Thrasymachus and Axiomatic Assumptions

Book I of the Republic dedicates a lot of narrative energy to establishment of setting, despite how economic its exposition is. We could interpret the minor arguments as just this: character-development and window-dressing. But this is one of the reasons reading Plato is more gratifying than reading secondary sources on Plato.

Thrasymachus’s spat with Socrates does not play out how we modern readers would expect. If we pay attention, we can pick out how Socrates differs in tact from even modern philosophers (who would pivot to the foundationally distasteful core of Thrasymachus’s assumptions). Can this restraint be attributed in full to Thrasymachus’s long reach, or (more likely) is the restraint Socrates shows against providing alternative models a telling move?

Homer & Mimetic Value-Systems

Shared texts can be the basis of a community dedicated to social betterment, while restrictions to unbiased information can form propagandizing machines of hegemonic totality. In Socrates’ era there were Homeric texts to fill this role, in the 19^th/20^th century in certain contexts there were Biblical translations, and in class we wondered whether a similar shared text existed in our new globalized modernity. This was in response to the implication (ideological model) that shared texts are an integral piece of societal order.

Given the aporetic effects of Plato’s dialogues, however, access to education/information/intellectual charity appears the more important component of fellowship. Socrates achieves conversation despite the homogenizing effect of counter-critical Greek culture, rather than neccessarily because of it. This is muddied by his constant use of examples and acceptable comprimise. Where is the utility of shared value for an elenctic model located? Does it provide dialectic hospitality? Is it more helpful in achieving rhetorical give-and-take? Or is it an obstacle to critical thinking when over-applied/over-amplified in such a way as to become collectively accessible? 

Other Readings

  Our focus on Platonic baggage has mostly been on Christian editorial bias (leading to a Plato without nuance who speaks through his characters in favor of fallacious arguments). While there are clear examples of this historical trend in modern Plato scholarship (Benjamin Jowett), it is also interesting to trace these complications back to eras closer to Plato’s. The three most prominent readings of Plato which arise from these literal direct-from-Plato interpretations are either theistic, hardline like some passages from Laws x, or in service of Presocratic-esque idealism. The turns taken by Aristotle or the Neoplatonists in their respective readings, for example, might be a place to find other inserted diversions into the literature of Plato in order to return to the text-as-it-was.

The Choice Not Taken

The explicit arguments in Plato’s Phaedo, as pertain to metaphysical and theological models, are not good arguments. Many of their assumptions are extravagant, and their reasoning more universalizing than necessary. Much of the dialogue’s import occurs elsewhere (in the implicature of behavior and tonal choice). There are ways that Plato’s Dialogues do things with their form that are irreplicable in others, but I am interested in producing analysis of other philosophical arguments that deal with avoided arguments (or avoided actions).