Some Quirky Interpretations of The Republic, Part 1

Listened to Plato’s Republic, Part 1, over and over during several runs. Not the first time I'd listened to it, and I thought I should know it well enough that I’d squeezed all the knowledge out of it like the juice in a lemon. I hadn't.

On a run a few days before that, I listened to Chapter 1 of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. Something about Aristotle’s take on ethics, so much more rhetorical than philosophical—even though he writes eloquently about the “contemplative life”—made some of the dialogue in The Republic stand out from the rest, sort of like those "red letter" New Testaments that have all of Jesus's words in red ink. 

In the opening scene of The Republic, Socrates has just left the festival at Piraeus. While he walks back to Athens he is hailed and then joined by a group of friends. Most summaries of The Republic skip over the interchange. which appears to be nothing more than the sort of witty repartee Plato is so good at. One online reviewer, for instance, writes “The dialogue begins with the question ‘What is justice?’” not even allowing the opening dialogue place in The Republic. Most interpreters want to get right to the “meat” of the dialogue, the discussion of justice that comes later. 

Looking at this exchange, however, (or rather listening to it several runs in a row while under Aristotle's sway), I noticed how chocked full of meaning these words really are. Notice, for instance, that in the initial dialogue, Polemarchus, who want’s Socrates to stay until the evening festivities, says, “But do you see how many we are? And are you stronger than all these? For if not, you will have to remain where you are.” 

What a succinct definition of democracy from Plato's view. For those fiends of Socrates, and the people of Athens, democracy is simply the dictatorship of the majority, systematized, physical force. 

Socrates replies, “May there not be the alternative, that we may persuade you to let us go?” to which Polemarchus replies, “But can you persuade us if we refuse to listen to you?"

In this brief exchange, we can see a metaphoric narrative of the trial of Socrates, and the flaw both saw in democracy, (and that we see in elections today), that democracy is only possible when you listen to your opponent. There’s no question that in The Apology, many of Socrates’s arguments are so poor that one has to assume they were so on purpose. I had always assumed (I.E. I had no textual evidence) that he intended to loose. Now, I wonder. Perhaps the arguments he made were so starkly unpersuasive because he knew his audience would refuse to listen. So, he was going to tell them the truth, whether they listened or not.

Witty repartee, perhaps, but with a dark undercurrent, that like Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” may be missed if the reader is only interested in the serious stuff. 

Were these all too serious allusions intentional? If you adhere to the intentional fallacy, the answer has to be no. However, when I read Plato, I see a careful writer, one who is in control of his writing. (And here, Post-Structuralists may unite with New Critics against me.) However, I can’t escape the possibility, even the probability, that he wrote between the lines with a clear purpose, to stick it to the Athenians in such a way that only those who would listen could recognize.