The "Republic'"s Third Wave and the Paradox of Political Philosophy
Author(s): Jacob Howland
Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Mar., 1998), pp. 633-657 Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20130250 . Accessed: 06/04/2014 09:06 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 support@jstor.org. . Philosophy Education Society Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Review of Metaphysics. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLICS THIRD WAVE AND THE PARADOX OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY JACOB HOWLAND "Unless," I said, "the philosophers rule as kings or those now called kings and chiefs genuinely and adequately philosophize, and political power and philosophy coincide in the same place, while the many na tures now making their way to either apart from the other are by neces sity excluded, there is no rest from ills for the cities, my dear Glaucon, nor I think for human kind, nor will the regime we have now described in speech ever come forth from nature, insofar as possible, and see the light of the sun. This is what for so long was causing my hesitation to speak, seeing how very paradoxical it would be to say."1 !5o GOES what Socrates DESCRIBES as the "biggest and most difficult" of the three waves of paradox set forth in book 5 of the Republic (472a4). While he does not pause to justify the latter description when he introduces the third wave, there can be little doubt that this wave is indeed both very big or important and very difficult. As for its diffi culty, Socrates mentions no less than four times his hesitancy to state that philosophers must rule or rulers philosophize (472a, 473e, 499a-b, 503b). Moreover, a more subtle, yet perhaps no less telling indication of the importance of the third wave is provided by the fact that it breaks at the exact center of the text as measured by Stephanus pages?a fact that commentators on the Republic seem hardly even to have noticed.2 Correspondence to: Department of Philosophy and Religion, The Uni versity of Tulsa, 600 South College Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74104; e-mail: jahow land@aol.com 1 Plato, Republic 473cll-e4. Most quotations from the Republic in this essay are drawn from Allan Bloom's The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968); otherwise I offer my own translation of the Greek text of John Burnet, Platonis Opera, vol. 4 (1902; reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). 2 Some calculation is involved in determining the length of the Republic, because the numbering of the Stephanus pages is not continuous. Thus, book 1 runs from 327a-354c; book 2, 357a-383c; book 3, 386a-417b; book 4, 419a-445e; book 5, 449a-480a; book 6, 484a-511e; book 7, 514a-541b; book 8, 543a-569c; book 9, 571a-592b; book 10, 595a-621d. If we assign to each of The Review of Metaphysics 51 (March 1998): 633-657. Copyright ? 1998 by The Review of Metaphysics This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 634 JACOB HOWLAND There are several reasons to believe that the centrality of the third wave may prove to be a philosophically important detail. First, the general structure of the Republic seems to place special emphasis on its central books. One scholar, Eva Brann, begins her interpreta tion of the Republic with the observation that this dialogue "is com posed on the plan of concentric rings."3 There are furthermore other dialogues in which Plato has evidently calculated the center of the text quite precisely, and has done so with the intention of indirectly underscoring the fundamental importance of a philosophical concep tion, argument, or issue. The most striking example of Plato's use of this literary device is to be found in the Statesman, in which the Eleatic Stranger introduces the notion of measurement in accordance with the nonarithmetical mean?a notion that is crucial to his account of statesmanship?at the arithmetically-determined midpoint of the dialogue.4 So too, Plato seems to call special attention to the signifi cance of the Eleatic Stranger's philosophical "parricide" of his teacher Parmenides by placing that dramatic event at the midpoint of the Sophist.5 While each of the passages cited above requires careful con the five subdivisions of the Stephanus page that are designated by the letters a, b, c, d, and e the value of 0.2 pages, book 1 is calculated to be 27.6 Stephanus pages in length; book 2, 26.6; book 3, 31.4; book 4, 27; book 5, 31.2; book 6, 28; book 7, 27.4; book 8, 26.6; book 9, 21.4; book 10, 26.6; and the total length of the Republic is 273.8 Stephanus pages. By this method of reckoning, the midpoint of the dialogue occurs 136.9 pages from the beginning, or at 473b. The third wave breaks, so to speak, at 473c-e. The centrality of the third wave is almost universally overlooked in the secondary literature on the Republic. It is noted in passing in Leon Craig, The War Lover: A Study of Plato's Republic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 11. 3 According to Brann, the center of the Republic?books 5 through 7, in which Plato sets forth "the actual founding of a city in 'deed,' ergon"?coin cides with the dialogue's core accomplishment: the education of Glaucon through Socrates' philosophical "music." Eva T. H. Brann, "The Music of the Republic" St. John's Review 39.1 and 2 (1989-90), 1-103: 7-8. My claim that thematic elements in the Republic are arranged in opposition around the third wave (see below) supports Brann's insight that the Republic reflects the "ring" or "geometric" composition that functions as a structural principle in Homer. Cf. Cedric H. Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (1958; re print, New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1965). 4 The midpoint of the Statesman is 284b. The Stranger's distinction be tween arithmetical and nonarithmetical measurement is set forth at 283c 285c. At 284b, the Stranger explains that the arts, including the political art, could not exist in the absence of nonarithmetical measurement. 5 The midpoint of the Sophist is 242b, and the Stranger introduces the is sue of parricide at 24Id. This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 635 sideration in its own right,6 these examples perhaps suffice to show that the placement of the third wave at the exact center of the Repub lic is unlikely to be incidental to our understanding of its significance within the dialogue as a whole. The center of a text is an appropriate place to hide that which is especially questionable as well as to emphasize that which is espe cially important; in certain cases where the author does not wish to be understood by every reader, these intentions may overlap. In writing on Plato, Leo Strauss took pains to identify the central item in a list as well as the subjects treated at the center of a section or book.7 Some times, he suggested, the center is to be understood as a place of honor suited to that which is most important; on other occasions, what is at the center is questionable in a way that casts doubt upon that which stands at the periphery.8 Both of these uses, we may note, are con firmed by ancient authors.9 Both, moreover, coincide in certain texts, especially where the author has reason to write esoterically. A nota ble example of this coincidence is to be found in Alfarabi's Summary of Plato's Laws, where, Strauss observes, at the "very center" of the Summary and at the beginning of the fifth chapter (which is "literally the central chapter") Alfarabi "does exactly the same thing he did at the end of the fourth chapter: he drops Plato's repeated and unambig uous reference to the gods."10 For those with eyes to see, Strauss sug gests, the center of the Summary contains Alfarabi's implicit critique 6 For a discussion of the connection between the central passages of the trilogy Sophist, Statesman, and Theaetetus, see Jacob Howland, The Para dox of Political Philosophy: Socrates' Philosophic Trial (Lanham, Md.: Row man and Littlefield Publishers, 1998). 7 See for instance Strauss's The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws (1975; reprint, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), 66, 69, 148,164-5, 175, 182. 8 For an example of the latter see Strauss, Argument and Action, 175. Examples of the former are provided by the other passages cited in the previ ous note; see also Strauss's remark about Adeimantus in "On Plato's Repub lic," in The City and Man (1964; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 64. 9 In his Life of Cicero 2.2-3, Plutarch notes that Cicero's being in the middle among his friends was a mark of honor. In De Oratore 2.77.313-14, Cicero observes that a good speech begins and ends with its strongest points and hides its weakest points in the middle. 