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Irony and Accessibility the Death of Socrates and the Life of Philosophy: an Interpretation of Plato's Phaedo by Peter J

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Irony and Accessibility the Death of Socrates and the Life of Philosophy: an Interpretation of Plato's Phaedo by Peter J Irony and Accessibility The Death of Socrates and the Life of Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato's Phaedo by Peter J. Ahrensdorf The War Lover: A Study of Plato's Republic by Leon Harold Craig Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos by Joseph Cropsey Review by: David Roochnik Source: Political Theory, Vol. 25, No. 6 (Dec., 1997), pp. 869-885 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191963 Accessed: 20-08-2014 17:09 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Political Theory. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Wed, 20 Aug 2014 17:09:55 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEW ESSAY IRONY AND ACCESSIBILITY THE DEATH OF SOCRATESAND THE LIFE OF PHILOSOPHY:AN INTERPRETATIONOF PLATO'SPHAEDO by PeterJ. Ahrensdorf.Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1995. 238 + x pp. THE WARLOVER: A STUDY OF PLATO'SREPUBLIC by Leon Harold Craig. Toronto:University of TorontoPress, 1994. 439 + xxxviii pp. PLATO'SWORLD: MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOSby Joseph Cropsey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 227 + x pp. During the fall semester of 1995, I taught Plato's Republic to a class of freshmen.The next spring,I workedthrough it with graduatestudents. These autobiographicaldetails are worthnoting because even if what they reportis common, it is nonethelessstartling: Plato's greatestdialogue can be success- fully taught both to beginners and to sophisticatedstudents. The Republic, whose philosophicalrichness and complexity are undeniable,is nonetheless uniquely accessible. Althoughbefuddled by, say, the divided line, the begin- ning student can still read the dialogue with pleasure and profit. With the possible exceptionof sectionsfrom Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the same cannot be said for other philosophicalmasterworks. The severe difficulties of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel's Phenomenology,or Wittgen- stein's Tractatuslie forbiddinglyon the surface.By contrast,the surface of the Republic, as is true of so many Platonicdialogues, is welcoming.1 Plato himself, throughhis characterSocrates, may well addressthe source of this phenomenon.In his famous diatribeagainst writing in the Phaedrus, Socrates says this: Writing,Phaedrus, has this strangequality, and is very like painting;for the creaturesof paintingstand like living beings, but if one asks them a question,they preservea solemn silence. And so it is with writtenwords (logoi); you might thinkthey spoke as if they had intelligence, but if you questionthem, wishing to know abouttheir sayings, they always POLITICALTHEORY, Vol. 25 No. 6, December 1997 869-885 ? 1997 Sage Publications,Inc. 869 This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Wed, 20 Aug 2014 17:09:55 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 870 POLITICALTHEORY / December 1997 say only one and the same thing. And every word, when once it is written,is bandied aboutalike amongthose who understandand those for whom it is not fittingand it knows not to whom to speak or not to speak. (275d-e)2 As opposed to the "living, breathing"(276a) words of a speakinghuman being who stands before and hence can direct an appropriatelycrafted message to a particularaudience, a writtenwork indiscriminatelyputs forth the same words to every reader. An inference is obvious: since this critique of writing is itself written, Platonicdialogues must have been conceived with an eye to overcomingthis very deficiency. Plato strove, in other words, to make his writing able to discriminateamong its readers(i.e., to know to whom to speak and to whom to be silent).3The dialoguesare multilayered, and this is one reasonwhy they are able to address,for example, both freshmenand graduatestudents. But how exactly do they accomplish this? A widely accepted answer would be Socraticirony. Simply put, Socratesdoes not say exactly what he means. Instead,cognizant of what his interlocutorcan comprehend,Socrates says different things to different people. If the interlocutoris not able to follow a complex line of thinking, then Socrates may address him in an appropriatelycomprehensible manner. To the grief-strickenand manifestly unphilosophicalCrito, for example,Socrates may well withholdhis complex thoughts about the relationshipbetween positive law and justice itself and instead simply encourage