Adeimantus and the Rhetoric of Interruptoin

Adeimantus and the Rhetoric of Interruption

We have spent the entire semester talking about the Republic. The western philosophical tradition has spent over two thousand years talking about the Republic, which is to say that the Republic is perhaps the most talked about book in philosophy. One result of this, is that there is an immense inherited idea of what the Republic says and is about. It is difficult to ever look at the text with unbiased eyes, but we need to. I attempt to do so by focusing my attention on one individual, in this case the interlocutor Adeimantus. The philosophical discourse of the Republic is not the product of Socrates alone; he is motivated and assisted by interlocutors, his conversation partners. Up until about fifty years ago the interlocutors and the literary aspects of Plato’s dialogues were mostly disregarded as accessory, but we now know that they shape the meaning of the dialogue. While recent Platonic scholarship has become increasingly interested Socrates’ interlocutors, the interlocutors in the Republic have not received comprehensive study individually. Specifically, there are two main interlocutors in the Republic: Glaucon and Adeimantus who are Plato’s two older brothers. I have previously conducted an extensive research project on Glaucon, and I am now examining Adeimantus. I argue that the interlocutors are meaningful, individual contributors to the philosophy of the dialogues, and that they require further examination. Without a serious consideration of the interlocutors, the philosophy embodied and spoken by Socrates cannot be fully understood.

My exploration of Adeimantus in the Republic operates on two levels. How is Adeimantus important to the philosophy of the Republic, and, inversely, how is the philosophy of the Republic important to Adeimantus? These questions capture what I think is truly at stake when we read Plato. By writing dialogues rather than treatises or essays, Plato depicts philosophy as it actively interacts with and influences individuals. If we are to know what philosophy means to ourselves—and I want to know—then it behooves us to investigate what it means to individuals much like ourselves.

To begin  answer these questions, I identified the sections in which Adeimantus is the active interlocutor and read them in isolation. Almost immediately, a very particular pattern emerged: Adeimantus only speaks in interruptions. Plato intentionally specifies or dramatizes his speech as interruption. For example, Socrates says “I had something in mind to say in response to [what Glaucon had said], but his brother Adeimantus said” or “And I was going to describe unjust regimes in order, but…” (362d, 449a-b). I point to these moments because it does not just say that he interposes; Plato narrates the moment and has Socrates comment that he was about to say something else. In other words, Plato is calling our attention to the fact that Adeimantus’ interruptions cause the dialogue to digress. If Adeimantus did not interrupt, a different dialogue, different philosophical discourse, would have taken place. In this way, Adeimantus’ importance cannot be overlooked.

While Plato intentionally places emphasis on Adeimantus as interrupting, this particularity of the Republic has gone overlooked. There is no scholarly study that focuses on Adeimantus’ role of interrupting and redirecting the dialogue. His interruption at the beginning of Book V, where he insists Socrates speak about women and children in more detail, has received mass attention, but it has not been connected to a larger pattern of the character. More frustrating, interruption is a known rhetorical device in ancient Greek literature, yet the definitive book addressing the meaning of interruption, The Rhetoric of Interruption: Speech Making, Turn Taking, and Rule Breaking by Daniel Smith, makes no mention of the Platonic dialogues at all.

And so the question of interruption is the question I’ve decided to focus on today. Where does Adeimantus interrupt, what about, what role is he taking when he interrupts, and what is the result of his interruptions? The question of interruption is the question of what Adeimantus is saying, and what Plato in representing through him. Almost always the attention is given to what Socrates says, but that is incomplete. In a sense, by emphasizing the importance of the interlocutors what I am proposing is new way of reading looking at the dialogue. With that in mind, I have attempted to visually represent how looking to the interlocutors changes the way we see the whole of the Republic. This here is a diagram I created to show which interlocutor speaks when, and for how long. Blue is Adeimantus, red is Glaucon. The numbers are the number Stephanus Pages they speak for.