10 While Alfarabi maintains that "what has to be cared for in the first place is the soul," Strauss notes that "Farabi does not reproduce Plato's state ment that one ought to honor one's soul 'next after the gods' (726a6-727a2)." "How Farabi Read Plato's Laws," in What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (1959; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 148. This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 636 JACOB HOWLAND of the central religious doctrine of God?a critique that this early Is lamic philosopher certainly had reason to present with the utmost caution.11 The present essay regards the textual centrality of the third wave of paradox as an essential clue to the meaning and structure of the Re public. The centrality of the third wave suggests that the relationship between philosophy and politics constitutes the foremost theme of the Republic as a whole. The placement of the third wave is further more a key to the organization of the dialogue. As we shall see, the paradoxical character of the relationship between philosophy and politics can be grasped most directly through an examination of cer tain fundamental oppositions that are systematically arranged around the third wave as the primary thematic and dramatic focal point of the Republic. Finally, I shall argue that the Republic is also in some re spects an esoteric document that appropriately attempts to conceal certain dimensions of Plato's political teaching from nonphilosophical readers. Plato scholars have followed two main lines of interpretation in approaching the third wave. The majority of commentators take the text more or less at face value. They understand the coincidence of philosophy and politics as the indispensable requirement for bringing into being the regime that Socrates has been describing since the mid dle of book 2, and they believe that Plato viewed this regime as a model of the genuinely virtuous city. Opinions differ within this ma jority viewpoint as to whether Plato saw this model as a blueprint for political action or as an ideal that actual cities could at best only roughly approximate.12 A second, very different line of interpretation was championed thirty years ago by Strauss and his student Allan Bloom.13 Strauss and Bloom assert that the discussion of the just city in general, and of the third wave in particular, must be understood within the context of Socrates' relationship to his interlocutors, espe cially Glaucon. They argue that Socrates was concerned to cure Glau con of his political ambition and to turn him toward a life of philoso phy.14 Read in this way, they claim, the city in speech illuminates in complex and subtle ways both the ineliminable tension between phi losophy and politics and the necessary limits of the political commu 11 Strauss's interpretation of Alfarabi's Summary should be read in con nection with the general remarks on the extraordinary significance that a "central passage" may assume in esoteric writing offered in "Persecution and the Art of Writing," in Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952; reprint, Chi cago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 22-37; see especially pp. 24-5. This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 637 nity with respect to the cultivation of virtue in human beings. Far from advancing a Utopian vision, the Republic in fact sets forth a pro found critique of political idealism.15 In important respects, the interpretation developed below lends more support to the readings of Strauss and Bloom than to the major ity view. I maintain that the third wave fails to present even an "ideal," impractical political solution, for Socrates raises serious doubts about the virtue of the great majority of the citizens of the city in speech. In particular, reflection upon the oppositions arranged around the third wave brings to light the implication that even in the "just" city, the Auxiliaries, precisely because they are not genuinely philosophical, may be bound to the regime by vice more than by virtue. Rightly 12 In A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni versity Press, 1975), W. K. C. Guthrie canvasses the range of views on the question of "whether this [Plato's] state, granted its virtues if it existed, could ever become a reality" (483). Karl Popper famously asserted that the Repub lic "was meant by its author not so much as a theoretical treatise, but as a topical political manifesto"; The Open Society and its Enemies, 2 vols. (1943, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 1:153. According to Nickolas Pappas, the Republic, a "systematic utopia," presents "uncompro mising recommendations for political change"; Plato and the Republic (New York: Routledge, 1995), 14, 15. In Philosopher-Kings: The Argument of Plato's Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), C. D. C. Reeve asserts that Plato attempted to show that the Kallipolis, "the good or maxi mally happy political community" that is ruled by philosopher-kings, is "a real possibility," from which it follows that the just city Socrates lays out prior to the third wave is "a real possibility as well" (170-1). Julia Annas argues that Plato wished only to make the case that his "political ideal"?the just city, the society of good people?is at least "not impossible in principle"; An Intro duction to Plato's Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 185; em phasis in original. 13 Strauss, "On Plato's Republic"; Allan Bloom, "Interpretive Essay," in Bloom, Republic of Plato, 307-436. Dale Hall defends the majority view against the readings of Strauss and Bloom in "The Republic and the Limits of Politics," Political Theory 5.3 (1977): 293-313. The main lines of Bloom's reading of the Republic axe summarized, and in certain respects extended, in "Aristophanes and Socrates: A Response to Hall," now reprinted in Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960-1990 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 162-76. 14 Strauss, "On Plato's Republic" 65; Bloom, "Response to Hall," 167-8. Bloom asserts that by the end of the Republic "Glaucon has moved from the desire to be a ruler to the desire to be a ruler-philosopher to the desire to be a philosopher. The conceit of philosopher-kings was the crucial stage in his conversion"; "Response to Hall," 168. 15 "Socrates constructs his utopia to point up the dangers of what we would call utopianism; as such it is the greatest critique of political idealism ever written"; Bloom, "Interpretive Essay," 410. This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 638 JACOB HOWLAND understood, the core of the Republic suggests that a virtuous commu nity of nonphilosophical individuals is an impossibility. This is a sug gestion that a politically responsible author would have good reason to conceal from many readers. The third wave thus calls attention to the relationship between philosophy and politics as the fundamental and enduring problem for all who care Socratically for the souls of hu man beings. Strauss and Bloom are also right to insist that the third wave must be understood within the context of Socrates' relationship to his young interlocutors; the Republic is, among other things, a pedagogi cal drama. Yet there is an important sense in which my reading tries to find the neglected middle ground between the two main lines of in terpretation set forth above. For the arrangements pertaining to non philosophical souls in the city in speech must be distinguished from those pertaining to potential philosophers. Moreover, I shall argue that the city in speech, at least in the final form that it achieves by the end of book 7, would be superior to any actual regime with respect to the care and development of the souls of potential philosophers. To this extent, Socrates' proposals are a serious?albeit admittedly unre alistic?reflection of his wishes. The proposed education of the phi losophers in the city in speech is one of the more poignant facets of the problem of the relationship between philosophy and politics. I Just prior to introducing the third wave, Socrates states that deeds fall short of, and can at best only approximate, the truth con tained in speeches (473a-b). The paradox of the third wave, however, does not first arise in the course of attempting to actualize the city in speech; it is rather one that subsists on the level of speech or concep tualization itself. Socrates thus stresses that it is very paradoxical simply to say that philosophy and political power must coincide (473e4). What could this mean? A preliminary answer to this ques tion is furnished by the observation that Socrates misleadingly pre sents the rule of philosophers as simply an indispensable condition for the genesis of the regime that he and his companions have already