Plato and the Body by Coleen P. Zoller

Author:Coleen P. Zoller [Zoller, Coleen P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781438470832
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2018-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

4.3.2 Misunderstandings and Mistaken Identities

Interpreting the hydraulic model passage also raises the question of whether or not the philosopher’s love of learning is compatible with civic leadership. Can a genuine philosopher, who sincerely loves learning and whose desires totally flow in that direction, engage in political activity? Plato seems to think so when he has Socrates boldly claim that happiness can only be found where philosophers rule as kings and queens (R. 473c-e, 487e, 499a-b, 500e, 521a-b).45 At 474b, after Glaucon warns him that saying such a thing would prompt many to do terrible, violent things to him on the spot, Socrates says, “If we’re to escape from the people you mention, I think we need to define for them who the philosophers are that we dare to say must rule. And once that’s clear, we should be able to defend ourselves by showing that the people we mean are fitted by nature both to engage in philosophy and to rule in a city, while the rest are naturally fitted to leave philosophy alone and follow their leader” (emphasis added). Plato’s insistence that the philosophical life should involve concern for human affairs is on display. Here, we have a definition of the philosopher that includes both philosophizing and political leadership as integral to Plato’s Socrates’s conception of philosophy itself. When Plato later introduces the hydraulic model Adeimantus and Glaucon fail to make any connection between this definition of the philosopher and what is implied by the hydraulic model, failing what strikes me as another crucial test Plato has Socrates give them.

Socrates recognizes that he must define the philosopher, as he is aware that when he says philosophers should rule, his listeners probably imagine different people than he does (R. 499e–500a). In fact, Socrates reiterates many times that the biggest obstacle to people agreeing with him that philosophers are the ones best suited to rule is the problem of mistaken identity (R. 474b-c, 485a, 495c, 498d–499a, 499d–500b).46 For Plato’s Socrates, sophists and others who may be mixed up with philosophers are not philosophers.47 Yet, philosophers are confused with those who persist with “the sophistications and eristic quibbles that, both in public trials and in private gatherings, aim at nothing except reputation and disputation” (R. 499a). Philosophers are mistaken for “those outsiders who don’t belong and who’ve burst in like a band of revellers, always abusing one another, indulging their love of quarrels, and arguing about human beings in a way that is wholly inappropriate to philosophy” (R. 500b). The sophists and other quarreling quibblers have given philosophers the bad reputation that drives the violent response Glaucon anticipates for Socrates’s claim that philosophers ought to rule.48

However, Socrates is certain that clearing up the philosophers’ identity will immediately bring his doubters to agreement.49 Consequently, in Book 5, Plato has Socrates define a philosopher as “someone who readily and willingly tries all kinds of learning, who turns gladly to learning and is insatiable for it” (R. 475c), “those who love the sight of truth” (R.

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