterization of rhetoric as a flattering impersonator, Socrates is able to explain both why rhetoric is not an art and why it seems to be an art. And Socrates must make and support both claims simultaneously or each claim loses its force. For example, Socrates cannot simply denounce rhetoric as a fake art, for he must account for its real and admitted efficacy.

By describing rhetoric as impersonating one part of politics, Socrates retains his prior admission that rhetoric seems to have extraordinarily great power to effect political events. He cannot deny

84. I take it that rhetoric lacks an intrinsic and rational order not merely because it aims at pleasure but because it aims at pleasure while competing to fulfill the function of an art that aims at a genuine good. Thusthe parasitic nature of rhetoric accounts for its being ἄλογον. In this, I follow Raphael Woolf, “Why Is Rhetoric Not a Skill,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 21, no. 2 (2004): 119–130, who argues that this account holds up against the deficiency of other accounts. Briefly, accounts that ground rhetoric’s failure to be an art in its aim atpleasurehave the difficulty of explaining why pleasure itself should be a disqualifier for art-status. Accounts that takeSocrates to be making a strictly methodological account have the difficulty of discounting the notion that the methods of rhetorical persuasion could achieve a high degree precision and predictability (consider the algorithms that predict effective advertising strategies). If the reason rhetoric is not an art is because it competes with something itcannot be, then its failure is due not to an inherent problem with pleasure or an accidental deficiency in method but because, as ibid., 127, says, it is “judged by [its competitor’s] standards.” 161 rhetoric’s efficacy, nor would such a denial negate this efficacy. Rather, Socrates mustweaken the power rhetoric wields by showing that its power is the sort that is only as effective as it is allowed to be. Flattery works only if one lets it. Rhetoric’s power is real as long as itsillusion goes unrecognized.

Polus’s understanding of rhetoric is undone by depriving it of a claim to rationality because the purpose of Polus’s understanding of rhetoric is to account for, to give a reason for the seeming contradiction between justice and happiness.85 Rhetoric is beautiful to Polus because it preserves the rationality of justice against the overwhelming evidence of justice’s inefficacy.

Rhetoric’s beauty saves justice from shameful impotence. Depriving rhetoric of its rationality is therefore tantamount to depriving it of its beauty and ultimately to depriving justice of any claim to reality. Polus’s representation of rhetoric illustrates the way it insinuates itself as a functionary of the art of politics. Not only does it make itself out to be similar to justice, but also it appropriates the conditions for the reality of justice. It flatters the one who flatters himself a lover of justice, and thereby makes a prior claim to that love. Consequently, Polus can believe in justice only if he already believes in the power of rhetoric.

Power Divided from Rhetoric: 466a-471d

It may seem—indeed, Socrates acknowledges—that his speech may be absurd, not for its content, but for its length. Despite his earlier, anticipatory restriction of Polus’s speeches,

Socrates presents his account of rhetoric in a speech far longer than Polus has made. This threat of absurdity or injustice is quashed as quickly as it is raised: Socrates explains the cause of his speech’s length and his admits that Polus may have recourse to a longer speech if Socrates does not understand Polus as Polus previously had not understood Socrates. This graciousness on

Socrates’s part calls to mind an unnamed possibility, that perhaps Polus does not understand Po-

85. Socrates obliquely acknowledges Polus’s fraught relationship with rationality by turning the conversation expressly back to him with an allusion to Anaxagoras at 465d—Anaxagoras who famously introduced the concept of νοῦς into his cosmology, but did not set it to account for anything in that cosmology. See Phaedo 97c– 98c. 162 lus. This possibility seems never to cross Polus’s mind. Indeed, Polus’s first attempt at refutation turns on the association of rhetoric and power, an association he assumes is obvious—even to

Socrates.

Instead of directly addressing Socrates’s account, Polus attempts to undermine it by drawing out its consequences, that is, by building a reductio ad absurdam. Perhaps this is why Socrates sounds his suspicion that Polus is interested still in speech-making as opposed to speech-refuting.

Socrates claims he cannot tell whether Polus is exposing his own opinion or questioning Socrates;

I believe that Polus cannot tell either. In the questioning that follows, Polus cannot help but expose his own opinions. Polus proceeds by unreflective associations and Socrates responds with accentuating divisions. Polus attempts to keep power tied to rhetoric because his understanding of and commitment to justice is already inextricable from his understanding of rhetoric. Socrates in turn attempts to separate rhetoric and power, using the distinction between seeming andbe- ing as a wedge. This distinction between seeming and being is both the one upon which rhetoric relies the most and the one it can acknowledge the least. The theme of the division between seeming and being is immediately present with Polus’s first association: reputation and power. He takes as a consequence of Socrates’s description of rhetoric that good rhetoricians would be believed to be base.86 He then takes this as an evident contradiction because he takes the power of rhetoric to be undeniable. Given the obvious power of rhetoric, Polus supposes that any rhetorician worth the title will be able to effect whatever presentation of himself he desires. Socrates in turn already begins working with the distinction between seeming and being by stating his belief that rhetors are not regarded or are not believed in at all. Although Polus initially treats belief as the manipulable material of the rhetors, it is the rhetor’s own failure of belief—that is, a mistaken belief about what is truly good—that will

86. Gorgias 466a: ἆρ᾽ οὖν δοκοῦσί σοι ὡς κόλακες ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι φαῦλοι νομίζεσθαι οἱ ἀγαθοὶ ῥήτορες; Irwin, Plato Gorgias, 34, with some justice, translates νομίζεσθαι as ”they do not count.” Wolves in sheep’s clothing decidedly do not count as sheep. 163 ultimately sever him from the power Polus now ascribes to him.87 Here is lived out the earlier claim that rhetoric does not truly understand what it works on or how it works at all.88

For Polus, the rhetor’s peculiar power lies in manipulating belief, but the purpose of possessing of that power is the same as possessing any other power: to make real whatever benefit the possessor of power desires. Socrates in turn splits desire for good from belief about the good and associates true power with the former and the rhetor’s efficacy with the latter. A true good is what is desired and true power is correlated only with this desire; the belief about a good, or what seems good, is what the rhetor works with and on. The rhetor’s (or tyrant’s) lack of intelligence (νοῡς) causes a disconnect between what really is good (and desired) and what only seems good (and is effected). Because he lacks the relevant intelligence, doing what seems bestto him will fail to bring about what is truly beneficial. Rhetoric can manipulate belief about what is beneficial and can bring that belief to action, but it cannot make what is not beneficial intowhat is beneficial. In the face of true benefit, Polus forgets the good with which he began: thegoodof being believed to be good. Polus again displays his conventionalism: he does not try to quibble about real versus seeming goods, and he does not attempt to defend a lack of intelligence. But his simplicity here also explains why he struggles to follow Socrates’s argument, for as obvious as it is to him that real goods surpass seeming goods and the possession of intelligence surpasses its lack, it is also obvious to him that rhetors and tyrants surpass others in power.

For Polus, power must include, at least in part, the power to do injustice. If injustice is truly a lack of power, then how can justice lose out to such weak injustice? Polus feels keenly that this defeat does occur and believes that denying this occasional defeat is tantamount to

87. This same failure extends also to the tyrant, but it is more blistering for the rhetor. For the rhetorworks with belief, but it is precisely a failure of belief that renders him crucially impotent. It seems that the rhetor more than any other should be able to succeed with belief, but, under Socrates’s terms, he more than most others cannot.

88. A further indication of rhetoric’s self-misunderstanding is the association of its power with the power of the tyrant. Polus’s examples of the effect of the tyrant’s power and of the rhetor’s power are consistent enough, but he does not acknowledge the fundamental difference in the way these ends are brought about. A tyrant is effective by force; his efficacy works without intelligence because it ignores what is and imposes what seems best. Arhetoris effective by persuasion; his efficacy works without intelligence because it obscures what is and impersonates what seems best. 164 consigning justice to the total defeat of being made absurd. If injustice succeeds not through the conscious application of comprehensible power but by mistaken belief made substantial, then there is no justifying injustice’s success over justice. Yet, Polus is led inexorably to this conclusion as Socrates advances the argument by making divisions which in turn tighten other associations.

Action is divided from its end, which in turn cements the relationship between desire and the end: “If anyone does anything for the sake of something, he wants not what he does but that for the sake of which he does it” (467d). Polus is compelled to agree or all rational action is lost. Then, Socrates distinguishes the good, the bad, and the in-between, which in turn clarifies the identity between desire simply and desire for the beneficial: “Those who do these things

[executing people, exiling them, or stealing their property] do them for the sake of the good” (468b). Polus again is compelled to agree, in part because rhetoric’s capacity to compel rests on this clear-cut truth that men want their good.

Ultimately, then, rhetoric is split from power precisely on the point of rhetoric’s own efficacy. For rhetoric could not be effective unless it is the case both that action followsbelief about what is good and that this belief is not set immediately by what is good but is mediated by appearance. Polus needs mediation this to be true for rhetoric to work, but does not want to say that rhetoric itself is thus mediated—rhetoric needs to be able to take everyone else in while not being taken in itself. Yet he has no way to save the rhetor from the underlying principles of his own practice. He never moves to take up the point Socrates initially urged him to defend: that rhetoric is an art and therefore that the rhetor does possess sense or intelligence. Perhaps he feels his artlessness enough to sense that he cannot defend his own lack of sense. Or perhaps the power he sees belonging to the tyrant and the rhetor does not admit of sense. The great power which he initially ascribed to the tyrants and the rhetors is so great precisely because it is not constrained by sense. Part of the immense power of the tyrant is never needing to account for himself. Now Socrates has shown that this appearance of never needing to account for himself is in reality not being able to account for himself. The rhetor recedes into the background as the 165 conversation continues: the tyrant becomes the primary focus of Polus’s response. It seems the only way forward for Polus is to forget himself as he is and to praise what he would wish to be.89

Happiness Divided from Injustice: 471d-475e

Polus’s praise of the tyrant arises in the form of attributing to Socrates envy at the tyrant’s actions. Upon being shown that he knows himself less than he thought, Polus reactively attempts the same strategy that Socrates used—claiming that he knows better what Socrates would really do than what Socrates might claim he would do. But this too is a further revelation of Polus’s own soul, for it is he that envies the tyrant, and this is presumably why he has pursued rhetoric.

The root of Polus’s conviction that the power of rhetoric safeguards the efficacy ofjusticeis the conflict between his conventional respect for justice and his conventional conviction inthe happiness of the tyrant.90 In order to save Polus’s understanding of justice from itself, Socrates now sets out to split happiness from the life of the tyrant. He effects this division by arguing for the claim that it is worse to do injustice than to suffer it.

Socrates’s argument is made to appeal to and reveal Polus’s particular understanding of justice and injustice. Again, Polus’s understanding of justice and injustice is thoroughly conventional. It is also constrained by his understanding of rhetoric. Polus is convinced in the power or rhetoric because otherwise there is no way to account for the failures of justice. For Polus, justice fails either because it is absurd to expect order from disorder or because something more powerful succeeds. The former is impossible for conventional Polus to accept, so he clingsto

89. It is important to note, with Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 75-76, that Polus chooses the life of a rhetorician, not the life a tyrant: “Polus wants the esteem and honor that he gets from gratifying his audience more than he wants the goods he would obtain through killing and torturing them, but he has not fully reconciled these desires in his own life.” This conflict within Polus accounts for the conflicting postures of envying the “happiness” of the tyrant and of being indignant at the supposed undermining of justice. The conflict I find in Polus is therefore not as Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias 62, has it, namely, a conflict between his envy at the tyrant’s happiness and his indignation at the tyrant’s injustice. As Iarguebelow, Polus’s commitment to preserving the reality and rationality of justice is not a commitment to being just himself.

90. See Xenophon, Hiero, chapter 1, section 8 for evidence that it was a common belief that the tyrant leads a particularly pleasant and enviable life. 166 the latter. Because Polus dare not live in a world devoid of justice, he must account for justice’s occasional failures. For Polus, rhetoric is the more powerful savior of the possibility of justice.

Polus preserves a place for justice by attributing its failures to the success of rhetoric. But in order for rhetoric to account for justice’s failures, it must also be compatible with justice’s successes. That is, rhetoric and justice have to be involved in the same kind of enterprise if they are each to have their efficacy. This enterprise is exclusively concerned with externalities.

Rhetoric works by manipulating appearances, by altering what seems to be the case. So too, justice works, when it works, only because it seems to. Justice works when what seems to be the case is met with appropriate reaction. The clearest case of justice’s efficacy is therefore foundin punishment, that is, when the one recognized as guilty is treated as guilty. The practice of justice, for Polus, is not concerned primarily, if at all, with whether one is actually guilty or not. Instead, it is primarily interested in punishing those who appear guilty.

Though Polus cannot find a way to combat Socrates’s argument, he also cannotfinda way to believe Socrates’s claim that those committing injustice are simply miserable, let alone that they are more miserable than those suffering injustice. I take his recalcitrance on this pointto be again founded on Polus’s deeply-set respect for this strictly external understanding of justice.

To assert that the greatest of evils is committing injustice is to disregard the inherent limitations of justice. Practicing justice requires recognition and reaction. If committing injustice is its own source of misery, what need is there for punishment or courts or rhetoric at all? It is not simply that Polus sees his supposed craft on the line. For Polus, rhetoric and justice are of apieceand both are equally at stake with Socrates’s claim.91 Polus may be wrong about what justice is, but

91. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 56-58, takes Socrates’s claim that wrongdoers are to be pitied because they harm themselves to be an unqualified corollary of the “Socratic Thesis” that injustice is the greatest of evils. This point of pitying wrongdoers is why some other have called this thesis a paradox (see Kahn,“Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias,” 85-86). Those who find this claim paradoxical perhaps feel the same indignation as Polus: pity seems either to preclude punishment or to render it redundant. But this view mistakes harm to be the whole of punishment. If healing is essential to punishment, as Socrates will soon argue, then there is nothing paradoxical in pitying the one in need of healing or in healing the one who is pitiable. 167 he is absolutely committed to what he believes it to be. His incredulity at Socrates is motivated by a perverse moral indignation.92

Polus’s understanding of punishment comes to light with his response to Socrates’s imaginative scenario of a claiming power over someone by threat of violence. In the scenario, Socrates boasts to Polus of his “marvelous and tyrannical” power because, by means of a dagger he has up his sleeve, he can put to death any one of the people around them in the agora (478d-e). Socrates uses this image to indicate what he considers to be the real life of the tyrant; Polus, however, takes this image to indicate a basic failure to understand the real life of the tyrant. For Polus, included in the tyrant’s power is the power to avoid punishment, and it is in avoiding punishment that justice is truly thwarted, not in the unjust act itself. Polus understands punishment to be the sole source of suffering for the unjust man. If the unjust escapes punishment, he escapes suffering; if the unjust man escapes punishment, he escapes any consequent evil. So Socrates’s power to threaten a man in the agora is ultimately powerless because he does not have the only power that matters: the power to separate his injustice from its consequent, conventional evil. Polus and Socrates agree that some exercises of power are better than others. They disagree on the source of that differentiation. For Polus that source is power itself, because power itself is the source of better and worse: power determines justice, not the other way around.

This basic insight is what makes Socrates’s claim that justice determines the success ofpowerso obviously false to Polus.93 Again appealing to externalities, to images, Polus makes his case by describing the situation of Archelaus, the ruler of Macedon, whose happiness seems obvious to

Polus. Happiness, like justice, is always clear. To be assured that justice is done, the unjust one must suffer at hands of another. To be assured that happiness is achieved, the happy onemust

92. This undercurrent of indignation is noticeable in Polus’s thumotic moments, which Socrates both subtly piques and, once, explicitly indicates by likening Polus to a young colt. Identifying the three interlocutors with the three parts of the soul, as some commentators have done, may be too precarious to argue from, but perhaps it is telling that in such identifications Polus represents θυμός.

93. Georg Römpp, “Der Staat und die Seele. Zum politischen Zusammenhang der Ethikdiskussion in Platons Gorgias,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 4 (1986): 586–599, 591, notes that it is “unverstandlich” to Polus that the power of political persuasion should prove impotent. 168 never suffer at the hands of another. Polus scoffs at Socrates’s insistence that he needstoknow how the ruler fares in his education and justice in order to determine the ruler’s happiness. Since, according to Polus, happiness is entirely a matter of what appears, whatever one need knowof

Archelaus’s happiness can be learned by stories of his actions and his circumstances.

Accordingly, Polus relates the tale of Archelaus’s injustice, which Polus takes to be as obvious as his happiness. For Polus the tyrant achieves the apex of both injustice and happiness.

Indeed, it becomes clear that it is by achieving the apex of injustice that the tyrant achieves the apex of happiness. Polus believes that describing the superlative greatness of Archelaus’s injustice constitutes a case for the tyrant’s happiness. Socrates claims that Polus is attempting a rhetorical refutation by means of this description (471d).94 If so, Polus has indeed failed to achieve either what seems best or what he desires. Polus blames his failure to persuade Socrates on the fact that Socrates does not want to agree. He says that Socrates does in fact see the truth of the tyrant’s happiness but that Socrates disagrees only out of desire (471e)—but this combination amounts to admitting that Polus lacks the power to do the very thing rhetoric is supposed tobe most capable of doing: persuading desires. Polus’s response here contains a severe condemnation of rhetoric: rhetoric is unable to persuade even when it is supposedly on the side of an obvious truth.

Socrates drives this point home by elaborating on the inadequacy of rhetoric for getting at truth. By acknowledging that a politically diverse array of Athenians would be witnesses— though “false witness”—for Polus’s case, Socrates admits that the case has conventional force

(472a).95 Polus may be able to achieve what seems good, namely, a winning case, but he cannot achieve what he wants, namely, to refute Socrates. Additionally, by mentioning these Athenian names, Socrates again recalls the Athenian audience to themselves and their purpose in attending

94. There are two senses of “rhetorical” here: first, a methodological sense inasmuch as Polus’s case restsof the detailed vividness of his description; second, a substantial sense inasmuch as the case for the tyrant’s happiness is a condition for the desirability of practicing rhetoric.

95. Sachs, Plato: Gorgias and Aristotle: Rhetoric, 57, n. 13, notes helpfully that the witnesses Socrates grants to Polus “reflect the diversity of Athenian political styles.” 169 to the exchange.96 In pointing to the divide between rhetoric and truth, Socrates reinforces for the audience the necessity of considering of what they are persuaded.

In this speech, Socrates also sets up his responding argument concerning happiness. He earlier had claimed that ”the beautiful and good woman or man is the happy one” (470e). Here he again associates beauty and happiness, this time saying that recognition or ignorance of who is happy and who is not constitutes the most beautiful knowledge and the most shameful lack, respectively. This second order claim implicates rhetoric in the obstruction of true happiness, for if it turns out that the tyrant is not happy, then it will also turn out that rhetoric is responsible for the mistaken belief about the tyrant’s happiness.

Though Polus was supposed to refute Socrates, Socrates maneuvers Polus to betheone refuted. He rehearses the array of claims already made at this point: Socrates claims that committing injustice is worse than suffering it; Polus supposes that Socrates has been refuted bythe example of Archelaus. Furthermore, Polus claims that the happiness of the unjust depends on avoiding punishment; Socrates claims that these unpunished unjust are even more miserable than the punished unjust. Polus responds to this by bringing in another rhetorical witness, this time the would-be tyrant who is in the midst of receiving his just punishment. With lurid intricacy

Polus describes the captured tyrant’s punishment (463b-c). We now recognize an antecedent logical commitment in Polus’s penchant for descriptive details. His unreflective commitment to the externality of happiness and misery is precisely the commitment that will compel him to accede to Socrates’s upcoming argument.97

96. Socrates’s vacillation between granting to Polus that everyone would share Polus’s opinion and his insistence that Polus and everyone else actually agree with him achieves the similar effect of recalling the Athenian audience to themselves: where do they fit in this split “everyone”? Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 65-66, also notes Socrates wavering between these positions is a “reflection of a wavering within the souls of the people Socrates is talking about, that is, within the souls of nearly everyone.”

97. It is the obviousness of this externality that causes Polus to laugh aloud at Socrates’s claim about the misery of the unpunished tyrant and to intensify his own position by asserting that he and all of humanity disagree with Socrates. Polus’s laughter is not (or is not only) an expression of snide insecurity. If Socrates is correct, then Polus’s cosmos is indeed ridiculous. If Socrates is correct and each human being really believes what Polus claims no human being would admit, then it seems there is nothing to do but laugh at the resulting absurdity. The stakes of the refutation have been raised to include now the very possibility of human community. 170

Socrates begins his argument by uniting ugliness to injustice. Polus must assent to this connection because he lacks any other way for injustice to be deserving of punishment. His conventionalism compels him to acknowledge that it is good that the unjust be punished, even as he asserts that it is not good for the unjust man himself. Again, Polus is steadfastly committed to the conventional reality and rationality of justice. There must be a reason that injustice should be punished, just as there must be a reason why injustice sometimes goes unpunished. But, according to Polus’s argument, injustice cannot deserve punishment for being inherently worse

(that is, bad) or for being inherently miserable. Consequently, ugliness is a prime candidate to be the cause of why injustice deserves punishment. Though Polus is pressed by the terms of his own argument to assent, I believe he also genuinely acknowledges the ugliness of injustice.98 Recall his description of Archelaus’s unjust actions: they were done in the dark or were later lied about. Polus recognizes that injustice shies away from being seen, even for one as powerful as

Archelaus. The tyrant possesses his happiness because of his injustice but in spite of its ugliness.

The tyrant’s happiness is as obvious as his injustice is ugly. If this tension does not hold,thenthe tyrant’s happiness would be no great achievement.

Polus therefore must agree and does agree that committing injustice is uglier than suffering it. In what follows, I believe we see Polus struggle to deepen what has seemed self-evident to him. Polus has not thought much about why injustice is ugly, and he has not thought about it because ugliness and beauty are supposedly as obvious as misery and happiness. So when Socrates begins to offer elaborations of beauty and ugliness, Polus assents from his experience, an experience primarily informed by his learning of rhetoric. Proceeding from bodies and sights to sounds and music and finally to laws and ways of life, Socrates develops an account oftwo possible sources of their beauty. In the course of this procession, Socrates develops one cause as the thing’s fitness for an end, then as contributing to an end, and finally as being beneficial.The

98. Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 73, agrees that Polus sincerely agrees that injustice is more shameful precisely because he is committed to the beauty/fineness of rhetoric. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 74, also asserts Polus’s sincerity, but I believe he is too rosy about what this sincerity portends, namely, that Polus truly loves justice and in a way wants to be just himself. 171 other cause, pleasure, remains the same for bodies as for music as for laws. It is Polus who concludes Socrates’s line of thought by proclaiming: “And now, at least, you’re defining beautifully in defining the beautiful by pleasure and good [ἀγαθόν]” (475a).

Polus agrees so readily because this account of beauty supports his understanding of and participation in rhetoric. Beauty is not simply the beneficial nor simply the pleasant. For Polus, beauty dwells in appearance and appeal, and for that reason it is the rhetoricians most versatile and useful instrument. It is more difficult to track why Polus substitutes “good” for the diverse and concrete descriptions Socrates has been using. Socrates had described the other constitutive criterion of the beautiful always in terms of a further end. For an interlocutor who is not Polus, this slavishness of beauty may be a point of contention. But for Polus, the rhetorician, Socrates captures exactly the most relevant characteristic of beauty, namely, its instrumentality.99

It may therefore seem all the more odd that Polus does not preserve the end-directed characteristics of the beneficial, but this oddness dissipates as soon as it is placed in the context of rhetoric. For Polus, rhetoric takes whatever one wishes as an end and turns all else into means. This was the feature of rhetoric which Socrates’s first argument undercut by deepening theend or the good sought and thereby transforming what had been ends (seizing property, banishing citizens, etc.) into means. Though Polus had been unable to refute Socrates’s accusation, hisown understanding of rhetoric as the instrumentalizing instrument remains. He is still guided by his instinctive feeling of what rhetoric can achieve and how, and it is exactly these beliefs which are now self-defeating.

In the next step of the argument, Socrates transfers the terms of the agreement about the beautiful onto a comparative scale. If one beautiful thing is more beautiful than another, then the difference of degree is due to greater benefit or pleasure or both. Likewise, if oneuglythingis

99. Kahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias,” 97, finds fault with this reduction but does not consider that it is necessitated by Polus’s practice of rhetoric. Cain, “Shame and Ambiguity in Plato’s Gorgias,” 221, argues that Socrates’s capitalizes on a “sliding ambiguity” between beauty as a narrowly social/moral concept applied to action and beauty more broadly and instrumentally used. I agree that this ambiguity is present but I believe it is one within Polus’s own understanding, not one generated by Socrates and used to pull the wool over Polus’s eyes, as it were. 172 uglier than another, then the difference is due to greater pain or badness or both. Polus continues to assent. Socrates then introduces his final point: the association of pain with suffering injustice.

Polus cannot deny this, given both his previous illustrations of injustices suffered and his implicit understanding that the unjust man enjoys the fruits of his injustice. Since suffering injustice is more painful than committing injustice, the only way for committing injustice to be uglierthan suffering it is for committing injustice to exceed suffering injustice in its badness. Committing injustice is therefore worse than suffering injustice. Polus’s own beliefs have led him to confront the inconsistency in those beliefs.100

Though Polus recognizes that he has ended up at the opposite of where hebegan, cannot find the single thread that got him there. Despite the holes that these arguments have bored into specific points of his conceptual fabric, Polus will not shrug off its mantle. Polus is earnest in his instinctive understanding of rhetoric and consequently of justice. Because he cannot be guided by anything else, Polus’s anterior and inconsistent understanding of rhetoric will therefore continue to expose him to Socrates’s refutation. Socrates indicates as much when he says that he is not interested in what everyone else says, but only in Polus as witness to his own refutation. Polus’s soul thus serves both as the witness and the jury in the trial of rhetoric.

100. The charge of fallacy levied by Vlastos, “Was Polus Refuted?” and Santas, Socrates: Philosophy in Plato’s Early Dialogues aim at Socrates’s claim about the pain of suffering injustice. These scholars take there to bewhat Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 72, calls an “equivocation of perspective.” Briefly, these arguments claims that Socrates assumes but Polus need not have agreed that the relevant one who is pained is the very same as the victim of the injustice. ibid., 69, sums it up nicely: “The logical problem with this argument is that Socrates claims to have proven that doing injustice is worse for the agent than suffering injustice is for the victim, but he ends up only proving that doing injustice is worst for X than suffering injustice is for X, where X might be the agent performing the acts of injustice but might also be the community beholding his ask of injustice.” I believe that this equivocation is not possible given Polus’s understanding of the position. Polus must take the ugliness involved in injustice to be ugly to the agent of the injustice. This position is entailed by Polus’s understanding of rhetoric: if the unjust man does not recognize that his injustice is ugly, why would he employ rhetoric to manipulate that very appearance? See Scott Berman, “How Polus Was Refuted: Reconsidering Plato’s Gorgias 474c-475c,” Ancient Philosophy 11, no. 2 (1991): 265–284 for a logical critique of Vlastos and Santas and other scholars who object to the plausibility of the argument. 173

Injustice United to Misery: 475e-477e

The next step in Socrates’s refutation of rhetoric as imaged in Polus’s soul goes beyondhis refutation of Polus. Polus, once a thumotic, colt-like conversation partner, has been drained of his ebullience. He now responds only minimally to Socrates’s questions.101 The previous argument has undone the order of his instinctive understanding, not only of himself and his supposed craft but also of the political framework in which he could practice his supposed craft. Polus’s rationale for justice has unraveled; the lawfulness of his cosmos has failed to cohere. Yet this is not enough for Socrates. It is not enough that injustice be severed from happiness. It is neither enough that the tyrant’s apparent happiness has been shown to be mere appearance nor enough that rhetoric’s artlessness leads to a failure to achieve a real good. Socrates sets out to show more, namely, that injustice not only misses happiness but also is guaranteed misery. He achieves this next step by arguing that the greatest of all evils is to do injustice and not receive the just penalty.

With the inclusion of just punishment in the argument, it is important to recall that

Socrates advances his refutation in light of rhetoric and justice as Polus conceives them.102 That is, Socrates’s argument takes its cues and constraints from the conception of justice that Polus’s

rhetoric demands. There is no need to suppose that the conception of justice presented hereis

Socrates’s own, full, and final sense of justice. Socrates instead works with the reflected image

of justice found in rhetoric’s parasitic impersonation of it because he is still primarily interested

in trying rhetoric, not in establishing an positive thesis about justice.103 Thus, when Socrates introduces the agent/patient principle and takes justice to conform to that principle, he is working with Polus’s notion of justice as constituted by punishment, that is, by physical punishment. On this conception, the action of justice must be transitive, which is to say, there is no action of jus-

101. Furthermore, as Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 67, notes, these responses have lost their previous tone of certainty.

102. Accordingly, although the conclusion of the argument is familiarly “Socratic” it would be a mistake to take Socrates’s argument to be his final, authentic word on the issue.

103. The difficulty for the reader consists in seeing what may belong to the genuine practice ofjustice through the distorting lens of rhetoric. I attend to this difficult task in the subsequent chapters. 174 tice if no one suffers justice. This notion of justice is rooted in an antecedent notion of rhetoric. For Polus, rhetoric is responsible both for the success and for the failures of justice. And just as the rhetorician convinces only as long as someone is convinced, so too, the city practices justice only as long as someone pays a just penalty.

Punishment is now presented as suffering justice, and justice is beautiful (476e).104 From the beauty of punishment, Socrates moves to its benefit. The justly punished man, by suffering

beautiful things, therefore has good things done to him, and thereby becomes better in his soul.

Here Socrates shifts the site of the undergoing out of the body and into the soul, which isun-

derstandable since the argument so far would identify the bodily pain that punishment inflicts as

ugly. Consequently, there are two patients correlative to the action of justice: the pained body and the improved soul. Using the double-edge of beauty and ugliness and of action and passion,

Socrates has slowly but surely carved a further dimension to Polus’s sheer and external view of

justice. Another doubled edge appears: the punished man becomes better not merely because he

previously lacked the good things which the just penalty confers; he becomes better also because the penalty removes the badness from his soul. The addition of goodness is simultaneously a

subtraction of badness. This liberating aspect of punishment is necessary for Socrates tounite

the unjust man’s suffering justice at the hands of the city to his suffering by his own unjustdeed.

Socrates uses the body/soul distinction to build his argument that the badness from which

just punishment liberates the punished is the greatest evil. Polus evidently does not find this distinction mysterious, since he easily acknowledges the list of bad conditions: poverty is a bad

condition with respect to possessions; weakness, disease, ugliness and such are bad conditions of

the body; and injustice, stupidity, cowardice and the like are bad conditions of the soul. On his

way to the conclusion that the badness of the soul is the worst of all evils, Socrates gains Polus’s

104. When Polus looks at his lurid image of the punished would-be tyrant, he must now see both a beautiful undertaking and a beautiful undergoing. The references to hitting, burning, and cutting, which Socrates usesto illustrate the agent/patient principle, remind both us and Polus of this image. 175 assent that the bad condition of the soul is the ugliest or most shameful of all the bad conditions. The bad condition of one’s soul is uglier than any other kind of badcondition.

Polus’s agreement with Socrates about the soul and its bad condition may be surprising, given that he has until now been occupied with the evils pertaining to possessions and the body.

In fact, I have argued already that Polus understands injustice to be strictly external, Yet he now agrees that injustice is a condition of the soul. I take Polus’s agreement here not to indicate a new- found or hitherto dormant understanding of justice as having a structure independent from its public perception and the soul as supporting that structure within itself. Instead, I believe Polus sees the difference between the body and the soul as a difference between kinds of externality. As

I have already argued, Polus sees no internal depth to the condition of the soul, especially with respect to justice. Justice is nothing but what is recognized; for justice to be is for justice to be perceived.

Likewise, it seems, for other virtues and vices of the soul: they are nothing significant except when on the surface, when they can be observed. The good or bad condition of the soul refers to the circumstance or situation the soul is in instead of an order or disorder that is inherent to the soul. This externalized conception of the soul’s condition follows from rhetoric’s conception of the soul. For rhetoric demands that the soul itself consist chiefly in what can be manipulated by speeches—otherwise there would be a significant limit to rhetoric’s power. If there were a font of conviction in a man’s soul, deeper than can be reached by rhetoric, then it would curtail rhetoric’s cunning. When Polus says that the unjust soul is ugly, he understands injustice as a surface flaw that need only be covered up—not something to be healed. Thiscon- cealment demands, however, that at least the unjust agent recognize the injustice of his act, that he acknowledge the ugliness of his soul. Without this antecedent condition there would be no ground for the desire to evade punishment. Without a prior admission, at least to oneself, of an ugliness there can be no attempt to hide it. Polus’s agreement that the soul’s bad condition isthe ugliest is therefore entirely in keeping with his understanding of rhetoric and justice. 176

Since the badness of the soul is the ugliest badness, it must exceed all other bad conditions either by pain or by harmfulness or both. And since the bad condition of the soul is not more painful than sickness or poverty, its superlative ugliness must come from a superlative harm.

Though Polus somewhat begrudgingly assents to this inference from superlative ugliness tosu- perlative harm, he shows no hesitation in agreeing that the superlative harm implies superlative evil. Now that the bad condition of the soul has been acknowledged as the greatest evil, presumably the argument should be done. Injustice has been united to harm, not only thoroughly but in the highest degree.

Justice United to Power: 477e-479e

Despite the success of his argument so far, Socrates persists and seems to do so longer than necessary. Polus has already agreed that punishment frees one from what has just been shown to be the greatest of evils. Surely, if Socrates’s only goal was to conclude that the worst of all is to do injustice and not pay the just penalty, then this conclusion is at his fingertips. Instead,

Socrates revisits the practice of justice, considering its relationship to power. Socrates takes the longer path so that he may end up not only at the conclusion to the present argument but also at a consummation of the whole of which rhetoric, power, and justice are parts.

As he did before, Socrates identifies the practice of justice as an art and now asaliber- ating art. Skill in business and doctoring are two other liberating arts; the former liberates one from poverty, the latter from illness. The one who is immoderate and unjust, like theonewho is diseased, is subjected to the art that frees him from this bad condition. Punishment is the prescription, and when the vicious is punished it is some practice of justice.105 As the ugliest condition by far was the bad condition of the soul, so too the finest art of these mentioned is the one concerned with liberating the soul.

105. 478a: ἆρ᾽ οὖν οὐ δικαιοσύνῃ τινὶ χρώμενοι κολάζουσιν οἱ ὀρθῶς κολάζοντες; The indefinite (τινὶ) here reminds us again that Socrates is not making any absolute claims about justice. 177

Socrates then reminds Polus that it is beneficence, not pleasure, which accounts for the beauty of these arts. The liberating is painful, but the freedom is advantageous. Socrates notes briefly that the happiest condition would be one that never succumbs to the evil from whichone must be liberated. With this reflection, Socrates signals again that the conversation has been conducted in the aberrant light of rhetoric. Perhaps there is a practice of justice is not a response to a prior injustice, but such a view of justice is never raised here, and it could not be, given the conditions of the conversation. As far as their conversation is concerned, that is, as far as justice can be mimicked by rhetoric, justice is strictly the cure to the wickedness of the soul. The cured man, that is the punished man, is better off than the uncured, unpunished, and still unjust man.

The worst of lives then belongs to the most unjust man who manages to escape allpunish- ment for his injustices. What had been cast as a show of power—that is, escaping punishment—is now described as a fearful show of ignorance. These men enjoy only the fatal combination offear at the pain of justice and ignorance of its benefit. Tyrants use their wealth and company andthe most persuasive speeches as a shield from the truth of their condition.106 The tyrant’s power was supposed to grant him happiness by evading punishment; now justice’s power actually grants him happiness only by inflicting punishment. But Socrates does not stop at this dismantling of the tyrant’s life. With a stinging politeness, he asks Polus if he would like to follow out the reasoning to its conclusion, namely, to the conclusion relevant for rhetoric.

After recapitulating the argument, Socrates comes to the question of the benefit ofrhetoric. In the best case, a man would never need rhetoric for he would never have invited wickedness into his life. But if he were guilty of some injustice, then he should seek the just penalty. In this and this alone would rhetoric be useful: to compel himself to submit to just punishment.

Socrates extends this utility of rhetoric also to those dearest to the man: he should also compel his friends, if they be guilty, to submit to punishment. Since the judge (or, equivalently in Athens,

106. It is unclear whom the tyrant is supposed to be persuading here, as Polus’s account likens rhetoricians to tyrants but does not indicate that the tyrants use persuasive speech to solidify their supposed power. Perhaps the tyrant needs to use his most persuasive speeches on himself. 178 the juror) need hardly be persuaded to convict the admittedly unjust, the persuasion exercised must be directed to the unjust man himself. Rhetoric is beneficial to oneself or to those dearest to oneself only to the extent that one must persuade himself or those closest to him to submit to just penalty.107 Not only does rhetoric lack the power Polus thought it had, but its actual power to benefit relies entirely on the prior power of justice. Even now Socrates has not finished with rhetoric; there is more to wring from Polus’s original vision. Polus has already admitted that he finds this all absurd, but Socrates pushes the argument to an even further absurdity. Rhetoric’s greatest use may be that it can prevent this unjust enemy from receiving just punishment. By Socrates’s argument, the sign of advantage over another is no longer to steal his life without receiving punishment oneself, but to grant no punishment and wish unending life upon the other, if indeed he is unjust. Perhaps it is nowhere more clearly obvious that the sense of justice used here and throughout is not justice in itself, but rather justice as it is reflected by rhetoric. In laying out this absurd situation, Socrates isadamant that the injustice, which rhetoric endeavors to make sure goes unpunished, must be an injustice done not to oneself but to another. The injustice against this (never again mentioned) third party is never to be rectified. Even granting the possibility that the just man must bring harmupon someone else, that he does so at the expense of another’s unjust suffering is clearly absurd. A consistent rhetoric yields not only an oddly powerless “rhetoric” but also a disturbingly powerful

“justice.” In the schema that began his conversation with Polus, Socrates claimed that rhetoric was the perverted impersonation of the practice of justice. By now perverting that perversion,

Socrates returns to justice—though still only an image of it. If his conversation with Polus has been a trial of rhetoric, then this final argument will be rhetoric’s just punishment.108 What Polus

107. If we map this claim on to the recalcitrant patient example from Gorgias’s speech, the argument concludes that rhetoric is useful only if one is both the patient and the rhetorician, or perhaps if the rhetorician’s own brother is the patient.

108. If rhetoric has now paid its just penalty, perhaps we are at last in a position to see what a rehabilitated, truly noble rhetoric can be. 179 had believed was the most advantageous power is now shown to be an absurdly useless instrument. Its seemingly limitless scope is restrained to seeking only the opposite of what Polus has originally claimed for it. Rhetoric is now justly punished and the punisher is the very sense of justice rhetoric had to assume.

The Trial of Rhetoric Concluded: 479e-481b

In this section I have argued that Polus is legitimately refuted and, along with him, the image of rhetoric represented by him. Polus is thoroughly and genuinely committed to rhetoric.

He at times seems clumsy and shortsighted with his responses, which accounts for the pervasive scholarly opinion that Polus need not admit all he does. But I claim that his clumsiness is actually earnestness, and his sight is fixed and therefore not far-reaching. He is a true believer in rhetoric. It entirely permeates his understanding of politics, of the practice of justice, and of power. The result of this understanding is a powerless justice, a justice that is weak but beautiful.

Polus cannot disentangle his vision of justice from its determination by rhetoric. But this is not idiosyncratic to Polus. The impersonating pseudo-art of rhetoric works precisely by entangling itself with every presentation of justice. Refutation of rhetoric will always have to attend to the unpredictable ways in which rhetoric will attempt to pretend to be the practiceof justice. Rhetoric is no art and therefore has no rational account by which it can be generally constrained and anticipated. Its refutation therefore can only hold it to account in the soul of the one attempting to use it, in the soul of the one who has believed its first and fundamental move: that it is an art. Furthermore, a refutation of rhetoric will always have to hold the particular practitioner of rhetoric to his own account.109 Recall that Socrates routinely refuses to submit to the standards to which rhetoric holds itself. A refutation of rhetoric cannot occur in general, it cannot aim at persuading the masses without subjecting itself to precisely the danger it seeks to expose.

109. It may be true of all Socrates’s refutations that they refute a way of life, as Kahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias” repeatedly notes, but it seem especially so with respect to the characters of the Gorgias. 180

Polus was particularly well-suited to helping Socrates expose the nature of rhetoric. After his refutation it is clear that he must give up either his conception of rhetoric or his commitment to convention. Despite his earlier thumotic temperament, however, Polus is no iconoclast. In- deed, as a consummate rhetorician, he is compelled to accept the rule of convention. The next interlocutor, though, decidedly does not.

Callicles & Socrates: 481b-505d

Callicles speaks as Socrates’s trial of rhetoric reaches its conclusion. Though his speech is directed to Chaerephon and not to Socrates, his question about Socrates is presumably one for general consideration: Is Socrates serious? or is he playing games? This question indicates that

Callicles is not sure how to make commensurate what Socrates believes and what he says. The fact that he poses it not to Socrates but to Chaerephon indicates that Callicles is also not sure whether Socrates can be the one to overcome this incommensurability. Callicles begins in an attitude where speaker and speech are already separated and where the speaker’s speech cannot be trusted to reveal the speaker’s soul. Even as Chaerephon repeats Callicles’s own words back to him—“There’s nothing like asking the man himself”—Callicles has already planted aseedof doubt about how effective asking the man himself may110 be.

It is unclear whether he is skeptical of Socrates despite or because of his prior familiarity with Socrates. This familiarity is clear from Callicles’s first exchange with Socrates atthe beginning of the dialogue and is reinforced with Socrates’s intimate and ironic descriptions of Callicles’s character. The intensely personal tone of the conversation between Socrates andCal- licles is rooted not only in their familiarity with one another but also in their shared citizenship.

For the first time in the dialogue, we see a conversation between two Athenians—and itisacon- versation about the pathology of politics.111 Not least because of the potential civic consequences,

110. Gorgias 481b: οὐδὲν μέντοι οἷον τὸ αὐτὸν ἐρωτᾶν. Compare Gorgias 447c.

111. Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule, 203, also notes the importance of their shared citizenship. 181 who each is and what each says is imbued with a deeper meaning. It is also worth recalling again that these speakers are surrounded by an unknown number of fellow Athenian citizens, citizens who had, at least initially, been interested in rhetoric.

These are a few reasons that the conversation between Callicles and Socrates isoneofthe most antagonistic, bitter, and tense conversations in Plato’s corpus.112 I will address and develop more of these reasons in chapter three where I will consider Callicles’s character and Socrates’s response more comprehensively. There I argue that Callicles represents a culmination ofthe kind of politics that sophistry and rhetoric together can produce. At present, my interpretation focuses on the place their conversation holds within the Gorgias and the ways it interrelates with the previous speeches and the previous characterizations of rhetoric. Within the context of the Gorgias, Callicles aims to correct Socrates not only personally but also politically. By way of personal correction, he attempts to dissuade Socrates from pursuing a life of philosophy, which presumably prompts Socrates to hold to such obviously ludicrous positions as came to light in the conversation with Polus. By way of political correction, Callicles attempts to provide a conceptual architecture for a politics that avoids the problems Socrates has shown belong to rhetoric. Callicles aims for his city to achieve a justice that cannot be manipulated by rhetoric. This is a justice which Socrates has hitherto missed or misunderstood. Forhis part, Socrates’s aim shifts as his conversation with Callicles takes shape. For Socrates too, the personal and the political are at first united. As the conversation progresses, however, I believe Socrates comes to see that a personal refutation of Callicles is out of reach.113 He then continues

112. Many scholars have noted the intensity of this confrontation. Alessandra Fussi, “Why Is the Gorgias so Bitter?,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 33, no. 1 (2000): 39–58, Doyle, “The Fundamental Conflict in Plato’s Gorgias,” and Catherine Zuckert, “Why Socrates and Thrasymachus Become Friends,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 43, no. 2 (2010): 163– 185 each give an insightful analysis of the enmity between Callicles and Socrates.

113. Many scholars have noted Socrates’s failure with Callicles. I agree in large part with the way Raphael Woolf, “Callicles and Socrates: Psychic (Dis)Harmony in the Gorgias,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 18 (2000): 1–40 and Buzzetti, “The Injustice of Callicles and the Limits of Socrates’s Ability to Educate a Young Politician” diagnose the problem, though I differ from these two on the consequences of the problem. Woolf takes Socrates’s failure to expose a fundamental limitation of philosophical discourse, namely that it presupposes a commitment to “psychic harmony.” Buzzetti’s view is not so grim, but he believes the proper response is for philosophy toborrow more from rhetoric. My disagreement with these positions will become clear below. 182 with a solely political refutation, that is, he aims to reveal to the surrounding citizens the problem with Callicles’s politics that Callicles himself refuses to see.

Love & Power: 481b-486d

Callicles has voiced doubt that Socrates can seriously mean what he says and that what

Socrates says can possibly be true. By “serious” Callicles seems to mean the politically possible. Socrates has claimed that it is worse to do than to suffer injustice, and the worst of all isnot to pay the just penalty for injustice. By Callicles’s lights, then, Socrates cannot be serious—not because these claims may not be true—but because if they were true then the entire orientation of human life would be inverted. The most basic of human impulses—the impulse to preserve one’s life—would run counter to what is good, what ought to be done. A politics built in opposition to this basic impulse, a politics based rather on what ought to be done would be a doomed politics.

Callicles resists Socrates’s claims, not because the argument itself is unconvincing but because it seems politically impossible.

Socrates recognizes that Callicles begins with the politically possible and ends with the politically favorable. He responds to this feature of Callicles’s character in terms of Callicles’s loves and in contrast to his own loves. Despite the ultimate difference between their loves, Socrates begins by emphasizing what is similar about their loves. In doing so, he raises a theme that will recur throughout their conversation: the theme of the private and the shared. If Socrates and

Callicles were entirely different, if their experiences were entirely private,114 then no conversation would be possible. Yet, as we shall see, Socrates and Callicles share almost nothing except the fact that they are both lovers and they are both Athenian citizens. By beginning with the thin but common ground of their loves, Socrates signals both his commitment to conversing with Cal- licles but also his recognition that the conversation will be marked more by difference than by similarity.

114. Gorgias 481d: ἴδιόν τι ἔπασχεν πάθος. 183

By beginning with their loves, Socrates also signals that the conversation will be intensely personal.115 Although Callicles responds with personal attacks of his own, to be sure, it is Socrates who sets the personal tone. It is Socrates who sets their dearest loves, their deepest commitments, and their very ways of life at stake in this conversation. Socrates and Callicles are a pair of lovers, each with a pair of loves, one a young Athenian man and the other a personification. Socrates loves Alcibiades and philosophy; Callicles loves Demos, the son of Pyrilampes, and the Athenian people (δήμος). These similarities yield a further similarity, specifically, a hermeneutic similarity.

In order to understand either Callicles or Socrates, one must understand that each says what is dictated by his beloved—Socrates says only what philosophy says, whereas Callicles does not have the power to contradict either of his beloveds. According to Socrates, the result of these beloveds for Callicles is that Callicles turns himself upside down. Perhaps drawing from some previous experiences of seeing Callicles speak in the Assembly, Socrates claims that Callicles says whatever the Athenian people want, even if it means immediately reversing the position he just presented. While understanding the provenance of Callicles’s claims may contextualize the potential absurdity of his claims, it does not alleviate this absurdity. Callicles is absurd because his city is absurd. Callicles does not agree with Callicles because Athens does not agree with Athens. Therefore, the only way to make Cal- licles coherent is to make Athens coherent. By the end of the dialogue, although it seems painfully clear that Callicles is in no way invested in the conversation or in overcoming his disharmony, Socrates will continue his refutation. At this opening moment we glimpse why: there is perhaps a way to salvage some coherence for Callicles if Socrates can succeed in saving some eventual coherence for Athens.

115. Some scholars draw a straight line from this personal tone to the opposition of ways of life; see Voegelin, “The Philosophy of Existence: Plato’s Gorgias”; Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 89; Doyle, “The Fundamental Conflict in Plato’s Gorgias.” While I will not attempt to deny that there is a fundamental conflict, asDoylesays, between Callicles’s and Socrates’s way of life, it is important to note that this disjunct is not exhaustive. I argue below that there is another way of life at stake, neither a philosophical life nor a life of politics in the way Callicles will soon describe. 184

While Callicles’s loves cause him to turn himself upside down, Socrates’s loves cause him to make claims that seem to turn the world upside down. It is philosophy who makes the speeches so shocking to Callicles; Socrates is merely the mouthpiece for this beloved. Callicles, it seems, was right to be skeptical about asking “the man himself,” for those speeches belong to philosophy, not Socrates the speaker. At this point, Socrates will have to find some coherence for Athens if he is to help Callicles, and Callicles must refute philosophy if he is to set Socrates straight.

Socrates concludes his speech by returning to the distinction between the private and the public. He lays out the stakes of the upcoming conversation: if Callicles cannot refute the speeches of philosophy then Callicles will disagree with Callicles, Callicles will be discordant in every part of his life.116 In contrast, Socrates claims he would rather be publicly contradicted than be self-contradictory. The contrast between these contradictions—public contradiction and self- contradiction—suggests that the latter is private contradiction. Accordingly, though Callicles’s self-contradiction is pervasive, it could be concealed, could be kept private. Despite being kept private, Callicles’s contradiction is nevertheless directly consequential for his conception of and activity in the city. I believe that here Socrates is gesturing to the need for a third category.

The binary of public and private is insufficient; the category of the common is required.This insufficiency of the public/private binary will echo in the insufficiency of the categories ofnature and convention, to which categories Callicles appeals in his opening speech

Callicles’s speech has three parts. In the first, he addresses the failures of the preceding interlocutors, Gorgias and Polus. In the second, he presents his own vision of politics from which vantage point he avoids the failures of the previous interlocutors and prepares for an attack on philosophy. In the third, he directs this attack to Socrates’s way of life. The central claims ofCal- licles’s speech are bookended by critiques based on accusations of shame. Gorgias and Polus are

116. Note that Callicles meets the challenge to refute philosophy’s speeches by critiquing philosophy as a way of life. There is room for a distinction between what makes Socrates say such things (that is, that itisworseto do than to suffer injustice) and what may make someone commit to such speeches. In other words, though Callicles does not seem to recognize this possibility, there is a way to abide by this view of justice and not be a philosopher, or even a lover of philosophy. 185 ashamed when they ought not be; Socrates is not ashamed when he ought to be. The way shame functions in these critiques is grounded in the central portion of Callicles’s speech wherein he establishes the binary of nature and convention. Furthermore, Callicles’s own character is revealed through his characterization of Gorgias and Polus on the one hand and Socrates on the other.

Callicles’s understands himself in contrast to shame, as the one who resists both conventional and natural shame. It is to this self-understanding that Socrates will apply his most pointed and poignant responses.

Callicles begins by recounting Gorgias’s and Polus’s error, of which, Callicles claims,

Socrates took full rhetorical advantage. Each’s error was the same: each was susceptible to shame.

Socrates used their conventional sense of shame to force them to say things in contradiction to themselves. Beyond this similarity, however, their contradictions differ significantly. Gorgias is pressured to assert that he has knowledge because he lacks the strength to admit that his power to persuade has no epistemic basis. He is unwilling to risk his safety in a foreign land by acknowledging that his power to use rhetoric is entirely detached from justice.117 He does not feel ashamed about his ignorance but must modulate his appearance to respond to the sense of shame of those surrounding him.118 Gorgias’s contradiction consists in asserting something he does not really believe, and convention shames him into this contradiction because he lacks the boldness to stand against the crowd.

Polus on the other hand asserts that it is uglier to commit injustice than to suffer it without any overt manipulation. His own conception of justice puts him in the position of acknowledging the shamefulness of committing injustice, even while averring that it is better than suffering injustice. Polus does not know how to conceive of the tyrant except as the maximally unjust man, that is, except as how the crowd conceives of the tyrant. Perhaps Polus’s tyrant does not

117. Callicles’s view of what causes Gorgias’s misstep finds proponents in contemporary literature, as noted above.

118. Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame might say that Gorgias does not experience internal shame, but does cave to the projected shame from those external to him. 186 feel guilty, but Polus feels that the tyrant must be guilty. He therefore feels shame at his own tyrannical impulses—inescapable as they may be. Consequently, whereas Gorgias said what he did not believe, Polus does not say what he does think, presumably because he cannot find the appropriate distinction he needs to escape the contradiction. His contradiction thus consists in yielding to a merely illusory constraint, and convention shames him into this contradiction because he lacks the insight to categorize the tyrant’s strength as anything but ugly injustice.

Callicles, I believe, sees himself as correcting the deficiencies of the previous interlocutors. He possesses the confidence that Gorgias lacked to assert sheer power. He possesses the intelligence that Polus lacked to recognize the true order of things. He matches Polus’s spiritedness without the immature imprudence; he matches Gorgias’s intellect without the measured neutrality. In short, Callicles sees himself as uniquely situated to respond to Socrates effectively.

Gorgias and Polus, despite professing proficiency with rhetoric, ended up succumbing to rhetoric themselves. Callicles believes that he alone can thoroughly subjugate rhetoric because he does not consider himself subject to conventional morality and politics. Callicles explains Socrates’s rhetorical move in terms of nature and convention. Socrates manipulates his interlocutors’ confusion of these two. In Polus’s case, Callicles states explicitly where Socrates deploys the confusion.119 Manipulated by Socrates, Polus mistakes what is conventionally considered ugly for what is naturally ugly. In the case of beauty and ugliness, as presumably for most categories, the natural and conventional iterations are opposed. Polus was working from a natural sense of better and worse when he claimed that suffering injustice is worse than committing it, but followed Socrates in using a conventional sense of beauty andug- liness when he claimed that committing injustice was uglier than suffering it. If Polus hadstuck with the natural senses in the latter case, then he would have asserted, as Callicles does now, that

“by nature, everything is uglier that is also worse” (483a).

119. He does not give a similarly detailed diagnosis of Gorgias’s error. Despite his approving rehearsal of Polus’s criticism of Gorgias, Callicles does not offer a criticism of his own nor does he elaborate much on Polus’s. Later we will see that he defers to Gorgias’s request to continue the discussion at a crucial moment. Clearly Callicles holds Gorgias in higher, though not necessarily authentic, esteem. 187

Alongside the nature/convention distinction, Callicles raises a distinction between the weak many and the strong few. The weak many use laws as pseudo-power to constrain thereal power of the stronger few. The weak many’s aim of equality is not only not truly just butalso not genuinely believed to be just. The many are satisfied with equality because, presumably by virtue of their weakness, they do not see having inequality in their favor as a possibility. This self-limitation even in the imaginative desire of the many is imposed on the naturally limitless desire of the superior few in the name of education—but this education is merely a deception. The laws and the education towards lawfulness are nothing but means of bewitching these superior ones. The good of conventional justice is equality and the instrument of conventional justiceisa kind of rhetoric. In contrast, natural justice calls for the expansion of possession unto the limits only of one’s own desires. Natural justice not only presupposes but responds to the self-setting parameters of power. It is just for the individual with the power of satisfying his desire to exercise that power. There can be no common good in this naturally just city for there is no possibility of a shared end between the few superior men themselves or between them and the weak many.

The unity of this new civic order is provided for by the internal pressures of powers impinging on powers instead of by the tacit agreements of convention. In contrast to conventional justice, natural justice is completely transparent. It does not need and has no use for guile. The naturally just city would be a city wherein rhetoric could not survive, a city that has no shadows of deception or shades of conviction.

I note two points of internal tension within Callicles’s speech, though there are other problematic elements which commentators have noted.120 These two points concern the status

of Callicles’s speech itself and the status of Callicles within the political order he outlines. To the

120. For example, Callicles’s own examples are less than compelling as Sachs, Plato: Gorgias and Aristotle: Rhetoric notes. Woolf, “Callicles and Socrates: Psychic (Dis)Harmony in the Gorgias,” 25; Kahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias,” 100; Saxonhouse, “An Unspoken Theme in Plato’s Gorgias: War,” 159-62; Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 89; and Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and ,Phaedrus 65-67, among others, note the abrupt shift in tone and perhaps the incompatibility of the first and third part of the speech. 188 first: the question of the status of Callicles’s very speech arises upon realizing that speech isitself the instrument by which conventional power suppresses natural power. Even as he exhorts a sort of realism, Callicles appeals to a city not as it is but as it may be. Callicles builds the naturally just city in speech, but this medium is precisely the means used to undermine natural justice. Is speech supposed to be a once-used ladder, employed to achieve this ideal city then thrown away after the achievement? And if it is such a ladder, who is meant to climb it?

This leads to the second point: the question of Callicles himself within his city inspeech.

