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How Philosophy Became Socratic: a Study of Plato's "Protagoras

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How Philosophy Became Socratic: a Study of Plato's How Philosophy Became Socratic C5246.indb i 4/8/10 10:44:19 AM C5246.indb ii 4/8/10 10:44:19 AM GH How Philosophy Became Socratic EF A Study of Plato’s Protagoras, Charmides, and Republic laurence lampert The University of Chicago Press Chicago & London C5246.indb iii 4/8/10 10:44:19 AM Laurence Lampert is professor emeritus of philosophy at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis and the author of Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, also published by the University of Chicago Press. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2010 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2010 Printed in the United States of America 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5 isbn-13: 978-0-226-47096-2 (cloth) isbn-10: 0-226-47096-2 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lampert, Laurence, 1941– How philosophy became socratic : a study of Plato’s Protagoras, Charmides, and Republic / Laurence Lampert. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-226-47096-2 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-226-47096-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Socrates. 2. Socrates— Political and social views. 3. Plato. Protagoras. 4. Plato. Republic. 5. Plato. Charmides. 6. Philosophy, Ancient—History. 7. Philosophy, Ancient—Political aspects. 8. Political science—Philosophy. I. Title. b317.l335 2010 184—dc22 2009052793 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992. C5246.indb iv 4/8/10 10:44:19 AM [ contents ] Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 part one Philosophy in a Time of Splendor: Socrates in Periclean Athens before the War, c. 433 chapter 1. Protagoras: Socrates and the Greek Enlightenment 19 Prologue: Great Protagoras 19 1. First Words 21 2. The Frame Conversation 24 3. Socrates with a Young Athenian 28 4. Socrates in Hades 34 5. Protagoras Introduces Himself 37 6. Socrates’ Challenge and Invitation: Can the Political Art Be Taught? 43 7. Protagoras’s Display Speech: Why the Political Art Is Teachable 50 8. Socrates’ Display Speech, Part I: The Wise Must Teach That Virtue Is Unitary 70 9. Socrates Stages a Crisis 79 10. Socrates’ Display Speech, Part II: A Wiser Stance toward the Wise 85 11. Alcibiades Presides 98 C5246.indb v 4/8/10 10:44:20 AM vi Contents 12. Socrates’ Display Speech, Part III: A Wiser Stance toward the Many 102 13. The Final Tribunal: Courage and Wisdom 117 14. Socrates the Victor 121 15. Last Words 124 16. Socrates’ Politics for Philosophy in 433 130 Note on the Dramatic Date of Protagoras and Alcibiades I 141 part two Philosophy in a Time of Crisis: Socrates’ Return to War-Ravaged, Plague-Ravaged Athens, Late Spring 429 chapter 2. Charmides : Socrates’ Philosophy and Its Transmission 147 Prologue: The Return of Socrates 147 1. First Words 148 2. Socrates’ Intentions 153 3. The Spectacle of Charmides’ Entrance 157 4. Critias Scripts a Play but Socrates Takes It Over 162 5. Stripping Charmides’ Soul 169 6. What Critias Took from Socrates and What That Riddler Had in Mind 178 7. Should Each of the Beings Become Clearly Apparent Just As It Is? 194 8. The Final Defi nition of Sôphrosunê, Socrates’ Defi nition 199 9. The Possibility of Socrates’ Sôphrosunê 203 10. The Benefi t of Socrates’ Sôphrosunê 213 11. Socrates Judges the Inquiry 226 12. Last Words 230 13. Who Might the Auditor of Plato’s Charmides Be? 235 Note on the Dramatic Date of Charmides 237 chapter 3. The Republic: The Birth of Platonism 241 Prologue: Socrates’ Great Politics 241 C5246.indb vi 4/8/10 10:44:20 AM Contents vii One: The World to Which Socrates Goes Down 243 1. First Words 243 2. The Compelled and the Voluntary 247 3. Learning from Cephalus 248 4. Polemarchus and Socratic Justice 253 5. Gentling Thrasymachus 257 6. The State of the Young in Athens 271 Two: Socrates’ New Beginning 279 7. New Gods 279 8. New Philosophers 289 9. New Justice in a New Soul 293 10. Compulsion and Another Beginning 306 11. The Center of the Republic: The Philosopher Ruler 312 12. Glaucon, Ally of the Philosopher’s Rule 320 13. Platonism: Philosophy’s Political Defense and Introduction to Philosophy 329 14. Public Speakers for Philosophy 337 15. Images of the Greatest Study: Sun, Line, Cave 348 Three: The Last Act of the Returned Odysseus 375 16. Love and Reverence for Homer 375 17. Homer’s Deed 377 18. Homer’s Children 382 19. Rewards and Prizes for Socrates’ Children 389 20. Replacing Homer’s Hades 394 21. Last Words 403 Note on the Dramatic Date of the Republic 405 Epilogue 413 Works Cited 419 Index 425 C5246.indb vii 4/8/10 10:44:20 