1. I owe the title of this chapter and much else of what is good in it to Mark Reinhardt. See his The Art of Being Free (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), esp. ch. 3. I have used the Greek text of John Burnet, vol. 4 of Platonis Opera (1902; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). I have also relied on the commentary by R. C. Cross and A. D. Woozley, Plato’s Republic: A Philosophical Commentary (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964). Translations are from various sources and I note them where appropriate.

2. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, ed. D. R. Griffin and D. W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1978), p. 39.

3. Among such recent critics of Platonic political philosophy, and of ancient Athens in general, see Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), esp. introduction and ch. 1; Stephen T. Holmes, “Aristippus in and out of Athens,” APSR 73, 1 (Mar. 1979): 113–27; Michael Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers (New York: Viking Press, 1984), esp. conclusion; see also the essays collected in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).

4. To honor one’s enemies is the lordly way, as Nietzsche puts it in the first essay of The Genealogy of Morals (1887; New York: Modern Library, 1918), 1.10.

5. Paul Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933).

6. The presence or absence of a theory of the forms is sometimes used to distinguish, along with other criteria, between early, middle, and late dialogues. The Gorgias is usually considered a “late” early or aporetic dialogue, while the Republic is generally agreed to be from Plato’s middle period. For this generally accepted schema, see W. K. C. Guthrie, Plato: The Man and His Dialogues, vol. 4 of A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 236. On dating Gorgias as a very early, or presystematic dialogue, one written before the so-called “Socratic” dialogues Laches,Charmides,Lysis, and Euthyphro, see Charles Kahn, “Did Plato Write Socratic Dialogues?” in Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates, ed. Hugh H. Benson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 35–52. I am less concerned with the dating of the dialogues, which is inexact in any case and cannot determine an interpretation, than with the contending and contradictory impulses that inhabit the dialogue.

7. Cf. Guthrie, Plato, 298, who states that the Republic “is Plato’s full and final answer to the question in the Gorgias, ‘how to live’ ” (pōs biōteon,Gorgias 492d). The phrase at 500c, hontina chrē tropon zēn, occurs in identical form at Republic 352d.

8. On Aeschylus’s use of the cosmogonic myth, see Froma I. Zeitlin, “The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia,” Arethusa 11, 1–2 (Spring/Fall 1978): esp. 162–63.

9. The literature on the Republic is vast. Particularly useful are Paul Friedländer, Plato, trans. Hans Meyerhoff (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958); Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943); A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work, 3d ed. (1926; New York: Dial Press, 1929); Guthrie, Plato; F. M. Cornford, The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950) T. H. Irwin, Plato’s Moral Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Literature and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Hans-Georg Gadamer, Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, trans. Christopher P. Smith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980); and Charles Griswold, ed., Platonic Writings / Platonic Readings (New York: Routledge, 1988). Among political theorists, see Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961); Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), and Between Past and Future (New York: Viking Press, 1958); Leo Strauss, The City and Man (New York: Rand McNally, 1964), J. Peter Euben, The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road Not Taken (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990); Mary P. Nichols, “The Republic’s Two Alternatives: Philosopher-Kings and Socrates,” Political Theory 12, 2 (May 1984): 252–74; and Alexander Sesonske, Plato’s Republic: Interpretation and Criticism (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 1966).