Callicles’s own position within this reconfiguration of political life is ambiguous. On theone hand, it seems necessary that some superior vantage point is required to peer through the systematic trickery of convention. On the other hand, Callicles belongs to and even speaks with the voice of the extant political system. Surely the most dangerous thing for one of the weak many to do is to cease the siren song that lulls the young lions and replace it with a rousing revelation of the purpose of that convention. Yet, if he were one of the superior few, why would he need to or care to convince anyone else of this power structure? Would he not simply throw off the shackles of shame and conventional justice? He is naturally superior enough to both make salient the lie of conventional justice and to resist the shame convention uses to impose this justice. Yet, he is not naturally superior enough to simply take what he desires; he too relies on the tools of the weak many, namely, persuasive speech.121

The answers to this questions are at present undetermined; nevertheless, whatever the answers to these questions, it does seem that Callicles believes that his basic insight into the truth of political power in turn empowers him to use and not be used by rhetoric. Callicles is the true master of rhetoric because he alone recognizes the real relationship between convention and nature, the all-important difference between conventional justice and natural justice. Gorgias

121. As mentioned, many other scholars notes the inconsistency in Callicles’s position that is apprecia- ble even before Socrates begins his refutation. The task at present is to understand the gestalt that houses this inconsistency. The problem is not to discern the one false belief that mucks up the whole scheme, butinsteadto comprehend how the whole scheme is inherently disharmonious. See, again, Woolf, “Callicles and Socrates: Psychic (Dis)Harmony in the Gorgias.” 189 and Polus succumbed to conventional shame, the tool of conventional justice. They bowed to the pressure of the many, to the standards of the public. They therefore occupied the ridiculous position of claiming to be or thinking themselves to be masters of rhetoric even as rhetoric itself manipulated them. By this light, Socrates seems to be another master manipulator of rhetoric, or, if not a master, at least good enough to exploit Gorgias and Polus. But, according to Callicles, Socrates escapes conventional shame only by virtue of his natural shamefulness.

Socrates’s natural shamefulness consists in pursuing philosophy beyond its utility. By taking up a philosophical life, Socrates is inverting one of the most basic natural orders: im- maturity and maturity. A mature man acting as a child is offensive to the course of nature.

Philosophy may be helpful in one’s youth, perhaps to prepare for the eventual escape from conventional constraints. But to pursue it beyond that, to make it the guide for the whole of one’s life, is to remain in a perpetual state of childhood. Maturing seems to mean taking one’s place within the conventional structures of power, and maturing for those with the gifts of natural power means occupying this conventional place for the moment. For Callicles, of course, the point of taking up a conventional place would be to acquire more and more conventional power in order to eventually jockey into a place of natural power. Philosophy is the ultimate source of natural shame because it is a perversion of natural power. It succeeds in ignoring the external, conventional suppression of natural skill but only to take on the self-imposed constraint of self- reflection instead of self-gratification. The shamefulness arises in coming so close to freedom yet unmistakably missing it.

In attacking Socrates’s way of life, Callicles defends his own. We should be wellaware that Callicles’s characterization of philosophy here serves his own ends. It is Callicles who opposes the philosophical life with the political life. He paints the picture of philosophy presenting itself as a substitute for political life. In making philosophy a contender for the prize of politics, Callicles misrepresents philosophy.122 In thus misrepresenting philosophy, Callicles supports his

122. Jeffrey Green, “The Shame of Being a Philosopher: Critical Response to Tarnopolsky,” Political Theory 33, no. 2 (2005): 266–272 notes, contra an article by Tarnopolsky that preceded her book (Christina Tarnopolsky, 190 own perspective on convention, nature, and justice. Philosophy may look like it is engaged in the same project as Callicles, that is, of revealing the limitations of the regnant view of rhetoric and justice. But this similarity only emphasizes the antithesis it poses to Calliclean politics. On

Callicles’s view, philosophy undermines the extant order so as to replace strength with softness, conviction with self-reflection, and action with contemplation. In this way, Callicles appropriates Socrates’s refutative work while subverting its purpose.123

To conclude, we must ask whether Socrates’s diagnosis of Callicles’s love was accurate.

Socrates claimed that, because of his love, Callicles was incapable of contradicting the Athenian populace. Yet, in his speech, Callicles is openly hostile to the ruling many, that is, to the people of democratic Athens. His denigration of conventional ideals and practices does not seem the act of a deferential lover. But Callicles’s animosity towards the Athenian populace does not belie Socrates’s account. Rather than contradicting the Athenian populace, Callicles is voicing a contradiction within the Athenian populace.

“Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato and the Contemporary Politics of Shame,” Political Theory 32, no. 4 (2004): 468– 494) that there may be some legitimacy to Callicles’s critique. Despite Callicles’s characterization of philosophy as deficient because it does not concern itself with power when it should, Green notes and I agree that perhaps Socrates should be ashamed. Unsurprisingly, given the dominant view that the Gorgias in general and the Callicles exchange in particular represents a contest between the political and the philosophical life, Green claims: “In the lacuna between the classical ideal of the philosopher and the reality of practicing philosophy in the disenchanted contemporary world there is room for shame” (270). Though I believe the relevant lacuna to be between genuine politics and politics unreflectively infested with rhetoric, I agree with Green’s sentiment that Socrates’s practice of politics, motivated as it is by his beloved philosophy, lacks the pure strength Callicles’s so prizes. Even if Socrates does try his hardest to persuade Callicles away from his pathological conception of politics, perhaps he does and should feel shame in his inability to do so.

123. This dynamic of appropriation and subversion is a reflection of the relationship of sophistry and rhetoric to πολιτίκη. 191

The Athens of the Peloponnesian War was a city of contradictions.124 On the one hand, it identified as democratic, and proudly so. Its form of government was based on the equality ofall citizens with respect to justice and in point of law. In the famous Funeral Oration, Pericles speaks for Athens to the Athenians. There, Pericles extols the democratic regime to support his praise of the men being buried. He says: “We have a form of government, not fetched by imitation from the laws of our neighbouring states; (nay, we are rather a pattern to others, than they to us); which, because in the administration it hath respect not to a few, but to the multitude, is called a democracy.”125 The equal many rules Athens. But on the other hand, the Athenians identified themselves as a conquering power, crushing other countries and their conceptions of justice without qualm. In the also famous Melian Dialogue, Athenians speak for Athens to the Melians. There, Athens denies the relevance of justice to the situation due to the inequality ofthe

Athenians and Melians. Singular and superior Athens rules. So the Athens of the Peloponnesian

War trumpets its democracy domestically even while unremittingly spreading its empire through the Aegean. It lives at home by the principle of the equality of the people, and spreads itself abroad by the principle of natural superiority.126

124. See Saxonhouse, “An Unspoken Theme in Plato’s Gorgias: War” for a thorough treatment of the Pelo- ponnesian War as a theme of the Gorgias and for an analysis of the significant inconsistencies this war brought out in Athens. Michael Svodoba, “Athens, the Unjust Student of Rhetoric: A Dramatic Historical Interpretation of Plato’s Gorgias,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2007): 275–305 also notes the internal conflict of the Athens of the Pelo- ponnesian War and makes an intriguing case, with which I agree in general, that Plato explains this inconsistency and the consequent failure in the way by way of Athens’s education in sophistic rhetoric. Villa, Socratic Citizenship, 32-41, sees the permeation of this theme as an indication that Socratic citizenship is a sort of dissent that aims at a “transvaluation of values.” I take up Villa’s account of Socratic citizenship in chapter three, but for now I note that Socrates assumes a notion of justice that is already present in the city and his dissent here is directed rather at a conception of politics that would destroy that assumed sense of justice.

125. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Thomas Hobbes, in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, vol. 8, ed. Sir William Molesworth, Bart. (London: Bohn, 1839-45), book II, chapter 37.

126. While this contradiction between the ideals of excellence and the reality of efficacy most poignantly plagues Athens, it also impresses on the city as such. I will return to this more general claim in chapter three, where I further address Callicles’s character and its political implications. 192

So Socrates was accurate in his description and prediction of Callicles, but this accuracy is hidden by the Athenian populace’s own self-misunderstanding.127 The love that was meant to unite Socrates and Callicles has instead divided Callicles from himself. Callicles’s vision of politics is born both from his love of Athens and his recognition of their contradiction, the contradiction between their conventional ideals and their natural power. Callicles attempts to resolve his contradiction by calling for a complete commitment to the side of power. Callicles wants for his city a justice that cannot be manipulated by appearances, that does not yield to the machinations of rhetoric. Natural justice cares nothing for appearances and so, for Callicles, is an answer to the maddening situation of conventional justice. Callicles wants a strong justice and a strong Athens.

Callicles’s superior city in speech is indeed a profession of a kind love for Athens. This manifestation of love for a contradictory Athens hints at a further contradiction.

In fact, Callicles has unwittingly made this new contradiction the foundation for his salvation of Athens. For the power Callicles sees at the heart of all politics—exclusive, inimical, entirely unshareable power—is a power inherently destructive of community, and therefore a power ultimately incompatible with the city. It is this contradictory nature of power that Socrates now attempts to draw out.

Personal Intervention, Provocation & Pleading: 486d-495b

Socrates responds to Callicles’s ominous speech, which, if true, would destroy the possibility of true community, by trying to establish between themselves a community for the sake of the truth. Socrates claims that he has happened upon a godsend in happening upon Callicles because the speech that is shared by them both will be the truth. Socrates thus signals that what is at stake in their conversation is the possibility of a common project with a common end. Yet, the constant self-sabotage of community is an unavoidable consequence of Callicles’s position. Con-

127. Contra Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 117, who believes that Callicles hides his deepest convictions. Nearer my approach is Villa, Socratic Citizenship, 36, who states that “in the figure of Caliclles we see the dissolution of the monumental Periclean synthesis.” 193 sequently, Socrates deploys a series of strategies to draw out Callicles’s account and to draw in Callicles himself. These strategies follow a line of provocation, beginning with a personal appeal and culminating in a plea for persuasion. These moments come between the first formulation of Callicles’s position and Socrates’s subsequent refutation of it. They therefore prepare for the refutation on the one hand by clarifying Callicles’s position and on the other hand by determining the degree of Callicles’s commitment to that position.

Socrates’s first strategy is to stake Callicles’s character on the viability of their common endeavor. He delivers another deeply personal characterization of Callicles—though admittedly one less insightful and potentially more ironic than the first. Socrates attempts tofind something—anything—to make Callicles stay engaged in the conversation. He therefore ties Cal- licles’s involvement in the conversation to his character. If Callicles were to give up to conversation, he would have to forfeit the features Socrates now cites as empowering Callicles to serve as a touchstone for Socrates’s speeches. These features are being knowledgeable, being well- intentioned, and being capable of speaking freely (ἐπιστήμην τε καὶ εὔνοιαν καὶ παρρησίαν, 487a). Socrates claims that he has nowhere else found the conjunction of these three features.

Gorgias and Polus come close inasmuch as they are wise and good-willed, Socrates says, but they lack Callicles’s capability for speaking freely (παρρησία).128

Already there is reason to be skeptical of Socrates’s characterization: though perhaps

Gorgias retains the semblance of wisdom and his relationship with Socrates could be considered friendly, Polus surely does not seem and was never treated as being wise, and his relationship

128. This last characteristic has received much scholarly attention, both as it belongs to Callicles andinsofar as it serves a central function in ancient cities; see Matthew Landauer, “Parrhesia and the demos tyrannos: Frank Speech, Flattery, and Accountabilty in Democratic Athens,” History of Political Thought 33, no. 2 (2012): 185–208 for both a recent survey of the extant scholarly literature on parrhesia and an insightful analysis of its political ramifications. I have chosen to translate it as speaking freely because I believe this preserves the potential moral ambivalence in the word. By its etymology, the word literally means all-speaking, and it can bear a positive or a negative connotation. In its negative light, it suggests someone who would and does say anything without reflection or care for circumstance. In its positive light, it could signify forthrightness or candidness: the one with παρρησία says what he believes without guile and with something like courage. Clearly the negative and positive connotations are exclusive: being willing to say anything is incompatible with being committed to saying only what one believes. I believe both connotations are at work in different ways in Socrates’s characterization. 194 with Socrates was tense from the beginning. Nevertheless, according to Callicles’s account of the foregoing conversations, Gorgias’s and Polus’s failures are exactly as Socrates suggests: they were unwilling to say what they truly thought because of shame. On this point, Socrates again prompts us to question his description by pitting his previous interlocutors’ seemingly craven caving into shame against their audacity to contradict themselves openly.129 Socrates further accentuates the dubious character of his characterization when he offers justifications for his account. The only justification provided for claiming that Callicleshas knowledge is that he has been “sufficiently educated, as many of the Athenians would say” (487b).

Socrates has to make more of a case for the claim that Callicles is well-intentioned toward him, which is unsurprising given the tension between them. Socrates makes a sort of a fortiori case: since Callicles advises his dear friends against philosophy as he advises Socrates against philosophy, Callicles must be at least as well-intentioned towards to his companions as to Socrates.

Lastly, Socrates cites as evidence for Callicles’s penchant for speaking freely the fact that Callicles claims to be shamelessness. Socrates ends his personal account of Callicles with a personal claim of his own. The conversation has personal consequences for Socrates too, as Callicles has already indicated. Ac- cording to Callicles, Socrates is risking death by continuing in the way he has, but he is more concerned here with the consequences for his life if Callicles is correct. Although Socrates may doubt Callicles’s wisdom, friendliness, and shamelessness, he seems convinced that both his and Callicles’s character are at stake in the present discussion.

The personal appeal seems to work, in one way, for Callicles does initially respondto

Socrates’s questions. It becomes clear almost immediately, however, that Callicles is at work on his own ends. Socrates’s first sortie is against the sense of superior at work in Callicles’s account. Socrates is in search for clarification by way of exclusion. Socrates excludes a physical or

129. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 93-95 also notes the less than solid justification Socrates provides, but believes it to be a strategy that Socrates employs to loop Gorgias into his project. In contrast, I believe the clearly dubious account is meant to flatter Callicles into staying in the conversation while simultaneously indicating a deeper current of meaning to the surrounding audience. 195 mathematical sense of superior by a quick refutation whereby the many turn out to be the more powerful by nature because of their great collective strength and number. Callicles allows the refutation to unfold with suspicious ease. The swiftness with which he assents to each damning move suggests an ulterior motive more than an intellectual insufficiency. Callicles’s clever strategy is not to meet refutation with refutation, but to undermine that refutation by associating it with exactly what it is supposed to be opposed to. Consequently, he has at the ready the response that Socrates is—again, without shame—catching at words and phrases, exploiting the common senses of speech for his own benefit. Callicles is well aware how much Socratic refutation looks like rhetorical manipulation, and he plays that to his advantage.

Socrates seems to have suspected such a move from Callicles and parries it with his own subtle association. He associates Callicles with the self-appointed superior ones (“presumably, you don’t consider your slaves superior to you just because they’re stronger than you are,” 489d) and emphasizes Callicles’s superiority over himself in this very conversation. To this, Callicles responds simply and starkly that Socrates is being ironic and Socrates reverses the accusation by referring back to Callicles’s allusion to Zeuthus.130 Previously, Callicles had allusively cast himself in the role of Zethus, promoting the practical life to his otherwise impractical musician brother, Amphion. By invoking Zethus here, Socrates reminds Callicles of his already claimed superiority; in short, Callicles has no grounds to defer his account of who is superior. After this momentary stalemate, Socrates ceases with facile refutations and Callicles ceases with his facile assents. With this new seriousness, Socrates prompts and Callicles responds with a clarification of the relevant sense of superior. It turns out that Socrates’s suspicion was not far off. The seat of power ends up being exactly the feature Callicles believes himself to possess: cleverness

(φρονιμωτέρους). Socrates’s personal appeal succeeds in revealing just how personal Callicles’s account of politics is.

130. For a survey of the scholarly comments on the role of Euripides’s Antiope as well as insightful philosophical analysis of how that tragedy bears on this dialogue, see Franco Trivigno, “Paratragedy in Plato’s Gorgias,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 36 (2009): 73–105. 196

Callicles has said better what he means by “superior” and now Socrates seeks toclar- ify what is “the more” to which the superior are justly entitled. In pursuit of this clarification,

Socrates shifts tactics. He leaves behind personal appeals and turns to provocation. Thewayhe achieves this provocation is by offering several minimizing glosses of Callicles’s claim. This minimization is provocative because it is a kind of misrepresentation that Callicles cannot let stand. He cannot abide this reduction because it undermines the heart of his claim, namely, the superiority of the superior. Socrates may be “playing the fool” (φλυαρεῖς ἔχων) here, but his foolishness carries serious consequences (490e). By limiting the matter of Callicles’s claims to food, clothes, and seed, Socrates purposely ignores the political setting of those claims. He thus provokes Calli- cles to restate the political consequences of his claim more explicitly. These diminished examples of exclusive goods also remind us of the exclusion of common goods from Callicles’s proposed political order. All goods must be private if they are to be distributed according to the desires of those who are more or less superior.

Callicles’s first response to the provocation is to emphasize the setting and scopeofhis claim. He restates that the superior man’s superior intelligence is an intelligence about “practical matters having to do with the city” (491d). With the inclusion of practical matters, Callicles then is obliged to add that the superior man is not only intelligent about what to do but also capable of carrying out his intelligent intentions. This inclusion of “manlier” among the qualities of the superior men gives Socrates cause to return to the question of the way in which these superior people are superior. Callicles, perhaps pleased at frustrating Socrates as much as he has been frustrated, instead answers the previous question: To more of what are the superior men entitled? Political power seems to be the answer. The superior bear the rule of the city, andall the other goods in which they exceed the inferior accrue to them by virtue of their role as ruler and the inferior’s role as ruled. According to Callicles, the ones who rule in the city are the ones who are superior at ruling the city; they have more power because they are more powerful. This elegant but empty formulation does not survive for long, for Socrates is not done provoking Callicles. Socrates’s 197 next question again shows a pointed misapprehension of Callicles’s point as well as a deeper grasp of what is at stake in that point.131 Socrates next asks about self-rulership and moderation, which sounds like the conventional nonsense that Callicles had dismissed at the beginning. Yet, of all the conventional values to raise, Socrates chooses exactly the one required to shatter the seemingly seamless reformulation Callicles just offered. Socrates’s question puts pressure onthe weakest point of Callicles’s claim about the powerful, namely, their character.

Callicles rebels at Socrates’s characterization of the moderate man as a self-ruler. Self- rule, as Socrates acknowledges, is the way the many characterize moderation. Yet, for Callicles, the identification of moderation with rulership is a lie. Moderating pleasures and appetites is the end that the many seek; it is a perversion of nature. This perversion is all the more stinging because the many use the “virtue” of self-rulership to deceive the superior men into shackling themselves. But this virtue is merely a conceit, and these moderate men are truly nothing but fools. According to Callicles’s conception of politics, self-rulership is impossible because power is always an exclusive exchange. One has power only to the extent that someone else lacks it. Freedom is purchased only by the oppression of others. At last Callicles clarifies what Socrates has been searching for: the naturally superior men are the ones with the wisdom to see this truth about power and the courage to act on it with no other end than the fulfillment of their own appetites.132

Callicles has resisted saying what this superiority amounts to, because this superiority is more powerful the more flexible it is, and this power is more effective the less it islimited.133

Despite this resistance, Socrates succeeds in provoking Callicles into revealing enough: his final

131. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 102, Kahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias,” 102-03, and George Klosko, “The Refutation of Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias,” Greece & Rome 31 (1984): 126–139, 127, takes it to be surprising that Socrates shifts to self-rulership. I believe it sounds surprising only if one already assumes a distinction between the political and the strictly moral. I make no such assumption here and neither, I believe, does Callicles.

132. The combination of wisdom and courage should sound familiar to the readers of this dissertation. I return to the sophistic roots of Callicles’s political vision in the third chapter.

133. This strategy should remind us of Gorgias’s own at the beginning of his conversation with Socrates. 198 formulation is the least restrained and most shocking. On this account, the terminus of all this power is nothing but pleasure, and regulation in any form—be it the conventions of law or virtue— is a violation of the nature of power and a violation of nature itself.

Callicles’s position is so far internally coherent. For power understood in this way, no other end could be supplied than maximization of appetite for pleasure. Given the order of presentation, it may seem that Callicles’s politics results from his hedonism.134 I believe, however, that Callicles’s peculiar hedonism follows from his peculiar politics. His vision of power is prior to its terminus in pleasure; his vision of natural politics informs his claims about the best way of life.135 As I show below, Socrates’s refutation bears out my understanding of the order of Calli- cles’s claims. In his refutation, Socrates first dismantles Callicles’s hedonism then continues his refutation to disclose the absurdity of Callicles’s politics.

Callicles’s politics implies his hedonism along the following lines: Because all human interaction is a struggle for power, because there can be nothing but animosity between the superior and the inferior, there is no possibility of a common end. There is nothing in which each member of a community could participate in common, so there is nothing that can be shared.

Public goods can be at best a fiction commonly believed but can never be a good commonly shared. The only true ends, the only genuine goods, then, are privately enjoyed goods. Because power is entirely exclusive, its end can only ever be isolated and individual. Pleasure therefore is the prime candidate to fulfill the role of necessarily private good. Also because power is entirely exclusive, this privacy must be severely attenuated—simple self-satisfaction will not suffice. It marks a misunderstanding of the structure of power to squirrel away and be sated by some small

134. Klosko, “The Refutation of Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias” is a representative of the approach that takes Callicles as a committed hedonist. Other scholars complicate this image of Callicles; see, for example, Devin Stauffer, “Socrates and Callicles: A Reading of Plato’s Gorgias,” The Review of Politics 64, no. 4 (2002): 627–657 and Raphael Woolf, “Consistency and Akrasia in Plato’s Protagoras,” Phronesis 47, no. 3 (2002): 224–252. I belong to the latter group.

135. Claude Gaudin, “Rhétorique et dialectique à propos de l’opposition ΦΥΣΙΣ-ΝΟΜΟΣ dans le Gorgias de Platon,” Revue des études grecques 102 (1989): 308–330 also makes this point, though he uses a deconstructive strategy to interpret Callicles; see especially 312–322. 199 portion of pleasure. Callicles’s antecedent conception of power demands that the appetite for pleasure be constantly maximized. Any appetite not increased and indulged leaves open a space for another to fill and therefore for another to expand his own power. And any expansion of another’s power is a limitation of one’s own.

Socrates now praises Callicles’s unrestrained speaking (παρρησιαζόμενος) for saying aloud what others think but do not wish to say. For the moment, however, Socrates focuses his concern on Callicles himself, and not these others. He gently pivots from provocation for the sake of clarifying Callicles’s position towards pleading for the sake of saving Callicles from a cramped fate that merely looks grand. Although Callicles’s position is sufficiently spelled out for the refutation which Socrates will ultimately levy against it, at this point Socrates foregoes that refutation for an attempt to persuade Callicles personally against pursuing the kind of life he has just proposed.136

Callicles has insulated himself against the force of any argument, for he can dismiss

Socrates’s seemingly sound reasoning as yet another enchantment of the weak. Socrates therefore proceeds by means of a series of increasingly shocking images. He attempts to make Callicles feel the danger of his position rather than lay out its logical inconsistencies. The first two images address the proposed life from the perspective of the individual living it, aiming at his private experience of living out this life of unending maximization of pleasure. The last three images, though much briefer, are more poignant and address the proposed life from its public perspective.

These first images may be considered a kind of the natural critique of the lifeCallicles proposes inasmuch as they associate it with what is naturally repulsive to it. Callicles had rejected the happiness of lacking nothing as a happiness predicable of stones and corpses (492e). Socrates reverses that response with his first story, which he presents as an elaborate concatenation ofa

136. See 493c-d: “And while these things are getting to be pretty absurd, they make clear what I want toget across to you, however I can, to persuade you to change course, and instead of a life in an insatiable and depraved condition, to choose a life in an orderly condition…” For support of this point, see James Nichols, “The Rhetoric of Justice in Plato’s Gorgias,” in Plato: Gorgias and Phaedrus, in Plato: Gorgias and Phaedrus (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 144: “Here Socrates himself tried several means of persuasion on Callicles.” This kind of persuasion is in service of trying to root out the unhealthy image of justice from Callicles’s soul and therefore falls under Socrates’s later description of the genuine practice of politics. 200 quotation from Euripides, a mantic Pythagorean aphorism, and a pun-laden fable about leaking urns from a foreigner. Socrates suggests that the life Callicles proposes is perhaps no life at all, but instead a sort of living death. He aligns the constituent activity of Callicles’s proposed life with the ceaseless, repetitive, purposeless activity that serves as a punishment in the underworld.137

What for Callicles was supposed to be the superior man’s life of power is imaged as the life of a gibbering, senseless, and powerless shade. Socrates thus represents Callicles’s naturally superior way of life as a naturally repugnant life, a life with little difference between it and death.138

Perhaps death is too far away to affect Callicles, for he responds to Socrates’s plea by admitting that he is unmoved by this tale and probably by other fables like it. Nevertheless,

Socrates again employs an image. This image emphasizes the toilsome characteristic of the life spent ever in pursuit of more and more pleasure. Again, this image seems to trade on the natural repugnance of the inherent difficulty and slavish demands of such a life. What for Callicles was supposed to be a courageous pursuit of ever more pleasure is imaged as the craven flight from ever imminent pains. Still, Callicles is unpersuaded. He does not deny the accompaniment of pain or the necessary precursor of challenging labor. Instead he returns to the image of the stone and implies that the toils and pains are worth the chance to experience the greatest pleasures.

Having failed to persuade Callicles by addressing the life as it may be experienced, Socrates now introduces images of specific pleasures—images which demand a public context. Thefirst image is of a type of bird who eliminates its digested waste as it ingests more food. Sharing meals is a frequent and essential part of living together in the city,139 whereas defecating is certainly a

137. Socrates is drawing on the frequent identification of punishment in Hades with a recurring distillation of one’s worst features. Consider, for example, the fates of Tantalus and Sysiphus.

138. A contravention of nature is also present in the persuasion of the soul to follow the body. There is a perversion of the natural hierarchy of soul over body, and there is a perversion of natural justice on Callicles’s model inasmuch as the body, obviously the weaker of the pair, persuades the soul to follow its commands, much to the detriment of the soul itself. On this point, see G. Carone, “Akrasia in the Republic: Does Plato Change His Mind?,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 20 (2001): 107–148.

139. Consider the importance of giving standards for symposia in the first book of the Laws; consider also the public feasts thrown in honor of Olympic or other victories (see Apology 36d–e). 201 private activity. It is the coincidence of these that account for the provocative distaste of the image. Perhaps Callicles begins to feel uncomfortable, for Socrates must remind him not to “slacken out of shame” (494c). The next image is of a man scratching an itch without restriction. Calli- cles certainly shows that Socrates is close to hitting a nerve by exclaiming that Socrates is being bizarre (ἄτοπος)140 and is an unequivocal rabble-rouser (ἀτεχνῶς δημηγόρος). The allusion to public masturbation, couched as it is in lewd puns, may be meant to amuse as well as shame—but shame is the goal, and Socrates nears it. His final image of the catamite comes closest to cracking

Callicles’s shamelessness. The catamite is another image that relies on a public context, though a less obvious one. Although Socrates is not suggesting, as with the previous image, that the catamite would enjoy his specific pleasure in public, Socrates is trading on the fact that catamites were barred from political life.141 Here convention is not working to prevent the superior men from increasing their power, but to keep power from one willing to subjugate himself to the pleasure of another. Socrates has recast Callicles’s proposed life as, at best, trivial and disgusting or, at worst, humiliating and debasing. It seems that Socrates may be successful in turning Callicles’s soul a little toward the ugliness of the life he proposes. In what seems likely to be an instance of projection, Callicles asks if Socrates is not ashamed to bring up such topics. Socrates correctly counters that these shameful images apply to whoever endorses unrestrained pleasure and refuses to distinguish between better and worse. Though Callicles may feel some stirrings of shame, he does notopenlyac- knowledge them.142 Instead, with a remarkable candidness, Callicles asserts the position Socrates attributes to him along with its consequences, “in order that [his] speech may not be inconsistent

140. Another possible translation for this term may be that Socrates is being obscene.

141. See Aeschines Against Timarkhos for the relevant court case. See also Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 272–273 andKahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias,” 106–107 for scholarly comment on this legal fact.

142. Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 84, notes that Callicles does feel “internal shame,” but that its conflict with “external shame” complicates his expression of this internal shame. That is, Callicles is pained at having to associate himself with a catamite but more pained atbeing seen by the audience as being forced to give up his point so quickly. 202

. . .” (495a). With Callicles’s open commitment to his account, Socrates abandons his provocative pleading for Callicles to change his mind. Callicles will not be dissuaded by these images.143 Now and at last Socrates pursues a refutation of Callicles’s position.

Private Pleasure, Public Pandering, Common Good: 495b-505d

Socrates conducts his refutation of Callicles in two parts. The first part addresses the most proximate position, namely, Callicles’s peculiar hedonism. The second part addresses Callicles’s broader conception of politics. Now, I have interpreted Callicles’s politics as implying his hedonism. His understanding of power as strictly exclusive and competitive demands that the goal of this power be strictly individuated and maximally pursued; pleasure satisfies these conditions.

Callicles’s emphasis on the natural superiority of some individuals prevent him from specifying the forms of this pleasure and thereby putting a priori limitations on the superior individual.

The result is a hedonism that in principle denies any validity to moderation and eschewsany hierarchical ranking of pleasures. On this view, all pleasure is good and any pleasure should be pursued without restraint. It is the lack of distinction between pleasures that Socrates first addresses. Once he secures a reversal on that point, leading Callicles to assert that some pleasures are after all better than others, Socrates then focuses on the provenance of that distinction between better and worse. His refutation thus takes up Callicles’s notion of the naturally superior and the understanding of political power that underwrites it.

It should be noted that, even though Callicles has been a consistently slippery interlocutor, his elusiveness now carries a more significant role. Socrates is not only trying to refute the positions that Callicles has laid out, but he must do so in such a way that holds Callicles off from his ever at-hand dismissal of such arguments. If Socrates and Callicles werealoneina room, the conversation may have ended long ago but almost certainly would cease once Socrates

143. In this use of images, pull quotes, and innuendo, Socrates here is least discernable from the look of rhetorician. Perhaps the most significant difference is that these tactics are employed in order to push Callicles into self-reflection, not to distract him from it. 203 begins refuting Callicles and Callicles begins to feel a loss of power. Even before Gorgias intervenes, I believe Socrates is well aware that Callicles is engaged in this conversation more for the audience’s sake than for his own. It will not suffice, therefore, to best Callicles on a point of technicality. Rather, Socrates argues so that, as he says later, the truth can be shared in common, and to achieve that, he must keep Callicles engaged. Before beginning his refutation, Socrates elicits twice more Callicles’s commitment to his strong hedonistic principle that the good and the pleasant are the same: all good things are pleasant and all pleasant things are good.144 Perhaps in anticipation of Callicles’s weak, joking reversal on this point, Socrates asks if Callicles insists (ἰσχυρίζῃ) on this point and whether it is something he is serious about (σπουδάζοντος) (495b-c). Having secured this starting point, Socrates begins his refutation. The refutation actually consists of two refutations, between which is a crises that threatens to halt the dialogue. The first refutation concerns the structure of pleasure itself and is dismissed by Socrates as probably unpersuasive. The second, which Socrates seems to have intended all along, is a broader refutation that trades on the character or status of the one pleased. As evidence that Socrates intends this second refutation all along, note that he begins by asking about distinctions between knowledge, courage, and pleasure, and these first two are the distinctive characteristics of the naturally superior.

Socrates marks these first distinctions as preliminary by playfully “memoralizing” them, complete with a reference to Callicles’s deme name, as if they were a legal affadivit (495d). What follows leaves behind knowledge and courage and instead focuses on the identification of pleasure as the good. Socrates first outlines a principle of exclusion concerning opposite experiences

(πάθοι), among which experiences are the good and the bad, then shows that pleasure and pain violate this principle.145 He concludes that pleasure and pain cannot be considered opposites

144. Nota bene: “good” in Callicles’s context means what is worth genuinely pursuing, as opposed, say, to merely seeming to pursue.

145. See Rod Jenks, “The Sounds of Silence: Rhetoric and Dialectic in the Refutation of Callicles inPlato’s Gorgias,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 40, no. 2 (2007): 201–215 for a helpful and valiant attempt to validate the logic of this argument. 204 in the way good and bad are, and therefore pleasure cannot be simply the same as the good. Beginning with the examples of health and illness, Socrates includes in the principle of exclusion the acquisition and loss of the experiences. Accordingly, each of the opposites is gained or lost in turn, but never at the same time. The opposite experiences of the good and the bad abideby this principle. So, if there is a set of experiences that one has and loses at the same time and in the same respect, those experiences cannot be the good and the bad, because they violate the established principle. To this Callicles agrees most emphatically.146

Socrates then shows how pleasure and pain violate this principle of excluded opposites.

He uses examples of the pleasures of consuming food and drink and the pain of lacking food and drink. Generalizing from the pain of hunger or thirst, Callicles agrees that all lack and desire are painful. He had implied as much when he did not contest this description in Socrates’s image of the leaking urns. Socrates then shows that the pleasure of filling that lack only occurs simultaneously with the presence of the lack, and therefore, only with the presence of pain.147 Once the desire has been satisfied, there is no pleasure to be had. In other words, once the pain is lost,sois the pleasure. It is possible, and in some cases perhaps necessary, to have pleasure while being in pain. But this violates the principle of exclusive opposites, and so pleasure cannot be identified with the good.

Socrates later admits that he does not suppose that Callicles would agree with this argument. So why does Socrates make it and then abandon it? Before the interlude wherein Callicles stubbornly refuses to stop playing dumb, Socrates seems to indicate that there is more to this line

146. The modifier used here, ὑπερφυῶς, is the same one used by Chaerephon to emphasize howserious Socrates was in his argument concerning justice. Chaerephon’s emphasis will be rewarded soon when Socrates returns to those arguments and calls them “adamantine.” Callicles’s emphasis is not so clearly rewarded. Callicles’s understanding of nature (φύσις—which shares a root with ὑπερφυῶς) perhaps cannot support his emphasis on it. Nevertheless it is in keeping with his desire for a pure justice, unmixed with weakness—the desire that prompted him to build his city in speech. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 114, also notes this out of place emphasis, but keeps his analysis limited to the individually moral and does not consider its relation to Callicles’s conception of the political.

147. This understanding of pleasure/pain maps on to Callicles’s conception of power as zero-sum: theac- quisition of power also always means the loss of power. Granted, the locus of this power is importantly broader than the locus of pleasure/pain. 205 of argument by exhorting Callicles to proceed to what follows. Yet, he does not then pick up this line of argument after the crisis, but instead takes up a new approach. I think this first refutation is meant more to display Callicles’s ignorance about the structure of pleasure and pain than to prompt him to develop such a theory. Perhaps Socrates had a longer inquiry into the nature of pleasure and pain planned but then abandoned it once he realized how short was Callicles’s patience. This first refutation in its present and perhaps truncated form is not effective because, in the end, it does not matter to Callicles whether he understands pleasure or not. What truly matters to Callicles is the relationship of the superior man to pleasure. As Callicles indicatesin the momentary crisis and as seems to be confirmed by Gorgias’s intervention (“Your honor isnot at stake here at all, Callicles. . .” 497b), these details about the structure of pleasure are trivial.148 Admittedly, if the first refutation were complete then the second refutation would beunneces- sary. But Socrates does not continue the first refutation because its success would seem more like an accidental failure on Callicles’s part to come up with a sufficiently clever theory of pleasure, rather than an inherent failure of his whole constellation of concepts. And it is the failure of the whole of Callicles’s conception of politics that Socrates is after.

Socrates therefore enlarges the scope of his refutation by turning to the association of pleasure and pain with good and bad people instead of experiences. He picks up the concepts with which he began, affirming that Callicles asserts that the superior men are courageous and intelligent (497e). He then asks whether foolish or cowardly men can enjoy pleasure in a similar way and to a similar degree as the intelligent and courageous men (498a). Callicles admits as much. Socrates then asks whether good and bad people are about equally pleased or pained, an equality which not only undermines the logical distinction between good and bad, but also undermines Callicles’s crucial distinction between the superior and the inferior (4998b). The superior men were supposed to have access to pleasure in a way naturally unavailable to inferior

148. See Keum, “Why Did Socrates Conduct His Dialogues Before an Audience?,” 433–435, for an insightful analysis of Gorgias’s intervention here. 206 men. Callicles again claims ignorance, and Socrates makes the inferences of his refutation with more detail.

I believe that at this point Callicles that knows he is going to reverse himself and that he is going to do so by claiming that Socrates cannot tell that he is joking. He allows Socrates to continue making his distinctions and connections in hope that Socrates ends up sounding like he is spewing eristic nonsense. Indeed, we saw this strategy at the beginning of their conversation. Callicles agrees with Socrates’s inferences so as to give content to his upcoming claim that

Socrates hangs on to these mere words with immature joy. Of course, Callicles is liberally rewrit- ing the history of the conversation. His “joking” assent was the very one that Socrates confirmed three times; he claims he has been joking all along, despite the intervening and seemingly serious desire to leave the conversation. Socrates counters Callicles’s “joke” with a small joke of his own: he updates his previous description of Callicles’s παρρηεσία, now calling him πανοῦργος.149 In addition to saying anything, Callicles would do anything, including tricking Socrates.

Socrates’s refutation of the identification of the pleasant with the good has effected Calli- cles’s reversal and has revealed the true priority of Callicles’s concepts. It shows that the pleasure achieved does not determine the goodness of the agent, but rather the goodness of the agent determines the hierarchy of the pleasure. Note that Socrates has not argued that no good is pleasant, but he has argued that not every pleasure is good and so there must be some distinct standard whereby some pleasures are better than others. Callicles had demurred from offering anysuch a priori hedonic hierarchy. His hesitancy is understandable given the difficulty in making such an assertion while at the same time maintaining that the naturally superior men demand freedom from extrinsic imposition of values. Since, for Callicles, power is the primary determiner of value, there can be no antecedently determined hierarchy of pleasures/goods. Thus, the more relevant incompatibility revealed by this refutation is an incompatibility not within Callicles’s conception of pleasure but within his understanding of politics. For denying such a hierarchy to

149. Παρρηεσία is a compound of πᾶν (all) and ρημη (speech); πανοῦργος is a compound of the same word πᾶν and ἕργον (deed). 207 pleasure leads to an absurd combination of the most elite virtues with the most basic, ordinary, and widely-achievable end, namely, pleasure. Callicles’s understanding of natural, real political power rests on a strict distinction between the superior and the inferior, but the goal of each end up being exactly the same.

Socrates therefore shifts the target of his refutation from Callicles’s understanding ofplea- sure to his distinction between the superior and inferior. Again he marks off his preliminary moves by a political allusion. Whereas before he cited Callicles’s deme name as if drawing up an affidavit, now he asks for Callicles’s vote on the matter that all actions are undertaken forthe sake of good things. This vote is supposed to be in solidarity with Polus and Socrates, bothof whom Callicles has claimed himself superior to. With this common vote, Socrates here signals that his refutation may provide an opening for a common good.

Before taking up the second part of Socrates’s refutation, however, some attention must be given to the seeming logical superfluity of this refutation. I have presented Callicles’s hedonism as a consequence of his politics. So, should not Socrates’s refutation of this hedonism imply a refutation of that politics?150 My answer is that Socrates is not concerned only with poking logical holes in Callicles’s position but also with demonstrating its danger to political life. I do maintain that Callicles’s politics is the prior claim, but it was Socrates’s unpacking of that political conception that pushed Callicles to openly adopt his peculiar and extreme hedonism—and to the extent that it was Socrates’s, Callicles may feel entitled to dismiss it..151 His hedonism may be

150. It may seem that I am here denying the validity of modus tollens, for I have argued that Callicles’s hedonism follows from his politics. The entailment at play here, however, is less deductive than motivational. Callicles adopts his hedonism because it fits with his politics, and because he is in the first place committed to hisconception of the political, he will withstand much excision of other beliefs in order to retain his central belief. For similar treatments of the secondary status of Callicles’s hedonism, see Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 114; McKim, “Shame and Truth in Plato’s Gorgias,” 42-43; Kahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias,” 109-09; and Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 86.

151. It seems to me entirely in keeping with Callicles’s position both to adopt this extreme ethic and to subsequently abandon it. See chapter three in which I develop in greater detail this feature of Callicles’s character insofar as he is a product of sophistry. For now, recall Protagoras’s hedonic calculus. Callicles’s hedonism is as an inverted image of that: Protagoras began with distinctions between pleasures and was forced to admit an identification of pleasure with the good; Callicles begins with this identification and ends with distinctions. 208 logically entailed by his conception of power, but it is politically peripheral. Those who would find Calliclean politics appealing are the very same who would suspect the practical validity of

this extended logical refutation. Consequently, the refutation of hedonism must be part of a larger

strategy.

Socrates therefore pursues a more comprehensive refutation, one that addresses the heart of Callicles’s position. His ostensible target is the way one ought to live. He thus returns to the

contrast of the two ways of life, which Callicles had initiated in a effort to refute the speeches

of philosophy. In this reformulation of that contrast, he places politics on the side of Callicles

and philosophy on his own side. Yet we shall see that Socrates claims the genuine practice of

politics for himself alone before the end of the dialogue. Consequently, we should not be too quick to take the kind of political life Callicles promotes to be the only kind of political life.152

Accordingly, I take the ostensible target to be the real target of the refutation, but the question

of how one ought to live must be situated within a political context. Conceptions of politics

surround, support, and inform the question of how one ought to live. So on one side is the politics demanded by Callicles’s love, and on the other side is the politics demanded by Socrates’s love.

These differ radically according to their ends; one aims a good that cannot be shared, andthe

other at a common good.

I have maintained that Callicles devised his city in speech out of a desire to preserve an

invulnverable justice. He believes that a justice ravaged by rhetoric cannot be a true justice.153

152. This moment in the dialogue provides support to those—the majority of scholars—who take thedialogue to be a contest between philosophy and rhetoric. I have made many arguments so far and will make more that this approach is not necessitated. By way of textual support in this moment, I turn the reader’s attention to Socrates’s addendum to his opposition between the Calliclean political life and the Socratic philosophical life. Serious interest should be given to the question of which of these lives is better as well as “whatever it is about this life that differs from that one” (500c). It is not enough to say which is better; we must also recognize what exactly differs between these two lives. In that difference, I believe we find a new way of living a political life and new way of using rhetoric.

153. Contra Dodds, Plato, Gorgias. A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary, 389–391 (and others) who take Callicles to be a strict and compelling immoralist. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 101, 121, also notes the fundamentally civic motivations for Callicles’s position. Buzzetti, “The Injustice of Callicles and the Limits of Socrates’s Ability to Educate a Young Politician” likewise resists the characterization of Callicles as strictly immoral, going so far as to claim that Callicles is truly just “deep down.” Stauffer and more so Buzzetti are too hopeful for Callicles’s morality, and neither notes how Calliclean politics can fundamentally ravage genuine politics. 209

He therefore consigns such justice, that is, the justice of the city, its lawcourts, and its laws, to the category of mere convention—a category used by the weak. In contrast, he locates true justice in the realm of nature, a realm wherein the superior rule and the inferior obey. Callicles is clear in his preference for natural justice over conventional justice, but both of these conceptions of

justice are based on an understanding of politics in which nothing can be genuinely shared.154 According to Callicles, the superior are beguiled into supporting the ends of the inferior. Even the

inferior seek equality, not because it may ground community, but because their very weakness

prevents them from asking for more. If there is anything that seems to be a common purpose,

anything like genuine community, it must really be a fiction for the sake of self-preservation.

Callicles’s strict division between nature and convention therefore intersects with another perceived binary, that between the private and the public. The public realm, on Callicles’s view, is

the prize of the rulers, who in turn have only private ends. Accordingly, conventional justice, that

is, the rule of the inferior, operates by a large-scale public deception. These inferior men make

everyone believe, and may even themselves believe, that it is in the interest of the whole to be circumscribed by law and to moderate private desires according to the principle of equality—but

in reality there is no such whole. Since these enchantments are mere speech falsely enshrined

as laws, rhetoric is not only the instrument but the very substance of conventional justice. In

contrast, Callicles envisions a city where speech would be artfully used to augment the naturally

powerful, not weaken them. Rhetoric would be an instrument only of the intelligent whereby these naturally superior ones express their superiority; this kind of rhetoric, therefore, could

never be turned against its master. Natural justice, presumably, needs no deception and does not

depend on rhetoric. Consequently, natural justice may be suppressed or denied by rhetoric in the

form of convention but it can never be replaced by rhetoric.

154. It would therefore be a mistake to imagine Socrates arguing against natural justice for the sake of conventional justice on Callicles’s terms. Rather, Socrates seeks to refute the entire schema for the sake of preserving the possibility of genuine justice, which is otherwise precluded by Callicles’s account of justice. 210

I repeat these points so as to indicate the locus of the inconsistency that Socrates’s refutation reveals. Callicles’s conception of politics precludes the possibility of a common good, yet the impossibility of a common good precludes the possibility of a city. Callicles introduces his natural justice as an answer to the maddening situation of conventional justice. Yet, this answer is incompatible with the reason it is needed: Callicles’s politics is incompatible with the city itself. As already mentioned, the focal question of Socrates’s refutation concerns the way one ought to live. The life Callicles proposes consists of speaking among the people, trainingin rhetoric, and participating in official activities, in short, the life of a “real man” (500c). Thislifeis couched in the gestalt of Calliclean politics, as Socrates indicates by connecting it to the activities of the “real man” (τὰ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς δὴ ταῦτα πράττοντα), which was Callicles’s catchphrase for the superior sort of human being. Accordingly, Callicles sees this way of life as opposed to Socrates’s life spent in philosophy. Socrates then returns to his schema of arts and pseudo-arts in order to argue that the rhetoric, which seems to belong to the superior man’s arsenal, is in fact essentially attached to the pleasure of those inferior to him. Callicles has acknowledged from the previous stage of the refutation that there are better and worse pleasures. He also admits that someart is necessary for someone to have the power to pick out the better from the worse pleasures.

Presumably, in the right hands, namely, the superior man’s hands, rhetoric would be just such an instrumental art for promoting natural justice. Now Socrates attempts to show not only that rhetoric is not this art but also that this notion of rhetoric actually undermines the superior man’s superiority.

Socrates rehearses his distinction between genuine arts and pandering pseudo-arts. He does not mention rhetoric yet, though surely Callicles knows that Socrates locates rhetoric in the latter category. Nevertheless, Callicles goes along with Socrates as he proceeds stepwise through the practices that gratify the masses. From music without words to dithyrambic poetry then to tragedy, Socrates at last arrives at an indiscriminate rhetoric which aims to please its audience 211 whomever that may include (501b-502b).155 Socrates proceeds through these seemingly apolitical practices of pandering so that he can lead Callicles to see that the political context of his valorized rhetoric does not prevent it from also being pandering.

Socrates then aligns gratification of the populace with pursuit of private interest. Callicles resists this association presumably to preserve the possibility that the superior man may at the same time pursue his private interest and avoid debasing himself before the masses. Callicles’s resistance takes the form of asserting that some rhetoricians do care for the good of the citizens. In order to avoid yoking his superior man to the whims of the masses, Callicles ends up committing himself to something like a common good, namely, a good that seems to exceed the individual’s good and encompass the goods of the many.156 Without such a good, the only ends of action are private goods. It follows that if the superior man is to attain his own private good (that is, pleasure), which includes his naturally just rule over the inferior, and if he is to avoid constant and comprehensive violence as the means of that achievement, then he must provide for the private goods (that is, pleasures) of those he would rule. But this makes the superior man little better than a slave to the fancies of those inferior to him. The more these men use rhetoric to sway the masses, the more they rely on it. The tool of their power actually weakens them—this absurdity is too much for Callicles.

Consequently, and not without its own absurdity, Callicles mentions, with approbation, past “rhetoricians” who seemed to care for the good of their fellow citizens (503c).157 The popula-

155. The practices that comprise this progression seem uncontroversially to be arts, yet this first blushis difficult to square with the previous account, since these practices gratify the pleasures of the people. Itseemslikely that by producing this list, Socrates is indicating that pleasure and the good may coincide. He soon also mentions a kind of rhetoric which may attain the status of art by its orientation toward the good of its audience. Thecomplex relationship between pleasure and the good and the crafts that appeal to the soul is not entirely solved here, butthis open problem does not undermine his refutation.

156. Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 87, notes that “there is then a common truth that is agreed upon by Callicles and Socrates, as Callicles comes to the painful but potentially beneficial realization that Socrates’s thesis better accounts for his own actions.”

157. Pericles, Themistocles, Militades, and Cimon—the political men Callicles mentions—were renowned military and political leaders. As Sachs, Plato: Gorgias and Aristotle: Rhetoric, 94, offers in his note: “ The fourof them presided over a half-century or so of vast expansion of Athenian power and wealth.” This vast expansion lead 212 tion of this list indicates, however, that though Callicles has acknowledged some need for a sort of common good, he still understands this good primarily in terms of pleasure. The rhetoricians he cites incited and oversaw the expansion of Athens’s empire, which brought with it wealth and power as well as war. Perhaps it is this promise of wealth and power that prompts Socrates to say that these statesmen were merely satisfying their own and the people’s desires. Perhaps it is the devastation of war that motivates him to claim that none truly cared for the improvement of the citizenry. Regardless, Socrates takes up Callicles’s invitation to find the sort of rhetorician who does care for the the good of the citizens as an opportunity to consider more carefully how that good comes about.

Socrates identifies the key characteristics of the artful pursuit of a common good ascon- cern with order and arrangement (503e-504a). In comparison with other crafts, Socrates describes the craftsman as putting each element of his craft into a harmonious arrangement. Theorganized result is a beneficial one. The goodness of what the craftsman brings about is derived fromits order and arrangement. In the body, the goodness that results from the artful practice applied to it is health and strength. When Socrates turns to the soul, though, Callicles is again recalcitrant, telling Socrates to answer his own question (504c). Callicles anticipates that the order and arrangement that the genuine art of rhetoric seeks to instill in the soul is law (νόμος). Further- more, the conditions of the soul that support this characteristic of being law-abiding are justice and moderation.158 This justice can be neither Callicles’s natural justice nor his conventional justice, for the good that this justice upholds is a common good. Its manifestation in law is not an

to the Peloponnesian War and the internally conflicted Athens that wages it. The absurdity in Callicles’s approbation is that Callicles praises these leaders not for their ability to provide for their own pleasure but for their ability to provide for the good of their fellow citizens. A further difficulty arises when we see later that these leaders donot even do what Callicles’s now praises them for doing. It is perhaps for this reason that Socrates conspicuously does not refer to them as leaders or even politicians

158. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 131-132, finds this argument too quick and unconvincing, butI believe his dissatisfaction is due to his desire to see “a truly serious effort to discover the arrangement and order of the soul.” Admittedly, Socrates does not provide that investigation, but, on my reading, such an investigation is not Socrates’s present goal. He is willing here, as before and as later, to assume a sense of lawfulness, justice, and moderation—already present in the city—that is compatible with a genuine common good. 213 expression of natural superiority or a conniving suppression of that superiority, but rather it is a reflective self-administration for the good of the whole.

The last features of Callicles’s superior man have been undone. Now the truly powerful man in political life will be the one concerned with instilling justice and moderation and eliminating injustice and self-indulgence in the souls of his fellow citizens. Self-rule was initially rejected by Callicles as sheer convention, as one of the many tools the inferior use to subdue the superior.

Now Socrates has shown that this self-rule is the only way to rule without actually being a slave to the pleasures of the populace or sacrificing political rule for mere violence. Callicles rejected law too, at least the law shared by the masses and those who would have rightfully ruled them. Now

Socrates has shown that this law, which Callicles derisively identified solely with convention, is not mere fiat but an expression of the internal order of the city for its own good. Socrateshas defied the rigid categories of convention and nature, opening the possibility for law that responds to, is accountable to, and helps bring about the benefits set by nature. Socrates has also opened the possibility of a conception of power that operates outside of oppression and submission, a power that originates with self-governance. Ultimately, Socrates has given a glimpse of a good that is neither privately coveted nor publicly wrangled, a good that grounds community by its common pursuit.159

Callicles’s politics have been radically gutted from its most extended implications ofhe- donism to its most fundamental conception of the very structure of power. Though there were some times when Callicles seemed to engage genuinely in the dialogue, for the most part he has blithely gone along with Socrates and occasionally announced that he is not interested in the conversation for his own sake. At 505c even his reluctant gratification of Gorgias seems to have exhausted itself. He now seems to disengage almost entirely from the conversation, telling

Socrates to ask someone else, to decide for himself what to do, and finally to finish the dialogue by becoming his own conversation partner. He will eventually be brought back in to the conver-

159. As mentioned earlier, Callicles’s contradictory politics was grounded in his love of the δημός. Now the task is to see if this there is a way to save the δημός from Calliclean politics. 214 sation by another appeal from Gorgias, but never again do we see Callicles as a responsive, let alone an invested, interlocutor. Moreover, I believe that not only is Callicles done with Socrates but Socrates is also done with him. The head that Socrates puts on his speech is not somucha refutation of Callicles as much as it is an alternative to all the claims concerning justice implied by the speeches of the three interlocutors.

Socrates: 505d-527e

For a moment is seems as though Socrates will finish the dialogue by himself. Yet itis in this moment of isolation that Socrates enjoins all those around him, both the interlocutors and the audience, in a common endeavor toward a common good. This common good is clarity regarding the matters at hand, and the common endeavor is a rivalry for knowing what istrue and what is false about these matters. The rivalry alluded to here is a kind of rivalry that rivalsthe previous understandings of how speech and community function. Socrates thus appropriates the vocabulary that better describes the kind of exclusive power his interlocutors have presupposed.

By this appropriation Socrates demands a rivalry for truth, a rivalry against falsehood. As such, it is a kind of striving for victory that can be taken up in common, since the victory is not one against another but instead a victory for all.

I contend that the prize of this victory is not only truth about power but also true power itself.160 As Socrates “puts a head” (505d) on his speeches he reveals another kind of rivalry, namely the rivalry between the conception of speech and power that is assumed by the practice of rhetoric and that presupposed by the genuine practice of justice. Though Socrates’s speeches mostly consist of recapitulations, they gain new strength in their comprehensive presentation.

It is not until the full scope of rhetoric, from its presuppositions to its consequences, has been

160. On this point, I found much useful in Rocco, “Liberating Discourse: The Politics of Truth in Plato’s Gorgias,” especially his notion of a “politics of truth,” which includes consideration of “how it is that Socratic philosophy presupposes a politics, or more precisely, how the search for truth is at the same time a struggle for power” (363). While his understanding of the political context and consequence of the dialogue resonates much with what I present here, I disagree with Rocco’s philosophical appropriation of and standard for political dialogue. I address this disagreement more fully in chapter three. 215 revealed that Socrates can give an equally full account of its alternative. This alternative addresses the issues of the individual, his relationship to others, and his place among the gods—all held together by a geometrical equality, a proportion that orders the whole cosmos. Thus the drama between truth and power—or real power versus seeming power—unfolds on a cosmic stage.

In this concluding section of the dialogue, Socrates’s interlocutor is ostensibly Callicles. I maintained above that Socrates is not primarily interested in having a discussion with Callicles anymore. Although Callicles will make a couple substantive contributions and one startling admission, he is mostly a facilitator for Socrates’s account. And Socrates is well aware of the ironic ridiculousness of this situation, admitting that he does indeed look like a demagogue (519d). The conversation is not so much with Callicles as Callicles but with Callicles as representative of the rhetoric that has been Socrates’s continual opponent. It is for the sake of the surrounding

Athenian audience that Socrates concludes with these speeches. We readers may have forgotten the audience after the intense conversations with Polus and Callicles, but Gorgias’s exhortation for Socrates to continue reminds us of these Athenian citizens. By Gorgias’s account, both he and these citizens do not think Socrates ought to stop (506b).161 The dialogue with Callicles may be less than an authentic dialogue, but it is of utmost urgency to the surrounding audience that

Socrates continue with it. It is to these fellow citizens that he is keen to offer an alternative way of seeing their practice of justice both in their individual lives and in their civic actions.

Truth and Power in Life: 505d-513d

Socrates begins by claiming that he is taking up the speech again from the beginning.

When he starts with the distinction between the pleasant and the good, we may wonder what beginning he meant, as the argument concerning that distinction arose well into his discussion with Callicles. Given that he goes on to discuss the differences in ways of life that flow from

161. Perhaps because of his knack of reading others, Gorgias does not push Callicles keep up the conversation as he did before. Gorgias himself may be interested in what Socrates has to say precisely because the audience is. It also seems possible that Gorgias is genuinely intrigued by the kind of speech Socrates mentions. 216 different understandings of power, perhaps the beginning he means is the beginning ofeach man. The question of how one ought to live is first in the sense that if this is not answered well, then the good for the sake of which the politics works is also obscured.

