MEDICINE, PHILOSOPHY, AND SOCRATES’ PROPOSALS
TO GLAUCON ABOUT Gumnastikhv IN REPUBLIC 403C–412BWhen Socrates reopens the discussion of imitation in book 10 at
595a– b, he initially allies himself with Glaucon’s anti-tragic point of view.
But then Socrates conducts a dialectical examination of the pedagogical
value of tragic and comic poetry. After articulating a long case against
poetry (595a– 606d) that presumably corresponds to Glaucon’s views on
the matter, he moves to a higher standpoint at 606e and following, call-
ing for a defense of the value of poetry.^56 For Glaucon poetic works are
just tales whose surface features may be imitated or aped in a slavish
way, not objects for inquiry and interpretation. Since Socrates knows
about Glaucon’s anti-tragic views and character, he tries in the fourth
proposal to exhort him to mental toughness and to a more strenuous
and philosophical study of the products of poetic craft.^57
Earlier Socrates had suggested to Glaucon, as we have seen, that
the virtuous person is able to acquire knowledge of both virtue and
vice, knowledge of the truth both about his own character and that of
others. Virtuous people have the power to recognize in advance and to
disable tendencies in themselves that could lead to vice. A main pur-
pose of the serious study of edifying literature is to impart this power.
Vicious people often lack it, remaining utterly ignorant of the power of
such tendencies in themselves and even protecting themselves against
recognizing their ignorance. They are, in the language of Phaedo 89d– e,
the misovlogoi who have succumbed to the greatest of evils, the hatred of
lovgo~, of literature and of reasonable discourse. Socrates does not want
Glaucon to succumb to it, any more than he wanted Phaedo to do so.
Later on, at 586c and following, Socrates makes a number of thera-
peutic suggestions to Glaucon about the harmful potentials of bodily
e[rw~ and of qumov~ when they are disconnected from the love of wisdom.
Indeed, the entire discussion between Socrates and Glaucon from 576b
to the end of the Republic seems to be an extended therapeutic lesson
for Glaucon about the need for the unifi cation of bodily e[rw~ and qumov~
with wisdom.^58 The purpose of book 10 in particular seems to be, as
suggested previously, to reveal the power of literature to contribute to
this unifi cation.^59
Plato’s Dialogues as Medicinal Rhetoric
The Socrates who makes the four proposals is a character in a Platonic
dialogue. The question that now confronts us is whether his strategies
with Glaucon cast any light upon Plato’s philosophic method, and partic-
ularly upon Plato’s reasons for writing in dialogue form.^60 Does a medi-
cal model of Socratic philosophy cast any light on Plato’s philosophic