Poetic Justice: Rereading Plato's "Republic"

265 Pages·2018·2.82 MB·English

by  Jill Frank

Poetic Justice

Poetic Justice
Rereading Plato’s
republic
Jill Frank
The University of Chicago Press Chicago & London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2018 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations
in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the
University of Chicago Press, 1427 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2018
Printed in the United States of America
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 51563- 2 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 51577- 9 (paper)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 51580- 9 (e- book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226515809.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Frank, Jill, author.
Title: Poetic justice : rereading Plato’s Republic / Jill Frank.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017025972 | isbn 9780226515632 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isbn 9780226515779 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226515809 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Plato. Republic. | Reading—Philosophy. | Philosophy, Ancient.
Classification: lcc jc71.p6 f735 2018 | ddc 321/.07—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025972
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
To the memory of Hershey (Harold) Frank and the
imagination of Alexander and Abigail
Lucky the man who at that time was skilled in song. . . . Now that everything has
been shared out and the arts possess their boundaries, so that we [poets] place
last in the race, there is nowhere for [the poet] to steer his freshly- yoked chariot,
though he may search everywhere.
Choerilus of Samos’ Lament (sh 317), trans. Michael Kicey
C o n t e n t s
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue: Learning to Read 1
1 Reading Plato 19
Reading, writing, fathers, and kings 21
How Plato wrote 27
Mimetic poetry 33
Mirrors 34
Representation 38
Resistance and self-authorization 41
2 Poetry: The Measure of Truth 50
Alienating authority, fathers again 55
Poetry silenced 60
Forms, knowledge, looks, simulacra 62
Poetry’s use 69
Poetry’s reason 71
Poetry’s benefit 75
3 A Life without Poetry 81
The brothers’ desire 82
Warriors, guardians, dogs 86
Poets, founders, gods 89
Simple minds 92
Obedience, domination, calculation, injustice 98
An aischropolis 105
Justice in and by itself 109
viii Contents
4 The Power of Persuasion 111
Compulsion 115
Deception 118
A grammatical interlude 122
Elenchos 123
Persuading in the middle voice 127
Analogy 131
Free and beautiful discussions 135
5 Erōs: The Work of Desire 141
Philosopher-kings, philosophers by nature, philosophical erotics 145
Desiring possession 151
Ladders, immortality, instrumentality 154
Genesis, reproduction in difference, belonging 159
Framing desire 163
Erōs and philosophy 167
Necessity, tyranny, and democracy 169
6 Dialectics: Making Sense of Logos 172
Provocatives 176
What do I see? or, The powers of sense perception 183
What do I think? or, Having an opinion 189
What do I make of it? or, Measuring, incommensurability, relationality 192
Framing knowledge 196
Impostures, images, truth 199
Willing to pay attention, an attitude of soul, phronēsis 202
A city in logos 206
Epilogue: Poetic Justice 210
Seeming, being, doing 215
Judging, appearances, imagination 217
No harm, one man:one art 221
Political philosophy 224
Work Cited 227
Index 243
A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
When the “healthy city” is first mentioned in Republic 2, it appears to need
only four or five men: a farmer, a builder, a weaver, and a shoemaker. With the
origin of the city lying “in the fact that we are not, any of us, self- sufficient,”
and the introduction of the one man:one art principle, however, the city im-
mediately swells to include carpenters, blacksmiths, skilled workers, cattle-
men, shepherds, other herdsmen, importers, exporters, traders, merchants,
seafarers, and laborers, and more (369b– 371e), Socrates implies, to infinity.
The same may be said of the one person:one art principle that has been the
writing of this book, for its appearance and logoi— its words, arguments, and
reasons— are the product of what feels like a near infinity of engagements. It
can be hard to keep track of infinity, so apologies in advance to anyone I may
inadvertently neglect to mention in these acknowledgments.
For helpful feedback on individual chapters, I am grateful to audiences and
discussants at Cambridge, Cornell, Duke, Johns Hopkins, McGill, North-
western, Princeton, Sarah Lawrence, Tufts, University of California, Berkeley,
University of Chicago, University of Georgia, Athens, University of Michi-
gan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of South Carolina,
University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin– Madison, and Yale, as well
as at meetings of the American Political Science Association, the Association
for Political Theory, the Conference for the Study of Political Thought, and
the Western Political Science Association. For conversations and comments on
particular chapters, my thanks go to Larissa Atkison, Andreas Avgousti, Ryan Ba-
lot, Harry Berger Jr., Ronna Bloom, Susan Buck-M orss, Joy Connolly, Susan
Courtney, Michael Davis, Alex Dressler, Peter Euben, Jason Frank, Marcie