The vision of the way of life that Socrates presents is one comprehensively orderedby self-governance. This way of life thus clearly rests on an understanding of power that isneither strictly exclusive nor inherently expansive. The notion of power at work here is instead a power that one puts to work on one’s own soul. It thereby governs the whole of one’s life, relationships to others, and even to the gods. By introducing this kind of power Socrates shifts the context of the account from an opposition between being powerful and being powerless to an opposition between two kinds of power. One kind of power precludes the possibility of genuine community and demands slavish injustice from its practitioner. This kind of power is the power behind the so- called art of rhetoric whose source of worth rests solely on its own preservation. The other kind of power provides for the flourishing of a just community as well as the justice of the individual who participates in that community. The worth of this power is grounded in its service to excellent order.

Socrates first and quickly rehearses key claims from the previous conversations. The pleasant is different from the good; something is good because of some virtue; this virtue comes about by the right order and arrangement of the thing which is native to it; for the soul, this natural orderliness marks it as moderate; therefore the moderate soul is good. Moderation makes the soul orderly, this order brings about its virtue or excellence, which in turn renders it good.

Socrates then ventures to new ground, building an account of how this orderliness of the soul encompasses all the individual virtues; that is, he builds an account of the unity of the virtues.162

This argument is not one that reduces all the other virtues to moderation. Instead, Socratesde- scribes the life of the well-ordered person and finds all the other virtues in the unity and integrity

162. Recall my argument from chapter one that the unity of the virtues was the generally accepted ideal perverted by Protagoras’s sophistic education; see Irwin, Plato Gorgias, 222: “Socrates relies on some common conception of the cardinal virtues which belong to a good man.” 217 of that life. Given that a person is moderate, he must also be pious and just because if he did not do what is appropriate with regard to the gods and human beings then he would not be moderate after all. So the moderate person is also a just and pious person. Socrates thendwellson the relationship between moderation and courage, which is unsurprising given that Callicles has marked off courage as the special virtue of the superior man.163 Since the moderate man does not act inappropriately, he avoids and pursues the actions, people, pleasures, and pains that he should, and he withstands with endurance whatever he must. The moderate man is therefore also courageous. The self-indulgent man, by eschewing moderation and thereby the proper order of his soul, loses access not only to justice and piety but also to courage—the virtue Callicles identified as necessary to render self-indulgence a sign of greatness. So far, Socrates has claimed nothing that it not implied by the city’s conventions.164 The

virtuous person is supposed to live a beautiful and happy life by virtue of his orderly soul. And

since the order of his soul provides for his happiness, if there is any damage to that order, the

only way to reclaim his happiness is to submit to the discipline (ἀκολασίαν) required to reorder his soul. Now Socrates widens the focus of his alternative. Just as Callicles’s self-indulgent man

has been found worthless and miserable, also miserable is the punishment-evading man Polus

praised. Up to this point the misery of the self-indulgent and the penalty-evading was confined

to their individual lives. But now Socrates identifies a new and political problem with the wayof

life that belong to these sorts of men: these sorts of men become incapable of sharing anything and therefore become incapable of friendship. Although Socrates focuses on the effect this inca-

pability has on the men themselves, namely, that they would not be loved by any other human

being or god, there is a further implied effect. These men do live in a community—a community

163. Socrates does not similarly dwell on the other virtue Callicles singled out, namely, cleverness or intelligence. Perhaps there was nothing worth saving in Callicles’s conception of wisdom. It is also important to Socrates, I believe, that he does not align this alternative way of life too much with his own. This must be a life that is attainable for any citizen, and Socrates’s life is surely quite peculiar and in some respects extreme. Intelligence (φρονήσις) is not left entirely out, however, since it is evoked by the very word for moderation, σωφροσύνη.

164. Contra Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 136, who, without evidence or argument, claims that Socrates here “transforms virtue into something most people would find hard to recognize.” 218 of other human beings as well as a larger community of men and gods—whether they are capable of doing so fully or not. The relationship with these others remains even though it is drained of any possibility of friendship or of a common good. This being out-of-joint with the cosmos and the city is another source of the vicious man’s misery.

In contrast, the internal order of the virtuous man resonates in the shared orderliness that binds the cosmos. The reigning power in this cosmos is a geometrical equality that holds the whole together. This geometrical equality is a kind of proportionality. It is not the sheer matching of quantity, but instead is determined by the qualitative structures of what it unites.165

The community of the cosmos is thus predicated on a kind of proportion that repeats fromthe highest reaches of the heavens to the innermost structure of an individual’s soul. Moderation and justice, which express and maintain the order of the individual’s soul, are thus united to the laws of his city, which express the order of that civic community and beyond. In this poetic way Socrates intimately associates proper order with a most comprehensive power. This power encompasses the whole not by its unending appetite but by establishing and preserving the order that constitutes the flourishing of each thing together. The consequences of this understanding of power also encompass all the claims Socrates had made against his interlocutors.

Armed now with this new conception of power, Socrates turns to refute the reproaches

Callicles made against him, specifically those against Socrates’s supposed powerlessness. Earlier,

Polus had agreed—and had been reproached by Callicles for agreeing—that, while it was worse to suffer injustice than commit injustice, it was more shameful to commit injustice than tosufferit.

Callicles in turn claimed that suffering injustice was not only worse but also the most shameful because it was the height of powerlessness. Socrates will agree with Callicles that what is worse is also the most shameful and is so because it lacks power. But Socrates uses his new conception of power to counter Callicles’s claim that this designation belongs to suffering injustice. Suffering injustice is not the sign of powerlessness, committing injustice is.

165. See Sachs, Plato: Gorgias and Aristotle: Rhetoric, 100, n. 45. 219

Socrates holds fast to his earlier claim that to commit injustice is both worse and more shameful. Although he has met no one who can unfasten the adamantine arguments for this claim, he goes on to give another argument in its favor—this time in terms of power.166 He first establishes a proportionality between the magnitude of evil and the magnitude of the beauty of the power that can prevent or rectify that evil as well as the shamefulness of lacking that power (509c). The greater the evil, the more beautiful is the power to prevent that evil andthemore shameful is the lack of that power. He then considers what power prevents one from committing injustice and what power prevents one from suffering injustice. Callicles is quick to note that a power is needed to prevent suffering injustice, but he withholds his assent that power is needed to prevent committing injustice. Anticipating Callicles’s resistance, Socrates draws from his conversation with Polus to argue for the necessity of this power. Socrates claims, as he has argued with Polus, that no one commits injustice because he wants to, so wanting not to commit injustice does not suffice to prevent him from committing injustice (509d-e). A power isneeded to prevent the commission of injustice. This requisite power is the power Socrates has just described, namely, the power that maintains the order of the soul and rectifies that order when necessary.167

The art that is needed to prevent the suffering of injustice is one that makes a man ruler in the city or, failing that, a comrade to the reigning power in the city, be it a tyrant or the

166. As I have mentioned and will argue more fully later, the opinion that it is worse to do than to suffer wrong is presupposed by the lawful order of the city and by its implementation of justice. The strength Socrates ascribes to this claim can be troubling to those who take Socrates to be promoting a philosophical life and who see Socratic philosophy as essentially aporetic. Hence, Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 138-140, stretches the text considerably to deconstruct Socrates’s conviction, though he fails to give any suggestion as to what could be Socrates’s ulterior motive. My political reading can provide an elegant exit to this problem, however. For the vein from which this argument derives its peculiar strength runs as deep as the city itself. In other words its strength is due it from its political function, not from special philosophical status.

167. Socrates includes also the need for an art to govern this power. Presumably this art is πολιτική, as its two parts νομοθετική and δικαιοσύνη are directed for establishing and maintaining the order of the soul. As Socrates reiterates, the worst evil is committing injustice without paying the just penalty; it follows that πολιτική will bethe most beautiful art as it either prevents (as νομοθετική) or rectifies (as δικαιοσύνη) this worst evil. 220 regime.168 To this Callicles wholeheartedly agrees: “Do you see, Socrates, how ready I am to praise when you say something beautiful? You seem to me to have said this quite beautifully.

(ὁρᾷς, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὡς ἐγὼ ἕτοιμός εἰμι ἐπαινεῖν ἄν τι καλῶς λέγῃς; τοῦτό μοι δοκεῖς πάνυ

καλῶς εἰρηκέναι)” (510a-b). Now, to become the friend of a tyrant one must become as much like the tyrant a possible. If one is much better than the tyrant then the tyrant’s fear and distrust of this superior one would prevent the friendship. If one is much worse than the tyrant then the tyrant would too much despise this inferior one to consider him a friend. The key to friendship with the tyrant, therefore, is to convince the tyrant that one is like him by praising and blaming the same things as the tyrant and by submitting to the tyrant’s rule (510d). Rhetoric is therefore the art that establishes friendship with the tyrant by providing a flattering imitation of the tyrant. By this art and the imitation it produces, one gains the power to evade suffering injustice.169

This sort of power, however, entails the commission of injustice. Especially in thecase

of imitating the tyrant, the imitation demands that the imitator commit injustices at least on the

behalf of the tyrant. Furthermore, this kind of power is felt most keenly when one not only commits outrageous injustices but also evades paying the just penalty for them. This power

therefore enables one to avoid not only suffering injustice but also suffering justice.170 Socrates

thus concludes his account that the power to prevent the suffering of injustice is tantamount to

168. Socrates proceeds with the case of the tyrant, which is the most extreme case. The other options, namely, ruling in the city or befriending a regime are not taken up here. Socrates does return to these options soon when he considers the cases of Pericles and other Athenian statesmen who could be said to rule and whose rule is predicated upon their pandering to the regime. See Gorgias 517a and following.

169. It is worth reflecting on the difference between imitation and proportion. Both are ways ofbecoming similar to something else, but in this case, imitation seems to entail the wholesale subsumption of the imitator’s nature to the nature of what is imitated. The similarity of proportion, on the other hand, depends on each element of the proportion maintaining its own nature. Their similarity is mutual, not parasitic. See Gorgias 513b: “You cannot be merely an imitator, you have to really be like them in your very nature . . .”

170. Again, Socrates will return to the scenario in which one imitates not an inherently unjust tyrant but a potentially just regime when he discusses the Athenian statesmen Callicles admires; see Gorgias 518e. There, the commission of injustice follows not so much from the quality of what is imitated as from the act of flattering imitation, clarified as indulging the desires of the city. 221 the power to commit injustice. In order to prevent what some (namely, Polus and Callicles) claim is a worse evil, this power effects what everyone acknowledges is evil.171

This point of degree—that there is a worse evil one should escape—is exactly thepoint that Callicles falls back on. According to Callicles, the fate of being put to death is worse than the fate of an unjust soul. Now Socrates takes up the assumption behind this claim: death is only the worse evil if life in itself is worth more than living well. The arts beside rhetoric that aim at the sheer preservation of life are not esteemed, but what more does rhetoric do than enable one to save his own life? The power of rhetoric sets preservation of life as the highest good andthus derives its worth solely from its own activity. In doing so it sets the standard of value quite low indeed. On this understanding of power, its sheer self-preservation is the necessary condition for all other values. If required, everything else is sacrificed for this end. Consequently, all the qualities Callicles valued are radically limited. Excellence reaches only as far as safety allows; courage cowers at the threat of death.

If Callicles insists on pursuing this kind of power, he must become exactly like the Athe- nian populace. He must become like the Athenian populace if he is to be loved by them, and he must be loved by them in order to have power in the city. This is what it means to be a politician in the way Callicles desires; this is what it means to practice rhetoric. But this power is bought at the price of what he loves the most. Recall that what Callicles loved most was, according to

Socrates, the Athenian populace. As I have argued, Callicles wanted his conception of power to prevail precisely because he does love his city and therefore wishes it to have true, natural justice—a justice that is strong and courageous.172 Socrates has now shown even more starkly than before that this kind of power is self-defeating.

171. Even Callicles’s “naturally just” man would shrink from such debasing sycophancy.

172. This reading saves Callicles from too brutish a reading that makes him a mouthpiece for immoralism or an aristocratic despiser of the masses (see Dodds, Plato, Gorgias. A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary, 389–391 ), but it does not go as far as some who would see in Callicles a desire for genuine justice, or even a desire to understand genuine justice (see Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 147; Buzzetti, “The Injustice of Callicles and the Limits of Socrates’s Ability to Educate a Young Politician,” 47). 222

Callicles says that something about this seems well-said, but he knows not what. Like the many, though, he is not entirely persuaded. Socrates attributes this resistance to his love of the populace.173 I take it that Callicles is nearly persuaded about the imitative gratification required in order to be loved by the Athenian populace. It seems entirely in character that this grovelling would grate against Callicles’s superior sensibilities. Yet, Callicles resists because he is not entirely convinced that this imitation would in fact take over his very nature. Callicles holds out in the hope that he can play the part of the beloved of the city while nevertheless remaining the superior lover, that he can pretend to be the panderer even as he prepares to become a ruler.

It will soon become clear that Callicles has in mind some among the leaders of Athens who seem to effect this transition, who seem to prove the possibility to which Callicles now clings. Consequently, it is these very leaders whom Socrates now targets.

Truth and Power in the City: 513d-523a

Instead of examining the issue over and over until Callicles is persuaded, Socrates returns to an old distinction in order to extend the conversation into the realm of the political. The old distinction is between the end as pleasure and the end as the good of either the body or the soul.174 This was the distinction that divided the psuedo-arts from the genuine arts. Here, however, Socrates is concerned with a new issue. His focus turns to who in fact possesses the genuine art that cares for the good of the soul, namely, the art of politics.

Socrates at last takes up the issue of genuine politics explicitly, in part because Callicles is still able to convince himself that there is a safe way for him to gain the power he desires in the city. Callicles believes he could find a way to prudently align his own interest with the interest

173. I take Socrates as here again suggesting the option of the civic persuasion he conceptually developed during his conversation with Gorgias when he claims that if they examine these issues together over and over, Callicles will be persuaded. Socrates does not indicate that he would teach Callicles or even that he would persuade Callicles. The passive voice of the verb renders ambiguous the agent of this persuasion.

174. Perhaps in preparation for the upcoming, so-called myth, Socrates here begins to increase his references to the body and the soul. 223 of the people and the city. He would have to compromise perhaps some of his more extreme desires, but he would do so with full awareness that this way was more stable and safer. Against

Socrates’s claim that Callicles would lose himself to the city in an attempt to gain this sort of power, Callicles is convinced that he could still play to the people’s pleasure in such a sufficiently clever manner that he himself would not be consumed. He would seem to serve in order really to rule.

He is convinced this way is possible because he believes that this was the method of the four leaders he cites earlier at 503c. He brought these men up as a counterexample to Socrates’s claim that rhetoricians aim exclusively at their own self-interest. Socrates there resisted Calli- cles’s counterexample, but not entirely. Socrates did absolutely exclude them from practicing the beautiful, true rhetoric that persuades men to become better. But he was less clear whether they instead used rhetoric to pursue only their own desires. A third option seems to be available— perhaps not the worst, but certainly not the best. The need to parse this option more finely now arises more urgently with the question of who practices the true political art. Before addressing these past leaders, Socrates lingers in the present, focusing on Calli- cles’s imminent entrance into political life. In this exchange, Socrates cements his point that the citizen first needs to be a good man before he could be a good citizen.175 Not only does Calli- cles have no witnesses to corroborate that he is capable of making men better, he also has not shown himself capable of making himself better. Yet, Callicles agrees that an adequate private training in an art is first required before one can take its products public. By this agreement, even though it indicts Callicles himself of being unprepared for public life, Callicles indicates that he still thinks of the political art in the same terms that Gorgias thought of the rhetorical art, namely, as a productive art.

175. This priority is not absolute. It seems clear from the fact that politics concerns making menbetterthat becoming a good man depends in some respect on there being good citizens who can provide for his education. The priority seems to rest primarily on the almost trivial fact that the one preparing to enter public life is chronologically first a private citizen, and before that one prepares for his role as a citizen by learning to be virtuous. Thisclaimalso indicates that moral neutrality is off the table for whatever art contributes to the formation of citizens. 224

After all of Socrates’s speeches, Callicles does seem willing to grant a distinction between rhetoric and the art of politics—at least he no longer is willing to contest this point. But the distinction in Callicles’s eyes—and perhaps in the eyes of the surrounding Athenian audience—is actually a distinction made within the structure of power presumed by rhetoric. Socrates uses

Callicles’s examples of the political art in the hands of four supposed leaders of men (Pericles, Themistocles, Cimon, and Miltiades) to show that there is still at work some remnant of Callicles’s previous conception of power.176 The art that Callicles ascribes to the four political men istaken to have all the power of rhetoric but without the explicit self-interest. It may look as though

Callicles and his conception of power allows for something like a common good, but this is, in fact, a further blindness to the common good. Callicles sees only the possibility of private goods coinciding, not being truly shared.

I take Socrates’s argument to be aimed not so much at proving that Pericles and company were responsible for making the citizenry worse but more that they failed to make them better even while they claimed to have that power. The incoherence of these citizens’ claims, on the one hand, and their conduct, on the other, remind us of the problem that got Gorgias into trouble. He had claimed so much power for rhetoric that he seemed to preclude the possibility of any student using it unjustly. The problem was not that Gorgias would or could corrupt anyone, but rather that his claim to power seems to violate the freedom of the student in favor of the intention of the teacher. Gorgias is supposed to have had as much power over his students—and Pericles over the Athenians—as a horse-trainer has over horses, or a potter over clay. On this model of the arts, the ill-mannered horse or the leaky jar is a failure of the artist, not a failure of the horse or clay. So too, if at the end of Pericles’s rule the citizens are unruly, then by force of Pericles’s own claims the fault is wholly Pericles’s. Furthermore, I argues that this fault is rooted in his faulty conception of politics.

176. Socrates refrains from calling these men “politicians,” instead referring to them as citizens (515d), servants (517b), men of politics (518b), or political men (519ba). He uses “politician” and “leader” only in contrast to what these men actually are; see Gorgias 519c. 225

To understand the power of politics along these lines is to remain thoroughly on the side of the pseudo-art; it is again to fall for the impersonation that rhetoric makes of politics. Granted, the rhetoric at work is not the overt pandering sort, but it is a mere impersonation of politics nonetheless. Indeed, it is flattering—and flattery is precisely rhetoric’s mode of imitation. Itis flattering to the people to provide a conceptual framework whereby any poor outcome forthem is entirely the fault of the ruler. Hence, Socrates’s real complaint against the four is that they complain about their treatment at the hands of their fellow citizens even while participating in and preparing for that treatment. Thus the problem with the four leaders is not that they practice the basest form of rhetoric—which Socrates says they do not (517a). And the problem is not that they fail to practice true rhetoric or genuine politics—neither they nor almost anyone else does. The problem is that they claim to practice genuine politics while they actually practice a sort of rhetoric.177 Then and worse yet, when they do fail at genuine politics, their failure seems afailure of politics instead of a failure of the assumptions of their claim.

Socrates agrees with Callicles that the four leaders are superior to the political men of the present, at least regarding their competence in supplying for the people’s desires (517b). These four citizens, their power, and what they were able to effect, Socrates admits, is impressive. But on this point, Socrates notes how laughable it is that he and Callicles keep circling the same issue, still ignorant of one another. Callicles’s ignorance of Socrates may be easier to see. Callicles is still thinking in terms of an exclusive exchange. Consequently, the efficacy of these rulers counts for something in Callicles’s conception of power, even though that power consists in indulging desires. Thus, Callicles is still ignorant of a real common good, and therefore also ignorant of

Socrates’s conception of genuine politics.

Socrates’s ignorance of Callicles may turn on Callicles’s lingering ignorance. Socrates has secured some assent from Callicles concerning true power for the good and the apparent power

177. This interpretation neutralizes those who fault Socrates’s critique for asking too much from thesepo- litical men; see Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 153-154. These citizens set the bar so high for themselves by making the claims to power that they do. 226 of indulging pleasure. But, in the end, this assent is mere words. Socrates may have thought that he was gaining true ground with Callicles, but now notes the possibility that Callicles’s words may have been merely flattering him. Undeterred by the ridiculous situation, Socrates performs what he will soon describe: he again takes up arguments in order to fight for a better Callicles, or, perhaps more successfully, for better citizens among the Athenian audience. For the last time Socrates returns to his schema, complicating it in order to accommodate the examples of the four political men. Socrates describes a new category of arts pertaining to the body which provide a good for the body but do not improve the body itself. The goods these arts produce may coincidentally benefit the body but the aim of the art is not the good ofthe body. These are arts of service: they serve the body, and they are governed by the ultimate arts that care for the body’s good. The supposed art of politics that Pericles and the others possessed was not the ultimate art of politics because these citizens did not truly improve the citizenry.

These citizens were themselves led by the city’s desires, and they counted their success byhow competently and cleverly they fulfilled those desires. Admittedly, some of the city’s desires may have been for genuine goods and, consequently, the fulfillment of these desires did improve the city. But the four’s art was not responsible for this improvement except instrumentally. Their art was not a ruling art (517e). It was an artthat yoked their actions to the city’s desires and therefore yoked their good to the city’s good. This coincidence of goods, because it was not the inherent end of their practice, could be and was sundered. Thus Socrates explains both how the people turned against each of the fourandhow it is that these same political men are revered now. These citizens were successful at serving the city’s desires up to a point, up until their fellow citizens turned against them. But because of their success at serving as well as their failure to moderate the city’s desires, now the citizens use the praise of the former servants of the city to blame the present servants.178

178. On this account, the fickleness of the people is an effect of the failure of the previous “leaders” todo what they claimed, not the cause of that failure. This reading contrasts with Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule, 210, who takes Socrates’s critique of these political men as a critique both of the “premises and practices of democracy” as well as “the inadequacies of critical approaches that fall short of 227

The leaders also remember their successes and therefore claim that they suffer aninjustice when the city turns against them. Consequently, Socrates claims that the leaders do the same absurd thing that sophists do.179 A leader of a city could never be unjustly ruined by his city because if the city is unjust, this injustice is due to the leader’s failure to make them just and so his punishment is just. Likewise, a sophist could never be unjustly cheated by his students because if his students are unjust, this injustice is due to a failure in his education of them, so their treatment of him is just. So if a sophist seems to be unjustly cheated, this must be because he could never have done what he claimed he could do and demanded payment for doing. These political men whom Callicles revere are just as close if not closer to sophists than to rhetors because sophists, at least, claim to make their students virtuous just as these leaders claim to have the city’s good in their sights. So the derision Callicles lays upon sophistry should be equally distributed to rhetoric and to the four political men.

Socrates elaborates on another point of similarity between the ones who practice this slavish pseudo-politics and sophists. The example of and analogy to the sophists clarify that these leaders operate without a governing conception of a truly common good. Sophists demand payment for the practice of their pedagogic craft. But if these sophists produce what they claimto produce, namely, more virtuous men, then it is shameful to ransom this benefit for remuneration (519c-d). The demand for remuneration signifies that the sophist’s good is separable from the student’s good. It does not sufficiently benefit the sophist merely to improve the student; he requires a further benefit to make it worthwhile for him to practice his craft. The goodofthe sophist and the good of the student are coincidental at best—certainly not truly shared. Like- wise if the favors the leaders granted to the people were truly common goods, genuinely shared among them, then the leaders would need no favor in return. The improved citizenry, by virtue

‘battling it through.’” I wish to thread the needle between an outright critique of democracy as such and acritiqueof what happens to democracy when the conception of power that is presumed by rhetoric governs the political actions of its “leaders.” I also take Socrates’s upcoming commitment to “battling with the Athenians” (521a) to thread the needle between “battling it through” and battling against in the sense of wholesale dissent.

179. I will return to these similarities in my fourth chapter. 228 of their improvement, would already only desire to do good to the one granting them this favor of improvement.

The contractual, exchange-based conception of power to do good precludes acommon good. The ruler/ruled relationship as typified by the four revered political men seems to bemutual slavery in which the only true master is the ephemeral, unmoderated desires of the people. The examples of improvement—which Socrates had acknowledged were impressive—are witnesses to the persistent reality of the common good–a good that prevails despite and not because of the supposed rational working of the leaders’ political art.

So if these political men do not possess or practice the genuine political art, does anyone? Socrates opposes to the menial servitude of the faux political art his own ceaseless battle to improve the Athenians. Callicles, perhaps more pertinently than he realizes, again raises the seemingly unreckoned expectation of execution as a consequence of shrugging off the slavish concern with flattering the citizenry. Far from not believing it could happen, Socrates sayshe fully anticipates this eventuality. And the reason he gives for this expectation is the fact that he takes himself to be one of the few—perhaps the only one currently—attempting to practice the genuine political art (521d-e). This claim is perplexing given the argument Socrates has just concluded. He just previously claimed that it is not a beautiful sign, in other words it contraindicates the practice of the genuine political art, if the one practicing that art is harmed by the ones he was presumed to improve. But now Socrates admits that he expects to be harmed by the very citizens for whose improvement he claims to fight. So, if Socrates is not blatantly contradicting himself, suffering harm cannot suffice to distinguish between the attempted genuine practiceof politics and its impersonation.

This convergence of fates—the fate of the impersonator and the fate of the genuine practitioner— highlights the radical divergence between the conception of the political that the impersonation assumes and the one its genuine counterpart assumes. The previous claimants to the political art made a claim to power; they claimed that they—and implicitly they alone—were capable of improving the citizens. They presumed to produce more virtuous citizens the way a weaver pro- 229 duces a cloak, or a baker a loaf of bread. Of course, they instead were gratifying the citizenry’s desires and counting this gratification as the citizenry’s good.

Socrates’s attempt at the political art, on the other hand, aims at the true improvement of the citizenry. But he does not claim that his practice suffices for this improvement.180 The citizens are not like so many threads to be handled and placed just so. Socrates aligns his practice of politics to the doctor, who we recall sometimes fails to persuade his patients to pursue their health. The patients must want to be healthy more than they want pleasure. The doctor’s prescriptions and proscriptions are ineffective unless the patient participates in bringing about his own health by following the doctor’s orders.181 Likewise, Socrates’s speeches are not spells that instantly improve whomever hears them. Socrates discusses what is best with the ones who require improvement; they must engage with these speeches in order to be benefited. The activity is common, as is the benefit.

But this activity is inherently limited and challenging. As Socrates noted in his conversation with Gorgias, speeches directed to large audiences are incapable of teaching about justice. Much less are such speeches capable of prompting the listeners to learn about justice when there is no teacher—and it must be noted that Socrates never claims to be a teacher of justice. His claims about justice are developed through dialogue and witnessing of dialogue and not devel-

180. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 164-166, and Villa, Socratic Citizenship, 36-41, also note this limitation, but they identify the source of this limitation as the incompatibility of philosophy and politics, whereas I take its source to be the necessity that the power for improvement be shared among the improver and the improved.

181. There is a subtle distinction that must be made regarding the analogy to the medical art. AsJ.Clerk Shaw, “Socrates and the True Political Craft,” Classical Philology 106, no. 3 (2011): 187–207, 190, notes: “political expertise entails getting one’s patients to recognize that they are benefited by the political expert.” While the medical art may be ineffective without the patient’s recognition that she is benefited, this failure in no way impugnsthe expertise of the doctor. Not so with the political art. The political art necessarily includes this recognition of benefit not only for efficacy but also for its status as a genuine art. Shaw further argues against the need forSocratesto claim expertise in order to claim to practice the political art, and on this point we also agree. I disagree with Shaw, however, in his assuming that the political art requires experts in the same way as other crafts. As highlighted by Shaw’s observation quoted above, I believe that the fact that the political art essentially requires a common effort indicates that it is an art without singular experts. 230 oped for didactic dissemination.182 These conversations cannot scale the same way that rhetorical speeches can. Moreover, these dialogues are difficult. They demand participation which isnot always pleasant and frequently evokes a feeling of helplessness in the face of the most pressing practical matters.183 These features of Socrates’s practice would account for Socrates’s failure to convince a jury, or, differently stated, for his failure to engage a critical mass of his fellow citizens in this practice.

There is, however, another reason Socrates is convinced that if he were taken tocourt, he would be resourceless (άπορια). In the analogy of the doctor brought up on charges by the pastry chef, the jury are comprised of children. Some have pointed to this as Socrates alluding to an inherent feature of Athenian democratic ideology that prevents mature, rational consideration of good versus pleasure.184 I take the jury of children instead to allude to the possibility of maturation, not its preclusion. There may be hope for Socrates if his jury is not comprised only of those inexperienced with his practice.185 Socrates may not need to convince the jury using the usual rhetorical means if there are enough among jury who have already benefited from him, who have learned for themselves what may come from discussion of virtue, or justice, or goodness.186 If his jury is comprised of people who have not undergone the kind of de-education

182. Keum, “Why Did Socrates Conduct His Dialogues Before an Audience?,” 429–435, elegantly demonstrates the importance of the witnessing dimension of the dialogue and deftly traces the consequences of this dimension.

183. Socrates’s prompting toward civic persuasion, his counter-intuitive demand to seek just punishment, and his emphasis on the common good which implicates all citizens in the success or failure of their city are all features of his art. The practice of this art does not require any specialized knowledge nor philosophical training, but are activities possible for each citizen as such. I give a more structured account of this art in my third and sixth chapter.

184. Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule, 211, n. 98, goes so far as to liken these Athenian “children” to those in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

185. Contra ibid., 211: “Thus Socrates has no real capacity to do good in his polis (he cannot ‘heal’ either the political community as a group or the would-be political leader [Callicles]) . . .”

186. Recall that the initial vote for Socrates’s conviction was quite close: “Now, so it seems, if only thirty votes had switched, I would have been acquitted”Apology ( 36a). 231

(ἀπαιδευσίας)187 Socrates’s conversations usually elicit, but have only heard the grousing of those who have smarted under Socrates’s discussion, then there is no hope that Socrates can practice his peculiar kind of politics on them at his trial. He recognizes the ridiculousness of claiming that he acts in the interest of justice in front of those who may never have examined their opinions about justice.188 Callicles for the last time demonstrates that he has not understood the alternative conception of power: he again questions how Socrates’s helplessness could be a tolerable, let alone a beautiful condition. Socrates’s vivid description of his anticipated trial looks nothing but ugly to Callicles. Callicles still measures shame and beauty by his persisting understanding of power, which takes its own exercise as the sole standard of worth. Callicles remains unrefuted; Callicles yet disagrees with Callicles. Callicles’s incoherent life still seems livable to him, and the conception of justice that this incoherent life assumes still lingers. Socrates therefore constructs his own lingering image and one which, at least partially, abstracts from the usual understanding of life.

Truth and Power in Death: 523a-527e

The purpose of Socrates’s final speech is to contrast the two conceptions of justice that have been presented throughout the conversation. The rich imagery of his so-called myth and the subsequent explication provide the audience with a self-contained distillation of the fundamental conflict. This conflict is, I believe, the truth that Socrates claims his seeming-myth bears.

Socrates makes a distinction between myth and account (λόγος) in part to emphasize that what

187. See Gorgias 527e.

188. Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 166-167, thinks that Socrates’s recognition of this limitation coupled with his own desire for self-preservation motivates the whole dialogue inasmuch as Socrates is throughout attempting to persuade Gorgias to ally his rhetoric with Socrates’s philosophy. Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule, 206, also sees Socrates’s self-preservation as a motivation, though not on the same scale as Stauffer: “A ‘reeducated’ Callicles will recognize the true demands of justice and so will neverbe a threat to Socrates, no matter how judicially vulnerable the latter might be.” I disagree with these interpretations because I do not take Socrates’s primary goal to be either protecting his practice of philosophy or protecting his life. On my reading, Socrates is acting out of self-preservation only to the extent that he considers himself intimately tied to the well-being of his city; his primary goal is to protect his city from the corrosive effects of Gorgian rhetoric and the Calliclean politics it presumes. 232 is presented applies to the present matter.189 The lesson is not one that belongs to a fabulous past or a imaginative future, rather, the ideals that the speech depicts are already at play in the rival conceptions of justice. His final account epitomizes the tension between rhetoric’s conception of justice and the conception of justice that comprises genuine politics.190 These are the two conceptions on offer, and they are on offer to the surrounding Athenians who have heard thethree wide-ranging conversations that come before this.191 Though it is tempting to think that Socrates is here indulging in some moralistic admonition, I take Socrates to be more interested in offering a comprehensive—albeit compressed—vision of the two conceptions of justice, their assumptions, and their consequences. That is, Socrates is not giving a sermon, warning against the eventual wages of wickedness.192 Rather, he is providing a rich vision of a present possibility, a way of going forward not for the sake of some far-off personal reward but for the sake of promoting justice in one’s own community.

The rival conceptions correspond to the way judgment was conducted during thereign of Cronos and during the ascendancy of Zeus. The practice of justice in the age of Cronos corresponds to the understanding of justice that rhetoric presumes and effects. The practice of justice belonging to the age of Zeus corresponds to the understanding of justice that comprises genuine

189. I found much inspiration for this approach in Alessandra Fussi, “The Myth of the Last Judgment inthe Gorgias,” The Review of Metaphysics 54, no. 3 (2001): 529–552 who in turn draws from the sixth century neo-Platonist commentator, Olympiodorus. We all agree that these mythic ages represent “two permanent human possibilities” (533). Where Fussi diverges from Olympiodorus and myself is her almost existentialist approach to death, which bears obvious debts to Heidegger, and seems more applicable to the role of death in the Phaedo. My interpretation diverges from theirs inasmuch as I believe these two permanent possibilities correspond to the alternative conceptions of justice that Socrates has developed throughout the dialogue.

190. Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 122, takes the myth as an illustration of “the painful cognitive-affective mechanism of shame that is involved in Socratic elenchus.” Perhaps by virtue the imagistic features of myth (even a myth that is a λόγος), it is unavoidable that commentators will variously interpret the myth to fit their interpretation of the dialogue as awhole.

191. Evidence that this is not meant exclusively for Callicles is that Socrates acknowledges that Callicles will think that it is nothing by an old wives’ tale.

192. Contra Julia Annas, “Plato’s Myths of Judgment,” Phronesis 27, no. 2 (1982): 119–143, 138, and Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 169, who read the myth as offering an imagistic “proof” of what has not been proven, namely, that the unjust and just will (eventually) get their deserts. 233 politics. Throughout these reigns, the basic principle of justice—that each gets his due—remains in effect. This point again corresponds to the conversation now being concluded. This traditional sense of justice has been presumed throughout the dialogue. By this principle, the just and pious are rewarded with happiness without evils on the Isles of the Blessed, and the unjust and impious undergo their just punishment in Tartarus. The principle remains the same and is presumed in both ages as the aim, but the procedures by which this principle is put into effect changes from one age to the other. Likewise, both rhetoric and genuine politics presume that the practice of justice aims to assign each his due. Even the radical Callicles, who eschewed “conventional” justice, used this principle to devise his notion of “natural” justice, whereby the naturally superior enjoy superior benefits. What differs between rhetoric’s conception of justice (whether “conventional” or “natural”) and genuine politics’s conception is whether that fixed end is taken to be the stable point around which to maneuver or the purpose to be pursued.

Though the basic principle of justice remains the same, the procedures by which thisprin- ciple is practiced differs from one age to the other. The procedures in effect during theageof Cronos saw this principle flouted. The judges and the judged were both living at the timeofthe judgment. Futhermore the judged knew beforehand the time of their death and consequently the time of their judgment (523b). These are the two elements of the practice of justice fromthe age of Cronos that Zeus identifies as the source of the undeserving arriving in both Tartarus and the Isles of the Blessed. By Zeus’s reasoning, two instances of deception are available because of these procedures. Because the judged have foreknowledge of the time of their judgment, they can prepare to deceive the judges by accumulating false witnesses and other false evidence of a just life—including their wealth, ancestry, and their own bodies (523e). This evidence astounds the judges and influences their judgment unduly. The judges are deceived for a further reason.

Because the judges are also still living at the time of the judgment, they are additionally deceived by the veil of their own bodies interrupting their souls’ apprehension of the souls of the judged.

Zeus adjusts these procedures accordingly. He sends Prometheus to deprive men of foreknowl- 234 edge of their death.193 Then he shifts the time of judgment to after death. The judgedaswell as the judges are already dead at the time of judgment, so there is no misleading interference either effected by the judged or affecting the judges. He installs his own sons tobejudgesafter their deaths. Two of the sons are responsible to judge the people who hail from his own part of the world: Rhadamanthus judges those from Asia and Aeacus judges those from Europe. Minos, being elder, presides over the final decision in the event of a doubtful194 case.

Before considering how this account corresponds to the rival conceptions of justice, we should note the relationship between the two presented practices of justice. The age of Cronos precedes the age of Zeus’s reforms, but Zeus does not begin his rule by instituting his modifications. In other words, the changes Zeus makes are not a sheer expression of power but a considered reaction to a realization of failure. Socrates’s account declines both to show Zeus acquiring his rule through violence against his father and to show the struggle for ascendancy between the three divine brothers (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades). By this omission, Socrates emphasizes rational apprehension over displays of violence. The battle for justice, though a life and death matter, is to be without bloodshed. Instead of a brute display of power, what motivates Zeus’s adjustments is a moment of recognition that the present procedure fails to preserve the principle of desert. But just this recognition—namely, the recognition that and how rhetoric’s practice of justice fails—has been Socrates’s purpose throughout the dialogue. The Jovian reforms are ideals that cannot be aimed for until this recognition is embraced. With their image, Socrates not only sums up his position but also presents a noble, ideal image of what there is left to do.

The practice of justice from the age of Cronos corresponds to the conception ofjustice that rhetoric assumes in its activity. The raiment of body, friends, wealth, and so on, correspond

193. Compare this role of Prometheus to his role in Protagoras’s myth, where Prometheus is the unjust provider of knowledge. By the end of the Protagoras, Socrates has aligned himself with the figure of Prometheus. In the Gorgias, Socrates brings about a de-education, like Prometheus here, that ultimately serves the interests of justice.

194. That there are still doubtful cases perhaps indicates the inherent difficulty of comprehending souls, even in more ideal circumstances. 235 to the concealing power of rhetoric. On this conception of justice, the judges and the judged have different ends. This divergence of purpose is reflected in the fact that the judges remain aliveafter they judge the ones who are about to die. There can be no common end because the judgment acts as a final divide between the judges and the judged. The judges aim to uphold the principleof desert while knowing that the judged seek only their own benefit. The confrontation with death, after which point there is no possibility of influence, seems to justify the attempt byrhetoricto influence as much as possible in whatever way possible. In the age of Cronos fear ofjudgment is tantamount to fear of death, that is, fear of finality and consequent impotence. On this model, the fear of final punishment is all-pervasive and nearly all-absolving. The ability to conceal one’s soul makes it possible to deceive the judges, and the fear of punishment all but guarantees that the unjust will make use of this possibility. The judges seem to acknowledge both this seemingly reasonable attempt by the judged to deceive as well as their own reliance on appearance inor- der to make their judgments. The result is that the machinations of appearance are taken tobe standards. The unjust escape their just penalty because they are able to deceive the judges,but also the just receive an unjust penalty because they fail to manipulate appearances sufficiently well. The problem is not only that the judged are capable of concealing their characters, butalso that this possibility is acknowledged to pervade the entire practice of justice. Consequently, the judged—both the just and the unjust—and the judges consider the practice almost exclusively in terms of appearance. By contrast, the practice of justice that comprises genuine politics takes the possibility of deception as precisely what must be protected against. Instead of conceding to the ubiquity of appearance, this practice resists the pressure of rhetoric and seeks to refute and be refuted.

This practice of justice corresponds to the modified mode of judgment in the age ofZeus.Zeus modifies the practice of justice on two fronts: he eliminates foreknowledge of death andshiftsthe judgment beyond death’s scope, so both the judged and the judges already dead at the moment of judgment. These modifications in the account correspond to a neutralization of the threat ofdeath 236 or punishment, to a common purpose between the judges and the judged, and to a recognition that the soul cannot be absolutely obscured.

On the conception of justice that Socrates defends, the threat of death or punishment is neither all-absolving nor thoroughly reasonable. This conception of justice recognizes a higher good than sheer life or sheer pleasure because it recognizes a worse condition than loss of life or incursion of pain, namely, that of injustice. The preservation of justice therefore wholly trumps preservation of life and preservation of pleasure. Just as in the story the loss of foreknowledge of death cancels the utility of the power to conceal, so also the recognition of a greater good than life and pleasure and a greater evil than pain and death severely circumscribes the utility of rhetoric.

Furthermore this good is a common one: the preservation of justice is a good for both the judges and the judged. The refusal to acknowledge the seeming rationality of sheer self-preservation elevates all involved, allowing them to participate in a truly common practice. This commonality is represented by the fact that the judges and judged share the status of already being dead.

In the reasoning out of his account, Socrates identifies the function of death as ultimately revelatory. Death separates the body from the soul and thereby separates concealment from the truth. The body conceals the soul but it also offers a template for understanding howthesoul bears the marks of the life it has lead. Clothing and cosmetics can conceal the effects and scars of harm suffered by the body, but only until the body is stripped naked. Likewise, the bodycan conceal the effects of injustice and other vices on the soul, but only until the soul is stripped ofthe body, that is, only until death. Translating this out of its mythic context, the practice of justice that corresponds to the one in the age of Zeus attempts to pass judgment on the soul stripped of its concealing capabilities, namely, rhetoric. The practice of justice that Socrates has defended is one that challenges the presentation provided by rhetoric. Socrates has suggested many ways to confront the concealing power of rhetoric, both outright and by his own example. Consider the features of what I have called civic persuasion as outlined in the conversation with Gorgias: resisting shame in order to cross-examine, building an ordered account instead of jumping to a suggested conclusion, enjoying refutation as much as refuting. Consider also the accusations 237

Socrates anticipates will be made of him because of his attempt to practice genuine politics: insulting elders and perplexing the youth. Sharp speeches meant to inspire suspicion of specious veneration seem a prerequisite for resisting the seduction of wealth, prestige, and friendly witnesses. Perplexity is the first step towards resisting the immediate conflation of what seems to be the case with what is the case.195 This practice of justice recognizes the possibility of being deceived but also andmore fundamentally assumes that the truth about the soul can be apprehended. It also assumes that justice is a common good, not a good opposed to personal benefit. Consequently, it conceives of punishment as primarily for the sake of rehabilitation and only upon failure of this primary function as for the sake of deterrence. Punishment is for the sake of the common good of a just community, a community which includes the unjust one who is to be punished. Punishment therefore should aim at rehabilitation so that the punished will again become just and can again participate in the community. This practice of justice thus renders avoiding punishment irrational inasmuch as it is tantamount to avoiding a greater good than one currently possesses; this was the position Socrates and Polus reached before Callicles interrupted them. According to Callicles, that is, in terms of rhetoric’s practice of justice, submission to punishment is merely a failure of power.

Even if the punishment is just, the inability to avoid it marks a worse fate, namely, impotence.

Socrates acknowledges the possibility of an injustice that is too harmful, that is, one that destroys the unjust man’s very ability to participate in the community, or worse, destroys the possibility of community at all. Socrates calls the man infected by this kind of injustice “incurable” (525c). The punishment of this sort of man alone is for the sake of deterrence. His never-ending punishment is directed not toward his impossible rehabilitation but towards the community in general. Here may rhetoric do some work: to dissuade others from falling into such a fate.

Socrates further surmises that only those who had great authority (or seemed to) like tyrants and kings, and not private men, are capable of committing injustices that render them

195. Note that this perplexity is not all consuming. Never, for example, is the principle of desert nor the superiority of justice put under suspicion. 238 incurable. He cites kings like Tantalus and Sisyphus as such incurable men. He also contrasts the degree of their punishments against the lesser punishment meted out to the memorable but otherwise small-scale depravity of Thersites.196 The depravity of those with a greater share ofau- thority more thoroughly destroys the justice of the community precisely because of their greater share of authority in the community. Thus the question of the kind of life one chooses topursue echoes in Socrates’s account again as he attempts to dissuade Callicles from pursuing a political life without a care for justice. Perhaps as a small antidote against hopelessness, he brings up the possibility of living justly despite the greatest license for injustice. To this end he cites the example of Aristides.197 But Socrates does not dwell on this possibility and gives no indication of what enabled Aristides to be such a just administer. It is clear, however, that those who exercise political authority well, do so in spite of their authority; it is far more common for this authority to fuel utmost wickedness.

Socrates proceeds from this worst sort of life to the best while still working within the idealized terms of his account. From the incurable to the curable who are sent to Tartarus to the just and pious men, private citizen or otherwise, who are sent the Isles of the Blessed, Socrates culminates with the philosopher who works on his own concerns and does not meddle. This one,

Socrates says, the judges especially admire, and perhaps it is this kind of life that Socrates also especially admires. Though he clearly defends the life spent loving philosophy, it is also clearthat

Socrates himself does not live the sort of life he ascribes to the philosopher here. Perhaps this is one reason Socrates is careful not to call himself a philosopher but rather a lover of philosophy.198

196. See Homer, Iliad II, 211-277; for the other punished figures, see Odyssey XI, 576-600. Socrates includes in this group Archelaus, but does not guess his punishment.

197. Aristides is a puzzling example because, though he was renowned for his justice, he was ostracized, and therefore seems to be a counterexample to Socrates’s earlier argument about no just leader being unjustly punished by his people. Perhaps he is mentioned here because he eventually returned and ended his career while maintaining his justice, or perhaps because he suffered the same fate as Socrates will. See Sachs, Plato: Gorgias and Aristotle: Rhetoric, 119, n. 64 for a brief account of his life; also, Herodotus, Histories 8.79.

198. I will return to the question of the intersection and tension of the practice of philosophy and the practice of politics in the final chapter. 239

For Socrates does not work only on his own concerns, but concerns himself also with the common good of clarifying the truth about matters of justice. His meddling takes the form of his combat for the possibility for truth to win out. Though Socrates may not earn the same admiration from the judges as a philosopher would, he is confident that his training in truth will earn him agood life and death. Whatever power Socrates has, he uses it to exhort all human beings—and Callicles (perhaps also the surrounding Athenians) in particular—to pursue this kind of combative life, a life fighting for the common good of truth about justice.199 If Socrates’s exhortation succeeds at large, then Callicles will be unable to defend himself before his fellow citizens, for his rhetoric, and the conception of politics it presumes, will find no quarter among a citizenry who practice genuine justice. Socrates describes Callicles’s fate in terms of his account, reversing the vivid language

Callicles used to reproach him. But this fate need not lie beyond death if the surrounding Athe- nians model themselves after the judges in the age of Zeus. If the city recognizes and refusesthe seductions of rhetoric and in turn adopts the alternative practice of justice represented by the age of Zeus, then Callicles will be as speechless as Socrates anticipates he himself will be when standing before a city seduced by rhetoric. Callicles’s safety, as much as Socrates’s danger, relies on the complacency of their fellow citizens.

As Socrates acknowledges, Callicles may be able to soothe himself by understanding this possible alternative practice of justice as a mere fable. The reality of his city remains nearer tothe age of Cronos than the age of Zeus, so perhaps Callicles can convince himself that he need never face the judgment Socrates describes. Though this alternative practice of justice is a not yetfully realized ideal, Socrates insists that nothing better or truer has been offered in the conversations.

This alternative conception of the practice of justice has alone remained unrefuted: that itisworse to do than to suffer injustice; that being good is superior to seeming good both in private and in public; that second best is receiving rehabilitative punishment for any failing of justice; that

199. Note that this life Socrates exhorts all human beings to try to live is not the philosophical life as described in the myth. Nor need it be the life of loving philosophy. 240 every sort of base flattery should be avoided; and that rhetoric, like any other practice, shouldbe used only for the sake of justice. But the refutation of the other conceptions and the resiliency of this one does not suffice to establish the practice of justice as constituted by these tenetsin the extant city. Even if Callicles or, as is more likely, some of the surrounding Athenians are persuaded by (or persuade themselves of) this conception of justice, this persuasion is only a first step. Instituting this practice of justice requires practice or training (ἄσκησις), and a training that begins with caring for one’s soul before seeking authority for oneself in the city (527d).

The citizen must come to see his own good in the city as belonging to the commongood of the city. He must recognize that this practice of justice aims at a genuine good for all and not a rivalry of private goods. This training in truth begins with Socrates’s refutation of rhetoric—a sort of de-education in or unlearning of what presents itself as the inescapable principles of justice.

These final lines emphasize that Socrates’s project has been primarily reactionary. Althoughhe has presented a competing conception of the practice of justice, this conception breaks no new ground but seeks only to rehabilitate was what broken by rhetoric. Socrates has been trying to undo what rhetoric has done, not build his own edifice of justice. Indeed, besides the extremely abstract and therefore uninformative principle of desert, no content has been given to the idea of justice. Justice itself remains opaque even as Socrates has tried to show the dangerous ways rhetoric claims to make justice transparent. It is a separate struggle to discern what belongs to justice in itself. The battle at hand—the battle that constitutes Socrates’s practice ofgenuine politics—is a defensive battle, but one that must be fought. Part II

The Argument

241 Chapter 3

Protagoras & Gorgias & Politics

To discern an original from its imitations is a rarely a simple task. This task is made even more demanding when the imitations actively dissuade the discovery of their original. In the case of sophistry and rhetoric, the task of articulating the genuine politics of which these are flattering mockeries calls for great care and clarity. Not only do these pseudo-arts obscurethe object of their imitation, but they also attempt to replace the original and in turn obscure thefact of their imitation. Much of the work, then, consists in determining what truly belongs to genuine politics and what is an illusory product of sophistry and rhetoric’s impersonation. This chapter undertakes that delicate and demanding work.

I have treated the imitations of genuine politics in the foregoing chapters, wherein my interpretations of the Protagoras and the Gorgias were guided by the understanding that together they reveal a greater whole. With these interpretations in hand, it is now necessary to consider that whole. This chapter first considers some features of the dialogues that are more salientin light of the whole. These features focus on the character of Socrates, whose overarching project is visible only after reading the two dialogues together, and the character of Callicles, whose background and motivations gain significant depth upon reading the two dialogues together. I then raise the register of philosophic reflection. Instead of focusing on the characters within the dialogues, I consider what Plato is doing with these two dialogues. This chapter therefore marks a shift from exegesis to explanation. I first address the problematic context of the politics that Socrates practices, then I offer an account of the nature of the city that explains boththe problematic context and Socrates’s response. In doing so, I draw out what I believe to be Plato’s vision of the city and its complex relationship to reality and appearance.

I characterize this complex relationship as self-deception; consequently, I take Plato to disclose a city that is inherently self-deceptive, that necessarily only thinks that is knows what it does not know. In the remainder of this dissertation, I argue that this self-deceptive nature

242 243 of the city is the vision of the city provided by reading the Protagoras and the Gorgias together. Furthermore, I argue that this self-deceptive character of the city can account for the political problems that arise in those dialogues. The majority of the present chapter prepares and motivates the need for such a thesis by tracing the limitations of the city’s relationship to truth and drawing out the consequences of such limitations for true politics. The chapter then culminates inan articulation of the conception of the city as self-deceptive and a demonstration of its explanatory power. Ultimately I argue that the self-deceptive character of the city best explains the distinctive activities of both sophistry and rhetoric and of their authentic counterpart, genuine politics.

A View of the Whole

I have thus far assumed an approach to the dialogues whereby the Protagoras prepares for the Gorgias and the Gorgias completes the Protagoras. In this section I explore this interrelation-

ship in terms of two characters within the dialogues. I first consider the trajectory of Socrates

from the initially uninterested, then slyly deferential middle-aged man of the Protagoras to the

intense and combative practitioner of his own kind of politics in the Gorgias. The development of Socrates over the course of the dialogues illustrates their narrative arch. This arch also gives con-

text to the part Callicles plays in the whole of the two dialogues. I argue that Callicles functions

as a culminating figure, as a representative of the potential fate of the young citizens ofAthens

should sophistry and rhetoric prevail. The confrontation between Callicles and Socrates, thewar

and battle prefigured by the first words ofthe Gorgias, supplies an answer to the unasked other half of the question that begins the Protagoras. There, Socrates was asked from where he comes,

and I believe that his conflict with Callicles is to where he must1 go.

1. Only a handful of scholars comment on both the dialogues in light of one another, for example, Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues, Wallach, The Platonic Political ,Art Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule, and Long, Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy. All these scholars comment on a host of Platonic dialogues, Zuckert, of course, commenting on all of Plato’s dialogues. It should also be noted that both Wallach and Ober treat these dialogues as part of tracing a development of Plato’s political thought, not due to any necessity internal to the dialogues. I know only of Fussi, “Why Is the Gorgias so Bitter?” who exclusively compares the Protagoras and the Gorgias, but in that treatment she is focused the dramatic 244

Socrates: From Promethean to “Politician”

In one way it is trivial to say that Socrates is a uniting character; he is the only character who appears in both dialogues. Again, in one way it is trivial to say that it is the same Socrates who appears in both dialogues. In this section, I aim to complicate the latter trivial claim. Socrates does unite these dialogues, but not by merely being a member of their dramatis personae. Instead, these dialogues are united as two disclosive points on the arc of Socrates’s political practice, a practice that starts in the Protagoras and peaks in the Gorgias. Through these two dialogues Plato shows the birth and maturation of Socrates’s attempt to practice genuine politics.2 Due to this maturation, then, Socrates is not simply the same Socrates from one dialogue to the other. The intervening years and the war that stretched them provides a crucible not only for the question of politics but also for how Socrates understands his role relative to that politics.

Socrates’s appearance in the Protagoras occurs fairly early in his dramatic timeline. The dialogue itself provides no conclusive indication of its date.3 Despite the ambiguity of an exact date, the fact that the conversation between Protagoras and Socrates occurs just before or at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War is beyond doubt. This was a time of decadence and splendor, with Athens enjoying the fullness of its ascendancy in the Greek world.4 Promise seems to fill

Athens’s horizon, even as the dialogue’s readers know the failure that awaits. The War and what it

elements of each dialogue. As far as I know, no scholar has treated these dialogues in conjunction as mutually informing.

2. This practice differs from the foundationalist project ofthe Republic. In neither the Protagoras nor the Gorgias does Socrates raise or pursue the kind of “what is…?” question that starts the Republic. I investigate the peculiarity of Socrates’s politics relative to political philosophy in chapter 6.

3. Consult David Wolfsdorf, “The Dramatic Date of Plato’s ‘Protagoras’,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 140, no. 3 (1997): 223–230 for a compelling argument against the long-standing scholarly opinion that the Protagoras occurs during the year 433. Wolfsdorf identifies a number of anachronisms that complicate the dramatic dateof the Protagoras and concludes: “The chronological indicators in the text converge on the general period ofthefirst decades of the Peloponnesian War, but not on a single date. A consistent dramatic date cannot be established” (230).

4. See Bartlett, Protagoras and Meno, 70; Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 19-146, Part I, entitled “Philosophy in a Time of Splendor: Socrates in Periclean Athens before the War. 245 portends for Athens—not only its defeat but also the contradictory impulses that impel it towards this defeat—therefore also tracks Socrates’s trajectory across the two dialogues.

With respect to Socrates’s own timeline within the dialogues, some scholars have noted that Socrates commences his role and reputation as a public figure in the Protagoras.5 In her comprehensive tome, Catherine Zuckert treats Socrates’s conversation with Protagoras first. She marks it as the beginning of his conversations with his contemporaries and the premier conversation that jump-starts his public standing.6 Previous to her treatment of the Protagoras Zuckert

devotes a chapter to Socrates “becoming Socrates.” She seems to think that Socrates has already

become Socrates by the time he converses with Protagoras. The only change between the Socrates

that first encounters the sophist and the Socrates that leaves the sophist is that the latter hasbegun to build a reputation for himself, that is, there is no new development, only a making public what

had already been developed.7 By contrast, I take Socrates’s conversation with Protagoras to be formative; he is still “becoming Socrates” when he engages with the sophist and this engagement is deeply significant for that becoming. He may have already developed the principles ofwhat we now know as “Socratic philosophy,” but he did not yet see what the political dimension of that philosophy might be or need to be. On this point, I am nearer Lawrence Lampert’s understanding of the function of the Protagoras vis-á-vis Socrates’s dramatic timeline.8 Lampert claims that

Plato uses the conversation with Protagoras to show us Socrates becoming the philosopher and

political philosopher with whom we are familiar. But Lampert, I believe, goes too far in emphasizing the philosophical development of Socrates in this dialogue.9 We see hardly any mention of

5. As mentioned already, Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule and Wallach, The Platonic Political Art are not so interested in dramatic dates of the dialogues as their developmental order.

6. Zuckert, “Why Socrates and Thrasymachus Become Friends,” 215-217.

7. see Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues, 218

8. Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 5–6.

