Plato: How To Win Friends and Influence People-Parts

What do people think of my extensive discussion of Dale Carnegie in chapters 4 and 6? To my surprise, no one has asked me about it yet. It makes perfect sense to me, but it's unusual, so I expected some push-back. Thoughts?

I'll just add one note - a change I'm contemplating. In chapters 4 and 6 I make the argument that Carnegie is more Socratic than you might think. But there's one point where I was thinking about making the opposite point, on pp. 291-2, then I ended up leaving it implicit. (We'll just test out the handy-dandy embed software here.)

Basically, Socrates says that justice amounts to winning friends (with yourself!) and influencing people-parts.

It looks like justice really turned out to be something like the following. It consists not in a man’s external actions, but in the way he acts within himself, strictly concerned with himself and his inner parts. He does not allow any part of himself to perform the work of another, or the parts of his soul to interfere with one another. He puts in good order what are in the true sense of the word his own affairs. He is master of himself, puts things in order, is his own friend, harmonizes the three parts like the limiting notes of a musical scale, high, low, and middle, and any that may lie between. He binds them together, and from a plurality becomes a unity in himself. (443d)

I think it's maybe worth playing up - just a little - how superficially Carnegiesque this famous passage is. What thinks you?

 

Comments

[William Bruce]

I would agree that it is worth playing up, with *where* you direct discussion being the key.

My two immediate thoughts on the matter pertain to the relation of the just man's soul to society:

1. The just man has no enemies.

2. The city is like the man (and vice versa).

These are standard, even pat observations for Platonic scholarship, but in a text with such ostensive (?) purposes their emphasis should be merited. Besides, that is just how you have to *read* Plato: a transvaluation of values (both Greek and Carnegiesque).

"Bring order to the internal world, not the external" -- or something of the sort.

[Brad DeLong]

I thought Dale Carnegie was brought forward because he is the Idea of the sophist, in contrast to Sokrates, who is the Idea of the philosopher? I thought it worked well...

But this requires that your readers have heard of Dale Carnegie. Perhaps "Dress for Success" or "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People"?