The Search for the Political Thought of the Historical Thrasymachus

Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, as a famous rhetor and an infamous interlocutor in the Republic, has experienced a rebirth in the disciplines of political science, history and rhetoric. A major question concerning work in these fields is the extent to which the historical Thrasymachus can be separated from the character of the Republic. In the historical record, Thrasymachus is an opaque figure. Only a single fragment of a speech survives for posterity. From this fragment, research has tried to distil a system of political thought.What did Thrasymachus think of politics? In which political camp did he reside? Attempts to answer these questions run into a formidable wall: the abject paucity of evidence. Given few definitive clues, research into the political thought of the historical Thrasymachus has reached no tenable conclusions. Thrasymachus remains a fairly obscure rhetor most famous for a fictional confrontation with Socrates.