described. This is misleading because the rule of philosophy will ulti mately not be something external to the nature of the regime: the city itself will inevitably be transformed by the requirement that its rulers This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 639 be philosophers. Most obviously, the regime must now be structured so as to guarantee, insofar as this is possible, a reliable supply of philosophic rulers (see 520a). Perhaps the first paradox associated with the third wave is that the essential condition for the possibility of the city in speech entails a transformation of the very nature of the city itself. This thought may be fruitfully extended, for it seems inevitable that philosophy will also be transformed when it comes to be yoked with political power. If this is correct, our path into the paradox at the heart of the Republic is well-marked: we must ask both what politics and philosophy are in themselves and what they come to be when brought into connection with each other in the way that Socrates de scribes. I speak of politics rather than the city in speech because So crates presents the third wave as the condition for the cure of political ills in general as well as the condition for the realization of the city in speech in particular. This formulation, however, presents an obvious problem: the Republic addresses neither politics as such nor philoso phy as such, for the treatment of each is from the first conditioned by the requirements of the other. Just as the philosopher is introduced in the guise of a ruler and in response to the needs of the city, the just city is introduced in response to the philosophical question of the power of justice in the soul (368b-369a). The conversation that un folds in the Republic precisely reverses the order of nature: the city comes into being for the sake of speech, while the philosopher comes into being for the sake of the deed of ruling. A few words must be said about the interpretative challenge pre sented by this situation. Note first that interpretation is unavoidable. In the city in speech the political things assume an exaggerated purity or perfection (see 473a-b), and in Socrates' depiction of the lover of wisdom in books 6 and 7 we see the philosopher through the filter of the city's deepest longing. Fortunately there are two sorts of clues that will assist us in correcting or compensating for the resulting dis tortions of philosophy and politics. Some clues are internal to the ar gument. These include Socrates' frequent references to compulsion, politically necessary lies, and the like. Others are provided by the con trast between the level of drama and the level of argument. These two sorts of clues will help us to see politics and philosophy as they are. In particular, they will help to show that Socrates' claims about the jus tice of the city are no less exaggerated than his claims about the excel This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 640 JACOB HOWLAND lence of the philosophers as rulers?a political excellence that is pre sented as a function of theoretical wisdom. The Republic in fact puts before us three distinct versions of the just regime. In introducing the third wave, Socrates mentions the re gime "that we have now described in speech" (473e2). Socrates is clearly referring neither to the first just city (or City of Pigs) nor to the Feverish City (372e-374a), but rather to the regime that results from the purification of the latter. This regime?let us call it the Second Just City?includes the first two waves of book 5, which do not intro duce new measures but merely amplify ones that were accepted much earlier in the discussion (423e-424a). Because the Second Just City is the city prior to the rule of philosopher-kings, it is in the description of this city that we will find the abstract or purified reflection of poli tics in itself or apart from philosophy. The third wave, moreover, sig nals the introduction of philosophy as an explicit subject of discus sion, so that it is in the stretch of text between the third wave and the end of book 7 that we will find the politicized reflection of philosophy in itself. Further, it is in this same central stretch of text that Socrates confronts the problem of making philosophers into kings, or of con vincing the city to accept the rule of the philosopher and convincing the philosopher to rule the city. The third just city that results from the paradoxical marriage of philosophy and politics is the Kallipolis, the "Noble and Beautiful City" that Socrates explicitly associates with Glaucon.16 The third wave is the logical and rhetorical fulcrum of the Repub lic as a whole. As we shall see, Socrates' proposition that philoso phers must rule or rulers philosophize entails the reconciliation of a range of humanly fundamental oppositions, including those between spiritedness and erotic love, public welfare and private affection, technical knowledge and nontechnical inspiration, the political pro duction of civic order and the philosophical discovery of truth. These opposed elements are arranged as counterweights around the third wave, upon which balances the whole burden of the argument. The common thread running through all of these oppositions is the matter of er?s, which is treated in radically different ways before and after the third wave. The difficulties involved in attempting a reconcilia tion of these oppositions are furthermore of interest not only with re 16 At 527cl-2, Socrates speaks of "the men in your [Glaucon's] kallipo lis." This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 641 spect to the city in speech, but, more importantly, with respect to Ufe in actual human communities. For the fact is that, strange bedfellows as they are, philosophy and the city nonetheless stand in need of one another. The fundamental challenges and tasks of political philoso phy are thus writ large in the Republic. II Socrates' hesitancy in introducing the third wave may initially surprise the reader. For his insistence that the city's rulers be philoso phers looks at first merely like the restatement of a point that he has already introduced and will develop further in the sequel, namely, that the city must be governed by knowledgeable individuals whose under standing of the regime will be no less adequate than that of its founders (428e-429a, 497c-d). Viewed in this light, what is new in this restatement is simply the use of the word "philosopher" to designate the possessor of the requisite political knowledge. Socrates' hesitancy would then seem to be rooted solely in an apprehension that his com panions will misunderstand him: his response to Glaucon's immediate prediction that "very many men, and not ordinary ones" will attack him is that they will have to make plain "whom we mean when we dare to assert that the philosophers must rule" (473e7-474al, 474b5 6). Subsequent developments confirm the prudence of this course of action, for Socrates must later argue against Adeimantus's association of philosophy with individuals who are either vicious or, at best, use less (see 487b-d and 498c-499b). The problem presented by Adeimantus's accusation is not insig nificant. Nor is the fact that this accusation comes from the mouth of Adeimantus, as this tells us something about the difference between him and his more erotic and potentially philosophical brother. The preceding interpretation nevertheless does not do justice to the radi cal novelty of Socrates' suggestion. For Socrates introduces the third wave without having clarified either the goal of philosophic striving or the internal motivation of the philosopher. Not knowing yet what phi losophy is, we are nonetheless told that philosophers should rule. Two questions will help to bring home the absence of philosophy from Socrates' prior account of the just regime. First, do the Guard ians in the Second Just City possess a genuinely philosophical charac ter? Second, how does the political knowledge possessed by these This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 642 JACOB HOWLAND Guardians compare with the wisdom at which philosophy aims? With regard to the first question, Socrates insists early on that those who are going to combine gentleness with spiritedness after the model of good guard dogs must be philosophical by nature (376a-c). In this context philosophy is associated with gentleness and distinguished from spiritedness or thumos. The same distinction is at work when Socrates later speaks of two coordinated elements within the souls of potential Guardians, one spirited and one philosophical, which must be "harmonized" by music and gymnastics (410c-412b). In describing the distinctive qualifications of those fit to be rulers, however, So crates says nothing about philosophy. He states instead