9. For example, ibid., 132: “Protagoras exhibits Socrates’ concern for the public reputation of philosophy at the opening of his public career” [emphasis mine]. 246 philosophy in the conversation, let alone a sort of self-reflective development of its principles.10 Socrates’s conception of and devotion to philosophy is presumed but not explicitly present in the

Protagoras. If Socrates does refine his philosophical practices in the Protagoras, I see him doing so only as they intersect with his commitments to his city and fellow citizens.

By the time of the Gorgias, however, Socrates is an old man. Although the specific dramatic time of the Gorgias is also obscure, it is clear that it occurs in the midst of the Peloponnesian

War and that it strongly anticipates Socrates’s trial and execution.11 I therefore take the dialogue to mark the twilight of Socrates’s public life, a life for the most part pervaded by the war. This was a war that saw Athens vaunted to the highest peaks of empire and then laid unbearably low.

It was also a time when Athens was confronted with the possibility that they misconceived their own power.12 In the Gorgias, Plato presents an Athens who stands at the edge of a bitter betrayal of the promise that was so pervasive in the Protagoras. Socrates’s depicted public life tracks that swell and decay, and his practice of genuine politics is developed in a kind of dialogue with it.13

I contend that Socrates’s culminating claim to practice this genuine politics in the Gorgias has its roots in the Protagoras. Socrates’s discussion with Protagoras changes him. We are told

10. Granted, Lampert’s argument relies on the esoteric development of Socrates’s philosophy, so he may not count it as a mark against his position that there is no explicit evidence for it.

11. I believe Saxonhouse, “An Unspoken Theme in Plato’s Gorgias: War,” 142-145, and Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus, 7-9, are correct that the obscurity of the dialogue’s temporal setting is intentional. I believe we are meant to situate the dialogue within the context oftheWar as a whole, and Plato achieves this by, as ibid., 7, says, making the Gorgias “of a time but not in a time.”

12. See Svodoba, “Athens, the Unjust Student of Rhetoric: A Dramatic Historical Interpretation of Plato’s Gorgias” for an argument that Athens is one of beneficiaries of Socrates’s conversations in the Gorgias. Saxonhouse, “An Unspoken Theme in Plato’s Gorgias: War,” 142, suggests something similar by identifying Callicles (historical details of whom we lack) with Athens itself.

13. This is not to say that Socrates’s practice bears no consequences foracity not suffused with this sort of conflict. Indeed, I argue below that Plato presents this incarnation of political association, that is, aregimewhose internal conflict has become externally manifest, because it is a limiting case. In this Athens, the self-deceptive nature of the city is most detectable and its susceptibility to corruption by sophistry and rhetoric is most destructive. If something of philosophical politics can be practiced even in this Athens, then a fortiori, philosophical politics is a possibility in less fraught circumstances. As I argue below, however, even in this contradictory Athens, there remains a notion of a common good, which is necessary for the possibility of resisting the corrupting influences of sophistry and rhetoric. 247 that even though he already knew of Protagoras’s presence in Athens, he had not yet visited the wise man nor did he seem to have any intention of doing so. Yet after his conversation with Pro- tagoras, Socrates is so consumed by it that he cannot speak of anything else to the companions he then encounters. Before Protagoras ends the conversation, Socrates states that his concern with the issues just discussed now takes on the cast of anticipation and comprehends his whole life (“. . . making use of [Prometheus] and exercising forethought for the sake of my own life as a whole, I am concerned with all these things.” Protagoras 361d). Socrates comes away from the conversation with a new sense of the significance of these matters, and this new sense becomes clear in his almost immediate retelling of the discussion to the companions he next meets.

Plato shows this turn elegantly by the vivid difference in tone between the framing encounter of Socrates with the comrades and his preliminary conversation with Hippocrates. In the framing narrative, Socrates eagerly relates his conversation with Protagoras, but he begins his recital by showing that he was initially uninterested in and consequently compelled to meet with Protago- ras. The frame story presents a graciously volitional dialogue, but inside the frame thedialogue is compulsory. At some point in his conversation with Protagoras, then, Socrates changed his mind and set himself a new task.

What does Socrates witness that spurs him to recount his confrontation and subsequently prompts him to take up other such public discussions? I take the turn in Socrates’s interest to occur when he glimpses the political consequences of Protagoras’s wisdom. Socrates was already aware, before speaking with Protagoras, that young Athenians sought his tutelage for the sake of political advancement, as the conversation with Hippocrates indicates. When Socrates hears

Protagoras claim to take his sophistry public, however, Socrates becomes aware of the possibility that sophistry could supplant civic education (Protagoras 316c-317c). Sophistry was previously a specious but specialized educational project and, importantly, a project with a healthy aura of shame—recall Hippocrates’s blush (Protagoras 312a). Protagoras’s sophistry, however, openly aims at educating towards political life; with Protagoras’s sort of sophistry, Hippocrates may not need to blush. The novel claim of this sophistry—namely, to teach a kind of specialized political 248 expertise—is a claim that expertly hides and consequently undermines the common roots of the practice of politics. With Protagoras’s formulation of it, therefore, sophistry loses its innocuous- ness, and Socrates loses the luxury of ignoring sophists. Thus committed to combating sophistry,

Socrates begins his own special practice of politics not to supersede traditional civic education but to preserve its possibility. Socrates’s unique claim to this genuine practice of politics comes at Gorgias 521d. In this dialogue, Plato shows us a Socrates immediately eager to enter into discussion with Gorgias. In fact, there is almost a sense of urgency to Socrates’s entrance. The Gorgias is without qualification a volitional dialogue. Socrates does not need to be compelled and we readers do not need a frame, since we see a Socrates engaged in the same concern as at the end of the Protagoras. When we see Socrates in the Gorgias, we see a man who has and continues to care for his fellows citizens and the possibility of their virtue. Socrates is not satisfied to refute one (or two!) rhetoricians, buthe aims to expose the political ramifications of rhetoric itself. This latter aim discloses his concern for the Athenians that surround him and beyond. This concern differs from, say, Gorgias’s or Protagoras’s concern with a group of Athenian citizens. That is, Socrates nowhere and nowise indicates that he is attempting to entice students to his own way of living well within thecity.

His unique concern for his fellow citizens is not to teach them but to protect the opportunity for them to learn for themselves—and this concern is one of the grounds for Socrates’s claim to uniqueness. The other reason, I believe, why Socrates claims that he alone, at least nowadays, practices genuine politics is that Socrates is the one who sees how sophistry and rhetoric endanger the city.14 Socrates schematizes this insight at Gorgias 464b-465e in terms of arts and pseudo- arts. Since his conversation with Protagoras, Socrates has attended to the ways sophistry and rhetoric confuse themselves with one another, insinuate themselves into the city’s most essential institutions, and impersonate the citizen’s most crucial practices. By the time of the Gorgias,

14. This insight may be due to his love of philosophy, but the practice this insight prompts is notitselfthe practice of philosophy—a point to which I return in chapter six. 249 though there may be some general shame in identifying as a sophist or even explicit enmity toward sophists,15 the politically subversive claims of sophistry have already infiltrated the citizenry. The sophistic conception of the politics accounts for the ascendancy of self-interest and the delegitimization of the common good. Furthermore, rhetoric enjoys even less suspicion; its prevalence is taken to be a sign of its necessary role in political life. In sum, the art of politics that passes as genuine is actually a practice pervaded by Protagorean sophistry and Gorgian rhetoric.

Since Socrates alone recognizes that genuine politics demands its extrication from these subversive pseudo-arts, Socrates identifies himself as the sole present practitioner of genuine politics.

Socrates’s practice of politics is therefore based on two tenets: his insight into the relationship of sophistry and rhetoric to the city and his care for the good of the citizens. I will consider in a more thorough and thematic fashion the character of this genuine politics below, but for now let us reflect on its performance in the dialogues. Socrates’s actions should beour primary signpost for circumscribing the character of this genuine politics. In part this is because there is very little that Socrates says about his practice. He says it aims at the good state of the soul by removing vice and replacing it with virtue (Gorgias 504d-e), it guides rather than gives into desires, and it persuades and compels other citizens towards improvement (517b,16, 521d-e).

Beyond this, however, Socrates refrains from providing content to this practice of politics. Much

of what we can gather about Socrates’s practice of politics is found in his actions, that is, his

very practice of it throughout these two dialogues. He shows rather than says how to be a citizen concerned with the common good of his city.

First, Socrates’s practice is on-going, as indicated by the stretch of time between these

dialogues. It is also marked by attempt, as indicated by Socrates’s own words(Gorgias 521d:

ἐπιχειρεῖν τῇ ὡς ἀληθῶς πολιτικῇ τέχνῃ καὶ πράττειν τὰ πολιτικὰ) but more so by the ambiguity

15. See Callicles’s derision of sophists as “worthless people” at Gorgias 520a.

16. Here he also says that this is the “only work of the good citizen.” This point is significant against those who take Socrates’s politics to be aimed at the would-be rulers of the citizenry. But at present, my focus is the singularity of Socrates’s politics. To this point, other citizens may indeed attempt this work, but their practice is undercut by their inability to see the full danger sophistry and rhetoric pose to the work of the good citizen. 250 of his success. These features complement one another: he is continually attempting this practice because he is never finished with its work. Connected to this feature, this art is not a productive art, in the sense that it does conclude with a product. Instead of an art that makes, it is an art that does. It is constituted by an activity, and this activity is a common one.17 Socrates also describes it as—and his actions demonstrate it to be—something like a rivalry for truth (505e: φιλονίκως ἔχειν). This contentious practice is not like the battles of rhetoric where onecitizen is pitted against the other. It is a battle against worse speeches for the sake of betterwaysof accounting for and understanding the common political project. Socrates fights not against his fellow citizens but with them and for them. Behind this struggle is the implicit understanding that the city is something worth fighting for. Accordingly, the combat is defensive: a battle to protect the possibility of the city’s common good more than to advance a specific conception of it.

This defensive character is emphasized by the refutative and investigative character of Socrates’s practice. The speeches Socrates uses to point other citizens towards what is best are speeches that disclose and counter the practices that are most dangerous. This reactive character of Socrates’s practice also accounts for why Socrates’s politics does not look especially political to someone like Callicles. Socrates is not promoting his agenda for the city nor seeking to claim power for himself. Instead he investigates the practices that others employ in order to advance themselves politically, and he critiques the conception of the city these practices assume.

His practice of politics is also, then, primarily a practice for citizens instead of those who would seek to rule the citizens. At Gorgias 517b, Socrates claims that the genuine practice of politics is “the only work for a good citizen.” The πολιτική τέχνη is not an art that belongs to special experts; though Socrates is singular in his attempt to practice politics, his uniqueness is not necessary and is in fact what he hopes to overcome by practicing his politics. This is not to say that those who would seek to rule cannot be beneficiaries of this practice of politics; on the contrary, Socrates thinks they would be most benefited inasmuch as they must first be

17. Recall Socrates’s decision to enlarge the audience of his conversation with Protagoras at Protagoras 317c-d, as well as his implicit and explicit appeals to the surrounding audience throughout that dialogue. 251 good citizens before they could be good rulers of citizens (Gorgias 514e). Socrates’s politics is therefore a practice of excellent citizenship rather than excellent statesmanship.18 If it is the case that the fundamental question of politics is “who should rule?” then the answer implied by Socrates’s politics is that the common good should govern the actions and decisions of the citizens.19 The work of the good citizen to improve his fellow citizens constitutes the continual attempt to reclaim and protect the true purpose of political power, namely, a common good.It is because of the threat sophistry and rhetoric pose to the common good that genuine politics demands Socrates’s enduring and urgent effort.

This trajectory from indifference at the beginning ofthe Protagoras to urgency at the end of the Gorgias portends consequences for Socrates himself. Before he attempts his practice of genuine politics, his interest in the youth of Athens, of which his interest in Alcibiades may serve as a synecdoche, is at worst potentially shameful.20 In retelling his conversation with Protagoras,

Socrates replaces his purported interest in beautiful youth with what the youth may find beautiful. His focus is not so much on seducing members or even a particular member of the younger generation, but on exposing the ugliness of what would otherwise capture these youth, namely, sophistry. Yet, as Socrates’s attention shifts, so do the effects of that attention. His interaction with the Athenian youth, previously tolerable though derided, is now ideologically threatening.

18. Contra, for example, Voegelin, “The Philosophy of Existence: Plato’s Gorgias,” Rocco, “Liberating Dis- course: The Politics of Truth in Plato’s Gorgias,” Shaw, “Socrates and the True Political Craft,” among others.

19. Though Villa, Socratic Citizenship is one of the very few scholars who also thinks that Socrates’s πολιτική τέχνη is an art of citizenship, we differ greatly on this point. Villa takes dissent simpliciter to be the essential feature of citizenship, a dissent that must necessarily turn its critical sight to the city’s so-called common good as well as the corrupters of it. To this, I again point to the fact that Socrates does not, in either of these dialogues, critique the notion of a common good, the laws of the city, the conventional notion of justice, nor even the principles of the regime itself.

20. See Protagoras 309a-309b. See Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 9-10, 19-140, on the importance of the figure of Alcibiades for the new project Socrates assumes after the Protagoras: “Socrates’s politics forphilos- ophy around 433 has a related and apparently more overtly political aim: private guidance of the politically most gifted and most ambitious young Athenian” (10). I believe Lampert’s emphasis on Alcibiades’s roleinthe Protagoras specifically and in shaping Socrates’s political project more broadly renders Socrates’s politics far too narrow. While it is difficult to overstate the significance of one of Socrates’s most notorious students, Plato also shows Socrates with more general concerns. 252

Though, as I have argued, Socrates does not offer his own philosophical wayoflifeas the alternative to sophistry or rhetoric, Socratic philosophy is inextricable from Socrates; consequently, it

will always look like Socratic philosophy is just another ideology—though one perhaps less skill-

ful at providing for its own safety. In attempting to combat the grip sophistry and rhetoric seek

over the youths of Athens, Socrates ends up seeming to seek the same sway these pseudo-arts do.21

Consequently, death too follows this trajectory. With allusive detail, Socrates identifies his

entrance into Callias’s house and his survey of the sophists found there with Odysseus’s descent

into the underworld (Protagoras 315a-316a). This spectre of Hades becomes visible again atthe

end of the Gorgias with Socrates’s account that others call a myth (Gorgias 523a-527a). These references to the underworld suggest that the fate of the city is in question, and this question is

whether the city succumbs to the subversion of its politics or not. Hades as the repository of fates

bookends Socrates’s project. The city that cannot recognize how sophistry and rhetoric debase

its politics runs the risk of damning itself. Socrates’s project is to help the city find its way to this recognition, even as he risks his own death in the process. To look beyond these two dialogues

briefly, we see that it is the lethal combination of too much association with the sophists andtoo

little use of rhetoric which brings Socrates first to trial and then to death. At the closeof

Protagoras, Socrates took Prometheus as his patron in his concern for the political consequences

of sophistry; his foresight points us to the Gorgias. At the close of the Gorgias, Socrates’s foresight focuses on his expected trial and death, a foresight shared by Callicles. One of the very few points

of agreement between Socrates and Callicles: whatever Socrates is attempting to do in the city,

it carries mortal consequences.

21. There is only so much Socrates can do to distance himself from this impression. Since scholars today ascribe some knowledge or didactic project to Socrates, despite the fact that Socrates disavows his own possession of knowledge and disclaims anyone’s ability to teach virtue, we can hardly be surprised that his contemporaries also mistook his purposes. 253

Callicles: A Character Born of Sophistry & Rhetoric

Callicles’s insight into Socrates’s fate marks him as another significant figure. Callicles also functions as a uniting character between the two dialogues, albeit in a different way than

Socrates. Although Callicles does not appear in the Protagoras, I believe he fills an absence that appears at the end of that dialogue. Hippocrates was the reason Socrates meets with Protagoras. Socrates accompanies the youth not only to gratify Hippocrates’s request for an introduction but also to protect him from the potentially deleterious effects of sophistry. Yet by the endof the dialogue, Socrates has not mentioned Hippocrates for some forty-four pages, that is, the latter four-fifths of the dialogue. Even when he takes his leave from Protagoras’s company,he does not explicitly note whether Hippocrates accompanies him—though he certainly is not with Socrates when Socrates encounters the companions.22 Hippocrates’s fate is ambiguous. Although it is clear enough that Socrates resists Protagoras’s sophistry, Plato leaves it unclear whether

Socrates’s resistance is repeated by any of the youths present. Though Socrates has revealed an intensely problematic relationship between sophistry and the city, Plato does not explicitly reveal the outcome of that relationship. There is an outstanding question, then, at the end ofthe

Protagoras: What happens to the youths of Athens given Protagoras’s sophistry? More broadly, what happens to the city if its citizens are not safe from sophistry? I believe Callicles is Plato’s answer to those questions.

The character of Callicles signals most clearly both the demand that the dialogues beread together and the benefit that results from a joint reading. Callicles functions as a culmination of the trajectory of the dialogues; his conversation with Socrates is the climactic confrontation in which all the key elements of the two dialogues converge. Additionally, our understanding of Cal- licles’s character deepens by reading these two dialogues together. Sophistry is the provenance and rhetoric is the instrument of Callicles’s peculiar understanding of politics and philosophy,

22. Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues 228, is right, I think, in arguing that Socrates’s use of the first person plural is a good indication that Hippocrates and perhaps others leaves with him, but it is still worth asking why this would be left ambiguous. 254 nature and convention, power, pleasure, and the good. In short, Callicles makes the conjoined dialogues more intelligible, and they together make him more intelligible.

I believe that in the character of Callicles Plato reveals the full effect of the dangers of sophistry and rhetoric. Callicles is the paradigmatic product of sophistic education and paradigmatic practitioner of political rhetoric. He has internalized the teachings of sophistry so thoroughly that he does not recognize their source and consequently, even necessarily, disparages that source. He has embraced rhetoric so thoroughly that there is no speech that is not some expression of power and no expression of power that is not some manipulation for personal ends.

His character thus discloses what results from sophistry and rhetoric’s unabated impersonation of genuine politics. As such, he is his city writ small—or, more precisely, his character is a projection of what his city can become if sophistry and rhetoric were to prevail without intervention.

Callicles’s relationship to his city is complex and recursive. He represents what fate faces

Athens but he also has grown from Athens’s contradictory roots. Understanding Callicles helps to understand Athens, and understanding Athens is necessary in order to understand Callicles. Perhaps the most unsettling feature of Callicles is the combination of contradiction and ofinvul- nerability to refutation. In this combination he is a distillation of a potential fate for Athens. In the first place, his contradiction resembles Athens’s own tension between its democratic principles and imperial ambitions. Moreover, just as Callicles’s contradictory life is livable for some time, so also Athens survives in spite of its inconsistency. Thus this problematic combination is the clearest point of convergence between Callicles’s character and his city. The dangers of this convergence extend in both directions, imperiling Callicles’s soul and the city itself. I will now argue that Callicles’s character is consequently formed by the same corrupting influences that threaten Athens: sophistry and rhetoric.

Callicles is what happens when sophistic education stands in for traditional civic education. His denigration of sophistry at the Gorgias 520a should not be taken as a sign that he has escaped its influence. Rather, it signifies sophistry’s thorough success. Recall that even before meeting Protagoras, Socrates warned of the unique danger sophistry poses: that its teachings 255 cannot be examined before being ingested (Protagoras 313c-314b). Callicles has taken into his soul the categories and claims provided by a sophistic education. And he has metabolized what he had ingested. He does not need to acknowledge the source of these categories and claims because he has already made them his own. There is a further danger regarding the propagation of sophistic education for which Socrates’s metaphor is inadequate. The view of politics implicit in sophistic education can proliferate without a teacher. Protagoras’s πολιτική τέχνη can color politics through ways of talking about the city, through postures towards what is to be valued, through habits of thought and speech—and all without the presence of a self-aware practitioner of sophistry. Consequently, Callicles need not have been a student of Protagoras—or of any particular sophist—in order to embody sophistry’s teachings. Callicles is thus the fruit of sophistry and not its roots. Callicles is therefore not concerned with the foremost of Protagoras’s concerns, namely, his safety. Callicles is no itinerant teacher; he instead hosts such teachers. Callicles is not worried about keeping peace with the elders while keeping pace with the young; he already keeps company of other young men and shows no qualms in castigating those older than he. The result is that Callicles brings out into theopen what Protagoras took pains to keep ambiguous. Again and again Callicles openly states the most egregious teachings of sophistry—and it is a testament to Protagoras’s forethought about his own safety that Callicles attributes none of these to sophistry.

Even though Callicles makes explicit what was only implicit in Protagoras’s speeches, it is not at all clear where Callicles himself belongs in his own speeches. Yet even his indeterminate mode of speaking he owes to sophistry. Just as it was a lingering question where Protagoras fit into the mythical past he relates, so also it is left undetermined where Callicles fits into the— perhaps mythical—future of the naturally just city. On the one hand, Callicles seems to identify himself with the extant powers of the conventional city while, on the other hand, he seems to be alone in recognizing the falseness of the city’s conventions. He does not identify himself as one of the superior men outright, and yet he seems to have the very characteristics he attributes to these superior ones. Like Protagoras, Callicles hides himself in his speeches. Yet, while Protagoras hides 256 in plain sight for the sake of safety, Callicles’s hides himself from himself, unable to acknowledge what is plainly before him.

Let us turn now to the content of Callicles’s speeches to see what they owe to sophistry.

In his speeches, three sets of categories are central and originate in Callicles’s unacknowledged presumption of sophistry. These categories are the elite/superior versus the masses/inferior, individual advancement versus collective safety, and nature versus convention. Ultimately sophistic education accounts for these binaries, which govern Callicles’s vision of politics and of the best way to live. In each case, however, Callicles’s brazen formulation of these categories offsets their sophistic origins. Callicles assumes the principles of sophistry as the undeniably rational framework for politics. Sophistry has become so commonplace that it is no longer recognized as such. Socrates’s worry that Protagorean sophistry would gain a semblance of legitimacy is justified and, in a way, superseded by Callicles’s assumption of sophistic principles. Sophistry has exceeded the semblance of legitimacy; for Callicles it takes on the semblance of sheer common sense.

Let us begin with the binary of superior versus inferior. Though it is an open question as to where Callicles sees himself on the spectrum of superiority and inferiority, nevertheless, two points are clear. One, that Callicles finds the virtues of wisdom and courage more worthwhile than the other so-called virtues. And two, that Callicles believes himself to be wiser and braver than many, and certainly more than the many. By elevating these virtues of wisdom and courage, he defies the unity of the virtues that Socrates had been so keen to consider with Protagoras. Cal- licles’s obvious preference for the few elite does not need to be teased out from his speeches. He openly demotes the other virtues: he relegates moderation—and, presumably, piety23—to the con-

ventional city. Furthermore, he splits justice into either a fiction used by the inferior to suppress

the superior or the manifestation of the natural order of the superior ruling the inferior.

23. Callicles never mentions nor even overtly alludes to piety. His silence may be another result of his internalization of sophistry. See Bartlett, Sophistry and Political Philosophy, especially 221-223, for a subtle treatment of Protagoras’s problematic relationship to piety. 257

Callicles therefore divides the virtues in just the way Protagoras did, except without the subtlety. Wisdom and courage, the only true virtues, are the virtues that belong to the elite—and these are the virtues that sophistry especially cultivates. Protagoras leaves the other virtues to traditional civic education much like Callicles leaves them for the manipulative masses. Both, with widely varying degrees of subtlety, suggest that these “conventional” virtues are fictions whose strength depends on how well they are believed. Protagoras had pointed to the agreements made by (most) men to value justice, moderation, and piety as the foundation of the city

(Protagoras 323b-c). Callicles rests his case for the natural worthlessness of these virtues on the fact that they are mere agreements (Gorgias 492c). Crucially, these agreements arise among the inferior masses and gain assent from those who otherwise would be superior only by means of systematic deception. For Callicles, then, traditional civic education amounts to an inculcation of deceit whereby the inferior are deluded into thinking themselves worthy of equality and the superior are beguiled into reinforcing their own supposed unworthiness. According to Callicles, the superior are thus made complicit in their own oppression by the cultivation of the traditional virtues of justice and moderation.

It seems that in at least one way, then, Callicles is superior to the naturally superior men.

For Callicles has the wisdom to see the truth about these false virtues. This wisdom includes the insight necessary for the one who is to throw off his conventional shackles and assume his natural and naturally just place of power. Wisdom also means, for Callicles, intelligence in the practical affairs of the city (Gorgias 491b). This sort of acumen is just what Protagoras claimed to teach in order to make his students better, that is, superior (318e-319a). Socrates ascribes, perhaps ironically, this sort of intelligence to Callicles when he recalls witnessing Callicles admonish his cohort of other well-off Athenians to avoid an overzealous pursuit of philosophy because such a pursuit interferes with political advancement (Gorgias 487c-d).24 Callicles extends this

24. There is a bit of black humor here in the fact that the only time we see Callicles inacommunity (κοινωνία) and the only time we hear of him practicing and promoting moderation is in the context of resisting philosophy. 258 admonition also to Socrates, again citing intelligence in practical matters as the appropriate goal (Gorgias 484d). Callicles seems to believe himself wiser in this kind of wisdom than the one who devotes his life to loving the love of wisdom.

It is not only his wisdom that distinguishes Callicles. Callicles’s sense of his own courage elevates him even above his distinguished guests. He diagnoses Gorgias’s and Polus’s failure to withstand Socrates’s refutation as a susceptibility to shame—but Socrates will find no such lack of manliness in him (Gorgias 482c-483a). Just as the superior man must have the courage to shatter everything he had been told was true and good in order to become a real man, so also Callicles deploys his own courage to repel the feelings of shame that Socrates tries to arouse, even shame at the image of the thoroughly unmanly catamite. For Callicles, shame is as it was for Protagoras: an sign of concern for safety. But Callicles, armed with his superior courage, need not find quarter in convention’s mewling promise of safety and therefore he need not be cowed by shame.

Callicles thus thinks he is wiser than Socrates, who foolishly pursues philosophy, and braver than Gorgias and Polus, who let themselves be shamed. Gorgias and Polus cannot combine their wisdom with the courage to be shameless, and Socrates cannot combine his shamelessness with true wisdom. In the coincidence of courage and wisdom, Callicles elevates himself even above the rarefied company he presently keeps. Sophistry claims to make its students betterand better; Callicles clearly supposes that he has achieved some superiority.

Callicles has little to say about how the superior ones come to be educated inthetrue virtues. He also has nothing to say about how he himself came by the intelligence that granted him insight into the true structure of the conventional city or the courage that emboldens him to call out its falsity. Given that the relevant superiority is supposed to be a sort of natural superiority, perhaps his silence about their formation is to be expected. It would be in keeping with his conception to take wisdom and courage to arise spontaneously in whomever is naturally superior.25 It is also worth noting that Protagoras appeals to just this inborn superiority when

25. If superiority arises spontaneously, then there is no need for teachers of the relevant excellent few. This inutility of the sophists may be why Callicles later calls worthless the sophists who claim to teach virtue (Protagoras 259 describing the function his sophistry performs in the city (Protagoras 327b-c). He implies that the students who would seek him out do so because they already have a natural talent that they wish

to refine and therefore are already naturally superior. Perhaps Callicles has his own origin myth

and therefore needs no account of the generation and cultivation of the true virtues. Regardless

of how these come about, though, it is clear that Callicles counts them as the only excellences that generate happiness.

Just as Callicles’s preference for the virtues of wisdom and courage can be traced back

to sophistry, so also can his conception of what those virtues are for, that is, his conception of

human happiness and the best way of life. Here we find the sophistic binary of the individual

versus the community. The end that Protagoras’s sophistry assumed for its students wasoneof sheer personal advancement (Protagoras 318a, 319a). With Socrates’s help, this self-advancement

is cashed out in terms of pleasure (Protagoras 356d-356e). Callicles again needs far less prompting than Protagoras did. He openly identifies the freedom to enlarge one’s desires and to indulge those desires as the highest end for man (Gorgias 492a-c). The hedonism that Socrates had to coax from Protagoras’s claims is now proudly averred by Callicles. Callicles again says aloud what Protagoras’s sophistry had assumed but did not openly acknowledge about its students.

Indeed, Protagoras had not openly acknowledged but did assume that his students are out only for their own good. His Great Speech sets up a mythico-social framework whereby such a pursuit is justified. By this account, each person is naturally oriented exclusively toward his own survival. This pursuit of survival and safety then prompts men to gather into communities.

Protagoras thus indicates that individual good is the effective truth behind collective enterprise.

Callicles, in turn, does not propose but rather presupposes this structure for all human community. What Protagoras had subtly suggested, Callicles outright assumes. Consequently, Callicles does not feel compelled to defend the life spent pursuing individual good. Callicles takes the

520a). On this point he sounds much like Socrates arguing against Protagoras about the teachability of virtue, though they each would hold this position for very different reasons. This point goes to my earlier claim that Callicles has so thoroughly internalized the teachings of sophistry that he no longer needs nor recognizes their teacher. It also anticipates my upcoming arguments for the self-defeating character of sophistry. 260 implicit message of Protagoras’s founding myth and makes it the explicit end of politics. For Callicles, it is unquestionable that each man does and should pursue his own good. Accordingly,

Callicles is more concerned with the difference between those who follow their desires with full awareness and strength and those who mask and limit their own desires. In Callicles’s hands, the terms of the argument therefore shift from individual advancement and collective safety to individual indulgence and collective comfort.

Finally, let us consider the binary of nature versus convention. Protagoras presented a complex sense of nature in his Great Speech. In it, human nature is marked at its most basic level by lack, by neediness. For Callicles, this translates to the necessity that all men seek their own good. For Protagoras, the nature which men inhabit is marked by its hostility. For Callicles, this omnipresence of hostility necessitates the natural superiority of strength, bravery, and cleverness.

At the next level, according to the myth, human nature is split into those more and less capable of achieving their end, that is, those who have the natural talent that sophistry can cultivate and those who do not. For Callicles, this translates into the naturally superior men who have both the most expansive appetites as well as the characteristics needed to satisfy these appetites. In these ways, the complexity of Protagoras’s account of nature are subsumed and flattened by Callicles’s overriding concern with power.

Something similar happens to the sophistic understanding of convention. For Protagoras, convention has a function that must be pragmatically respected—at least for the most part. Con- vention and law are necessary for the city to remain mostly stable; for that reason their facade should be maintained, even if it is recognized to be a facade. But for Callicles, the facade is too obvious and offensive to be allowed to remain. For Protagoras, the laws were merely agreements, but they were agreements that constituted the practices of justice and the maintenance of civic order. For Callicles, however, these agreements are nothing but the means whereby the inferior many can overcome the superior few, and consequently they are perversions of true, that is, natural, justice. 261

Sophistry relies on a distinction between nature and convention so that it may align itself with nature. The distinction thereby becomes invidious. For the student of sophistry, for Callicles, the distinction between nature and convention is isomorphic with the distinction between reality and farce. Should the student of sophistry desire his city be more than farce, then he must desire it to be more natural. Callicles therefore, in a move that seems to him no more nonsensical than convention itself, introduces “the law of nature” (Gorgias 483e). What else can a citizen reared by such an education do to confer some stability, some reality to his city? For Callicles, the conventional city is built upon the shifting sands of mere agreement. The city’s laws are justso many speeches whose power rests not on reality but on how convincing they are. Here enters

Callicles’s preoccupation with rhetoric. While he may prefer and perhaps may prudently seek to bring about a city governed by the law of nature, in the meantime, Callicles must live and live well in his given city. Callicles therefore requires political rhetoric in order to manipulate the manipulations of others for his own benefits.

Just as Callicles is the consummate student of sophistry, so also he has been wholly persuaded of the fundamental premise of Gorgian rhetoric, namely, that speech is only an expression of power. For Callicles, nature is the realm of reality and power it its currency. The chief function of the conventional city is to wield force while pretending both that persuasion differs from force and that the city in fact uses persuasion. The city maintains this pretense most obviously inthe case of punishment. By Callicles’s lights, punishment is the most apparent and direct expression of power in the city. The city can pretend it is not sheer violence because the city takes thepun- ished to be justly punished. The punished one is punished because he violates what the cityhas agreed is just. According to Callicles’s reasoning, this agreement prevails, however, not through justice but through an arrangement of accepted opinion. The practice of justice and the function of the laws, therefore, is merely belief manipulation. And insofar as the city is essentially in the business of belief manipulation, shame is one of the city’s most effective ways of ensuring coop- 262 eration. By associating violation of the city’s laws with shame, the city preempts that violation.26 For Callicles, what the city lauds as self-governance is actually a manipulation that hides its own hand.

By Callicles’s lights, because the city’s power amounts to manipulation of belief through speech, the city itself is essentially manipulable by whomever can wield a cleverer rhetoric. This insight lends Callicles his confidence in resisting the pressure of conventional shame. Rhetoric, for Callicles, is the mechanism that both empowers him to exploit his city’s present structure and entitles him to dismiss any claims made on him by his city. He can say whatever he wants and not be held to any of it. Even if he in fact does feel shame, his understanding of rhetoric allows him to explain away this momentary feeling. For Callicles the only true shame is powerlessness, and one is powerless only if he lets himself be overcome. Perhaps for this reason, Callicles’s frustration with Socrates’s perceived impotence surfaces again and again.

Callicles can say whatever he wants because he is confident that he need only find an effective subsequent speech to get himself out of any trouble to which his current speech commits him. There is no truth to the speeches themselves, since they are merely instruments ofpower.27

If an inconsistency in his speech is discovered, this does not call for him to renounce his position but instead calls for a greater display of power. Exchanging speeches is always a kind of war for

Callicles, and it is a war that can always be won if one has enough power. In other words, it is in principle always possible to spin the speech to one’s advantage if one is skillful enough. Callicles therefore resists refutation not because he puts no stock in logic but because he puts all his belief in the fundamental logic of his own position. His logic amounts to this: all other positions can use rhetoric cleverly to seem true. Nothing but his own conviction can be believed because it is stipulated that the other is a clever deceiver. The more true the other position seems, the moreit

26. This association should remind readers of Zeus’s donation to the development of human beingsand their political endeavors.

27. See Rocco, “Liberating Discourse: The Politics of Truth in Plato’s Gorgias,” 370–372, for an insightful treatment of this understanding of speech and power. 263 should be resisted and denied. In this case, what is denied is only the cleverness of the deception, not a genuine claim to truth. Of course, a consequence of this position is that Callicles’s own conviction remains opaque to self-reflection.

At this point, it should be clear that and how sophistry and rhetoric contribute to Calli- cles’s character. It follows that just as sophistry and rhetoric must be understood in the context of the city, so also Callicles must be understood also as a citizen. Indeed, the contradiction at the heart of Callicles’s character is a contradiction between his identity as a citizen and his identity as a student of sophistry and rhetoric. It remains for us to clarify this central contradiction and to identify what is at stake in the contradiction. In other words, I now consider the two problems of Callicles: the problem that constitutes Callicles himself and the problem that Callicles poses about the city.

As I already indicated in chapter two, I see Callicles subjected to two levels of refutation by Socrates. The more superficial level is the refutation of his peculiar hedonism. This refutation is the more effective and more explicit one. Callicles does eventually reverse his position onplea- sure and the good, though he never explicitly acknowledges that it is a result of the refutation.

A more diffuse and implicit refutation addresses Callicles’s underlying conception of politics and the consequent understanding of the best way to live. Callicles’s inconsistent hedonism relies on his inconsistent conception of politics. In turn, his inconsistent politics relies on an even more fundamental conviction, which Socrates only obliquely addresses but does not refute. Callicles’s deepest conviction is that his contradictory life is livable.28 If the ultimate result of Socrates’s refutation is that Callicles’s life is contradictory, this result then seems to be robbed of any practical implication by the fact that Callicles is living that life. Yet, to the extent that Socrates’s refutation is deprived of practical consequence—that in a concrete and poignant way, Socrates fails—a more serious and pervasive problem comes to light. This more serious and pervasive problem is the one Plato raises by putting these characters into conversation with one another. I

28. Doyle, “The Fundamental Conflict in Plato’s Gorgias,” 93, and Woolf, “Callicles and Socrates: Psychic (Dis)Harmony in the Gorgias,” 26, also note the viability of Callicles’s contradictory life. 264 believe it is also the problem through which we can discern Plato’s understanding of the nature of politics.

Let us first consider again the two levels of contradiction that Socrates refutes in hiscon- versation with Callicles. The first level concerns hedonism. Socrates’s refutation of Callicles’s hedonism drives Callicles to rescind his commitment to the claim that pleasure and good are identical. His reversal takes the form of a joke, which retroactively casts his previous answers as jocular prodding. Callicles means his claim of levity to extend to his insistence that he was serious about pleasure and the good being the same at Gorgias 495a. Callicles makes this identity claim following the last of Socrates’s increasingly scandalous images of pleasure, the image of the catamite. When Callicles later renounces his hedonism, I believe he does so ultimately to distance himself from this image. He distances himself not merely because of its unseemly appearance but primarily because of its political implications. Catamites were excluded from political life.

For Callicles, the real problem with the life of pleasure is not the compresence argument Socrates presents, but that the pursuit of pleasure can lead to a life that precludes politics.29 Pursuing pleasure was supposed to be a way of living the best kind of political life. What motivates Callicles’s reversal is not the theoretical inconsistency of his hedonism, but its practical infeasibility.

After defeating Callicles’s hedonism, Socrates turns to the conception of politics thatun- derlies Callicles’s hedonism. The refutation of this conception addresses the second level ofcon- tradiction. In this case, the inconsistency that Socrates’s refutation reveals is even more clearly existential than theoretical. Callicles’s conception of politics is motivated by a preference for reality over appearance, that is, by a desire for truth, albeit truth understood as power. Yet, this preference operates only within the conceptual parameters provided by sophistry and rhetoric, specifically, the opposing pairs of private good versus public good and natural order versuscon- ventional order. Socrates shows that this combination is self-defeating: Callicles’s commitment

29. Though I found Jenks, “The Sounds of Silence: Rhetoric and Dialectic in the Refutation of Calliclesin Plato’s Gorgias” to present a cogent account for the validity of Socrates’s argument, for reasons given above, I do not think the validity of this argument is what moves Callicles. 265 to politics is undermined by the conception of politics he assumes. Callicles opposes the private good to the public good, citing the former as the true good and the latter as a deceptive facade to cover the inferior men’s pursuit of their own private goods. Yet, Socrates shows that this understanding calls for the superior man to pander to the pleasure of the inferior man in order to gain the power to pursue his own goods. The distinction that was meant to limit the reach of deceptive appearance ends up demanding further dependence on this appearance. Similarly,

Callicles opposes natural order to conventional order, again aligning reality with the former and deception with the latter. Yet, this distinction collapses when Socrates demonstrates that thelaw and order that belongs to the city is the city’s inherent source of strength, health, and beauty. The distinction that was meant to strengthen the city instead weakens it by denying it any internal structure.

Though the theoretical difficulties with Callicles position are made clear, probably for the sake of the surrounding audience, Socrates’s refutation is also meant to show how Callicles disagrees with Callicles On the one hand, there is Callicles the intrepid, iconoclastic pursuer of his own pure pleasure and thereby natural justice; on the other, Callicles the flattering, careful chaser of good opinion and thereby conventional and civic success. Callicles boldly decries the laws of convention but shrewdly does not defy them. He vaunts the expansive and exclusive desire of the superior man but admires the statesmen who seem to him to improve the city while they increase their power. Callicles’s love of his city is in conflict with the way he conceives of his city—he understands neither his own love nor the object of his love. I believe this conflict is what Socrates alludes to when he claims that “our choice of that power [that is, Calliclean power] in the city will be at the cost of what we love most” (Gorgias 513a). Moreover, I believe it is this claim to which Callicles responds with such startling authenticity, saying that something seems well said in Socrates’s speech (Gorgias 513c). Socrates has come close to persuading Callicles to look at the contradiction in his character, to recognize that if he manages to gain power in the city in exactly the way he believes best, then he will inevitably destroy the very city he loves. 266

Yet Callicles is not persuaded. The refutation hangs in the air between them, but Socrates has not convinced Callicles to give up his contradictory position. Callicles still disagrees with

Callicles. It is important to note that this disagreement does not turn on the parts of the soul.

That is, it is not the case that the desirous part of Callicles’s soul drowns out the rational partofhis soul. The problem with dividing Callicles into desire on the one hand and intellect on theotheris that this divide does not align with the faultline along which his contradictory soul is split. Both sides of Callicles’s contradiction involve love and intellect. Callicles’s desire for power conflicts with his desire to improve his city, and Callicles’s understanding of the ends corresponding to these desires is inconsistent. There is a whole life for Callicles on either side of his contradiction.

Callicles could follow Socrates and adopt a conception of power that would more truly fulfill his love of justice. Or Callicles could deny his love of justice and commit to his desire for personal power and pleasure. The problem is that Callicles tries to make a single life from these conflicting principles.30

The question of how Callicles can sustain his contradictory life therefore remains open. To address it, we should recall Socrates’s first extended speech to Callicles. There he identifies

Callicles as a double lover: he loves Demos, the son of Pyrilampes, and he loves the Athenian

δῆμος. Socrates goes on to say that Callicles makes contradictory claims because of his beloveds.

Callicles’s inconsistency therefore arises not from the fact that he loves but from what he loves.

Callicles understands neither his own love nor his beloved, but his beloved also fails to understand itself. Callicles makes contradictory claims because he cannot contradict his conflicted city.

Callicles can live his contradictory life because he lives in and emulates his contradictory city.

Callicles’s vision of politics is thus born in part from his love of a city who bears a contradiction between its conventional ideals and its natural power. His love brings about an imitation of his city in his own soul. This imitation permits him to live his contradictory life and evento

30. Woolf, “Callicles and Socrates: Psychic (Dis)Harmony in the Gorgias,” 4, n.6, further notes that Callicles tried to make this single life without trying to make these principles cohere, and therefore argues for Callicles’s “psychic disharmony.” 267 flourish in it. Consequently, his inconsistency remains impervious to Socrates’s refutation and by extension obstructs the success of Socrates’s practice of politics. It seems that the difficulty

Socrates faces with Callicles is a paradigmatic instance of the difficulty Socratic politics faces with the polity. As I mentioned above, Plato uses Callicles to present a limiting case, the most difficult case wherein genuine politics may still be possible. The stalemate thus takes onabroader significance. With it, I believe Plato presents with dramatic vividness a problem for politics itself.

A Problematic Politics Revealed

At this point it is necessary to leave behind the characters of the dialogues to some extent. We must turn our attention instead to what Plato conveys through these characters, their speeches, and their deeds. With these dialogues, I believe, Plato outlines the contours of a crucial problem for politics and indicates an account of that problem. To detect both this problem and the response to it, we must read as fellow philosophical thinkers alongside Plato. This shift from interpretation to investigation unfolds in the following sections along two levels of consideration. First I articulate the problem in its particular terms, a problem of Socrates and Athens. Inasmuch as Plato’s goal is philosophical, however, it cannot be limited only to what is true of the particular situation of Athens and Socrates. Consequently, we must aim to move beyond these particularities to what is abiding. I therefore also articulate the problem in more profound terms, that is, in terms of the very nature of the political community.

The Problem of Socrates and Athens

The problem that the Gorgias and the Protagoras pose for Socrates is this: it seems impossi-

ble to save the city from the perversions of sophistry and rhetoric. There seems to be something in

the nature of the city, as in the soul of Callicles, that not only makes it susceptible to sophistry and

rhetoric but also prevents the eradication of these. The bleakness of this prospect is compounded by Socrates’s role. To some extent, Plato has Socrates recognize this bleakness by depicting him

continue to struggle for Athens’s sake while acknowledging that he will most likely be slain by 268 those he is attempting to save. Indeed, it is never far from the reader’s mind that Socrates iskilled by the citizens he is attempting to improve precisely because of his attempted improvement. Yet

Socrates’s supposed failure is preceded by a lifetime of dedication to his city and an unceasing practice of so-called genuine politics. Is Plato indicating that Socrates’s dedication was futile? his practice pointless? Does Plato present Socrates’s failure as a call to condemn the city that condemned his teacher? Or is Plato offering a modification of Socrates’s practice of politics, one that perhaps makes it safer to practice?

These questions loosely comprise the political problem of Socrates and Athens, whichhas received extensive and varying treatment from a number of scholars. These treatments differ as much in the formulation of the problem as in its proposed resolution. Josiah Ober, for example, articulates the problem in terms of Socratic critical reason and the ideological structure of fourth- century Athenian democracy: “Was the practice of Socratic-style philosophy bound to come into conflict with the practice of Athenian-style democratic politics?”31 John R. Wallach adopts Ober’s central tension but expands its stakes to include the broader issues of the λογος of virtue and the εργον of political practices.32 In an earlier article, Wallach pithily claims that the central problem “consists of the discordant relationship between critical discourse (λόγος) of virtue (arete)

and practical power (ergon).”33 Hannah Arendt explicitly notes the double-edge of the problem,

claiming that Socrates’s failure prompted Plato both to doubt “certain fundamentals” of Socratic

philosophy and despair about political life.34 Leo Strauss articulates the problem as a tension between the superiority of the philosophical life, from which political life derives its dignity,35

31. Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule, 165.

32. Wallach, The Platonic Political ,Art 44–49.

33. John Wallach, “Plato’s Socratic Problem, and Ours,” History of Political Thought 18, no. 3 (1997): 377–398, 377.

34. Hannah Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” Social Research 57, no. 1 (1990): 73–103, 73.

35. Leo Strauss, “The Origins of Political Science and the Problem of Socrates: Six Public Lectures,” Inter- petation 23, no. 2 (1996): 127–208, 187. 269 and the city’s unjust failure to be regulated by that superiority. Consequently, Plato’s political philosophy is meant to “protect the inner sanctum of philosophy” against politics.36

For the present purposes, these scholarly discussions are helpful for articulating a number of useful distinctions. These distinctions include the distinction between the historical Socrates and the character of Socrates in the dialogues; the distinction between the character of Socrates as revealed through his speeches and deeds and the thought of Plato as revealed through the dialogues themselves; and finally the distinction between Socratic politics and Platonic political philosophy. I will differentiate my own view from the scholars’ mentioned in terms ofthese distinctions.

Before treating these distinctions, I must address an issue of scope. Though I will be addressing issues that pertain to the whole of Platonic philosophy and Platonic political philosophy, my primary concern remains limited to what the Gorgias and the Protagoras contribute to this greater whole. One of the most distinctive contributions these dialogues offer is their treatment of the city as it is, that is, a city suffused with the threats posed by sophistry and rhetoric.37 In one sense, this city is, of course, Athens, and particularly Athens as it approached and was embroiled in the Peloponnesian War. Yet, since these dialogues are works of political philosophy, their message cannot be limited to a strictly historical reading. As works of philosophy, these dialogues deal with the nature of the political in progress and in practice. I say “in progress” to distinguish the issue of politics in these dialogues from questions of founding new political communities or establishing new regimes for existing political communities. I also say “in practice”—not to sever the issues from theory or contemplation but to confront seriously the demands activity places

36. Strauss, “The Origins of Political Science and the Problem of Socrates: Six Public Lectures,” 178.

37. I therefore consider these dialogues to have an end distinct from the goal of constructing an ideal regime as in Plato’s Republic and Laws. Nevertheless, I am in general committed to a unified understanding of his political philosophy, and nothing in my arguments here should preclude that understanding. See V. Bradley Lewis, “Politeia kai Nomoi: On the Coherence of Plato’s Political Philosophy,” Polity 31, no. 2 (1998): 331–349 and Lewis, “Plato’s Philosophical Politics” for a representative case of the sort of unifying approach that could be compatible with my arguments here. 270 on such theorizing. In sum, these dialogues constitute a philosophical treatment of a pressing, practical, but perennial political problem.

In order to clarify this problem, a distinction must be made between the author of this philosophical treatment and the characters he uses to play out the problem under consideration.

Before we distinguish Plato from Socrates, however, a separate distinction must be made and must be kept separate. It may be tempting to think that the distinction between Plato and Socrates is just a distinction between the author of the dialogues and the man who was his teacher, but there are two sets of distinctions to be made. Many scholars have found it worthwhile and explanatorily fertile to distinguish between the thought of the historical Socrates as reported but theoretically unchanged in the dialogues and the thought of the character of Socrates used by Plato as a vehicle for his own philosophy. Within the frame of this distinction, Socrates is sometimes a creation of

Plato and sometimes not. In the former cases, the words of Socrates give voice to the thoughts of Plato and therefore it makes no sense to ask about a distinction between the author and the character; this Socrates just is Plato’s mouthpiece. In the latter cases, the distinction between Plato and Socrates is obvious, but this distinction breaks in terms of historical situation, not in terms of author and character.

I am deeply skeptical of the worthiness of the distinction between historical Socrates and

Socrates/Plato, not least because most of its explanatory power assumes an approach to the dialogues that focuses almost exclusively on the propositional content found therein, often with a lack of sensitivity to the power of the dramatic details of the dialogue.38 An approach that divests the dialogues of the meaningful delicacy and intention of their dramatic settings is an approach that leaves out too much. In addition to the unsatisfying approaches to the Dialogues that usually accompany this distinction, the distinction itself seems to me to be hopelessly unsatisfying. Short of irrefutably accurate evidence of the historical Socrates’s speeches and deeds, this distinction will always be underdetermined, and consequently, disputes about it will remain

38. Gregory Vlastos is representative of this approach. See Wallach, “Plato’s Socratic Problem, and Ours,” 379-382, for an even assessment and critique of Vlastos’s approach. 271 irresolvable. I therefore dismiss this distinction, at least on the grounds of utility, in favor the distinction between the author and his character.39

Admittedly, the case of Socrates is a special case of this distinction. It is undeniable that

Socrates holds a significant and unique place in the Platonic corpus. It is easy to see how thecare

Plato devotes to vividly presenting Socrates’s peculiar mannerisms can lead one to assume that the portrait of Socrates in the dialogues works closely from a living model—or a living memory of one. Rather than implying that there are two “Socrates” in the dialogues, however, Plato’s care with this character should prompt an approach that attempts to find a unified Socrates throughout his appearances in the dialogues.40 Socrates is a favored character among the sundry and richly crafted dramatis personae of Plato’s Dialogues, but he is nevertheless a character. He, like many other characters in the Platonic corpus, is drawn from historical sources, and like the other characters he comes to us through Plato.

As for Plato himself, discovering Plato amidst his dialogues demands at least a further distinction. The distinction is between Socrates’s political practices and Plato’s political philosophy. There can be no doubt that Plato did not imitate all the idiosyncracies he assigns tohisrepre- sentation of his teacher. There is certainly one remarkable and undeniable difference: instead, of spending all his time in conversation in the public square, Plato wrote.41 Not only did Plato write

but he decided to write dialogues, that is, Plato wrote in a way that deliberately and radically

39. Some scholars attempt to thread the needle between these two views, on the one hand bydenying that Plato depicts the historical Socrates with accuracy or only limiting those depictions to the Apology, and on the other hand by asserting that Plato is nevertheless in conversation with the positions that belong properly to his teacher. Wallach is one such scholar; see especially John Wallach, “Socratic Citizenship,” History of Political Thought 9, no. 3 (1988): 393–413. As a consequence, in Plato’s writings, some of historical Socrates’s thought is a foil for the development of Plato’s own positions. I find this approach unsatisfying to the extent that it is used toexplain away difficult positions as that which is to be Platonically superseded. The approach meets with discontent forthesame reasons as the developmental approach; see my Introduction.

40. Zuckert, “Why Socrates and Thrasymachus Become Friends” and Lampert, How Philosophy Became So- cratic are excellent examples of this kind of project, though I disagree with some of the details of their arguments. As mentioned above, Lewis, “Plato’s Philosophical Politics” is another example of this attempt to unify, in this case focused on Plato’s political philosophy.

41. I return to the significance of this distinction in chapter six. 272 obscured his own voice. Plato himself says nothing in the dialogues, and Plato says everything with the dialogues.42 Whatever philosophical work the dialogues are meant to do, it cannot be immediately and should not be easily identified with the work Socrates does in those dialogues.

In what follows, then, the distinction between the author and his character is to remain indelible. From this distinction arises the question: How does Platonic political philosophy differ from Socratic political practice?

My answer to this question differs significantly from the ones frequently offered byother scholars. More often than not, scholars—even ones that acknowledge a difference between Plato’s philosophy and Socrates’s practice43—immediately designate Socrates’s practice as its own kind of philosophy.44 For example, Christopher Long distinguishes between a Socratic political topology (or a place of speech) and a Platonic political topography (or a place of writing), but these both converge as philosophical strategies to cope with political issues.45 In the same vein, Wallach takes the political art of the Gorgias to signify “the intellectual emergence of a new ethical and political vision, one that rejoins ethics and politics at the level of Platonic theory.”46 Wallach attempts to keep Socrates and Plato distinct except on the point of the philosophical qualityof

42. Perhaps this latter claim needs to be attenuated, given one’s position onthe Seventh Letter. Nevertheless, the sentiment of the claim prevails.

43. Wallach, “Plato’s Socratic Problem, and Ours,” 383, I believe, correctly assesses that “Strauss absorbs the problem of Socrates into his interpretation of Plato.” Though Strauss warns against making Socrates speak for Plato (for example, Strauss, “The Origins of Political Science and the Problem of Socrates: Six Public Lectures,” 180),itis clear that Strauss considers Socrates to be Plato’s philosophic hero. Consequently, he finds no significant difference between Plato’s political philosophy and the speeches and deeds of Socrates in the dialogues.

44. In my interpretations of the dialogues, I have already noted the commentators who make the assumption that in these dialogues Socrates presents philosophy as the other option to sophistry or rhetoric.

45. Long, Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy, x. Brian Marrin, “Review of Christopher P. Long, Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy: Practicing a Politics of Reading,” Polis 33, no. 1 (2016): 229–233 accurately critiques Long for bypassing subtle political thinking for a philosophical schema.

46. Wallach, The Platonic Political ,Art 195. Presumably Wallach does not distinguish between Platonic theory and Plato’s political philosophy. 273

Socrates’s political art.47 Similarly, J. Clerk Shaw, though he goes to great pains to keep Socrates from making too strong an epistemic claim with the claim to the true political craft, nevertheless identifies Socrates’s political craft with philosophy itself, asserting that “philosophy aspiresto true politics.”48

Although I am suspicious of this conflation in other so-called political dialogues, Iames- pecially convinced that it is not warranted in the case of the Protagoras or the Gorgias. I have already stipulated in my interpretations of the dialogues that I take Socrates neither to defend nor to promote philosophy in either his conversation with Protagoras or his conversations with Gor- gias, Polus, and Callicles. I believe the coherence of my interpretations supports this stipulation, but I will also make a brief case for it here. In the Protagoras, Socrates never mentions philosophy except ironically.49 He certainly never identifies what he is doing as an instance of philosophy;

instead, he implies that his examination of Protagoras on Hippocrates’s behalf is a stand-in for

what he would want and expect the elders of the city to do (Protagoras 314b). His refutation of

Protagoras does not seem the unique task of the philosopher as such since the care for the souls and therefore the education of young citizens at least also belongs to the elders. Though I have

argued that Socrates is especially capable of confronting sophistry (and rhetoric) because of his

love of philosophy, we do not therefore have license to restrict this critical work to one who loves

philosophy as Socrates does.

The Gorgias requires a more subtle argument, for in that dialogue there are references to philosophy with no obvious irony. Socrates mentions philosophy in his first speech to Cal- licles but pointedly does not call himself a philosopher—instead he identifies himself as a lover

47. Wallach, The Platonic Political ,Art 195: “Such a conception of the political art could be said to reflect the efforts of both the historical Socrates and Plato to shift the ultimate context for evaluating political successfromthe acquisition of wealth to the strength and care of the soul.” Wallach then makes it clear that his shift is a result of more or less effective attempts to “theorize” the art of virtue, where “theorize” seems to mean to investigate philosophically.

48. Shaw, “Socrates and the True Political Craft,” 191.

49. In describing Callias (Protagoras 335d) and in ascribing wisdom to the Spartans (Protagoras 342a-343b). 274 of philosophy.50 He does claim that he says what philosophy says, but just because philosophy says it does not mean only philosophy can say it. Indeed, the claim Socrates defends by saying what philosophy says—the claim he later describes as being bound by adamantine arguments—is a traditional civic claim, namely, that doing injustice is bad.51 Though Socrates contrasts his love of philosophy with Callicles’s love of the δῆμος, it is clear that his love of philosophy prompts him to better care for the δῆμος than Callicles is capable of. That he is motivated byhislove of philosophy does not necessitate that any attempt at genuine politics must be preceded bya commitment to philosophy. In this dialogue, Socrates’s love of philosophy motivates his defense of justice, but it does not motivate a public discussion of the nature of justice; Socrates neither asks nor demands an answer to the question “What is justice?” As mentioned before, Socrates assumes a notion of justice already latent in the city. Socrates’s love of philosophy, in this case, does not motivate an investigation that radically critiques the city’s conception of justice—that would be a task of philosophy as such. Instead of seeking to replace the extant notion of justice with a philosophically rigorous definition, Socrates attempts to care for and improve his fellow citizens and makes no claims that this care belongs to the special purview of philosophers.

