Spring 2007 - Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy

1 2 0 I nterpretation
Protarchus conceals a belief in the futility of philosophical inquiry, for
this would make him as hopeless as Philebus (9). But we must balance his
admiration for philosophy against his evident inability to do genuine philosophy
and his probable unwillingness to make philosophy the basis of his life.
Some other observations of Protarchus’s behavior serve to
confirm his intermediate status and shed further light on his character and its
sometimes contradictory manifestations. He makes a point of holding others
to their promises (Socrates to continue, Philebus to abandon the discussion)
while violating his own commitment to defend Philebus’s position. He makes
a notable outburst at one point (19c1 ff.), showing himself to be capable of
losing his temper, and even playfully threatens violence (16a4-6); yet he also, in
the act of making his first concession to Socrates, seems to do so for the sake of
equanimity and fair play, and expresses a desire for all of them to be kept
safe throughout the discussion (14a6-9). He rather emphatically rejects the
blasphemous implications of an irrational and chaotic cosmos (28e1-2)—
the very cosmos which undergirds the Philebian position he is supposedly
defending—and shows thereby his acceptance of religious conventions; but he
shows no signs of the zealous devotion which we see in Philebus, either to the
cause Philebus embraces or to any other. And his enthusiastic denunciation
of pleasure at the end appears to draw on the support of popular morality
(65c4-66a3), even though this morality is directly at odds with the position of
Philebus which he adopts with no compunctions at the beginning.
This inconsistent behavior may seem baffling, but in fact it
is no different from the way most people tend to behave. To be in between
philosophy and hedonism is to be in the condition of “the many,” the de - mos of
demotic morality as well as the unthinking mass of people who are said to
favor the goodness of pleasure over wisdom in the Republic (505b). So like the
many, Protarchus prizes the rule of law but wants the rules only to apply to
others; he values equality but admires those, like Gorgias, who appear to hold
the means for the obtainment of power (cf. 58a7-b3). He may be capable
of violence—but only the violence of the mob. His strength comes only in
numbers; alone he is weak. And he is inclined towards pleasure, but at
the same time is capable of being persuaded by a philosopher to defend
philosophy (cf. Republic 499d ff.). In all these ways he expresses the essence of
the conventional man, the organization man, and perhaps most appropriately,
the democratic man (see Republic 561c-e).
Protarchus, then, is the representative of hoi polloi and the
embodiment of its contradictions. He may be better educated and socially