Plato's Fable: On the Mortal Condition in Shadowy Times

By Joshua Mitchell

This book is an exploration of Plato's Republic that bypasses arcane scholarly debates. Plato's Fable provides refreshing insight into what, in Plato's view, is the central problem of life: the mortal propensity to adopt defective ways of answering the question of how to live well.

How, in light of these tendencies, can humankind be saved? Joshua Mitchell discusses the question in unprecedented depth by examining one of the great books of Western civilization.

He draws us beyond the ancients/moderns debate, and beyond the notion that Plato's Republic is best understood as shedding light on the promise of discursive democracy. Instead, Mitchell argues, the question that ought to preoccupy us today is neither "reason" nor "discourse," but rather "imitation." To what extent is man first and foremost an "imitative" being? This, Mitchell asserts, is the subtext of the great political and foreign policy debates of our times.

Plato's Fable is not simply a work of textual exegesis. It is an attempt to move debates within political theory beyond their current location. Mitchell recovers insights about the depth of the problem of mortal imitation from Plato's magnificent work, and seeks to explicate the meaning of Plato's central claim--that "only philosophy can save us."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691124388
• ISBN13: 9780691124384
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Mitchell's Gift to Political Theory and the Attentive Reader

Once again Professor Mitchell elucidates a central text of political theory, the caverns of the human soul, and, indeed, the trajectories of Western civilization. One cannot, however, assess the merits of this claim about PLATO'S FABLE (or previous Mitchell books) on an initial glance in the table of contents or a cursory reading. One must engage patiently with the text. PLATO'S FABLE begins with an overview of contemporary political theory and one of its main misunderstandings -- an analysis of mimesis (that is, imitation) in human life. Reason, as understood by Habermas or Rawls, doesn't value the existence of mimesis and is blind to parts of the soul, such as honor, that are excluded from what Mitchell calls "The Fable of Liberalism." Identity politics and methodological individualism, identified as derivatives of Hegel, Rousseau and Luther, are also shown to lack a proper, balanced concept for imitation of earthly and divine patterns. A full account of reason and the ability to think beyond these narrow Reformation categories of human association may come through a return to Plato, Mitchell suggests. The close reading of THE REPUBLIC which follows the lively introduction is not ordered simply from start to finish. Rather, Mitchell deftly and patiently summarizes Plato's strategies -- analogy, allegory, narrative -- to speak about the elements of the soul which Plato explores. Mitchell connects the central theme of THE REPUBLIC, the search for justice in the ideal city, to the ordering of the soul. Seekers of "justice" are lead astray by following various "mortal patterns" expressed by Plato's conversation partners. After examining Plato's interaction with Thrasymachus ("might = right"), Polemarchus and Cephalus (father and son focused on wealth), Adeimantus, and Glaucon, we begin to recognize the role of both imitation and the refusal to imitate, the predictable reasons for aping and ways new generations re-pattern, the soul in fever seeking pleasure and an enclosed soul seeking honor. By the end of Chapter 2 one can identify the three types of souls central to Plato's text (honor-loving, wealth-seeking, and pleasure-seeking), relate the historical and personal evolution of these types, and apply these soul-types to diverse problems of public life such as democracy-building in non-Western environs, the popularity of genealogy and the search for "roots", the degeneration of "rights-talk" into monologues about preferences and the cost explosion of end-of-life medical treatment. Particularly clever and meaningful is Mitchell's talk of the "true prisoner's dilemma" to address the mortal condition. Here Plato's analogy of the cave and contemporary game-theory or "rational-choice economics" are playfully contrasted. In this comparison, the reader is struck by the numbingly narrow terms of contemporary political science and appreciates the recovery of conceptual tools that this book offers. As Plato's discussants often leave unconvin