It is surely possible to take Socrates’s peculiar way of conducting a conversation, that is, his elenchus, as evidence that he is always and with everyone attempting to do philosophy. But this does not entail that he is only ever “doing philosophy.” In the Protagoras and the Gorgias

Socrates is doing politics as well as loving philosophy. It is crucial for Socrates—and perhaps for political philosophy more generally—that the speeches philosophy tells him to speak are the same

50. The figure of the philosopher appears only once in Socrates’s speech: he lived his life withhisown thoughts and did not interfere in any other’s business and after his death was sent to the Isles of the Blessed. This figure’s life certainly sounds different from Socrates’s own, though we and perhaps also Socrates mayhopethathe had the opportunity to live that kind of life.

51. I disagree with Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” that the principle that it is better to suffer than to do injustice is a philosophical truth, that is, a truth that requires a philosopher to derive it. It seems to me that this principle follows closely upon the prohibition of injustice, which in turn seems to have a strong claim to being a condition for the possibility of political community itself. The city decidedly does not say: “Do not do injustice, except if you may suffer by not doing injustice.” Her evidence for the status of this claim as a “philosophical truth” isthatit paradoxical (240), but the fact that it is difficult to abide by or that it finds vocal opponents does not seem sufficient to make it a principle that only philosophers can divine. 275 ones that the city needs to hear; in other words, it is crucial for Socrates that genuine politics is compatible with philosophy. But it does not follow from this that philosophy is the only source of these speeches or that genuine politics is strictly dependent on philosophy. It must be possible to practice Socratic politics without also being a philosopher.52 If this distinction is not maintained, then it seems that no genuine politics is possible without a citizenry comprised of philosophers— an even greater demand than the rule of philosophers in Republic!

Socrates does offer himself as a model—to Hippocrates as a model of the youth’s elders, to the other young Athenians in Callias’s home as a model of how to investigate sophistry, then to the Athenian audience who lingers after Gorgias’s display as a model of how to cross-examine rhetoric. Yet never does he require that those for whom he is a model be themselves philosophers or even be interested in the way of life guided by a love of philosophy.53 The model Socrates offers is one of citizenship in confrontation with the antagonists of sophistry and rhetoric. It may well be that it is Socrates’s love of philosophy that enables him to practice genuine politics in the face of its pernicious impersonators, but he nowhere suggests that love of philosophy is a prerequisite for this practice.

I take the distinction between the practice of philosophy and the practice of genuine politics to be well-founded in the text as well as helpful in avoiding a further problematic conflation.

As mentioned above, many scholars conflate Socratic politics with Socratic philosophy with the result that at least one of the objects of Socrates’s criticism is identified with conventional politics. Surely conventional politics is not philosophical—not least in that it must cease its striving for an understanding of the whole and stipulate that it has succeeded in understanding at least a part

52. It is compatible with my view that Socrates’s love of philosophy may be necessary to put genuine politics into motion. As I argue in chapter six, it may also be necessary for political philosophy to devote itself in some respect to maintaining genuine politics. But the work of genuine politics, of remaining vigilant against sophistry and rhetoric, of caring for the justice of one’s city and the improvement in virtue of one’s fellow citizens—that work is work for the citizen as such.

53. It should be noted that the model of citizenship Socrates offers is more tolerant of his own way oflife than the model of citizenship Callicles offers. I count it as too narrow a reading, however, to conclude from thisthat making the city safe for philosophy is Socrates’s only or even primary motivation. 276 of it, such as justice. If, then, Socrates proposes a philosophy as a way of doing politics, he must either dismiss or radically reform conventional politics. To take this path is to conflate conventional politics with the politics of sophistry and rhetoric. Consequently, the target of Socrates’s critical discourse is taken to be the democratic ideology of Athens and this ideology is taken to include monolithically both sophistry and rhetoric.54 On this approach, there is no city worth saving, and only a new politics—a politics that improves by replacing the old politics—could be

genuine politics. But this approach is dissonant with the text. Never do we see Socrates turn

his critical eye to the traditional values of the city in these dialogues. Rather the opposite, he

seems to assume these very values. Socrates does not ask what is virtue because he assumes the

sense of virtue at which civic education aims. Socrates does not ask what is justice because he already assumes the sense of justice the city aims to enact. Socrates reserves his critiques for

sophistry and rhetoric. He attempts to save the city from these not by turning the citizens into

philosophers but by helping them become better as citizens. And he helps them become better

citizens by helping them strengthen a largely extant understanding of virtuous citizenship that resists the lure of sophistry and rhetoric.

With these distinctions in place we are able to consider afresh the relationship between

Plato’s political philosophy and his depiction of Socrates’s political practices in these dialogues.

The problem of Socrates and Athens need not commit us to a Plato who attempts to rectifyor

augment Socrates’s deficiency. Neither must the problem commit us to a radical rejection of the city that condemned Socrates. Though Plato shows Socrates’s politics to be insufficient and

he criticizes Athens’s treatment of his teacher, both these intentions should be situated in the

larger context of his political philosophy. I believe that inasmuch as these dialogues are works of

political philosophy, with them Plato is asking a question about the nature of the political. Plato’s

54. For example, though Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule, 210-212, remains ambiguous on the extent to which “Socrates’s ethics of criticism” is philosophical, it is clear that he takes this ethics of criticism to primarily target the ideology of the democratic political culture that belonged to contemporary Athens, a culture which subsumes the ideologies of sophistry and rhetoric. Also, Villa, Socratic Citi- zenship, 3–8, 21ff., with his emphasis on dissent, take Socrates set his critical sights on the conventional conceptions of justice, virtue, and even the possibility of a common good. 277 specific response to the specific problem of Socrates and Athens also points towards thegeneral conditions and consequences of that particular setting. The problem of Socrates and Athens isan opportunity for more careful philosophical reflection, a question that invites consideration rather than a obstacle that demands an answer.55

In these dialogues, Plato’s political philosophy begins with the questions: given that there is a stalemate between the extremes of a conception of politics underwritten by sophistry and rhetoric and the practice of genuine politics, then what is the nature of the city that can account for and accommodate both? Why is there a such stalemate? In other words, what is the cause of the failure of Socrates’s politics? And why, if Socrates recognizes that failure seems most likely, does Socrates continue in the way he does? What, if anything, is there left to the city worth saving, given that it cannot seem to distinguish those who would save it from those who would destroy it? In the Gorgias and the Protagoras I believe Plato’s philosophical goal is to pose and address these questions. With these dialogues, Plato discloses the nature of the city in its essential activities—and that nature is revealed by the problem of Socrates and his city.

The Problem of Being and Seeming in the City

The philosophical problem that the dialogues present arises from the stalemate between

Socrates and Callicles. The question at hand is what is the nature of the city that can accountfor this stalemate? The stalemate has three parts: genuine politics, the city itself, and sophistry/rhetoric as dual imposters of genuine politics. The city itself is what is at stake in the conflict between genuine politics and its imposters. Both genuine politics and sophistry/rhetoric make claims

55. To some extent then, I agree with Wallach, The Platonic Political ,Art 9, that “Socrates is as much a problem as a hero in Plato’s philosophical project.” I disagree with Wallach about the nature of that problem. It is a philosophical problem, that is, an aporia that invites and inspires recurring reflection and investigation. I prefer this formulation instead of a political problem that demands a concrete solution, although I do argue that concrete consequences follow from the philosophical investigation. It is a part of my self-deception thesis developed below that the most significant problems of the city are philosophical problems that nevertheless demand specifically political responses. 278 about the city’s being, but neither of them entirely succeed or entirely fail in establishing their understanding of the city as the city’s understanding of itself.

Genuine politics aligns itself with being and identifies sophistry/rhetoric with seeming.

It aims for the city to identify itself with its deposit of authenticity, that is, to identify itself as a common effort to promote and preserve a real and common good. According to the accountof genuine politics, sophistry and rhetoric are dissimulations that not only lack reality themselves but also obscure the reality of the city. For their own part, sophistry and rhetoric seek to bring the city—or those who would rule it—to see that the city already is nothing but seeming. According to the vision of the city that sophistry/rhetoric offers, genuine politics is itself illusory and certainly deluded. Each of these accounts of the city thus offer a different framework of what the cityis and of the way the city sees itself, but neither succeeds in establishing itself as the city’s self- understanding. This is the stalemate that begins our inquiry of political philosophy. Wemust now ask: what makes this stalemate possible?

While I do take it that Plato is, in some sense, a champion of the account assumed by genuine politics, I am more interested in the problem that arises for such a champion. To see this problem, we must be careful to avoid a Scylla and a Charyibdis: aligning the city too much either with sophistry/rhetoric or with genuine politics obscures the problem. In other words, if sophistry and rhetoric are correct about the city, then there is no philosophical problem at all.

There would be nothing true to the city, nothing salvageable from the city. The city wouldbe an unprincipled tangle of apparitions that forever obscure and never reveal. If sophistry and rhetoric are correct about the city, then any attempt at genuine politics would be a naive and fundamentally misguided quest.56 That is, genuine politics could be nothing but a failure. An obscuring overcorrection to this would be an understanding of genuine politics that takes its task to be founding of a new order, one in which sophistry and rhetoric would have no place. On this account, the city could be nothing but its being and would have no need for seeming. Genuine

56. Socrates would be a problem, then, insofar as it becomes necessary to account for such foolishness in one who so loves the love of wisdom—but this seems a problem for a hagiographer rather than a political philosopher. 279 politics would succeed then only if it were entirely successful. This view makes genuine politics simultaneously thoroughly pessimistic about the city as it is and thoroughly optimistic about the possibility of making the city as it should be.

The philosophically interesting problem arises only if one believes that the city already has and requires a real, common good but also recognizes that appearance plays a necessary role in the functioning of the city. The political philosopher must not only account for the truthof genuine politics but also the limited efficacy of that truth. Additionally, the political philosopher must confront the problem of how seeming power can be truly effective in the city. The political philosopher must do so because sophistry and rhetoric are partially correct about the city: the city does rely on appearances and does trade on their power. This reliance makes the city susceptible to the perversions of sophistry and rhetoric. But the city is also resistant to these perversions; it is possible and not practically infeasible—though admittedly difficult—to attempt genuine politics.

What is needed is an account of the city that explains both its susceptibility and its resistance to sophistry and rhetoric. The sought-for account of political community is one which explains how genuine politics is not felled by the sometimes success of sophistry and rhetoric and why it is worthwhile for genuine politics to fight for the city as it is, not seek to replace it. Withthe

Gorgias and the Protagoras together, Plato raises these problems and suggests a response.

The Self-Deceptive Nature of the City

The needful account is one provided by the vision of the city offered byPlato’s Protagoras and Gorgias together. I argue that Plato’s vision is of the city as inherently self-deceptive. This self-deceptive aspect of the city accounts for the city’s relationship to sophistry and rhetoric. In the following section I establish the self-deception thesis, a thesis which claims that self-deception is an inherent element of political communities and one that explains the possibility and efficacy of sophistry and rhetoric. First I expand on this self-deceptive nature of the city, clarifying the complex relationship between being and seeming that characterizes the political realm. Then I demonstrate how my self-deception thesis accounts for the problematic elements of politics and 280 political association presented above. This prepares for the next chapters in which I develop the more particular implications of this thesis for sophistry, rhetoric, and philosophy.

The basic structure of my argument is not deductive. What argument about whatPlato intends can be? Instead, my argument is abductive. The self-deception thesis bears significant explanatory power for the dialogues’ presentation of the city and the problematic implications of that presentation. There are some moments within the dialogues that lend weight to thethesis, but the evidence for the thesis’s relevance lies primarily in its ability to account for the presented political situation and for the mode of that presentation. In my interpretations of the dialogues and my philosophical treatment of them thus far, I have endeavored to investigate and uncover a whole by which Plato discloses a truth about the city. The self-deception thesis is my attempt to articulate that truth.

What Is Meant by Self-Deception

Articulation of the self-deception thesis requires a distinction between two levels of being and seeming. The first level concerns the activities that comprise the city itself, namely,the generation, preservation, modification, or repudiation of the conventions of the city—conventions that include both the written and the unwritten laws. The second level concerns the reflectionof the city on its own activity, namely, the account it gives of itself to itself. This second level self- awareness is also constitutive of the city’s identity; it is what transforms the coincidence of many men acting on similar values and for similar ends into a common endeavor on behalf of a single and unified identity. This self-awareness is necessary not only for the city to distinguish itself from other cities but also to guide its internal movements as it perdures through generations.

The activities of the city through its citizens—what I have called the first level—assume andare responses to the question of what the city is and what the city values. The city’s self-reflection on these constituting activities asks that assumed question and validates the responses to it.57

57. I owe a debt to Michael Davis, The Politics of Philosophy: A Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics (New York: Rowman / Littlefield Publishers, 1996), 47, for his inspiring articulation of the city in theseterms. 281

The relationship between these two levels is best characterized as self-deception. Atthe first level, the city relies upon appearance in order to act and therefore function. Atthesecond level, the city must eschew acknowledgment of this reliance on appearance in order to preserve its activity and functioning. The city’s first-order beliefs—about what is good, what is just,and what is the best way to live—are expressed in its laws, its customs, the precedents set in its courts, and the way it rears the next generation of citizens. The city’s second-order beliefs—beliefs about the status of its first-order beliefs—hold both that its first order beliefs are true and that itholds them with appropriate confidence. It is possible, however, that these beliefs first order beliefs are false and, therefore, that the city’s second-order confidence is misplaced. It is possible that the understanding of virtue or human flourishing embodied by the city’s customs and enshrined in the city’s laws is incomplete, ambiguous, or fundamentally wrong. It is also possible that these conceptions are essentially true. What is not possible, however, is that the city acknowledge the uncertainty of its conceptions.

This open recognition is not possible most significantly because of the practical consequences of such an acknowledgment. The city functions in and through action, and the character of this action must be definitive. In one sense, the city’s actions must be definitive becauseac- tions must be definitive, because the circumstances demand determinate commitment. In another sense, the city’s action must be definitive because of what is at stake in those actions. Thelives and deaths of its citizens, its continuity through generations, its confrontation with and manage- ment of endless contingencies—all these require that the city’s decisions be decisive. Because it does act as the final arbiter of justice, it must also present itself as such. The city must present its authority as final if it is to have authority at all. The city is thus comprised not onlyofits actions but also of its reflective appraisal of those actions. Its actions are informed at leastby its beliefs and its beliefs are shaped at least in part by its actions. Yet, a condition for the city’s convictions is that is misrepresents the status of those convictions. The city therefore appears to itself to be other than how it may be and it mistakes this appearance for its being in such a way 282 that it is unable to question the apparitional status of that self-presentation. In this way, the city is self-deceptive.

The two, conjoined elements of the city’s self-deception are its reliance upon appearance and its inability to recognize that reliance. As a general example of the city’s reliance on appearance: the city must make known and make public to other cities as well as to its own citizens the unique good it offers, preserves, and promotes. This good must be a good that answers thegeneral question of the best way for human beings to live together as well as the particular question of the best way for these human beings to live together in this place at this time. There must be a shared vision of this good—a vision continually shared and commonly shaped of who the city is.

This self-awareness of the city is not a contemplation of its principles that can be detachedfrom its many and various activities. Rather, the self-awareness arises amidst activities that spring from and in turn reinforce the identity and character of the city. Each city is a continual and performative answer to the question of how human beings can live together, and each city offers itself as an answer distinct from (and often superior to) other possible answers. The answer is continual because the question is continual. The question arises withthe ascent of each generation, with each threat of destruction from external forces, and with each internal crisis—economic, legal, or cultural. Yet in each iteration the answer given must seem final, firm, and complete. The city never truly treats as a question the question that partially constitutes it. The city never opens itself to genuine puzzlement about who it is—it cannot afford to. To be without an answer even as the question is asked is a political absurdity. There is no continuity in confusion; the city without resources, that is, the city in aporia cannot survive. In each instance when the question arises again, it arises as a demand to articulate what is already the case. The answer is given as if to a question that has already been laid to rest. Thecity relies on the asking of this question but at the same time presents itself as an answer that makes the question unaskable. This is one way in which the city relies on an appearance butcannot acknowledge that reliance. 283

The self-deceptive character of the city is more concretely manifest in the case ofitslaws and customs. The laws and customs of the city are the embodiment of its unique answer tothe question that can never be truly asked. Laws explicitly and customs implicitly assert claims about the best way for human beings to live and to live together. Consequently, the city must present itself as committed to its laws and convicted of their truth. The city takes the laws notaswishes for how things might turn out but as descriptions of the best and prescriptions for what to do with those who fall short of the best. It takes those descriptions as accurate and those prescriptions as apt. This confidence in the laws relies on their appearing to be accurate and apt, butdoesnot demand that they really be accurate and apt. The best laws will actually be true and fitting, butthe city must have confidence in its laws, must present its laws as appearing true and fitting, whether they are or not. My point does not exclude the possibility of changing laws when they are not appropriate. There are number of mechanisms for this ranging from de facto ignoring of the law by the relevant authorities, to interpretive precedents, to official amendments. Once the lawis subjected to these mechanisms, then the city may afford to withhold its confidence. Regardless of any given law, however, the city must lavish its full confidence on its laws as a whole. What may be criticized is the content of a particular law or set of laws, but the city cannot critique the status of its laws in general.

The city cannot demand that the laws prove themselves to be more than anattemptto discover what is; the city must presuppose that the laws have already accomplished the discovery of what is.58 Were the city to entertain the possibility that its laws may not be true, may not be just, this would be tantamount to robbing the laws of their authority—even more, of the possibility of their authority. Yet, laws without authority cannot regulate, and an unregulated city does not remain a city for long. The apparent and recognized truth of the laws is what justifies the laws’ authority and the city’s application of them. The city grounds the validity of its laws inthe

58. For this formulation of the task of law, see Plato’s Minos 315a. See also V. Bradley Lewis, “Plato’s Minos: The Political and Philosophical Context of the Problem of Natural Right,” The Review of Metaphysics 60, no. 1 (2006): 17–53 for a treatment of this dialogue that influenced my account. 284 validity of the formation of these laws according to their regime. The wisdom of the elders, the elite, the people, or the gods is taken to account for the city’s certitude in the truth of its laws.

This wisdom is not absolutely accurate or there would be no need to change laws. Yet thelaws themselves must be taken as absolute. The city cannot acknowledge that it conjectures what it takes as certain, that it aspires to what it claims it has already achieved. In this way too the city is self-deceptive.

Considering the self-deceptive character of the city vis-á-vis its laws is helpful for clarifying a potential misunderstanding of the thesis. In light of the self-deceptive character of the city’s relationship to its laws, it may be tempting to articulate that relationship in terms of opinion and knowledge. This temptation is enlightening to a certain extent. For the laws of the city arethe city’s opinions—consider the relationship between νομός and νομίζειν—and those opinions may be true or false. True opinions are not the same as knowledge, however, and yet the city presents its laws as knowledge rather than mere—even if true—opinion. Here the temptation becomes misleading for it suggests that the city could overcome its self-deceptive situation by replacing opinion with knowledge. If conceived in this way, then the city’s self-deception seems an unfortunate circumstance rather than an constitutive characteristic. It presumes that this replacement project, though surely a demanding practical task, is possible in principle.

To the contrary, I believe this understanding of the thesis mistakes the relationship of the city to its opinions. On this understanding, the project is to replace the city’s opinions with knowledge. Whether this replacement is achieved by the addition of certain conditions (for example, sufficiently powerful justifications) or by the destruction of the opinion in order toascend to the essentially distinct category of knowledge—in either case, the first step is to acknowledge a difference between having an opinion and truly knowing. But exactly this distinction isim- possible for the city to make. The city does not merely have opinions; in a crucial respect, it is its opinions. Furthermore, in an equally crucial respect, the city must take its opinions to have

what properly belongs to knowledge, namely, final authority. Yet, knowledge is an achievement

whose first step is the recognition that opinion is not the same as knowledge. This distinction 285 is a condition for the possibility of knowledge. But precisely this distinction is what the city’s relationship to its opinions conceals, for the sake of its own survival. So it is, after all, in principle impossible for the city to replace its opinions with knowledge.

The self-deceptive character of the city is therefore not so much an epistemological failure as it is a manifestation of a metaphysical mode. It is not the case that the city can be entirely honest with itself but does not succeed in doing so. It is also not, on my account, the particular features of a given regime that prevent it from achieving justified confidence in its constitutive convictions. The problem is not that this or that regime fails to replace opinions with knowledge, but rather that the very structure of political association is a mixture of being and seeming, or reality and appearance. Furthermore, the structure of this mixture of being and seeming in the city conceals the fact of the mixture itself. The city must both be self-aware and self-concealing; in this way the city is inherently self-deceptive.

Before I demonstrate the explanatory power of the thesis in the next section, it is helpful now to clarify the thesis negatively by describing and disclaiming some inaccurate conceptions of it. I address three points of potential misunderstanding. The first point concerns the possibility of truth in the city given its self-deceptive nature. The second point concerns the question of agent and patient in the given deception. The third point concerns the implications of license or excuse that accompany the thesis.

It may seem that the self-deceptive nature of the city prevents the city from attaining any truth in its actions or regulations. To overcome this misunderstanding it is crucial to keep in mind both the nature of appearance itself and the two levels of appearance that are at work in the city. Appearance may reveal or obscure reality. In the former case, the appearance is a seamless interface between the reality and the apprehension of the reality.59 Everything that is must also seem if it is to be encountered, and it is possible for the seeming to be entirely transparent. Of course, it is also possible that appearance vitiate reality, that seeming frustrate rather than

59. For an account that helped to articulate my own, see Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 104-105. 286 facilitate an encounter with being. Thus, appearance itself can work in concert with reality or against it. The first-order appearances of the city (what the city takes to be good, just, noble,and so on) may reveal being. In fact, one of the differentiating principles between genuine politics and its impersonating usurpers is that genuine politics presumes that there is a real good to which the city to some extent already is and always should be directed. The self-deceptive nature of the city in no way prevents it from holding and practising true beliefs about these crucial notions; it is entirely possible for any or all of the city’s beliefs to be true. The self-deceptive nature of the city does, however, entail that this possibility remain undetermined. Consequently, the second- order appearance of the city, the way the city appears to itself, obfuscates the indeterminacy of the first-order appearances. Because the city cannot acknowledge that its first-order beliefs are appearances, it cannot critically investigate them as such.

This inability does not imply that no opinion or appearance of the city can beinspected for truth. Rather, the thesis claims that city cannot begin such an inspection on the ground that the opinion is an opinion or the appearance is an appearance. The city can and surely does consider and occasionally replaces its opinions, but it considers them only as truths or mistakes

(not as opinions) and replaces them only with other opinions (now purported to be the truth).

When investigating the truth or aptness of a given claim, the options before the city are not true opinion or false opinion, but truth or error, good or wicked, noble or ignoble. That is, the city considers the content and effect of the assertion, not its status as something inherently excluded from the possibility of knowledge. The city’s self-deception does not preclude the possibility of truth in its claims but it does preclude a genuine appraisal of those claims.

Another potential misunderstanding of the self-deception thesis is to conceive of the deception as perpetrated by one faction of the city against another faction. On this misunderstanding, one part the city withholds or misconstrues politically relevant information from another part of the city, or they promote beliefs founded on bases they know to be insecure. Though deceitful politicians undoubtedly abound, their deceit is not the deceit of interest here. Instead, the self-deception thesis affirms the coincidence of the agent and patient of the deception. The 287 city itself is both the deceiver and the deceived, though the sense in which the city is a deceiver must be qualified.60 When Callicles describes the city as structured by a systemic deception of the strong by the weak, this is an illicit appropriation of the city’s self -deceptive nature. Indeed, the fact that there are readily available misunderstandings of the city is a predictable consequence of its self-deceptive nature. Though it is admittedly tempting to conceive of the thesis inthisway, to do so sacrifices the unity of the city and therefore the very being the thesis seeks toexplain.

Connected to this misunderstanding of the thesis is some notion that the self-deceptive nature of the city may excuse or even embolden the potential political deceiver. The self-deception thesis is meant to explain the susceptibility of the city to deceit, not to exclupate those who deceive. The self-deceptive nature of the city does render it incapable of confronting andcom- prehending the structure of its being. This feature of the city leaves it vulnerable to a basic degree of deception, which can be exacerbated, but this feature neither grants license to nor excuses such deception. In other words, the self-deception thesis makes a descriptive and explanatory claim, not a normative one.

What is Explained by Self-Deception

Having articulated the self-deception thesis and addressed potential misinterpretations of it, I now generally indicate its explanatory power with respect to the problematic politics described earlier; I provide a more detailed treatment of its explanatory power in the subsequent chapters. To restate the earlier problem: if genuine politics, as Socrates describes and practices it, assumes that a real and unique good belongs to the city, then it should be successful in eradicat- ing the perversions of sophistry and rhetoric. Its failure to defeat sophistry and rhetoric seems to endanger its principal claim to being an authentic art, which is based on its orientation towards a true good. This dilemma arises: either genuine politics has a basis for its claims, inwhichcase it prevails against its imposters, or sophistry and rhetoric are no imposters and so-called genuine

60. I treat the potential paradoxes of self-deception more thematically in chapter 6. 288 politics is the sham. The self-deception thesis defies this dilemma. I argue that this thesis canac- count for the inability of genuine politics to succeed entirely against pseudo-politics while saving genuine politics itself from complete ruin. The self-deception thesis grants the ineradicabilty of sophistry and rhetoric while preserving the possibility of genuine politics.

The self-deception thesis claims that at the root of the city’s being is an inability torec- ognize the distinction between being and seeming as this distinction pertains to itself. Sophistry and rhetoric are ineradicable because they take advantage of this inherent element of the city.

Sophistry and rhetoric are indeed perverting impersonators of genuine politics, but they find purchase in the city by virtue of a feature of the city itself. The city’s susceptibility to these guileful practices is part of its very structure. Sophistry and rhetoric offer an apparent good as the city’s real good. The city’s self-deceptive nature means that an appeal to reality over appearance is insufficient for the real to prevail. Sophistry and rhetoric remain threats to the city, notbecause there is no real good for the city, but because the city is constituted by its problematic relationship to that real good. The failure of genuine politics to refute sophistry and rhetoric in toto is therefore not a failure of genuine politics itself. Instead, we must reevaluate the terms of success for genuine politics in light of the self-deceptive nature of the city. Since sophistry and rhetoric can be elimi- nated from the city only by eliminating the city itself, the mark of the success of genuine politics should not be that it absolutely abolish sophistry and rhetoric, but that it does not completely fail in combating their effects. For genuine politics, sophistry and rhetoric are problems tobe managed, not solved. By the lights of the self-deception thesis, genuine politics succeeds when it prevents sophistry and rhetoric from succeeding. Its work is never complete; its victory never final. Genuine politics fulfills its function by continually combating sophistry and rhetoric; it succeeds by fighting and not losing, not by winning. The self-deception thesis thus also explains why genuine politics is an unremitting practice. Because the threat of sophistry and rhetoric is sewn into the being of the city, genuine politics can never cease defending the target of those threats, namely, the city’s real, common good. 289

Now we can return fruitfully to the stalemate between genuine politics and pseudo- politics embodied in the stalemate between Socrates and Callicles. I previously explained Cal- licles’s refusal to be refuted in terms of the contradictory state of Athens itself. Callicles’s love of the δῆμος engenders his imitation of the δῆμος. He can withstand his self-contradiction as

Athens does—Athens who is caught between its egalitarian ideology and its imperialist impulses. Callicles’s city seems to belie the claims that there is something wrong with disharmonious beliefs. The self-deception thesis explains how it is possible that Athens functions and, forawhile, flourishes amid its self-contradiction, without ceding that this disharmony is harmful. Itisnot the case that Athens is really a democracy and only pretending to be an empire, not that it is really an empire masquerading as a democracy. The problem is that Athens is both, acts as both. But it can be both because it does not raise for itself the question of the possibility of pretending.

The city lives by blurring the distinction between seeming and being so that it cannot tell,and thus need not decide, which it is and which it merely seems to be.

The self-deception thesis explains why Athens cannot attend to the distinction between being and seeming, to the question of whether it really is what it seems to itself to be. Indeed,

Athens cannot move to distinguish which is “the real Athens” without placing itself in real danger of the dissolving its unity. Of course, appeals to “the real Athens”—or whatever political community—are commonplace rhetorical tricks, but the question “who are we really?” is also only a rhetorical question. It is only asked when there is already an answer.61 For the sake of the continued existence of Athens, Athens must already take itself to be the real Athens, and therefore it cannot recognize what it must for its contradictory principles to show themselves as contradictory. Its political unity thus depends on its self-deception regarding its identity.

The self-deception thesis also accounts for some of the features of Socrates’s peculiar practice of politics. I have already mentioned its continual character. Socrates likens his practice

61. The occasions on which this question is raised without a ready answer are occasions of crisisand, sometimes, civic dissolution. That Plato witnesses such a crisis, dissolution, and attempted reconstitution should never be far from our minds. My claim here is not that the city can never genuinely ask this question, but that when it does, things have already gone terribly wrong for the city. 290 to doing battle not to winning.62 But this is to be expected if the city can never rid itself of the threat of sophistry and rhetoric. The thesis also accounts for why Socrates’s political practice takes place outside of the official fora for political activity yet has deep implications forwhat occurs within those fora. Socrates cannot pose his refutative questions to the city itself. He does not decry Athens’s contradiction from the Pynx. Instead he poses his refutative questions to those who claim to know something about politics and its power. More importantly, he poses his questions in front of those whose hearts and minds turn towards the political sphere but who are not already immersed in its activities. He conducts his investigations in front of politically primed-youth in the Protagoras and rhetorically-curious citizens in the Gorgias. The primary beneficiaries of Socrates’s practice are those on their way to their own political actions, before they fully assume the mantle of civic responsibility or before they actively engage in official duties.

Given the self-deceptive nature of the city, concern for a genuine political good must be cultivated prior to entering the political sphere. Nevertheless, this concern must be cultivated and its legitimacy must be defended. Socrates does not provide any content to the traditional values that permeate public discourse. Again, he never asks or answers the question, “What is justice?”

But he does endeavor to keep possible and rational the conviction that virtue is possible, that justice is worthwhile, that there is a common good beyond one’s immediate desires. Commitment to the reality of these goods is itself part of “the best” at which Socrates’s speeches aim.63 I have so far outlined a case for the explanatory power of conceiving the city as inherently self-deceptive. In short, the thesis explains the possibility and power of sophistry and rhetoric in the city as well as the character and limitations of the genuine politics that opposes them.

This case has been presented at a remove from the particular issues of the dialogues. Inthenext chapters I deepen my case by applying the thesis to the relationship of sophistry and νομοθετική

62. (see Gorgias 513d, 521a).

63. See Gorgias 521a 291

(chapter four) and to the relationship of rhetoric and δικαιοσύνη (chapter five). Finally I consider genuine politics, its relationship to philosophy, and the way this relationship is conditioned by the self-deceptive nature of the city. Chapter 4

Sophistry & The City

Introduction

In the previous chapter I proposed the thesis that self-deception is an inherent feature of the city. In this chapter, I expound on the explanatory power of that thesis. To do so, I consider how the thesis accounts for sophistry’s impersonation of the establishment of law (νομοθετική).

My guide for this move is again the schema of arts and pseudo-arts that Socrates develops at

Gorgias 466a and following. This schema also supports my intention to focus on sophistry inits political register. Consequently the relevant sense of sophistry for my present argument is the one promoted by Protagoras in the Protagoras. In my interpretation of that dialogue, I argued that

Protagoras’s sophistry attempts to appropriate part of and thereby undermine the whole ofcivic education. In this way it operates as does the sophistry described in the schema. Accordingly, I take civic education to be the relevant sense of the establishment of law, not least because it is by cultivating habits of citizenship and respect for the laws of the city that the narrow and official sense of legislation has any power.1

Using the schema, I detail how sophistry succeeds and is resisted in its impersonation of civic education. I also use the self-deception thesis, which I developed in the previous chapter, to explain sophistry’s qualified success. I argue that the feature of self-deception best accounts for not only the city’s complex relationship to its own practice of civic education, but also how that relationship can be exploited by sophistry. The city does, however, resist the seductions of sophistry in some crucial respects, which I examine below. The function of the self-deception thesis is to account for the possibility of that resistance given the success of sophistry. As I gen-

1. For an detailed argument of the function of civic education as an essential element of legislation, see Brent Edwin Cusher, “How Does Law Rule?: Plato on Habit, Political Education, and Legislation,” The Journal of Politics 76, no. 4 (2014): 1032–1044. Admittedly, his argument concerns Plato’s Laws, but I believe his reasoning to be sound and applicable to the present context.

292 293 erally argued at the close of the previous chapter, the fact that the city is self-deceptive explains how it is possible both that the pseudo-arts are successful in fooling the city and that the genuine political art is nevertheless justified in its pursuit of a genuine, political good. The purpose ofthis chapter is to represent that general argument in the particular case of the pseudo-art of sophistry and the genuine political art of civic education. I argue that civic education can legitimately aim at the common good of a virtuous citizenry, despite sophistry’s ability to sabotage that endeavor; the self-deception thesis accounts for both these capabilities.

Though I have already stipulated that my primary concern is with the sophistry Plato has Protagoras voice and practice in the Protagoras, it is worthwhile to distinguish this sense of sophistry from others, both in the Platonic corpus and in the air of contemporary Athens. Perhaps a more difficult task is to say what is sophistry in general than in particular. Iagree,for the most part, with David D. Corey that Plato characterizes the sophists as “professional teachers of aretē.”2 Of course, “professional” should be read here both in the sense that the sophist claims to have a specialized kind of knowledge and in the sense that the sophist merely professes to teach virtue.3 Alexander Nehamas makes a cogent case that sophistry’s object, not the content of certain teachings or the method employed, is what distinguishes it from philosophy—at least from

Socratic philosophy. Socratic philosophy seeks the truth, sophistry seeks success for its teachings, whether they be true or not.4 I agree with Nehamas as far as this, that sophistry seeks success for its teachings and safety for its practitioners. Assuming this fundamental similarity, then, I

2. David Corey, The Sophists in Plato’s Dialogues (Albany: State University New York Press, 2015), 3. I disagree with Corey’s exclusion of Gorgias on the grounds of this categorization. As Alexander Nehamas, “Eristic, Antilogic, Sophistic, Dialectic: Plato’s Demarcation of Philosophy from Sophistry,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 7, no. 1 (1990): 3–16, 4, points out, Gorgias was “universally acknowledged” as a sophist alongside Protagoras. Fur- thermore, Corey does not take into account Socrates’s multiple claims that sophistry and rhetoric get mixed up with one another.

3. Hence, I include Gorgias as a kind of sophist (and would claim Protagoras to be a kind of rhetorician, as well).

4. Nehamas, “Eristic, Antilogic, Sophistic, Dialectic,” 10-11. According to Nehamas, this distinction cannot extend to Plato because Plato thinks he has the truth that Socrates seeks, and therefore he does seek success for his teaching. Nehamas believes Plato’s “magnificent solution” to this problem is his theory of the Forms (11). Asshould be clear from the previous chapter, I abjure this way of dividing Plato and Socrates. 294 take Protagoras to differ from Hippias and Prodicus, as well as the eristic brothers, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, along the lines of his overtly political scope.5 Furthermore, I take Protagoras to differ from Gorgias because he aims explicitly at the sons of those who currently holdpower in the city. Protagoras’s project is a kind of political instruction, one that I argue not only cares more to prevail than for the truth but also damages its students’ ability to seek truth.6

Revisiting Protagorean Sophistry

There are several reasons internal to the Protagoras to believe that Plato presents Pro- tagoras as a paradigmatic sophist. For one, Protagoras is the only self-proclaimed sophist asked about his sophistry. Furthermore, he is questioned as a sophist before other commonly recognized sophists. With respect to the content of Protagoras’s speech, Protagoras identifies himself as unique among sophists and strongly implies that he is thereby the most excellent (Protagoras

317a-c). Where other sophists had hidden their sophistry, Protagoras publicizes his and, supposedly, is better off for it. Where other sophists focused on a highly-specialized field (Prodicus) or developed a general polymathy (Hippias), Protagoras attends to a central but specific concern and is therefore better for students (Protagoras 318d-e).

Protagorean sophistry provides a case study in sophistry’s interaction with the city, a case that includes the possibility of sophistry’s success and indicates the danger this success poses to the city. As I argued in the first chapter, Protagoras’s sophistry primarily targets traditional civic education, aiming to replace that education for an elite set of students. Let us therefore recall some of the features of Protagorean sophistry. Sophistry presents itself as aiming to educate in

5. For the political aspects of Protagoras’s and other sophists’ teachings, see Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement, 139-162.

6. A warning: the way a citizen seeks truth in and for his city cannot be the same way the philosopher seeks truth, if the self-deception thesis stands. I return to this difference in chapter 6, but it should be kept inmind throughout. 295 good judgment regarding political matters.7 Furthermore, it claims to be a compatible supplement to traditional civic education, merely providing further instruction for those who have a natural talent for excellence in political matters.8 In contrast to its purported aims, sophistry actually develops good judgment as an instrument for achieving the ends of safety and comfort in the city; that is, the good judgment sophistry teaches is good for the individual using the judgment but not for the city. Sophistry also actually undermines what it claims it merely extends. For by educating the elite in ways to cleverly advance their own benefit, it educates against the purpose of civic education—that purpose being to protect and promote the city’s common good.

Moreover Protagorean sophistry is especially concerned with safety, no doubt due to its open attempt to educate politically. It presents itself therefore as an extension of traditional civic education, an extension that claims to leave the effect of traditional civic education entirely in place and intact. With this claim the sophist seems to pose no danger to those who tolerate him, but he nevertheless promises a special education to those who would learn from him. The skill of the sophist is to straddle its appearance to a wider public and is appeal to its target audience. It is not necessary to note this split between sophistry’s public face and its actual aims in order to benefit from a sophistic education. Indeed, the special danger of Protagorean sophistry isthatit seems, perhaps even to those who would seek it out, to be compatible with the city as it stands.

We may count it a sign of the success of Protagoras’s strategy of hiding in plain sight that the incompatibility between sophistry and the city is so often taken as a problem within the city itself.

We must therefore remain aware of two levels of sophistry: sophistry as taught by the sophist and sophistry as learned by the students. Sophistry isolates itself to those who can afford it but retroactively provides for these elite a different basis for their claim to superiority.

7. Protagoras 318e-319a: εὐβουλία . . . περὶ τῶν τῆς πόλεως, ὅπως τὰ τῆς πόλεως δυνατώτατος ἂν εἴη καὶ πράττειν καὶ λέγειν.

8. Protagoras 328a-b: ἀλλὰ κἂν εἰ ὀλίγον ἔστιν τις ὅστις διαφέρει ἡμῶν προβιβάσαι εἰς ἀρετήν, ἀγαπητόν. ὧν δὴ ἐγὼ οἶμαι εἷς εἶναι, καὶ διαφερόντως ἂν τῶν ἄλλων ἀνθρώπων ὀνῆσαί τινα πρὸς τὸ καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθὸν γενέσθαι. 296

Instead of gaining access to this special education by accident of wealth, these students lay claim to this superior education on the basis of their own virtuous merit. Sophistic education thus looks like desert instead of inheritance. The students of sophistry therefore find their convictions reinforced, which in turn makes them more eager for the subsequent teachings of sophistry. The best way to inoculate the potentially damaging power of elitism is to make what is only limitedly available into what should universally be the case. In other words, everyone should be as wise as they can, but some are, by virtue of their virtue, more capable of wisdom than others. This takes the bite out of the exclusivity of sophistry, because the advantage sophistry offers is seen to be earned rather than bought. Thus sophistry makes a case for itself, both as advertisement and apology. Consequently, those who do not gain access sophistry are seen to fail to achieve superior excellence rather than to be barred.

It is a further feature of sophistry that its radically unsettling principles become commonplace and obvious for its students. Socrates, however, becomes aware of the unique danger sophistry poses to the city; his forethought allows him to envision what would have to the city if Protagorean sophistry became the common sense among the elite. In confronting Protagorean sophistry, Socrates is therefore particularly sensitive to the layers of dissemblance that shroud sophistry. It is so as to combat sophistry’s move toward normalcy that Socrates not only stays to speak with Protagoras but also immediately recounts this conversation with his fellow Athe- nian citizens. Socrates is well aware of the intense power of attraction Protagorean sophistry possesses—he says as much in attributing more beauty to Protagoras than to Alcibiades (309c).

Moreover, his actions demonstrate that he is committed to revealing both the assumptions and the implications of sophistry’s appeal.

The Structure of Sophistic Impersonation

Keeping these features of Protagorean sophistry in mind, let us now consider the way this paradigmatic sophistry supplants civic education. To clarify this complex and deliberately misleading practice I shall again use the schema of arts and pseudo-arts that Socrates presents in 297 the Gorgias 466a-b. That schema built an analogy between arts that care for or pretend tocare for the body and the arts that care for or pretend to care for the soul. The art that truly cares for beauty of the soul is the establishment of law, to which I will return below; the art that truly cares for beauty of the body is the art of gymnastics. The faux-art that pretends to care for the soulis sophistry, and its bodily analogue is cosmetics. Not only do these faux-arts aim at pleasure and not genuine improvement but also they flatter those upon them whom they work to believe that this pleasure is a genuine improvement. Both sophistry and cosmetics attempt to impersonate their counterpart arts, and in doing so they compete with those genuine arts.

This impersonation is therefore inherently detrimental. It may be possible to imitate without undermining, and it may be possible to offer a pleasure that is not corrupting. But the very structure of these faux-arts close off those possibilities. Their imitation harms its original, and their offer of pleasure crowds out pursuit of a genuine good. The faux-art does not merelyoffer an alternative; it seeks to replace its counterpart—at least to those few to whom it caters.9 In

its pandering form, cosmetics does not embellish an already flourishing body. Instead it appeals to those who desire beauty by offering beauty but without the toil and restrictions demanded

by gymnastics. Likewise, sophistry does not extend the establishment of laws in the souls of

citizens with supererogatory advancements—at it claims to do. Instead it appeals to those who

desire to flourish in the city by promising this flourishing without the toil and restrictions ofcivic

education. There are four elements to focus on here: the replacement of the end, the meansofma- nipulating appearances, the dual disclosures of these appearances that render the user complicit

in this manipulation, and finally the parasitic character of the impersonation.

To the first feature: the impersonation substitutes a different end for the one at which the

true art aims. In the case of the bodily arts, the true art of gymnastics aims at the strength and

beauty of a healthy and well-functioning the body. Cosmetics, on the other hand, offers the look of a beautiful and healthy body. Gymnastics establishes and maintains the inherent order of a

9. Woolf, “Why Is Rhetoric Not a Skill” makes this competitive feature the bedrock for this case that rhetoric (and for our present purposes, sophistry also) is not a true art. 298 flourishing body; cosmetics projects the beauty that accompanies a flourishing body. Similarly in the case of the psychic arts: the true art of establishing the laws aims at the stability and nobility of a healthy and well-functioning citizenry. Sophistry, on the other hand, offers the appearance of improvement as increased political power. Civic education establishes and maintains the inherent order of a flourishing citizenry; sophistry projects the strength and power that accompanies a flourishing citizenry.

Part of the structure of this impersonation is that the counterfeit art seems to be compatible with what it counterfeits—as already mentioned, this substitution is advertised as a supplement. Since the ends the pseudo-arts offer looks like what accompanies the ends of the genuine art, the pseudo-arts looks like they merely enhance what is already achieved by the genuine arts. In other words, because the end pursued by the pseudo-art is incidental to the end achieved by the genuine art, it looks at though the practice of pseudo-art is merely incidental to the practice of the genuine art, and therefore does not endanger its practice. It does not seem problematic for the one who practices gymnastics to also use cosmetics. Likewise, it does not seem problematic for the one who has educated in the laws and customs of the city to pursue additional, sophistic education. The principles of these arts nevertheless do conflict, for the pursuit of seeming beauty undermines the pursuit of genuine beauty. To practice cosmetics as an art, that is, to practice it in the same way as one would practice gymnastics is to elevate the seeming beauty to the same level of worth as genuine beauty. By detaching the appearance from the reality that gives rise to it, the reality loses its force as a governing principle. And this lost force is not replaced by the pseudo-art. The end offered by the pseudo-arts simply cannot fulfill the function ofthegenuine arts. To pursue the ends of the pseudo-arts, therefore, is to abandon the purpose of the genuine arts.

The allure of these substituted ends is that they are more pleasant to come by thantheir counterparts. The force of this appeal of pleasure accounts for the success of these arts insubsti- tuting a false good for a genuine good. At this point the second feature becomes salient: these pseudo-arts execute their substitution of ends by means of manipulating appearance. The pseudo- 299 arts take advantage of the already present desire to achieve what the genuine arts offer. They circumvent the path of that extant desire by claiming to offer the best of what the genuine art offers but without the accompanying toil and restrictions. They therefore present beauty assep- arable from the practice required to achieve it. A glowing complexion can result of exercise and diet, or it can be achieved by the right skin creams. Recognition in the city can result from preserving and promoting the city’s good, or it can be achieved by sophistic savvy.

The implication of these alternative ways to achieve what is presented as the verysame end is that the ones who get the same end by more difficult means are fools. Why engage in the continual practice of conditioning one’s body or soul if you can get the same results without the work? By making their alternatives look like a trap for fools, the pseudo-arts pander to their would-be practitioners. Not only do they seem to offer the same end, they offer more pleasant means to achieve it. The one who takes up cosmetics or sophistry instead of gymnastics orcivic education therefore is flattered into believing that he has a special insight, to be more shrewdand discerning than the poor fools who have to work to achieve their beauty. Here arises the third feature of this impersonation, namely, the fact that the practitioner of the pseudo-arts becomes complicit in the manipulation of appearance rendered by the pseudo- art. There are two facets of this manipulation: the disclosure of the appearance to thewould-be practitioner, and the disclosure to everyone else. The pseudo-art impersonates the genuine art, and the one who uses the pseudo-art impersonates those who practice the genuine art. The one who has taken up cosmetics instead of gymnastics has taken the end of cosmetics to be, in all the relevant aspects, the same as the end of gymnastics. In this way, what appears to him has been manipulated by the promises of the pseudo-art. Additionally, however, the one who has taken up cosmetics has in turn presented his achievement as the same as what is achieved through gymnastics. In this way, the way he himself appears is also a manipulation—manipulated by his own practice of the pseudo-art. His practice of cosmetics fails if he does not look like he has been practicing gymnastics. If his seeming beauty does not seem to others like the real beauty, then his choice of the pseudo-art has been for naught. He therefore participates in the 300 sophistic substitution of seeming beauty for real beauty, and he is complicit in the manipulation of appearances. We return here to the idea that one cannot learn from a sophist without becoming somewhat a sophist himself.

Crucially, despite the move to substitute the seeming beauty for the real beauty, the seeming beauty must seem like the real beauty. In other words, the manipulation of appearance presupposes a stable order, an original reality. Implicit in the success of the complicit practitioner is that he is one of only a few. His success depends on recognition from those who strive after the real beauty; he achieves his end only if these others believe that he has achieved it. In order that he be an exception, there must be a somewhat stable rule or standard. Just as counterfeit money can be effective only if there is sufficiently little counterfeit money in circulation, soalsothese impersonating “arts” only work if the genuine art is generally prioritized. On the one hand, the elitism implied by this feature is a crucial part of the pseudo-art’s pandering; on the other hand, this dependency puts decisive limits on the scope of the pseudo-art’s success.

Here we find the fourth feature of this impersonation: the strange, self-defeating lifeofthe parasite. The pseudo-art is dependent on the true art for its environment, yet it is also subversive of that environment. Consequently, the pseudo-art can succeed in its substitution only if it does not succeed too much. It relies on the original in order to have something to imitate, but its imitation is inherently harmful to that original. It slowly destroys what it depends upon. There must, therefore, be limits to the appeal of the pseudo-art. What was attractive about the pseudo- art was its promise of easily gained pleasure. This promise seems to be universally attractive.

Since the pseudo-art cannot be universally pursued, though, there must be some other source of limiting its appeal.

Practically the limitation is wealth. Cosmetics and sophistic education are available only for those who can afford it. Broadcasting this as the admitting qualification, however, would undermine the efficacy of the pseudo-arts pandering. The appearance of beauty or nobility must be maintained, and that appearance cannot be grounded on the mere possession of wealth. Pro- tagoras’s way around this problem is to appeal to his would-be students’ sense of their own ex- 301 cellence. He makes something like this case: sophistry is for the few not because of their wealth, but because only a few are capable of the courageous pursuit of a wisdom beyond traditional civic education. Sophistry’s target is limited to those who can afford it, but sophistry also presents this limitation as a mere coincidence. Sophistry therefore covers up its mercenary motivations with the semblance of merit. So far I have used the schema to clarify the structure of sophistry’s impersonation and to illuminate what are its necessarily self-obscuring practices. But a schema is only a schema and must prescind from a number of complexities. It is to these complexities that we now turn.

We shall not leave the schema entirely behind, however, for next we must consider the object of sophistry’s impersonation in order to see how this impersonation endangers the city.

Civic Education and Sophistry

In this section, I continue to use the schema of pseudo-arts to develop some features of the genuine art of legislation. I therefore unite the schema’s sophistry and its opposition to the art of legislation, on the one hand, to Protagorean sophistry and its opposition to civic education, on the other. This task includes identifying the art of legislation with civic education, and subsequently uniting these, with some qualifications, to the traditional civic education that

Protagoras’s sophistry undermines. I then consider a dilemma for that civic education, which arises as a consequence of the political adequacy of appearance. Finally, I demonstrate how the city’s self-deceptive nature determines its response to this dilemma, and how this response opens the city to the danger of sophistry.

Civic Education and the Genuine Art of Legislation

Socrates says little about the genuine art of legislation (νομοθετική) in his schema. After the restoration of the democracy in Athens, and therefore after the dramatic time of the dialogue, this term correlates to the specific work of the νομοθέται, those selected by lot from the ranks of the juror whose task is to participate in and preside over the enactment of new laws, νομοί—a 302 procedure called νομοθεσία.10. Before this constitutional meaning and by virtue of its etymology (νόμος + τιθέναι, law + to establish), νομοθετική bears the broader meaning of the practice involved in establishing laws. Given its function in the schema, we may gloss the meaning quite literally as the art of establishing order in the soul.

While Socrates does not say much directly and explicitly about this art, there is much to infer from its position in the analogy. First, it is a part of the genuine art of politics; second, it is concerned with the soul; third, it is specifically concerned with the beauty of the soul; and finally, it is formative rather than corrective. Given that νομοθετική is a constitutive partofthe genuine art of politics, the well-functioning city must also be the aim of νομοθετική in some way.

So, its concern with the soul is a concern with the souls of citizens as citizens. Furthermore, it is concerned with the beauty of their souls. By way of its analogical relationship to the art of gymnastics, this beauty is a native or inherent beauty that the soul may possess. That is, the beauty of the soul is a beauty that arises from the soul acting just as a soul, without flaw.11 This beauty arises from the soul’s well-ordered condition.12 The “law” that forms part of the word must be a law or order than informs the soul as a whole. Its practice may be most obvious in the particular act of legislation, but its practice also structures an array of political activities—just as the practice of gymnastics is most obvious in exercise but also governs diet, sleep, entertainment, and so forth. In this way the art is formative rather than corrective: it seeks to establish in the first place a strong and beautiful psychic condition for the citizenry by means of order andlaw. Given this characterization, I propose that the art of establishing order in the soul crucially includes civic education. Civic education aims also at forming order in the citizenry, at establishing customs and laws by means of habitual and habituating exposure to reigning notions of the good, noble, and just. In this way the citizenry form and are informed by the traditional virtues of

10. See Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule, 186-187

11. Consider the (admittedly aporetic) arguments concerning beauty in Plato’s Hippias Major.

12. See Gorgias 506d: “. . . the most beautiful state does not come about by chance but through right arrangment and art . . .” [οὐ τῷ εἰκῇ κάλλιστα παραγίγνεται, ἀλλὰ τάξει καὶ ὀρθότητι καὶ τέχνῃ]. 303 justice, moderation, piety, courage, and wisdom. The end of civic education is a citizenry whoare firm in their civic practices, who are guided by their virtue, and who, based on this foundation, are capable of practicing good judgment concerning political matters. Civic education aims at caring for the souls of those educated, and by this end, it also cares for the city that its laws and customs be preserved through the generations. This ordering of the citizens’ souls prepares for the particular activities belonging to the practice of politics, such as deliberation on policies. For these reasons, I take civic education to form an essential element of νομοθετική broadly construed.

Another factor in discerning the relevant sense of νομοθετική is that is must be a practice that we can understand Socrates to attempt. The narrow sense of legislation is not a strongcan- didate for the relevant sense, given that Socrates claims to not involve himself with the official work of the city except when obligated. Furthermore, in none of the times that Socrates explicitly mentions his participation in the mundane sense of politics does he include an instance of legislation. If we take νομοθετική to mean primarily civic education, however, then it is much easier to see how Socrates may practice this art. In the first place, his speeches aim at the best for the citizens (Gorgias 521a). In the cases of his conversations with Polus and Callicles, these speeches reveal a disorder in their political opinions and the danger that disorder poses to the functioning of the city. Socrates’s greater emphasis on Callicles, a fellow Athenian, further contributes to the case that Socrates’s refutative practice is a sort of education of citizens. Consider also Socrates’s action in the Protagoras; he had no interest in the sophist from Abdera until his sophistry nearly replaces a young Athenian’s education. Furthermore, Socrates settles in for an extended conversation with and refutation of Protagoras only after the sophist explicitly describes his sophistry as a kind of education in political excellence. I take all these instances as evidence that Socrates’s considers his practice of conversing about virtue and refuting disordered opinions as advancing 304 a kind of civic education.13 In turn, I take this Socratic practice to be the relevant way in which Socrates practices νομοθετική as part of πολιτική.

Further evidence for this connection between νομοθετική and civic education can be found in other Platonic dialogues. Brent Edwin Cusher advances a similar thesis concerning the key function civic education plays in the rule of law. Considering primarily Plato’s Laws, Cusher emphasizes the dual importance of written and unwritten laws, and argues that to sustain the latter certain civic habits must be cultivated in each successive generation. The unwritten laws support the written laws, and civic education supports the unwritten laws. There is, therefore,a significant sense in which legislation (νομοθετική) is civic education.14 Yet, it is not easy to see how far to apply this evidence to the Gorgias schema. Not least because it would be too hasty to identify the Athenian Stranger with Socrates, I do not believe this evidence alone suffices to justify that νομοθετική is meant univocally in both dialogues; however, I do believe it is a mark in my argument’s favor that this sense functions similarly in other particularly political Platonic dialogues. Even though there is no particular treatment of written versus unwritten laws in the Protagoras or Gorgias, Socrates does characterize law as primarily an order or arrangement that is determined by and towards the good of the thing ordered or arranged.15 This characterization is broader than the products of the legislative body and seems to include customs and habits as well as laws more narrowly conceived. Establishing such customs and habits in a soul clearly lines up with civic education and serves the further function of preparing the citizen’s soul to be responsive to the laws (in the more precise sense) of his city.

Having shown that there is good reason to believe there is a vital connection between civic education and νομοθετική, I now want to connect civic education as a genuine art to the

13. Recall my earlier arguments against the view that Socrates is exclusively a functionary of philosophy or a proponent of philosophical education in these dialogues. Again, I claim only that this practice is distinct from, not incompatible with, philosophy.

14. See Cusher, “How Does Law Rule?,” 1037.

15. See Gorgias 504d, 506d. 305 traditional civic education that is the presumed practice of any stable city. As mentioned above, because Socrates claims to be the only present practitioner of genuine politics, the genuine art of

νομοθετική does not seem to be at work in the city already. If traditional civic education is not

genuine νομοθετική, then what is its status? I propose that traditional civic education, though

admittedly failing to hit the mark of genuine νομοθετική, nevertheless aims at such authenticity. The failure of traditional civic education to count as a genuine art is not a failure ofintention

but a failure of execution. Like the genuine arts, traditional civic education aims to develop

virtue in its citizens, to order its citizens toward the best, and to protect them against disordered

opinions. Furthermore, like the genuine arts, traditional civic education proceeds by reasoned

account (λόγος) instead of a mere knack (ἐμπειρία); it also offers explanations of its successes.16 Admittedly, traditional education uses the means of habituation to instill the reigning meanings of the relevant concepts, as opposed to Socrates’s practice of self-examination and critical inquiry into the reigning meanings of the relevant concepts.17 The last chapter of this dissertation will make a more detailed case that these two practices cohere, but for now it suffices to note that these approaches to civic education are not incompatible. In other words, though Socrates’s practice of civic education and traditional civic education diverge in significant respects, they share the same end and to that extent are compatible.

