MARK MOESthe parallel analyses in the two writers of the connection between Athenian
imperial expansion and political-moral decline. Note also parallel ideologies
of power in Callicles and Thrasymachus, on the one hand, and the Athenians
at Sparta and Melos in Thucydides, on the other. There are also parallel em-
phases in both on the intellectual element of statesmanship, and parallel adap-
tations and deepenings of the sophistic concept of the rhetorical virtuoso. An
axiom of Thucydides’ political thought, according to Werner Jaeger, was that
human nature consists in the constant ascendance of passion and the will to
power over intellect. Plato seems to want to parry this view. See Jaeger, Paideia,
vol. 1, chap. 6, n21. David Grene compared and contrasted Plato and Thucy-
dides in Man in His Pride: A Study of the Political Philosophies of Thucydides and Plato
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950).
- See Charles N. Cochrane, Thucydides and the Science of History (New York:
Russell and Russell, 1965). This work was fi rst published at Oxford in 1929. See
also Werner Jaeger, “Thucydides: Political Philosopher,” chap. 6 of vol. 1 of Pai-
deia; and Jaeger, “Greek Medicine as Paideia,” chap. 1 of vol. 3 of Paideia. - Fifth-century medical thinkers arrived at the conception of types (ejiv dh)
of human nature, of bodily structure, of disposition, of illness, and so forth.
A. E. Taylor in his Varia Socratica studied the frequent occurrence of the terms
ei\do~ and ijdeva in the Hippocratic writings. See Jaeger, Paideia 3:296n45. Jaeger
says that Plato transferred these concepts to the realm of ethics and from there
to his entire ontology. See Jaeger, Paideia 3:24. - See Cochrane, Thucydides, 30– 31.
- Cochrane thought Plato was doing therapeutics in a regrettable way. See
Cochrane, Thucydides, 91, 102, 105. Popper, of course, thought that the “spell of
Plato” was the partial inspiration of many enemies of the “open society.” - See note 18 above.
- This suggestion is in keeping with the views of Mitchell Miller about
why Plato remains anonymous. See note 16. I would add that the “freeborn
physician” (Laws 720b– e) aims to bring a client (a reader) to understand his
own diseases (by seeing them mirrored in those of the interlocutors depicted).
And he aims at the reader’s cooperation in his own therapy (by experiencing
the “kindling” of philosophic understanding through careful and persistent
study of the dialogues). Plato cannot know in advance what particular needs his
reader will have, and if he gives his reader some “empirical injunction with an
air of fi nished knowledge, in the brusque fashion of a dictator,” he becomes but
a slave doctor treating slaves (Laws 720c). - Ruby Blondell makes the important point that Plato’s choice of inter-
locutors for Socrates mirrors the norms of Platonic Athens, as viewed from a
“public,” elite male, “upper class” perspective. In my terms, Socrates diagnoses
those who exhibit symptoms most typical of important contributors to Athens’
problems. See Blondell, Play of Character, 66. - See, for example, Socrates’ remarks at Gorgias 448d– e, 451d– e, 461d,
462c– d, 466b– c; Protagoras 334a– 336b; Theaetetus 150c– d, 167d– 168b; Cratylus
390c; and Parmenides’ remarks at Parmenides 136c– 137b. On the importance of
paying attention to the philosophic differences among the philosophic masters