The Republic is an interesting case for my hypothesis that the Socrates of all of Plato's dialogues is the same questioning character as the Socrates of the Apology. It has seemed to many readers, on the contrary, that there are two different Socrateses even within the Republic. That is one of two interpretative problems about the Republic with which I begin.

STRANGENESS AND DISCONTINUITY

There is wide agreement among readers of the Republic that in the last nine of its ten books Socrates proposes many views that are in various ways strange. One or another very careful and very sympathetic commentator has called one or another of these views “curious,” “altogether peculiar,” “philosophically frustrating,” “seriously flawed,” “very ugly,” “risible absurdity,” “too hasty and too crude,” “embarrassingly bad,” “botched,” “outlandish,” “a mistake,” “shocking,” “truly bizarre,” “preposterous,” “hysterical,” “utterly grotesque,” “repellent,” “inhuman,” “incoherent,” “nearly unintelligible,” or has said that they “rightly move us to horror.” The strangeness of Socrates' proposals in the Republic needs explanation: can the Socrates of the Republic possibly mean what he says?

A second feature of the Republic that needs explanation is the much-noticed feature that the Socrates of book 1 seems very different from the Socrates of books 2–10. In book 1 Socrates questions several interlocutors and reduces their answers to absurdity. He claims that he is ignorant about justice. He is the examining and ignorant Socrates of the Apology.

The Socrates of some of Plato's dialogues is the avowedly ignorant figure of the Apology who knows nothing important and who gave his life to examining himself and others. In contrast, the Socrates of other dialogues such as the Republic and Phaedo gives confident lectures on topics of which the examining Socrates of the Apology professed ignorance. It is a long-standing puzzle why Socrates acts so differently in different dialogues.

To explain the two different manners of Socrates a current widely accepted interpretation of Plato's dialogues offers this two-part, Plato-centered, hypothesis: (i) the character Socrates of the dialogues is always Plato's device for presenting Plato's own views; and (ii) Plato had different views at different times. The Socrates who confidently lectures presents these famous four doctrines: Plato's blueprint for the best state, Plato's “Theory of Forms,” Plato's view that philosophy is the knowledge of those Forms that fits the knower for the highest government stations, and Plato's arguments for the immortality of the soul.

To explain Socrates' two different manners this book offers instead an interlocutor-centered hypothesis that the character Socrates, who is permanently convinced that he knows nothing great, has reason to conduct different kinds of examination with different interlocutors. With some, he is the avowedly ignorant questioner. With others, he has reason to appear to be a confident lecturer: the reaction of interlocutors to an apparently confident lecture reveals them. Revealing them is the first step of an examination of them. Throughout Plato's dialogues Socrates' philosophizing centrally involves examining.

COMPARISON OF SOME ACCOUNTS OF PHILOSOPHY

The dialogues that chapters 2–6 considered present several different conceptions of philosophy. At Apology 29d–e Socrates says that his philosophizing involves challenging, examining, and reproaching. The Apology also shows awareness, however, that some audience members conceive of philosophizing differently from Socrates. Their different conception counts considering what is in the heavens and under the earth as philosophizing (Apology 23d). Socrates denies conversing on those topics.

The Theaetetus' Socrates gives Thales as example of a philosophizer (174a–b). Thales' doing astronomy would put him into the group that the Socrates of the Apology says he is not part of. The Theaetetus digression describes a philosopher with interests very different from the philosophizing Socrates claims in the Apology.

In the Republic Socrates says philosophers focus on forms and on being itself. Socrates has to explain for his interlocutors what he means. Adeimantus' preconception that philosophers give inescapable argument to unwelcome conclusions interferes with Adeimantus' keeping Socrates' new explanation in mind.

In the Phaedo Socrates describes philosophers who practice dying.

Various details of Theaetetus, Republic, and Phaedo block any immediate inference that Socrates as depicted includes his own practice under the conceptions of philosophy that he articulates in those dialogues. The Theaetetus' description of philosophy was best understood to be part of a revealing extraction-by-declaration from the unexaminable Theodorus. Socrates offers the Republic and Phaedo descriptions as part of a task of persuading his interlocutors of a conclusion they assign to him.

