THE PLATONIC EDUCATION IN HUMAN EXCELLENCE

But what of Plato himself? Socrates' criticism of Homer for hiding himself inevitably reminds one of the author of the dialogue in which we read that criticism.^[477] Does Plato not hide himself even more than Homer? Is Plato

not a wholly imitative poet, like the tragic poets, but unlike Homer, who does offer his audience and readers, for example, his own judgments, accounts of death, and similes? And yet, in certain ways, Plato does not hide himself more than or even as much as Homer does.

216

²17

454e6-455c2) - he too hides himself (even leaving aside his irony - 337a3-7, 506b8- cι). See Saxonhouse 2009, 740-741, 745. However, insofar as Socrates speaks more than anyone in the dialogue, the “poet” Socrates ends up imitating especially himself in his narration and therefore does not, for the most part, hide himself. It may also be significant that the only part of the dialogue in which Socrates narrates sections of the discussion rather than simply “imitate” the speech of the characters is in the Thrasymachus section (336bι-7, 336d5-e2, 337a3, 338a4-bι, 342cιo, 342d2-3, 342d8, 342e5, 343aι-3, 344dι-5, 346cι, 346cι2, 350cι2-d5). Perhaps, insofar as Thrasymachus is the only character who praises injustice and tyranny in his own name, Socrates is somewhat reluctant to imitate “a worse one, unless it is brief” (396d5-eι; see 343b1-344c8).

One might also perhaps explicitly call them Socrates' students: In the course of his discussion with them, Socrates, on one occasion, makes the claim to Adeimantus, to be a “teacher,” albeit a “ridiculous” one (392d8; see also 338bι-3).

327aι, 327cι-2, 367e6-368a7, 427c6-dι, 580b8-c5; consider 367d4-eι, 475d8-476a8, 504e4-505a6, 507a7-b11, 596a5-b11. Glaucon does also appear briefly at the very beginning of the Symposium 172aι-173b8 and, with Adeimantus, at the very beginning of the Parmenides.

This is the revolution brought about by Plato, a revolution explained and justified by Plato’s Socrates' critique of Homer in the Republic. Unlike Homer and also the tragic poets (and Thucydides) who follow him, Plato presents the philosopher in the full light of day, as a model for imitation. Accordingly, Plato offers a vivid portrait of the philosopher, especially in the three dialogues in which he appears or is mentioned and in which his brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, appear prominently: in the Apology, on trial for his life; in the Phaedo, on the day of his death and at the moment of his death; and in the Republic, in which Socrates presents an extensive and edifying - as Glaucon says, “wholly noble” (540c3) - depiction of the philosophic life.^[478] In all the dialogues, but in these three in particular, Plato offers the philosopher Socrates as a model for imitation for philosophic natures and thereby completes the education for philosophic natures that Plato’s Socrates sketches out in his critique of Homer.

The new education for philosophic natures culminates in the imitation of Socrates. How does such imitation reflect Socrates’ critique of the Homeric education? As we have seen, Socrates’ critique of Homer’s greatest hero Achilles focuses on his stance toward death: His passionate fear of his own death and of the deaths of his loved ones, a fear that can only be overcome by such passions as anger. In his Apology and Phaedo, Plato presents Socrates as apparently exuding a superlative fearlessness in the face of death. In his defense speech before the Athenian jurors, Socrates denounces the fear of death as unreasonable - “for to fear death, men, is nothing other than to seem wise but not be so” (29a4-6) - and declares that what may well set him apart from most human beings is that he does not fear death:

But I, men, am perhaps distinguished from the many human beings here and in this, and if I were to assert that I am wiser, it would be in this, that since I do not know sufficiently about the things in Hades, I consequently also do not suppose that I know. But doing injustice and disobeying the one who is better, both god and human, I know that is evil and base. In precedence to the things that I know are evil, then, I will never fear or flee things which I do not know whether they even happen to be good. (29b2-9).

And Socrates seems to match these words with his deeds. For rather than beg for his life, or even attempt to persuade his jurors to offer a milder sentence than death, Socrates is remarkably defiant throughout his defense speech. Most notably, he brings up the death penalty even before the jurors have voted him guilty;^[479] he announces that “I will not desist from philosophizing” and “I would not do otherwise, not even if I were to die many times”;^[480] he ostentatiously refuses to beg for his life as, according to him, men in the jury may have done;²²¹ and then, after the jurors vote to convict him as guilty of impiety and corrupting the young but before they have sentenced him, Socrates proposes as an alternative to the death penalty that he receive one of the highest honors from the city, before, at the last minute, proposing that he pay a fine.²²² By asserting that death is not an evil and by backing those words with his emphatically fearless behavior toward the jury, Socrates evidently seeks to inspire his companions to master their own fear of death, as Socrates argues that poets should do in the Republic.

