MEDICINE, PHILOSOPHY, AND SOCRATES’ PROPOSALS
TO GLAUCON ABOUT Gumnastikhv IN REPUBLIC 403C–412Bthe view that Plato was a writer of mime and should be read like a satirist try-
ing to get his audience to see its own foibles and fl aws. Jokes are not merely
expressions of the unconscious, but also ways of infl uencing and bringing un-
conscious factors to light.
- One might in this connection think of Socrates covering himself with a
veil while delivering his fi rst speech in the Phaedrus. One thinks in this connec-
tion of the way in which, according to Socrates at Republic 393d, the poet-author
of “narrative with imitation” hides himself. - In the Republic there are many passages in which either Glaucon or
Adei mantus asks Socrates for a quick answer to some deep philosophical ques-
tion which he does not want to think through for himself. Socrates always ex-
horts him to think for himself. See 358d, 367a– e, 427d– e, 434d– 435a, 435c– d,
449c– 450c, 451a– b, 457c– e, 472a, 506b– d. An excellent discussion of this as-
pect of the philosopher-interlocutor relationship as depicted in the Platonic di-
alogues can be found in Miller, Philosopher in Plato’s Statesman, ix– xix. On page
xiii Miller says that there is an important sense in which each man must “make
the philosophic ascent for himself.” See also Mitchell Miller, Plato’s Parmenides:
The Conversion of the Soul (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 3– 12. - The Athenian Stranger in Laws 720b– e seems to indicate this when he
says that the free medical practitioner does not give prescriptions until he has
won the patient’s support. Lidz, “Medicine as Metaphor,” 530, cites P. Carrick in
support of the view that “for Plato the responsibility for carrying out a program
of mental and physical hygiene rests squarely with each person.” See P. Carrick,
Medical Ethics in Antiquity (Boston: D. Reidel, 1985), 27ff. - Jaeger says that the principal axiom in Hippocrates’ doctrine of sick-
ness is that healing is initiated by the body itself, and all the doctor need do is to
watch for the point where he can step in to help the natural urge to self-healing.
See Jaeger, Paideia, 3:28. - An interesting discussion of the interrelation of cognitive and affective
factors in what Socrates considers to be the highest kind of knowledge can be
found in Emile de Strycker, “The Unity of Knowledge and Love in Socrates’
Conception of Virtue,” International Philosophical Quarterly 6 (1966): 428– 44. - According to Strycker, good vision of the whole is like good vision of
the material world to the extent that there is always more observation to be
done. Good vision of value expresses itself in more appropriate and consistent
deeds and utterances, just as good physical vision enables one to function bet-
ter in the physical environment. - See, for example, Gerald Press, “Knowledge as Vision in Plato’s Dia-
logues,” Journal of Neoplatonic Studies 3, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 61– 89. Kenneth Sayre
attempts to show that one never knows propositions but always states of affairs.
Knowledge for Sayre is a cognitive access to a state of affairs, whereas belief and
many other cognitive states are intentional attitudes to propositions. See Ken-
neth Sayre, “A Surface Map of Cognitive Attitudes,” chap. 1 of Belief and Knowl-
edge: Mapping the Cognitive Landscape (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefi eld, 1997). - See the brief summary of the Thomistic theory of knowledge in Fulton
Sheen, “Critical Appreciation of the Modern Objections Against Intelligence,”