Listening to Reason in Plato and Aristotle

At the beginning of Plato’s Republic (327c), Socrates and Glaucon are waylaid on their way home by Polemarchus and friends. “Do you see how many we are?” says Polemarchus. “Of course, I do” responds Socrates. “Well then, you must either be stronger than we are, or you must stay here,” says Polemarchus. “Is there not an alternative, namely that we may persuade you to let us go?” says Socrates. “Could you persuade men who do not listen?” asks Polemarchus. “No way” says Glaucon.Dominic Scott’s book Listening to Reason in Plato and Aristotle asks the question who will listen to the arguments of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. One might treat this as a historical question, discussing the possible role of each of these works in the curricula of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum, respectively, and the reception of these works among later philosophers, philosophy students, and the general public. Scott takes a more specific tack. He does not address Polemarchus’s question directly, but rather asks who will be convinced by Plato and Aristotle that moral virtue is to be valued for itself (2). (In ancient Greek thought, something can be valued both for itself and for something else.) The book is a sequel to the much-discussed Levels of Argument: A Comparative Study of Plato’s “Republic” and Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” (Scott 2015), and Scott brings the conclusions of that book to bear on the question at hand. As in the previous book, he argues that there are important parallels between Plato’s and Aristotle’s works. He concludes with a discussion of passages from Aristotle’s Politics and Plato’s Laws, as well.Part 1 of the book, on Plato’s Republic, starts out with a recapitulation of three routes. In the shorter route, books 2–4, Plato compares the soul to a city and finds the cardinal virtues including justice in both soul and city. The longer route is what the guardians of the ideal city will have to pursue, a rigorous education from age twenty onward that leads to an understanding of the forms and finally the form of the good. Scott also hypothesizes a middle route, where people start out with the shorter route, achieve some grasp of the forms, from books 5–7, but not enough to give definitions starting from the form of the good. An example of the middle route is the discussion of which pleasures are more real, or “truer,” in book 9, a discussion that presupposes the forms, but does not proceed from an unhypothetical first principle. Book 10 is the culmination of the shorter route.Scott goes on to discuss each route in reverse order. First, the longer route. Since Socrates, as presented in the dialogue, is skeptical about the ability of most people to grasp the forms, one might think that this route is not open to all. Scott argues that this inability is not innate but caused by interference from the spirited (thumetic) and appetitive parts of the soul, so most people would first need a radical change of character to be able to gain knowledge of the forms. According to Socrates, they have yet to learn mathematics, which again puts the forms beyond their ken. Nevertheless, is it still possible for anyone to become a Platonic philosopher, given the right education? No, says Scott. Even in ideal circumstances, according to Socrates, only a few will have the rare qualities required to become philosophers.Next the middle route. Here Scott discusses the controversial arguments distinguishing the lovers of sights and sounds from the philosophers. Part of the argument would seem to be directed to the lovers of sights and sounds, persuading them that they lack the knowledge that they think they have. Scott argues that this argument does not depend on introducing the lovers of sights and sounds to the forms, and he also suggests that the arguments about philosophers being rulers could be defended without an explicit commitment to the forms. Who would be able to follow the middle route? Scott suggests that these are people in between the many and the few, who cannot advance to full-scale understanding, but who might be more prevalent in the ideal state. But, Scott adds, while these people would be able to follow the political middle route, they may not be able to follow the ethical one because, being incapable of contemplation, they would not be able to transform their desires in the right way.Finally, the shorter route. Although Socrates’s encounter with Thrasymachus does not seem to be part of the shorter route, Scott takes pains to argue that Plato casts the discussion with Thrasymachus as a failure. Thrasymachus thinks that justice is a mug’s game and we are better off being as unjust as possible, and Socrates does not convince him otherwise. Scott then argues that according to the following books of the Republic, the nonrational parts of the soul may interfere with one’s rationality. May not the education in music and poetry be necessary for taking the shorter route? Perhaps we can persuade some people via the shorter route, as in book 9.Chapter 4 discusses the role of Platonic education, including mimetic poetry and music. Chapters 5–6 examine the degenerate states and people discussed in Republic 8–9, raising the question which if any of those people would be susceptible to moral argument.Scott concludes that Plato is cautiously optimistic