Even more notably, in the Phaedo, his companion Phaedo bears wit­ness to Socrates’s remarkable serenity during the dramatic day of his death:

Indeed, for my part, I experienced wondrous things as I was present. For no pity overcame me, even though I was present at the death of a dear man. For the man appeared happy to me, Echecrates, both in his bearing and in his speeches [or arguments - λoyων], so fearlessly and nobly did he die, so that it was impressed upon me that that he was not going to Hades without a divine portion but that he would fare well in that place, if indeed anyone ever does. On account of these things no pity at all overcame me, as would have seemed likely for one in the presence of mourning. (58eι-59a3)

The Phaedo also especially bears witness to Socrates’ remarkable self­sufficiency, a self-sufficiency that Socrates in the Republic calls on the poets to celebrate and criticizes Homer’s heroes and gods for lacking. Not only does Socrates refuse to lament his own death, au tragique, but he apparently feels no sorrow whatsoever at leaving behind his family and friends. He curtly dismisses his weeping wife Xanthippe before his final conversation, he does not even mention the three sons he is leaving behind (and ignores Crito’s mention of them), and he appears so indifferent to his companions that one of them, Simmias, accuses him of “easily” “abandoning” them.^[481] Indeed, rather than weep on the day of his death, Socrates laughs, twice, for the only time in the Platonic dialogues.^[482] As Phaedo explains to Echecrates and his fellow admirers of philosophy, Socrates con­vinced his friends, through his demeanor in the face of death and through his arguments for the immortality of the soul, that death is not evil and thereby calmed their pity, their sorrow, and their fear of death.^[483] In this way, Socrates in the Phaedo seeks to strengthen the rule of reason over the always potentially overpowering fear of death as Socrates in his critique of Homer in the Republic urges poets to do.

To be sure, in both the Apology and the Phaedo, Socrates indicates that there may be reasons for wondering whether death is truly not an evil and hence whether it is truly unreasonable to fear death. For example, in the Apology, even though Socrates claims that the possibility of death as a dreamless sleep is one that he would welcome, by identifying philosophiz­ing with the spirit of wakefulness, he invites us to question that claim.^[484] Similarly, even though Phaedo declares that Socrates manifested his happi­ness and fearlessness in the face of death through both his demeanor and his arguments for the immortality of the soul, Socrates himself repeatedly provokes^[485] and even invites acute doubt concerning the truth of his arguments for immortality.^[486] Accordingly, one may wonder whether Socrates covered himself just before the moment of his death in order to mask his own sorrow in the face of death, just as Phaedo covers himself to mask his own sorrow.^[487] Nevertheless, the powerful example that Plato presents on the surface of both dialogues is that of a philosopher serene and fearless in the face of death. Ultimately those who strive to imitate Socrates may, in their maturity, critically examine both Socrates’ arguments and his demeanor on the day of his death as presented in the Phaedo. But those followers will be better able to carry out such an examination in a dispas­sionate and self-possessed manner thanks to their habitual imitation of the dispassionate and self-possessed Socrates.^[488]

The Phaedo concludes with Phaedo's statement, on behalf of his companions, that Socrates was the best man they had ever known or tested, and that he was “especially the most wise and the most just” (118a15-17).

Plato's Republic and Phaedo present the philosopher as embracing the teaching that the Forms - beings, such as the Noble, the Just, the Good, the Equal, the Couch, the Table, that are separate from particular percep­tible beings and that are themselves imperishable - constitute the proper objects of the philosopher's quest for knowledge since they alone are truly knowable.²³⁵ This teaching is profoundly reassuring to all those who seek the whole of wisdom since it guarantees that such wisdom is attainable and thereby allays the abiding fear that the quest for a complete wisdom is futile.²³⁶ This teaching and the teaching concerning the immortality of the

is, or at least resembles, an erotic human being (474b4-475c5; 485aιo-c9). But even there, Socrates goes on to explain that the philosophers' passion for the truth effectively renders them dispassionate since that passion is so all-consuming that it leaves all their other passions considerably “weaker” (485d3-e2).

²³¹ Apology of Socrates 28dιo-e4, 32a9-c3.

²³² 17dι-18a3, 20e3-22a6, 23e3-24aι, 24d3-25c4, 30d5-31a7, 31c4-33aι, 36b5-cι.

²³³ See 18c2-8, 21b8-23cι, 24c4-25b7, 29b2-6, 29c5-e3, 30b7-cι, 30eι-31b5, 32bι-c3, 34b7-35d8, 36a4-5.