WHEN CAN WE SAY THAT SOCRATES DOES NOT BELIEVE PROPOSALS HE MAKES IN BOOKS 2–10?

I have argued that the brothers' assent to Socrates' proposals in the Republic commits them to those proposals. Socrates, as persuasive speech-maker, so far commits himself to nothing that he says in his speech. His not committing himself, however, does not imply that he rejects any of the novel proposals to which he gets the brothers' assent. Only his explicit examination and his discovery of absurdity would imply that Socrates as depicted rejects what led to absurdity. And in Republic 2–10 he does not examine.

In the absence of Socrates' examination we readers may of course ourselves examine Socrates' proposals. We may after reflection reach the strong judgment that the lives of most of the people in the city constructed in imagination are not worth living: the philosophical ruling class is required to spend much of its life on military planning for this state that maintains its ill-gotten territory to meet excess desires of the manufacturing class that the military class fights for; all three classes have their lives largely organized around the maintenance of the shallow goal of the militarily efficient city that Glaucon set when he restricted discussion to the luxurious city; the arts are censored severely; the reproductive and childrearing arrangements seem inhuman; many of the citizens are, like slaves, unable to choose their ways of life (590).

In short, upon examination we may find Prettycity in many ways quite unacceptable.

LOOKING FOR THE SOCRATES OF THE APOLOGY

Plato's Apology depicts Socrates' defense speech when he is on trial for his life. Its Socrates recounts the life that led to the charge against him. So the Apology is a natural starting point for formulating my hypothesis that the Socrates of Plato's dialogues that depict other times in Socrates' life is the same.

I do not first take my hypothesis as a datum and then try to understand the other dialogues to fit with it. My study of the Apology will sharpen my hypothesis by giving me a Socrates to look for in the other dialogues. I do not assume that I will find him. If my hypothesis is correct, my study of some other dialogues in which Socrates appears should confirm the hypothesis.

I do not take up the interesting question whether Plato intended the speech he wrote to correspond closely to what the historical Socrates said at his actual trial. Of course no one expects the depicted speech to be word-for-word the same as the actual speech. Even a team of note-takers, for which we have no evidence, would not have ensured total accuracy. At best, we'd expect only the outline and main content in Plato's Apology to be the same as the actual speech.

I mention, however, as relevant to that question a possibly revealing pun. Socrates says early on:

THE FAMOUS PROPOSALS OF THE SOCRATES OF THE PHAEDO

The Socrates of the Phaedo apparently differs from the Socrates of the Apology in two conspicuous ways. He offers arguments for the immortality of the soul. He famously enunciates that philosophy is the practice of dying and of being dead (64a). In contrast, the Socrates of the Apology did not know what happens after death (29a; 42a); and the philosophizing he claimed to do consisted of challenging, elenchizing, and reproaching his fellows (29d–e, discussed in detail in chapter 2).

I'll argue that for two reasons the apparent differences are merely apparent. First, the Phaedo gives us no reason to think its Socrates is not the same agnostic about death as the character Socrates of the Apology. Second, the Phaedo gives us strong reason to think that Socrates as depicted in the Phaedo does not endorse the conception of philosophy that he articulates there.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

Phaedo narrates the Phaedo, an account of Socrates' conversation that Phaedo witnessed in prison on the day of Socrates' execution. Phaedo's narration occurs at Phlius, a locus of Pythagoreanism. Phaedo's audience is Echecrates, a member of the Pythagorean community at Phlius. The main interlocutors of the conversation that Phaedo narrates are Simmias and Cebes. We learn at 61d that they have been studying with Philolaus, the renowned Pythagorean.

WHICH OF PLATO'S DIALOGUES CALL SOCRATES A PHILOSOPHER?

Socrates, defending himself when on trial for his life, imagines his accusers saying:

Socrates rejects the imagined offer:

Using the word “philosophizing” for the activity in which he spent his life, he says that his philosophizing was urging his fellows to care for how they might best live.