16. This is not to say that these accounts are without error or the explanations are complete. Whatmattersis that these accounts are offered in good faith; they have the potential to be brought nearer the truth, unlike sophistry which can aim only at an imitation of a genuine good.

17. For Villa, Socratic Citizenship, 2-5, this feature of traditional civic education absolutely excludes it from contributing to genuine citizenship. Traditional civic education does not entirely prohibit critical examination, however; such reflection on the notions of virtue is essential to the city and in fact occurs frequently. Witheachrising generation and with each internal or external civic crisis, the given meanings of political concepts come into question and are discussed avidly. What differs in this case from the way Villa envisions Socratic citizenship isthat,in the former case, the values of the concepts are assumed and critiqued immanently, where as Villas’s Socrates exemplifies his citizenship by attempting a direct “transvaluation of values” (5). In order for this vision oftheSocratic project to begin, however, some prior conviction in the values of the city, for example, the superiority of justice to injustice, is required. Traditional civic education provides for this prior conviction and therefore is compatible with, though in tension with, Socratic critical philosophy. Sophistic education, on the other hand, is incompatible with civic education, and this incompatibility is the focus of Socrates’s attentions in these dialogues. 306

Traditional civic education does not rise to the level of a genuine art because it cannot adequately distinguish itself from sophistry. This is not to say that traditional civic education and sophistry are in fact indistinguishable or that they actually elide. Instead the problem is that sophistry can claim such an elision and traditional civic education cannot adequately deny it.

This failure of traditional civic education is the point on which Socrates’s peculiar practice succeeds. Socrates’s practice is predicated on distinguishing the difference between νομοθετική and the pseudo-art that impersonates it. In contrast, as I argue below, traditional civic education does not make this crucial distinction and therefore cannot defend its own authenticity. Traditional civic education cannot defend its own authenticity—but not because it does not genuinely aim at the good of its citizens and their city. Traditional civic education is genuine in a way wholly unavailable to sophistry. This failure is not a failure of principle but a failure of application. Iargue below that this failure of application is nevertheless a permanent possibility for traditional civic education. In other words, genuine civic education does not overcome the danger of sophistry once and for all, but it operates with awareness of that danger and consequently is adequately able to defend its authenticity.

A Dilemma for Civic Education

What is the principle of civic education’s authenticity? Civic education aims for the best and attempts to bring this about in a rational way. That is, civic education aims at havingcitizens who abide by the laws because both the laws and the citizens are good. Ideally, the educated citizen is made good by good laws; consequently, he follows the laws because the laws are good and so is he. By continual and comprehensive instruction, the citizen develops the traditional virtues. By those virtues, he in turn contributes to the education of his fellow citizens, in part by upholding the laws to which he owes his virtue. As the aim of this education is common, namely a good, law-abiding citizenry, so too are its means: everyone is responsible for instilling the city’s habits and customs and for acquainting the next generation with the laws of the city as well as with the ideals behind them. 307

This principle is salutary and not prima facie infeasible. It is a worthy aim and one commensurate with the end of the city itself. The failure of traditional civic education arises inthe application of this principle. For though the city will not accept the breaking of its laws, it will accept citizens who abide by them neither on account of the goodness of the laws nor on account of their own goodness. There may be a citizen who is not virtuous but nevertheless doesnot break the law; this citizen fails to meet the standard of the city, but the city also fails to hold the citizen accountable to that standard. There may be a citizen who upholds the law not because the law is good and recognized as such, but because he wishes to avoid punishment; again, this citizen fails to achieve the aim of the city, but the city does not insist on this achievement. Civic education endeavors to instill virtuous respect for the laws, but those very laws and the city they order do not demand that the success of this excellence. Again, ideally, the citizens follow the law out of a pursuit of goodness, nobility, and justice, and they recognize the force of the law to flow from its truth. Instead, the city will tolerate those who follow the law out of fear; the city will settle for citizens who respect the laws only because of the force of the laws, not becauseofany apprehension of the truth of those laws. In this way, the power of the laws, which is necessary for the functioning of the city, sometimes seems to undermine the purpose of education in and for those laws.

There is, therefore, a mismatch of principle and practice. To be clear: the discontinuity is not merely between doing and saying. The city is not saying one thing and doing another. It does not merely proclaim that it seeks to make its citizens virtuous; it also actively pursues this aim. Civic education genuinely aims at forming virtuous citizens, and the city genuinely aims at promoting and preserving civic education. Indeed, it must pursue this aim or risk having no virtuous citizens. The city not only is not lying about this aim, but also it cannot abandonthis aim. It may seem—and indeed emphasizing this seeming is a special tactic of sophistry—that the city implicitly admits that this aim is impossible to achieve, which is why it does not exclude citizens who fail to achieve it. The implication of this seeming infeasibility is that it is possible to

“wise up” about the ends of civic education; this “wising up” is the promise sophistry makes. 308

The city thus enters—and must enter—a dilemma. It cannot fully implement its principle of civic education, but it also cannot abandon it. This dilemma rests on the political adequacy of appearance. It is adequate for citizens to look like they are virtuous, to seem to respect the law. The only violation of the laws the city can act upon is an observable violation. Sincenot actively breaking the law is compatible with with merely appearing to respect the law, this mere appearance suffices for tolerable citizenship. Yet if the city were to proclaim that itcaresonly for the appearance of virtue, it cannot also make the claim that it values virtue. The city cannot aim to make citizens that only appear to respect the law; it must aim at citizens who do respect the law. The city thus proposes a standard to which it both does and does not hold itselfandits citizens. Furthermore, the city cannot acknowledge that it accepts the political adequacy of appearance. It cannot do this because to do so is to invalidate the legitimacy of its principle of authenticity. The city must preserve the authority of its laws, even though this authority maybe detached from the ideals of virtue that ground this authority. The city claims that its laws areits laws because the laws are good and true. It also claims that internalizing and abiding by these laws both develops and demonstrates virtue. To then acknowledge that following the laws need not be connected to virtue would undermine the initial claim of the laws’ goodness, nobility, and justice. Because the city relies on appearance—in this case the adequacy of the appearance of virtue—but also cannot acknowledge this reliance, I believe the self-deceptive nature of the city accounts for the dilemma.

Sophistry and Self-Deception

The city’s self-deception also explains why the city cannot acknowledge the dilemma.

Consequently, self-deception accounts for why sophistry is able to mount such an effective attack on the principle guiding civic education. In the next section I will address the specific points where sophistry makes its attack. In the final section of this chapter I will show how theefficacy of sophistry’s attack does not entail that it is ultimately correct about civic education. Atpresent, 309

I outline how self-deception functions with respect to the city’s susceptibility to and resistance against sophistry.

Sophistry’s basic strategy is to take advantage of the unacknowledged adequacy of appearance. It appeals to the fact that sometimes merely seeming to be virtuous suffices to survive— and occasionally thrive—in the city. Sophistry grounds its claim to this insight, to its “wisdom,” by drawing on this adequacy of appearance, the adequacy of merely apparent virtue. From this ground, sophistry makes its central claims about the disunity of the virtues, the distinction between nature and convention, and the prevalence of the individual good over the common good— claims that I investigate in the next section. Since this adequacy is a fact that the city itself cannot openly admit, sophistry seems like it lets its students in on a special secret. Sophistry pretends to pull back the curtain on the true workings of the city and prompts its students to use this insight to further their own standing in the city.

Since the city cannot acknowledge the situation on which sophistry stakes its insight, the city is unable to confront sophistry on the appropriate front. This is not to say that the city does not attempt to combat sophistry. Indeed, Protagoras’s unique approach to sophistry is predicated on the potential hostility that sophistry faces from the city. My claim is that the city’s checks to sophistry are able to be turned against the city itself—primarily along generational lines, that is, by turning the ascending generation against the regnant one. When the city is suspicious of sophistry, to the would-be students of sophist it looks either like willful ignorance or deceitful denial of the truth. When the city laments the corruption that sophistry brings, it looks like resentment at losing control. When the city runs the sophists out of town, it looks like an exercise of the same sheer force that sophistry revealed to be the root of the city’s laws. When the city propagates shame at being called a sophist, it looks like becoming shameless is the price one must pay to become wise. The city cannot properly defend itself against sophistry because it can neither admit nor fully deny the basic point sophistry makes.

It is clear, then, that sophistry does not simply and wholly lie about the city. Indeed, sophistry’s claims about the city gain traction precisely because they are half-truths. Unfortu- 310 nately for the city, the partial truth that sophistry uses is the very part that the city cannot concede. The self-deceptive structure of the city explains why the city cannot make this concession and, consequently, why the city is susceptible to sophistry. Sophistry even uses the truth that the city is self-deceptive to advance its cause. Sophistry recasts the self-deceptive feature of the city as a malicious duplicity: the common good is a fiction promoted by those in power in the city in order to preserve their own power. Civic education, by sophistry’s lights, is the primary vehicle for promoting this falsehood and therefore is in fact not education but the deliberate perpetuation of ignorance. As mentioned in the last chapter, the city cannot defend the common good against this sort of refutation. The city cannot grant the initial premise, that its common good maybea farce, in order to build a case for the validity of its good. The city can only point to the reality it serves by serving it and then sharing the benefit that follows from the pursuit of this good. But sophistry can spin this pursuit and whatever successes it garners as self-serving—good enough for what it is but not a good that has any claim on those who can see past its fabricated roots.

The fact that sophistry can make such an effective case does not entail that itscaseis sound. The political adequacy of appearance cuts both ways. For sophistry needs only toseem like it speaks the truth about the city in order for it to succeed. Sophistry does have something like insight into the structure of the city: it recognizes and turns to its advantage the sometimes sufficiency of mere seeming. But this insight goes no further. For the sufficiency ofmereseeming does not undo the reality of the good that the city pursues. That the city accepts less than excellent citizens does not invalidate its aspiration for an excellent citizenry. As mentioned before, the city cannot admit to and therefore cannot appropriately situate this adequacy of appearance, but the adequacy of appearance itself does not invalidate the city’s common good. It is still possible for the city’s good to be true, even if the city is incapable of grounding that truth in such a way that would meet sophistry’s accusations. The self-deceptive character of the city explains why the city cannot admit to theadequacy of appearance, but it also explains how this does not amount to the city being mistaken in its pursuit of a common good. Sophistry may make the strong case that those who rule actively 311 deceive those whom they rule about the so-called common good of the city and the necessity of virtue. But sophistry need only make the minimal case that the city is mistaken about its so-called common good and the need for the virtues. As evidence for both cases, sophistry points to the political adequacy of appearance and the city’s inability to confront it. But if we understand the city to be inherently self-deceptive, then sophistry’s evidence points only to this feature and not to a mistake or a conspiracy about the common good. The basis of sophistry’s claim about the city does not carry if the city is self-deceptive. If it is on account of its self-deception that the city accepts but cannot acknowledge its acceptance of the adequacy of appearance, then sophistry’s claim to explain the city does not exclude the validity of the city’s good. The city’s self-deception can account for sophistry’s half-truth while preserving the possibility of a true common good. Consequently, self-deception explains both how the city is susceptible to sophistry (by explaining why the city unable to defend itself competently against sophistry’s claims) and how the city is resistant to sophistry (by explaining sophistry’s success without granting truth to its premises).

Self-deception thus saves the possibility of the common good from the claims of sophistry. Unfortunately, the true danger to the common good is not restricted to the soundness of sophistry’s claims, for the efficacy of sophistry is not limited by its truth. I have shown that the realityofthe common good is not endangered logically by sophistry’s argument, but it is endangered practically by the way sophistry undermines the constitutive practices of the city. Even if sophistry does not speak the truth about the city and its common good, much harm can be done by its lies. The remainder of this chapter takes up the deceptions of sophistry in detail and thusgives a fuller account of the danger sophistry poses to civic education both with respect to its practice and with respect to its ideal purpose.

The City’s Susceptibility to Sophistry

Having presented in outline the way the city is susceptible to sophistry, I now address the specific targets of Protagorean sophistry. My treatment begins as Socrates’s does withthe question of the unity of virtues. After considering the disunity of the virtues that sophistry 312 suggests, I then consider the ground of that disunity in the central sophistic claim of how to characterize the distinction between nature and convention. Finally, I take up the implications of this distinction for the city’s good, arguing that it transforms a common good to a universal but essentially private good. Altogether I provide a detailed account of the specific ways sophistry seeks to replace civic education for a few and thus undermine it for all.

Unity of the Virtues

After Protagoras’s Great Speech, Socrates raises “a certain small impediment” (328e). This impediment concerns the unity of the virtues as presented in Protagoras’s ample case for the why virtue can be taught. According to my interpretation, Protagoras uses his speech to communicate different messages to different audiences: one message to the older generation who presently hold the power and are concerned to preserve the traditions and customs of the city; and another message to the affluent youth who would be Protagoras’s students, that is, those who seekbut do not presently wield power in the city. To this latter audience, Protagoras suggests a division between the virtues. This division is less a metaphysical distinction than a practical division of which virtues should be used in what way by which kind of citizen. Protagoras’s division between the virtues separates the political virtues of justice, moderation, and piety, from the sophistic virtues of courage and wisdom.

In my account of this moment in the dialogue, I said that Protagoras pays lip service to the excellences that belong to the citizenry at large, namely, justice, moderation, and piety. He admits that it is crucial to appear to have these virtues; he also intimates that these virtues are built up for all by all through a habituation of both desires and intellect.18 In his speech, however, Protagoras never explicitly mentions courage and wisdom. These virtues, I argued, are reserved for the would-be students of Protagoras. Courage, Protagoras flatters his audience, is an antecedent condition for implementing the dangerous but profitable use of sophistry. It takes

18. See Protagoras 323b for the claim that it is madness to admit the truth of one’s injustice, and 323d-325d for the description of the diffuse responsibility of teaching virtue and punishing vice. 313 a certain kind of spine to be willing to cast aside what one has been taught from childhood. Wisdom, on the other hand, is Protagoras’s special contribution to the education of his potential students. The wisdom that Protagoras offers consists in using his insight into the truenature of human beings and structure of their political life in order to advance one’s own good while maintaining a semblance of civic continuity with and contribution to the common good. Protagoras has good reason to be less than straightforward with this position. The city could not condone a distinction between the “political” virtues and the virtues that enable one to advance in politics. The city cannot admit, let alone instruct, that it rewards with political power only those who subvert the virtues that support the common good. To do so would sabotage the city’s own unity and invalidate its educational aims. Athenian democracy certainly cannot countenance that some virtues are for some and others for others: political virtues for the many, sophistic virtues for the few. And no city can long countenance that justice is only for some of its citizens, not for all. The city must aim at complete virtue for its citizens; civic education must educate all citizens in all the virtues. But the city, while certainly educating for all the virtues, also cannot insist that its citizens possess all the virtues as one. At least, the city cannot afford to turn down the courage of a solider who is perhaps also not just, nor the justice of an officer or juryman who is perhaps not wise. Any city must deal with the fact that wisdom is rare. And when courage is needed, the city cannot be overparticular. Here again enters the adequacy of appearance. For as long at the soldier’s lack of justice is not as obvious as his courage is necessary, the city will ignore the former for the sake of the latter. The city must strike a balance between asserting the need for excellence andmeeting its own neediness. And, once again, the city cannot acknowledge this discrepancy, for to admit that partial virtue is accepted is to imply that partial virtue is acceptable.

The city is therefore not equipped to confront Protagoras’s subtle teaching. It canonly say, as it had said, that complete excellence is the aim; but this declamation is rendered hollow by Protagoras’s promise of political advancement at the expense of complete virtue. Let us now consider more carefully the character of Protagoras’s division between the virtues in order to 314 see the ground of its efficacy. One way to account for Protagoras’s division of the virtues isto categorize the political virtues as the virtues that the sophistic student does not need to have but does need to seem to have. In this way, Protagoras appropriates the political adequacy of appearance and transforms it, for his students, into a principle of the necessity of appearance.

The mere appearance of justice, say, is sufficient for the city and therefore necessary forthe sophistic student. Indeed, Protagoras asserts that admitting to injustice is a patent absurdity, an insane disregard for one’s own safety (323b).19 The end at which this required appearance of virtue aims is the preservation of one’s own safety within the city. The imitation of these virtues thus also implies an imitation of their end, namely, the pursuit of a common good. A further implication is that the other virtues, wisdom and courage, are the real virtues and that the real good is one’s individual good.20

It is necessary to seem to have the virtues of justice, moderation, and piety, in order to survive in the city, but to have them truly would undermine the ultimate project of self-advancement.

The virtues that the sophistic student should truly possess for the sake of his self-advancement, are the virtues of wisdom and courage. Presumably the civic versions of these virtues are merely fictions by sophistry’s lights. The civic virtues of wisdom concerning what should andshould not be done, what is and is not noble—this may be helpful to know but not to abide by; in fact, it is a mark of true wisdom to reckon this civic wisdom for what it really is. The lauded civic courage to fight and die for this received wisdom—for the ideals and identity of the city—this is the very thing that endangers the one with true courage to work subtly against the lie of the city.21 In the sophistic project, true courage does not lead to a defense of the city and its customs, but to a bravery in the face of the danger posed by such defenders. Likewise, true wisdom does

19. Compare Socrates’s inversion of rhetoric as useful only to the extent that it helps one seek just punishment for oneself at Gorgias 480a-d

20. To reiterate, the use of “real” does not mean to ascribe to Protagoras any strong metaphysical stance. As Protagoras’s speech on the relative value of the good indicates (Protagoras 334a-c), the real virtues are real insofar as they are useful for a particular end, namely, the student’s political advancement.

21. I argue below that this vision of courage is not as easily dismissed as presented here. 315 not lead to a deeper understanding of the nobility the city attempts to pursue, but to a skillful manipulation of that understanding in order to pursue one’s own good.

So the division between the virtues amounts to a division between real and imitation virtues, that is, the virtues the sophistic student should really have and the others he should merely imitate. The sophistic student should imitate the virtues that the student of non-sophistic civic education genuinely espouses. The sophistic student should really have the genuine excellences, which are either cultivated (courage) or generated (wisdom) by sophistic education. The reason the sophistic student should imitate the political virtues is for the sake of basic survival, the minimal preservation of his safety within the city. The reason he should cultivate the real virtues is for the sake of individual advancement in the city. Therefore, even though by imitating the political virtues the sophistic student minimally preserves some order to the city, in a more insidious sense, sophistic education in the virtues undermines the order of the city. The disunity of the virtues is founded on an assumption of the disunity between the sophistic student and his fellow citizens. Socrates is therefore quite keen to pick up on the issue of the unity of the virtues. Though it played only a slight explicit role in Protagoras’s speech, this small thread, once pulled, unravels the whole sophistic project. For the origin of this division between the virtues uncovers the sophist’s civically corrosive account of nature versus convention. And the purpose of this division reveals the insuperable opposition of the individual good to the common good. Accordingly, I now turn to the origin and the purpose of this disunity.

Nature and Convention

The sophist’s division between the real virtues and the imitation virtues is grounded on a distinction between the reality of nature and the mere appearance of convention. Real virtue is demanded by nature; imitation virtue is demanded by convention. The demands of nature are real because nature is the abode of reality; the demands of convention may be satisfied by mere appearance because convention itself is nothing by mere appearance. In this section, I will 316 expound on the sophistic approach to this distinction, but first, let us consider the character of this distinction in the eyes of the city.

What is the city’s conception of the distinction between nature and convention? In the first place, the city does and must acknowledge such a distinction. It cannot claim for itselfandits customs the same universality that nature can. Civic education includes learning the peculiarity of the customs of one’s city, that is, learning what makes one’s own city unique—not least in order to strengthen the priority of one’s own customs over the customs of another city. These customs therefore cannot assume or expect universal assent. Indeed, if formation in the laws and customs of the city were somehow natural, then civic education would be unnecessary. Accordingly, the city must acknowledge the difference between nature and convention on the grounds that the latter, unlike the former, needs conscious effort in order to be sustained. Civic educationis partially instituted by convention and is necessary for sustaining convention.

Yet even as the city must acknowledge a distinction between nature and convention, it must also claim some terra firma on which to ground the priority of its customs, the respect for its laws, and the endurance of its conventions. The city must say that the virtues are excellences of human beings as such but also that these virtues are best exemplified and promoted by its own customs. The city must say that its conventions are agreements, but also that these agreements are guided by the truth of what is good and noble and just. The agreements that form the city’s conventions cannot, by the city’s estimation, be sheer coincidence—there must be some sense in which they converge on a truth. Yet the only evidence the city has of the goodness, nobility, or justice of these agreements are the agreements themselves. The city therefore must distinguish its own being from the kind of being nature has, yet claim for itself a stability and fittingness that is consonant with nature. Protagoras’s account of the development of political communities seems to meet this demand of being similar to but distinct from nature. Yet, as I will show, Protagoras’s account meets this condition in a way that undermines the grounding the city requires.

The distinction between nature and convention in Protagoras’s Great Speech is complex.

On the one hand, nature leaves man needy and nigh resourceless; on the other hand, man is 317 endowed by nature with the undeniable urge to survive. The capacities closest to man’s natural beginning, namely his special skills and knowledge, are necessary but insufficient for his survival.

Man succeeds in surviving only after a second divine intervention. To survive he forms civic communities, but he forms them not by nature nor even by artifice (at least not his own artifice).

He forms civic communities by transforming the urge for self-preservation into a common effort of common survival. And this transformation occurs by the threat of death for any who seeks exclusively his own survival: ”And set it down as a law from [Zeus] that he who is incapable of sharing in respect and right is to be killed as an illness to the city” (322d).

Nature therefore gives us an unremitting purpose but neglects to provide any means of achieving it. Each step towards the our natural purpose is also a step away from it, a path which terminates in the formation of cities. It seems that the only way to satisfy our natural compulsion of survival is to mitigate it by acceding to the coercion of the city. Convention looks to be the only way to achieve man’s natural aim of survival, yet it necessarily precludes the full achievement of that end. But, as Protagoras’s speech subtly suggests, the neediness of nature and the compromise of convention are not the only options. Sophistry transcends these categories, for it alone provides an exclusive way to enjoy the needful supplements of convention while still pursuing the fullness of self-preservation. In this way sophistry provides the elusive political wisdom that

Prometheus fails to steal and that Zeus withholds from human beings.

Sophistry educates its students to pursue their natural ends within the confines of but not confined by the conventions of the city. The sophistic students pursue their natural endsby means of the real virtues of courage and wisdom. They safeguard their survival in the city by means of imitating the political virtues of justice, moderation, and piety. The wisdom provided by sophistry is the wisdom to see that the agreements that make up the conventions of the city are merely a coincidence of opinion. As they are entirely outside the realm of nature, the conventions of the city have no basis in reality; they are only what most people living near one another agree upon in order to keep living. The sophistic student—like his less enlightened citizens—also agrees with these laws, but—unlike his simpler fellow citizens—he is not taken in by their claim to be 318 some stable expression of what is good and noble and just. The sophistic student recognizes that the only stable thing is the natural impulse to self-preservation and everything else is merely a means for achieving this natural goal.

By sophistry’s account, then, the ground for the laws’ power is not nature but a sort of ransoming man’s singular and single natural impulse. According to sophistry, the city effectively says: “We know it is natural for you to want not to die, so follow our arbitrary and non-natural laws or we will kill you.” With one hand, the city promises salvation; with the other, it threatens destruction. So it looks as though one follows the laws of the city out of some natural inclination or because the laws have a natural appropriateness. But really, according to sophistry, the city replaces individual preservation with shared security and purchases the latter at the expense of the former. Rather than an advancement on nature, the city only continues the pattern of neglect.

Or so says sophistry. Consequently, sophistry presents civic education as no true solution to the problem of human nature—that role belongs to sophistry alone.

Civic education aims at forming good citizens who follow good laws because of their own goodness and the goodness of the laws. Sophistic education aims at forming citizens whose excellence consists in knowing when and how to follow and not follow the laws. On the sophistic vision of convention, the laws are not good but are rather necessary. These laws are followed not because they are good laws but because law is necessary. The only true good, the only natural good, the good in view of which one does or does not follow the law, is one’s individual good, namely, the preservation and promotion of one’s own interests.

Individual Good and Common Good

The culmination of the sophistic distinction between nature and convention and thecon- sequent disunity of virtues is a separation of the individual good and the common good. Yet again sophistry takes advantage of the city’s position. The city claims to promote the common good as a shared good or a good held in common. Therefore the city’s common good is also agood for each individual, though not necessarily enjoyed individually. Civic education aim at such a 319 common good, namely, a virtuous citizenry. The success of this good relies on the activity of the community and the benefit of this good is enjoyed by the community. The citizens severally must contribute to civic education in order for civic education to occur and then succeed. And all the citizens together benefit from an excellent community and virtuous fellow citizens. In providing for such common goods, the city presents itself as the supplier of the best and most comprehensive of goods. Yet the city also demands that some citizens sacrifice some individual goods for the sake of the common good. In Athens this feature may be seen in the distribution of political office by means of lot.22 More generally and viscerally this feature is evidenced by the need for soldiers to give their lives in defense of their city. The city thus promotes a commonly shared good while requiring that some sacrifice their most basic good for it.23 In sophistry’s hands, the common good of the city is transformed into a crowd-good, an

aggregate of individual goods or goods enjoyed individually. From Protagoras’s Great Speech,

the primary good provided by a political community is security. The formation of political com-

munities succeeds in saving human beings from the threat of wild animals, and the institution of justice succeeds in preserving those preserving communities (Protagoras 322b). The cultivation of virtue is for the sake of preserving the city, and the good the city provides ends up being nothing but a lack of painful death. The positive correlate to this lack of a painful death is the possession of pleasure. The city, however, does not provide pleasure except incidentally, and certainly does not provide for pleasure in common. The city only provides the basic good of survival. Once this basic good is guaranteed, the individually practiced arts are what add positive value to the lives of human beings. In fact, the city often works to curtail the pursuit of pleasure, especially by means of habituating its citizens towards moderation. So even though the city provides for the generally sought good of not being brutally killed, it does not provide for and sometimes prevents

22. In terms of what is the good that is sacrificed, this sacrifice could go two ways. For those withno political aspirations, being assigned to an office means less time to tend one’s personal wealth; for those with political aspirations, not being assigned to an office means less opportunity to advance one’s standing in thecity.

23. It is worth reiterating that I am not claiming that the city has no way of resolving this conflict. I am claiming that sophistry takes advantage of this conflict to present its own account of how to resolve it. 320 its citizens from attaining the generally pursued good of enjoying pleasure. In this way sophistry supports its promise to exceed what the city and education in its customs and laws can offer. Yet in doing so sophistry subtly but crucially reconstructs the proper good of the city.

By this account, sophistry transforms the common good into a universal good. That is, it is a good each person wants, but it cannot be a good that is enjoyed in common. By making the prime civic common good tantamount to a lack of pain, sophistry aligns good with pleasure.

Safety, or lack of pain, is a basic condition for pleasure. To this end, according to sophistry, the city advances tolerably well. But the true goal, or the natural goal, is the promotion of one’s security and advantage, the success of which is measured by pleasure. On sophistry’s account, the only common good of the city is a weaker version of the universal good, which is naturally sought by all, namely, pleasure. Pleasure, though universally sought, is enjoyed only privately or individually. The sophist thus ingeniously and insidiously replaces the city’s primary example of a common good with an individual good. Sophistry then implies by extension that all so- called common goods are merely oversold fictions of some essentially individual good. With this hijacked account of the city’s good and the education directed toward it, sophistry presents itself as the way to do what everyone else already does but more cleverly and clear-sightedly. Those with natural courage to pursue their natural ends and who acquire sophistic wisdom will be able to fulfill most completely the natural purpose of human life.

This full capacity of human life consists in attaining the most pleasure. Onmyinter- pretation, Socrates devastatingly demonstrates this point with his arguments about the hedonic calculus. Socrates demonstrates that the art of measuring pleasures follows from Protagoras’s account of human nature and community. In the dialogue, Protagoras balks at Socrates’s forthright account of “wisdom” but not only because of the danger that such forthrightness usually poses to sophistry. Protagoras also distances himself from the hedonic calculus on account of his students. Protagoras is always advertising, and he therefore resists the loss of nobility that inevitably accompanies the cold calculations of this pleasure-measuring art. If his fundamental sophistic insight is never laid out in bare detail, then Protagoras can trade on the noble excitement of ap- 321 prehending “the truth” about the city and its so-called common good.24 Part of the appeal of Protagorean sophistry is its elite exclusivity, but this appeal is lost if the truth that his sophistry offers is revealed to be no more than the base and basic claim, held by the menial many,that pleasure is the good.25

Sophistry exploits the tension between the city’s providence of a common good and the city’s occasional demand for sacrifice from its citizens. Socrates’s refutation of sophistry, however, reveals that this very tension resurfaces in sophistry’s own claims. The beauty that accrues to a citizen’s sacrifice is a beauty beyond the reach of sophistry. Sophistry undermines the city’s common good, replacing it with the individual’s good, but sophistry also thereby undermines its own access to beauty. Socrates has, in effect, put the cosmetically enhanced body up next tothe gymnastically trained body in the full bloom of his beauty—and the difference is undeniable. In the dialogue, Socrates engenders this disfavorable comparison by turning to courage again after his incisive treatment of Protagoras’s wisdom. The two virtues that were the special domain of the sophist now prove the sophist’s lie. The thread of the disunity of the virtues has unravelled to reveal the one virtue that sophistry cannot imitate.

The City’s Resistance to Sophistry

We are now in a position to consider the city’s resistance to sophistry. As I have argued, the efficacy of sophistry does not suffice to prove the truth of its positions concerning thedis- unity of the virtues, the priority of nature over conventions, and the demotion of the common good/promotion of the individual good. My argument so far has been mostly negative: sophistry need not be true because the self-deceptive character of the city can account for the city’s suscep-

24. Perhaps it is for this reason that Socrates calls sophistry “more beautiful” than rhetoric at Gorgias 520b: it trades on its students’ desire for nobility.

25. It is helpful to note here that the metabolized sophistry we find in the character of Callicles provides a prima facie answer to this advertising problem: for Callicles, what secures off the allure of elitism is the expansiveness of appetite for these pleasures. This solution is but fleeting, for even Callicles is undone by having to confront the lowness of his final good. 322 tibility to sophistry. I will now give a more positive argument, an argument that we have good reason to think that sophistry’s claims about the city are not true. To this end, I consider the problem that courage in particular poses for sophistry. On the basis of this consideration, I give an account of the self-defeating nature of sophistry itself. Though sophistry may be self-defeating, it nevertheless does harm in its impersonation of civic education. Therefore, in the end, I take up the question of what could broadly be an application of Socrates’s attempt at genuine civic education. This education would be shaped by the restrictions of the self-deceptive nature ofthe city but nevertheless responsive to the peculiar threat sophistry poses.

The Nobility of Inimitable Courage

Courage is the final virtue Protagoras and Socrates discuss and the one Protagoras most obviously falters on. Protagoras’s position on courage at the end of the dialogue conflicts with his sophistic principles, both covert and overt.26 It is not possible for Protagoras consistently to laud the nobility of self-sacrifice. The courage involved in going to war is both undeniably beautiful and undeniably inconsistent with the limited, individual good of safety and self-advancement. Protagoras certainly contradicts himself on the point of courage, but the question at present is whether sophistry must also render itself contradictory.

It may be argued that here Protagoras is merely personally moved by the example of the solider going bravely to die for hearth and home. If so, then Protagoras’s inconsistency is an accidental feature of the practitioner of sophistry. It may also be argued that here Protagoras assents to the nobility of courage in order to protect his sophistic teaching from entering into an obvious conflict with the civic conception of courage. If this is so, then the inconsistency is a circumstantial feature of the practice of sophistry, something sophistry is driven to claim not by internal exigency but by external expediency. I argue here that the inconsistency is not merely a moralistic hang-up that Protagoras himself cannot overcome, nor is it a only claim he

26. See Bartlett, Sophistry and Political Philosophy, 98: “Protagoras . . . cannot consistently stick to an understanding of courage that strips it entirely of its noble character.” 323 is compelled to make for the sake of safety. Rather, the inconsistency results from an essential limitation of sophistry’s power.

Sophistry presents itself as a supplement to civic education, but, as I have argued, it is instead a perverse impersonation of that education. It pursues an end that is incompatible with the genuine good sought by civic education, and in pursuit of that end it deploys means that subvert the practice of civic education. One such subversive tactic is to imitate certain virtues, namely, the political virtues of justice, moderation, and piety. The sophistic student will learn to seem as though he possesses these virtues. He will not be concerned with actually cultivating these virtues, for their purpose is the flourishing of the civic community and his purpose ishis own advancement. He will act just or moderate or pious only to the extent that it protects his pursuit of his own ends. Part of the wisdom he acquires in his sophistic education is how to imitate these virtues. This imitation is the basis for Protagorean sophistry’s claim to safety. Sophistic education promises that the student will learn to seem to be a virtuous citizen without actually being a virtuous citizen. Without this promise, a sophistic education would be quite a dangerous an enterprise.

In Protagoras’s surreptitious teaching of the disunity of the virtues, courage was omitted from the civic virtue which require imitation. I accounted for this omission by arguing that

Protagoras prompts, appeals to, and relies on the fact that his students self-identify as already courageous. These students must already be courageous if they are willing to learn the potentially dangerous (thought not too dangerous) art of sophistry. They must have the manliness to become their own man and no longer abide meekly by the laws of their fathers, or rather, only appear to so abide. This unspoken sense of courage is present inchoately in Hippocrates and explicitly in

Callicles.27 But what of the civic sense of courage?

Courage as a civic virtue is one of the most obvious and most public of virtues. Consider the soldier going off to war—the example Protagoras picks to exemplify the nobility of courage

27. I commented at length on Hipprocrates’s spiritedness in chapter one, and on Callicles’s supposed manliness in chapters two and three. 324

(Protagoras 359e). This courage in the face of clear and immediate danger is more visible thanmost of the acts of justice or moderation or piety, which hold a political community together. Courage in this sense is surely also necessary for the city; indeed, it may be because when courage is needed the stakes are so clearly so high that the beauty or nobility of such courage is undeniable.

But more than this, courage alone seems to be the virtue that is inimitable. For the sophistic student, the purpose of imitating the virtues is to preserve his safety. He does the just thing, not because he wants to be just but because, on balance, whatever loss to his personal gain that he accrues by acting justly in this instance, it is not so great as the loss rendered by the city as punishment for his injustice.28 Given this limiting condition of safety, however, the sophistic imitation of courage is impossible in the most obvious and most lauded case. We might say that when courage matters most, a sophistic imitation of it is least possible.29 To seem to be courageous in the circumstances of war is just as dangerous as actually being courageous. There is no calculation under which this seeming courageous is more favorable than admitting that one lacks courage. There is no such calculation for the sophistic student in part because thecommon good, which such courage benefits, is not considered a genuine good.

Because of this instance of courage is self-sacrificing, the good it serves cannot be ultimately a private good. The good it serves must be a common good: it is for the security ofhiscity that the soldier faces death. In absence of such a good, this instance of courage could only be a result of foolish, perhaps willful, ignorance.30 Yet it is because of this service to the common good

28. Note that this comparison of potential gain against potential loss is exactly the function of the hedonic calculus at Protagoras 356d-e.

29. This is not to say that no imitation of courage is possible, or that no cowards perish onthebattlefield. Rather, my claim concerns the imitation of political courage specifically that the sophistic student is to effect.

30. One might imagine that this is what Callicles would say of such a soldier, if he were pressed. He might say that this soldier dies for some fiction crafted by weaker men and therefore dies in ignorance and folly. Itis notable, though, that despite Callicles’ preoccupation with manliness, the fact that the first words from his mouth and of the dialogue are “war” and “battle,” and that his political heroes (Pericles, Themistocles, Cimon, and Militiades) were all military leaders, he never addresses the civic courage that belongs to a soldier. It is also notable that Socrates never prompts him to. Perhaps the looming presence of the Peloponnesian War makes such a topic too difficult to broach. 325 that this instance of courage is so noble. The nobility that belongs to courage is a nobility that cannot, in its most obvious case, be imitated by sophistry. Consequently, in the case of courage, sophistry must admit its own limitations. It cannot, after all, turn every noble thing toward a personal advantage.31

A Dilemma for Sophistry

The power of sophistry is inherently limited by a beauty that accompanies only service to a common good. Sophistry seemed to promise that everything would seem to be the same, as far as the city is concerned. It seemed to promise its students that they would be able to enjoy all the good repute and power in the city that usually redounds to the clearly virtuous—all without the constraints that necessarily accompany being truly virtuous. Yet, sophistry cannot imitate the heroic courage of the self-sacrificing soldier. Furthermore, if it is to be consistent, sophistry must deny that this self-sacrifice is truly good and beautiful.

If sophistry were correct, that is, if the sophistic view of the city were true, then this inimitable beauty would be no beauty at all. But sophistry cannot make that claim. As I argued above, insofar as sophistry is parasitic, sophistry runs the risk of being self-defeating. Earlier

I had focused on sophistry’s inherently limited efficacy. If everyone were a sophistic student then there would be no one to exploit; sophistry can extend its practice only so far. This feature becomes more obvious in the case of courage. If it were ordinarily held that the soldier’s courage was simple-minded folly, there soon would be no soldiers. Then, the good for which the soldier is prepared to sacrifice his life would no longer exist to be defended. To dismiss the soldier’s courage is to dismiss the common good; and to dismiss the common good is to dismiss the city. In other

31. Bartlett, Sophistry and Political Philosophy, 99, makes much the same point: “Protagoras has recourse to a nobility reducible to the good for oneself, and he subsequently reaffirms his view that ‘all noble actions’ are assuch ‘good’ (335e5-8). But Protagoras has shown himself to be unable to stick to this view of nobility.” I think that on this point I am in agreement with Seth Benardete, Socrates and Plato: The Dialetics of Eros (München: Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, 1999), 47, when he claims that “sophistry confuses the beautiful with the good.” I am not entirely confident, however, since this is a particularly gnomic claim on Benardete’s part. 326 cases, sophistry responds to this problem by remaining within the bounds of its elite activity. In the case of its claims about courage, however, even this narrow scope is too dangerous.

Sophistry cannot make itself consistent, for such a consistency entails that it will be unable to hide at all, let alone hide in plain sight. It cannot deny the beauty of sacrificial courage without foreclosing its own safe practice. To dismiss such a clear case of civic courage would certainly raise the ire of many citizens—those who lost family and friends to such a sacrifice or those who had been prepared to make such a sacrifice themselves. And, to be clear, the choice before sophistry is either to embrace or to dismiss this sense of courage—its pandering imitation has proven impotent in this case. Insofar as sophistry wants consistency for its wisdom, it must dismiss this sacrificial sense of courage. But doing so only shifts the inconsistency into adeeper level. For insofar as sophistry is essentially concerned with safety, it cannot dismiss this sacrificial sense of courage.

The dilemma for sophistry is thus a dilemma of self-preservation. What wouldmake sophistry’s wisdom consistent would also make it impossible to practice in the city, because the consistent opinion so deeply conflicts with dear and common opinion. What would make this a safe opinion to hold would also make the city itself unsafe, because if the dear and common opinion falters so does the strength and security of the city. This is the same dilemma of self- defeat faced by any parasite. The stronger and more prevalent sophistry becomes, the weaker the city becomes. Yet sophistry relies on the city. Sophistry requires there to be a law and rule in order to make itself the exception. It needs an orderly whole in order to offer to the elite opportunities to take advantage of it. For sophistry to be right about the city would mean the end of both the city and sophistry. As I have already noted, sophistry does not need to be right about the city in order to work. But now we see that in order to work, sophistry must not be right. 327

Self-Deception and Genuine Education

It is true that the city is sometimes satisfied with the mere appearance of virtue. From this, sophistry infers that its student needs only the mere appearance of virtue. But it is also true that the city does deeply desire the full reality of the virtues, for without this desire there could not be a city. Sophistry relies on both of these truths but is consistent with only one. In this way, a perverse way, sophistry again imitates in a perverse way the city, for the city also can acknowledge only one of these truths. For the sake of the genuine good it seeks, the city cannot admit that it is sometimes satisfied with mere appearance. For the sake of its own good, sophistry turns the adequacy of appearance against the city’s desire for genuine good, and in doing so destroys the very thing that supports it. The city’s self-deceptive nature means that the city cannot acknowledge an essential truth about itself, but its self-deception does not amount to self-destruction.

In one sense the city already resists sophistry, for civic education does genuinely seek virtue. Whether it succeeds in this pursuit is the work of the citizenry but can only be their work if they are genuinely dedicated to it. That is, commitment to the reality of the city’s good isa condition for the possibility of whether or not this good is brought into actuality or achieves its fullest expression. In principle, the common good must be a reality for which the city strives.

How best to educate citizens is a legitimate question and can be an open question for the city. But whether there is civic excellence cannot be a live question for the city. The city must both assume that there is civic excellence and treat this assumption not as an assumption but as indubitable bedrock. Again, this conjunction of assumption and inability to acknowledge as assumption is what I have called the self-deceptive character of the city.

Because of this self-deceptive character, as I have already indicated, the city cannot address the problem of sophistry along the same lines that sophistry uses to attack the city. Despite this situation, there is a way to extend traditional civic education so that it can more effectively resist sophistry. This way is demonstrated in Socrates’s practice of cross-examination andre- flective inquiry. Recall his conversation with Hippocrates before going to meet Protagoras. This 328 conversation was not a foot-stamping denial of sophistry’s appeal but a critical questioning of what sophistry offers. It was a questioning that not only provoked but also paid attention tothe sense of shame Hippocrates felt for his desire to seek out a sophistic education. Socrates neither dismissed nor diminished the appeal of sophistry’s novelty and promise, but he did bring Hip- pocrates to consider this appeal and promise in light of how he would “present [himself] to the Greeks” (312a). This evocation of shame, and its implicit reliance on a sense of beauty or nobility, is a helpful antidote to the flattery that sophistry uses so well.

This kind of examination targets the student’s desire for a sophistic education andthe claims sophistry makes about itself. The education that can adequately defend against sophistry is therefore not an apologetics course for the city’s beliefs as opposed to sophistry’s claims—a contest of who has the better arguments for their position. That is, the genuine art of civicedu- cation that can combat sophistry does not attempt to beat sophistry at its own game. If mythesis about the self-deceptive nature of the city is correct, an education that adopts tactic is inevitably doomed. Sophistry can never be wholly defeated, but it can be curtailed. In the face of this incurable sophistry, genuine civic education also needs a recurring element. The required adjustment to traditional civic education is, therefore, a stance of critical inquiry towards sophistry’s claims.

This adjustment presupposes and reinforces an antecedent respect for the laws, an education in the laws and customs of the city that has already been received at the hands of parents, pedagogues, and fellow citizens. From this foundation, genuine civic education prompts reflective resistance to the categories that sophistry applies to the city.

It must be noted, again, that this kind of education is not a specialized pursuit, nor does it require professional instructors. In fact, what is required is a critical reflection of those who would offer such a specialized education. For his part, Socrates does not and need notpresent his own account of how political communities come into being in order to call into question the validity of Protagoras’s account. He nowhere offers his own definition of virtue or givesa demonstration of their unity, but he does not need to do so in order to reveal the implications of Protagoras’s understanding of virtue. Socrates does not teach virtue—indeed, he says he does 329 not think it can be taught—but he does protect the virtue that is learned through traditional civic education.

The education of a free man, if it is to remain free from sophistry’s subversion, mustbe reflective about the claims sophistry makes about education. This reflection does not, however, amount to philosophic reflection: it does not turn the same scrutiny to the principles andideals of the city. In this case, the Socratic supplement to civic education is not philosophic education; rather, it protects the possibility of civic education. Even though the way to protect civic education from sophistry is not by transforming it into philosophical education, the fact that

Plato makes Socrates the protector does raise difficult questions about the relationship between philosophy and civic education. I take up the questions in the final chapter. Chapter 5

Rhetoric & The City

Introduction

This chapter follows the same plan as the previous chapter, but concerns rhetoric andthe practice of justice in the city. Here I continue my project of employing the self-deception thesis to explain the relationship between political rhetoric and the city in and on which it works. The task is to explain more fully the way in which rhetoric is a danger to the city, why the city is susceptible to this danger, and how the city may resist this danger. The relevant sense of rhetoric is the rhetoric practiced and promoted by Gorgias and Polus in Plato’s Gorgias, and the part of politics it impersonates is the city’s practice of justice, which is most obvious in the law courts.

As before, I argue that the self-deceptive character of the city accounts not only for the city’s complex relationship to its own practice of justice, but also how that relationship is undermined by rhetoric.

Revisiting Gorgian Rhetoric

The rhetoric with which I am concerned is political in a fairly narrow sense: arhetoric deployed for political ends in an overtly political context.1 The purpose of this kind of rhetoric is to persuade a crowd to believe and consequently act on the belief of which they are persuaded.

The context of this kind of rhetoric is therefore anywhere a crowd gathers for a political purpose, including the assembly, the council, and the law-courts. The means of this persuasion are speeches, which are presumably more persuasive the more they are skilled or artful. In a democracy such as Athens, rhetoric therefore seems to be the mediator between an intention of what

1. One may look to Plato’s Phaedrus to find another manifestation of skill in composing and deploying speeches.

330 331 the city should do and the enactment of that intention by the citizenry at large.2 At stake in the conversations between Socrates and Gorgias and between Socrates and Polus are a number of questions concerning the intention that rhetoric makes persuasive. These questions are: what is the character of that intention, that is, whether just or unjust? To whom does this intention belong? And by what may this intentioned be constrained? Although this question is the crucial question, it arises only negatively at first. Because neutrality is the hallmark of Gorgian rhetoric, it looks as though rhetoric is not involved in determining the character of the intention. This neutrality is both epistemic and ethical. Its epistemic neutrality ensures that Gorgian rhetoric needs no knowledge of what it persuades in order to persuade. Its ethical neutrality is twofold: it may persuade of the unjust as easily as of the just, and it may be practiced by anyone—regardless of character—who can afford to pay for the teaching.

The question of the antecedent intention arises negatively at first because the power ofGorgian rhetoric rests on the irrelevance of the answer to that question. It does not matter by whom or for what end rhetoric is used; indeed, that it is effective for anyone and any purpose is the ultimate sign of its power. The arc of Socrates’s conversation with Gorgias is to bring outthis connection between rhetoric’s neutrality and its power. In the final moments of that conversation, the shamefulness of rhetoric’s neutrality and the danger that accompanies that neutrality drives Gorgias to renounce one of his more renowned positions, namely, that he does not teach virtue. Despite Gorgias’s attempt to curb Socrates’s exposure of rhetoric’s ugliness orshame- fulness, Polus intervenes to defend the supposed neutrality of rhetoric and the power that such neutrality ensures. Of course, Polus’s defense of the neutrality of rhetoric by means of appeal-

2. See Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens and Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule for subtle analysis of the discursive function of political rhetoric to negotiate tensions between the demotic mass and the intellectual/economic elite, between the common sensibilities of the people and the eclectic voices of dissenters. In those works, Ober argues that rhetoric, or, public oratory performs an essential role as the medium in which Athenian establishes and revises its political ideology. Ober, “Power and Oratory in Democratic Athens,” 89, puts it pithily: “In the ongoing dialectical give and take of public oratory, audience response, and demotic judgment, a set of common attitudes and social rules was hammered out.” The question at present is howGorgian rhetoric simultaneously imitates and subverts this civic function of rhetoric. 332 ing to the tyrannical use of it actually serves to undermine that neutrality. At the end of these conversations, it is clear that rhetoric’s power is far from neutral.

Gorgian rhetoric amounts to a promise of power. According to Gorgias, rhetoric promises the power to enslave the doctor and the trainer and the money-maker (Gorgias 452e). Anyone who relies on interaction with others can come under the thumb of the rhetorician because the rhetorician can persuade those others for or against. This stark statement of rhetoric’s power emphasizes a distinction between the kinds of powers at work in the execution of any intention.

In the political arena, as with these cases, it is one kind of power to know what should be done and it is another kind of power to convince others to do so. Rhetoric claims to provide the latter, but not the former. These two powers can fruitfully combine, as evidenced by Gorgias’s fraternal cooperation with his physician brother (456b). Or rhetoric can hold the doctor’s livelihood for ransom by convincing his would-be patient to decline treatment. Of course in this latter case, it is not only the doctor but also the patient who is harmed. In trading on the distinction between its own power and the power of other practices, rhetoric also essentially deprives itself of any guidance by an informed or reflective notion of what is good.

That rhetoric need not have knowledge does not seem to hamper its power. Rhetoric does not depend on the knowledge that other crafts possess, but the other crafts occasionally depend on rhetoric. When the case is not a single intransigent patient, but a crowd of jurors or assemblymen, rhetoric’s independence from knowledge yields a significant advantage. From the perspective of rhetoric, in the best case the doctor or trainer’s special knowledge is useless in convincing a crowed since the crowd cannot be taught.3 And in the worst case, the doctor or trainer’s special knowledge puts limits on his powers because he is concerned with the normative standards inherent to his craft. The rhetorician, on the other hand, isfree.4 The doctor’s end is

3. See Gorgias 455a.

4. See Gorgias 452d: “[Rhetoric] is truly the greatest good and is the cause both of a human being’s own freedom and his rule over others in his own city.” 333 not merely his own efficacy but also his patient’s health, whereas the rhetorician’s end consists only in his efficacy.

Rhetoric is not primarily concerned with usurping doctors and trainers, however. The primary context of Gorgian rhetoric is the political arena; its primary targets are the jurors and the assemblymen. Rhetoric poses a problem to the city not because it makes long speeches instead of short, exchanged speeches or because it uses stylistic embellishments that appeal to emotions.5

Persuasive speech in itself is not a problem for the city; indeed, persuasive speech is necessary to establish and sustain political communities. By contrast, persuasive speech aimed at acquiring and levying power in absence of a common good is a problem. Gorgian rhetoric is a problem for the city because it replaces the kind of persuasive speech needed for the city to function. That is, rhetoric replaces the persuasive speech by which the city aims at satisfying the demands justice with speech aimed at satisfying the desires of the rhetorician.

Gorgias develops his account of rhetoric with some awareness of the problem his practice poses to the city. Accordingly, he mounts a defense of rhetoric. Not despite but because of this defense, Socrates is able to cross-examine Gorgias in such a way that he must reverse his famous claim that he does not teach virtue. Gorgias recognizes that it is dangerous to be caught divorcing persuasion in the law-courts and in other political fora from a concern for justice. Consequently,

Gorgias tries to insist that his craft of persuasion is bound to a concern for justice. But this defense limits the power of rhetoric—something that Polus sees clearly. Polus does not understand, however, that the shame that motivates Gorgias’s concession is not shame at admitting ignorance but is rather a recognition of the ugliness that follows from too openly denying the need for justice. The consequences of Gorgian rhetoric come most to light in Socrates’s conversation with the student of Gorgian rhetoric, a student who is so enamored of the true power of rhetoric that he is incapable of hiding the threat this power poses to truth. With this manifestation of rhetoric’s nature in mind, let us turn to Socrates’s own characterization of it.

5. As Carone, “Socratic Rhetoric in the Gorgias,” 224–233, points out, Socrates himself employs all these tactics. 334

The Structure of Rhetoric’s Impersonation

Socrates introduces the schema of arts and pseudo-arts in answer to Polus’s question of what Socrates thinks rhetoric to be. The schema is also meant to explain why rhetoric iswicked and therefore shameful (463d). The schema thus serves both to describe and to condemn rhetoric.

The schema provides an explanatory framework whereby Socrates’s description of rhetoric asa knack for gratification amounts to a condemnation of it as wicked and shameful. Rhetoric’s impersonation of justice, the fact that it substitutes gratification for a genuine and needful benefit—this condemns the pseudo-craft.

Knacks in themselves do not seem to require this sort of censure. Neither do practices that aim at pleasure.6 The feature of rhetoric that the schema highlights is its competition with the genuine art of practicing justice in the city. Rhetoric competes with, indeed, endeavors to impersonate the practice of justice, and for this reason rhetoric is wicked and shameful. The way this impersonation competes with the genuine art of justice is by pandering. It offers pleasure to the exclusion of what is truly beneficial by presenting the pleasure it offers as just as goodas what is truly beneficial.

Reflecting on the bodily correlate to rhetoric is helpful to discern the structure ofthis pandering impersonation. Socrates puts forward haute cuisine as this correlate. If haute cuisine presented itself as a possible addendum to the healthy diet, then there would seem to be no conflict—indeed, it is part of the pseudo-arts’ surreptitious substitution that it seemscom- patible with the genuine art. But, according to the schema, the pandering pseudo-art of haute cuisine offers itself as a replacement for a healthy-diet. It promises to cure what ails with ajolt of delectability. It elides the pleasure of a replenished body with the pleasure of the tasty pastry or sauces. Pandering haute cuisine passes itself off as the answer to the body in need of health, and to this extent it subverts the work of medicine. Likewise, to the extent that rhetoric passes itself off as the answer to the city in need of justice, rhetoric subverts the work ofjustice.

6. See Woolf, “Why Is Rhetoric Not a Skill,” 121–123 for a treatment of these insufficient grounds for why Socrates so censures rhetoric. 335

As in the previous chapter, it is helpful to consider the following four features of rhetoric’s impersonation: the substituted end, the flattering means by which that end is substituted, the complicity of the practitioner of rhetoric, and finally the self-defeating character of this parasitic pseudo-art. Regarding the substituted end, the relevant question is: at what sort of pleasure does rhetoric aim? A possible answer is that rhetoric aims at the pleasure of the audience, that it trades on the audience’s emotions and that this indulgence of πάθοι is itself pleasant, whether or not the particular emotion is. But trading on emotions seems to be more a tactic than an end. I propose instead that the pleasant end at which rhetoric aims is the end of winning. Recall that the context of the rhetoric under investigation is a political context. That is, rhetoric does aim not at generating a sterile opinion, just something someone believes; instead, rhetoric aims at generating a conviction, a consensus that causes consequent action. The pleasure it aims at is the pleasure of holding the opinion that prevails, the pleasure of being on the winning side. This pleasure belongs both to the practitioner of rhetoric as well as to the audience, though it belongs primarily to the practitioner since he is the one trying to persuade about the opinion. It should be noted again that part of the structure of this impersonation is that the pseudo- art seems compatible with the art it impersonates. Just as there seems to be no necessary conflict between a healthy diet and tasty food, so also there seems to be no conflict between a concern for justice in the law-courts or assembly and a concern for winning. Indeed, the latter case calls for a stronger coincidence: if one is truly concerned to see justice done, then it seems that one must also be concerned with his position carrying the day. This genuine compatibility rests on the

subordination of the desire for winning to the desire for justice. One can remain truly concerned

to see justice done only if his concern to win remains subjected to his concern for justice. But this

hierarchy cannot hold if rhetoric is a competitor with the practice of justice. And rhetoric cannot

help but be a such a competitor if it claims supreme power in the same realm as the practice of justice. 336

It is necessary, then, to distinguish between the rhetor7 and the audience. Rhetoric differs from sophistry along the lines that the practitioner of rhetoric’s interaction with this audience is far more active than the sophistically educated man’s interaction with his city. Recall that cosmetics promises the look of beauty without the toil of exercise, so also sophistry promises the look of virtue without the toil of actually living a virtuous life. The sophist, that is, the teacher of sophistry, uses flattery to win students who then take up a sophistic education. The sophistically educated man is deceived about sophistry’s end (that it is just as good as or better than the end provided by genuine education) and in turn deceives those who are not sophistically educated by presenting himself as genuinely virtuous. Those who are deceived by the product of sophistry are not the primary target of sophistry’s flattery—the primary target of sophistry’s flattery isthe would-be product of sophistic education.

In contrast, rhetoric seems to have two targets: on the one hand, it aims to flatter the audience and by that means convince them of the rhetor’s intended belief; on the other hand, it aims to flatter the would-be practitioner of justice to become instead a practitioner ofrhetoric. This latter flattery is prior to the former: the rhetor must first be convinced ofthepower rhetoric before he can turn that power to his audience. The pandering promise that rhetoric makes to the rhetor himself is also much more explicit in its substitution of one end for the other.