The first thing that I want to point out is that Glaucon is the interlocutor twice as often as Adeimantus. This could imply that Glaucon is Socrates’ main concern. This combined with the dramatic emphasis Plato puts on Adeimantus as an interruption and diverter of that conversation suggests that Glaucon and Socrates’ conversation is primary, and that Adeimantus is more of an observer who interrupts when he deems it necessary. When Adeimantus does speak, it is considerable, and he does not let Socrates and Glaucon speak uninterrupted for too long. The longest place where Glaucon and Socrates speak without interruption is the final section. For some reason, Adeimantus leaves the dialogue quite early. At a certain point, whatever it was that motivated him to interrupt ceases.

With the shape examined, I want to now turn to the content of Adeimantus’ interruptions. Here I have put in contrast the rhetoric of Adeimantus’ interruptions with examples that are characteristic of Glaucon.

Glaucon trusts Socrates’ word as truth, and he desires to be convinced. He even explicitly asks for a persuasive speech. Adeimantus, in contrast, is critical of Socrates. He is not convinced, nor does he express a desire to be convinced as Glaucon does. The question that motivates the dialogue, whether a just life is the happiest life, is Glaucon’s question, not Adeimantus’. Adeimantus questions are about the value and validity of Socrates’ arguments. What becomes evident is that Glaucon and Adeimantus are interacting with the philosophical discourse in fundamentally different ways. For Glaucon, the discourse is an object of experience, and, for Adeimantus, it is an object of examination. Glaucon is the student of philosophy who is actively undergoing the process. Adeimantus is outside the experience and observing. This places Adeimantus in the position of critic or judge.

Here again I want to linger on the underlying shape this positioning creates. On the left is the traditional understanding of the interaction of the three characters.

In the former, Socrates is the largest figure and Glaucon and Adeimantus have the same relationship to him. Some scholars give more or less emphasis to Glaucon or Adeimantus, but they are often considered mostly similar. On the right is what I am proposing. Because he is explicitly described as interrupting, unlike Glaucon, and because his interruptions are critiques, Adeimantus on the outside of the conversation between Glaucon and Socrates. This positioning shows what I mean about the brothers engaging in two different ways. Glaucon is inside the circle. In a sense, these are the two ways that we as readers engage with it. On a first read, we are experiencing the dialogue and may suspend our questions to see what happens, with rereading it we must interrogate it more.

These are typically engagements with philosophy that occur separately, but in the Republic the two interlocutors allow both of the engagements to occur at the same time. We are able to see philosophy judged as it is actively happening before us. Moreover, the questions that Adeimantus asks are the precise questions that Glaucon, someone inside the experience cannot ask. Adeimantus asks what the best education of the youth is. He asks whether philosophy is valuable or just useless and vicious. He critiques the gods. He asks whether Socrates is making the people he speaks of happy. Glaucon is currently being educated,, experiencing philosophy, and, hopefully, being led toward a happy life. To ask Adeimantus’ questions, he would have to step outside of the education he is inside of. The questions Adeimantus asks are important in another way. They are in many ways reflective of the questions that got Socrates killed, the misleading of the youth and heresy towards the gods. In that sense they are the questions about the philosophical education most in need of answers. Adeimantus, of course, does not know these are the questions that will be asked in Socrates’ trial. From his current perspective they are all important because they are about the fate of his brother.

This brings me to Adeimantus’ final interruption. I want to look more closely at this one because it is the most revealing. If we can understand why Socrates and Adeimantus finish their conversation early after this exchange, we can understand what was at the root of Adeimantus’ interruptions. Glaucon and Socrates were discussing the decay of regimes, in cities and in souls. Socrates’ has just asked Glaucon what he thinks the timocratic man, a man ruled by the love of honor, would be like, when Adeimantus interrupts. Adeimantus says, “I imagine,” said Adeimantus, “for his love of victory at least, he’d come pretty close to this fellow right here, Glaucon” (548d). Socrates responds by defending Glaucon. “Maybe in that respect,” Socrates says, “but it seems to me he’d have a nature unlike his in these ways” (548e). We can derive two things from Adeimantus’ final interruption. Firstly, in his final conversation with Socrates, the topic is Glaucon’s soul. The questions Adeimantus asked earlier were heavily concerned with education and philosophy, which can be interpreted as questions about how those things will affect Glaucon. In his final interruption, Adeimantus brings up the topic of his brother directly, and his fear that his brother may be ruled by a love of honor. Socrates says that, in comparison to Glaucon, the timocratic man is less educated, less musical, more “obedient to rulers,” and would “judge himself worthy, not for his speaking but for warlike deeds.” (548e-549a). Remarks that seem consistent with a soul less philosophic. With the question of Glaucon satisfied, Adeimantus is satisfied. In some sense, the main question of Adeimantus all along was Glaucon.