10. The etymological beginnings of theory and theorist are to be found in the postHomeric vocabulary. The verb theōrein, originally derived from the noun signifying a spectator (theōros), came specifically to mean “to look on, contemplate or observe.” It differs significantly from the Homeric panoply of “sight” verbs because, as Bruno Snell has remarked, “it does not reflect an attitude or an emotion linked with sight, nor the viewing of a particular object: instead it represents an intensification of the normal and essential function of the eyes” (Snell, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, trans. T. G. Rosenmeyer [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953], p. 4). Theōrein thus emphasizes the object seen and the intensity of the viewer’s experiences rather than the “palpable aspects, the external qualifications, of the act of seeing” (ibid.). The Homeric attributes of manner do not cling to this verb, which in the classical period meant “to contemplate.” Theory thus comes to signify mental activity, not the function of the eyes, although Plato uses the expression “to see with the mind’s eye” (Republic 582c) to denote mental vision. The turn away from the Homeric conception of vision is both a turn outward, toward the object of perception, and a turn inward, toward the intensity or depth of the experience. A theōros was originally a spectator of a sacred event or a public performance, an emissary sent to the oracle at Delphi, a witness of religious rituals, rites of purification, or the sacred games at Olympia. The theōros also traveled to other poleis in an official capacity to observe an event and then returned home to report on what he had witnessed. Theory became an activity that entailed watching and observing a spectacle related to things divine and recounting the essentials of the witnessed event clearly, accurately, and with discernment. This means that only those citizens were sent who could “see” with discrimination. Since theory required embarking upon a journey to foreign lands, the theorist acquired the connotation of a traveler, someone who had experienced the world beyond the parochial confines of the polis and even beyond the Hellenic civilizational area. Theory subsequently entailed “seeing with an eye toward learning about different lands and institutions, alien practices and experiences, distilling and comparing the pattern of things seen while engaged in travel” (J. Peter Euben, “Creatures of a Day: Thought and Action in Thucydides,” in Political Theory and Praxis: New Perspectives, ed. Terence Ball [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977], p. 34). The etymology of theater also bears out a relation to philosophy and theory. The theater (theatrōn) is a place for seeing or beholding a spectacle, especially dramatic representations; it is also a place of assembly and a collective noun for hoi theatai, the spectators. The Greek theatrōn originates in the feminine noun thea, which signifies “see, sight, gaze, look upon, behold admire and contemplate.” From it, Greek derived a field of words having to do with seeing, sight, and spectacle, e.g, to theama (sight, spectacle, play), hē theama (spectacle), and the verb theaomai meaning “to gaze at or behold, to see clearly and with a sense of wonder or admiration.” Theaomai not only designates physical vision (Rep. 327a), but mental activity as well, especially in the sense of contemplation or a “vision of the mind” (Rep. 582c, Phd. 84b). On the etymology of thauma,thea, and theōros, see Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue grecque (Paris: Editions Klincksieck, 1970), pp. 424–25, 433, as well as Hjalmar Frisk, Griechisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1960), p. 669.

11. I draw this account from Sheldon Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” APSR 63, 4 (Dec. 1969): 1078.

12. Though I should add parenthetically that both Cephalus’s and Polemarchus’s definitions of justice are encompassed in the class structure of the ideal city: the members of the moneymaking class pay their debts; the members of the warrior class are like well-bred dogs, kind to their friends, fierce to their enemies. Thrasymachus and the justice of tyrants remains unexplained in this schema. Perhaps that is owing to the difficulty of successfully uniting philosophical knowledge and political power. In terms of the drama of the dialogue, can Thrasymachus’s desire for power be tamed and his soul turned toward the love of wisdom? Or, conversely, is the philosopher’s will to knowledge really a will to power, and Socrates’ desire not for wisdom but for rule and control?

13. J. H. Jacques, Plato’s “Republic”: A Beginner’s Guide (Derby, Eng.: Citadel Press; London: Tom Stacey, 1971), p. 51, cited in Guthrie, Plato, p. 444–45.

14. The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker, 2d ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 145.

15. Friedländer, Plato, 1: 143.

16. Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, p. 126.

17. Alister Cameron, The Identity of Oedipus the King (New York: New York University Press, 1968), pp. 50–51.

18. Not all dialogues idealize the experience of conversion. Polemarchus hints at this when he asks, “How can you persuade us if we won’t listen?” and in Gorgias, Callicles refuses to listen.

19. Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, p. 134.

