Bridging the Gap: Connecting Socrates’ City in Speech to Plato’s Athens

Dawn had broken when he said: ‘Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know.’

“There is still one of which you never speak.’

Marco Polo bowed his head.

‘Venice,’ the Khan said.

Marco smiled. ‘What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?’

The emperor did not turn a hair. ‘And yet I have never heard you mention that name.’

And Polo said: ‘Every time I describe a city, I am saying something about Venice.”

-Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Written years after the death of Socrates, Plato records his mentor’s arguments in The Republic. Rather than a straightforward argumentative text, it utilizes a framed narrative contextualized as a conversation between Socrates and several interlocutors. Plato’s preference for collaborative dialogue, in which the respondents help the philosopher to refine and shape the outcome, reflects the broader approach Socrates takes to develop his argument. Additionally, the framing presents an opportunity for Plato to contrast his mentor’s views against those of the Athenian elite by constructing debates between the two perspectives. Book I engages with several different conversants before Glaucon and Adeimantus propose the primary challenge against which Socrates outlines the rest of the text’s aims. The selection of Plato’s brothers out of the gathered Greek elites, their subsequent challenge and readiness to learn, and the education on how to pursue a well-ordered soul form a narrative parallel to Socrates’ actual argumentation. Within Plato’s The Republic, the interlocutors connect Socrates’ argumentation to contemporary Athenian society and demonstrate the process of the selection and reform of the guardians. Although Plato seems to function merely as the scribe for Socrates’ argumentation, I argue that his framed narrative and emphasis on the interlocutors in Books I and II expand beyond Socrates’ claims by paralleling the selection of the guardians and arguing for the utility of guardianship as a real rather than ideal construct.

Book I of The Republic establishes the framing device of a dialogue through which the rest of the text operates, creating a parallel introduction of later arguments. Plato begins the text by describing Socrates returning from a festival before meeting Polemarchus, who tells him to “‘either prove stronger than these men or stay here’” (327b). Although Plato implies that Polemarchus is joking, the interplay signals a key theme common to many of Socrates’ later arguments — that force and rhetoric are not sufficient means of persuasion. Later in The Republic, Socrates argues that in the topics of justice, education, and governance, the use of reasoning and pursuit of the truth is preferable to external persuasion. The first exchange establishes that the narrative device serves a broader purpose of introducing and underscoring the themes that Socrates argues. In this sense, the voices of Plato and Socrates are distinct — Socrates outlines an argument around which Plato constructs and presents a narrative for a broader appeal to tie into the contemporary world of Athens.

Similarly, Plato parallels Socrates’ argument for the selection of guardians in Book I, recreating the ideal construct Socrates outlines using contemporary Athenian figures. The section initially engages with Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus before effectively writing them out of the text in favour of Glaucon and Adeimantus as the primary interlocutors. Consequently, Socrates evaluates and discards each of them, rejecting their arguments and the aspects of the Athenian elite that they each represent.

Cephalus initially converses with Socrates and represents the older segment of the Athenian elite who would not benefit from reeducation because they are too committed to the established order. Notably, Cephalus chooses to exit the scene completely to go sacrifice (331d) rather than refine his definition of justice, effectively rejecting the teaching himself. The apparent disconnect between Cephalus’ argumentation and how Socrates responds is also poignant — Cephalus comments on how he believes a good life should be lived (331a), and Socrates responds by questioning his idea of justice (331b), which Cephalus had not actively discussed. With Socrates as the effective protagonist of the narrative, it indicates that Cephalus is not fit to engage with the rest of Socrates’ arguments because he is not oriented toward the correct things and refuses to reexamine his perspective. Rather than focusing on justice as the ultimate good, his pursuit of his perception of a good life by appeasing the gods and having good relations with men is what interests him. Plato writes Cephalus out of the dialogue, rejecting him as a guardian because his deep-rooted convictions stemming from Athenian culture render him incapable of even engaging with the correct concepts.

