著者

朴 一功

出版者

日本西洋古典学会

雑誌

西洋古典學研究 (ISSN:04479114)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, pp.98-111, 1999-03-23

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By investigating the Greek word neidw and its cognates in the Republic and other dialogues, Popper believed that Plato is recommending rhetorical propaganda i. e. "talking over by foul means," together with violence, rather than "persuasion by fair means" as instruments of political technique (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945). But more important than this criticism is Morrow's claim that even without the foul means, persuasion, as is understood by Plato, involves ominous consequences ('Plato's Conception of Persuasion,' PR62, 1953). Morrow examined relevant passages, particularly in the Laws and concluded that Plato, who could not allow any soul to engage in "the free play of individual criticism" so that it could safely reach maturity, blinded himself to the deeper meaning of Socratic concern for the soul. Yet Socrates' dialectic, in which Morrow sees the spirit of genuine persuasion, does often break down without any agreement being reached when it is carried on with such difficult interlocutors as Callicles and Thrasymachus. Plato took seriously Socrates' failure to persuade them to care for virtue. My purpose is, by examining this line of Plato's thought, to show that his conception of persuasion has the significance drawn from his reflections on Socrates' dialectic. It is not just that the failure of a reasonable conversation would be, as Irwin supposes ('Coercion and Objectivity in Plato's Dialectic,' RIP40, 1986), due to the insincerity or ill-temperedness which the interlocutor displays in refusing to continue cooperative discussion. We know that in the Gorgias Socrates argued that rhetoric alleged to be the art of persuasion was no art but a mere empirical knack, whereas in a later dialogue, the Phaedrus, Plato concedes the possibility of the kind of rhetoric that deserves a genuine craft and sets it forth as the art of leading souls. What this remarkable change actually means will become clear to us when we consider Socrates' method of cross-examination and refutation. His arguments always rest on, and his conclusion step by step logically follows from, premises to which he secures agreement from his interlocutors. But the problem lies in the way in which the agreed-upon premises are accepted, taken, and felt by each interlocutor with his own point of view. Socrates' understanding of some premises does not agree with, and is sometimes irreconcilably different from, the interlocutor's, so that it is hard for them to share the same conclusion. For no statement and no word is a logical formula or a logical symbol to be manipulated in a definite way. Such disagreement has its roots, Plato's theory of the tripartite soul reveals, in their essentially different conceptions of the good that cannot be easily reduced to each other. Now in the Apology Socrates says, "the unexamined life is not worth living" and invites everyone to join in cooperative inquiry. However, when Plato wrote the Republic he had become sceptical, not about the truth of Socrates' memorable words, but about his philosophical activity characterized as inquiry into the truth by examinig himself and others, since everyone does not want to, and cannot, therefore, should not, examine himself or herself in the same way as Socrates does. Plato's realistic view is that no two people are born alike in that there are innate differences which fit them for different occupations. Dialectic requires a natural gift for it. People's different conceptions of the good, however, derive from their dominating desires or motives rather than from their natural gifts. Hence three basic types of men, the philosophic, the ambitious, and the lovers of gain. Plato can, then, no longer believe that the conflict of their value judgements is resolved by Socratic argument, since their experience, intelligence, and ability in discussion are decidedly different. Thus in the Phaedrus he attempts to reinstate rhetoric as the art of persuasion by basing it on psychology and dialectic. Plato was not blind to the deeper meaning of Socratic concern for the soul. Following Socrates, he certainly admits that genuine persuasion requires inquiry into the truth by dialectic, but unlike Socrates, he demands that a person who employs it should select a fitting soul, not every soul, to plant and sow in it his or her words founded on knowledge. Persuasion in other cases, therefore, must involve more or less "noble lies" or compulsion. Such conception of persuasion Plato applied to his own political philosophy. But perhaps the application was an inevitable conclusion for Plato himself who experienced more than once political confusion and violence in the Cave. Whether it may lead to liberation or enslavement of human beings, we can see in it Plato's insight into the significance of his master's philosophical activity. For, as Corn ford argued ('Plato's Common Wealth,' GR4, 1935), he would have foreseen that Socrates' mission pointed to a subversion of all existing institutions, which rest on fictitious devices.