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The Republic Leo Strauss Plato’s Republic (1957) Seminar in Political Philosophy: Plato’s Republic A course given in the spring quarter, 1957 Department of Political Science, The University of Chicago Edited and with an introduction by Peter Ahrensdorf Peter Ahrensdorf is James Sprunt Professor of Political Science and affiliated professor of classics at Davidson College. He is the author of The Death of Socrates and the Life of Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato’s Phaedo (State University of New York Press, 1995) and other works on ancient philosophy and drama. © 1975 Joseph Cropsey © 2014 The Estate of Leo Strauss. All Rights Reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS Editor’s Introduction i-v The Leo Strauss Transcript Project vi-vii Editorial Headnote viii Session 1: Introduction, Book I 1-18 Session 2: Book I 19-34 Session 3: Book I 35-51 Session 4: Review, Book II 52-68 Session 5: Books II, III 69-82 Session 6: Books III, IV 83-100 Session 7: Book IV 101-113 Session 8: Books IV, V 114-128 Session 9: Books V, VI, VII 129-140 Session 10: Book VII 141-155 Session 11: Book VII 156-173 Session 12: Book VIII 174-190 Session 13: Books VIII, IX 191-204 Session 14: Books IX, X 205-218 Session 15: Book X; summary points 219-221 Plato’s Republic, spring 1957 i Introduction to Leo Strauss’s 1957 Spring Seminar on Plato’s Republic Peter J. Ahrensdorf Plato’s Republic had already played a leading role in Leo Strauss’s intellectual life long before he taught his seminar on that dialogue during the spring quarter of 1957. In Strauss’s most famous book, Natural Right and History (1953), the Republic figures prominently in the Introduction: “Let us beware of the danger of pursuing a Socratic goal with the means, and the temper, of Thrasymachus”—and in his elucidation of the classical understanding of the best regime and the classical natural right doctrine.1 In his most famous essay, “Persecution and the Art of Writing” (1941), Strauss frames his argument that philosophers of the past presented their teachings in a deliberately oblique, exoteric manner with references to and discussions of key passages from books 2 and 3 of the Republic.2 Perhaps most importantly, Strauss found in Plato’s image of the cave, not only a clear guide to “Plato’s view of the relation between and philosophy and politics” (1946),3 but a compelling account of “[t]he natural difficulties of philosophizing” that philosophers encounter at all times everywhere (1932)4 and hence “the classic description of the natural obstacles to philosophy” (1948).5 In Natural Right and History, Strauss introduces the very “idea of philosophy” with an account of the cave: “Philosophizing means to ascend from the cave to the light of the sun. The cave is the world of opinion as opposed to knowledge . Philosophizing means, then, to ascend from public dogma to essentially private knowledge” (11-12). Strauss was even inspired by Plato’s image of the cave to express in terms of that image his own account of the obstacles to philosophy peculiar to his own times: due to the distinctive prejudices of our times “we find ourselves in a second, much deeper cave than the lucky ignorant persons Socrates dealt with; we need history first of all to ascend to the cave from which Socrates can lead us to light; we need a propaedeutic, which the Greeks did not need, namely, learning through reading” (1931).6 Strauss reaffirmed this account of the intellectual predicament of human beings in modern times in his 1935 book Philosophy and Law: “only the history of philosophy makes possible the ascent from the second, ‘unnatural’ cave, into which we have fallen”7—and in his 1948 essay on Spinoza—“People may become so frightened of the ascent to the light of the sun, and so desirous of making that ascent utterly impossible to any of their descendants, that they dig a deep pit beneath the cave into which they were born, and withdraw into that pit.”8 Yet even though Strauss discussed the Republic in detail in numerous works published prior to 1957,9 at the time of his 1957 seminar Strauss had not yet published a commentary on the Republic or indeed on any Platonic dialogue. Strauss went on to publish commentaries on seven dialogues: first, relatively short, separate commentaries on The Republic, the Statesman, and the Laws in his chapter on Plato in The History of Political Philosophy (1963); then, a longer commentary on the Republic in the City and Man (1964);10 and later, commentaries on the Minos (1968), on the Euthydemus (1970), and on the Apology and the Crito (1976), and a book on the Laws (1975).11 Plato’s Republic, spring 1957 ii Strauss’s remarks in his 1957 seminar on the Republic foreshadow in many respects his City and Man essay. More specifically, the