We are probably obliged to say that Plato’s Republic is the greatest of the Great Books, or at least, the work that most sets our expectations of what such a book should be. To agree with that statement is not to say that you’re not liberally educated if you haven’t studied it, nor that a person who nourishes herself more on a book like Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, or Virgil’s Aeneid, or Solzhenitsyn’s Red Wheel might not turn out the better/wiser one. Nor is it to say that it is the book most needful for our time. But as it would be impossible for the Republic to not continue to attract interest, and to thus remain near the center of any liberal arts program, it is to Jacob Howland’s immense credit that, in my judgment, he has written the most cutting-edge and best commentary on it, Glaucon’s Fate: History, Myth, and Character in Plato’s Republic.
Published in 2018, I’ve belatedly written a review of it for Perspectives on Political Science, which you can now read here.
I won’t repeat here what I say in that review, and will even stay mum about the great secret Howland uncovers and explores about Glaucon.1 I’ll just say that he picks up certain key insights of Republic-interpretation first laid out by Mary Nichols, and proceeds to deepen and extend them.
My dissertation compared Plato’s Republic and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, on the topic of democratic character. As a result, I am pretty expert in most aspects of Tocqueville-studies, and as far the more-daunting field of Plato-studies goes, I do know quite a bit of the scholarship on the Republic.
That’s why I might be qualified to make the judgment I did above. Maybe in another post, I’ll list the commentaries, after Howland’s, which I think are the best.
Two important aspects of Howland’s book which my review did not have time to do more than mention are his argument 1) that consideration of Critias’s ideas and influence pervade the Republic, and 2) that the Myth of Er is a unique moment in Plato’s corpus that highlights the “salvific” purpose and potential of genuinely Socratic philosophizing. Let’s dip into those two aspects a little, to provide readers with a taste.
Critias
Critias became notorious in Athens for his leading part in the tyranny of the Thirty. The fact that he was noticed in previous years discussing philosophic topics with Socrates, as displayed by Plato in the dialogues Charmides, Timaeus, and Critias, didn’t help Socrates’ reputation with the Athenian jury at his trial, nor for that matter, with the amateur Plato-scholar and prominent lefty I.F. Stone, when he wrote a best-selling but C-minus book about the trial in 1988. To argue that his ideas have something to do with the Republic, Howland analyzes those three dialogues, as well as a fragment from Critias himself that has survived. Here’s a taste of what he notices:
As W. Thomas Schmid observes, Critias’s speech about the Delphic oracle dispenses altogether with “the normative voice of revelation,” substituting—in the midst of a discussion of moderation, no less—“the amoral human praise of self-certainty” for the “divine moral counsel of self-restraint.” The substitution flies in the face of Socrates’ characteristic self-subordination to the obligations of a superior divinity, to say nothing of his knowledge of ignorance, the philosophical core of his sound-mindedness. It also exemplifies Critias’s tendency to appropriate both traditional and contemporary ideas, including the thought of Socrates, in ways that efface the distinction between philosophy and poetry... (93)
Critias imagines a ruling meta-science that would be able to distinguish what is scientific from what is not, and so certify the authenticity of the sciences. (119)
For Socrates, speech is essentially dialogue, and its character is erotic and philosophical; it is a medium of exploration in which natures reveal themselves, beings come into sight, and souls may be turned around and set in motion toward guiding truths. For Critias, speech is essentially monologue, and its character thumotic and political; it is an instrument of control, though which facts may be constituted and designs actualized. (99)
Salvific Socratic Philosophy
Here’s a few particularly striking passages from Howland on this idea:
Socrates says in the Theaetetus that many of those he associated with “went away earlier than they should have,” leaving “either on their own, or persuaded by others” (150e). Alcibiades is a notorious example… …for Socratic dialogue is not a short-course medicine; the psychic and political illnesses it treats are chronic and incurable. Philosophia repays each in kind, and saves only her most constant companions. (226)
In the Republic as in tragedy, however, the way up is inseparable from the way down. Socrates’ presentation of the possibility of individual salvation through philosophy takes place in the shadow of politics... (19-20)
Socrates pauses at this point to make sure that the man for whom his tale [the myth of Er] is particularly intended grasps its essential implications: “Now here, as it seems, my dear Glaucon, is the whole risk for a human being. And on account of these things, each of us, neglecting all other studies, must take care especially to be a seeker and a student of that study by which he might be able to learn and discover who will give him the ability and knowledge to distinguish the good life from the bad, so as always and everywhere to be able to choose the better from among those possible.” (618b-c) The study Socrates so strongly recommends is not mathematics, or any of those included in the curriculum of the philosopher-kings. While these branches of knowledge concern immutable structures, the inquiry he speaks of aims above all at living justly, and equips us to judge human lives. (cf. 618d-e) This has a familiar ring, for the search for a study that will makes us capable of living a good life is nothing other than Socratic dialogue. …if any activity involves both “making analogies of” and “reckoning up” “all the things we have just spoke of [office, birth, beauty, strength, wealth, poverty, etc.] and how they stand, both in combination with one another and separately, with respect to the life of virtue” (618c), it is the image-rich, critically reflective conversation of Socrates. (236)
So, those should be tastes enough to get you running to read Howland’s book, perhaps the wisest one yet written about the greatest of the Great ones.
The key discovery (see my review!) was made, as Howland indicates, by historian Mark Munn. What Howland adds and explores are its implications for Republic-interpretation.
Glad to see the review--looking forward to reading it after reading your post here, since I don't have Prof. Howland's book!
I do encourage you to write on the Republic commentaries--could be a good post for, I guess, summer readings! I'm certainly interested in getting the benefit of your expertise on the matter, since I have only a limited acquaintance with the scholarly literature.
Also, do you know anything about what Prof. Howland has been doing since the catastrophe when those oligarchs ruined the liberal arts studies at the University of Tulsa, in Oklahoma?
Thanks for the reminder, Carl. Without spoiling the secret of the book, Howland's research lends support to the Pomoocon (friendly) criticism of Platonism.