ABSTRACT
The first book of the Republic ends on a tentative note. Like many of the earlier dialogues, it raises questions rather than offering answers. We can imagine Book I of the Republic as a radio play, in which some typical char acters express some typical opinions, which are then shown to be much more open to criticism than their proponents had realised. The actual arguments put in the mouth of Socrates are unconvincing. The best that can be said for them is that they make you think. The same can be said of many of Plato’s early dialogues, the ‘Socratic dialogues’ . They show an opinionated individual, overly confident of his own opinions, being tripped up by Socrates, who does not himself express any views, but is content to be a gad-fly, forc ing people to think for themselves, and not take their opinions second-hand from the conventional wisdom of their day. They are dramatic, with sharp delineation of character, easy to read, but negative in content. Although it is hard to fault any single dialogue, cumulatively they exasperate us, leaving us with a sense of not getting anywhere. They make us think, but they do not carry conviction. If we met Cephalus or Thrasymachus at a party, we should no longer be ready to accept their word for it that honesty was just giving back what one had borrowed, or that morality was a mug’s game. But though they had been shown up, we should not be convinced that their po sitions were indefensible. Cleverer men might have done better. The local Marxist has been worsted in an argument in the village pub, but we are not sure that Marxism has really been refuted: when challenged to say exactly what we meant by some term, ‘civilisation’ , say, we were at a loss, but we do not concede that we did not know what we meant when we used the word. Thrasymachus was made a fool of, but then he was a fool all along. A more skilful sophist could have made a better case for amoralism, and might be able to establish that morality is merely the ideology by means of which the dominant class keeps the rest of us in servile obedience to their wishes.