²³⁴ 20d6-23cι, 28dιo-29aι, 29b2-6, 29c5-7, 31bι-5, 31c4-7, 37e3-38a8; Phaedo 118aι5-17, 74a9-76e4, 78cιo-83b4, 95e7-102b2.

²³⁵ Republic 475d8-480aι3, 504c9-511e5, 517a8-c5, 518b6-dι, 531c9-535a2, 596a5-598d6; Phaedo 65cιι-68b7, 74a9-76e4, 78cιo-83b4, 100b9-102b2. According to Aristotle in the Metaphysics (1078b30-33) the doctrine of separate Forms is not Socrates' but Plato's and his followers'.

²³⁶ Phaedo 88cι-90e2, 100b9-102b2; consider also Meno 80dι-81e2, 86bι-c2. soul,^[489] which together constitute the doctrinal core of Platonism,^[490] combine to calm the fears of death and ignorance that always threaten to overwhelm or undermine the rule of reason in philosophic natures. These doctrines, then, serve a key purpose of the education of philosophic natures as articulated by Socrates in his critique of Homer in the Republic.

These two doctrines also resemble, in large measure, the religious teaching that Socrates promulgates in the course of his attack on Homer and the other poets in the Republic. The perfect, unchanging, and benign Forms resemble the perfect, unchanging, and benign gods of Book II.^[491] Indeed, Socrates calls the Forms “divine” and urges the philosophic natures to revere them and to strive to resemble them, just as Socrates calls on the philosophic natures to strive to resemble the gods and become as divine as possible rather than to question them, as Homer urges.^[492] It is true that, whereas one key feature of the theology of Book II is that the unchanging gods evidently do not intervene in human affairs, the doctrine of Immortality in both the Republic and the Phaedo does teach that the gods reward the philosophers and punish the unjust.^[493] But even in Book II of the Republic, the gods are said, at least to begin with, to benefit human beings, even at times by punishing them.^[494]

Now, it must be said that both the doctrine of the separate Forms and the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul are questionable. Socrates does not offer a demonstration of the truth of the doctrine of the separate Forms in either the Republic or the Phaedo, but rather repeatedly invokes this doctrine as one that he and his companions habitually or “customar­ily” affirm or even “babble” about:^[495] For example, Socrates remarks when speaking of the Forms or Ideas, “it is not a few times that you have heard it... since you have heard many times that the Idea of the Good is the greatest study and that it is by making use of it in addition to just things and the other things that they become useful and beneficial” (504e7-505a4); “Once I have come to an agreement... and reminded you [plural] of the things stated before and spoken of on other occasions many times” (507a7-9); “Do you want us, then, to begin from this point, considering according to our customary procedure? For, I suppose, we are accustomed to set down each single Form concerning each ‘many,’ to which we apply the same name” (596a5-7); “If the things we are always babbling about, something noble and good and all such being, exist” (Phaedo 76d7-9); “And I will go back to those much-babbled about things and will begin from them, setting down that there is something noble itself by itself, and good and big and all the other things” (100b4-7). Moreover, in Plato’s Parmenides, the philosopher Parmenides raises powerful arguments against the doctrine of separate Forms,^[496] arguments that Socrates nowhere answers, in that dialogue or, for example, in the Republic^[497] or the Phaedo. Furthermore, as modern, contemporary, and even ancient commentators have all noted, Socrates falls short of demonstrating the immortality of the individual soul in the Phaedo.^[498] While Socrates does set forth four arguments for the

190 Homer and the Tradition of Political Philosophy immortality of the soul in the Phaedo,^[499] each of them but the last provokes powerful objections,^[500] and the final argument only concludes that “the form of life itself” does not perish, not that the individual soul continues to exist after death.^[501] Accordingly, Socrates indicates in the Phaedo in particular, on the day of his death, that his companions should continue to examine critically both doctrines.^[502] Nevertheless, the surface impression that Plato conveys in both the Republic and the Phaedo is that a follower of Socrates should embrace both the doctrine of the separate Forms and the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul. Those doctrines are meant to calm the fears of philosophic natures, fears that are them­selves reasonable - of death and of the impossibility of completely and definitively acquiring wisdom - but fears that undermine reason. They are part of the preparation of philosophic natures for reasoning about the world, for philosophizing, by habituating them to control their passions and to follow their reason.^[503]

Ultimately those who strive to imitate Socrates most attentively and faithfully must, in their maturity, critically examine both doctrines. Indeed, inasmuch as these doctrines articulate the deepest hopes of such followers - their hopes for perfect wisdom and personal immortality - these doctrines may enable such followers to be fully conscious of their deepest hopes and hence to examine them clearly and critically. But, again, those followers will be better able to carry out such an examination in a dispassionate and self-possessed manner thanks to their long­standing and habitual adherence to these calming and reassuring doc­trines as well as to their habitual imitation of the dispassionate and self­possessed Socrates.

