The really great book under review is David Sansone’s “Green and Yellow” commentary on the first book of Plato’s Republic—a volume that includes the Greek text (27 Stephanus-pages long, differing from Slings’ edition in seven places) with spare apparatus and a 35-page introduction. It is the ninth Plato text in this series.[1]
Sansone’s brilliant commentary has all the virtues of the genre: philology, text-editorial decisions, argument summary and critique, historical context, reflection on changes across Plato’s writerly career, and many novel or refreshed assertions about the Republic that reward close reflection.[2] It brings out Plato’s stunning variety of ideas, moves, provocations, and dubious spans of argumentation. It draws from an attractively eclectic variety of literature, much of it from the past three decades though with choice older works. (Embarrassingly, my first conference presentation, printed in an SAGP newsletter, gets its first citation here.) Any philosopher or classicist should consult it continuously when studying, writing about, or teaching the dialogue. You’ll learn tons; I did, across all the classical sub-disciplines.
The volume of course also faces the major challenge of the genre: where to put what interpretations. Many of the best ideas are scattered, unmarked, through the commentary. The modest Introduction, while tickling at fundamental topics—the relative independence of Book 1, the specialness of justice as subject of investigation, the date and scene, the speaking characters, the textual transmission—must altogether forgo the discussion of some large-scale issues and give only suggestive reasoning for those that it does take up. And in avoiding simple duplication, the Introduction sometimes risks inadequacies of synchronization with the commentary itself.
I wish to give one example that I think illuminates the commentary’s extraordinary insights as well as the information-management limitations to which it is liable. Why has Plato “chosen to set his most ambitious work in the Piraeus at the time of a newly established festival in honor of a non-Greek divinity” (13)? That’s a great question. In the Introduction, Sansone makes two observations in his own voice and relates a third. First, Book I is bookended by references to the festival (327a and 354a), which sets it off as a “proem,” evidently suggesting the Book’s special interpretative status vis-à-vis what follows. Second, the unusual dramatic location is “Plato’s way of announcing that we are entering novel territory for both Plato and Socrates”—in particular that, in having Socrates now expound the nature of the soul, justice, and human society, and even “give a lecture … explaining the very nature and object of knowledge,” the Republic “represents a departure from Plato’s previous compositional habits” (14). (Sansone does not mention unifying interpretations, such as Sandra Peterson’s in Socrates and Philosophy in the Dialogues of Plato, Cambridge, 2012, that read the constructively-questioning Socrates of Books II–X as concerned principally with adducing the commitments of his interlocutors, an effort consistent with, if preliminary to, examinative questioning.) Third, according to Burnyeat and Vegetti there is a meaningful parallel between descending to the port city and the Book VII philosopher-kings’ re-descent into the cave. Here Sansone does not scrutinize what seems to me to be an inconsonant parallel (aren’t we to imagine Socrates’ activity “above” and “below” to be the same?—and Socrates repeatedly disclaims having the knowledge that the Book VII philosopher-kings are supposed to have), though he later seems to accept something like that parallel (74).
More considerations about the festival context arise in the commentary itself. Ad 327a2: sending Socrates to the religious festival has an apologetic purpose, reinforcing the appearance of his piety. Ad 327a3: this festival was probably first held in 429, giving one (inconsistent) temporal anchor. Ad 327b1: Socrates’ verb θεωρήσαντες opens up to the Platonic “metaphor for contemplation of the Forms.” Ad 328a1: the festival distinguishes the characters of Plato’s two brothers, with Adeimantus “enthusiastic about taking part in the further festivities” but Glaucon being quite unaware of its even happening. Ad 328a1: the festival features a relay race, unusual in being a team event; Plato specifies this “in anticipation of S.’s argument beginning at 351a,” which is that the success of “collective entities in competition with each other” depends on “their individual members refrain[ing] from treating each other unfairly.” Ad 354a10: “Only now can we appreciate why P. has chosen to set Republic at the feast for Bendis”: one representation of Bendis in the recently discovered (1985) Thracian “Rogozen treasure” is “mounted on a lion” and another, as Sansone sees it (by contrast to earlier scholars), is “holding two wolves by the forepaws”. Thrasymachus was compared to these animals and Socrates subdued him; and in Charmides, dated 429 as well, Socrates says he learned some Thracian medical techniques, which in fact pertain to virtue-amplification.