The rhetor is flattered into believing that he has the power to win, that his opinion willcarry the day through the skill use of his rhetoric. In taking up Gorgian rhetoric, the rhetor chooses to aim at power and takes up a position towards speech and justice that makes him complicit in the impersonation. In order to be effective, the rhetor must take speech to be primarily a toolfor power, a means of manipulation. The rhetor must act as though, even if he does not explicitly claim that, there is ultimately no difference between persuasion and force.8

7. I will use “rhetor” to refer to the practitioner of Gorgian rhetoric. This term distinguishes the one who learns rhetoric for political ends as opposed to the one who learns rhetoric for the sake of teaching rhetoric; I will refer to the latter as a rhetorician.

8. The historical Gorgias does explicitly claim this; see Gorgias, Encomium of Helen, B, 8-11. 337

This elision between force and persuasion marks the self-defeating characteristic of rhetoric. As with sophistry, rhetoric works only if a sufficiently little number realize this crucial assumption. If the audience realizes that they are not persuaded to promote a position they take to be fitting but instead are forced by manipulation to follow the secret bidding of the rhetorician, then the “persuasion” collapses. There is, therefore, some tension between the efficacy of the practice rhetoric and its ubiquity.9 The more prevalent the practice of this rhetoric becomes, the weaker the city on which it works becomes. With the deterioration of the practice of justice comes sickness of the city; rhetoric’s success is conditioned on that success being limited.

A more stinging concern for the rhetor is the critique Socrates suggests later at Gorgias

513a. The rhetor takes the audience’s desires as a manipulable means for achieving his owndesire to convince that audience of a particular belief. The rhetor therefore relies upon his audience’s desires. Though he may be able to manipulate these desires, and perhaps to a certain extent generate them, he nevertheless depends on them and their strength. The rhetor’s aim is distinct from what the audience desires, and if those desires conflict, it is not always the rhetor who will prevail. The more the rhetor feeds the license of the crowd’s desires, the more he endangers his own power over those desires.10

This last feature—rhetoric’s parasitic character—also explains why it fails to meet thestan- dards of a genuine art. Because it works by impersonation, it does not provide the principles for its own success. It may be able to generate pleasure routinely, but rhetoric cannot claim to understand the cause and reason for its own success. It cannot make this claim because the pleasure it generates depends on an antecedent notion of justice. Rhetoric can impersonate justice, but it

9. Given Socrates’s characterization, it is not surprising that recognition of the effect of rhetoric itself become a rhetorical trope; see Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens, 173 for a treatment of this rhetorical ploy. But even then, the recognition is negative. The rhetor says “Be wary of these rhetorical ploys (my opponent uses)!” but never, “I am now manipulating you with my rhetorical ploys.”

10. This may be why rhetoric is considered ἄλογος (465a). It is unable to provide an account of itselfnot because pleasure itself is indeterminate, but because the desires of the crowd are always potentially surprising if they are not guided by a genuine sense of justice. Self-interest in absence of a concern for the truth about one’s good (what Socrates calls a “common good” at 505e) will be unpredictable and protean to same extent that the “self” in self-interest is nigh infinitely malleable. 338 cannot understand justice. Rhetoric is inherently a subordinate practice that tries to supersede its subordination. Since it disrupts the proper order, it is wicked; since it disrupts order, it cannot claim order for itself.

The structure of rhetoric’s impersonation of the practice of justice thus accounts forits wickedness. The schema shows that rhetoric is wicked because its impersonation is invidious. Rhetoric intends not only to mimic justice, but by this mimicry also to supplant the practice of justice. It makes the arena of political persuasion into nothing more than a battlefield of conflicting forces. For rhetoric, the power of speech is not to see justice done, but toseepower gained and wielded. With this inverted image of the practice of justice, we are now prepared and compelled to consider more carefully the character of this practice.

The Practice of Justice and Rhetoric

With the structure of rhetoric’s impersonation fresh in mind, we may now turn to what it impersonates. I first consider some features of the practice of justice that are indicated byits function in the schema. Using the law-courts as the paradigmatic site of the practice of justice, I next articulate a dilemma that arises for the city regarding its practice of justice. I then show how this dilemma is a consequence of the city’s self-deceptive character and how rhetoric takes advantage of this character. As in the previous chapter, the city’s self-deception provides the conditions for the city’s complex relationship to rhetoric as well as to its own practice of justice.

The Genuine Art of the Practice of Justice

It must be emphasized straightaway that the genuine art of justice is a part of the political art and therefore is not restricted to the cultivation of a personal virtue. The schema itself demands this political dimension: δικαιοσύνη is a part of πολιτική; it is correlated to νομοθετική, which does not share its name with a traditional virtue; it is contrasted to rhetoric, which claims to work primarily on crowds in political fora. The sense of δικαιοσύνη as the counterpart to rhetoric may rely on the justice of the individual soul—indeed, Socrates later suggests that it re- 339 lies on and contributes to all the virtues of the individual soul (507a-c)—but its focal meaning is civic. The primary sense of justice here is the justice that belongs to the actions of thecitizen as citizen. Consequently, I have chosen to translate δικαιοσύνη with the phrase “the practice of justice” in order to emphasize its practical, political dimension.

What then is the political activity governed by this practice of justice? Generally, this activity consists in maintaining the city’s orderly functioning and rectifying that order when necessary. The schema suggests further features of this practice. The fact that the practiceis concerned with the soul suggests that the sense of justice here is corrective rather than distributive. This corrective sense is also supported by the fact that Socrates identifies the bodily correlate as medicine. The practice of justice under consideration is a practice that focuses on maintaining the good order of the city in light of new circumstances (the work of the assembly and the council) or on rectifying a deviation from that good order (the work of the courts and occasionally the work of the assembly). In both cases the practice of justice is put to work when the city must react to a need.11 The correlation with medicine suggests that the practice of justice is most clearly needed when the city requires correction. In this case, the practice of justice restores the city to the health that accompanies good order by publicly trying and punishing those who disrupt that good order.

On Socrates’s understanding, the good order of the city is a good order of the soul (479d; 480d-e), so the trial and punishment of a disordered soul is meant to return a good order to that soul and thereby to the city as a whole. This corrective function of the practice of justice is therefore also primarily rehabilitative. This rehabilitative function cannot be forsaken as long as it is possible; it is only when rehabilitation is impossible that the intended function of punishment be to deter.12

11. It may be possible to derive a basis for a distributive sense of justice from these features. At the very least, distributive justice would have to abide by the principle: “do no harm.”

12. See Gorgias 525b-c. The analogy to medicine helps us see a crucial difficulty facing a rehabilitative conception of punishment. A sick organ cannot be simply excised. The doctor must strike a balance when shecuts or cauterizes so that the local harm not outweigh the whole’s health. In treating the part, the doctor must keep in mind the whole and the part’s functioning in that whole. So also, the city must act against the part that disrupted its order, but it must also treat that part as a part of itself. The criminal was first a part of the city; it is therefore best, 340

In light of the issue of punishment, we can detect two goods at which the practice of justice aims: one is the good order of the city as constituted by the good order of the souls of its citizens; the other is the truth about where and how this order is disrupted and consequently the truth about what is or is not just in a given case. The pursuit of justice—or rather the potential failure of justice—always carries the threat of injustice. It is possible that a criminal is left free or an innocent man punished. But in order for there to be a practice of justice at all, it must be aware of and attempt to avoid such failures. The practice of justice thus must includethe activity of discerning when it is just or unjust to punish, and the health of the city depends on this discernment. Therefore, in order that the practice of justice achieve the good order ofthe city and of its citizens’ souls, truth must also be its aim. To recapitulate, the practice of justice meets the criteria of a genuine art. The practice of justice aims at what is best by restoring the city to good order or maintaining that order.

It also proceeds to that end not by guesses but by applying a rational principle. This guiding rational principle is a commitment to the truth of the matter. The practice of justice aims to assign punishment to those truly in need of punishment. Under the genuine art of justice, one’s guilt or innocence is the determining factor of whether one is found guilty or innocent. This truth about the injustice in a given person’s soul causes the assignation of guilt and the application punishment. The genuine art of justice discerns this cause and enacts what follows fromit.

As with the art of establishing the laws, the art of practicing justice is an ideal, one that is not fully met in the city’s activities but one that nevertheless guides those activities. The actual practice of justice in the city must assume this ideal, and I argue below that the city already does perform an aspect of this practice. But Socrates’s presentation of this genuine art makes a crucial modification by clarifying the relationship between this art and its counterfeit. Even rhetoric takes the genuine art of justice to be a necessary aim for the city, for it is precisely

if possible, to return him to that status. At this point, the practice of justice’s likeness to medicine breaks down. For the doctor is separate from the patient, but the city is, in a way, both agent and patient of its execution of justice. It is its own healer as well as what is healed. 341 this ideal that rhetoric imitates. Rhetoric’s attempt to mimic the execution of justice would gain no traction if the city’s citizens did not, in some way, desire justice. The genuine art of justice demands that rhetoric’s power to win be subordinated to the truth of when injustice occurs. Part of the genuine art of justice is to recognize rhetoric’s usurping aspirations. Consequently, the city’s actual practice of justice must become aware of this nature of rhetoric in order to better approximate the genuine art of justice. This awareness is necessarily limited, however, by the limitations of the city’s awareness of its own practice of justice.

A Dilemma for the Practice of Justice

In its attempt to approximate the ideal of justice, the actual practice of justice withinthe city confronts a dilemma. The dilemma consists in two opposing constraints. On the onehand, the city must aim at the ideal practice of justice whereby the authority to punish rests on the truth of the unjust person’s guilt. On the other hand, the city determines this truth only by the persuasion of a crowd that generates a belief without knowledge. By the first constraint, the city says that it does something it does not necessarily do, namely, convict only the truly just and acquit only the truly innocent. By the second constraint, the city necessarily does something it cannot say, namely, hang its authority on manipulable appearances. The city is unable to abandon either constraint.

The city cannot escape its reliance on appearances. The city claims it punishes onlythose who are unjust, but the city can actually punish only those who seem unjust. This reliance on appearance is the inverse of the political adequacy of appearance mentioned in the previous chapter. In the case of the political adequacy of appearance, it suffices to escape punishment ifa citizen appears just; in the case of the necessity of appearance, it is necessary that a citizen appear unjust in order to be punished. The one to be punished must be found guilty; he must seem to his fellow citizens to be guilty. The provenance of that seeming is ideally the truth about whether the one on trial is unjust or not, but it need not be. A sign that the seeming upon which punishment relies need not be a manifestation of truth is rhetoric’s ability to manipulate the jury’s estimation 342 of the case. But the power of manipulation wielded by rhetoric does not cause this deficiency of seeming; rhetoric merely takes advantage of this seeming.

Yet, the city also cannot forsake its aim at the truth. There are two reasons for this constraint: the city cannot claim to preserve one of its basic distinctions without assuming this ideal of justice, and the city may lose its claim to rationality without it. The latter reason is weaker, but it nevertheless may be argued that the city rests its rational authority, at least its rational authority to punish, on its attempt to achieve the ideal of justice. When the city claims that itseeks the truth and punishes on the basis of this truth, it provides a sufficient reason that its exercise of harm against one of its own members is neither sheer force nor properly harm. If the city adopts the ideal as its aim, then the punishment it levies is not sheer force because it is directed by the common action of judgment and toward the common good of rectifying injustice. Similarly, the punishment is not properly harm because the common good of rectifying disorder includes the good of healing the unjust man’s soul. In this case, the punishment follows rationally from the city’s laws and the subsumption of the individual case under that law. Without this aspiration to truth, then the city would have to provide another reason why its punishment is not merely an exercise of force by the many against the one or few.

Though there may be other ways to guarantee the rationality of the city’s exerciseof power, the city must aim at the ideal of justice if it is to retain its essential distinction between persuasion and force. If the city does not uphold the necessity of aiming for truth in its practice of justice, then its claim to rely on persuasion rather than force is either an open contradiction or a flagrant deception. If the city does not make the truth of what is just or unjust itsaimin its execution of justice, then the persuasion by which it determines the need for justice can be nothing but a manipulation of appearances. If the city admits that persuasion is nothing but a manipulation of appearances, then it can no longer make a distinction between persuasion and force. So if the city acknowledges that seeking truth plays no role in its execution of justice, then persuasion is never guided by the truth but only by power, and the city’s claim to operate by persuasion rather than force would necessarily ring hollow. If, then, the execution of justice 343 amounts to an exchange of power determined by nothing but the coincidence of power, it is no execution of justice after all. Even though the city’s practice of justice fails in crucial respects, it cannot fail to uphold the ideal without also undermining its actual functioning.

Consequently, in the city’s execution of justice, there arises an incongruity between principle and practice. As with the city’s attempt to instill a civic education in virtue, the discrepancy here is not simply saying one thing and doing another. Unless we grant immediate victory to rhetoric, it is still permissible to believe that the city not only claims to pursue truth in its law- courts but actually does care about punishing only the unjust. The incongruity is rather between the necessities imposed by the principle of seeking truth and by its application. Because it is possible for human beings to discern between truth and mere appearance, the city must uphold the principle that truth must be sought for the sake of justice. But, because it is not possible for human beings to discern truth except through appearance, the city must rely on appearance in order to dispense justice. Therefore, there is always a potential conflict between the city’s principle of justice and its practice of justice—a conflict which becomes actualized when human beings mistake mere appearance for a manifestation of truth.

Crucially, the city must characterize such conflicts, when they become apparent, as mistakes. The city not only must explicitly uphold the principle of truth in its execution ofjustice, but also must implicitly promise that this principle is met for the most part. Yet, it is not possible for the city to underwrite that promise. When mere appearance is mistaken for truth, this is not a mistake in the sense of a deviation. To be sure, what is intended is not achieved, but this failure is a permanent possibility. The city must claim that it always seeks truth and not mere appearance, but at the same time it can only rely on appearance without no guarantee that the appearance is of the truth. The city cannot openly acknowledge this reliance on appearance without suggesting that its principle of seeking truth is invalid. The connection between appearance and truth is too tenuous for the city to acknowledge. The city cannot afford to separate the appearances onthe grounds of which it deprives its members of privileges, property, and even life, from the truth 344 that legitimizes this punishment. This reliance on appearance in conjunction with the inability to acknowledge it is another manifestation of the self-deceptive character of the city.

Self-Deception and Rhetoric

The self-deceptive character of the city thus accounts for its stance towards thedilemma that faces its practice of justice. Furthermore, the self-deceptive character of the city explains rhetoric’s ability to interpose itself between the city’s aim and its execution of that aim. Because the city cannot fully acknowledge all the aspects of the dilemma, it cannot adequately defend itself against rhetoric’s manipulations. The next section will address some particular features of rhetoric’s manipulation; for now it is helpful to map the overture of rhetoric’s response to the city’s practice of justice. In general, rhetoric’s strategy is to insinuate itself in the distinction between what is true and what appears true. By positioning itself thus, rhetoric is able to imitate the practice of justice in such a way that its imitation undermines the efficacy of that practice. Rhetoric claims to dojust what the city does—use appearances—but does not presume to aim at truth in doing so. Accord- ingly, rhetoric not only assumes but moreover admits that persuasion is merely an exercise of power, namely, the power of those equipped with rhetoric over those not so equipped—audience and other speakers alike. Consequently, rhetoric presents punishment as another exercise of power, levied by the strong and suffered by the weak. Rhetoric promises the power to force pain on another and to protect oneself from suffering such pain at the hands of another. Bythese claims, rhetoric ultimately precludes the possibility of a common good and advertises itself to the individual as a tool to advance his own good.

In general, rhetoric’s ability to succeed depends on the power of speech to conceal as well as reveal. Rhetoric attempts to appropriate the political dimension of this power. It conceals the city’s complex relationship with its own practice of justice under the guise of revealing—at least to its practitioners—the whole truth behind the city’s practice of justice. Rhetoric promises to its practitioners the use of speech’s power to conceal and to reveal. The city, on the other 345 hand, demands the use of speech only to reveal and can acknowledge the power of speech to conceal only as a defect, not as an essential feature. For the city’s practice of justice, speech is supposed to uncover the truth of the matter, and it is therefore the power of the truth and not the speech that persuades.13 For rhetoric’s impersonation of that practice, the power of speech— the power both to conceal as well as reveal—is the only relevant power, the power that alone produces persuasion. Rhetoric’s impersonation is able to cling to the city’s practice of justice because persuasive speech, even for the city, is speech that constructs a convincing semblance of guilt or innocence.

As with sophistry, the imitative pseudo-art of rhetoric pretends that its success follows from some insight into the workings of the city. This insight is indeed a half-truth about the city, and it takes on the character of a secret because it is a half-truth that the city cannot acknowledge.

The secret that rhetoric shares with its practitioners is that appearance is the ultimate ground of the city’s exercise of power. Rhetoric then promises to do just what the city does, but more skillfully and therefore with greater success. The rhetor bases his skill and success on the premise that appearance is all that belongs to the city; it claims that even the city’s assumed principle of aiming at truth is a useful appearance. This move is flattering because if the city isbuilt entirely on seeming, then the entirety of the city is able to be manipulated by the one skilled at rhetoric. Rhetoric thus appropriates the truth that the city relies on appearance and totalizes it.

But because this reliance on appearance is one that the city cannot openly embrace, the city is unable to counter this totalizing move. Again, the city is unable to acknowledge this reliance on appearance without putting in danger the legitimacy of its exercise of power. Rhetoric exploits the city’s inability for its own advantage, suggesting that the city claims to pursue truth not because it actually does but because seeming to do so is necessary for its power. According to rhetoric, the city does not desire justice, but only that its own power prevail. Consequently, rhetoric claims

13. See Rocco, “Liberating Discourse: The Politics of Truth in Plato’s Gorgias,” 362–363 and 381, for an insightful treatment of contemporary resonances of this view, especially in Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the unforced force of the better argument. 346 to do better what the city already does, and the city is unable to gainsay this implication. Inthis way the city’s self-deceptive character makes it susceptible to rhetoric’s impersonation.

By rhetoric’s machinations, the city’s reliance on appearance becomes the whole truth about the city and the city’s pursuit of truth become a lie the city tells itself to keep its power.14 I take rhetoric to be right to say that the city is self-deceptive but wrong about the way in which the city is self-deceptive. Moreover, it is because the city is self-deceptive in the way I have described, that it cannot make the necessary distinctions about the way in which it actually is self-deceptive.

But this means that, although the self-deceptive character of the city accounts for its susceptibility to rhetoric, it also provides an opposing explanation for rhetoric’s efficacy. Rhetoric claims that it works so well because it has insight into how the city really works and how the city misrepresents itself to itself. My account explains why rhetoric works so well without granting this insight to rhetoric. If we understand the city to be self-deceptive in the way I have outlined, then it is possible to preserve the reality that the city claims for itself while also accounting for the way the city cannot be wholly honest with itself about itself. The reality that rhetoric threatens is the city’s desire for justice. It threatens this reality by pitting the city’s practice, which relies on appearance, against its principle, which seekstruth about the just or unjust matter at hand. Rhetoric suggests that if the city relies on appearance, then it cannot truly care about what is truly just. According to the political structure both assumed and effected by rhetoric, the city’s desire for justice is merely a semblance, which isitself manipulable. The problem at hand is that rhetoric’s threat to the city’s desire for justice isreal and dangerous. The danger of rhetoric is real either because rhetoric is correct about the city’s relationship to its practice of justice or because rhetoric merely seems correct. Under the first line of explanation, if rhetoric is correct about the city, then the city’s desire for justice is at best a self-deceptive smokescreen for its exercise of force and at worst a deceptive conspiracy—but

14. This is not to say that each rhetor explicitly promotes this or even consciously presumes it. Rather,my claim is about the necessary structure of political rhetoric that accounts for the claim that rhetoricians do make, such as the claim that they can enslave a number of others or they can escape punishment by their art. 347 either way, the city’s desire for justice has no share of truth. I deny this explanation and propose a different sense in which the city is self-deceptive. Under the second line of explanation, if rhetoric only seems to be correct about the city, then two questions must be answered. First, why is it that rhetoric seems correct? And second, why is this seeming so effective?

By understanding the city as inherently self-deceptive in the way I have outlined, we are able to answer these two questions. Rhetoric seems to be correct because the evidence it uses for its claim that the city does not truly care for justice is correct. The story rhetoric tells about the city is indeed partially accurate: the city does ultimately rely on appearances in its execution of justice. Rhetoric then uses this half-truth to lend likeliness to the rest of its story: that because the city does rely on appearances, it cannot genuinely care about the truth. But this inference is unnecessary. The city relies on appearance as a way of relying on the manifestation of truth. The city maintains that speeches are persuasive because they are true. The city merely asserts this claim. It cannot prove this claim—nor does it attempt to—because of its self-deceptive character, but this inability to be fully transparent to itself suffices to explain why rhetoric seems to be accurate. It is possible for the city both to rely on appearance and genuinely seek justice,

because the self-deceptive nature of the city allows it to intend the latter without acknowledging

the former. The self-deceptive character of the city also explains why rhetoric’s merely apparent

accuracy is so effective. The city cannot be in the business of deciphering seeming powerfrom

real power, for its own power relies on appearance. Consequently, even the mere appearance of power can be truly effective in the city.

In this way, the self-deception thesis offers an alternative explanation for rhetoric’s seem-

ing truth and its real power. The self-deceptive character of the city explains not only howthe

city is susceptible to the manipulations of rhetoric, but also how the city is able to resist these ma-

nipulations in some way. The next sections explore these two features of the city’s susceptibility and its resistance to rhetoric. 348

The City’s Susceptibility to Rhetoric

In this section I consider three particular features of the city’s susceptibility to rhetoric.

By susceptibility, I mean the ways in which rhetoric is able to take advantage of and pervert the practice of justice in the city. In order to examine these points of susceptibility, I elaborate on how these features appear from the perspective of rhetoric and the way in which rhetoric must treat them. First I consider what character persuasion assumes under the command of rhetoric.

Then I consider the what must be the case about punishment in the city if rhetoric view ofjustice holds. Finally I consider the implications of rhetoric’s approach to justice for the kind of good at which the city can aim.

Power and Persuasion

Before considering what rhetoric takes political persuasion to be, let us recall the function that persuasion serves in the city according to the city’s self-understanding. The city must keep a distinction between persuasion and force in order to safeguard its claim to specifically political power. Without the distinction between persuasion and force, the city cannot support its claim that it operates by a different kind of rule than sheer slavery. Under perfect persuasion, citizens are persuaded by citizens to pursue an action that serves a common good of the city, that is, a good shared by the citizenry. The persuader persuades the persuaded to pursue the common goodof their city, and the persuaded come to hold the belief they are persuaded of because they recognize the belief as truly contributing to that common good. The aim of the persuader is shared with the persuaded; power is not wielded by one over others but by many for all.

Of course, the city frequently fails to obtain this perfect form of persuasion. What is truly good for the citizenry in common is not always grasped or adequately communicated. Therefore, while is it simply the best for the city always to pursue the best end because its citizens come to believe (that is, are persuaded of) the truth that it is the best end, this simply best situation can only occur if the city preserves the conditions for the best end even in absence of the best end. In other words, the structure of persuasion’s efficacy must remain, even if it not used perfectly. The 349 structural possibility of perfect persuasion must remain, even if the enactment of that perfect persuasion remains forever only an aspiration. Otherwise the city faces only the extremes of perfection or dissolution. The efficacy of political persuasion, when deprived of the possibility of being oriented toward a common good, then becomes the power to bring about a given end by means of affecting the desires and consequently the actions of others. This deficient formof persuasion seems to escape immediately being characterized as force because the means of its power are men’s souls, beliefs, and desires, as opposed to threats of violence.

Though this deficient form of persuasion is a permanent possibility for the city, rhetoric makes this possibility into the central sense of persuasion. That is, rhetoric makes the deficient form the standard. In rhetoric’s hands, persuasion becomes only a sterile imitation of the city’s ideal, able to effect much but never the end for which it was meant. In this way rhetoric reduces persuasion to force. For rhetoric, the power that belongs to persuasion is the ability to bring about the persuader’s desired end by means of manipulating the beliefs and consequently the desires and actions of the persuaded. Rhetoric promises this power to its practitioner; it promises to the rhetor the power to win over the crowd. The rhetor achieves his end by presenting a belief in such a way that the audience wants to make it their own. The audience becomes convinced because some aspect of the belief the rhetor presents seems good enough to motivate action. The audience does what the rhetor desires because the audience members too, though perhaps for their own reasons, desire it. But the good that the rhetor presents has no essential connection to what genuinely benefits the audience. Consequently, the necessity of knowing or caring for the true good of the city never hampers the rhetor’s ability to present a compelling good. The rhetor’s purpose is strictly his own good.

Therefore there are two levels at which truth fails in rhetorical persuasion. Oneisat the level of the content of the conviction and the other it at the level of the orientation of the conviction. The content of the belief that the rhetor convinces the audience to adopt mayor may not be true. In other words, the audience is made to want something that may or may not be genuinely good, and they want it because it is presented as genuinely good. At the level of content 350 then, the piece of persuasion may be true but only coincidentally. At the level of orientation, the truth never obtains. The audience comes to want something because it is presented as genuinely good. This presentation is predicated upon the rhetor intending for the audience a genuine good.

But the rhetor ultimately intends his own good. Therefore the purpose of the persuasion that the rhetor presents never reveals and may intentionally obscure the rhetor’s true purpose. The rhetor need not always actively persuade against the good of the audience, noralways persuade solely for his own good, but he must always ultimately persuade for his own good even if it harms the audience. Since persuasion is the guarantor of rhetoric’s promise that the rhetor’s end will prevail, persuasion must always and essentially be poised to be a struggle for the rhetor’s good over any other. The rhetor’s presentation of a good for the audience may bea genuine good for the audience but only ever coincidentally. The rhetor’s presentation of a good for the audience is essentially a deception, not because the end result is never good but because the rhetor never intended the audience’s good. The rhetor is always ultimately deceiving the audience because he is always ultimately interested in his own good while he convinces the audience that he knows and wants for them their own good. The invariable priority of the rhetor’s good over the audience’s explains why rhetorical persuasion is a form of force.

The force at work in rhetorical persuasion is not exactly like the force to which Socrates alludes in his conversation with Polus, the force of a man pressing a knife to another (469d-e). In fact the dissimilarity is enough for rhetoric to maintain its imitation. The deception integral to rhetorical persuasion is nevertheless a form of force. The rhetor achieves his aim by exerting his strength over a corresponding weakness in his audience. The rhetor is able to prevail not because of a truth whose power can be shared by all but by a private power to be able to construct and use persuasive speeches. This strength of the rhetor, granted to him by his ability to deceive the audience, is what accounts for his success. The most effective rhetor will never give his audience occasion to become aware of the ways in which he is exerting power over them, but the audience will nevertheless submit to him. 351

Again, the problem that rhetoric poses to the city is that it presents its reductive understanding of persuasion as a form of force not simply as another possibility for persuasion, but as the essential character of persuasion. So the city’s self-understanding of persuasion, by rhetoric’s lights, amounts to merely untutored manipulations where both the manipulator and the manipulated are taken in. Hence, rhetoric claims not only to do what the city does but also to be far superior to the city. Again, rhetoric is right enough that the city needs persuasion. But the more rhetoric’s conception of persuasion prevails, the more persuasion acts like sheer power, and the more corroded becomes the kind of persuasion the city needs.

Pain and Punishment

One reason the city needs persuasion is to determine who deserves punishment. Rhetoric’s corrosion of persuasion extends to a perversion of punishment as well. I therefore now consider the specific case of the assignment and execution of punishment. This case is especially useful because this instance of the city’s practice of justice most looks like an exercise of sheer power and is therefore the point on which the city is most susceptible to rhetoric’s imitation. The case of punishment is where rhetoric’s conception of persuasion and justice will be most obvious and where its claim will be most plausible. Under the rhetor’s conception of persuasion, punishment is just another exercise of power. Indeed, the maximal cases of the rhetor’s power are to escape punishment (that is, to resist power used against him) and to punish others (that is, to use this power against others). The rhetor is most powerful when he is able to evade punishment thatis justly deserved or to impose punishment that is unjustly deserved.

In the case of the imposition of punishment, the one who seems guilty of injustice is forced to submit to violence at the hands of those who are convinced of the punished one’s apparent injustice. According to the rhetor, then, the weakness of the punished party is not his injustice (if indeed he was unjust) but his seeming to be unjust. That is, the weakness of the punished isthe inability to manipulate appearances sufficiently well. On account of this weakness, the punished one must submit to the power of the rhetor by way of the rhetor’s power over the jury. The 352 rhetor’s strength is rests on manipulating the strength of the jury—a manipulation which is all the more powerful if it transforms the actually innocent into the seemingly guilty. The rhetor’s strength finds one of its fullest expressions in forcing someone who is too weak to resist tosubmit to punishment. The weakness of the punished is thus inversely proportional to the strength of the rhetor. In the case of persuading the crowd to punish someone, the rhetor’s victory most clearly has a correlative loser: the one who is to be punished.

The rhetor’s skill in manipulating the medium of appearance is manifest not onlyindi- recting the punishment toward whomever he wishes but also in directing it away from himself.

Again, for the rhetor, punishment is only painful violence which must be avoided if possible—and such evasion is possible for the sufficiently skilled rhetor. The rhetor with sufficient rhetorical skill will be able to slip the clutches of any accusation, as long as there is a jury to be persuaded.

The rhetor’s strength is most fully at work when he is actually guilty of the accusation anddeserv- ing of punishment. Here the weakness is not embodied in the punished, but there is nevertheless a correlate weakness in the citizenry who must continue to live with unpunished injustice in their midst and with no recourse to rectify it.

On rhetoric’s view, punishment is pain that accompanies the weakness of being insuffi- ciently persuasive. This pain is, for the rhetor, the absolute thing to be avoided because itisthe sign of the worst failure of his particular power. The rhetor seems to be concerned with justice and injustice because he is actually concerned with avoiding or imposing pain. Just as the rhetor’s power has nothing to do with justice but rather with the appearance of justice, so also punishment has nothing to with injustice but rather with the appearance of injustice. Pleasure—at least the pleasure of prevailing—accompanies the strength of the rhetor’s power and pain accompanies the weakness of lacking it. Justice and injustice, or the appearance of them, are merely instruments to be used more or less well by whoever is trying to persuade the jury. For the rhetor, justice is just a clever appearance that his rhetoric allows him to be cleverer than. For rhetoric, dispensation of punishment is determined according to the division of the powerful and the weak, not along the lines of the truly deserving. 353

Along these lines, the central effect of punishment is to weaken the weak or strengthen the strong. If punishment is tantamount to weakening the weak, then it cannot serve the civic function it is meant to serve, namely, strengthening what was weak. Earlier we saw that the rhetor’s view of punishment is theoretically opposed to the the city’s conception of punishment on the grounds of the rhetor’s view of persuasion as a kind of force. Now we see that the func- tional consequence of the rhetor’s view also conflicts with the function the city presupposes and requires punishment to serve. For the city, punishment is meant to return the community to a state of health by rectifying a deviation from the laws of the city.15 Punishment is therefore not meant to weaken the weak, but to strengthen the weak—those made weak by their injustice and who thereby make their city weak. Punishment is meant to return the weak to a state of justice. Punishment causes this strengthening either for both the city and the one who does injustice by rehabilitating him, or for the city alone by deterring future unjust actions.

While rhetoric divides the punishers and the punished into the strong and the weak, the city must understand itself to be both the healer and the healed. Punishment is meant to be the city’s self-healing. When the city punishes, it is both weak and strong—weak in that its laws are broken and broken by one of its own, and strong in that it must set aright its own weakness.

Even though the city punishes in order to strengthen and even though the weakness it punishes is the weakness of injustice, it must be acknowledged that the city nonetheless punishes weakness.

This truth is the one twisted by rhetoric’s subversion. Rhetoric’s approach to punishment looks true and is effective because the city’s exercise of punishment is determined by weakness—but rhetoric misrepresents the source of that weakness.

Individual Good and Common Good

Rhetoric’s dichotomy between the punisher and punished as the strong and the weak, as well as rhetoric’s conception of persuasion as force presupposes a certain conception of the city

15. Under the genuine art of justice, this rectification is essentially for the sake of rehabilitation, rather than retribution or deterrence. This lattermost is consider a second best if the punished one is beyond rehabilitation. 354 itself and of the kind of good it promotes. According to this conception, the only real good is the discrete good of the individual. Consequently, the city’s claimed commitment to a common good is and must be treated as another manipulable appearance—perhaps the most potent appearance but an appearance nonetheless. From rhetoric’s perspective, the city is an aggregate of individual desires for individual goods that can be manipulated to coincide, with greater or less skill and therefore with greater or less success. On rhetoric’s model, when persuading a crowd the non- rhetor is not doing something essentially different from the rhetor. The non-rhetor doesthe same thing as the rhetor, namely, causing his desire to prevail, only he does so with less skill and perhaps less self-awareness.

Rhetoric presupposes that the only relevant good is the individual good because the benefit for which rhetoric essentially aims is the benefit of the rhetor. The rhetor’s goodmustin principle be distinct from and therefore not shared with the audience’s good. The audience’s good, or at least the rhetor’s presentation of it, is merely a means for the rhetor’s end. He convinces by flattery, and he flatters by promising to the audience a vivid and appealing good.In this way, rhetoric can look compatible with the city’s supposed commitment to the common good because, if the rhetor is successful, he convinces the audience that he is offering them their own good. Again the rhetor’s skill partially depends on recognizing that this presentation of the audience’s good is crucial for his success. His goal is not the audience’s good but is served by presenting this good. Even if the good he presents is a common good—justice, for example—insofar as he presents a flattering image of it, this good can amount to nothing more than pleasure.

It is not for the sake of the beauty of justice that the audience is persuaded to pursue justice, but rather it is for the sake of the pleasure of seeing themselves as beautiful in their justice. Again, it is possible that these ends coincide: the result of rhetorical persuasion can be just; but it is necessary that these ends are not identical: the persuasion aims at the pleasure that may or may not attend but is always distinct from the genuinely beneficial.

As an illustration of this, let us reconsider Socrates’s limiting case of rhetoric’s power.

At the close of his conversation with Polus, Socrates describes a rhetoric that would seek the 355 genuinely beneficial. This rhetoric would be used to convince someone who has committedan injustice to seek the just penalty. The absurdity of this use of rhetoric is enough to prompt

Callicles to interject—but what is the source of the absurdity? It is absurd for rhetoric as the

(pseudo-)craft of Gorgias and Polus to pursue this sort of benefit because it is a benefit without an attendant flattering pleasure. Socrates describes the desire for a just penalty as comparableto someone seeking a doctor to heal his illness. From the perspective of rhetoric, however, this case importantly differs from the case Gorgias cites as evidence for the salutary effect of rhetoric.Gor- gias describes a scenario in which he convinces a reluctant patient to submit to a painful medical procedure (456b). Presumably he does so by making the good of a longer, healthier life appear more appealing than the good of escaping the imminent pain of the procedure. But the analogue to this longer, healthier life is not available in the case of the unjust man. For the unjust man is supposed to be on the verge of getting away with his injustice—that is why some persuasive speech is needed to convince him to seek the just penalty. By the lights of rhetoric, there is no more appealing good that rhetoric can present to the man than to escape punishment. Because the only supposed good to which rhetoric can appeal is the pleasant, there is no good that the rhetorician can use to convince the man to submit to just punishment. The unjust, unpunished man already possesses the highest good to which rhetoric can appeal—the pleasure of the fruits of his injustice without the threat of the pain of punishment.

The only end that rhetoric can assume—either for the audience or for the rhetor himself— is pleasure. Consequently, rhetoric can never promote a common good qua common, for pleasure cannot be shared in common. For rhetoric, a common good cannot be a real good. Consequently, a rhetoric that pursues a common good will be absurd. Rhetoric’s understanding of persuasion and punishment presupposes the impossibility of a common good. This presupposition sets a practical impediment to the ability of the city’s common good to prompt action. Persuasion as force assumes that the city is primarily a place for prevailing desires not a place of common endeavor. If persuasion as force becomes the primary form of political persuasion, then the consequent failure for political persuasion to achieve a common good becomes evidence for the 356 absurdity of a common good. Likewise, to understand punishment as the strength of some prevailing over the weakness of another is to assume that injustice is not a common concern and its rectification is not a common healing. On this understanding, injustice is the occasionfor the oppression of the weak and the success of the strong. Punishment, in turn, is not a return to a healthy whole but an instrument for delight in domination. If punishment as domination becomes the primary understanding of punishment, then its failure to restore a common good becomes evidence for the absurdity of that common good.

By subverting the city’s practice of justice away from a common good and towards individual goods, rhetoric projects its own inability to aim at a common good as a problem with the coherence of a common good. This projection is based on rhetoric’s assumption that citizens cannot truly desire anything but their own benefit. It is on this point of what the citizenry can truly desire that the city resists rhetoric’s subversion. For even as rhetoric assumes the exclusive reality of the individual good, rhetoric itself is constrained by the power to move individuals that the common good possesses—even the appearance a common good.

The City’s Resistance to Rhetoric

I have argued that the self-deceptive character of the city accounts for the city’s susceptibility to the manipulations of rhetoric; in this section I argue that this self-deceptive character also helps situate and explain the city’s resistance to rhetoric. First I establish the character of the city’s resistance to rhetoric. The city resists rhetoric’s appropriation of its practice of justice insofar as the practice provides the necessary conditions for that efficacy. In other words, in order for rhetoric’s lies about justice to work, the city must—at least in some way—be genuinely devoted to pursuing justice. This mode of resistance raises a dilemma for rhetoric. Rhetoric cannot deny but also cannot explain why the city cannot be manipulated out of the desire for justice. The only possible explanation it can offer is one that entails its own ruin. Yet, this untenable position for rhetoric does not result in its collapse. Consequently, the city’s resistance to rhetoric must be maintained; even though it belongs to the character of the city to resist rhetoric, this character 357 needs to be continually cultivated. Finally, then, I consider implications for the city’s practice of justice given the city’s self-deceptive character as well as the indelible character of rhetoric.

The Indomitable Desire for Justice

I discussed above one limiting case for rhetoric’s power, namely, that it is absurd for rhetoric to convince someone to submit himself to a just penalty. This is absurd for rhetoric because the notion of justice at work in this case is one whose legitimacy rhetoric cannot acknowledge. Indeed, in order to preserve itself from absurdity, rhetoric must locate the absurdity of the case in the notion of justice. This notion of justice takes the just penalty as the onlyway to heal the harm of injustice. On this understanding, injustice is not a exercise of power that yields pleasure for the agent and pain for the patient. Rather, injustice is more harmful for the agent than for the patient. Likewise, the just penalty in the example is not an exercise of power that strengthens the agent and weakens the patient. Rather, the patient is strengthened by the punishment precisely because it restores justice. Given my characterization of rhetoric, it is clear that this notion of justice and injustice is not one rhetoric can assume. But, I argue now, this notion of justice is also not one that rhetoric can outright defeat.

Rhetoric cannot outright defeat this notion of justice because this notion is the one that the city must uphold as its ideal. The city must promote a sense of justice according towhich injustice should never be done, even if by doing so one escapes suffering injustice.16 Whatever may be the particular details of the city’s notion of justice, justice must be that which is to be done and injustice must be that which is not to be done. The city must maintain this exemplary sense of justice by which committing injustice is the worse option. It is therefore in terms of justice that the city makes its claims of order; the city organizes itself through claims of what should be done and what should not. Justice thus supports and in part constitutes the city’s common good.

16. Admittedly, the city does not need to follow through in practice all that is entailed by theclaimthatit is worse to do injustice. The city can accommodate exceptions in exceptional cases—but it is crucial that thesecases be noted as exceptions. 358

This sense of justice is clearly not reducible to pleasure or to a strictly individual benefit. Even if one submits to the just penalty for the health of his own soul, the restored justice of his soul is commonly enjoyed by his fellow citizens. The exemplary sense of justice in the city is justice understood as a common good.

As noted earlier, the city is imperfect in its pursuit of this justice. Despite this imperfection, the city must retain and promote an ideal of justice. Rhetoric, too, is bound by this necessity, at least by the necessity of seeming to retain and promote an ideal of justice. Even though rhetoric seems to be miraculously powerful,17 the city is nevertheless not entirely subject to its whims.

For rhetoric cannot entirely eschew the appearance of justice. It cannot too openly denounce the validity of justice. It may be able to use the force of the desire for justice towards its own ends, but it cannot declare that justice does not matter. It may be able to manipulate the appearance of justice such that it can convince an audience to do something unjust, but it cannot convince them to do it as unjust.

The appearances rhetoric uses, the appearance of justice among them, are not endlessly manipulable. There is a fixed constraint to rhetoric’s manipulations: it must seem toaimat justice. To be sure, rhetoric can operate within this constraint with shocking efficacy—many an unjust man may go free and many an innocent man be convicted by rhetoric’s machinations—but it cannot altogether overcome this constraint. Rhetoric must manipulate appearances so that the rhetor’s desideratum appears just, because the audience cannot be manipulated out of its desire for justice. Rhetoric must use the indomitable desire for justice because it cannot unseat that desire itself.

Perhaps this constraint on rhetoric is most obvious on the point of shame. As Christina

Tarnopolsky has argued, the rhetorician’s ability to flatter depends on his sensitivity to hisau- dience’s sense of shame.18 In flattering, the rhetorician must be careful not to violate whatever

17. See Gorgias 456a

18. Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 105-106. I have found Tarnopolsky an astute analyst of the structure of shame and have benefited from her insights on this phenomenon. 359 barriers to shame his audience has erected. The audience will not be convinced if they detect something shameful in what the rhetorician tries to convince them to do. He may be able to convince them to do something shameful, but only by convincing them that it is nothing ugly after all.19 The sense of shame on which rhetoric trades is, as Tarnopolsky deftly indicates, theone that arises from the painful recognition of disapproval, not the recognition of the source of that disapproval in one’s own inadequacy. That is, this sense of shame prompts one to avoid thepain that comes with disapproval, not necessarily to avoid the actions that are worthy of disapproval.20

So the rhetorician is able to convince an audience to commit a shameful action because he has made them seem to themselves to be doing nothing shameful in that action. He has given them a view of themselves that shields them from what Tarnopolsky calls “the gaze” of a disapproving other.21

Yet the audience’s sense of shame, of which rhetoric must be keenly aware, is developed within a context of actions worthy of disapproval and reproof. The rhetorician may be able to manipulate the affective dimension of a shameful action, but he cannot much manipulate—at least in the moment of his speech—those standards by which shameful actions are in the first place determined. Both the rhetorician and the audience operate within an antecedent framework of shamefulness and nobility, of shared justice and divisive injustice. This framework provides an ideal of citizenship and an ideal of justice by which the audience measures what is shameful. This antecedent framework is not imported from an external source of authority but is integral to the the audience’s conception of their own authority. Consequently, the gaze of a disapproving other that directs the audience’s sense of shame is in the first place an “internalized other.”22 The critic

19. Here I think I come near what Benardete, Socrates and Plato: The Dialetics of Eros, 47, might mean when he claims that “Rhetoric confuses the just for the beautiful.” Again, I demur from confidence because this typically oracular mot is nigh impenetrable.

20. See Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 106.

21. ibid., 102, 105.

22. ibid., 112-113. 360 that the rhetorician must be most on guard against is not an external, authoritarian figure but is instead the very same group of citizens of which the audience member is a part. The relevant potential source of shame is the audience member imagining what it would be like to be on trial before the very body to which he is currently contributing.

This sense of shame is crucial for the rhetorician as he relates to his audience, butitisalso crucial for the rhetorician as he relates to his own craft. As dramatically demonstrated with the characters Gorgias and Polus, the rhetorician must be careful not only about the sense of shame his audience may have about their own actions but also about the backlash if he is unsuccessful in convincing them that the shameful is noble. In my interpretation of Socrates’s conversations with these two rhetoricians I noted that each one’s sense of shame was responsive to the political context in which he uses his rhetoric. I will briefly rehearse those accounts now.

Gorgias was shamed into admitting that he teaches justice. Here, Gorgias does not feel shame himself; rather, he acts out of an anticipation of his audience’s sense of shame. Although

Polus thus takes Socrates to have used the threat of a shameful response to force Gorgias, it is not clear that Polus fully understands what is the sense of shame that actually motivates Gorgias.

Gorgias claims to teach justice not from a personal pride that would have been wounded by an admission of ignorance—it was generally known that Gorgias did not make claims to teach virtue!

Rather, Gorgias makes a claim that clearly conflicts with his well-known and peculiar reputation out of concern for retaliation against peddling an all-powerful political craft that cares nothing for justice. It is not the possible pain of wounded pride but the far more urgent possible pain of being run out of the city that motivates Gorgias. The threat of being run out of the city is especially relevant for the rhetorician, beyond the bodily discomfort. For rhetoric can only work within the context of a city.23 As much as Gorgias may believe persuasion to be equivalent to force, he

23. In light of this context, Gorgias’s concern for his personal safety does not limit Socrates’s refutation to him personally (as Kahn, “Plato on the Unity of the Virtues,” 84, explicitly claims and as Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, 36-39 implicitly assumes), but the refutation does indeed reveal something of the nature of rhetoric. 361 needs his audience to believe that they are persuaded and not forced, and for that condition he must rely upon the city.

The point on which Polus is shamed is less easy to detect. According to Callicles, Polus was shamed into claiming that it is uglier to do than to suffer injustice. According to my interpretation of Socrates’s conversation with Polus, Polus did not contradict himself by making this point. Nor is there any indication in the action of the dialogue that on this point Polus suffers from the affective dimension of shame—he does not hedge this claim nor accede to it reluctantly.

Just as Polus had accurately detected shame in Gorgias but misapprehended its source, so too

Callicles is partially correct and partially incorrect about Polus’s shame. I argued in chapter two that Polus’s claim about the greater ugliness of committing injustice is so easily granted because it complements the vision of justice he and rhetoric assume. If it is the case that it is better to do injustice, then the rhetorician would be at a loss to account for why cities condemn and punish injustice. Therefore, since he affirms the consequent but denies the antecedent, he must devisean- other reason why injustice is hounded with denunciation. Ugliness is that reason. Furthermore, the perception of this ugliness belongs to the agent of the unjust act; there is no equivocation about the perspective of the ugliness.24 Again, this is entirely coherent with Polus’s view, for if the one who committed the unjust act did not recognize that his act would be denounced and reviled, then he would not try to use rhetoric to escape his penalty.

Shame is the undoing of Polus, but not by prompting him to make the claim about the ugliness of doing injustice; rather shame is the undoing of Polus by prompting him to defend the rationality of rhetoric in the first place. Polus’s vision of his supposed craft is threatened by the tension between rhetoric’s power and its rationality, a tension initially that came out in

Socrates’s conversation with Gorgias. If Polus is unable to square the power rhetoric has to flout justice with some reason for doing so, then he can give no account of his own tyrannical impulses. Polus rationalizes his rhetorico-tyrannical impulses not as just, but as what everyone would do

24. Contra Vlastos, “Was Polus Refuted?” and Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, 69-73. 362 if they but had the power. If rhetoric is not itself rational, that is, if it does not serve a beneficial end in such a way that its success is regular, then there is no stable power by which to explain the supposed success of those so-called happy few who can lead a tyrannical life. For Polus, the power of rhetoric or tyranny suffices to explain its unjust use. Consequently, rhetoric both depends on and debilitates a genuine desire for justice. As with Gorgias, Polus’s conception of rhetoric and its efficacy is informed and tempered by the context of a city that cares for justice.

I raise these points about shame because in the rhetoricians’ shame we can discern how the city resists rhetoric’s power. The desire for justice, although manipulable, is never abletobe fully uprooted. Gorgias is forced to claim to have as much knowledge as he does power because of the force the desire for justice has among the people over whom rhetoric presumably has power. Polus is compelled to defend the rationality of rhetoric according to the reason of the city precisely because he cannot tyrannically act on his tryannical impulses. In other words,

Polus cannot simply suppress the desire for justice. Despite rhetoric’s presumption to power, the possibility of this power presumes a context of constraint: rhetoric’s power must answer to a prior desire for justice.

A Dilemma for Rhetoric

The city’s resistance to rhetoric poses a dilemma for rhetoric. Earlier this chapter Idis- cussed a dilemma for the city regarding its practice of justice. In sum, the city must both uphold the ideal of truth but nevertheless rely on potentially misleading appearances as the ground for the determination of justice. Rhetoric responds to the dilemma by abandoning the former horn.

Consequently, rhetoric supposes the city’s ideal of truth to be merely an appearance, and the conflict between the city’s ideal and its practice is due to the assumption of an absurd ideal.Ihave used the thesis that the city is inherently self-deceptive to show that the dilemma can stand without implying that the ideal of justice is absurd. Instead of forcing a decision between a city with no ideals and a city with only ideals and no deficient practices, the self-deception thesis expects and accounts for this conflict within the city’s self-representation. The city must present itself 363 to itself as pursuing the ideal; it cannot acknowledge how it fails to achieve that ideal without inviting a far worse failure. According to the self-deception thesis, to demand fully transparent consistency from the city is to misunderstand or ignore its nature. As a consequence, the deficient practice can be explained without condemning either the ideal itself or the city’s pursuit of it as absurd. In this way understanding the city as inherently self-deceptive accounts for the efficacy of rhetoric without granting its assumptions. The self-deception thesis explains why rhetoric canbe effective even if its power is illusory, even if the city’s common good is real. Rhetoric, however, cannot run a similar explanation. That is, rhetoric cannot explain why the appearance ofthe common good can be effective despite its illusory status. In the previous section I demonstrated that rhetoric cannot deny the efficacy of (the appearance of) the common good. So now rhetoric faces its own dilemma: rhetoric is the master of appearances and yet cannot master the power of the appearance of the common good. In what follows I will develop two responses to this dilemma and show that neither are satisfactory to rhetoric. I thereby demonstrate that rhetoric is self-defeating if its understanding of the city stands; I take this to be good reason not to entertain the validity of rhetoric’s characterization of the city.

Rhetoric’s response to this dilemma must find a way of avoiding the following argument:

If the common good is strictly illusory, then rhetoric should be able to manipulate that illusion.

Rhetoric is not able to manipulate that illusion entirely. Therefore, the common good is not strictly illusory. If, on the other hand, it is true that the common good is not strictly illusory, it follows that rhetoric must recognize a limit to its power. Moreover, rhetoric must then acknowledge that any continued trafficking in mere appearances is tantamount to undermining the city’s common good, which good it now acknowledges as valid. Rhetoric cannot admit that the common good is true without endangering its entire practice. Therefore, rhetoric must find a way to disrupt the argument; it must find a different way of explaining why it is not able to manipulate the illusion of the common good entirely. 364

Just such a disruption is found in Callicles’s interruption of Socrates’s conversation with Polus. The Calliclean response is to claim that though the city’s common good is strictly illusory, there are other features of the city that account for the efficacy of this illusion. Callicles imag- ines a conspiracy of deception perpetrated by the collective weak wherein the common good is an illusion that is systematically shored up as real. This deception is weaved from the beginning througout the citizenry. Rhetoric cannot convince the citizenry to give up their desire for justice as such because this desire has been intentionally engineered to resist the very appeal to individual power that rhetoric promotes. Consequently, on the Calliclean model, rhetoric is not able to manipulate fully the illusion of the city’s common good because the game is rigged against rhetoric from the beginning. The Callicles move denies that the limit of rhetoric’s power is due to the fact that it treats falsely what is true, that is, because it treats the real common good as illusory. Instead, the Callicles move asserts that rhetoric’s power is limited because rhetoric treats truly what is pervasively, intentionally false, that is, it recognizes as illusion what has been promulgated as real. But Callicles’s response carries its own difficulties. As Socrates shows in his conversation with Callicles, this view is self-defeating. As an aspiring politician, Callicles’s vision of the city is self-defeating because it destroys the very association that he aspires for dominion over. If the rhetor is to gain power for himself in the city, he must subject himself to the whims of the city. He must flatter the audience he seeks to sway and he must thereupon sacrifice the very strengthhe attempts to wield. Given Callicles’s understanding of the city, the only kind of power therhetor can gain in the city carries the price of sacrificing the power he most desires. If Callicles is correct about the illusory nature of the city’s common good, then the only way he can pursue a political life is by promoting that illusion too. More generally, the Calliclean position is a self-defeating one for rhetoric to assume. Say the rhetor assumes the Calliclean response to the supposed nobility of the self-sacrificing soldier, claiming that here is no beauty but only the folly ofsomeone stupid enough to think the city’s common good is real enough to die for. If the rhetor causes the

Calliclean position to prevail, then there would be no soldiers to preserve the city. Suppose the 365 rhetor voices the Calliclean response to the supposed justice of punishing the unjust, claiming that there is no desire to see truth prevail but only a malicious flexing of unfounded strength that dresses itself up as order even as it undermines the natural order. If the rhetor is persuasive in promoting this position, then there would be no order at all. If rhetoric’s conception of the city becomes the reality of the city, then the city cannot be; and if the city cannot be, then neither can rhetoric.

I had previously argued that we need not take rhetoric’s characterization of the city as accurate, offering the self-deception thesis as Plato’s alternate explanation for the same phenomena rhetoric purports to explain. Here I have argued that we not only need not but should not,

on pains of a performative contradiction, take rhetoric’s characterization of the city as accurate: if rhetoric prevails, then it defeats itself.

Self-Deception and Genuine Justice

Rhetoric is self-defeating only as it gains greater and greater success. If rhetoric’s con-

ception of the city were to become the city’s conception of itself, then the city and rhetoric along with it would collapse. So the city’s resistance to rhetoric allows rhetoric to maintain a sort

of equilibrium. The city’s resistance to the success of rhetoric is what keeps that success from

expanding into self-defeat. Still, this reflection on the city’s resilience should not be takento

warrant complacency. Rhetoric’s power may be curtailed by the citizens’ desire for justice, but

there is still much room for damage to the citizens’ understanding of justice. Consequently, a genuine practice of justice would be one that both recognizes the unique threat rhetoric poses

and addresses that threat.

This genuine practice of justice must work within the constraints of the city itself.A

doctor might wish, as she cauterizes a wound, that the human body be invincible, but her craft nevertheless consists in cauterizing the wound. Similarly, someone who truly desires justice,

that is, who desires true justice, may dream of a political community which is not susceptible to

the counterfeits of justice. Nevertheless, the city in need of restored and strengthened justice is 366 exactly the kind to falter in its pursuit of justice. The true practice of justice is not the sameas the ideal practice of justice, or rather, not the same as the practice of justice in the ideal city. The ideal city would require no rectification because no deviation would occur.

The true practice of justice must be grounded in the truth about the city. Ifmyargu- ments about the self-deceptive nature of the city hold, then the city is irrevocably susceptible to rhetoric’s appropriation and subsequent subversion of its best and most necessary principles. The true practice of justice in the city cannot eradicate rhetoric. Instead, the true practice of justice must strengthen what rhetoric makes weak and turn back to the good what had been warped toward pleasure. In order to protect the city’s principles, most relevantly the role of truth in the city’s administration of justice, the genuine art of justice must be sensitive not only to the fact of rhetoric’s danger but also to the way in which rhetoric operates.

Socrates’s own practice of justice meets these conditions. He endeavors to turn speech towards the best—in his case, not by proposing particular political plans or by bringing charges against particular people, but rather by cross-examining rhetoric itself. This task, as it unfolds in his conversations with Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles, both reveals the peculiar danger rhetoric poses to the city and strengthens the truth-seeking power of speech. Socrates recovers, against the insinuations of rhetoric, the power that speech has to attend to and pursue truth. By prompting self-reflection among the surrounding Athenian audience, Socrates provokes his fellow Athe- nians to consider their own desire for truth even as they are shown the ways rhetoric manipulates that desire. Socrates’s politics provides for a kind of speech both aimed at truth and reinforced against the appropriations of rhetoric.

To reiterate, Socrates aims to persuade, but he is not engaged in instructive persuasion.

Recall that in his conversation with Gorgias, Socrates suggests that there are two kinds of persuasion: instructive persuasion generates belief by bringing about knowledge of the matter believed; the other kind of persuasion generates belief without bringing about knowledge. Socrates does not persuade the Athenian audience by teaching them a single and true conception of justice, which is impervious to threats by rhetoric. Instead, he tacitly retains the notion of justice that 367 the city already assumes. But he does indicate a way of persuading and of being persuaded that, while not accompanied by knowledge, nevertheless is not satisfied with an assumed adequacy of mere appearance. This way of persuading and being persuaded is one that reflectively retains the desire for truth and is on guard against the manipulation of that desire. In this way he makes room for a kind of political speech that is not merely power levied in a zero-sum struggle for dominance. There can be a political speech that persuades because the persuader and/or the persuaded care primarily for the further end of benefit for the city as a whole.