The pious character of the Platonic doctrines of Immortality and separate Forms is a crucial feature of the Platonic education. For Plato is, after all, presenting as a model of excellence and an object of imitation Socrates, a man condemned to death and executed by the city of Athens

for impiety and for corrupting the young. Moreover, as we have noted, philosophers as a whole at this time were widely suspected of atheism,^[504] a capital crime, and suffered religious persecution for impiety, most notably, Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Diagoras, Socrates, and, later, Aristotle.^[505] The threat of religious persecution may have been a reason why, according to Plato’s Protagoras, the philosophic Homer hid himself rather than presenting himself as a model of excellence and imitation in his poems.^[506] Now, Plato boldly presents the philosopher Socrates as a model of excellence and imitation in his dialogues. However, especially in the Apology, Phaedo, and Republic, he presents Socrates as an emphatic­ally pious man. In the Apology, Socrates explains to the Athenian jurors that his philosophic life has always been in “service to the god” Apollo, a service he has been summoned to by the Delphic Oracle and “by the god... from prophecies and from dreams and in every way in which any other divine allotment ever ordered a human being to practice anything at all”: He is “the gift of the god” to the Athenians.^[507] In the Phaedo and the Republic, Socrates presents the philosopher to his companions as one who contemplates the divine Forms.^[508] And in both dialogues, Socrates also proclaims his belief in the personal immortality of the soul and in an afterlife in which the gods reward the good and punish the wicked.^[509] In contrast to Homer, and also the tragic poets and Thucydides, Plato brings the philosopher out from the shadows into the full light of day; but he reveals the philosopher to be a respectably and reassuringly pious figure rather than the radical skeptic he was hitherto suspected of being.

Through all of his dialogues but especially through the Apology, Phaedo, and Republic, Plato offers a new education, a Platonic or Platonistic education, as a replacement for the Homeric education that encourages admiration first for the tragic political and military hero - the virtuous, pious, passionate, sorrowing, and questioning Achilles - but ultimately for the enigmatic, humane, philosophic poet, Homer himself. For that education, Plato suggests, gravely underestimates the weakness of reason and the potentially enslaving power of the passions, and conse­quently ends up romanticizing and strengthening, at the expense of reason, the passions of anger, honor, pity, sorrow, love, and especially the fear of death. Through his own poetic presentation of Socrates, the fearless, dispassionate, self-sufficient, apolitical philosopher who promul­gates the pious, edifying, and reassuring doctrines of the separate Forms and the Immortality of the Soul, as an explicit object of admiration and model for imitation, Plato offers an education that seeks to calm the passions, to strengthen reason among philosophic natures, and to enhance the status of reason and philosophy in the world as a whole. In this way, even though Plato certainly does not expect all to become philosophers,^[510] he does, as Plutarch says, seek effectively to open a “path” to philosophy for “all” (Nicias 23).

A defender of Homer might challenge the new, Platonic education on two points in particular: its apolitical character and its predisposition to dogmatism. A defender of Homer might argue that, by sharply separating political life from the philosophic spirit of questioning, Plato risks harming both politics and philosophy. For while questioning rulers, as Achilles questions Agamemnon, risks political instability and conflict, the suppression of such questioning risks depriving political life of invigor­ating and enlightening debate and deliberation, as occurs among the Achaians but not among the Trojans,^[511] and as thrived in Athens but not Sparta,^[512] and hence risks impoverishing and enfeebling political life. Moreover, while exposing philosophic natures to political life may risk inflaming, for example, their passions for honor, encouraging philosophic natures to excel in speeches and deeds in the assembly and the battlefield and hence to experience political life can lead them to face directly the moral conflicts and human problems that naturally arise out of political life and can thereby lead them to a richer and more fruitful experience of philosophic thinking than that available to merely private individuals. Secondly, a defender of Homer might challenge Plato’s poetic presenta­tion of the philosopher as a fearless, self-sufficient promulgator of the doctrines of the separate Forms and the Immortality of the Soul on the grounds that such a presentation risks substituting a spirit of respectable dogmatism for a spirit of radical philosophic questioning.²⁶¹ For while Plato indicates that such a poetic presentation is necessary to prepare philosophic natures to follow reason over their passions but must itself eventually be subjected to the scrutiny of reason, a defender of Homer might contend that the philosophical prejudices self-consciously pro­moted by Plato to tame the passions may ultimately shackle reason as well. The former challenge to the Platonic education, regarding its apolit­ical character, was to be made most prominently by Machiavelli, the second, regarding its predisposition to dogmatism, by Nietzsche.

²⁶¹ Consider Strauss 1959, 126-127, as well as 1952, 21; 1968, 91.