This gives us much to work with. I happen to find the “novelty in ritual practice: novelty in Platonic literary approach” analogy a bit facile, but I do not have any better suggestion than that Plato saw how pregnant the historical event was as scene-setting.
But what about identifying Book I as a “proem”? Sansone rejects the view that Book I “was originally intended as a stand-alone work”—a conjectural Thrasymachus—on the grounds that the stylistic distinctions found between it and II–X are not probative (3–7). Those who date Book I early tend also to date the section that overlaps with Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen, namely from Books IV–V, to before 391. But these books, reworkings of a postulated Ur-Republic, do not differ stylistically from the surrounding books: therefore, we do not have reason to think that a Thrasymachus from the same early period would also differ stylistically from the surrounding books. Second, what stylistic differences do exist between Book I and II–X could come from the prominent role of the three non-Athenian interlocutors in Book I. Finally, there are “a number of points at which Plato seems to be anticipating … what is to come in later books,” which suggests an organic mode of composition.
This all sounds entirely reasonable. But for me there is a bigger question: Why does Book I take the shape it does? I find quite striking the structural similarities in the unfolding of conversations in Plato’s dialogues. In Charmides and Laches, for instance, Socrates deals quickly with the two candidate-definitions of his first interlocutor, then gives much more attention and epistemological flavor to the third candidate-definition floated by a second interlocutor. (A related single-interlocutor structure is found in Hippias Major, Lysis, Protagoras, Meno, and Theaetetus). In Gorgias, Socrates disputes with three interlocutors in sequence. In most of these dialogues, the conversation ends with Socrates’ claim to uncertainty about the definition of the pursued evaluative term and the importance of continuing the conversation soon.
Sansone does not dwell on the significance of the structural similarity between these other dialogues and the Book I proem, which has three interlocutors and three definitions, the first of which (honesty and repaying your debts) is readily rejected, the second (giving each his due, or benefiting friends and harming enemies) takes more time, and the third (the advantage of the stronger) gets much more attention and has an epistemological flavor. Those parallels, I am sure, give the best grounds for surmising a once-independent or at least independently conceived dialogue (so I am surprised Sansone does not address them head on). But why keep the Cephalus-Polemarchus-Thrasymachus discussions, or why write them, as the beginning of an otherwise non-elenctic and extremely long dialogue? Plenty of readers, I surmise, take Book I as the expression of a (paradoxical) anti-Socratism: Plato shows that Socrates’ usual approach leads to unsatisfying aporia and Plato is now ready to make bold assertions on topics that Socrates elsewhere disclaims knowledge of. To my eyes this is a paradoxical position because Plato has Socrates continue on, with no reasons given to justify abandoning his earlier epistemic skepticism, even that he had just been kidding. (Was Socrates mistaken or ironic about his avowals of ignorance? Was he ignorant of transcendent universals, accessible grounds of knowledge that Plato has total-confidence-buoying access to?) Be that as it may, such aporia-shaming is a (strange) possibility. What other options are there? It could be that Plato believed that his tried-and-true triple-elenchus was the best way to captivate his readers. (But Plato had other approaches, as found in Phaedrus, Symposium, and so forth.) It could be that Glaucon and Adeimantus should have been satisfied with the aporetic outcome and so scheduled future conversations—as other interlocutors do—but their desire to be “truly persuaded” (357b1), rather than inquirers on their own behalf, shows something about their character, as do the questions to which they give affirmative answers in what follows.