about introducing philosophy to the masses, although he would expect all members of the ideal city to make an effort to philosophize.Part 2 of Scott’s book focuses on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. According to Scott, Aristotle’s target audience is one composed of potential legislators and political leaders, or, more precisely, “philosophers qua potential advisors of political leaders and legislators.” According to Scott, upbringing has two steps, first habituation and only then intellectual training (an interpretation at odds with those interpreters who think that ethical virtue and thoughtfulness [phronēsis] must develop hand in hand). The young and immature, who live only by their feelings, are unsuitable students. (Might there not be mature young people who would benefit? Consider if Aristotle had met Greta Thunberg instead of Alexander!) According to Scott’s interpretation of the famous stadium analogy, we start with habituation and end there, seeing what laws will be suitable for habituating the citizens. Chapter 7 discusses the functions of the Nicomachean Ethics. According to Scott, Aristotle cannot be addressing the moral skeptic, but he is interested in morally reinforcing and clarifying the views of an audience who already value virtue. Scott gives two examples, the discussion of pleasure in Nicomachean Ethics 10, which is intended to help the hearer hit the mean, and Aristotle’s discussion of self-love in Nicomachean Ethics 9.4, showing what internal conflict the good person avoids by being good. (Surely, the more troubling conclusion is that one can’t have a good friendship if one is that conflicted oneself.) Scott goes on to compare the function arguments of Republic 1 and Nicomachean Ethics 1, arguing that Aristotle’s function argument is inconclusive but is completed by his account of the doctrine of the mean in Nicomachean Ethics 2.6. This addresses Thrasymachus’s view that pleonexia, getting more than one’s fair share at the expense of others, is where it’s at, but Scott draws the more modest conclusion that Aristotle is only reinforcing the views of those who already agree that virtue is valuable. In the final chapters Scott expands his account of the young, argues that Aristotle is not committed to excluding women from some kinds of philosophical thinking, and raises some issues concerning Aristotle’s difficult discussion of incontinence (akrasia). Passages on music, habituation, and to kalon, and from Plato’s Laws, round out the discussion.In the following, I shall focus on the discussion of Thrasymachus. It certainly seems as though Thrasymachus is just humoring Socrates at the end of Republic 1, and no longer properly engaging in discussion. However, fast forward to the beginning of Republic 5 (part of the middle route?) and Thrasymachus makes a cameo appearance, joining in with Glaucon and Adeimantus to make sure that Socrates pursues the discussion about women and children. Thrasymachus even comes up with an aphorism related to the discussion in book 1, “Do you think these men have come here to smelt ore for gold and not to hear a discussion?” (Republic 450B)—that is, do you think we’ve come here for some idle hope of immediate gain, instead of carrying out a serious task? If one has been following the discussion of the soul in the previous books, one might reasonably think that Thrasymachus’s thumetic character has been tamed so as to support reason. Perhaps, according to Plato, Thrasymachus has been brought to listen to and to promote reason after all. This is important, because Scott claims that Plato’s concern is that the nonrational parts of the soul interfere with the rational part, preventing a proper hearing of reason. But the thumetic part of the soul is also important in supporting reason, just as the auxiliaries support the rulers in Plato’s ideal city.If Plato thinks that his most formidable opponent, Thrasymachus, can be tamed, perhaps he is even more sanguine about the power of philosophy than Scott suggests. As for Aristotle, according to Scott, Aristotle ignores Thrasymachus. Perhaps Aristotle could use a similar strategy to the one he employs for those who purport to reject the Principle of Noncontradiction, that x cannot be both F and not F at the same time in the same respect. If he can persuade his opponent to say something meaningful or to act, then he can show that the opponent does accept the principle despite himself. If the opponent refuses to do either, all Aristotle can do is to show a rational third party the results of such a refusal. A similar strategy may apply to Thrasymachus. If Thrasymachus refuses to engage, the best Aristotle can do is to show to others what is vicious about the Thrasymachean way of life, which he does. The more difficult question is how to engage and convince those who will not listen, as in the opening quotation of this review.At the very beginning of his book Scott says that his discussion raises “a fundamental question about the role of philosophy in public life: can philosophers ever hope to persuade so wide an audience of the kind of message that Socrates was intent on promulgating?” (1). The conclusions of his book are only cautiously optimistic. However, as coauthor of the Humanities World Report (2015), he shows the kind of role a philosopher may have in contributing to public debate

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