To further understand that passage, I'll look at other passages in which Plato uses “philosophy” words. I seek evidence that Plato is, or is not, depicting Socrates as a philosopher.

In the section of the dialogue which we are going to explore in this chapter, Socrates finally engages in a complex and powerful criticism of the very core of naturalism. The section can be divided into two parts. In the first part (433b–435d), to be dealt with in §8.1, Socrates, after rehearsing some previous conclusions, criticizes the naturalist view that names are naturally correct and that their natural correctness consists in their being similar to their referents. In the second part (435d–439b), to be dealt with in §8.2, Socrates turns to the related view that knowledge of names yields knowledge of their referents.

RESEMBLANCE AND CONVENTION IN NAMES (433B–435D)

Preliminaries (433b–434b)

Cratylus' answer at 433b6–7 seemed to show that he was meekly yielding to the arguments of Socrates. This latter then hammers his point home:

CONVENTION AND INDIVIDUAL DECISION (384C–385B)

First statement (384ce)

Hermogenes begins to state his own views politely contradicting Cratylus:

The core of Hermogenes' self-presentation can be divided into three sentences:

1. (H1) ‘I cannot … agreement’ (c11–d2),

2. (H2) ‘It seems to me … our slaves’ (d2–5),

3. (H3) ‘No name … call things’ (d5–7).

Let us examine each sentence more closely.

(H1) asserts that the correctness of the name consists in convention (συνθήκη) and agreement (ὁμολογία).

It should be clear that in order for the hylomorphic interpretation of Aristotle's temporal theory to be viable, it is imperative that Aristotle have the theoretical resources to account for the perception of kinetic cuts. For without such, he will not be able to maintain (as he explicitly does in Physicsiv.11) that we actually do perceive the now as before and after in motion.

To address this challenge, we must venture beyond the pages of the Physics. The text bearing most directly on this issue is chapter 7 of the De Sensu, in which Aristotle declares with confidence: “[N]or can there be any imperceptible time, none that escapes our notice; rather, it is possible to perceive each [pantos]” (448a25–7). The antecedent of “each” is a matter of some controversy. The most proximate candidate referent in the passage is “time” (chronos), but several translations read “instant” (nun) into the text. Neither can be ruled out on grammatical grounds. If we accept the former reading and bear in mind Aristotle's stated position in Physicsiv.11 that “the now is no part of time” (220a18–19), then the remark seems in no way to commit Aristotle to the perceptibility of instants.

Given the naturalness of specifying “time” as the antecedent of “each,” why do many translators prefer “instant”? One possible reason might be the desire to find somewhere in the text an independent argument for the perceptibility of instants, for that kind of argument would further fortify the theory of time developed in the Physics.

SUBJECT AND STRUCTURE OF THE DIALOGUE

The correctness of names

Plato's Cratylus, the subtitle present in the MSS informs us, is ‘about the correctness of names’ (περὶ ὀνομάτων ὀρθότητος). More precisely, it is about the question whether the correctness of names is a natural or a conventional matter. But what do the terms ‘name’ and ‘correctness’ mean here? This is never spelt out explicitly in the dialogue; the characters just take it for granted from the outset.

As for ‘names’, the characters take a generous view: they count as ὀνόματα proper and common nouns, adjectives and verbs in infinitive (414ab, 426c) or participle (421c) mood. They do not explicitly include verbs in finite moods, but they seem to be including them implicitly when they say that the ὄνομα is the ‘smallest’ part of a sentence (385c, see §2.2.2). So it is standard, and doubtless right, to take it that in our dialogue (and elsewhere as well) the term ὄνομα generically applies to any word whose function is not primarily syntactic (hence not to conjunctions and prepositions). Indeed, the term ὄνομα is obviously connected with the verb ὀνομάζειν, ‘to name’; and so an ὄνομα is essentially a word that names or refers to something.

As for the ‘correctness’ of such names, on the face of it this is a vague label.