Platon Politicus: Interpolative Dramaturgy of the Republic

• In Event: Plato, Philosophy, and Democracy

Abstract

According to Aelian, Plato was preparing a tragic tetralogy for the Dionysia when he met Socrates. Platonic dialogue’s generic association with tragedy has haunted him since. Indeed, most every vision of Platonic dialogue’s political force is explicitly or implicitly predicated on the analogy between dialogue and tragedy, drawing on vocabularies of provocation, awakening, and encouragement. Socrates provokes, awakens and encourages his fellow interlocutors to reflect, interrogate, judge, etc.; Plato provokes, awakens, and encourages us to reflect, interrogate, judge, etc. Is the tragedic construction of the spectator-text- relation the (only) appropriate generic touchstone for a political Plato? Is this tragedic articulation of Platonic dialogue’s politicality a satisfying expression of and inquiry into the dramaturgical depth of the genre? More pointedly: what about Aristophanes and Greek comedy?

The first portion of this paper, attending to the Republic’s resonances with Aristophanes’ comedies with respect to postures of spectator participation and performance improvisation, advances an invitation-forward reading of Platonic dramaturgy against the popular tragedically inflected provocation-forward reading. The second portion sketches the significance of a comedic frame for Platonic hermeneutics as such. Ultimately, I suggest that if we do not think Platonic dialogue seeks exclusively to translate (tools for) a critical gaze or to provoke its audience to critical reflection—if these options do not exhaust the political dynamism of Platonic dialogue—tragedy cannot be our only dramatic foil. Attention to the Symposium 223d of it all breaks open a different kind of textual politics: one whose center of gravity consists more in bringing-in than pushing-out.

Author

• Helena Weigert Crusius, Cornell University