Dialettica e politica in Platone (review)

Book Revie.ws Adriana Cavarero. Dialettica epolittca in Platone. Pubblicazione della scuola di perfezionamento m filosofia dell'universit~ di Padova, no. 20. Padova: CEDAM, 1976. Pp. vi + 281. Given the length of this book, one expects that the "politics" and "dialectic" of the title are not meant to promise a study of all Plato said about dialectic, nor all that he might be understood as having said about politics. This expectation turns out to be correct: Caverero limits herself to studying the relationship between dialectic (with which she equates philosophy) and pohtics. She maintains that philosophy and politics are so intimately connected in Plato that they cannot be separated. She contends that the ultimate aim of all Plato's philosophical activity was that it have political impact, that it lead to the betterment of society. She is not claiming that Plato identifies politics and philosophy , nor is she saying merely that It is a consequence of Plato's thought that a philosopher must engage in political life (though she does maintain that this is a consequence). Rather, she argues that intrinsic to every phase of Plato's philosophy is a political dimension, and that Plato fully intended that dimension to be present. By approaching Plato as she does, Cavarero enters a debate of long standing. Against those who regard political philosophy as nothing more than one among many of Plato's interests, she joins sides, as she points out, with certain representaves of"German philological neo-humanism" (for example, Jaeger) who have held that a political concern is basic to, is the initial and overarching impetus of, Plato's philosophy. She considers only briefly the more recent phase of the debate as found, for example, in two papers in Plato H, edited by Vlastos. i In one, Wayne A. R. Leys has argued that for Plato political philosophy is merely an attempt to escape from politics, that he was concerned not at all with politics as an art of compromise, an art essential for maintaining concord m a society whose members are pursuing widely divergent values. F. E. Sparshott in a reply to Leys agrees that Plato was antipolitical; he attributes this to Plato's view that a philosopher can have nothing to contribute in a situation where knowledge is not available. Still, Sparshott maintains, by his development of "antipohtics" Plato made "a major, even if formally negative contribution, to political philosophy." Now Cavarero writes as follows: "If authentic politics is that which develops m the conflicts of opinions and interests, or is the activity, following the usage of the Sophists in Athenian democracy, engaged in with one's adversaries without reconciling the subjective level of varying opinions and interests, then Plato was surely a nonpohtical and antipolitical philosopher" (p. 141n.). She does not, however, make clear whether she is in accord with Sparshott in seeing some value in Plato's "antipolitics," or whether she rejects the hypothesis that an apt description of politics has been given. To establish her thesis that Plato's thought is thoroughly political, even if not in the more contemporary sense of that term, Cavarero looks for evidence in the early, middle and late dialogues, the three parts of her book following this dwision. From the early dialogues, she emphasizes the rejection of a rhetoric that led to persuasion without knowledge, though she concentrates most on Socratic refutation (in the Euthydemus, Protagoras, and Apology), which she sees as principally a method for liberating people from the false political ideals of the Sophists, a group she describes as the one ultimately responsible for the social evils of the time. From the middle period, she not surprisingly concentrates on the Republic, devoting over a fourth of her book to this one dialogue. She sees the Republic as signaling an essential step in the development of Plato's political philosophy. The ~(New York: Doubleday, 1971). The two papers are: Leys, "Was Plato Non-Political?" pp, 166-73, and Sparshon, "Plato as Anti-Pohtical Thinker," pp. 173-83. [4631 464 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY negative refutation found in the earlier dialogues is now surpassed in importance by dialectic, which couples intellectualdiscovery with a refusal to make absolute any specific concept...