Polemarchus picks up the argument but is ultimately discarded by Plato as a viable interlocutor due to his similar reliance on cultural convention rather than the truth. He, like Cephalus, believes the argument about justice advanced by the poet Simonides (331e). However, he is willing to refine his definition of justice as “helping friends and harming enemies” (334b) once Socrates points out the flaw in how good men can mistakenly perceive the unjust as good and recognizes that doing harm is never good. Even though he internalized cultural conventions, he still attempts to utilize reasoning to amend his beliefs. While his conversation remains unfinished due to Thrasymachus’ interjection, he likely does not continue as an interlocutor due to the fundamental premise of his idea of justice being rooted in the wrong concepts. His definition requires just men harming others, contradicting Socrates’ idea that justice is always inherently good (335e). In conjunction with his initial greeting where he presupposes harm to Socrates if he does not speak with them, it suggests that he is rejected as an interlocutor, or stand-in guardian, because his definitions of justice rely too heavily on notions of force to animate them.

Finally, Thrasymachus emerges as the most egregious example of an elite objector unfit to become a guardian. At certain points, he seems almost a caricature of who a guardian should not be by demanding pay to present his idea of justice (337d) and becoming belligerent when asked to reevaluate his definition (340d), preoccupied more with clever rhetoric than legitimate answers and the truth. In challenging the nature of the Socratic structure, he inadvertently proves its utility. He argues that Socrates will “not answer himself, and when someone else has answered he gets hold of the argument and refutes it” (337e), but Thrasymachus provides incorrect answers with a refusal to reevaluate their logic, making himself and his rhetorical strategy look foolish. His conversation serves more to highlight the validity of the narrative structure through which the dialogue proceeds rather than be a legitimate consideration for guardianship. Because the present debaters represent elements of the Athenian elite, Plato makes the argument through the exchange that Sophists and their supporters should be wholly disregarded because the basic interplay of ideas and philosophic conversation cannot occur with them.

After Book I, the dialogue proceeds without the three aforementioned debaters, representing the selection of the guardians out of the Athenian people. Plato does not choose them to continue the conversation which effectively designates them as less capable or effective in serving as Socrates’ foils in the subsequent books. As a part of the greater Athenian elite, they represent the elements unfit to rule due to their incorrect orientation that cannot be rectified by education as with Glaucon and Adeimantus. Plato’s description of their rejection forms a direct parallel to Socrates’ caution of the necessity of carefully selecting guardians with the correct disposition (413c). By linking concrete examples of unfit practices and dispositions like sophistry, which was a contemporary element of the Athenian elite, Plato directly connects Socrates’ lesson to the actual society. The dialogue effectively functions with the characters as real examples that fulfill the archetypes that Socrates describes within it.

In contrast to the previous conversants, Plato highlights the suitability of Adeimantus and Glaucon as interlocutors emerging in Books II and III, showing two real and imperfect figures with a suitable disposition for guardianship. Socrates underlines his preference clearly when he says, “I had been full of wonder at the nature of Glaucon and Adeimantus… Now you truly don’t seem to me to be being persuaded” (368a). His primary evaluation of why he admires them is their willingness to change their minds and questioning of the conventional logic of their society. They do not necessarily have to be faultless to be proper guardians but simply be like the lovers of truth Socrates believes should guard the city. This distinction raises the possibility of the legitimate realization of a guardian class by illustrating an example of an imperfect guardian to clarify the ideal type that Socrates describes. Through the pair, Plato demonstrates a reform of the elites into guardians, rooting Socrates’ constructed group of guardians in speech within the characters of two actual individuals to ground the argument.

Adeimantus and Glaucon act as the interlocutors because they are willing to engage with the material and want to hear a different narrative than the one they learned. Adeimantus notes that he argues “out of my desire to hear the opposite from you” (367b). They not only initiate the debate and describe the conventional logic of how to think about justice but also want to isolate the core of the tension between that claim and the one Socrates makes by saying, “Follow Glaucon’s advice and do not take reputations into account.”