his friend to obey the rulings of the Athenians. Socrates may argue thus even if such a straightforwardstatement does not adequatelyexpress his own far more subtle position. If this is the case, and if such ironic withholdingis characteristicof the dialogues themselves, then a possible answer(or at least the beginningof one) would be suppliedto the question of how a philosophical work as the Republic becomes uniquely accessible. Probablyno moderncommentator has made irony and the multiplelayers of Platonic writing more central to a reading of the dialogues than Leo Strauss.In The Cityand Man, he begins his well-knownchapter, "On Plato's Republic,"with an analysis of Phaedrus 275 and concludes, "The Platonic dialogue, if properlyread, reveals itself to possess the flexibility or adapt- ability of oral communication."The dialogue, Strauss continues, "says differentthings to differentpeople-not accidentally,as every writingdoes, but thatit is so contrivedas to say differentthings to differentpeople, or that it is radicallyironical." From this, Straussinfers that "the properwork of a writingis trulyto talk, or to reveal the truth,to some while leading othersto salutoryopinions."4 This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Wed, 20 Aug 2014 17:09:55 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEWESSAY 871 The political corollary of such a hermeneuticalposition is readily forth- coming: "Ironyis essentially relatedto the fact that there is a naturalorder of rank among men."5There are those few capable of understandingphilo- sophical difficulties and those many who do better with less than the truth (i.e., with "salutoryopinions"). Freshmen with no inclinationto advance in philosophy may leave a readingof the Crito with the superficialimpression that all forms of civil disobedienceare simply bad. They are therebyencour- aged to obey the law. By contrast,the advancedstudent should be urged to explore what appearsto be a contradictionlying just beneaththe surface of the dialogue.After all, at 46b Socratessays thathe is a manwho obeys nothing but reason. Why, then, does he also say one should always obey the law? Crito does not ask what the properresponse is to a law thatis not reasonable. The elitism implicit in Strauss'shermeneutic presupposes a radical gulf between those capableof miningfor the truthand those in need of superficial opinion. The true teaching of the dialogue is hidden from those who would neitherunderstand nor benefit from it (and who, for reasons to be discussed shortly, would, if exposed to the philosophicalteaching, bring harm to the philosophers). The three books here underreview follow Strauss'slead, for each distin- guishes between a surfaceteaching and a hiddenor buried,a more genuinely Platonic,depth. While each is in its own way helpful, all are finally deficient, and this is precisely because they misconstruethe meaning of the surface- depthrelationship in a Platonicdialogue. These authorsdenigrate the surface by treating it as a philosophically insignificant facade. They disconnect surface from depth and thereby disrupt the structuralcontinuity that, I propose, is the dialogues' most notable achievement. In the course of discussing these books, I offer a proposal that aims to preserve the integrity of the dialogues' surface. Far from being superficial cant, and as opposed to being a screen or a disguise, the surface must be respected as a significant dimension of the philosophical content of the dialogue itself. I do not imply that the Platonic dialogues have no depths to be mined or that,ultimately, such depthsare accessible only to a few. Instead, I hold that the surface of the dialogue is a phenomenon that must be philosophicallypreserved. Even if the surfaceis transfiguredas the result of a philosophicalinterpretation of the dialogueas a whole, such transfiguration must be conceived as anAufhebung, a dialecticalsublation that does not only simply negate but also preserveswhat is being negatedby elevating it. My proposal also has a political correlate.The sensibility suggested by what I offer should perhapsbe describedas more "liberal"or "democratic" This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Wed, 20 Aug 2014 17:09:55 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 872 POLITICALTHEORY / December 1997 than that implicit in the books here underreview, for I insist that beginning readers, ordinarycitizens, must be invited to read furtherand to enter the projectof philosophy.In otherwords, the commentatormust assume thatthe superficialreader can be taught,and such teachingshould begin with a clear articulationof the surface.This surfacedepicts characters, deeds, places, and times, as
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