The Republic’s Analysis of Images as Dissuasion from Politics

Xenophon reports an early conversation of Socrates with Glaucon, which allegedly resulted in Glaucon’s withdrawal from public life (ta politika) (Mem. 3.6.1). In this paper, I explore the hypothesis that Republic 2-10 are, loosely, Plato’s expansion of this Glaucon: his readers might have anticipated a conclusion in which the central character prioritizes individual self-cultivation (epimeleia tou heautou) over collective activity at the scale of the oikos or polis. We should take Plato’s Glaucon at his word when he concludes that the philosopher “won’t want to take part in politics” (ouk ara… ta ge politika ethelēsei prattein, 9, 591B-592B), and will instead attend to “the constitution within him” (en autōi politeia, 591B), echoing the conditional “quietism” of book 6 (496A-E). This outcome, and the conversation leading to it, will (I suggest) parallel Xenophon’s dialogue and comparable exchanges in the Platonic corpus, especially the Alcibiades I.

But the Republic, I argue, develops a unique line of argument for this prioritization of psychē over polis. Socrates’s persuasive power rests on his detailed and critical analysis of images and similes in the middle books, especially the critique of the limits of images (eikōn, eidōlon) in book 7 (see below). Leading into the middle books, political justice is strikingly redefined as an image (eidōlon) of justice within the soul (at 443B-C, referencing the city-soul analogy of 368C-369C; cf. 402B-C). Like young citizens in general, Glaucon is prone to literalize the allegory (378D-E): he reads the “city in speech” as a city that ought to be somewhere in space and time (pou, 592B), like the eikōnes at the base of the divided line. When Glaucon grasps that justice in the psychē is primary over justice in the polis, however, he will “no longer see an image (eikōn)… but the truth” (7, 532D-533A). In practice, his grasp of the inferiority of images to realities (596E-597A) is what leads Glaucon to prioritize the cultivation of his soul before action in the state.

I attempt to ground this reading in a unified theory of images evident in the middle books. The terminology includes eikōn (e.g., 410B-D, 487E-489C; 509D-510B; 532D-533A; 588B-589C); eidōlon (328B-C; 443B-C; 600E; 605B-D); muthologein (378D-E; 588B-589C); mimēsis (397E-398B, 513B, 532A-B, 595A, etc.); and dēmiourgia. Socrates’ own images deploy this terminological field interchangeably: there is no difference in kind between the eikōn of the inner animals en logōi (588B-589C), the eidōlon or muthos of the just city en logōi, the eikōn of the ship (487C-489C), or the eikōn of the cave (515C-517A), except for their register, source, and target domains. Socrates leads Glaucon to the recognition that eikonic muthoi “nourish” only the non-rational parts of the soul (401D-402A), and he frames their own “city in speech” (from the “City of Pigs” to the Kallipolis) as such a muthos. Glaucon recognizes that imitative images, like non-rational motivations, “distort” the soul (lobasthai, 495D, 595A, 605B-612A). Even the best, most nourishing muthoi, like the picture of the city itself, are to be abandoned for the reality they picture.

I will try to situate this interpretation in the tradition of commentary on Socrates’ analysis of images, with reference to readings by Proclus, Nick Smith, Julia Annas, Bernard Williams, C.D.C. Reeve, and Tad Brennan. I also attempt to defend it against several plausible objections. Centrally, I think, it may help to reframe the long-standing debate about the coherence of the Republic’s central image (Proclus, in Remp. I, 8.60-11.4): to what degree are the dialogue’s apparently political  or social claims to be taken literally? The metaphor is read literally by Glaucon, to a degree that leads him into dialectical absurdities from books 2-9; and that is exactly his—and our—difficulty.

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