Protreptic Aims of Plato’s Republic Robert L. Gallagher The Republic represents Glaucon, Socrates’ principal interlocutor, in a state of conflict between his belief in justice and his desires for luxury, honor, and sex, and, furthermore, represents Socrates developing arguments that arouse Glau- con’s emotions in such a way that he resolves his conflict in favor of justice and the pursuit of philosophy. 1 Therefore the Republic depicts Socratic effort to affect the emotions of Glaucon with the aim to change him, and that this is the context for its discourse on the nature of justice. Furthermore, the Republic is designed to arouse emotions of readers, so that they too are moved to take up a just life and turn towards philosophical reflection. Accordingly, the Republic is protreptic in two senses: it seeks to cause a change in at least one character, Glaucon, and seeks such a change in the behavior of its readers. 2 Hence, the Republic is philosophical protreptic, that Slings 1999, 76 defines in the strict sense as ‘texts which incite to the study of philosophy’. Various commentators hold that parts of the Republic are protreptic. 3 But no one has proposed that the dialogue overall is protreptic in any unified sense. 4 And no one has discussed in any detail the relation of arousal and states of char- acter of interlocutors to the plot and argument of the Republic. 5 I evaluate por- tions of the discourse that Socrates conducts in Republic ii-ix with Glaucon, and then apply this to understanding how the Republic may affect the reader. In the course of my argument, I outline a Platonic theory of emotion and belief, and offer some remarks clarifying the Republic’s evaluation of tragic poetry. My focus on Glaucon is supported by his role in the dialogue. Glaucon is Ancient Philosophy 24 (2004) ©Mathesis Publications 1 1 By ‘emotions’ I mean the feelings state of the spirited part (tÚ yumoeid°w): anger, fear, shame, pity, pride (cf. Cooper 1999, 200). 2 This phraseology is modified from Slings 1999, 59 that says that a text is protreptic if ‘its design is to cause a change in the behaviour of those for whom it is destined’, i.e., its readers, or ‘within the text one character endeavours to cause such a change in another character or characters’. 3 Grube 1931, 305; Gaiser 1959; Slings 1999, 125; Blank 1993; and Gifford 2001, 97-106 agree that Rep. i is, at least in part, protreptic. Moreover, Slings 1999, 76 lists Rep. x 621b8-d3 also as a ‘protreptic situation’. Gaiser 1959, 207 says Rep. iv-vi (up to 502c) constitute ‘a protreptic defense against the claim that philosophizing is useless’. 4 Though the ‘Tübingen school’, with which Gaiser is associated, holds that all the dialogues are protreptic with respect to Plato’s ‘unwritten doctrine’ (see Gaiser 1980). 5 Blank 1993 treats the arousal of emotion chiefly with respect to the state of aporia, and the pro- treptic effect that the experience of aporia has on various individuals, almost exclusively in aporetic dialogues. But this excellent does not relate emotional arousal to changes in the beliefs of individuals, and much of its focus is on Plato’s audience and is discussed in that connection below.