Socrates Among the Thoughtless

I started reading The Republic the other day, and found the first chapter to be quite strange. Most likely because I am otherwise unacquainted with Greek writing. I don't know what I was expecting, but a series of dialogs that made nearly everyone other than Socrates seem like an idiot wasn't it.

But I came to realize that it was merely an unfamiliar way of establishing the premises of what was to come. Rather than simply lay out the initial viewpoint of the book, Plato uses the dialogs between Socrates and those around him to build up a picture. What makes it strange is how agreeable everyone is, for the most part. There's almost no pushback against the ideas that Socrates lays out, even when they seem manifestly at odds with reality as most people understand it to work. For example, when Socrates says that it is generally agreed to be wrong to return a borrowed weapon or to be strictly honest with someone who has become mentally ill, a lot of assumptions are being made there. Yet there is no disagreement, or mention of those assumptions, allowing Socrates to easily stymie the others by driving them to repugnant conclusions.

Of course, if Polemarchus or Glaucon had more thoughtfully argued their cases, that could have easily taken up an entire book right there, and left no room for Socrates to lay out how he feels the Republic of the title should work.

But perhaps more importantly, Socrates' interlocutors illustrate the idea that many people adopt standards of ethics or justice that seem valid to them, but don't really think about them as deeply as, well, someone like Socrates does. For my own part, I don't argue with people like Socrates on an ad-hoc basis; I beg a day or two to consider the viewpoint that I plan to bring to the discussion; there is no surer way to lose a debate than to be convinced to undertake one while unprepared, and I don't think as well on my feet as I would like.

In the end, though, it was an interesting, if somewhat obtuse, way to set things up. The dialogs didn't do as good a job of laying out the initial premises as a more straightforward explanation would have, but I can see why it had been done that way; it reads much more like a play, and I could see it being staged for an audience in lieu of people reading the text for themselves, given that mass production of books was still centuries away.

This far, I'm not in agreement with most of what Socrates/Plato are putting forward, but that's likely due to a difference in overall world view. But it's interesting reading thus far.