first seven class sessions here anticipate in many ways his discussion in that essay of how to read a Platonic dialogue and his detailed commentary on the first four books of the dialogue (50-116). The most noteworthy and interesting feature of Strauss’s 1957 Republic seminar is the attention it pays to books 5-10 of the dialogue. While 22 of 88 pages of the City and Man essay are devoted to books 5-10 of the Republic (116-138), roughly half of the class sessions are devoted to those books (the middle of session 8 through session 15). Moreover, while only 12 of the 88 pages of the City and Man essay (or less than 1/7) are devoted to books 5-7 (116-128)—those books Strauss apparently refers to in the essay when remarking, “That part of the Republic that deals with philosophy is the most important part of the book” (127)—three and a half sessions (the middle of session 8 through session 11) out of 15 (almost one quarter) are devoted to those books, of which Strauss says in the seminar, “The center and peak of the Republic is the discussion of philosophy12 [from] the middle of book five until the end of book seven” (session 14). Perhaps most importantly, whereas Strauss devotes less than three of 88 pages to Plato’s famous Doctrine of Ideas in his City and Man essay (118-121), six of the fifteen sessions of Strauss’s seminar discuss at considerable length that very doctrine. Indeed, session 10 is entirely devoted to a discussion of the Idea of the Good, a topic barely mentioned by Strauss in his City and Man essay (119). Classical scholars have criticized Strauss’s interpretation of Plato for neglecting Plato’s Theory of Ideas, but such a criticism simply cannot be made of his 1957 seminar.13 The Republic seminar also presents fascinating and detailed discussions of the Bible (sessions 10, 12, 13), Aristotle's Physics (session 11), and of thinkers whom Strauss hardly mentions in his City and Man essay on the Republic, if at all: Kant (sessions 10, 11, 13), Hegel (sessions 9, 10, 11), Heidegger (session 10), Schelling (session 10), and Tocqueville (session 12). One theme that Strauss focuses on more obviously in the seminar than in the City of Man essay is that of the grave theoretical difficulties that beset the philosophic quest for wisdom and the deeply problematic incompleteness of that quest. In the following excerpts, for example, Strauss emphasizes what he had earlier referred to in his 1932 manuscript, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” as the “natural difficulties of philosophizing,” and the political and theoretical consequences of those difficulties: If full knowledge of the idea of the good as it would be needed is not available, then the rule of philosophy will not be possible. Aside from the great problem of philosophers and rule, there is the intrinsic problem of the incompleteness of philosophy. If this is so, the conflict between the city and philosophy cannot be resolved (session 9). The beauty of the Republic is this—the Republic is not only a political utopia but at the same time a philosophical utopia . The beauty of the Republic is that it presents a political utopia which is impossible because the philosophic utopia is impossible. I think this is the deepest nerve of the argument of the Republic. First we have the political utopia, that which our hearts or our consciences desire. Then we see that this in itself requires philosophy. What the completion of philosophy would mean is sketched. Then it Plato’s Republic, spring 1957 iii is suggested to us that this completion is impossible. Thus this description of what philosophy in its perfection would be is utopian. Therefore, the political utopia is a utopia14 (session 9). Certainly the first part of the statement—that philosophy presupposes the whole is intelligible-—is essential if philosophy is to be possible. Our question is clear. How does Plato try to establish the basic premise of philosophy? (session 10) Plato treats what we call natural science in a dialogue called the Timaeus. He presents natural science there not as a science but as a likely tale.15 That is one of the deepest difficulties for Plato—to find the possibility of a true science of things which come into being and perish. This is really an infinite problem (session 11). Philosophy essentially regards its presuppositions as problems. It cannot be dogmatic in this sense. It cannot simply accept these presuppositions and not see a problem in them (session 11). Another striking feature of these sessions is the capital importance in Strauss’s eyes of one thinker in particular whom he barely mentions in the City and Man: Kant (89, 128n).16 In Strauss’s discussions here, Kant and Plato constitute, in important ways, the fundamental theoretical alternatives.
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