ὁμοίους ἡμῖν: PROVOCATIVE CONTRADICTIONS IN PLATO’S MYTH OF ER

Abstract

This paper examines the myth of Er at the end of Republic X. Focusing on the role of the familiar, I argue that the interpretative difficulties that the myth presents compel us to consider the myth from a this-worldly perspective. I discuss how intertextual connections with a scene from earlier in the Republic, Socrates’ conversation with Cephalus in Book I, invite us to draw a comparison between the two passages and to consider the myth in light of the discussion about the afterlife there. What we find in the myth is a mise en abyme; as we try to interpret Socrates’ report of Er’s story, we see reflected back at us an image both of the Republic and of ourselves as readers of the dialogue. While the frame of Er’s story leads us to expect a portrait of another world characterizing the ineffable blessedness of just souls in the afterlife, we get instead a depiction of embodied souls trying to discover through dialogue the nature of divine retribution in the afterlife, souls whose fate depends on their understanding of the text that lies before them. The souls in Er’s story are avatars of ourselves, ignorant, but still questioning. In conclusion, I suggest that the contradictory nature of the myth is in fact carefully calculated so as to lead us to the kinds of critiques so often sounded about the end of the Republic. In recasting traditional eschatological myths into a new, but no less problematic, form, Plato compels his readers to critique in his myth the very inconsistencies they allow to pass without criticism in the myths they have been told since youth. For Plato it is such ‘provocative contradictions’ (παρακαλοῦντα) that most lead us up toward the light of critical thought.