Plato's Apology

Philosophy is not about persuasion

I have recently finished a thorough reading of Plato’s Apology. Due to an upcoming project that I will reveal in 2025,in the past six months, I have completed detailed readings on what I believe are Plato’s most pedagogical texts. These include Lysis and Alcibiades, to name just two.

Lysis, more commonly known as the dialogue that inquires into the nature of friendship is an example of the shorter Platonic texts that engage more specifically and particularly with the conduct between teacher and student. They also contain subtle critiques of generational politics, the passing of virtue from one generation to another and so on.

These shorter texts (Laches, lysis, Alcibiades ect.) don’t attempt to deal more systematically with the whole social and political structure, such as the Republic, or perhaps also Laws or Statesmen. Rather, they focus in on particular members of the younger generation of Athenians—often positing the older generations of teachers and instructors in a somewhat critical light. They tend to focus in on the teaching of a particular virtue such as friendship, courage or temperance. But they also attempt to critically analyse a certain inadequate conduct between the generations of Athenian society.

Lysis and Alcibiades are both expressions of young men fed up with being related to through either a neglectful or flattering conduct by those around them. Whether those be the most powerful members of Athenian society, too busy managing wealth, writing new laws, or vying over political or military leadership, we see elders and authorities too preoccupied to take a concerted interest in the education of the youth. We also see the opposite. The sophistic tendency to attempt to improve the youth (this means, for all intensive purposes, adapt to pre-existing characteristics of status). Yet these sophists have not yet inquired into the nature of the virtues they teach, nor the ends of human development and education. They have not inquired enough to confidently know they are, in fact, doing these young men any benefit. Lastly, we also see the problem of the simple flattery of these young men by their elders, in order to simply gain their favour. (especially if these young men are from powerful families)

We see a similar pattern in both Alcibiades and Lysis. In Lysis, Socrates will claim that the soul is caught between good and evil, just as the body is caught between health and sickness. When a disease is too far in its corrosion of the body, a treatment could be too late to properly beat back the disease. In some sense the soul is structured on similar temporal urgencies. When evil has too radically taken control, the good will have a weaker influence over it, perhaps eventually passing the threshold whereby it cannot defeat the evil that has corroded it.

Of course to some extent, this means that a person too caught into ignorance will not be reasoned with. Evil, we are told, is simply a radicalised and untreatable ignorance. Modern secular academics like to insist that Socrates, like a good little scholar, believed ignorance is so bad, it could—in his backward, premodern, religious zealotry—be labelled as evil. In other words, modern academics would love to downplay the strong metaphysical and absolutist wording that good vs evil invokes. Yet, Socrates here does imply that there exists those that are in some sense too sick to be treated. There are those, consequently, who are simply too ignorant to be reasoned with.

This more totalitarian character also comes alongside the more liberal and open character typically associated with philosophy and the agora. The Republic suggests in two parts, corresponding scepticisms about the power of medicine and reasoning. In the section on medicine, Socrates will claim that medicine is only for that which is evidently treatable. (such as a broken leg). That which is chronic, peculiar and untreatable should simply be ignored or endured by the sufferer. In a similar tone—one which today we might call a doomerist tone—the limits of treatment analogy tells us that when the first philosopher frees himself from the chains that hold him in his illusory imprisonment, citing Plato’s cave analogy, on his return to free his fellow prisoners, they refute his words, and attempt to kill the man who brings them the truth of their imprisonment. Again this depicts a threshold moment whereby persuasion is fails.

In Alcibiades, we see Socrates warning the young ambitious Athenian against those who love him for what he has, and not what he is. His wealth, status, and influence over Athenian society leads many flatterers towards Alcibiades, in an attempt to sway him and perhaps profit from his influence. On the other hand, Socrates promises a commitment to his student’s soul—promising to never leave him; which for all intensive purposes means to commit himself to Alcibiades’ soul instead of his wealth and power.

We might be tempted here to see Socrates as force that opposes himself to power. We could be misled, however, into believing that Socrates wishes to draw Alcibiades away from power politics—and instead motivate him to become a peculiar loser on the fringes of society, engaging in wild speculations on nature of things. While Socrates is in some sense framed this way by both his modern academic supporters — and the enemies he endured in his own time in his own society — this is also perhaps a false caricature.

While Socrates certainly does criticise power-for-the-sake-of-power, or money-for-the-sake-of-money, he by no means wishes to draw the young ambitious men of Athenian society into a position of desirable irrelevance. Quite the contrary.

Although likely stated with some playful teasing, when Socrates prophecies the future of Alcibiades, he describes a state of heightened ambition; he describes a sort of civilisational, imperial quest that lay ahead in what would be in the future of Athens most charismatic general.