that the Guardians will be distinguished from the Auxiliaries by being older and more skillful in guarding, and by their unusual steadfastness in preserving the conviction (dogma) that one must do what is best for the city (412c-e; see also 413c, 414b). This dogged steadfastness in retaining the impress of civic orthodoxy is nothing other than the vir tue of political courage, which Socrates identifies in book 4 as the power always to hold fast to orth? doxa, or "right opinion," much as good, white wool that has been well dyed keeps its color under even the most adverse conditions (429d-430c). Courage, however, is the virtue proper to thumos, not to intellect (see 375a-b). Moreover, while one is courageous in the defense of that which one loves, So crates makes it clear that the Guardians' care for the regime is to be rooted not in philosophia or the love of wisdom but in their love of, or philia for, the city (412c-d). In book 4, Socrates discovers wisdom in the "good counsel" and "craft of guarding [h?phulakik?]" of the Guardians, which involves knowledge of how the city as a whole is to be cared for (428b-d). In what does this knowledge consist? We may approach this question by way of the tasks that the Guardians are to undertake in the Second Just City. These include the conduct of war, regulating the population and the economy, sorting children into the appropriate classes, and overseeing the breeding and education of citizens (415b, 421e-422a, 423b-d, 459c-461e). The latter tasks in particular will require the em ployment of medicinal lies, which in the best case will deceive even the rulers themselves (414b-c, 459c-d).17 These dimensions of the art of ruling, however, amount neither individually nor collectively to wisdom or sophia. To be willing to lie in the belief that it is best to do so is of course not the same thing as to know the truth about what is best. We may note in this connection that when Socrates tracks down This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 643 the virtue of sophia in book 4, he rather pointedly confesses his igno rance about how it is that he was able to do so (429a). Nor is much light shed on the nature of wisdom when Socrates turns from the vir tues of the city to the parallel virtues of the soul. The virtue of the rul ing part of the soul is said to be logismos or calculation (439d), but there is in this context only the faintest anticipation of that in the light of which correct calculation is possible, namely, one's perception of goodness (438a). The Good, we learn in book 6, is the ultimate object of the soul's deepest desire as well as of philosophical aspiration (505d-511e). Apart from an inquiry into the Good such as that under taken later in the dialogue, Socrates' identification of calculation with wisdom is woefully incomplete. To summarize, the Second Just City is distinguished by the rule of courage and moderation, or of well-tempered thumos, rather than wis dom. In this it resembles both the character of its founders and that of the most well-ordered actual regimes. We recall that Socrates is moved to establish a city in speech by the provisional praise of tyr anny set forth by Glaucon, who is "always most courageous in every thing" (357a2-3), and especially by the moral indignation of Adeiman tus at the ubiquitous spectacle of human injustice (358b-367e). The vehemence of Adeimantus's attack on those who "vulgarly" turn the powers of justice and injustice "upside down" (367a7-8) and the indul gence with which he excuses Glaucon's praise of injustice suggests that he thinks of himself as one of those exceptional individuals "who from a divine nature cannot stand doing injustice" (366c7), and so as someone who would be "so adamant [adamantinos] as to stick by jus tice" even if he possessed Gyges' ring (360b5). The same pun appears at the end of the Republic, when Socrates states that one must "cling adamantly" to the opinion that the choice between justice and injus tice is the most important one "in life and death" (618e3-619al). That the city in speech has its roots in offended thumos is underscored also by Socrates' reference in this context to the courage that Glaucon and Adeimantus displayed at the battle in Megara (368a). Socrates' intro duction of the city in speech is furthermore itself an act of courage: al though he believes that he is incapable of presenting an adequate 17 Note that the models of the gods according to which the rulers are to be educated cannot themselves be distinguished from noble lies, because, as Socrates admits, "we do not know where the truth about ancient things lies" (382dl-2; see also 378a). This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 644 JACOB HOWLAND defense of justice, he nonetheless maintains that "when justice is be ing spoken badly of" it would be impious to "give up and not bring help while I am still breathing and able to utter a sound" (368b8-c2).18 There is another feature of the Second Just City that must be ob served, and that is its technical approach to civic education. This is something that the city in speech has in common with all actual cities. Like every existing political community, the Second Just City wants its citizens cut to measure: it seeks to fashion human beings who will understand themselves not in terms of their particular individuality but in terms of the homogeneity of citizenship. The city therefore en visions civic education or paideia on the model of the productive arts.19 According to Socrates, citizens are to be formed by a process that involves taming human beings like animals, stamping and mold ing them like putty, tuning them like musical instruments, and dying them like wool with salutary beliefs (375b-e, 377a-b, 410d-e, 429c 430b). Although the Second Just City carries its control over the edu cation and comportment of citizens to an extreme that has never been seen in actual political communities, it is perhaps not coincidental that the actual regime most like it in these respects was that of Sparta, which was also distinguished by the rule of thumos moderated by shame.20 The artful molding of citizens in the Second Just City and the measures pertaining to women and children that are introduced in book 5 have a common aim, namely, the achievement of civic order. 18 Strauss observes that "anger is no mean part of the city [in speech]"; "as far as possible, patriotism, dedication to the common good, justice, must take the place of er?s, and patriotism has a closer kinship to spiritedness, ea gerness to fight, 'waspishness,' indignation, and anger than to er?s"; "On Plato's Republic," 78, 111. As Strauss notes in the same essay, the City of Pigs "complies to some extent with Adeimantas' character. . . . [b]ut it is wholly unacceptable to his brother"; 95. Cf. Stanley Rosen's careful distinc tion between Glaucon's spirited and erotic nature and Adeimantus's more austere nature in "The Role of Eros in Plato's Republic," Review of Meta physics 18 (1965): 452-75; see esp. 463-6. 19 Cf. the Eleatic Stranger's employment of the art of weaving as a model for the political techn? (Statesman 279a-283a, 305e-311c). One should also consider in this connection the Euthyphro, in which Socrates compares the Athenian model of paideia to the cultivation of plants. I explore this impor tant analogy in ch. 4 of The Paradox of Political Philosophy. 20 An excellent overview of the Spartan regime is provided by Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 136-62. This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 645 We recall that in the first city in speech, civic order was a consequence of the innate moderation of the citizens?individuals who seem inhu man in that they lack thumos and are moved by er?s only on the most rudimentary level of sexual appetite. Thus they neither eat meat nor hunt animals (see 372a-c with 373c), they have no political offices and no army, there are no competitions among them, and they are free in every respect from pleonexia, the desire always "to have more" (ple onektein) of which Thrasymachus speaks (344al). It is Glaucon's re jection of this "City of Pigs" that introduces the recognizably human community of the Feverish City and so ultimately necessitates the al teration of human nature for the sake of civic order. The Second Just City represents an extreme attempt on the part of a Feverish City to return to the humanly impossible order of the City of Pigs by means of the moderation of spiritedness and the suppression of potentially un just desires in the souls of its citizens. Moreover, because every actual city engages to some lesser degree in precisely this attempt, the failure of the Second Just City to fashion truly virtuous citizens exposes the necessary limits of nonphilosophical politics. While Socrates never explicitly admits