Table Of ContentPLATO’S FABLE
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PLATO’S FABLE
ON THE MORTAL CONDITION
IN SHADOWY TIMES
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Joshua Mitchell
princeton university press
princeton and oxford
Copyright © 2006 by Princeton University Press
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Mitchell, Joshua.
Plato's fable : on the mortal condition in shadowy times / Joshua Mitchell.
p. cm. — (New forum books)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12438-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Plato. Republic. 2. Political anthropology—Greece—History. 3. Philosophical
anthropology—Greece—History. 4. Classical literature—History and criticism.
I. Title. II. Series.
JC71.P6M56 2006
321'.07—dc22 2005016653
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12438-4
ISBN-10: 0-691-12438-8
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If man were wholly ignorant of himself he would have no poetry in
him, for one cannot describe what one does not conceive. If he saw
himself clearly, his imagination would remain idle and would add
nothing to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed
for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave
much in impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes,
forever in vain, trying to understand himself.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
The wisdom of Plato is not a philosophy, a search for God by means
ofhuman reason. Such a research was made as well as it can be by
Aristotle. Plato’s wisdom is nothing but an orientation of the soul
toward grace.
—Simone Weil, Intimations of Christianity
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CONTENTS
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Preface ix
A Note on the Translation xv
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION 1
Imitation in Mortal Life 1
The Disappointments of Reason 3
Hegel and the Origins of “Identity Politics” 5
Rousseau’s Gentler Form of Imitation 7
Beyond the Reformation Categories of
“Identity Politics” and Socialization 11
Reason Revisited: Plato’s Critique of “Rationality” 12
Honor’s Place 14
(Divine) Reason 16
The Mortal Condition in Shadowy Times 18
Chapter 2
PLATO’S FABLE 21
Rendering Each Its Due 22
The Origin of the City 27
Fables, Lies, and Medicine 34
Fool’s Gold 47
Noble Education—and Beyond 51
From the City to the Soul 56
The Philosopher 59
The Hunt for the Good 68
The Decline toward Tyranny 75
Timocracy 79
Oligarchy 82
Democracy 89
Tyranny 99
The Prisoner’s Dilemma 111
Envy 113
Sadomasochism 114
viii CONTENTS
Rights and the Relativity of All Things 115
Averting Ruptures 119
The Pathos of Measurement, and Power 122
Trivia 126
Medical Crises, Legal Gridlock 133
Ethics as First Science 137
Beyond Debt 139
The Misplaced Search for Origins 146
The Opinings of the Divided Soul 152
The Inaction of the Divided Soul 156
Chapter 3
CONCLUSION 167
The Fable of Liberalism 167
The Tocquevillean Wager: Mimesis and the
Mediational Site of Renewal 175
The Socratic Wager: Mimesis and the
Philosophical Practice of Death 189
Bibliography 195
Index 203
PREFACE
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A
N APOLOGY, of sorts, would be in order if I were here offering
yet another “interpretation of Plato.” Perhaps in an earlier age—
say, in the aristocratic age—further justification for what I have
done would not be required, since this offering, small though it may be,
would be received under the category of “commentary” rather than “in-
terpretation.” And while that would not hallow what I have provided
here, it would certainly authorize it.
We do not live in such an age, however; and so a warrant of a dif-
ferent sort is required, one that vindicates a project such as this one on
more imaginable grounds. “Commentaries,” which presume a durable
tradition, within which the conventions of scholastic conduct remain
tacit, hold little sway in an age that has no enduring interest in tradition.
And “interpretations,” at their worst, fall into the category of mere per-
sonal opinion, for which no one concerned with science in its fullest
sense should have patience. Knowledge is not soliloquy.
At their best, of course, “interpretations” are far more than mere per-
sonal opinion, as a perusal of the secondary literature on the history of
political thought demonstrates. At their best, such works warrant our at-
tention less because they are perspicuous articulations of the original au-
thor’s intention than because they provide a resumeof a coherent, even if
deeply troubled, moment of history, when for a time thinkers labored
under a set of prejudices that set the boundaries of their generation. In
their more distinguished expressions, the fecundity of a original text,
and the light cast on it by its interpreters, unwittingly cooperate to di-
vulge the contours of a historical moment that is fleeting—as all are.
Here, contingent interpretation is correlative to canonical authority. To-
gether they issue that third thing: an authoritative self-understanding
that holds sway for this or that community, here and now. Somewhere
between the accidents of personal opinion and the Timeless lies “inter-
pretation.”
While “interpretation” of this sort is certainly more than mere per-
sonal opinion, its compass remains more restricted than our aspiration,
hushed though that might be. In the terms of Plato’s fable, such “inter-
pretation” corresponds to the passing shadows in the Cave that are first
identified by the cleverest of the prisoners below. For a time, a coherent
world is brought into focus by their efforts, and then shifting light and
the transience of all things conspire to wreak havoc with their labors.
