Tushar Irani's Plato on the Value of Philosophy seeks to put our understanding of Plato's critique of rhetoric on a new footing by turning our attention to what we might call the social dimension of that critique. Irani reads the Gorgias and Phaedrus as complementary dialogues connected not only by their focus on rhetoric but also by their treatment of love (erōs) and friendship (philia) as integral to Plato's incipient model of a philosophical art of argument. Irani's most important contribution is to emphasize the centrality of “the different interpersonal attitudes that Plato believes distinguish the rhetorical ethos from the philosophical ethos: whereas the former seeks to dominate or otherwise win over an audience, the latter seeks to benefit others. A philosophical attitude towards argument thus fundamentally requires a form of care [for others] according to Plato” (6).Irani's introduction provides helpful context (8–18), including a brief treatment of the most important fifth- and fourth-century views of rhetoric, including those of Gorgias of Leontini, Thucydides, and Aristophanes. Isocrates's model of rhetoric receives a more detailed analysis (13–18), which locates Isocrates squarely in the camp of Gorgias and other “conventional” rhetoricians, whose views Irani will contrast with Plato's model of the “philosophical attitude towards argument.”The body of the study is divided into two parts: part 1 (chapters 1–4) treats the Gorgias, and part 2 (chapters 5–8) turns to the Phaedrus. In part 1, Irani argues that Plato's critique of Gorgianic rhetoric consists of two main interconnected arguments. First, Gorgias and his students Polus and Callicles share an “attitude towards argument” grounded in an instrumental “attitude towards others” that seeks to dominate them in the rhetorician's own interest. And second, this Gorgianic attitude fails to develop an account of the soul, the object both the rhetorician and the philosopher aim to affect through their different approaches to the art of argument. Part 2 turns to the Phaedrus in order to examine the Platonic model of the soul, upon which, Irani argues, a properly philosophical “attitude towards argument” and its concomitant “attitude towards others” is founded. For Irani, the Phaedrus provides a necessary supplement to the Gorgias by offering the detailed account of the soul to which the Gorgias gestures without elaborating. Moreover, by focusing on the Phaedrus's analysis of the soul and the soul's relationship to the forms, Irani seeks to connect Plato's critique of rhetoric to his metaphysics in an innovative way.Chapter 1 explores Socrates's contrast between two ways of life dedicated to “the practice of argument” in the Gorgias, that of the rhetorician and that of the philosopher. Irani's key claim here is that “for both the rhetorician and the philosopher, the practice of argument brings with it a distinctive political outlook and disposition towards others” (31). While the rhetorician is motivated by the goal of “securing [his] personal interests or desires,” the philosopher engages in “a use of argument aimed at mutual understanding” (33).Chapter 2 develops this contrast by focusing on Socrates's claim that he is the only practitioner of the true political art (Gorgias 521d), which he characterizes as therapeia, a “form of care for the soul” (46). Irani argues that all three interlocutors in the Gorgias confirm that “while a conventional rhetorician will calibrate his efforts at persuasion to the desires of those with whom he engages, his attitude towards argument is marked … by self-interested concerns, particularly a desire for dominance over others” (53). Hence the rhetorician sees his audience as a means to his own ends, unlike the philosopher, who seeks to benefit his interlocutors because he sees them as ends in themselves.In chapter 3, Irani begins with the well-known passage from the Gorgias in which Socrates claims to share with Callicles the unusual situation of having two beloved objects: Socrates loves philosophy and Alcibiades just as Callicles loves the people (dēmos) of Athens and a young man named Demos (481c–d). The approach the two lovers take to their twin beloveds exemplifies their contrasting “ways of approaching the human soul,” which is central to their “two different ways of approaching politics” (69).An analysis of Callicles's “great speech” follows (70–75), in which Irani shows that Callicles's account of rhetoric contains a fundamental contradiction or “disharmony” (76). While the purpose of rhetoric, according to Callicles, is to satisfy the rhetorician's desires, the practice of rhetoric subjects the rhetorician to his audience's desires, which he must satisfy through pandering and flattery (77). The philosophical life, Irani emphasizes, suffers no such disharmony, since by practicing philosophy “Socrates sees himself fulfilling not only his own good but the good of others as well” (87).Chapter 4 concludes Irani's analysis of the Gorgias by connecting Callicles's immoralism and hedonism by showing how both emerge from his commitment to the rhetorical way of life and, in particular, the role of rhetoric in a model of politics in which the ultimate goal is to dominate others in a zero-sum game. Socrates's examination of Callicles, according to Irani, exposes