that the Second Just City fails in this respect, he provides us with enough evidence to rule out any other inference. According to Socrates, the rulers must guard above all one "great" or at least "sufficient" thing (423el-2)?namely, the education and rearing of the Auxiliaries and potential Guardians. Yet in a slightly earlier passage he admits that one cannot confidently affirm (diischurizesthai) the adequacy of this civic education with re spect to the prevention of iryustice (416b8-9). It is not hard to see why he does so. In the first place, Socrates finds it necessary to sup plement the education with a great lie that will help to make the citi zens "care more for the city and for one another" (415d3-4). Even with the addition of the Noble Lie, however, Socrates worries that the Auxiliaries may come to treat their fellow citizens like savage masters, much as sheep-dogs may turn upon the flock "due to licentiousness, hunger, or some other bad habit" (416a4-5). He therefore finds it nec essary to remove the temptations that might "rouse them up to do harm to the other citizens" (416dl). In particular, the Auxiliaries will not be allowed to possess private houses and storerooms or private property beyond what is strictly necessary, and they will be told that it is not lawful or holy for them to pollute the gold and silver in their souls by coming into contact with material gold or silver (416d-417a). This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 646 JACOB HOWLAND The latter measures leave no place to hide private gains. In guar anteeing that the Auxiliaries are always in the public eye, these mea sures combine shame before one's peers with fear and reverence be fore the gods in order to insure that the desire for riches does not take root in the soul. Notice that this assumes that the threat of unjust ag gression can be neutralized by preventing the growth of the longing for wealth and luxury, or at least by providing for its immediate dis covery and punishment. But what about the other desires that may lead to injustice, especially those more closely connected with the spiritedness and erotic longing of youthful warriors?qualities that are concretely exemplified by Glaucon (see 402e, 474d-475a)? It is striking that Socrates is silent about these matters. For it is the ambi tion to rule and the love of honor and victory that are most closely as sociated with injustice in Glaucon's Myth of Gyges' Ring (see 360a-c with 362b), while er?s is connected with psychic disease and tyranny from the moment Cephaius endorses Sophocles' description of erotic desire as a "frenzied and savage master" (329c3-4). In book 3, So crates equates erotic passion with such "misfortunes" as disease and drunkenness; the "mad" pleasures of sex must therefore be restricted on account of their connection with hybris and licentiousness (395e, 396d, 402d-403c). And in book 9, er?s is revealed as nothing less than the inner tyrant that explains the phenomenon of the tyrannical man (573b6-7, 574e2-575a7, 575c4-dl). By failing to mention the potential for injustice that arises from er?s and from the longing for power, victory, and honor, Socrates seems to suggest that the civic education as supplemented by the No ble Lie has succeeded in moderating these desires. That any such sug gestion would be misleading is clear from the beginning of book 8, in which Socrates explains that the decline of the city in speech results from the ultimate failure of the regime to control sexual er?s, or in Glaucon's words to subordinate erotic necessity to geometrical neces sity (458d). This is not all. For the shocking truth is that the Second Just City attempts to control the desires in question not so much by moderating them as by pandering to them. It is crucial to realize in this connection that in book 5?a book in which Socrates speaks almost exclusively with Glaucon?Socrates deliberately provides for the vicarious satisfaction of his companions' desires for bodily pleasure, power, and honor. At the outset of book 5, Socrates is detained by men eager to hear about matters pertaining to sex (449a-450a). This is not the first time in the dialogue that he This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 647 has been "arrested" (see 327c-328b), and since he capitulated on the previous occasion his companions are no doubt confident that they will now also prevail. Under the circumstances, Socrates' resistance to discuss matters pertaining to women and children seems coy?as though he wished to tease his young companions rather than to dis suade them. He then proceeds to inflame the imagination of his audi tors by means of the increasing titillations of the first and second waves of paradox?measures stating that the male and female guard ians must share all pursuits in common and establishing the common possession of women and children (457b-d). Thus the pleasurable prospect of joining women in naked exercise (452a-b) gives way even tually to the fantasy of intercourse "as often as possible" with multiple partners that is given as a reward to the best men of the city, and espe cially to those among the Auxiliaries who are good in war (459d 460b). So enthusiastic is Glaucon about these measures that he lays down the additional law that no one, whether male or female, should be allowed to refuse the kiss of the valorous soldier (468b-c). Keep ing in mind Socrates' earlier reference to the fact that both Glaucon and Adeimantus were eulogized by Glaucon's lover for their bravery in the battle of Megara (368a), we may conclude that these young men, and probably the others who are present as well, must imagine that they themselves would receive all of the rewards of valor in this city? including not only sex, but also choice cuts of meat, distinguished fu nerals, and even worship as a daim?n or lesser divinity after death (468c-469b).21 This list of rewards is, moreover, disturbingly familiar: in their enjoyment of food fit for heroes and honors and erotic liber ties suited more to the traditional Greek gods than to human beings, the best men of the Second Just City possess many of the main advan tages that Glaucon had earlier associated with the tyrannical license conferred by Gyges' ring (360a-c). The connection with erotic license is further strengthened by the observation that even the tyrannical dream of incestuous intercourse finds fulfillment in this city (461e; see also 571c-d). Finally, we may note that the suspension of laws against assault in the Second Just City goes a long way toward the fulfillment of still another tyrannical desire, in that it removes the greatest con ventional impediment to the immediate satisfaction of violent aggres sion (464e). 21 The reward of various honors in life and death was previously re served for the Guardians alone (414a). This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 648 JACOB HOWLAND The preceding observations are sufficient to raise grave doubts about the internal order of the souls of the Auxiliaries in the Second Just City. Put bluntly, it is unclear whether the attachment of these in dividuals to the city would be rooted in their courage and moderation or in the selfishness of untutored desires. This problem cannot be dis solved by the observation that the Auxiliaries, unlike the tyrant of book 9, act for the common good, for what is in question here is the intrinsic condition of their souls. Moreover, Socrates ultimately sug gests that civic education without philosophy is capable of producing only the superficial image of virtue in the soul, not the genuine arti cle.22 Shortly after he calls into question the quality of the education adumbrated in books 2 and 3, Socrates makes a distinction between the political courage that such an education produces and the sort of courage that would come to light by way of a "still finer" treatment (430c4). The latter treatment would presumably involve the longer road that involves inquiry into the Good (435d, 504b). In book 6, at any rate, Socrates explains that the philosophic ruler is a craftsman not of virtue per se but of "the whole of demotic virtue" (500d7-8)? the common virtue characteristic of the people or demos. He goes on to describe the process of crafting demotic virtue as one of drawing or painting certain virtuous practices upon the dispositions of human be ings, an image that suggests the results of this educational process are, so to speak, no more than skin-deep (501a-c). This implication is confirmed much later in the Republic by Er's cautionary tale about the first participant in the lottery of lives, a soul that jumps at the chance to possess the greatest tyranny. At the critical moment the soul in question is swayed by unchecked folly and gluttony, even though it had previously lived in an "orderly regime" and had partici