In the Republic, Socrates seeks to convince Plato’s brother Glaucon that the just life of philosophy is preferable to the unjust life of tyranny. Jacob Howland’s Glaucon’s Fate argues that he fails. The available evidence suggests that Glaucon joined his cousin Critias and his uncle Charmides in the regime of the so-called Thirty Tyrants, the brutal oligarchy that governed Athens in the immediate aftermath of the Peloponnesian War. If Howland is right, Plato’s intelligent and courageous brother—suspended as he was between the corruption of Athenian politics and the integrity of Socratic inquiry, between kinsmen who were leaders of the Thirty and a just friend who fell afoul of them—could not be saved even by the age’s most capable advocate of virtue and philosophy.

What went wrong? Howland’s exploration of this guiding question focuses on Socrates’ rivalry with Critias, with whom he competes for the attention of ambitious young aristocrats. The contrast between these two men is stark. Socrates offers young souls an escape through philosophy from the Cave of the city; Critias offers them a path to rule. Socrates’ erotic path is reliant on the knowledge of one’s ignorance and neediness; Critias’s thumotic one is rooted in the presumption of an abstract and impersonal perfection. Socrates seeks truth; Critias supposes he already possesses it. Yet in the Republic, Socrates professes admiration for Callipolis, a totalitarian regime strikingly similar to the one implemented in Athens by the Thirty. Why would he do so? What responsibility does he have for Glaucon’s fate? What was he hoping to achieve when he accompanied Glaucon to the Piraeus, and what does he accomplish in the Republic? In approaching these questions, Glaucon’s Fate examines the historical and literary context of the Republic—including Critias’s thought as presented in his own writings and in Plato’s Timaeus-Critias and Charmides—and explores the relationship between myth, character, action, and argument in the dialogue itself.

Glaucon’s Fate will be published by Paul Dry Books in November of 2018.