From the Beginning to Plato

FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO 377
they possess a reason, if a débile and dependent one, that they are capable of an
altruism within the city of which appetite is incapable within the soul. However,
what counts as a ‘necessary’ appetite, deserving of satisfaction, must vary with
natural disposition and civic role; a rational altruism can permit artisans a livelier
appetitiveness than befits others. If so, they too may achieve Plato’s personal and
civic ideal of unity in becoming one man instead of many (IV.443e1), and yet
identifying with everyone else.
Such is Plato’s political ideal. His personal ideas shines forth in the defence of
inspired madness that constitutes Socrates’ second speech in the Phaedrus,
though it is there enveloped in an aptly mythic glow that makes interpretation
hazardous. Not only recollection of the Forms, but erotic companionship, are
presented as recoveries of an earlier and happier state. Souls in heaven are
pictured as following in the trains of the Olympian gods, and so forming more
selective bonds of congeniality than are proper to civic relations. After the
catastrophe of incarnation, followers of Zeus will look for someone to love who
is by nature a philosopher and a leader, while followers of Hera will look for
someone who is naturally regal, and so on (252e1–253b4). This fits well with the
Republic’s acceptance of varied natural talents, but extends the varieties of
personality. It does not only value the companionship of philosophers, but allows
that spirited lovers, though less intellectual and less chaste, may eventually, in
the ornithic imagery, regrow their plumage together and fly back to heaven
(256b7–e2). (We may suppose that it is in order to relate even unphilosophical
love to recollection that Socrates here exceptionally envisages tripartition even
before incarnation.) Thus Plato seems willing to grant personal attachments a
general power to facilitate and enhance whatever activities are their sphere.
However, he finds them particularly apt to philosophy. One reason is the
interpersonal nature of philosophizing. Most explicit here is the Seventh Letter:
‘Only after long partnership in a common life devoted to this very thing does
truth flash upon the soul, like a flame kindled by a leaping spark’ (341c6–d1).
Dialectic is essentially a kind of dialogue, a truth of which he keeps us in mind
by the very genre of his writings. It is oral discussion, and not written
communication, that can alone truly achieve the mental immortality described in
the Symposium: living words sown in one soul contain a seed that can propagate
them in others down an unending sequence (Phaedrus 276e4–277a4). The sphere
of philosophy is friendship.
V
Plato calls his famous demand that philosophers be rulers and rulers philosophers
‘the greatest wave’ (Republic V.473c6–7). We must not forget that he was
writing under a democracy, and one whose values, even within his parody (VIII.
557a9–558c7), we too must find congenial. And yet he makes his conception of
a class of guardians selected and trained for devotion to the city still more
remarkable in its concrete elaboration.