pated in virtue "by habit, [and] without philosophy" (619c6-dl). Yet it is true of every citizen in the Second Just City, and of all but the rulers of the Kallipolis, that if they participate in virtue they do so by habit, and without philosophy. Virtue apart from philosophy, however, would seem to be a weak and paltry thing. Before we leave behind the Second Just City, let us briefly con sider the matter of Socrates' pedagogical rhetoric. Especially given 22 Put in the terms introduced by David Sachs in "A Fallacy in Plato's Re public" (in Gregory Vlastos, ed., Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, vol. 2, 1971 [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978], 35-56), the Auxil iaries are vulgarly just but Platonically ur\just. Cf. Strauss, "On Plato's Re public": "while in one respect the warrior's life is the just life par excellence, in another respect only the philosopher's life is just" (115). This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 649 the limitations of the Second Just City, why does Socrates describe the life of the Auxiliaries in book 5 in such conventionally seductive terms?terms intended to arouse the erotic imagination of Glaucon and his young companions? In addressing this question it is important to bear in mind that book 5 unfolds in a concrete context that makes its own peculiar pedagogical demands upon Socrates. This point comes sharply into focus when we consider Socrates' suggestion at the end of book 7 that the Kallipolis could be established by beginning with children under the age of ten (540e-541a). Needless to say, one would not speak to these children as Socrates has just spoken to Glau con; one would not attempt to win their allegiance to the regime by emphasizing sexual rewards for bravery and the like. Conversely, So crates speaks as he does in book 5 because he wants to win Glaucon's allegiance, not to the Second Just City as such, but to the logos as a whole. In particular, he wishes to guarantee that Glaucon will listen with the keenest possible interest to what comes next. For what comes next is a radical reorientation toward the subject of er?s?a re orientation that creates space for the expansion of Glaucon's awaken ing desire into a genuinely philosophical passion. Ill When Socrates introduces the third wave, he states that the coin cidence of philosophy and political rule is necessary to bring into be ing the just city that he and his companions have already described. He thus implies that the city in speech has been perfected and now lacks only actual existence (see 472d-e). As we have seen, the Second Just City is less than perfect to the extent that the souls of most of its citizens (with the exception of the Guardians) are likely to remain in ternally disordered, in spite of the civic education and the other mea sures to which they have been subjected. In other words, the Second Just City is not genuinely just; the genuinely just city does not yet exist even on the level of speech. The rule of philosophy, as we shall see, is necessary not simply or even primarily for the existence of the virtu ous regime in deed, but more importantly for the regime's (limited) achievement of virtue in speech. The connection between philosophy and the perfection of the city in speech is not obvious from Socrates' defense of the third wave, be cause that defense takes for granted the goodness of the regime and focuses instead on the problem of its possibility (see 471c-e). This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 650 JACOB HOWLAND Socrates points out that the regime will need rulers who possess the same understanding as that of its founders?the primary founder, of course, being Socrates himself?which is to say that the rulers will have to possess philosophical insight into the superiority of this city over all others (497c-d). His main argument, however, is that only philosophers possess knowledge of what virtue is in itself; they alone will therefore be competent craftsmen of laws and practices pertain ing to what is noble, just, moderate, and good (484b-d, 500b-501c). Such knowledge, however, implies an intellectual apprehension of the nature of the Good itself (504a-e, 540a-b), and so is equivalent to wis dom. Perhaps it is his eagerness to provide the city with the best pos sible rulers that causes Socrates thus to blur the distinction between philosophia and sophia: no one who is wise, as he points out in the Symposium, either "longs for wisdom [philosophei] or desires to be come wise, for he is wise" (204al-2). No less noteworthy is Socrates' apparent assumption that the regime has indeed been wisely founded up to this point. For although he takes pains in book 7 to describe the education of the philosopher-kings, he does not modify or extend the rearing and education of the nonphilosophical majority. The mode of education established prior to the third wave must evidently suffice for the latter. Especially when viewed in the light of Socrates' description of the painting of souls undertaken by the philosophic craftsman of de motic virtue, the preceding considerations leads us to conclude that the great majority of citizens in the Kallipolis will be no better or worse than the citizens of the Second Just City. Socrates also makes it clear, however, that the philosophic rulers of the Kallipolis will be superior to everyone in the Second Just City because they alone will be fully virtuous. Only the philosopher, he says, "knows and lives truly," for he alone has a "clear pattern" of the virtues "in his soul" and thus "becomes orderly and divine, to the extent that is possible for a human being" (484c7-8, 490b6, 500c9-dl). The Kallipolis perfects the Second Just City because only the Kallipolis aims explicitly at making possible the achievement of the fullest excellence of which the very best human beings are capable. Paradoxically, it is only in thinking about how the best conceivable city can be realized in deed that So crates and his companions succeed in bringing this city to perfection in speech.23 Socrates' introduction of the topic of philosophy in fact involves a number of paradoxes, all of which turn, in one way or another, on the matter of er?s. For the third wave signals a tidal shift, so to This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 651 speak, in his treatment of this subject. Let us begin with the observa tion that the phenomenon of erotic love has no place whatsoever in Socrates' discussion of the lives of the nonphilosophical many. In fact, the laws established in book 5 attempt to sever the distinctively human connection between sexual desire and to kalon or the beauti ful, which is to say that they effectively reduce er?s to an animal appe tite that exhausts itself in the achievement of its immediate object. This reduction is necessary because sex in the city in speech is subor dinated to a program of politically useful eugenics?a program that represents a logical, albeit extreme, extension of the city's attempt to fashion citizens after the model of the productive technai. Erotic at traction to the beautiful is after all irrelevant to the biological event of insemination, and tends in any event to lead to the disease of "irregu lar intercourse" (see 458d9 with the reference to drugs at 459c). One could say that the ladder of er?s that Diotima describes in the Sympo sium (210a-212b) is cut off at the first rung in the Republic. The love of other bodies is deprived of the usual human opportunities to grow into the love of another soul, for in the city in speech the fulfillment of physical desire leads neither to marriage nor to the intimacy of the family. Instead, the citizens are to be bred like farm animals and reared in "pens" into which mothers will be brought for milking (459a b, 460c-d). Further, just as one might drown the runt of a litter, mal formed or illegitimate babies, including those born of parents beyond the prime age of mating, will be destroyed (460c, 461b-c).24 So much for love apart from philosophy. Immediately after the third wave is introduced, however, the theme of er?s explodes unex pectedly into the dialogue: Socrates begins to clarify the nature of the philosopher by appealing to the way in which boys who glow with the 23 This may be a consequence of the fact that Socrates' companions in the Republic axe not yet philosophers; in such a conversation, Socrates per haps could not perfect his city in speech by any other method. 