MEDICINE, PHILOSOPHY, AND SOCRATES’ PROPOSALS
TO GLAUCON ABOUT Gumnastikhv IN REPUBLIC 403C–412Btion of the economic and political history of Athens.^66 The Hippocratics
had divided the work of the physician into three parts: semeiology, prog-
nosis, and therapeutics, seeking general formulations that would enable
doctors to read sy mptoms in such a way as to arr ive at tr ue classifi cations
and prognoses of diseases. Thucydides held that the knowledge of the
nature of political crises is like the knowledge of the nature of diseases,
and endeavored to make history into a semeiology and prognosis of hu-
man life, enabling men of future ages to recognize recurrent ethical-
political maladies by their symptoms.^67 He treated political ways of life,
such as Spartan authoritarianism and Athenian liberalism, under the
medical rubric of regimens, and left to the political philosopher the
task of constructing, on the basis of prognoses, more adequate systems
of social therapeutics.^68 He composed the speeches for his History as
part of an attempt to do semeiology and prognosis on the political prac-
tices of his day. He wanted to determine such classifi cations or formula-
tions (ejivdh) as would raise history from mere chronicle to something
more “scientifi c,” as many doctors wanted to transform medicine from a
mere empirical knack into a tevcnh.
In taking seriously the possibility that Plato’s project is in impor-
tant ways and on some level similar to Thucydides’ project so under-
stood, we are led to raise certain intriguing questions. One is whether
Plato might not have depicted Socrates’ philosophic practice with the
aim of provoking and initiating readers into doing semeiology, progno-
sis, and therapeutics on cultural practices of their own time. Another is
whether the depictions of apparent espousals by philosophers of anti-
liberal political programs in certain dialogues are not really Platonic in-
vitations to readers to do semeiology and prognostics on the anti-liberal
practices of their own day. Critics such as Cochrane and Popper take
Plato to be making detestable therapeutic proposals.^69 But reading him
alongside Thucydides suggests a different picture. Plato may be burying
his own therapeutic suggestions beneath the surface of the dialogues,
or he may be doing diagnostics in some parts of dialogues while mak-
ing therapeutic suggestions elsewhere in the same dialogues, or simply
leaving social therapeutics as a homework problem for the ages. The
Hippocratic doctor, after all, exercised great discretion and believed
that therapy is initiated mainly by abetting and removing obstacles to
the natural urge to self-healing.^70 It may be that in remaining silent by
writing mimetic dialogues, Plato is employing the remedy for misologiva
and misanqrwpiva that he put into the mouth of Socrates in the Phaedo,
withholding complete trust from less than healthy persons.^71 Must we
take for granted that the proposals for an “ideal povli~” in the Republic,
or even the legal proposals of the Athenian Stranger in the (unfi nished)