Recovering Reputation

Abstract Reputation matters. This is the general consensus among social scientists on matters ranging from judgments about the character of political candidates to the image nation-states project to domestic and foreign audiences. And this is as it should be in democratic polities that run on opinion, for reputation is a species of opinion. But reputation is also a cause of concern for democratic citizens. We worry that political appearances are highly artificial, stage-managed affairs and that the rhetoric of people power is mere window dressing for what is in fact rule by elites. Our concerns find an echo in the fourth-century bce democratic Athens and, specifically, in the dialogues of Plato. This book works with and through Plato’s writings to proceed from an initial and rather cynical view of reputation as a concern of the few, to a more optimistic one about its potential in a democratic context. It shows Plato’s interlocutors engage the many by either undermining their judgment or by challenging it. Whereas prominent Athenian citizens such as Socrates in the Apology and Gorgias undermine demotic judgment and diminish its value, marginal citizens such as the philosopher in the Theaetetus and noncitizen residents such as Cephalus of Syracuse challenge the many while still seeking their praise, thereby permitting reputation’s demotic potential to emerge. The non-democratic constitutions Plato outlines also bear witness to the demotic power of reputation, an ancillary to philosophical rule in the Republic and central to the mixed constitution of the Laws.