Abstract

My dissertation asks whether and to what extent a rational statesman, at least one who is committed to the free and open discourse considered fundamental to a liberal regime, should make use of the irrational art of rhetoric to secure voluntary obedience to his law. To do so, I explore the suggestion in the Laws, Plato's final work, that the gentle and persuasive bedside manner characteristic of rational medicine should serve as the model for rational statesmanship. In this dialogue, a certain stranger from Athens attempts to teach two elderly representatives of the illiberal Dorian tradition to open up their laws to the gentle influence of philosophy. To achieve this result, the Athenian successfully invokes, at a crucial point in the dialogue's drama, the image of the Hippocratic physician. In the process of curing these men of their demented devotion to the authority of the law, Plato thereby presciently anticipates and advocates, some interpreters assert, liberal commitment to reasoned public discourse. ;I seek to argue, however, that the vigor with which the dialogue's protagonist presents rational medicine as the model for rational statesmanship easily obscures from his interlocutors' view his less prominent presentation and administration of a wide range of subrational therapies. In addition to Hippocratic medicine, this dialogue is suffuse with discussions of purifying shamans, exorcistic witchcraft, temple incubations, oracular prescriptions, apotropaic amulets, mystery rites, voodoo dolls, musical harmonization, intoxicating drink, aphrodisiacs, hallucinogenic drugs, magic spells, and enchanting poetry. This subtle reassertion of the power of magical medicine--as the Athenian discusses bodily illnesses and their cures--is intended to demonstrate to the dialogue's adolescent reader, who displays an earnest commitment to free and rational, even philosophical, discourse, that the Hippocratic physician's rational persuasion is ultimately a less than dispositive model for political rule. Just as the Athenian stranger treats his patients with a combination of rational and irrational medicine, so too must the philosophical reader, if he desires to rule, be willing to avail himself of both the gentle persuasion of reasoned discourse and the enchanting coercion of irrational rhetoric in his efforts to preserve his city's health