‘And I will tell you the hope that you are at present are living: Before many days, you think that you will come before the Athenian assembly and will prove to them that you are more worthy of honours than Pericles, or any other man that has ever lived , and having lived, and having proved this, you will have the greatest power in the state. When you have gained the greatest power among us, you will go on to other Hellenic states, and not only to Hellenes, but to all the barbarians who inhabit the same continent as us. And if god were then to say to you again: and here in Europe is to be your seat of Empire, and you must not cross over into Asia or meddle in Asiatic affairs, I do not believe that you would live on these terms; but the world, as I may say, must be filled with your power and name - no man less than Xerxes and Cyrus is of any account with you. Such I know to be your hopes - I am not guessing only - and very likely you, who know that I am speaking the truth, will reply, Well, Socrates, but what do my hopes have to do with the explanation which you have promised of your unwillingness to leave me?…The explanation is, that all of these designs of yours cannot be accomplished without my help; so great is the power I have over you and your concerns..’

Alcibiades’ ambitions are not undermined or humbled by Socrates. Rather, it seems that the only route by which these aspirations could be fulfilled are through the relation to Socrates; to a honest confrontation with one’s own soul—and through philosophy.

Moreover, when Socrates addresses his accusers in the Apology, we do not end the philosophical life with the successful persuasion of others through rational dialogue. Quite the contrary. We see a split. We realise that there are those in Athenian society who will spontaneously find themselves attracted to Socrates; they wish to know themselves, they wish to know the nature of the good and pursue the virtues that a philosophical life demands. This group—who are described as the younger men from the upper classes—do fit the liberal academic’s category of being open to philosophical persuasion.

However, there are others; those who are bringing Socrates to trial(Anytus, who spoke on behalf of craftsmen and politicians, Meletus, who spoke on behalf of the poets, and Lycon, who spoke on behalf of the rhetoricians ). These groups, on the contrary, will go out of their way to destroy and sabotage the possibility of the philosophical life. For modern purposes, we could map these groups onto those institutions such as interest groups, NGOs, corporations and media.

Thus, philosophy is not the task of universal persuasion. Its role within the larger social order is split. Thus, while its more open and spontaneous nature towards that demographic who are open to its invitations, should be treated as such, philosophy is necessitated into a political ambition due to the perpetual existence of that element which desires to destroy it. Therefore, a sort of friend/enemy distinction is inherent in philosophy from its very origins.

The reason that Plato felt the need to speculate on a society that was ruled by philosophers, likely stems from his observations of this group of cave dwelling, show trialling, money hungry people, within the social order: the accusers.

Therefore, we cannot claim a philosophy as universal in its liberality or rationality. Philosophy includes the task of coming to terms with the reality of this split. It must deal with the demographic that wishes to sabotage its potentiality; it must protect itself against those corrosive forces.

Additionally, to refer back to the metaphysics of the soul touched on in Lysis, we see that virtue—including the virtues of friendship—is a sort of immune response to the corrosion of (this demographic?).

Therefore, we see in Plato a constant reflexivity between the soul and the city. Here, we see that the corrosive forces that draw one to a point of untreatable ignorance, has its more concrete expression in the social relations often seen in the relation of sophists, merchants or arrogant state officials. In some sense, this seemingly unpersuadable element retard the development of the society’s potentiality.

In this sense, the role of the Guardians, which is both military, governmental, but also educational (looking out for the state of the soul) (the phulake, or watchkeepers), begins to make more sense. We should acknowledge that this role is not simply a spontaneous, liberal, discursive role. It contains within it a protective, militaristic and forceful aspect; something likely to be labelled as authoritarian or theocratic by modern minds .

Afterall all, if we take the Republic into account, we see that Plato’s ultimate realisation concerning how philosophy and the philosopher can happily coexist with the society, is that philosophers should simply rule that society. Its virtues are therefore not the virtues of higher culture, or something placed on top of the ‘real’ functioning of the society. Rather, philosophy expresses an immune response to the forces that civilisational advancement creates; its pathologies of wealth and arrogance, for example. These are not bourgeois pleasantries which can be enjoyed once a society has earned wealth, military security, a more liberal character and free time. Philosophy is not modern art. Rather, it emerges as an immunity against the potentially fatal pathologies of that wealth and security itself. Socrates’ death is the martyrdom that initiates the eternal practice of this immune system.

Yes, it does freely and openly invite in an open discourse into the nature of things. But this invitation only comes about through a split, and a larger immunological battle over the meaning of that civilisation itself. The accusers of Socrates are just as much part of the philosophical practice, as much as those willing young men who enjoy the free engagement of thought. They signify the limitations of reason and persuasion; and they must be politically confronted by the philosopher in order to ensure the philosophical life is not dominated and liquidated by them.