MARK MOESLaws, constitute actual Platonic therapeutic recommendations? Might
not these proposals only be speech acts whose illocutionary force de-
pends upon the role they play in diagnoses and prognoses? We must not
forget that Socrates in the Republic, after “building in speech” an “ideal
povli~,” works out in books 8 and 9 the ways in which this “ideal povli~”
is the starting point for an inevitable decline into various pathological
conditions.
Some salient and recurrent features of Plato’s dialogue form are at
least compatible with the possibility that Plato is following Thucydides in
attempting to train his readers in an interesting kind of ethical-political
pathology, or to invite them to a serious examination of conscience.
Many of the dialogues depict conversations between either Socrates or
some other philosophic master and one or more non-philosophers or
philosophic neophytes. The non-philosophers are mostly real characters
from Athenian history notorious for their personal failings or known to
have been implicated in some way in the decline of Athens in the late
fi fth century.^72 The masters often say it is essential to their purposes that
they use the question-and-answer method.^73 Plato depicts the masters
as fi rst attempting to refute or examine the non-philosophical inter-
locutors by posing questions to them, or eliciting opinions from them,
and then as posing further questions or making further suggestions on
the basis of their responses. There are indications in the texts of many
dialogues that there are silent auditors listening to the conversations,
as if Plato were inviting the reader to count himself among them. Many
of the dialogues appear to end inconclusively, and even if they seem to
contain a good deal of positive doctrine, careful scrutiny of the text of-
ten reveals implicit Platonic critiques or qualifi cations of that doctrine.^74
Plato never directly addresses the reader or appears as a participant in
any of his dialogues. As author he hides himself and implicitly with-
holds complete commitment to any positive theses.^75 He often declines
to supply even his philosophic characters with the best case they might
have available for a thesis. Instead he puts bad arguments into their
mouths or has them miss opportunities to produce better arguments
or fuller expositions of their views, as if he wanted readers to try out for
themselves better arguments or fuller expositions.^76 Often the masters
ask the interlocutors to announce the results of the conversations; rarely
do they commit themselves in an unqualifi ed way to any positive theses
produced during the conversations.
A medical model of Platonic philosophy is able to go some distance
in making these features intelligible. The model can be summarized
like this. Plato depicts Socrates (or other philosophic “physicians”) as
working to engender health in the povli~ of Athens, in the only way