Plato's Caves

Months before the 2016 United States presidential election, universities across the country began reporting the appearance of white nationalist flyers featuring slogans like "Let's Become Great Again" and "Protect Your Heritage" against the backdrop of white marble statues depicting figures such as Apollo and Hercules. Groups like Identity Evropa (which sponsored the flyers) oppose cultural diversity and quote classical thinkers such as Plato in support of theiranti-immigration views. The traditional scholarly narrative of cultural diversity in classical Greek political thought often reinforces the perception of ancient thinkers as xenophobic, and this is particularly the case with interpretations of Plato. While scholars who study Plato reject the wholesaledismissal of his work, the vast majority tend to admit that his portrayal of foreigners is unsettling. From student protests over the teaching of canonical texts such as Plato's Republic to the use of images of classical Greek statues in white supremacist propaganda, the world of the ancient Greeks is deeply implicated in a heated contemporary debate about identity and diversity. In Plato's Caves, Rebecca LeMoine defends the bold thesis that Plato was a friend of cultural diversity, contrary to many contemporary perceptions. LeMoine shows that, across Plato's dialogues, foreigners play a role similar to that of Socrates: liberating citizens from intellectual bondage. Through close readings of four Platonic dialogues—Republic, Menexenus, Laws, and Phaedrus—LeMoine recovers Plato's unique insight into the promise, and risk,of cross-cultural engagement. Like the Socratic "gadfly" who stings the "horse" of Athens into wakefulness, foreigners can provoke citizens to self-reflection by exposing contradictions and confronting them with alternative ways of life. The painfulness of this experience explains why encounters with foreigners often give rise to tension andconflict. Yet, it also reveals why cultural diversity is an essential good. Simply put, exposure to cultural diversity helps us develop the intellectual humility we need to be good citizens and global neighbors. By illuminating Plato's epistemological argument for cultural diversity, Plato's Caves challenges readers to examine themselves and to reinvigorate their love of learning.

Plato's Caves offers us a remarkably coherent and compelling vision of what a Platonic theory of cultural diversity would entail. We might think of LeMoine's book as doing the provocative work of the gadfly celebrated in its pages, prompting us to remember that there is still much in the thought of this seemingly familiar philosopher that remains to be better understood., [Plato's Caves] is well-researched, clear, well written, extremely well-organized and [LeMoine's] provocative thesis that Plato was a strong advocate for the philosophical value of cultural diversity is persuasively argued. It is filled with numerous observations about the dramatic details of the dialogues that cause me to think about all the dialogues she considers in new ways and to return to the dialogues themselves with new eyes., Plato's Caves offers careful, clear, and useful analysis while avoiding qualities that can make Platonic scholarship difficult to access for the nonspecialist. ... For some readers of Plato's Caves the primary object will be to better understand Plato, and for others the primary object will be to better understand cultural diversity. In either case, there is much to be learned from this study., For some readers of Plato's Caves the primary object will be to better understand Plato, and for others the primary object will be to better understand cultural diversity. In either case, there is much to be learned from this study., Rebecca LeMoine powerfully challenges pernicious claims that Plato's political philosophy underwrites a Western cultural orthodoxy, that his thought is closed to non-Greek or foreign influences, and that he is deeply xenophobic. As sensitive to the distinct literary forms of the dialogues as to their philosophical meaning, LeMoine shows how Plato uses the foreign or alien to provoke his own characters as well as his readers into the kind of aporia and epistemic humility necessary for genuine inquiry into difficult questions."-Susan D. Collins, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame

Rebecca LeMoine is Associate Professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University. She has published work in academic journals including the American Political Science Review, History of Political Thought, and Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought.