Plato's Tragic Politics: Reading the Republic as Tragedy

This dissertation is about the history of the concept of tragedy. I seek to broaden the meaning of the concept of tragedy for political scientists and theorists by returning to the texts and contexts of ancient Greek tragedy. To this end, this dissertation explores theories of the tragic in the work of Jean-Pierre Vernant and Walter Burkert. Vernant and Burkert help uncover tragedy’s preoccupation with animal sacrifice, which is taken to be central to the meaning of tragedy. In animal sacrifice, with which the work of Burkert is concerned, the sacrificed animal is anthropomorphized, signaling the humanity of the animal and the remorse of “man the killer.” Sacrifice, like ancient tragedy, captures the ambiguities of action, while also positing an intimacy between the community and its victims. The second part of this dissertation consists of a long argument about Plato’s Republic, to the effect that Socrates’ disavowal of tragedy and tragic poetry as inimical to political life must be understood within the context of ancient tragedy and its predecessor, Homer. This second part offers the view that the Republic itself contains tragic elements, above all in the ambiguous figure of Socrates, who, like the officiating priests at the sacrifice who suggest that they resemble their animal victim, bears resemblance to the object of his criticism: the poets. This argument is an extension of important past work by Jacques Derrida. This tension in the character of Socrates is reproduced at the level of the city in speech which Socrates founds in the dialogue: the great threat to Kallipolis is tragic poetry and imitation, but its founders and statesmen are frequently referred to as poets, doctors, and painters, all of which professions are described with derision or viewed with suspicion at some point in the Republic. Finally, this dissertation concludes by considering the Cave allegory of Republic VII, arguing that like Antigone the image draws upon its religious background, particularly the Eleusinian mysteries, but does so skeptically and critically. This final part of the dissertation draws on work done by Andrea Wilson Nightingale and S. Sara Monoson.