24 Socrates, incidentally, is obviously well aware that such measures bru talize er?s, since he introduces to kalon as the object of erotic love just after the third wave breaks (476b). We must conclude that he knows just how out rageous are his constant references to the highly sacred character of the ephemeral "marriages" in the city in speech (458e, 459e-460a, 461a)?mar riages that will inevitably violate even the divine prohibition against incest (461e). This is presumably why he takes the precaution at the beginning of book 5 of prostrating himself before Adrasteia, a goddess who punishes acts of hybris against the gods and sacred laws, and why he later explains that he "shrank from touching the law concerning the possession and rearing of chil dren" (451a, 453dl-3). For further discussion see Jacob Howland, The Re public: The Odyssey of Philosophy (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993), 110-18. This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 652 JACOB HOWLAND bloom of youth are able to arouse and "put their sting in" erotic lovers like Glaucon (474d5). What is more, the borrowed language of bodily attraction pervades Socrates' entire discussion of the philosophic na ture. Thus the main distinction between philosophers and nonphilos ophers is at the outset presented as an erotic one: while others love wine, food, honors, beautiful sights, and arts and practices of all sorts, the philosopher alone is a lover of the whole of wisdom and truth, for which he cares, Socrates says, as a lover might care for everything re lated to his boy (475a-476b, 485a-b). So strong is his er?s for wisdom that moral virtue accompanies it as a kind of by-product: a soul en gaged in "the contemplation of all time and all being" (486a8-9) would not be immoderate, illiberal, cowardly, or unjust. While these vices are connected with bodily er?s, Socrates explains that the genuine philosopher?the soul that possess "a true erotic passion for true phi losophy" (499c 1-2)?longs for intercourse with the Ideas, and for the psychic labor and birth of wisdom that follows from this union (490a b). He even goes so far as to represent philosophy as a woman who will bear bastard children, or sophisms, when she joins with any but the most worthy natures (495b-c, 496a; see also 535c, 536a). This warning, we may note, is the philosophical or spiritual counterpart to the prohibition against irregular bodily intercourse in the city. What exactly is going on here? To begin with, it would appear that the topic of erotic love can be safely explored only in the context of the soul's relationship to the true and the beautiful. But if it is safe to discuss er?s in connection with philosophy, it is also necessary that one do so. For philosophy cannot be pressed upon the soul. "No forced study," as Socrates says in book 7, "abides in a soul" (536e3-4), and the alternative to extrinsic pedagogical compulsion?the alterna tive, in other words, to the process of stamping, molding, and dyeing that constitutes the bulk of the civic education laid out in books 2 through 5?is the internal motivation of er?s. Socrates touches upon the nature of this motivation in connection with the discussion of mu sic in book 3, which is also the only place prior to the third wave where er?s is treated as something other than merely a discrete phys ical appetite. In that context, Socrates makes it clear that the proper object of love is beauty: thus that which is kalliston, most beautiful or fine, is also the most lovable (erasmi?taton: 402d6). Music, in turn, is presented as a guide for er?s: by surrounding young souls with im ages of beauty, music trains them "to love in a moderate and musical way what is orderly and kalon" (403a7-8).25 Once it is awakened, This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 653 however, this love itself guides the soul. Socrates thus mentions the fact that Glaucon once loved a boy with a good character but a defec tive body in order gently to suggest to him that a musical soul will nat urally move beyond the mad love of bodies to the orderly love of noble and beautiful souls (402e-403c). So important is er?s for the develop ment of genuine virtue that it is literally the last word on the subject of music: for it is fitting, Socrates says, that musical matters end in "erotic matters pertaining to the beautiful [ta tou kalon er?tika]" (403c6-7). Someone reading only the discussion of music in book 3 might in correctly conclude that well-directed er?s is the foundation of virtue in the Second Just City. Socrates suggests, however, that the educa tion in music will be fully successful in only a very few cases, because anyone whose soul is truly musical will become a Guardian. Con versely, anyone who fails the tests by which the Guardians are se lected?anyone who forgets to do what is best for the city, or can be persuaded to do otherwise, or can be forced by grief or pain or charmed by pleasure or terrified by fear to do otherwise?proves thereby not to be "a good guardian of himself and the music he was learning" (413e3). The great majority, in other words, need to be guarded by others, who will control them with precisely these instru ments of external compulsion?pleasure, pain, fear, and persuasive deceptions. If Socrates cuts off Diotima's ladder of er?s in the first parts of book 5 after letting us glimpse it in book 3, it is only because he understands that it cannot support the weight of the many. For the many nonphilosophical citizens who are the focus of books 2 through 5, education is a highly public, technical process founded not in er?s but in thumos. However, the situation after the third wave is quite different. For the few philosophical rulers who are the focus of books 6 and 7, education is a much more profound, inte rior, and therefore private process that is essentially erotic and, with respect to its ultimate goal, prophetic. In book 7, Socrates establishes tests of character and intellect that recapitulate on a higher level the tests of courage and moderation set forth in book 3. Teachers, he ex plains, should use play and not force in training and observing 25 Socrates states that the musical man will feel just this sort of moder ate and musical love for those who are beautiful in soul as well as body, and it is noteworthy that Glaucon identifies himself as one who is capable of lov ing a boy who is physically defective but beautiful in soul (402d-e). This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 654 JACOB HOWLAND children in "labors, studies, and fears" (537a9-10). At each stage, So crates says, "the boy who shows himself always readiest must be chosen to join a select number" (537al0-ll). In this way, those suited by nature to rule will in effect select themselves when they are placed in situations that allow them to manifest the requisite qualities, in cluding especially philosophical er?s and an aptitude for studies (see 535b-d). Philosophical er?s, in turn, is connected with a kind of prophecy or foreknowledge about the Good. Thus Socrates uses the verb manteuesthai, "to divine," to describe the soul's access to the Good: just as the soul "divines that it [the good that it pursues] is something, but is unable to get a sufficient grasp of just what it is," So crates "divine[s] that no one will adequately know" the just and noble things before it is known in what way they are good (505el-2, 506a6 7). "You divine beautifully," is Glaucon's response (506a8). One is re minded of Aristophanes' remark in the Symposium that the soul of one in love "is not able to say, but divines and speaks oracles about what it wants" (192dl-2). Aristophanes' speech, one should recall, is followed by Socrates' account of his initiation at the hands of a priest ess into the Mysteries of er?s, a daim?n or demigod that interprets for human beings that which is divine (202d-203a), and there is a par allel here to Socrates' initiation of Glaucon into the Mysteries of the Good.26 Would it be fair to say that in the Kallipolis the natures of poten tial philosophers grow naturally toward the Good? Not quite. For books 6 and 7 are also peppered with references to compulsion, not all of which have to do with forcing philosophers to assume the task of ruling. Most important, Socrates makes it clear that compulsion is needed to harmonize the elements of a philosophical nature. "For the parts of nature that we have described as a necessary condition for them," he explains, "are rarely willing to grow together in the same place" (503b7-9). In fact, Socrates explains by way of answering Ade imantus's worry about the link between philosophy and viciousness that the best souls are peculiarly corruptible, for each of the praise worthy elements of the best natures "has a part in destroying the soul 26 Cf. 509a9, where Socrates reminds Glaucon to avoid blasphemy and use words of good omen (euph?mein) as he explicates the image of the sun. Since Socrates observes that the sun?Helios in Greek mythology?is a god (508a), it is evident that the Good, as a philosophical reinterpretation of our divine origins, is itself to be understood as divine. Socrates engages in