Here's a fine argument for you!
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1) Anyone who plans to prescribe medicines will need to be a skilled doctor;
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2) These people plan to prescribe medicines;
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3) Therefore, these people will need to be skilled rulers.
If you expected the last word of the conclusion to be ‘doctors’ instead of ‘rulers’, then you will find the rest of this note plain sailing.
The argument above is given to us by the transmitted text of Republic 459. There are no significant variants in the tradition. It occurs in the passage in which Socrates proposes eugenic breeding for the rulers of the Kallipolis. Once Glaucon has agreed that the city should follow the example of animal-breeders, and breed only the best specimens, Socrates foresees the need for falsehood and deception:
459b10 Dear me! If this also holds true of human beings, our need for excellent rulers is indeed extreme.
c1 It does hold of them. But what of it?
c2 Because our rulers will then have to use a lot of drugs. And while an inferior doctor is adequate for people who are willing to follow a regimen and don't need drugs, when drugs are needed, we know that a bolder doctor is required.
c7 That's true. But what exactly do you have in mind?
c8 I mean that it looks as though our rulers will have to make considerable use of falsehood and deception for the benefit of those they rule. And we said that all such falsehoods are useful as a form of drug.
(trans. Grube/Reeve)In these lines, our initial syllogism is laid out in reverse, with a preliminary expansion of the metaphor of drugs:
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1) lies are a kind of drug [d1]
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2) our rulers will need to use lies [c8-d1]
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3) so our rulers will need to use drugs [from 1, 2; and cf. c2]
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4) only bolder doctors (not inferior ones) can use drugs [c3-c6]
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5) so we will need excellent rulers [from 3, 4 ??? cf. b10-12]
It is the last line of our argument, or the first line of the Greek, where the problem lies, in the invalid reference to rulers, where a reference to doctors is wanted (459b10):
βαβαῖ, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, ὦ φίλε ἑταῖρε, ὡς ἄρα σφόδρα ἡμῖν δεῖ ἄκρων εἶναι τῶν ἀρχόντων, εἴπερ καὶ περὶ τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένος ὡσαύτως ἔχει.
Although it does not affect my proposal, I should note that the syntax of the main clause is slightly irregular, as noted by Adam (ad loc.) in his commentary: ‘We should expect ἄκρους εἶναι τούς ἄρχοντας, but the accusatives are attracted into the genitive by δεῖ.’
So the construction teeters between ‘we need skilled rulers’ (as it would have been without the εἶναι) and ‘we need the rulers to be skilled’ (as it would have been with accusatives). A fairly common confusion of constructions, and not one that leaves the meaning in doubt.
The reference to doctors may be supplied, I think, by restoring the text as follows:
ὡς ἄρα σφόδρα ἡμῖν δεῖ <ἰατρῶν> ἄκρων εἶναι τῶν ἀρχόντων
which will then read: ‘we need the rulers to be skilled doctors.’
The argument is thus restored:
‘If things stand with humans as with horses, then our rulers will certainly need to be skilled doctors!’
‘Oh? Why is that?’
‘Because our rulers will need to use a lot of drugs, and only skilled doctors can use drugs.’
‘True, but say more!’
‘Well, our rulers will need to use a lot of falsehoods, and falsehoods are a sort of drug.’
From the standpoint of palaeography, the story is an ordinary saut du même au même, in which ΔΕΙΙAΤΡΩΝΑΚΡΩΝ was reduced to ΔΕΙΑΚΡΩΝ.
Two other options may occur to the reader: the option of changing ΔΕΙΑΚΡΩΝ directly to ΔΕΙΙAΤΡΩΝ (leaving no instance of ἄκρος in the sentence); and the option of changing it to ΔΕΙΑΚΡΩΝΙAΤΡΩΝ (writing ΙAΤΡΩΝ after ΔΕΙΑΚΡΩΝ, rather than inside of it).
The first option is made less likely by Plato's habit of using ἄκρος to characterize specialists, and doctors in particular. Adam on 366b7 writes: ‘ἄκρος was a fashionable expression to apply to the élite of any profession or art’; we might compare the phrase ‘top-notch’. Within the Republic alone, we are given the phrases ‘a skilled steersman or doctor’ (κυβερνήτης ἄκρος ἢ ἰατρός) at 360e7, and ‘skilled doctors or judges’ (ἰατρῶν καὶ δικαστῶν ἄκρων) at 405a8; the Theaetetus also refers to a ‘skilled judge’ (δικαστὴς ἄκρος) at 201c6. In addition, the absence of ἄκρων would blunt the contrast with φαυλότερον in 459c4; our doctors must be skilled, because inferior ones cannot use drugs. It is not impossible that Socrates might have said, ‘our rulers will certainly need to be doctors’, but it is far more likely that he desiderated skilled ones.
The second option, of changing the order of ἄκρος and ἰατρός, would produce the same sense, but entails a palaeographical story that is, I believe, slightly less plausible. A scribe misled by this homoioteleuton would have been more likely to transmit the tau rather than the kappa that our manuscripts contain.
What are the larger implications of this change? Does it show that Platonic forms are insubstantial, or that Justice is a myth, or that Socrates was a sophist? No. So far as I can tell, it has no larger implications of any kind. And in my opinion, that is a further point in its favour. This very modest change to the text does not change the overall flow of the discussion or the overall import of the dialogue. It simply corrects a glaring error in the logic, caused by a trivial slip of the pen.Footnote 1