This understanding of persuasion and the speech that brings it about is Socrates’s “true rhetoric” (517a). In the process of demoting Gorgian rhetoric, Socrates elevates a rhetoric that serves a properly subordinate role. This true rhetoric derives its truthfulness from its instrumental relationship to the genuine practice of justice. Insofar as it is governed by genuine politics, this political rhetoric aims at making the citizens better—instead of making them better ableto achieve what they are made to believe is their individual good. Therefore, this rhetoric cannot be a modified version of Gorgian rhetoric; it has fundamentally different ends.25 This rhetoric subordinates the aim to prevail to the aim of preserving justice, and it accepts the limitations to its power that follows. The superiority of this rhetoric derives from its service to a higher end, not its success. Indeed Socrates candidly admits that it does not always succeed—as it did not in his own trial.

As with civic education so also with true rhetoric: Socrates’s genuine politics is not meant to be a wholesale substitute for extant politics. Socrates does not aim to reform or replace the structures of political deliberation or the structures of the law courts. He does not advocate for a systematic restructuring of the mechanics of Athenian politics—he does not even directly criticize these mechanics. Instead he offers the Athenians a model of truth-seeking speech and

25. Contra Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias, Buzzetti, “The Injustice of Callicles and the Limits of Socrates’s Ability to Educate a Young Politician,” Weiss, “Oh, Brother! The Fraternity of Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Gorgias,” Carone, “Socratic Rhetoric in the Gorgias” and Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus. I agree with Rocco, “Liberating Discourse: The Politics of Truth in Plato’s Gorgias” that the tension between the rhetoric Socrates performs and the rhetoric Gorgias promulgates defies closure. 368 a way of being persuaded that considers in the first and last place the common good of the city. This genuine rhetoric cannot be a panacea, but it can protect against the most insidious aspectsof

Gorgian rhetoric; it cannot guarantee that justice will in each instance prevail, but it can prevent the desire for justice from being debased into a desire for individual advancement. Chapter 6

The City & Philosophy

At the ends of both the Protagoras and the Gorgias, their beginnings are evoked. At the end of the Protagoras, with an allusion to forethought still hanging in the air, Socrates leaves his conversation with Protagoras to enter into the conversation that began the dialogue. At the end of the Gorgias, Socrates describes the judgments that await him because of his continual struggle for the souls of the Athenian citizenry—the battle that the first words of the dialogue portend and that Socrates has just fought. Accordingly, as readers of Plato, we are supposed to be continual readers: always looking backward and forward at the same time, always striving to see the whole at play in the parts. Even for a work that falls far short of Plato’s genius, there is some worth in recalling the beginning at the end, not least in the opportunity for the unfolded whole to come into view precisely as a whole. Constructing this kind of opportunity is the task of the present and concluding chapter. To that end, my first aim is to restate with clarity and force the shape of the whole argument that has been sustained over the previous chapters. Then my second aim is to draw out the range of implications this whole suggests for politics, for political philosophy, and for readers of Plato.

The Central Claim & Planes of Consideration

The central claim of this dissertation is that Plato’s treatment of sophistry inthe Protago- ras and of rhetoric in the Gorgias reveals a conception of the city as inherently self-deceptive.

There are two interdependent planes of consideration involved in this claim. One is the meaning and cogency of the self-deception thesis; the other is the textual basis for the thesis. Only so much clarity on the relationship between these two planes was possible until they were both sufficiently developed. The detailed exegesis of chapters one and two served to reveal anddeepen the conceptions of sophistry, rhetoric, and their relationship to the city. These conceptions in turn allowed the self-deceptive nature of the city to come to light. Because the exegesis devel-

369 370 oped a problem that the self-deception thesis is meant to address, there was little direct mention of the self-deceptive nature of the city in those treatments of the dialogues. Chapters three, four, and five were intended to establish the sense in which the city is self-deceptive and demonstrate the explanatory power of the self-deception thesis with respect to the efficacy of sophistry and rhetoric in the city. The conceptions of sophistry and rhetoric used in these chapters were the ones derived from the exegesis of the previous chapters. These two halves of the dissertation are therefore mutually informing; that is, exegetical commitments constrain philosophical reflection and philosophical reflection directs exegesis.

At this point, then, two stock-taking questions arise: Is the conception of the city as self- deceptive cogent? and How does Plato convey this conception within these two dialogues? These questions neatly divide into the philosophical and the exegetical. When asking these questions, the two planes retain clearer distinctness, but answering these questions inevitably involve their interdependence. On the one hand, a principle of charitable interpretation would seem to demand that I not ascribe to Plato a view that is internally incoherent or manifestly false—or do so only as a last resort. Consequently my interpretation should present cogent arguments. On the other hand, on pain of putting my words into Plato’s pen, any position that I claim is disclosedby the dialogues must have a foundation in the dialogues. Consequently, the cogency of any thesis would ring hollow without a rigorous grounding in the text. Balancing these two commitments is required. If I were to limit myself to what can be derived immediately or nearly immediately from what is said within the dialogues, then I would purchase safety for my exegesis at the price of diffidence in my philosophical reflection. Both fidelity to the text and tenacity in reflectionis needed.

It may be objected, however, that I have not asked whether Plato actually intends to convey this conception of the city in these two dialogues. This objection is difficult to answer because it asks about a difficult point. As noted already, Plato’s intentions are obscured by his creations even as they are revealed by his creations. Nevertheless, I respond to the objection by offering this dissertation as a whole; this work is an attempt to ask and answer that very question. Itake 371 as the metric for what counts as a convincing answer to this question to be the extent to which my interpretations of the dialogues are satisfactory and the thesis I develop from them is compelling.

What does Plato intend by these dialogues? The only means of answering this question is sound philosophical reflection on careful readings of the dialogues, which is what I offer here.

Before continuing, I will note—I believe it to be a note in my favor—that I do not claim exclusivity for my interpretation. I do not claim to have the singular and definitive answer to the question of what Plato intends by these dialogues. According to my approach to Platonic dialogues, the strength of other interpretations pose no threat to the validity of my interpretation.

For example, I believe Robert Bartlett’s interpretation of the Protagoras to be well crafted and insightful, especially regarding the role piety does (or does not) play in Protagoras’s teaching.1 I take the different emphases and angles of Bartlett’s interpretation to enrich my understanding of the dialogue rather than diminish my interpretation of it. Likewise, Seth Benardete’s interpretation of the Gorgias offers a very different approach to that dialogue than the one I assumed.2

Much to the benefit of his readers, he pairs the Gorgias with the Phaedrus, but such a pairing will inevitably draw out different tones from these dialogues. That Plato’s dialogues can support a manifold of non-exclusive interpretations is warranted by the (at times maddening) obscurity of

Plato’s intentions and the unquestionable complexity of his writing. Far from being lamentable, however, this seems to be one of the most enduringly appealing features of Plato’s dialogues.

The Self-Deception Thesis

Before taking up the interpretive issues directly, I should first address the philosophical question: is the conception of the city as self-deceptive cogent? This thesis about the self- deceptive character of the city is the culmination of my interpretive project. But now in this moment of recapitulation, it is beneficial to first consider the end, so that we may see more clearly

1. Bartlett, Sophistry and Political Philosophy.

2. Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and .Phaedrus 372 what must be done to achieve it. In pursuit of that clarity, I shall now restate what it means for the city to be self-deceptive and what is explained by this feature. In restating the thesis I aim to satisfy the demand that the thesis be coherent and clear; in restating the explanatory power of the thesis, I aim to satisfy the demand that the thesis be plausible. If I succeed in these, I take it I succeed in arguing for the cogency of my thesis. Unsurprisingly, self-deception is a tricky concept. It is beneficial for the present purposes to begin with a sketch of an individual’s self-deception in order to contrast it with the city’s self-deception. Indeed, most philosophical treatments of self-deception focus exclusively on the individual.3 More specifically, most philosophical treatments focus on the how the individual acquires a belief by which she counts as self-deceived, or how, in the face of evidence, she retains a belief by which she counts as self-deceived. Contemporary treatments of self-deception also begin with the assumption that the belief acquired or retained is a false belief. This condition is the first Alfred Mele lists when he summarizes the jointly sufficient conditions for self-deception.4

He asserts the necessity of this condition by claiming it to be a “purely lexical point”: “A person is, by definition, deceived in believing that p only if p is false; the same is true of being self-deceived.”5

This lexical point is apt if properly contextualized, but may be misleading in certain casesofself- deception, including the case of self-deception most relevant for the present argument.

3. See especially Alfred Mele, Self-Deception Unmasked (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) as representative of a non-intentionalist approach, and R. Audi, “Self-Deception, Action, and Will,” Erkenntnis 18 (1982): 133–158 as representatives of the intentionalist. Interestingly, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, “Liars or Self-Deceived?: Reflections on Political Deception,” Political Studies 63, no. 4 (2015): 887–902 presupposes self-deception in belief acquisition/retention in order to focus on the iterative deceptions that emanate from an initial self-deception on the part of a politician. Despite her emphasis on political self-deception and a socially diffuse conception of self-deception, she remains focused on the self-deception of individual political agents. Some recent work (for example, M. Subrey, “Self-Deception: Helping and Hindering Personal and Public Decision Making,” in Evolutionary Psychology, Public Policy and Personal Decisions, ed. C. Crawford, ed. C. Salmon (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 2004)) has been done on collective self-deception or the social context of self-deception, but these approaches focus on the how institutions or organizations can support and concentrate individual self-deception.

4. Mele, Self-Deception Unmasked, 120.

5. ibid., 51. 373

The most common case of self-deception in the Platonic corpus is the case of thinking that one knows what one does not know. In this case the content of the supposed knowledge need not be false. The deception arises not at the level of the acquisition of a first-order belief butin the second-order assessment of the status of that belief. Therefore, one may hold a true belief but may be deceived about whether one truly knows it. In this case the believer is deceived about herself and her status as a knower rather than about the truth status of the belief.6 The believer is deceived about herself, but she is also the one deceiving herself. Insofar as she does not submit her belief, p, to an available critical inquiry, or retains p along with her belief that she knows p even after p undergoes such a critical inquiry, she is a self-deceiver in addition to one who is self-deceived. At this point the necessary condition of falsity is applicable. There is a false belief in the second case, but the false belief is not p, rather it is the believer’s belief that she knows p.

In this case, she deceives herself about herself, namely, about her status of knowing p. Even if p

is true, she still presents herself to herself as well as to others otherwise than how she actually is.

An illustration of these two cases is helpful. A routine example of self-deception is a case wherein a father believes his child to be an exemplary student, despite the available evidence for

the contrary. In this case, the father has acquired or has retained the false belief that his child

is academically gifted, and acquiring/retaining false belief constitutes self-deception (as opposed

to mere mistaken belief) because the acquisition/retention is motivated. In this case, the father

wants to think highly of his child, so he employs any number of strategies to acquire/retain that belief beyond what any non-motivated rational thinker would employ. The father is deceived

about this son, but he himself (not his son, say) is the agent of the deceit. In the Platonic case, a

public figure claims to know what is political virtue, or piety, or justice, and so forth, despitethe

difficulty inherent to such matters. In this case, the content of the supposed knowledge maybe

true—Euthyphro’s account of piety may be true!—but the claim that this supposed knowledge is

6. R. Holton, “What Is the Role of the Self in Self-Deception,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 101, no. 1 (2001): 53–69 and J. Fernandez, “Self-deception and Self-knowledge,” Philosophical Studies 162, no. 2 (2013): 289–301 find this particular kind of failure of self-knowledge to be a primary case of self-deception. 374 knowledge is not true. The public figure’s claim to being a knower is false, even if her supposed knowledge is true. The public figure is motivated to hold this false belief as was the fatherinthe example. But in this case, the public figure is deceived about herself in addition being the agent

of this deceit.

It is important to clarify the way in which the self-deceiver is an agent of her self-deception— or at least to clarify the way in which the self-deceiver’s agency does not function. To assume

that the self-deceiver’s agency is comparable to the agency of a deceiver is to open the account

of self-deception to a number of puzzles.7 One such puzzle is the villain/victim puzzle, where the

self-deceiver would have to be both villain (in being the agent of the deception) and victim (in

being the one deceived). This situation smacks of paradox because it seems that one and thesame person would have to believe both p and not p at the same time. This situation is troubling not

only because it may not be possible, but also because if it is possible, we may be forced to reckon

the self-deceiver insane or excluded from the standards of rationality for some other reason. But

there is good reason to resist excluding the self-deceivers from standards of rationality, not least because of the intuition that self-deception is both a failure of rationality—not a wholesale re-

jection of it—and a failure for which the self-deceiver bears some responsibility. So even though

it is misleading to think of the self-deceiver’s agency as comparable to the deceiver’s agency,

nevertheless it is fitting to think that the self-deceiver bears some agency in and therefore some

responsibility for the self-deception.8

7. See Mele, Self-Deception Unmasked, chapter 3 for a number of “static” and “dynamic” puzzles that arise if one adopts the agency model of self-deception.

8. The responsibility condition is one among three generally recognized in the scholarly literature. Theother two conditions are the specificity and the selectivity condition. The specificity condition demands that anyaccount of self-deception adequately distinguish it from other forms of failed rationality, such as delusion and ignorance. The selectivity condition demands that any account of self-deception explain why some beliefs—even motivated ones—are given up in face of contrary evidence, and others are not or are kept from even confronting such contrary evidence. The responsibility condition is the one most relevant for my purposes, but I follow the account of Fernandez, “Self- deception and Self-knowledge” in meeting the other two conditions. 375

The puzzle of the nature of the self-deceiver’s agency is a puzzle that does notrequirea complete answer here; a brief sketch of the character of the self-deceiver’s agency should suffice.9

Earlier I claimed that when the believer does not submit the belief that she knows to an available critical examination or she retains her belief even after it is refuted by such a critical examination, then she is a self-deceiver in addition to one who is self-deceived. In these cases, at least, there seems an easy way out of the puzzle of holding both p and not p at the same time. The self-deceiver does not lie to herself by trying to convince herself of p while knowing not p. Rather, the self- deceiver deceives herself by ignoring threats to her status as a knower—whether the threat is a refutation of her purported knowledge or the possibility of such. She refrains from following up on the possibility that her claim to knowledge is unfounded once that possibility is presented to her. In this case, her agency is not diminished by exculpating ignorance, for she chooses to ignore or avoid the threats to her self-understanding. Accordingly, she bears responsibility for continuing to present herself (both to herself and to others) as a knower after being confronted with but declining to consider the possibility that she only thinks herself to know. With this sketch we can now turn to the comparison between the self-deception of the individual and the self-deception of a city. As with the self-deception of an individual, the first- order belief of a self-deceiving city (beliefs about what is just, what is noble) may be true. The relevant falsity for a self-deceiving city arises in its self-assessment of those first-order claims.

The city presents itself to itself as knowing or having justified confidence in its claimsabout justice, nobility, and goodness—and to that extent presents itself otherwise than how it is. Again, as in the case of the self-deceiving individual, the failure here is not a simple mistake or simple ignorance. Instead, the failure is a failure to confront the possibility of being mistaken; the failure

9. Much of Mele, Self-Deception Unmasked is an attempt to give a deflationary answer to this puzzle, which, even if sound, I find unsatisfying. He is concerned to describe the mechanics of self-deception and sketch a conceptual vocabulary for discussing those mechanics. I find this unsatisfying in a way similar to being dissatisfied witha tabulation of sinews and bones in answer to the question of why Socrates is sitting in jail. Galeotti, “Liars or Self- Deceived?,” 889-890, gives an “invisible hand” account of the self-deceiver’s agency that is potentially more satisfying, but she develops it mostly by analogy and only to the extent that it serves her immediate end of describing indirect political self-deception. 376 resides in ignoring the possible ignorance. Finally, as with the individual, it is important that the city’s self-deception not be understood as the city lying to itself but as the city failing to be honest with itself about itself.

This last point calls for emphasis, for it is unfortunately too easy to find examplesofa ruler or a more powerful portion of the city wielding dissimulation against the rest of the political community.10 But just as it was crucial to resist thinking of an individual deceiving herself on the same model as interpersonal deception, so also it is crucial to resist thinking of the city’s self- deception as a case of all too common political prevarication. It is the city itself and as a whole that deceives itself. The city itself and as a whole is both the agent of its self-deception andthat about which it deceives and is deceived. According to my thesis, the city itself and as a whole presents its laws and adjudications as possessing final authority, but it cannot provide a ground for its authority that is adequate to its claim to authority. The reason it cannot do so is because it cannot confront the possibility that this authority may be groundless without putting its very existence at risk. This point is the crucially different point between the individual’s and the city’sself- deception. The individual who self-deceives does not adequately consider the possibility that her

claim to knowledge is false; the city cannot adequately consider the possibility that its claim to

knowledge, and the authority that follows from it, is false. Because the city is unable to conduct

such an investigation into its own principles, its self-deception is an inherent and inescapable feature. For the individual, self-deception is a defect which may and should be overcome; for

the city, self-deception belongs to its very character. According to my thesis, to think of the

city’s self-deception as requiring a solution is to misunderstand the status of this self-deception

and to misunderstand the city itself. What is an remediable imperfection in the individual is an

ineradicable feature of the city.

10. Galeotti, “Liars or Self-Deceived?,” 891, claims that the most effective cases of this kind of straightpo- litical deception originate in the individual self-deception of the political agents. 377

With this description I have fulfilled the condition that the thesis be clearly and coherently stated. A less strict and more suggestive way to present the self-deception thesis is to say that the city stands in between being and seeming but must see itself as on the side of being. The city is not and cannot afford to be entirely unconcerned with what truly is, yet it can never bewholly without appearance, can never achieve truth without semblance. It must continually pursue the practical realization of a real, that is, genuine, common good; yet it can only stipulate the reality of this good and buttress it with assertions of commitment. Thecity is always a mix of seeming and being, but it must always seem to itself to dwell in being alone.11

Parallel to this more poetic formulation, we could say that the city stands between sophistry and rhetoric, on the one hand, and philosophy, on the other. With this image, I turn to the task of presenting the power of the thesis to account for the city’s relationship to sophistry and rhetoric.

The problematic nature of this relationship, which I derived from the Protagoras and Gorgias, centers on the fact that sophistry and rhetoric, despite their false conception of the city, nevertheless are effective within the city. On the one hand, the city resists sophistry and rhetoricto the extent that it defies their characterization of politics inasmuch as it does and must strive fora real, common good. On the other hand, the city is susceptible to sophistry and rhetoric to a troubling degree. The self-deception thesis is meant to explain how the city can be both undeniably vulnerable to sophistry and rhetoric and yet capable of enduring them—and moreover worthy of a defense against them. The self-deception thesis explains this tension by preserving a way for the city tocare genuinely for truth while indicating how that possible truth is open to sophistry and rhetoric’s distortion. The self-deception thesis grants that the city’s claims about what is just, noble,and good may be true and that this concern for truth is essential to the city, but it also asserts that the city cannot fully withstand sophistry/rhetoric’s subversion of that possible truth because the

11. In more recent political theory, the alternatives of pure being or pure seeming have echoes in the discursive or coercive models of political power, of which Habermas and Foucault, respectively, are representatives, as I note in my introduction. 378 city cannot be honest with itself about the status of that truth. Taking up the issue from another angle, the self-deception thesis explains why sophistry/rhetoric can be as effective as they are despite their own internal inconsistencies. At the ends of the fourth and fifth chapters I gave arguments that sophistry and rhetoric’s conception of the city cannot be true. Sophistry is at a loss to explain the nobility of courageous self-sacrifice on its model of politics, yet cannot deny this nobility. Rhetoric practically relies on an antecedent desire for justice but its conception of the city excludes the possibility for such a desire. Yet the success of sophistry and rhetoric depend not on the truth of their own premises about the city but rather on the inability of the city to be fully truthful with itself. Consequently, the self-deception thesis explains how, even though these practices are parasitic and self-defeating, they are nevertheless effective within the city. The self-deception thesis thus accounts for the city’s vulnerability to sophistry and rhetoric; additionally, it not only explains why the city requires a defender but also why a defense is justified. The city is capable of resisting sophistry and rhetoric inasmuch as it is concerned withthe truth of its claims about the just, noble, and good. Yet because the city is unable to be honest with itself about its relationship to the truth of its claims, it can only inadequately defend itself against sophistry and rhetoric. The city requires a further defense, not one that argues for the truth of its claims but one that protects the possibility that the city be concerned with truth at all. The city deserves a further defense precisely because it is concerned with the just, the noble, and the good and because this concern is commonly beneficial for its members. At this point my philosophical reflection meets my hermeneutic concerns, for the character of Socrates as such a defender ofthe city is my best evidence for the presence of the self-deception thesis in these dialogues.

Finding the Self-Deception Thesis

In the previous section I treated the philosophical standing of the thesis that the city is inherently self-deceptive, arguing that this thesis is coherent and powerful. Now I wish to argue for the further position that this claim is in fact Plato’s and is one disclosed by the Protagoras and Gorgias. As mentioned already, I take the character of Socrates to be the central figure in my 379 argument. In outline, I maintain that Socrates’s speeches and deeds in these two dialogues are best explained if we understand him as a defender of a politics whose parameters are determined by the self-deceptive character of the city. Here a subtle distinction is required: we must remain sensitive to the distinction between Plato’s project with these dialogues and Socrates’s project within these dialogues. I will not argue that Socrates proposes the self-deception thesis, even indirectly. I will argue, however, that Plato does propose the self-deception thesis by means of creating dramatic dialogues that operate according to the truth of that thesis. In other words, the self-deceptive character of the city is a condition for the dialogues, the horizon within which these dialogues unfold; yet, this horizon is exposed by the dialogues themselves. The self-deception thesis is a thesis of Plato’s political philosophy; Socrates’s practice of politics and the context in which he practices it are determined by and disclose that political philosophy.

In asserting that the self-deception thesis is a thesis of Platonic political philosophy, the need to show how it appears in the Protagoras and Gorgias remains even as the difficulty in-

creases. The difficulty increases because there is no speech or deed within the dialogues thatcan, in isolation, serve as evidence. Consequently, the argument for the thesis is abductive. My thesis

supplies the metatextual conditions under which the dialogues unfold, the presupposed concep-

tual structure wherein the dialogues arise. In other words, my thesis answers the question why

Plato presents Socrates as practicing his peculiar politics and why Socrates needs to do so. In the

next section I will address in fuller detail some features of Socrates’s practice of politics, especially focusing on the way that his practice is conditioned by the self-deceptive character of the

city. The thesis also suggests an answer to why Plato’s own response to the political problemof

sophistry and rhetoric is to write these dialogues. I will return to the implications of the thesis

for political philosophy in the final section of this chapter.

For now I will indicate the way the thesis supplies interpretive explanations otherwise unavailable. The need for such explanations is not immediately obvious. In fact, for mostreaders

of these dialogues, the explanation of the dialogue is self-evident: Why does Socrates confront

sophistry and rhetoric in this manner?—for the sake of or on behalf of philosophy. What is 380 the purpose of the dialogue?—to pit philosophy against its enemy, if not to ensure its victory. Even though these readers disagree about how philosophy is to be contrasted with sophistry or rhetoric, or whether Plato is successful in sufficiently contrasting them, it is generally assumed that philosophy and its counterparts are the players on the field. Again, for most readers,

Socrates’s interest in contesting Protagoras’s position on educating excellence or in critiquing the rhetorical practices of Gorgias and Polus is exhaustively determined by and reducible to his philosophic interests. Either he is interested in these critiques because he has his own specific and philosophic position to promote, such as philosophical education or philosophical, “true” rhetoric. Or he is interested in these critiques because he is generally committed to the philosophical practice of questioning those who claim to know, and the Protagoras and Gorgias are merely examples of that practice in action. So go most interpretations.

In this dissertation I have partially and indirectly averred the latter option and have rejected the former outright. In the first two chapters, I argued against the ready assumption that

Socrates’s interest in these dialogues is exclusively or directly philosophical. There are a number of interpretive difficulties if Socrates is the proponent of philosophy in these two dialogues, and especially if Socrates is offering his own authentic and considered philosophical positions and arguments. These difficulties disappear if we do not assume that Socrates is seeking toreplace sophistic education with philosophic education or Gorgianic rhetoric with philosophical dialectic. As a further piece of evidence of this position, consider that Socrates assumes some sense of many crucial political concepts in each dialogue. That is, he never asks “What is virtue?” or “What is learning?” of Protagoras; and never does he ask “What is justice?” in the Gorgias. Whatever project he is committed to in these dialogues, it does not carry the obvious hallmarks of Socratic philosophical inquiry.

The lack of these “what is . . .?” questions also highlights that Socrates does notengage in another feature usually associated with Socrates’s philosophical practice, namely, the dissenting function of refutation. The usual model of Socratic refutation takes Socrates to question the conventional opinions about such crucial political concepts as justice and other virtues. For ex- 381 ample, Dana Villa identifies this “dissolvent nature of Socrates rationality” as the defining feature of Socrates’s citizenship.12 In this capacity, Socratic questioning seems in tension with the stability of the conventional sense of justice and therefore in tension with politics itself. But in these dialogues, Socrates does not submit all conventional opinions about virtue and justice to refutation. Instead, he assumes some conventional sense of these notions while he refutes those whose practices pretend to be compatible with these conventional opinions. In these dialogues, Socrates is not attempting to replace conventional opinion with philosophical knowledge or philosophical knowledge of ignorance; he is trying to protect these very opinions.

My point is not to deny that Socrates has philosophic interests—indeed in the Gorgias he claims he is saying what philosophy says! My point is rather that these philosophic interests do not exclusively determine his speeches and deeds in these dialogues—though they may ultimately determine them. In other words, the speeches and deeds that constitute his practice of politics do not belong exclusively to his love of philosophy. Consequently, even if “philosophy” is ultimately the correct answer to the question of why Socrates confronts sophistry and rhetoric, it is not a complete answer. Without the ready answer of philosophy to explain all of

Socrates’s speeches and deeds, we need another answer. I believe the complete answer would have to consider Socrates’s attempt to practice politics as genuinely political and not simplyan appropriation of the political by the philosophical. It now remains to articulate how Socrates’s practice of politics is not identical or reducible to but is nevertheless compatible with his love of philosophy.

As my interpretations of the dialogues show, it is fruitful to take Socrates as engaged in a genuinely political project, to take Socrates as concerned with his fellow citizens as citizens

12. Villa, Socratic Citizenship, 3. Villa describes Socrates thus, claiming inspiration from Hegel and Arendt, though he seems either to ignore or be ignorant of the critical sense of dissolvent rationality developed by Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno as a way of describing the totalitarian impulses of the Enlightenment; seeTheodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of the Enlightenment, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford University Press, 2002), 4. Indeed, my primary critique of Villa is that he reads Socrates as far too much like an Enlightenment figure, presupposing the equal capacity of all and thereafter demanding the equal necessity of all to become a self “unemcumbered” of conventional prejudices (23). 382 and not as potential philosophers. In light of this claim two questions arise: Why not make try to make citizens into philosophers? And, if he cannot do so, why bother with these citizens at all? There should be a reason why Socrates does not try to replace sophistry with philosophy or rhetoric with dialectic and why he continues his practice of politics even in absence of such a replacement. There should be a reason why Socrates is satisfied to defend—and let stand—civic opinions, even if he is to die at the hands of those who hold such opinions.13 In other words, the question at hand is: what can make Socratic politics make sense? I answer this question in terms of the self-deception thesis. Consequently I ground this thesis in the Protagoras and Gorgias, insofar as the self-deception thesis can account for Socrates’s practice of politics.

Socratic politics would not make sense if there was nothing worth preserving in the political realm. If citizens as citizens were out of redemptive reach, then a project that attempts to prepare these citizens for justice and to prevent injustice from arising in their souls would be absurd. Socratic politics, as I have described it, would be a futile attempt to preserve a sinking— perhaps never seaworthy—ship. This line of thought takes the city to be essentially continuous with sophistry and rhetoric. Along this line, the city would be little more than an ignorant crowd, doomed to follow whatever demagogue sounds sweetest. The city would eternally be the howling—potentially murderous—children of Socrates’s analogy at Gorgias 522a. If this were the city, then Socratic politics would be not only absurd but perhaps suicidal.14

13. I do not mean “defend” in the sense of arguing for the truth of these civic opinions or even protecting them from legitimate refutation. Rather I mean “defend” in the sense of preserving them from an enemy set on destroying the very capacity for truth that belongs to civic opinion. In other words, Socrates does not argue for the truth of civic opinions—though he does seem content to assume it—but he does argue against sophistry and rhetoric which are destructive of the possibility of a true political community.

14. This way of thinking would have to explain why Socrates has his individual conversations sooftenin public and frequently with a clear eye on the surrounding audience; see Keum, “Why Did Socrates Conduct His Dialogues Before an Audience?” This understanding of the city as essentially irredeemable seems to be presupposed by those who emphasize Socrates’s esotericism; see, for example, Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, and Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias. If the city and philosophy are absolutely inimical and Socrates is only ever concerned with philosophy, then Socratic politics must be essentially a way to hide from the city. Socrates’s esotericism is, then, primarily a way to safeguard himself while detecting and drawing in those rare few who are capable of a philosophical life. While I do maintain that there is an essential tension between the city and philosophy, I will argue below that this tension does not validate abandoning the city to corruption at the hands of sophistry and rhetoric. 383

Alternatively, my conception of Socratic politics would also not make sense if it were possible and/or salutary for philosophy to wholly appropriate the political. If philosophy is the best life and if it were feasible to make all citizens into philosophers, then Socrates’s love of philosophy would presumably entail that he attempt to cultivate as many philosophers as possible.

Socratic politics would then be only temporarily political—a protreptic intended to transcend its origin. This line of thinking assumes that each citizen (or perhaps a sufficiently largenum- ber of citizens) is capable of and would be best served by pursuing a philosophical life. Taking

Socrates’s life as a paradigm for the philosophic life, this way of life may include being devoted to the unending search for wisdom, submitting each claim—no matter its provenance—to a critical cross-examination, and refusing to act unless convinced that the action is not unjust. But all of these activities would find significant resistance in a traditionally ordered city, for thecity’s search for wisdom must end at some point and produce a definite action. Accordingly, making a polity of philosopher-citizens would require a transformation of the political itself. This line of thinking therefore seems to have the same poor notion as above of what the city as such is capable of, but coupled with a rather optimistic conviction of what citizens as individuals are capable of.

In order to make sense, then, my conception of Socratic politics must assume a city that is capable of producing and supporting virtuous citizens, where that virtue is proper to the kind of being the city has. For Socrates to be concerned at all with the city as such, there must be something to the city that is worth preserving; it must deserve preservation. But for Socrates’s concern to be one that does not terminate in a transformation of the political into the philosophical, whatever is worthwhile in the city must belong uniquely to it and not be a deficient form of some other ideal. I contend that by assuming an inherently self-deceptive city we can satisfy these demands. The self-deception thesis provides an account of a city that can pursue a commongood while explaining the way it can be and often is derailed from that pursuit. The thesis accounts for how the city can admit of genuine attempts at the arts of νομοθετική and δικαιοσύνη, but 384 nevertheless be susceptible to the flattering impersonations of sophistry and rhetoric. Thecity deserves protection because it is capable of aiming at a genuine and real good; the city needs protection because this aim can be corrupted. Furthermore, the self-deception thesis demarcates the political from the philosophical without consigning the political to a morass of morally and epistemologically suspect claims. According to the thesis, the city’s susceptibility to corruption is not an eradicable imperfection. It is not as though the city could be philosophically sound if only it or Socrates tried hard enough. By virtue of its self-deceptive character, the city cannot commit itself to the potentially unending search for knowledge because it must take itself to have already achieved such knowledge. Although this sort of self-deception may be fundamentally devastating to philosophy or to living a philosophical life, it is necessary for the city. Consequently, whatever good belongs to the city it cannot be simply identified with the goods of philosophy nor rightfully held to its standards.

Despite these restrictions on the philosophical, it cannot be denied that Socrates, the lover of philosophy, is the one who attempts to practice genuine politics. Genuine politics does indeed differ from the catch-all category of “politics” by virtue of a kind of philosophical concern forprin- ciples. This concern for principles grounds its fittingness as a counter to the sophistic/rhetorical view of politics. Yet this quality does only qualify the practice, which is fundamentally political and not philosophical. The practice of true politics operates at a level of reflection higher than deliberations about policy, and for that reason may be considered philosophical, but this reflection is still essentially situated within the political horizon. From this point, now thatthe proper qualifications, parameters, and presuppositions of the practice of true politics, I willrefer to Socrates’s practice of it as philosophical politics.15

15. I eschewed this term in the third chapter because I was there taken with the task of keeping the realm of the political distinct from the philosophical in order to bring out the self-deceptive nature of the city. I needed to minimize the philosophical aspect of true politics so that the distinctively political could be seen. Now that my readers have spent many pages dwelling in the distinctively political, I employ the term here without dread at resurrecting the spectres laid to rest in the third chapter and with hope that I may evoke new life for the term. 385

At last we are in a position to elaborate on that practice. In elaborating on this practice, however, we must keep in mind that this vision of philosophical politics is provided in a work of political philosophy. Again, as before, Socrates the character and Plato his creator must be kept distinct. The next two sections trace the consequences of the self-deception thesis for Socrates’s philosophical politics and for Plato’s political philosophy.

Consequences of the City’s Self-Deception

In the previous section, Socrates’s attempt at πολιτική emerged as a tense and delicate balance between his ever-present philosophical motivations and his thoroughly political goal.

I argued there that understanding the city as inherently self-deceptive explains this balance. I now move to consider more carefully how this balance is conditioned by the self-deceptive nature of the city. From this consideration, the difference between philosophical politics (that is, what Socrates enacts in the Protagoras and Gorgias) and political philosophy (that is, what Plato prompts by these dialogues) emerges more clearly.

Consequences for Philosophical Politics

As mentioned above, the self-deceptive nature of the city provides conditions for and constraints on Socrates’s practice of genuine politics. Here I focus on how Socrates’s love of philosophy informs his practice of politics within those conditions and constraints.

The most significant desideratum of the self-deception thesis is that it allows for the reality of the common good despite the efficacy of sophistry and rhetoric. The reality of a political common good, on which any concrete realization of that good is predicated, is what sophistry and rhetoric most endanger by their impersonations of the genuine political art. The nomothetic art aims at cultivating good citizens who follow good laws because both they and these laws are good. The dikaiosunic art aims at maintaining or restoring justice in the various political fora. Both of these practices can be commonly attempted and executed, and the ends of these practices can be commonly enjoyed. Even though the city may fail in their practice of these arts, 386 it nevertheless is able to attempt them. This capacity is what sophistry and rhetoric mortally endanger, and it is this capacity that Socratic politics preserves.

Socrates’s practice of politics therefore presupposes that the city as such is capable of pursuing a common good. The only explicit mention of a common good in either of these dialogues occurs at Gorgias 505e:

. . . οἶμαι ἔγωγε χρῆναι πάντας ἡμᾶς φιλονίκως ἔχειν πρὸς τὸ εἰδέναι τὸ ἀληθὲς τί ἐστιν περὶ ὧν λέγομεν καὶ τί ψεῦδος: κοινὸν γὰρ ἀγαθὸν ἅπασι φανερὸν γενέσθαι αὐτό.

For my part, I think it is necessary that all of us vie for knowing what is true and what is false about what we are discussing: it is a common good for all that it become clear.

At this point in the dialogue, Socrates is justifying why he will complete the discussion he began with Callicles, even though Callicles’s unwillingness means that he will have to continue on his own. This common good, and not some individual benefit for Socrates, is Socrates’s reasonfor continuing despite less than desirable circumstances. The content of this good is clarity about the truth and falsity that pertains to the issue being discussed. The issue between Socrates and

Callicles, as I have argued, is the very nature of politics. One common good, then, is clarity about what truly belongs to politics and what does not. This good is what stands to be gained ifnot only Socrates but all those present engage in a rivalry for truth (φιλονίκως ἔχειν).

I believe that this common good is the aim of Socrates’s philosophical politics. According to my interpretation of philosophical politics, that is, a philosophical politics conditioned by the self-deceptive nature of the city, this common good is neither a strictly philosophical common good nor a determinate political good. Instead it is a political common good that makes possible determinate political goods, even without meeting the requirements of a philosophical common good. On account of being genuinely political, philosophical politics cannot aim for the same end as philosophical inquiry simpliciter. On account of being philosophical, philosophical politics does not arrive at final and concrete claims about what determinate goods the city should pursue and how. 387

The aim of Socrates’s philosophical politics is not a determinate political common good, like administering just courts or replenishing a virtuous citizenry. His practice is not to suggest policy or determine a given deliberation. Instead, the aim of philosophical politics is to preserve the possibility that these determinate political decisions aim at genuine political goods. The common good pursued by philosophical politics sets the transcendental conditions for determinate political common goods. In absence of the possibility of a political common good, each deliberation, election, or declaration can aim only at the greater power of some over others. This is the vision of politics that sophistry and rhetoric insinuate and advance, and this is the vision of politics that philosophical politics combats. Philosophical politics fights for clarity about the truth of politics by exposing the self-destructive nature of the alternative. Philosophical politics fights this battle not against the citizens but with them and for them.

This point explains how philosophical politics differs from the more recognizable formsof political activity, such as participating in political deliberation. Rather than promoting positive, concrete theses about what belongs to the city’s common good, Socrates’s philosophical politics is instead a negative and transcendental enterprise. It is transcendental inasmuch as it defends the possibility of the city’s common good against the threat posed by sophistry and rhetoric. It is a negative enterprise inasmuch as he proposes no content to that political common good but instead critiques the political conception presumed by sophistry and rhetoric. By this refutation,

Socrates reveals how the conception of politics that sophistry and rhetoric presume is destructive of the possibility of true politics.

Clarity about true politics—namely a politics that can aim at real, political, common goods— is the common good at which philosophical politics aims. Given the self-deceptive nature of the city, however, it may seem that the city is forever barred from this good. This line of reasoning mistakes the relevant sense of self-deception, however. The self-deceptive nature of the city does not prevent it from recognizing the truth about the political. The self-deceptive nature of the city instead prevents the city from asking whether or not it does make such a recognition because the city must always believe that it already knows the truth about the political. It is possible for 388 the city to see that there is a genuine political common good for it to pursue. The self-deception thesis only claims that the city cannot be honest about its ability to see this truth. Philosophical politics aims to protect the city’s ability to see that there is a political common good; it does not strive to make the city honest with itself about the status of that sight. Philosophical politics therefore works within the conditions set by the city’s self-deceptive nature. Under these conditions, success for philosophical politics consists not in establishing a new order, but in preserving the possibility of a city that can strive for the just, the noble, and the good. Success amounts to not letting sophistry and rhetoric drive the city to destruction. The self-deception thesis explains this limited goal by way of accounting for the perennial danger of sophistry and rhetoric. Because of the nature of the city, sophistry and rhetoric and their threat to the city’s common good can never be entirely eradicated. The best possible outcome is that they meet continual and competent resistance, and this goal is the one at which Socrates’s philosophical politics aims. His philosophical politics does not seek to remake politics after philosophy’s image; his philosophical politics aims to preserve the political as such against its peculiar mortal threat.

It should be noted that philosophical politics need not acknowledge the city’s self-deceptive nature in order to be governed by it. As I argue below, we should maintain a distinction between political philosophy and philosophical politics. The self-deception thesis is a thesis of political philosophy, not a tenet of philosophical politics. It is not necessary that the practitioner of philosophical politics discerns, let alone avers, the city’s inherent self-deception. It is enough that this practitioner be able to discern the peculiar dangers of sophistry and rhetoric and to combat them for the sake of the common good. Philosophical politics must recognize that the common good is a condition for the possibility of the city and that sophistry and rhetoric are mortal and metaphysical threats to the city—that they endanger the very being of the city. But it is not necessary that philosophical politics be consumed by the question about the being of the city itself, or about the relationship between being and seeming in it. Questions about the being of the city, about its reality and appearance, about its self-deception nature—those questions belong to political 389 philosophy, not philosophical politics. As for whether Socrates discerns the self-deceptive nature of the city, I find no great evidence either way, and therefore remain neutral.

Now we are able to see more clearly the difference between the practice of philosophical politics and the practice of philosophy itself. In practicing philosophical politics, Socrates’s response to what the city needs is informed by what the city can achieve. Consequently, he presumes what the city must also presume, namely, a real, common good. The truth that is common good achieved by philosophical politics is not the same as the truth that is the common good achieved by philosophy. The truth that may be achieved by philosophy must be achieved bya common activity, which presupposes that the agents are themselves philosophers (or lovers of philosophy). This common philosophical activity must critically examine any claim to truth. But such a critical examination cannot belong to philosophical politics. In doing philosophical politics, Socrates does not submit the political common good itself to a philosophical investigation, for such an investigation is not included in the city’s power. The target of the critical element of philosophical politics is sophistry/rhetoric, and this critical examination is undertaken for the sake of defending the possibility of the city’s common good.

This defensive character of Socrates’s philosophical politics explains both how Socrates is no expert (which he claims he is not) as well as how his philosophical politics counts as a genuine art.16 The art of politics, in order to count as an art, must aim at the benefit ofthecity and the souls of its citizens. But this good is precisely a common good, a good that functions in the city as a whole. This feature is one reason why comparison with other, particular-oriented crafts must be limited. Although the analogies to gymnastics and medicine are helpful, theyare nevertheless analogies, and therefore we need not take the similarities between these arts and the arts that constitute the political art to be complete. One such point of disanalogy is the figure of the expert. For example, the expert doctor can successfully treat her patient without her pa-

16. Shaw, “Socrates and the True Political Craft” helpfully dissects the scholarly literature on this point. Similar to my account, he also read Socrates as not making a claim to expertise here, but he does not consider the possibility that πολιτική is a sui generis art. 390 tient understanding or even valuing medicine. When the doctor relies on some further practice of persuasion to convince her patient to submit to a medical procedure, this dependence is accidental. Not so with the political art. The political art must direct the citizens towards a common good, but it is crucial that these citizens also participate in that good, and this participation must be predicated on some familiarity with and acknowledged worth of the benefit.17 The political art Socrates describes does not discover this common good, but presumes it as what is to be defended. Recognition of this kind of good is not the special purview of an expert but an endeavor that demands common participation. Accordingly, in practicing his politics Socrates does not make a claim to special knowledge about what is just or noble or good. Socrates’s practice of this art not only reveals the dangers of sophistry and rhetoric, but also does so in a way that invites the audience to participate in the refutation.18

Socrates’s philosophical politics therefore does not belong to Socrates alone. This practice is fundamentally one that citizens as such can do. By making clear what is at stake in unreflectively pursuing sophistry and rhetoric, Socrates’s philosophical politics calls for an examination of these threats and a renewed commitment to what they threaten. This examination does not entail taking up philosophy as a way of life; it is the kind of self-reflection that makes a human life livable qua human.19 The citizen, as citizen, is not only capable of conducting this kindof examination, but also compelled to do so on pain of otherwise contributing to the erosion of the fundamental structures of his city.20 Socrates’s philosophical politics appeals to citizens as

17. This art is therefore not an art of statesmanship but an art of citizenship, the way to beanexcellent citizen, contra Rocco, “Liberating Discourse: The Politics of Truth in Plato’s Gorgias,” Voegelin, “The Philosophy of Existence: Plato’s Gorgias,” et al..

18. See Keum, “Why Did Socrates Conduct His Dialogues Before an Audience?,” 431-435.

19. See Apology 38a.

20. This conception of philosophical politics thus threads the needle between the kind of wholly skeptical and dissenting activity Villa, Socratic Citizenship, 5-12, describes and a kind of “philosophical soul-caring” that Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment, 180-187, describes. According to Coby, what philosophy has to offer in the political realm is not only not the ceaseless search for truth in the teeth of convention but also not any sort of critical examination. For Coby the best philosophy can do for citizens as such is provide a “non-philosophical approximation to the flexible principle of the philosopher,” which amounts to giving a “simple moral imperative.” 391 citizens to reflect upon the conditions for their city, and in particular the need for acommon good. There may be some critical appraisal of convention, but only in service to the stability and health of the city as a whole. There may be inquiry into the nature of virtue, but only in service of cultivating it in the souls of one’s own, of one’s children, and of one’s fellow citizens. These reflections in turn contribute to the continual activity of establishing the laws in the soulsofeach new generation of citizens (νομοθετική) and in rehabilitating justice in the souls of each citizen who deviates from justice (δικαιοσύνη). Socrates’s philosophical politics is aimed at the citizen who is concerned to raise his son as an Athenian who cares for the good of his community, or at the citizen who is called to determine whether his fellow citizen is guilty and deserves death.

We may well ask then, what is philosophical about Socrates’s philosophical politics? Why is it that his beloved philosophy enables him to be one of the few to attempt genuine politics?

There are two aspects of Socrates’s practice of politics that echo his philosophical posture.One is an appeal to principles; in other words, Socratic politics occurs a level of critical discourse higher than the level that mundane politics takes place, and it must do so in order to counter sophistry and rhetoric effectively. I argued earlier that the city as such cannot adequately defend itself against sophistry and rhetoric. Sophistry and rhetoric have ready and effective responses to the city’s counterclaims, when the city actually makes them. The way to combat sophistry and rhetoric is to critique their use of concepts borrowed from the city, not simply to aver more emphatically those concepts. The required strategy is to reveal these seductive impersonations precisely as impersonations. That is, the needed response is not to say of sophistry and rhetoric that they engender a bad sort of politics, but to show how they undermine the practice of politics altogether. The second philosophical aspect of this practice arises here, namely, that it promotes the love of truth over the love of one’s own. Or, more precisely, it suspends love of one’s own so that what is true may become one’s own. By virtue of loving philosophy over the seductive call of

Coby believes this is required because “most people would only be ruined by the freedom and discretion allowed to the philosopher” (185). Some freedom and discretion is necessary for reflective self-governing, however, and I believe Socrates’s philosophical politics supports that sort of critical self-examination. 392 political ambition, Socrates is afforded an original distance from which he can conduct a critique of the corruptοrs of political power. This love of philosophy is not the only way to achieve this distance, though; for the citizen, love of the truth manifests itself as love of the common. A love of the common good of one’s city can provide such a distance. If a citizen loves the common good over his own ambition, then he is capable of examining that love to ensure that it is not subverted. His commitment to a common good allows him to critique what would impersonate it. It must be noted again, however, that this critical stance—either Socrates’s or the citizen’s—is not directed against the common good itself but to its surreptitious replacement.

Philosophical politics cannot demand a philosophical life because, generally, citizens cannot live a philosophical life. Though Socrates proposes no reforming program or innovative agenda, at some point the citizen must do so. Though Socrates may search unceasingly for knowledge and never rest with mere opinion, at some point the citizen must act with conviction. Though Socrates is always asking questions, at some point the citizen must giveafinal answer. Philosophical politics cannot be identical with philosophy because it must be available to all citizens; the lover of philosophy as such cannot be the model for all citizens without endangering the city itself. Philosophical politics may make the city better for citizens and lovers of philosophy alike, but it does not make the city absolutely safe for lovers of philosophy.21

With this point, it becomes clear that there remains a tension between philosophy and the city. Lest we become too sanguine about the success of such an art, we need only recall Socrates’s anticipatory concession to Callicles about his own fate. Socrates’s philosophical politics does not avoid the dangerous tension between philosophy and the city. Socrates attempts his philosophical politics in full awareness of its danger. If he were content to leave the city in the clutches of sophistry and rhetoric, to let fester unmolested the conception of politics they insinuate, then he

21. Socrates was not brought to court until he was 70 years old, despite practicing his love of philosophy openly for over half that time. The vote for his conviction was also quite close; see Apology 36a. If we do aver that there is an inherent and dangerous tension between the political and the philosophical life, then I suggest that the fact that Socrates survive so long and so nearly escapes conviction is a testament to the efficacy of his philosophical politics. This point in no way alleviates the tragedy of his conviction and execution. 393 perhaps he could have avoided his trial and death. Yet, Socrates poignantly asserts at Apology 38a, after he has been convicted, that that he finds no greater good than to converse dailyabout virtue with his fellow citizens and that this point is the one most difficult of which to persuade his fellow citizens.

Consequences for Political Philosophy

These dialogues in which we witness Socrates’s philosophical politics are not themselves works of philosophical politics—or are not only these. Socrates’s philosophical politics comes to us through Plato’s political philosophy but does not exhaust that political philosophy. By way of a preliminary distinction, let us recall the most immediate difference between what Socrates does in these dialogues and what Plato does with the dialogues. Socrates speaks and Plato writes.22 Socrates speaks to particular people, keeping in mind the determinate audience that surrounds his conversations; Plato writes for an indeterminate audience of whom he is necessarily ignorant to a large extent. Socrates goes wherever the political danger is, to the sophist surrounded by his students or to the rhetor surrounded by an eager audience. Plato remains essentially distant from those with whom he communicates. Socrates’s deeds and speeches capture us in a living conversation. Plato’s deed is singular and his own speech is never heard: the dialogue is a world that is given as a whole and yet resists closure. As much as we may imagine ourselves in the place of Socrates’s interlocutor—or in Socrates’s own place!—the fact that we do so only by way of engaging with Plato’s work makes a further demand. As readers of Plato, we are not merely readers of Socrates. So while the work of philosophical politics is necessary, it is not the only work to be done. Those who read the dialogues as part of living a philosophical life—those who

22. Long, Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy, x, draws this distinction interestingly between the place of Socrates’s speaking (topology) and the place of Plato’s writing (topography). While I am indebted to his subtle observations for how methodologically to practice a “politics of reading” (171), the content of his treatment of the dialogues, especially their political elements, was less helpful. I believe Long too quickly and too happily elides philosophy with politics and to that extent remains insensitive to the dynamics between the two. 394 read them as an act of loving philosophy—should not rest satisfied with Socrates’s philosophical politics but should also search for Plato’s political philosophy.

I have argued that the self-deception thesis belongs to Plato’s political philosophy. The conception of the city at work in the Protagoras and Gorgias is a city that has dependencies it cannot acknowledge, weaknesses it cannot eradicate, and the possibility of striving for a kind of good otherwise unavailable. From the perspective of philosophy, the city is a broken, beautiful thing that cannot be fixed but must be fought for. Plato depicts Socrates as intimately andgen- uinely immersed in the city so conceived. But at the close I want to ask what implications this thesis has for discerning Plato’s political philosophy. Given this nature of the city, what can we expect from Plato’s political philosophy? Before taking up that task, however, I must first state explicitly the conception of political philosophy I use. And even before that, I must reiterate what I mean by philosophy. The sense of philosophy I have derived from Plato’s Dialogues is a ceaseless striving after the truth of the whole by confronting the aporia that if not constitute then at least always attend the irrepressible, uniquely human attempt to understand the whole. Accordingly, political philosophy confronts the aporia concerning the city. One such aporia is this feature of self-deception, which, though coherent in itself, nevertheless renders the city inherently problematic. In turn this problematic character of the city sets the terms for the philosophical inquiry devoted to it.

The conception of political philosophy that contextualizes the Protagoras and Gorgias suggests a broader scope for political philosophy than one might expect. Given the self-deceptive nature of the city, political philosophy must include questions of metaphysics and epistemology in addition to ethical and narrowly political concerns. The metaphysical status of the city asa mixture of seeming and being demands an investigation into the structure of being as such and seeming as such. This investigation would include the inquiry into the structure of thecity’s common good and therefore into the relationship between wholes and parts. Plato’s political philosophy does and must ask the question: “What is the city?” Correlated to this question are epistemological questions concerning the ways the city and its citizens relate to truth. The city’s 395 complex relationship to truth and deception requires an investigation into the nature of truth and the modes of deception, the status of opinions and the demands of knowledge. Plato’s political philosophy does and must ask the question: “How does the city know?”23

These questions are not incidental to the inquiries of political philosophy. The politicalart concerns the soul, and the soul is that by which we are open to the whole. Political philosophy therefore cannot sequester itself with specialized questions but must ask questions about the whole, about being and knowing and the good. This quest for understanding the whole should not be confused with a quest for a system which organizes these modes of inquiry and gives rules by which to apply answers from one inquiry to another. This quest must be dialectical; it must look ahead and behind. Wherever it begins—with a seemingly undeniable feature of the city or with a metaphysical necessity—after it is underway, it must return to this preliminary point, examine it, and then begin again. In some non-trivial way, then, any of Plato’s dialogues will pertain to his political philosophy. Any study of Plato’s political philosophy will have to reckon with this comprehensiveness if it aims at completeness. Despite the comprehensive scope for political philosophy, there are significant constraints on how it relates to the city that it attempts to understand. Perhaps more accurate: precisely because political philosophy is ceaselessly committed to understanding the city as a whole and the whole to which the city belongs, it must take care with how it brings its inquiry to bear on the city which essentially cannot share its commitments. Given the self-deceptive nature of the city, perhaps the most immediate restriction for political philosophy concerns the possibility of establishing ideal cities. Any utopia that Plato’s political philosophy may propose cannot be understood as a straightforward program for political change. The desire to make an ideal city, even in speech, must be understood in light ofthe essential limitations of political communities. Similarly, any proposed art of statesmanship must

23. This formulation of the question should not be read in a Cartesian tone. The question does notaskfor foundations of certainty (the city knows p because of s). The questions asks about the quality and structure ofthat knowledge: in what way does the city know or claim to know? 396 be judged against what belongs to the nature of political community.24 Consequently, if the Protagoras and the Gorgias show us the city as it is, then we must reconsider how Plato intends

Socrates’s speech about the city as it should be in the Republic, the Eleatic Stranger’s conception of the art of the statesman in the Statesman, and the Athenian Stranger’s suggested civic institutions in the Laws. This is not to say that there is no place for thorough investigation into the idealcity; it is rather a call for a more subtle consideration of the dialectic between what is best in the eyes of philosophy and what is best for politics. In short, the political philosophy that emerges from the Protagoras and Gorgias shows the need to moderate the philosophical striving for the best according to the parameters of what is politically possible.25

One such point of moderation concerns the power and function of speech (λόγος). As is clear—sometimes painfully so—in the Protagoras and Gorgias, speech has a dual power to conceal as well as reveal. The conception of political philosophy that I abduct from these dialogues is attuned to this dual power and to its function within the city. It would be a mistake todisdain the power of speech to conceal and strive to replace all such speech with speech which aims only at revealing. It surely belongs to philosophy to aim at true speech whose truth is recognized and supported by thorough and unyielding examination. But this cannot be the way that truth belongs to the city. Consequently, political philosophy must aim at the truth about the city’s relationship to truth. This truth, immersed as it is in concealing and revealing speech, mustbe part of the whole to which political philosophy addresses itself. The Protagoras and the Gorgias provide such poignant depictions of sophistry and rhetoric in order to capture fully and genuinely

24. This is no mere feasibility claim; that is, this restriction does not follow from some principle of“ought implies can.” Rather, this restriction is a response to the nature of the city, some recognition of the inherent worth of preserving and promoting what properly belongs to the political realm—even if this activity will end in tragedy. Jonny Thakkar, Plato As a Critical Theorist (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2018), 5-17, gives a careful cartography of the field of ideal theory, which I found helpful. I disagree with his interpretation ofwhat Plato thinks of the role that philosophy should play in ideal politics. Thakkar’s argument itself is interesting, valuable, and even largely in agreement with my own argument here, but by my lights it fails as a faithful interpretation of Plato, in part because I think Thakkar focuses too exclusively on the Republic.

25. Mary Townsend, The Woman Question in Plato’s Republic (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017), 12, 169-171, finds this need for moderation at the heart ofthe Republic. 397 the city they endanger. Political philosophy, if it maintains its interest in the city as a whole and in the whole of which the city is a unique part, cannot dismiss as an aberration what is actually an essential feature. Political philosophy must moderate—though never abandon—its desire for unadulterated truth if it is to care for the truth of the city. Thus Plato’s political philosophy is neither a despairing pessimism nor an idealizing utopianism. Plato does what philosophy demands: unblinkingly reckons with truth of the city.

Here is it clear that the restrictions on political philosophy just discussed stem from the obligations political philosophy has to the city it studies. The political philosophy that Plato discloses through his Protagoras and Gorgias is predicated on the possibility of a real and uniquely

political good. This unique good is endangered by a philosophically motivated impulse to elevate the city to a realm of pure being, just as it is endangered by the sophistic and rhetorical impulse

to plunge the city into a realm of sheer seeming. If a genuine good belongs to the city as such,

then political philosophy must occupy the delicate seam of being and seeming, ever concerned

with what truly is but never ignoring what seems to be and how. Plato’s political philosophy is committed to confronting this tension within itself because it acknowledges this tension within

the city itself. Perhaps this understanding of the tension in political philosophy goes towards

accounting for why Plato himself does not engage in the practice he attributes to Socrates. Plato

writes and writes dialogues, replete with elaborate appearances that call for thorough examina-

tion. With these dialogues and the distance they afford, he mimics the dual power of speech to conceal and to reveal but always with the hope that these speeches open his readers to the

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