20. I have here taken certain liberties with Martha Nussbaum’s account of philosophical dialogue. I should say something about her claim that dialogue moves from particular to general accounts and judgments, and that “tragedy warns us of the dangers inherent in the search for one form by continually displaying to us the irreducible richness of human value, the complexity and indeterminacy of the lived practical situation,” while Socratic dialogue does not. As I have indicated, that warning might come from Socratic philosophy as well. I certainly argue that philosophical dialogue attends to the particular: Socrates treats his interlocutors as particular individuals with different and distinct needs. He treats his fellow citizens, not as abstract equals before the law, but as a father or older brother would treat his sons or younger brothers. At the same time, we should not neglect the philosophical elements in tragedy: Socrates does show us how to rise above the particularities of tragedy to inquiry, yet conversely, Oedipus and Socrates show us that inquiry can be tragic. I therefore think that Nussbaum understates tragedy’s search for truth. Tragic theater indeed displays “the complexity and indeterminacy of the lived practical situation,” yet it does so in a highly ordered and structured way. Tragedy might not ultimately find a “single or unitary form of truth,” yet the impulse to search it out resides in the fabric and organization of the text, even as the play itself warns against such searches. Nussbaum both underplays the intellectual aspects of tragedy and overstates her case against philosophical dialogue when she argues that tragedy is antiphilosophical and dialogue overly abstract, determinate, ultimately reductionist, and so antitragic.

21. This is as true for Plato’s contemporaries as it is for us. See Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 2.

22. Friedländer, Plato, 2: 50–56.

23. Diskin Clay, “On Reading the Republic,” in Platonic Writings / Platonic Readings, ed. Charles Griswold (Routledge: New York, 1988), p. 22.

24. Ibid., p. 23. I agree with Clay that the Republic is structured by interruptions and questions, but where he argues that the book is ultimately “an open dialogue,” I maintain that the text subverts itself, undermines its drive toward closure, and questions its conclusions. This is to recognize contending forces at work in the text that make it an ambivalent book, but not to settle for a “single” reading, either “open” or “closed.”

25. For a recent statement of these two positions, see Dale Hall, “The Republic and the Limits of Politics,” Political Theory 5, 3 (Aug. 1977), and the response by Allan Bloom that follows. Nichols, “The Republic’s Two Alternatives,” pp. 252–74, finds a discrepancy in the Republic as to what philosophy means, although she finally concludes that “Plato obviously prefers Socrates, whose way of life he immortalizes in his dialogues, to the philosopher-kings of the Republic” (270). For Nichols, the most telling way in which Plato distinguishes himself from Socrates is by writing. For an extended treatment of this position, see her Socrates and the Political Community: An Ancient Debate (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1987).

26. This is Cornford’s position in Unwritten Philosophy, pp. 58–59, as well as Karl Popper’s in The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1: The Spell of Plato (1949), 5th ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966). R. S. Bluck defends Plato against some of Popper’s more outrageous allegations in “Is Plato’s Republic a Theocracy?” Philosophical Quarterly 5, 18 (Jan. 1955): 69–73.

27. For a similarly dramatic reading of Plato’s dialogues, besides the works of Strauss, Sesonske, and Friedländer cited in n. 9 above, see Eric Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957); Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965); Paul Plass, “Philosophical Anonymity and Irony in the Platonic Dialogues,” American Journal of Philology 85, 3 (1964): 254–78; and J. H. Randall, Plato: Dramatist of the Life of Reason (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970).

28. On this issue of pessimism and the renunciation of politics, see Clay, “On Reading the Republic,” pp. 32–33.

29. Arlene Saxonhouse characterizes Socratic philosophy this way in “The Philosophy of the Particular and the Universality of the City: Socrates’ Education of Euthyphro,” Political Theory 16, 2 (May 1988).

30. Strauss, City and Man, p. 127; Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968), “Interpretive Essay.”

31. On Plato’s questioning of Socratic questioning, see John Sallis Being and Logos: The Way of the Platonic Dialogue (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 1978), p. 27.

32. Timothy Reiss, in Tragedy and Truth (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 21ff., describes Greek tragedy this way.

33. See, e.g., Max Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in id., Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell et al. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), p. 243. See also the “Postscript,” p. 246, where Horkheimer compares critical theory with Greek philosophy: “Its goal is man’s emancipation from slavery. In this it resembles Greek philosophy, not so much in the Hellenistic age of resignation as in the golden age of Plato and Aristotle.”

34. See, e.g., the essays in Jürgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970); id., Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971); and The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984, 1987).

35. On this point, see Martha Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, pp. 121–32, esp. p. 123.

36. William Connolly, “Democracy and Territoriality,” Millenium: Journal of International Studies 20, 3 (Winter 1991): 465.

37. On this pun in Plato, see Clay, “On Reading the Republic,” p. 19.