Refute Thyself: The Socratic Method in Plato’s Republic Book 4

ABSTRACT

In this article I discuss Plato’s use of method in the Republic in light of the Socratic method. I show that in Book 4 this method is a key moment in the conversion from a political way of life (where habits, tastes and beliefs are conditionally deduced from the dominant regime) to the philosophic way of life, in that Socrates’s account of method is never separated from the experience of questioning the dialogue incites. The Socratic account of method differs from our modern conception of method in that it is never presented abstractly or with finality. It is learned by experiencing its application to the constitution of one’s own soul. Socrates’s use of questioning and agreement (i.e., elenchus) prepares the soul to apply the method in a way that reveals the contradictions between the city and the soul and the questions these contradictions raise. I conclude that questioning and method taken together constitute a decisive but often overlooked moment in the philosophic conversion presented in the Republic, and suggest that contemporary political theory would benefit from a return to the method that implicates the questioner herself in the search for knowledge of justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Plato
• The Republic
• Socrates
• Socratic method

Notes

All parenthetical references to Plato’s Republic in the text are to The Republic of Plato, translated by Allan Bloom, 2d ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1991).

1. “City in speech” is the literal translation of Socrates’ proposed solution to the problem of discovering justice. I disagree with those who see the “city in speech” as a blueprint for Plato’s so-called “ideal state.” E.g. Popper, The Open Society; White, Companion to Plato’s Republic; Annas, Introduction to Plato’s ‘Republic’; Sayers, Plato’s Republic; Rice, Guide to Plato’s Republic; Rudebusch, “Dramatic Prefiguration in Plato’s Republic”; and Cross and Woozley, Plato’s Republic. See Ludlam, Plato’s Republic for an account of the historical origins, beginning with Cicero, of the political (mis)interpretation of the dialogue (1–3). Many scholars, including but not limited to Strauss (City and Man); Rosen (Plato’s Republic); Benardete (Socrates’ Second Sailing); Sachs, trans. (Republic); Bloom, trans. (Republic of Plato); and Zuckert (Plato’s Philosophers) have compellingly refuted this interpretation. The pervasiveness of this political reading of the dialogue is in part responsible for the scholars’ failure to perceive the relation between Socratic method and philosophic conversion in Book 4.

2. Meckstroth, “Socratic Method,” 646.

3. The edited volume Does Socrates Have a Method, ed. Scott, omits a sustained treatment of the Republic in its discussions of elenchus.

4. Scott, “Introduction,” Does Socrates Have a Method?.

5. See Brickhouse and Smith, “Socrates’ Elenctic Mission,” 139.

6. Muir, Legacy of Isocrates.

7. Cited in Meckstroth, “Socratic Method,” 648, note 14.

8. Ibid., 645, citing Max Weber.

9. See Everson, Epistemology, for an ancient understanding of method that is compatible with philosophy as a way of life.

10. Wolin, “Political Theory as Vocation,” 1071.

11. Meckstroth, “Socratic Method,” 644. Meckstroth’s account would benefit from the inclusion of Benardete’s claim in Socrates’ Second Sailing that Socrates uses the procedure of “eidetic analysis”, which is by nature “periagogic or conversive (518d4)” (4–5).

12. Meckstroth, “Socratic Method,” 647.

13. Ibid., 647. Meckstroth does not foreclose the possibility of the Socratic method being relevant for modern empirical methods. The latter third of his article is devoted to arguing that Socratic method “provides a common language for evaluating both quantitative and qualitative methods by drawing out a critical logic of empirical inquiry shared by both” (644).

14. Ibid., 646.

15. Ibid., 649.

16. Ibid., 646.

17. Ibid. See Plato, Republic of Plato, 336e, 340a, and 348a–b.

18. Meckstroth, “Socratic Method,” 646.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., 649.

21. I am grateful to James Muir for this observation, which Meckstroth does not make. Cf. Benardete, Being of the Beautiful, xii–xiii, on the etymology of “dialectics” as used by Plato.

22. My approach might be compared to Collins’s in Exhortations to Philosophy.

23. For an in-depth analysis of the problem of parts and wholes in Plato, see Harte, Plato on Parts and Wholes.

24. This central stage of conversion to the philosophic life is preceded by the experience of ignorance and eros at the end of Book 1. I would thus agree with those who state the significance of beauty and love in turning the soul from becoming to being (see e.g., Johnstone, Listening to the Logos).

25. Plato, Republic of Plato, 403c.

26. Cf. Aristotle’s Politics, 1261a15.

27. For an account of the use of non-contradiction in ancient argumentation, see Castagnoli, Ancient Self-Refutation.

28. Plato, Republic of Plato, 402d–403c.

29. Ibid., 401e.

30. Ferrari is thus mistaken when he asserts in “The Three-Part Soul” that the “longer road” is never followed, because he misidentifies the question to be about whether they will prove that their account of the divided soul is true, rather than whether the justice of the city and the soul are the same (166–67). Ferrari is correct, however, to criticize those (such as Cooper in “Plato’s Theory,” Kahn in “Plato’s Theory of Desire,” and Bobonich in Plato’s Utopia Recast) who extract from the Republic a unified psychology by abstracting its various statements concerning the soul from their context within the dialogue as a whole (167).

31. Cf. Plato, Republic of Plato, 420b.

32. There are other limitations relating to this account of the soul, which are brought out by Socrates in Book 9 when he adds to each part of the soul its own, distinctive pleasure (see Ferrari, “The Three-Part Soul,” and Sommerville’s “Pleasure and the Divided Soul”). These limitations do not, however, affect my argument that the problem of parts and wholes and the two definitions of justice lead to an experience of the elenctic method within one’s own soul.

33. Cf. Silverman, Dialectic of Essence, where he considers Plato’s use of the dialectical method in the Republic in light of his design “to illustrate the education which will produce a philosopher-ruler in order that she might best rule an ideal polis” (66). In my account, the possibility of the city in speech becoming ideally just has been done away with by the end of Book 4, which would lead to a different reading of the remaining books.

34. This use of logic to examine the soul is an example of Brill’s point that for Plato the soul is never encountered directly. See Brill, Plato, 1–3.

35. Meckstroth’s account of the first two stages of elenchus is evident here.

36. This statement expresses some discrepancies other scholars have noticed: e.g., Dorter, “The Divided Line”: “Nothing in the soul corresponds to equality of women… elimination of family… or philosopher-rulers… Plato makes the transitions [between Books 2–4 and 5–7] seem as discontinuous as possible and calls attention to the inconsistencies between the material in books 2–4 and books 5–7 (536c–d)” (2). Cf. Ferrari, “The Three-Part Soul,” 166.

37. For an analysis of the third class in this context, see Benardete, Socrates’ Second Sailing, 14.

38. Meckstroth, “Socratic Method,” 646.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Anne L’Arrivee

Elizabeth Anne L’Arrivee, PhD, is lecturer at Colgate University, NY, USA, teaching ancient and modern literature, political philosophy, and religion.