Socrates' Second Sailing. On Plato's "Republic" (review)

Book Reviews Seth Benardete. Socrates' Second Sailing. On Plato's "Republic." Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989. Pp. ix + ~38. $29.95We can highlight, in summary form, the substance of this book "On Plato's Republic" by quoting its own overall characterizations of the Republic and/or parts of it. "The Republic is an eidetic analysis of the beautiful, the good, and the just .... Its procedure is twofold: to set the just alongside other things and to set the just apart from other things. It isolates and associates. Parting and pairing.., makes it possible for any argument to run smoothly, for it is the unexpected break and the unexpected join in arguments that constitute the way of eidetic analysis" (5). Here is what Benardete says about the narrative form of the Republic: "Socrates is himself and plays all the other parts .... Since we see and hear everything through him, we tend to overlook the effect his actual presence might have had in the setting he conjures before us. We... do not stand back to attend to Socrates' agency apart from the argument" (9f.). Here is the extent to which the book realizes that the city fabulated by Socrates is a remediated city resulting from the rejection of the true (&~.~10tv~ I, 372e), healthy (~u 372e), and minimally necessary (~vctu215 369d-e) city. Glaucon has objected that this city lacks the luxuries and refinements to which he is accustomed (Bk. ~, 37~c-d), but when these are reinstated, they make it a feverish city (q~.ey~alvovoc~v ~6Xtv, 372e): Since the issue [that Adeimantus raises] was that justice and happiness do not go together... Socrates turned to the city of fevered heat in order to reform it enough to admit happiness. (79) The making of the just city consisted simultaneously in the displacement of the natural locus of justice and the establishment of the natural locus of justice as the core of the city. Justice came to light by denaturalizing the sense of justice. (95) We certainly get the impression that the class-structure of the city exhibits the city's justice. (46) The auxiliaries are the embodiment of the unwritten law. (86) The city which has its origin in the cooperative satisfaction of the needs of the body, turns out to be nothing but shadows. Through Glaucon's rejection of the city of pigs, the soul by itself took over from the individual the unity of body and soul which initially the city was intended to image (369a). The ex-prisoner understands at last that the city is Hades where there are only ghostlike bodies called souls (516d5, 52~c2). That to be means to be body is the necessary first step out of the cave. This is the truth in the false claim that the healthy city is true. (175) [665] 666 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29:4 OCTOBER 1991 Socrates manages to get rid of poets and fathers in his communistic city, hut he does not get rid of money makers (14) But since all this completely misses the irony which deeply and architectonicallypervades Socrates' discursive construction from the middle of Book 2 to the end, we quote the Ix~ok's only reference to irony: "Socratic irony.., is no obstacle to the discovery of truth" (21). In connection with Plato's characterizations of the speakers in the extended conversation which he has dramatized, here is the book's perception of Glaucon's role in the Republic, and his relation to Socrates: "The Republic exemplifies the ascent of philosophy in the element of political habituation. Socrates gets Glaucon used to philosophy without any conversion to philosophy. He reproduces in him the forced union of philosopher and king. Not only does Socrates have to admit, however, that to comply with justice is to be unhappy (52oe4), but he has to justify the philosopher's compliance in language that betrays the spuriousness of his argument" (18o). And here is Benardete's view of Polemarchus's character as seen by Socrates: "At the beginning of the Republic, Polemarchus... son of a metic, threatens violence to two citizens.... Polemarchus is a bully.... Cephalus must have brought Polemarchus up...