There is one last development worth mentioning that may contribute to Adeimantus silence. Shortly after their discussion, there is a change in Glaucon. Here Socrates reinstates the question and answer style of discussion. Earlier Glaucon had requested Socrates give a persuasive speech. Socrates disallows Glaucon from merely following Socrates’ discourse and tells him that he must “look” and “examine” for himself the lives they are discussing. He also criticizes lazy thinking. "It isn't enough," Socrates tells Glaucon, to "just to assume these things... one needs to investigate carefully... for the investigation concerns the most important thing, namely, the good life and the bad one" (578c). This is all to show that Glaucon is now being forced to assume a more critical stance and to be an examiner. With this shift, Adeimantus does not need to fulfill that role or worry that his uncritical brother may be lead astray. The opening image of the Republic is of Socrates walking with Glaucon up to Athens. For Adeimantus, then, the evening begins with seeing his brother being led along with Socrates. Perhaps now he may think Glaucon more capable to walk by himself.

When considered, it is evident that all of the philosophical discourse in the Republic is the result of an interruption. As Socrates and Glaucon walk up to Athens, they are interrupted by Adeimantus and Polemarchus. And everything that follows, the entirety of the Republic, is the result of that first interruption. What becomes evident is that interruption occupies a central place in Platonic and Socratic philosophy. Plato intentionally writes dialogues and Socrates engaged in them, and a structural feature of conversation is the possibility of interruption. We see this throughout the dialogues: Meno, Protagoras, Symposium to name a few. In all cases, these Interruptions can and do dictate the course of the conversation. The philosophy of Plato is always live and living in this sense. Interruption affirms the nature of philosophy, dialogue, and the Socratic method as contingent upon and particular to the individuals taking part. It is contingent upon the impossible to predict shape that the conversation will take and the detours and digressions that appear from interlocutors. It is particular because the content is shaped by the ideas, concerns, and abilities of the participants. If Adeimantus was not there, the Republic would not be the same, and the same can be said of all interlocutors.

If we think of the Republic acting on us, perhaps the whole of it should be blue since the Republic interrupts us. It begins fairly abruptly, and the conversation begins quickly and escalates. We’re dropped unexpectedly into the text and have to figure it out. It, like any work of literature, takes us out of our own lives, and forces us to reconsider them.

In the dialogue Theaetetus, Socrates converses with briefly with an unnamed man who does not want to participate in a dialogue. He would rather lecture, and if he must converse, he wants a passive interlocutor who will not interrupt him. Socrates, pointedly, does not commend him for being a great philosopher. Plato here again emphasizes the necessary place of interruption in the Socratic method. Socrates is portrayed as radically different from the others in the Theaetetus; he contends with many voices, and he risks and even welcomes the unexpected twists and challenges. In a sense, the Socratic style then is more reflective of the search for truth in our own lives. Like the dialogues, our lives are contingent and particular. As in the Republic, the search for truth is a rough steep path with many obstacles, and we almost never get the retirement and silence we would like to do philosophy. And it is within those circumstances that we must philosophize. As with Glaucon and Adeimantus, we are necessarily inside the experience, yet we must learn to act as critic.

As embodied by Adeimantus, to interrupt is to examine. To put ideas on trial. In some sense, interruption is what it means to do philosophy: to always ask questions and to always keep the dialogue changing and developing. I return to what I said at the beginning: to study the interlocutors is to ask the question of the interaction between philosophy and the individual. From Adeimantus we see that philosophy is interruption. We interrupt dialogue and change the course of philosophy, and philosophy interrupts us and changes our course as well.