AM C5246.indb viii 4/8/10 10:44:20 AM [ acknowledgments ] I am grateful to George Dunn for the help he has given me with this book. His acute insights, exegetically grounded and far reaching, illumined many passages of Plato for me, and he generously permitted me to incorporate them as I saw fi t. In addition, the two readers for the Press did me the great service of providing de- tailed criticisms from deeply informed perspectives; their work greatly improved the fi nished version of this book. C5246.indb ix 4/8/10 10:44:20 AM C5246.indb x 4/8/10 10:44:20 AM [ introduction ] Plato spread his dialogues across the temporal span of Socrates’ life, set- ting some earlier, some later, inducing their engaged reader to wonder: Does that span map a temporal development in Socrates’ thought? Did Plato show Socrates becoming Socrates? Yes, this book answers, the dra- matic dates Plato gave his dialogues invite his reader to follow a now little- used route into the true mansion of Socrates’ thought. Following that route, the reader accompanies Socrates as he breaks with the century-old tradition of philosophy, turns to his own path of investigation, and enters, over time, the deepest understanding of nature, and then, gradually again, learns the proper way to shelter and transmit that understanding in face of the threats to philosophy that Plato made so prominent. The plan of Plato’s dialogues shows Socrates becoming Socrates, “the one turning point and vortex” 1 of the history of philosophy—and of the history of political philosophy, philosophy’s quasi-philosophical means of sheltering and advancing philosophy. Plato’s chronological record of Socrates becoming who he was has a signifi cance far transcending philosophy’s existence in Socrates’ or Plato’s time, for it is the enduring record of philosophy becoming Socratic, taking the shape that came to dominate the spiritual life of the West. A study of Plato’s dialogues that pays close attention to their chronology and settings sees one of the roots of our civilization be- ing formed, over time, in the mind and actions of a wise man in imperial Athens, a man intending that his wise thoughts and actions colonize the wider world from there. 1. Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, ¶15. C5246.indb 1 4/8/10 10:44:20 AM 2 Introduction The question of how Socrates became Socrates arises late in a study of Plato’s writings and is meant to arise late: only after Socrates has actu- ally won in Plato’s reader a portion of the admiration due him does that question arise. “How did Socrates become himself?” is a question asked by those whom the dialogues have already drawn to that seemingly most public of philosophers. Wanting with some urgency to know just how their own special teacher became himself, such readers will interrogate their primary source on Socrates and only then begin to discover just how Plato wove into his dialogues the answer to a question they were crafted to generate. Plato’s Socrates in Time and Place Plato assigned most of his dialogues a specifi c dramatic date, showing Socrates conversing at a particular time and place with a particular person or persons. Platonic scholarship of the last century and a half has paid relatively little attention to these dramatic dates compared with the effort expended on determining composition dates, the time at which Plato might have written them. Scholars assign composition dates on the basis of some theory of Plato’s development; Plato assigned dramatic dates pointing to stages in Socrates’ development. By inquiring into the latent signifi cance of the patent dramatic dates, we can reconstruct Plato’s ac- count of how Socrates became himself, for Plato did not describe Socrates’ development in any straightforward way but instead communicated it in- directly through the dramatic dates. He indicated thereby that Socrates’ development did not occur in a vacuum—it was not simply a movement of thought; instead, it was a series of conscious gains by a mind that, in its devotion to thinking, came to recognize the situatedness of thinking in a person in space and time. Plato’s dialogues show Socrates to be a most remarkable man in a most remarkable place and time, for Plato set his life history of Socrates against the background of the larger life history of Athens, the city in which Socrates spent his life, whose wars he fought, whose festivals he celebrated, whose young he counseled, whose history and politics he measured, whose laws he obeyed until fi nally submitting, at age seventy, to its death sentence even though his oldest friend offered him easy escape from prison the day before the sacred ship returned from Delos, releasing his city from sacred restraint and freeing it to kill him.
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