Volume 41 Issue 2 Volume 41 Issue 3 Double Issue 63 Note to Readers Fall 2014 65 Sophie Bourgault The Unbridled Tongue: Plato, Parrhesia, and Philosophy 91 Richard Burrow Fulfillment in As You Like It 123 Alexandru Racu Strauss’s Machiavelli and Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor Book Reviews: 163 Steven H. Frankel Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism: Another Reason, Another Enlightenment by Corine Pelluchon 171 Michael Harding Political Philosophy Cross-Examined: Perennial Challenges to the Philosophic Life by Thomas L. Pangle and J. Harvey Lomax 181 Will Morrisey Locke, Science, and Politics by Steven Forde Spring 2015 201 Jonathan Culp Happy City, Happy Citizens? The Common Good and the Private Good in Plato’s Republic 227 Aryeh Tepper The Problematic Power of Musical Instruments in the Bible 247 Julien Carriere & Ancients and Moderns under the Empire of Circe: 279 Steven Berg Machiavelli’s The Ass, Translation and Commentary 313 Erik S. Root Liberal Education Imperiled: Toward a Resurrection of Reason and Revelation in Higher Education Book Reviews: 349 Fred Baumann Leo Strauss on Moses Mendelssohn, translated and edited by Martin D. Yaffe 359 Gregory A. McBrayer On the God of the Christians (and on one or two others) by Rémi Brague 367 Rafael Major Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom by Timothy W. Burns ©2015 Interpretation, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of the contents may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. ISSN 0020-9635 Editor-in-Chief Hilail Gildin, Dept. of Philosophy, Queens College Associate Editor-in-Chief Timothy W. Burns, Baylor University Associate Editors Daniel Ian Mark • Geoffrey Sigalet General Editors Charles E. Butterworth • Hilail Gildin General Editors (Late) Howard B. White (d. 1974) • Robert Horwitz (d. 1987) Seth G. Benardete (d. 2001) • Leonard Grey (d. 2009) • Harry V. Jaffa (d. 2015) Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell • David Lowenthal • Harvey C. Mansfield • Ellis Sandoz • Kenneth W. Thompson Consulting Editors (Late) Leo Strauss (d. 1973) • Arnaldo Momigliano (d. 1987) • Michael Oakeshott (d. 1990) • John Hallowell (d. 1992) • Ernest L. Fortin (d. 2002) • Muhsin Mahdi (d. 2007) • Joseph Cropsey (d. 2012) International Editors Terence E. Marshall • Heinrich Meier Editors Wayne Ambler • Marco Andreacchio • Maurice Auerbach • Robert Bartlett • Fred Baumann • Eric Buzzetti • Susan Collins • Patrick Coby • Elizabeth C’de Baca Eastman • Erik Dempsey • Edward J. Erler • Maureen Feder-Marcus • L. Joseph Hebert • Pamela K. Jensen • Ken Masugi • Carol L. McNamara • Will Morrisey • Amy Nendza • Susan Orr • Michael Palmer • Charles T. Rubin • Leslie G. Rubin • Thomas Schneider • Susan Meld Shell • Nicholas Starr • Devin Stauffer • Bradford P. Wilson • Cameron Wybrow • Martin D. Yaffe • Catherine H. Zuckert • Michael P. Zuckert Copy Editor Les Harris Designer Sarah Teutschel Inquiries Interpretation, A Journal of Political Philosophy Department of Political Science Baylor University 1 Bear Place, 97276 Waco, TX 76798 email [email protected] The Unbridled Tongue: Plato, Parrhesia, and Philosophy 6 5 The Unbridled Tongue: Plato, Parrhesia, and Philosophy Sophie Bourgault University of Ottawa [email protected] My tongue has been galloping on and obviously I ought to curb it constantly; I must keep a bridle in my mouth and not let myself be carried away by the argument. —Plato, Laws Is Karl Popper definitely passé in Plato studies? The temptation is great to answer in the affirmative. Certainly, his controversial polemic The Open Society and Its Enemies (where Plato’s name, we will remember, is associ- ated with totalitarianism) has been subject to numerous refutations since the 1950s.1 And yet, the ghost of Popper still seems to haunt North American political science departments—as is suggested by the number of political theorists who still feel the urge to wrangle with him over his account of Plato. For instance, it is partially in order to discredit Popper that Arlene Saxon- house, in a fairly recent article, meticulously analyzes the narrative structure of Plato’s Republic. Based on the ambiguity and multidimensionality of this 1 Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966). For criticisms and assessments, see R. B. Levinson, In Defense of Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957); R. Bambrough, ed., Plato, Popper, and Politics: Some Contributions to a Modern Controversy (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967); R. Maurer, “De l’antiplatonisme politico- philosophique moderne,” in Contre Platon, vol. 2, Renverser le platonisme, ed. M. Dixsaut (Paris: Vrin, 1995); J.