Interpretive Essay

The Political Challenges of the Philosophic Life

Plato’s Letters does little to dissuade the reader from concluding that the whole affair of Plato’s dealings with the Syracusans was a disaster. Twice Plato accepted the invitation to return to Syracuse to serve as tutor to the young tyrant, and twice he wound up imprisoned there with his life in danger. If the reason for all this was some hope for the establishment of philosopher-kingship, that hope turns out to have been unreasonable, and acting upon it imprudent. Dionysius never lived up to the philosophic promise others claimed he had (330a2–b7, 340b1ff.); and as for Dion, for whose sake Plato seems to have risked so much for so long, in the end it seems that, for all his nobility, he lacked the shrewdness and discernment to survive and prosper in the cutthroat political struggle he initiated when he overthrew the Syracusan tyranny (333d7–334a6, 334d6–335c1, 351c6–e2; see also 321b5–c1). At best, it seems Plato has been a poor judge of character. At worst, the affair stands as an indictment of Plato’s doctrine of philosopher-kingship altogether. Can Plato be respected as a political philosopher if his one great attempt to put his philosophic claims to the test resulted in catastrophe? The gravity of what is at stake in the Letters is underlined by Plato’s confession in Letter Seven regarding his role in Syracuse’s recent history. Plato admits that, though it was never his intention, the whole Syracusan disaster—culminating in the civil war, which at the time he writes is still roiling, with all its destruction and slaughter—came to pass on account of him (327a1–5 with 327d3–328b1; cf. 353c8–e5, but see also 326e1–3, 350d6–7).

But all of this is rather more in the way of a first impression than anything clear enough to justify us in rendering judgments about either Plato’s practical wisdom or his culpability in Syracuse. To begin with, it is helpful to recognize that the characterization of Plato’s political activities we have just given reflects above all the narrative of Letter Seven. The more we compare the account of Letter Seven to what we find in the other letters, however, the more we are reminded that Letter Seven is only one such account, and one that belongs to a specific context—Plato’s reply to the late Dion’s followers’ request for help in waging the war against tyranny in Syracuse. When Plato wrote to Dionysius himself, or to other Greek rulers and statesmen in other circumstances, he spoke somewhat differently on all of Letter Seven’s major themes, such as political counsel, philosophic education, and Plato’s own political motives. If indeed Plato has prepared the Letters as a coherent work of political philosophy, he has done so in such a way that we, the readers, are invited to observe him in a variety of attitudes, each suited to a particular permutation of addressee and occasion. It is our job then to draw our inferences about Plato’s genuine thought and understanding from a careful comparison of the manners in which he approaches these various situations. Ultimately, it is only by taking up an exploration of the whole Letters, in a spirit of openness to whatever may be the lesson Plato meant it to convey, that we can arrive at justifiable conclusions regarding the questions we have already begun to raise on the basis of our first impressions. What is the connection between Plato’s intention in going to Syracuse and his doctrine of philosopher-kingship? What explains his evidently poor judgment over the course of the whole affair? And why would he write about it all in a way that can so easily be seen as spotlighting his failures in thought and action?

Our inquiry will proceed in three phases. First, we will attempt to extract from the Letters what seems at first to be its most promising and intriguing content: the character and substance of Plato’s direct and concrete political counsel to actual rulers or aspirants to rule. As we will see, however, one cannot isolate this theme—the character of Plato’s narrowly political counsel in the Letters—from his overriding concern for the defense and promotion of philosophy. With a view to this higher priority of Plato’s we will be led to a second pass at the Letters, in which we will seek to ascertain what it can teach us about the way in which Plato presented philosophy to the world and to his students. Only after these two major and distinct but connected themes—Plato’s political counsel on one hand and his presentation of philosophy on the other—have been explored will we be prepared to examine with sufficient perspicuity the disaster that unfolded for Plato in Sicily, and to offer some suggestions as to its underlying causes and implications.