In Glaucon's Fate, Jacob Howland presents an account of Plato's Republic that falls broadly within the Straussian camp of Platonic interpretation. Like Strauss, Howland rejects the notion that the utopian regime presented in the book represents Plato's actual political principles; rather, he reads the city in speech as Socrates's ironic construction intended ultimately to moderate Glaucon's political ambitions by progressively revealing to him the superior justice and happiness of the philosophic life and the inescapable limits of politics. The central drama of the Republic is Socrates's attempt to convert Glaucon from a political to a philosophic conception of human excellence. Howland departs from the Straussian interpretation, however, by arguing that Socrates ultimately fails to persuade Glaucon, and that his attempts to persuade him lead Socrates to “betray” philosophy (if only temporarily).

In brief, the argument of Glaucon's Fate is as follows. Although Socrates wished to convert Glaucon from his political ambitions to the philosophic life, he failed. The historical Glaucon allied himself with the Thirty Tyrants who ruled Athens in 404/403 BC, and he died fighting for them at the Battle of Munychia. Glaucon's fate is intimated in the Republic itself (chap. 1). Through the building of the city in speech, Socrates progressively reveals the core of Glaucon's character, which is an unstable combination of longing for virtue and desires for power, honor, and bodily pleasures. The three main stages of building the city in speech—the bucolic “True City” (bk. II 369b–372d), the austere and musical “Virtuous City” (bks. II–IV), and the collectivized, hierarchical, and philosophically ruled “Callipolis” (bks. V–VII)—are, in fact, progressively inferior to one another, as the latter two stages embody increasing accommodations to the flaws in Glaucon's character in order to keep him interested in the discussion (chap. 2).

Socrates's ultimately unsuccessful attempt to wean Glaucon from tyrannical ambitions reveals the conversation in the Republic to be a kind of battle between Socrates and Critias (the leader of the Thirty) for Glaucon's soul. Through readings of the Charmides, Timaeus, and Critias, Howland presents Critias as a kind of supremely ambitious esoteric technocrat, someone who believes that the superior few should use scientific expertise and religious myth to dominate and exploit the inferior many. This same perspective is found in the speeches of Thrasymachus and Glaucon in Republic I–II (chap. 3). To refute this position, Socrates in fact weaves aspects of Critias's views into the fabric of Callipolis, not because he agrees with them but rather in order to keep Glaucon's interest long enough to convert him (hopefully, eventually) to philosophic moderation (chap. 4).

This accommodation leads, however, to the construction of a shameful regime at the service of the pride and appetites of the guardians, overseen by metaphysically sophisticated technocrats who are presented not as erotic pursuers of wisdom but as nonerotic possessors of it. In humoring Glaucon's appetites to this extent, in presenting philosophy this way, and in showing a kind of vindictive anger towards those who bring philosophy into ill repute, Socrates in fact betrays the spirit of philosophy: “he clouds the erotic purity of his soul with the unphilosophical spiritedness of an ideologue” (211). He thereby incurs a certain kind of guilt, even as he also fails to convert Glaucon (chaps. 5–6). Through writing the Republic, however, and especially through the myth of Er at its end, Plato proves himself (rather than Glaucon) to be the true heir of Socrates. The Republic as a whole, capable of being read and reread, may successfully convert future Glaucons to the soul-saving practice of philosophy in a manner that Socrates's actual conversations could not convert the real Glaucon (chap. 7). (This summary necessarily leaves out a wealth of fascinating details and wide-ranging discussions of other ancient authors that Howland uses to bolster his case.)

Although Glaucon's Fate is a rich, incisive, and humane book, and a genuine pleasure to read, I was not convinced of its main claims. The evidence that Glaucon joined the Thirty is slim, circumstantial, and unpersuasive. There is no direct evidence either way. The circumstantial historical evidence Howland marshals is simply that Glaucon was not at Socrates's trial, but that fact can be explained in many ways other than by hypothesizing that Glaucon had died fighting for the Thirty. As far as circumstantial textual evidence goes, Howland is certainly correct that the Republic and Xenophon (in Memorabilia III.6) both present a politically ambitious Glaucon. The problem for Howland is that both Xenophon and Plato also very much seem to present Socrates as moderating those ambitions. This is clearly the case in Memorabilia III.6, and in the Republic it is Glaucon himself who objects to forcing philosophers to be political rulers (at 519d), and who shows no apparent interest (in books VIII–X) in bringing Callipolis into being. The fact that Glaucon seems eager for a while to bring the city into being does not imply that Glaucon left the conversation still in possession of that longing, or that such a longing could be subsequently rekindled. Without a sufficient warrant to conclude that Glaucon joined the Thirty, the preponderance of the evidence suggests that Socrates succeeds rather than fails in the Republic.

Further, although I think Howland is fundamentally correct to argue that the regime of Callipolis is an accommodation to Glaucon's character rather than an expression of Plato's own political principles, it is much harder to accept his claim that the Virtuous City is an inferior society to that of the True City, and that Callipolis is inferior to both. To make that claim requires believing, for example, that the fairly simple rustic country life of the True City is, in fact, a “simple and wholesome life of peace and health [that] exemplifies the fundamental virtue that Socrates will later identify as sōphrosunē,” and that “the True City furnishes the definitive natural measure of the goodness of all other human communities and human souls” (59). Despite the fact that Howland repeats these claims many times, in light of the complexity of the soul revealed in books IV, VIII, and IX (especially the ambiguous “necessary desires” in book VIII), I find it difficult to believe that the “True City” is meant to represent a truly fulfilling communal life that can accommodate the needs of the most gifted human souls. It seems both simpler and more persuasive to see the unfolding of the city in speech as a progressive unfolding of the complexity of the soul and its goods in such a way as to prepare Glaucon for the revelation of philosophy as the best life. Such a view does not, of course, require the reader to see Callipolis as a genuinely desirable regime.

Despite these reservations, Glaucon's Fate is an erudite and closely argued book that will amply reward the attention of all readers interested in Platonic political philosophy. Among many other strong points, its discussion of Critias is excellent, and its interpretation of the myth of Er is thorough and thought-provoking.