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INTRODUCTIONPlato’s dialogues contain many references to Greek medical prac-
tice and medical tradition. Some scholars have even supposed that Plato
portrayed Socrates in many of the dialogues as extending and reinter-
preting Greek medicine in such a way as to create a kind of practical phi-
losophy rooted in questions about the nature of human life and human
health. On this supposition, Socrates aims to engender or facilitate in
his interlocutors a virtue comparable to health, and to free them from
vices comparable to illnesses, while his conversational practice is com-
parable to the interaction of an astute physician with his ailing client.
In “Medicine, Philosophy, and Socrates’ Proposals to Glaucon About
Gumnastikhv in Republic 403c– 412b,” Mark Moes attempts to show the ini-
t ial plausibilit y of t his supposit ion and t hen to test it by putt ing it to work
in reading an intriguing passage from the Republic. The fi rst section of
chapter 3 briefl y brings into focus some medical themes in three pas-
sages from the dialogues. These are Socrates’ discussion of dialectical
rhetoric in the Phaedrus, Socrates’ discussion of gumnastike ̄ and iatrike ̄ in
the Gorgias, and Phaedo’s account of the way in which Socrates behaved
and spoke toward him and Simmias and Cebes when he warned them
against misologia in the Phaedo. The second section draws out some of
the implications of the supposition. The third offers a reading of Repub-
lic 403c– 412b, where Socrates makes a series of proposals to Glaucon
concerning gumnastike ̄ in the polis. The essay argues that Socrates in-
tends these proposals to provide Glaucon with opportunities for what
Moes calls “diagnostic self-recognition.” The essay’s cogent interpreta-
tion provides confi rmation for the supposition. The fourth and fi nal
section briefl y discusses parallels between Plato and Thucydides in a way
that dovetails nicely with the essay in chapter 2, and assesses the plausi-
bility of a medical model of Platonic philosophizing, corresponding to
the model of Socratic philosophizing discussed in the earlier sections.
Plato had an important older contemporary who made infl uen-
tial use of medical ideas. It may be conjectured with some plausibility
(but not argued in a clinching way) that Plato concerns himself in at
least some dialogues with issues raised by Thucydides, who adapted the
principles and methods of Hippocratic medicine to the interpretation
of the economic and political history of Athens. The Hippocratics had
divided the work of the physician into three parts: semeiology, progno-
sis, and therapeutics, seeking general formulations that would enable
doctors to read symptoms in such a way as to arrive at true classifi ca-
tions 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 prog-