-F. Pradeau, Platon, les démocrates et la démocratie (Naples: Bibliopolis, 2005). © 2015 Interpretation, Inc. 6 6 Interpretation Volume 41 / Issue 2 structure, Saxonhouse concludes that Plato is—contra Popper—a thinker who is sympathetic to democracy.2 Saxonhouse is certainly not alone in putting forward a “democratic Plato”: Peter Euben, Sara Monoson, Gerald Mara, and Dana Villa have all, each in his or her own unique way, tried to show that Platonic thought can be reconciled in some ways with liberal democracy.3 (In our conclusion, we will seek to reflect on the broader motives driving this scholarship.) Despite great differences in their methods and conclusions, what unites these inter- preters is the fact that all seem to attach great significance to theform , rather than to the content, of Plato’s dialogues. For some, it is possible to bracket the overly harsh things Socrates has said about democracy and to infer sympa- thy for democracy from the way philosophy is enacted in Plato’s dialogues. By attaching great importance to form (or style), some of these interpreters believe that Platonic dialogues can serve as a rich model for modern liberal democracy, since Plato’s dialogues are, at least at their best, a model of free- dom, equality, and, most importantly, sincerity or frank speech. A certain kinship is drawn, then, between Socrates and discourse ethics, by underscoring the significance given by Socrates and Plato to parrhēsia— that is, to an absolute and courageous sincerity in philosophy (or politics). Literally, “parrhesia” means “all saying” (pan rhēma); it consists in radically frank, sincere speech. As van Raalte sums the matter up, the term was used by the ancient Greeks to refer to either of two things: a sociopolitical condition or a character trait in an individual—for instance, “Athens is a city where there is parrhesia” (democratic ideology was indeed closely tied to the practice of parrhesia), or “this man speaks with parrhesia.”4 But the word “parrhesia” was certainly not always used with a positive connotation: in Plato, Isocrates, and Euripides, for instance, parrhesia is also associated with manipulation, empty chattering, and excessive freedom.5 2 See Arlene W. Saxonhouse, “The Socratic Narrative: A Democratic Reading of Plato’s Dialogues,” Political Theory 37, no. 6 (2009): 747, and Athenian Democracy: Modern Mythmakers and Ancient Theorists (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996); Sara M. Monoson, Plato’s Democratic Entanglements (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 13–14; Michel Foucault, Le gouverne- ment de soi et des autres (Paris: Gallimard, 2008), 264–66. 3 Peter Euben, Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Monoson, Plato’s Democratic Entanglements; Gerald Mara, Socrates’ Discursive Democracy: Logos and Ergon in Platonic Political Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997); Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 4 Marlein van Raalte, “Socratic Parrhesia and Its Afterlife in Plato’sLaws ,” in Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, ed. I. Sluiter and R. M. Rosen (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 279. 5 For Plato, see Phaedrus 240e; Laws 649b; Republic 557b. Opinions vary regarding the number of The Unbridled Tongue: Plato, Parrhesia, and Philosophy 6 7 The recent turn to the issue of parrhesia in American Plato scholarship largely is due to a series of lectures given by Michel Foucault at Berkeley in 1983 on the notion of parrhesia (an abridged version of the course offered at the Collège de France on the same theme).6 In these lectures, Foucault painted with broad brush strokes the history of ancient parrhesia, underscor- ing three key moments: the Periclean moment (where parrhesia for the most part entails the right7 of any citizen to address with frankness an assembly or a jury); the Socratic-Platonic8 moment (where political parrhesia under- goes a crisis, withdraws from the public sphere, and turns toward the soul of the prince or of any individual); and, finally, the Cynical moment (where ethical parrhesia becomes more radical and brutal). Since this essay is pri- marily concerned with Plato scholarship, we will focus on Socratic-Platonic parrhesia—which is, according to Foucault, to be envisioned primarily as an approach to philosophy rather than an approach to politics.9 What we will see, however, is that various students of Plato have appropriated Foucault’s work on Socratic-Platonic parrhesia in order to put forward a “democratic Plato,” a Plato who is sympathetic to democratic political practice. Indeed, contrary to Foucault (who insisted that Platonic parrhesia is hostile to democracy), Monoson and Saxonhouse believe that this hostility is not completely insur- mountable, and that it is possible to see a subtle endorsement of