ABSTRACT
Christina Tarnopolsky has given us a rich and thought-provoking paper on Plato’s treatment of thumos and rationality in the Republic. She argues that the account found in Books 2 to 10 – which she attributes to Plato rather than Socrates – reveals the limitations to Socrates’ conception of philosophy as rational argumentation. In fact, these limitations are already hinted at in Socrates’ expression of dissatisfaction with his own arguments at the end of Republic 1 (354b), though only revealed in a more explicit way in the rest of the book. Now, critics have long noticed an apparent literary disjoint between Book 1 of the Republic and the rest of that work. Large parts of Republic 1 read as if it really belongs with other so-called ‘early’ or ‘aporetic’ dialogues, in which Socrates’ role is largely confined to asking questions and finding contradictions in the claims of his interlocutors. Republic 2-10, in contrast, seems to be explicitly pushing a positive doctrine. Some, such as Gregory Vlastos (1991), have even used this apparent difference in style as evidence that the two parts of the book were composed at different periods of Plato’s career. Tarnopolsky’s treatment, however, implies that there is a literary unity to the work after all, and in this she is not alone – see, for example, Rowe (2006). For it is precisely by treating the two parts of the book as belonging to a unity that she can draw the conclusion that – for Plato – ‘the analytic and combative rationality of Socrates needs to be supplemented with a more aesthetic view of rationality that can account for the paradigms, outlooks, or worldviews that ground human beings’ political judgments and ways of being in the world, and that operate according to a more imagistic logic’. Since I am in great sympathy to the overall point of Tarnopolsky’s account, what follows should be read as a friendly suggestion.