Adeimantus also forms a parallel to Cephalus, demonstrating how a person with a similar disposition but a different internal moral orientation can lead to guardianship. Like Cephalus, Adeimantus’ initial objections centre around poetry, wealth, and the afterlife. He argues that people “don’t praise justice itself but the good reputations that come from it” and that by “throwing in good reputation with the gods, they can tell of an inexhaustible store of goods that they say gods give to the holy” (363a). His position receives an extended reply because it is oriented toward the topic of justice, rather than Cephalus’ preoccupation with the afterlife itself. Additionally, the argument, though it is presented as a proposition held by Athenian society for Socrates to work against, also works as a critique of the lifestyle Cephalus supports. While Cephalus argues that sacrificing and paying debts is sufficient for a just life (331b), Adeimantus acknowledges in his extended counter to Socrates that these are not sufficient conditions for a just life even if they give the appearance of goodness. Conscious of and concerned by the distinction between what is good and what appears good, he continues to serve as an interlocutor throughout the text because he is oriented toward the latter. Through this distinction, Plato isolates Socrates’ claim that the true sign of a guardian is their internal disposition, which is necessarily difficult to perceive. He demonstrates both that such a disposition already exists within the Athenian elites and that it is possible to identify it clearly in practice through conversation like in books I and II. While Socrates only speaks vaguely on vigorous testing to identify the rulers, Plato signals that such identification is possible through truth-oriented dialogue that reveals inner dispositions.

An objection can be made that after the first three books, Plato loses a sense of the dialogue and reduces Glaucon and Adeimantus to background characters as well, demonstrating that the framing does not meaningfully diverge from Socrates’ argumentation. The interlocutors voice no other main objections than the principal counter-argument advanced in Book II. And these are legitimate points — Socrates squarely controls the narrative for the rest of the work, building his argument with minimal input from the interlocutors. But Glaucon and Adeimantus were never meant to act as debaters in the sense of Thrasymachus, who was fully committed to his position and unwilling to change, because guardians are necessarily oriented toward the truth, not opinion. The two brothers advance but are not convinced by the conventional holdings about justice (368a). Part of their suitability to serve as stand-in guardians stems from their lack of internalization of cultural dogma, so the later lack of objections cements the guardian metaphor rather than establishing them as blindly accepting Socrates’ teachings. Once the topic has become fully mirrored and the two men reorient themselves toward the truth, Glaucon and Adeimantus do not have objections because they are reformed and ready to receive their education, but also because Plato’s purpose in using them finishes, rendering them obsolete as complex characters within the text.

Additionally, even if Plato intended to use the format of the text to ground the metaphor in the real figures of his time, the text’s narration from Socrates’ perspective creates distance between the reader and the interlocutors. The point of view suggests that Plato’s principal aims are not to connect reality to Socrates’ constructions because it separates the reader from the dynamic characters who stand in for Athenian citizens. However, a constant throughout the entire Republic is the format of the dialogue reinforcing the Socratic philosophy of proving claims by engaging with others in conversation. Within the framed narrative, Socrates acts as the designated protagonist advancing his arguments whereas Glaucon and Adeimantus serve as foils. Even though they ground the story in the reality of Athens, the primary focus of the text is what Socrates thinks, and Plato arranges everything around it. This principal aim of Plato’s narrative device does not necessarily negate a secondary goal to link Socrates’ constructed guardians to actual Athenian society. The point of view does not impede Plato’s ability to parallel Socrates’ argument using the actions surrounding the conversations. Even with Socrates as a protagonist, all other characters become superfluous within the constructed narrative as Plato manipulates them to mimic the selection and reform element of guardianship.

Ultimately, the first two books of Plato’s The Republic distinguish between Socrates’ voice and Plato’s narrative style through the role Plato gives the interlocutors of demonstrating the selection of the guardian elite, grounding the metaphor in reality. The distinction between the protagonist and writer often appears interchangeable especially with Socrates as the narrator advancing his arguments. However, within a constructed narrative, Plato manipulates the surrounding elements to create a story rooted in history and accomplish his goals of showing the legitimate possibility of the argument. Whereas Socrates does not focus on applications of his city to real life, Plato including Athenian individuals within the dialogue introduces contemporary elements into the reader’s perception. The action of Plato collecting his arguments in written form inherently includes normative judgement and reconstruction of argumentative elements left to the transcriber’s judgement. As a result, Plato extends the argument and claims that the city in speech is more of a possibility than Socrates advances in his argument. The framed narrative serves as a distinction between the arguments of Socrates, the protagonist, and Plato, the writer.

Works Cited

Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. 1st Harvest/HBJ ed., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.

Plato. (1968). The Republic (A. Bloom, Trans.). In The Republic of Plato. New York: Basic Books.

Plato’s Academy mosaic. 100 B.C.E-100 C.E. National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Naples.