MEDICINE, PHILOSOPHY, AND SOCRATES’ PROPOSALS
TO GLAUCON ABOUT Gumnastikhv IN REPUBLIC 403C–412Bto ordered mathematical ratios. It also suggests that the rational powers of the
soul are both cognitive and affective (because on each level they are ordered
toward images of the Good). See notes 2 and 3. The discussions in books 7– 10
of the Republic seem aimed stepwise at the four powers of the soul distinguished
in the Divided Line: book 7 at nou'~ and diavnoia, books 8– 9 at pivsti~, and book
10 at eikasiva (including the poetic power).
- It is noteworthy that the argument about the soul’s immortality at
608c– 612a culminates in a portrayal of the soul in its pure state as simple and
not differing from itself as the divided soul was represented as doing in book 4.
“We must not think that the soul in its truest nature... differs with itself....
What we’ve said about the soul [in book 4] is true of it as it appears at pres-
ent... that is why we have to look somewhere else in order to discover its true
nature... to its love of wisdom.... Then we would see what its true nature is,
and be able to determine whether it has many parts or just one” (611c– 612a).
Of course, Socrates “divided” the soul into powers in the image of the Divided
Line. But the soul can be divided in two ways. First, it can become disintegrated
when its powers do not work in unison as they should. Second, it can also be
divided conceptually into its various powers by a mind trying to understand it.
See note 3. When Socrates discusses conceptual division for the sake of under-
standing in Phaedrus 263b– 266b and 270c– 274a, he speaks of being able to cut
things along their natural joints and not to splinter any part like a bad butcher
might do (265e). - The fact that some dialogues are narrated and some are direct, and
that there are nestings of direct dialogues within narrated dialogues and nest-
ings of narrated dialogues within direct ones is of course important. See David
Halperin, “Plato and the Erotics of Narrativity,” in Methods of Interpreting Plato
and His Dialogues, ed. James C. Klagge and Nicholas D. Smith, Oxford Studies in
A ncient Philosophy supplement ar y volume (Ox ford: Clarendon, 1992), 93 – 130. - See Michael Frede, “Plato’s Arguments and the Dialogue Form,” in
Klagge and Smith, eds., Methods of Interpreting Plato, 201– 19. See especially
Frede’s discussion of “gymnastic dialectic” at 213– 14. See also David Roochnik,
Beautiful City: The Dialectical Character of Plato’s Republic (Ithaca: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 2003). - I am sympathetic with some of the points Griswold makes in his ironic
reading of the critique of writing in the Phaedrus. See Charles L. Griswold Jr.,
Self-Knowledge in Plato’s Phaedrus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), espe-
cially chap. 6 and the epilogue. See also Ruby Blondell, The Play of Character in
Plato’s Dialogues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 110– 11. Yet,
in my judgment, Plato’s critique of writing in the Phaedrus is meant to be taken
seriously. - See the discussion of knowledge as vision in the section entitled “Impli-
cations of the Medical Model” above. - See Kenneth Sayre, “A Maieutic View of Five Late Dialogues,” in K lagge
and Smith, eds., Methods of Interpreting Plato, 221– 43, esp. 230– 37. - Rutherford, Art of Plato, 66– 68. Note especially the remarkable par-
allel between Thucydides’ stasis chapters (3.82– 83) and Republic 560– 61, and