What Sansone does draw out, quite provocatively if also with much compression, is a disanalogy between Republic I and some of these other dialogues that Sansone treats as relevant here. In other dialogues, he says, the goodness of the virtue or capacity under discussion goes without question. Here, however, Thrasymachus denies the value of justice (8, cf. 29–30). So, Socrates will need to find not just a definition but also “what justice is good for and how it benefits its possessor” (8). (In Gorgias, I note, Callicles doubts the value of sôphrosunê.) Further, unlike wisdom, courage, and sôphrosunê, “which can be exercised in private, justice and piety are manifested only in one’s interactions with others”; so, while the former “can be investigated in isolation from society at large,” the latter “requires an investigation of social practice as well, [and b]y the end of Book One, that investigation is only in its preliminary stages” (11). This would be good to hear more about.
Another thing it would be good to hear more about: why for this huge dialogue are Plato’s elder brothers the primary interlocutors? Sansone says that they “are ideal participants… since they lack Thrasymachus’ antagonistic spirit … [but] are not so compliant as Polemarchus” (32). But ideal for what? The vast majority of the premises they accept they do so without the kind of rigorous testing instanced by Socrates or his cleverer interlocutors—Protagoras, Callicles, Critias—in other dialogues. So are they ideal at getting themselves persuaded by Socrates? Thrasymachus is less good at that, as Sansone frequently observes (with especially interesting remarks ad 349b1–350e10), though even he eventually capitulates (albeit Sansone believes he is not actually convinced, ad 353e12). Here we come to deep and controversial questions about Plato’s purposes, ones not readily answered by the language of any particular sentence; but since Sansone does make programmatic statements throughout (as is fitting), we might have more here.
Two final items. What about sustained reflection on debates about justice with which Republic I might be in dialectical or contextual relation, for instance in tragedy and historiography, not to mention Antiphon B44? (A discussion of Pindar ad 331a2 is pretty brief.) And what about reflection on the meaning of “harm” (βλάπτειν), the analysis of which seems essential to the rejection of the dominant definition of justice, “benefiting friends and harming enemies”? (The summary and initial comments ad 335b2–336a9 and 335b2 are again awfully brief, especially in light of A. Jeffrey, “Polemarchus and Socrates on Justice and Harm,” Phronesis 24, 1979.)
I realize that my desire for Sansone to have addressed everything verges on the pleonectic. The reader should be assured this is only a testament to my trust in Sansone’s well-earned insight and guidance. Highlights of this analytic competence and creativity are found especially in the summary argument-analyses and critiques (e.g., ad 333e1–334b8, 334a4, 334e3, 335b2, 341c9–10, 341d4); we see where Socrates’ reasoning goes funny, and have the occasion to wonder why his interlocutors accept it nevertheless. The textual parallels are apt, and translation of Greek idiom into English idiom highly welcome. I will turn to this commentary often in the future; I have hardly yet digested all its lessons.
Notes
[1] The others are on Alcibiades (ed. Denyer, 2001), Apology (ed. Denyer, 2019), Menexenus (ed. Sansone, 2020), Phaedo (ed. Rowe, 1993), Phaedrus (ed. Yunis, 2011), Protagoras (ed. Denyer, 2008), Symposium (ed. Dover, 1980), and “Poetry” (Republic 3.376–398b + 10.595a–608b with Ion, ed. Murray, 1995).
[2] The commentaries of Chris Emlyn-Jones, in his Plato: Republic 1–2.368c4 (Aris & Phillips, 2007), pp. 134–70, and Gilbert P. Rose, in his Plato’s Republic Book 1 (Bryn Mawr Greek Commentaries, 1983), 1–40, are so much shorter as not to be in the same class. Some valuable textual remarks are found at Kenneth Quandt’s website, http://www.onplatosrepublic.com/. Julia Annas’ An Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford, 1981), pp. 1–58, gives close attention to many of the issues raised by this commentary.