On Justice and Talk

After we said our prayers...Polemarchus...caught sight of us from a distance as we were hastening homeward and ordered his [slave] boy run and bid us to wait for him, and the boy caught hold of my himation from behind and said, “Polemarchus wants you to wait.”... [Polemarchus catches up and says,] "you see how many we are?” he said....You must either then prove yourselves the better men or stay here.” “Why, is there not left,” said I, “the alternative of our persuading you that you ought to let us go?” “But could you persuade us,” said he, “if we refused to listen?”--Plato, Republic, Book 1, 327b-c.

Before we get to the great debate between Thrasymachus and Socrates (recall and here), the opening page(s) of the Republic introduce a large number of themes, including non-trivial material on civic religion, religious innovation, and the nature of Socratic piety which get developed in the exchange between Socrates and Cephalus. So, it is easy to miss the little exchange between Polemarchus and Socrates.

Polemarchus, the son of a wealth arm's dealer, acts as if he believes that might makes right. We tend to associate this with undemocratic tendencies, but his might consists in numbers. He has the most bodies and, thereby, can impose or force his axiological views on Socrates. His attitudes are a metaphor for democratic rule (without constitutional protections for outnumbered bodies). This conception of democratic-rule is compatible with slave-holding as Plato subtly reminds us.*

Socrates's response is among my favorite moments in philosophy. It's not just because he introduces the opposition between bodily force and persuasion as a means of setting disputes (that's important, but does not exhaust the possibilities), but rather, also, because he calls attention to a neglected alternative. Socrates's message is that we need not be trapped in dualities. He exhibits as exemplar here a noble ideal: philosophy is, in part, the pursuit of neglected alternatives to choice-options already articulated by the powerful. That's a dangerous enterprise, of course (as Socrates's fate reminds us), especially if, as Polemarchus indicates, the powerful won't listen. It may also be unrewarding because the powerful tend to have the most to offer (in rewards, protection, recognition, status, etc.).  If even the young among powerful of good will refuse to listen (by, say, participating in such a philosophical pursuit), then the philosophical enterprise may turn futile.

Of course, a moment's further reflection suggests that the Socratic course may be even more dangerous if the powerful do listen (carefully) and  then feel threatened by what they hear or if philosophy corrupts the young in ways that makes them dangerous. That's to say, if it is intrinsic to true philosophy to explore alternatives to the status quo, then we cannot take for granted (given that the status quo is nowhere fully just) that the consequences of the practice of Socratic philosophy are always beneficial to society or philosophy's students.

Regardless of Plato's considered opinion on slavery, it remains notable that slavery is absent in the true city (or the city of pigs) that Socrates goes on to develop first (369b-372d).

 

Comments

[Ruth Groff]

Yes, totally! (And the piety issue, too, is flagged within the first line or two.)

I always start out with "... first we prayed *and* looked on," followed by this exchange, when, on Day 1 of my fall Intro class starting in on a several weeks long read of the Republic, I undertake to impress upon students both that the entire thing can and must be read as one would read a (philosophical) poem - with that degree of care to every detail - and that one of the things that it is about, as so many of the dialogues are, is precisely this question of whether or not it is possible to persuade people who refuse to listen.

The same problem vexes the hypostatized 3-part soul as depicted in the R., wherein spirit and appetite have to somehow come to agree to be ruled by reason.

Plato is the best.