philo sophical divination or prophecy in book 7 as well (see 523a8, 538a4, a7, a9), and it is worth noting that at one point he calls Glaucon daimonic (522b3). This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 655 that has them and tearing it away from philosophy" (491b8-9). What is more, in actual cities the very excellence of such souls makes them a target for every kind of flattery (494b-495a). Carefully exercised compulsion therefore plays a role at each stage of a philosophical edu cation. Just as in the Image of the Cave the prisoner who is released from bonds is compelled to look at the fire and must be dragged into the sunlight (515e), the potential philosopher is forced to undertake the study of calculation because calculation "compels the soul to use the intellect on the truth itself" (526b 1-3). The same is true of kindred studies such as geometry and astronomy, which potential philoso phers will be commanded to pursue because they compel the soul to turn toward what is (526e, 529a). Compulsion is present even at the fi nal stage of education, for when philosophical souls reach the age of fifty they must be forced to gaze upon the Good (540a). Given that no forced learning abides in a soul, how are we to un derstand the role of compulsion in a philosophical education? There seems to be only one answer, namely, that it is needed to remove im pediments to the natural growth of learning?impediments that would otherwise block the path of the soul's erotic attraction to the true and the beautiful. Provided with the opportunity, philosophically-inclined souls?but only such souls?will climb the ladder of er?s to the top. Everything depends, however, on the creation of such opportunities through the intelligent use of extrinsic pressure. To the many, of course, such pressure must always seem burdensome. For the exter nal harshness of a rigorous education fades away only when one be gins to glimpse the inner beauty of genuine understanding. IV It is in thinking through Socrates' references to compulsion that we may best come to appreciate the complexity of the need that at taches philosophy to the city, and therewith the enduring paradox that stands at the heart of the Republic. The political community needs philosophy because only philosophical insight into the soul makes clear the limits of politics with respect to virtue, and it is only with these limits in mind that the city can hope to establish and maintain beneficial laws, customs, and institutions. Philosophy needs a well ordered city because only such a city takes deliberate steps to remove the many impediments to the perfection of philosophical natures. The pursuit of philosophy, however, is at odds with the public life of the This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 656 JACOB HOWLAND city in ways that are exemplified by the oppositions between thumos and er?s, orthodoxy and insight, and public order and private virtue that we have been exploring in this essay. These thematic opposi tions, arranged as they are around the third wave, come to a head when one ponders how it is that philosophy and political power could ever be brought to coincide. Actual communities do not recognize the political importance of philosophy, because most human beings, lacking philosophical er?s therefore also lack self-knowledge and knowledge of the nature of genuine virtue. In actual communities, moreover, most philosophi cally-inclined natures are corrupted, while those few that are able to "keep company with philosophy in a way that's worthy" (496b 1) grow up spontaneously, like weeds (520b; see also 497b). Furthermore, these few philosophers are unwilling to rule. This general situation makes for the problem of the third wave, a problem that Socrates is ultimately unable to solve. According to Socrates, the philosopher must attempt to persuade the nonphilosophical many that philosophers should rule (499d-500a; see also 493e-494a). This presupposes that the philosopher is willing to rule or can be compelled to rule, for otherwise he would never at tempt to persuade others to allow him to do so. But the philosopher is not initially willing to rule, and can be compelled to do so only by an argument that adverts to his debt to the city that has given him a philosophical education?a debt that is not incurred by any philoso pher in any actual regime (520a-b). Hence the only argument that can persuade the philosopher to try to convince the citizens that philoso phers should rule presupposes that a city ruled by philosophers al ready exists. The same circularity is evident when we consider the question of whether the many would be persuaded by the argument that philosophers should rule. Socrates makes it clear that the many could be persuaded of this only if they are gentle, ungrudging, moder ate, and willing to let reason guide their actions (500a, 501c-d). Yet a nonphilosophical multitude of such good character surely exists no where outside of the city in speech.27 The textual centrality of the third wave suggests that the para doxical character of the city in speech, and more generally of the rela tionship between philosophy and the political community, is the 27 Cf. Strauss, who maintains that "the Republic repeats, in order to overcome it, the error of the sophists regarding the power of speech"; "On Plato's Republic," 127; see also 124-5. This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE REPUBLIC'S THIRD WAVE 657 philosophically central point of the Republic. Reflection on the third wave reveals the need that links philosophy to the political commu nity, together with the necessary limits of philosophy's efficacy with regard to the life of the city and of the city's ability to become philo sophical. For the philosophically-inclined reader who is sensitive to the structure of the text, these are the core lessons of the Republic. That they have not generally been recognized as such is a measure of Plato's subtlety in communicating them, which is in turn an indication of his political responsibility.28 Finally, let it be noted that the Republic not only presents us with a fundamental problem, but also provides a solution in dramatic form. For it is with the paradox of political philosophy clearly in mind that we can best begin to appreciate the extent of Socrates' accomplish ment in fashioning even a single night's community of philosophical discourse out of a group of young men on their way to a big town party.29 University of Tulsa 28 Yet these lessons are taken to heart by perhaps the most dedicated students of the political philosophy of the Republic, the medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophers. Alfarabi's influential description of the philosophical ruler and his appraisal of the usefulness of noble lies (and specifically reli gious myth) in ruling the nonphilosophical many are clearly laid out in the passages from The Political Regime, The Attainment of Happiness, and Plato's Laws excerpted in Medieval Political Philosophy (hereafter, UMPP"), ed. Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), 31-94. With regard to the question of the political responsibility of the philos opher, Averroes remarks in his commentary on the Republic that "Just as it is only the physician who prescribes a drug, so it is the king who lies to the mul titude concerning affairs of the realm. That is because untrue stories are nec essary for the teaching of the citizens. No bringer of a nomos is to be found who does not make use of invented stories, for this is something necessary for the multitude to reach their happiness"; Averroes on Plato's Republic, trans. Ralph Lerner (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 24. See also Al farabi's explicit defense of Plato's esotericism in Plato's Laws, MPP, 84-5, as well as the distinction between the demonstrative, dialectical, and rhetorical classes drawn by Averroes in The Decisive Treatise, MPP, 163-86 (see esp. 181) and the remarks pertaining to Plato set forth by Isaac Israeli in his Book on the Elements, excerpted in Isaac Israeli: A Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth Century, ed. A. Altmann and S. Stern (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 134-41. 291 wish to thank the Philosophy Department at Baylor University and the Philosophy Faculty at the University of Bucharest for the opportunity to present earlier versions of this essay. A Liberty Fund conference organized by Joseph Cropsey provided the seeds for my ideas about the third wave. I am especially indebted to Jeffrey Macy of the Hebrew University, whose many helpful suggestions have greatly improved the present article. This content downloaded from 192.167.204.6 on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:06:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions