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Greek to Me What the Ancients offer us today. by RYAN SLAUER
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The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. —Alfred North Whitehead
The influence of Plato in Western thought is difficult to overstate. Aristotle’s writings assume the reader has an intimate knowledge of Plato’s dialogues, and many of them (Politics, Poetics, Nicomachean Ethics, etc.) either complement or challenge his teacher’s thoughts. Cicero, the influential Roman statesman, was indebted to Plato, and his De Republica is a Romanized version of Republic. Plotinus, a late antique philosopher, developed a system of philosophical thought and religious belief based on Plato’s works. This Neo-Platonism was very important to the thoughts and writings of early Christian apologists, especially St. Augustine. Continued analysis of his work has kept Plato influential: many modern philosophers, including J.S. Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Hegel and Voltaire offer both praise and criticism of the ancient teacher. The decrease in university enrollment in the humanities (from 14 percent of degrees in 1966 to 7 percent in 2010) has coincided with the notion that the humanities are irrelevant. No impression could be further from the truth, but rather than offer general praise for Classics and humanities, here I will extol them with a specific example of their brilliance — Plato’s Republic. In the words of English professor Mark Bauerlein, “Exposure works better than explanation, Ryan Slauer is a senior studying economics and Latin.
14 / The Arch Conservative
participation better than entreaty. The humanities defenders, mistakenly, try to persuade and coerce when they should intrigue, excite, fascinate, and inspire.” Republic is a dialogue between Socrates and a group of friends, and is therefore ideal for “exposure” and “participation”: as readers, we are sucked into the conversation and grapple with the questions and topics that arise between Socrates and his fellow interlocutors. As Socrates presses his companions to determine whether they truly understand the subject, we cannot help but question our own understanding. For example, in Plato’s Symposium, the participants in the story praise and discuss the nature of Love. Socrates’ contribution to the topic is perplexing on its surface and probing in its depth (no spoiler here, go read it!) We scratch our heads and ask with his listeners, “What is Love? Why is it so powerful?” The dialogue in Republic discusses the nature of justice and the characteristics of an “ideal” city-state. What is justice? The difficulty in answering this question is underscored by the fact that by the end of the dialogue, the question still stands. Various characters in
the dialogue reveal contemporary notions of justice: the aged Cephalus argues that justice is speaking the truth and paying debts, actions facilitated by wealth. Polemarchus contends that justice is doing good to friends and harm to enemies. Thrasymachus states that justice is simply the advantage of whoever is in power. Socrates deduces his understanding of justice by asking the following question: what is the ideal city-state? In a conversation riddled with fascinating and controversial conclusions, Socrates defines justice as the condition where each individual in the community, or each element of the human soul, performs his own unique “task.” Farmers farm and cobblers repair shoes, but both are subject to the guardian (administrative) class; similarly, the appetitive part of the soul hungers and thirsts but is subject to reason. This is justice, and it leads to harmony in the ideal city-state and in the ideal individual. To the average reader, Socrates’ contribution is unfamiliar. This “ideal city-state” does not, and likely cannot, exist, so what WINTER 2013