an underlying “unreflectiveness” about what the good for humans actually is. This unreflectiveness is, in turn, connected to the absence of an adequate account of the soul and human motivation in the Gorgianic model of rhetoric. For Plato's alternative account of the soul, the reader must turn to the Phaedrus.Picking up on the discussion in chapter 4, Irani begins his reading of the Phaedrus in chapter 5 with an analysis of two models of love (erōs) presented in the three speeches in the first half of the dialogue. Lysias's speech and Socrates's first speech present love as a “purely pleasure-seeking drive,” while Socrates's second speech (his palinode) offers “an account of love grounded in the appreciation of matters of real value” (113). Irani's analysis of the three speeches emerges organically from his reading of the Gorgias and its contrast between two different views of human motivation that characterize the “rhetorical ethos” and the “philosophical ethos.” “The main import of Socrates' account of interpersonal love in the palinode,” according to Irani, is that the “genuine lover” described in the myth of the charioteer regards “his partner as a fellow companion in learning … rather than as a mere provider of pleasure” (129).Irani further argues that this view of the beloved object as a partner depends on Plato's model of psychology and, in particular, its account of human desire and motivation. Irani emphasizes Plato's analysis of the soul's complex form, in which “reason functions as an independent source of motivation in pursuing matters of value” (129, emphasis original). The chapter ends by suggesting that Plato's characterization of the forms as “the proper objects of desire for the rational part of the soul” is key to understanding how reason can constitute such an independent source of motivation (130).Accordingly, chapter 6 elaborates the psychological model of motivation sketched out in the previous chapter by adducing evidence from elsewhere in the Platonic corpus, including the Republic and Symposium. Irani argues that, for Plato, the forms are objects of desire independent of any satisfaction the philosopher derives from them: “The value or goodness of the forms … cannot consist in us desiring them, but must be self-contained” (134). Thus the philosopher's love of the forms provides a model for his love of other people, since both kinds of beloved objects are viewed as ends with intrinsic value rather than merely as means of the lover's satisfaction.Moreover, the forms exercise what Irani calls an “internal compulsion” on the philosopher, since the soul, by its nature, desires the forms. Hence Irani attributes to Plato the view “that those who are compelled in philosophical argument are in an important sense compelled by themselves” (139, emphasis original). The philosopher's deployment of argument to arouse such “internal compulsion” in the interlocutor therefore differs sharply from the manipulative or coercive force of the rhetorician's argument. “In contrast to the power of a merely rhetorical argument that moves us as if by external force,” concludes Irani, “the power of a philosophical argument is found in its ability to provoke independent thought, such that the dialectician can be said to engage in a cultivation rather than an indoctrination of his interlocutor” (143).Chapter 7 focuses on Socrates's well-known chariot allegory (Phaedrus 246a and following) as a model for the philosophical practice of “soul leading” (psuchagōgia) that recognizes and attends to the rational nature of the interlocutor. Irani departs from other readers of the Phaedrus, who tend to see Socrates's second speech (the palinode) as a more or less complete rejection of his first speech. Instead, Irani reads Socrates's two speeches together as “an example of rational compulsion” (152) through which Socrates attempts to direct Phaedrus toward the love of wisdom and the practice of philosophy. By depicting Socrates attending to Phaedrus's rational nature—an expression of his love for him—the Phaedrus stages an example of the care for others (therapeia) that, according to Irani, is central to a properly philosophical art of argument.Chapter 8 concludes Irani's analysis of the Phaedrus with a focus on Plato's understanding of the soul as defined by the principle of self-motion. Irani connects this idea of self-motion especially with the rational part of the soul as the essence of human nature, suggesting that the philosophical orientation toward others recognizes and attends to them as “self-movers.” Thus Irani understands the appeal to Phaedrus in both of Socrates's speeches as displaying “concern for Phaedrus as a self-mover” directed at his “capacity for independent movement” through his rational nature (178).A brief conclusion considers the implications of Irani's arguments for some broader questions in Platonic scholarship. Two elements stand out here. First, if the essential feature that distinguishes philosophical argument from rhetoric is its orientation toward others as rational “self-movers,” we need not assess its success or failure based on whether or not it results in persuasion or conviction (185–88). The ultimate aim of philosophical argument, as a form of care, is to advance the interlocutor's own capacity to pursue wisdom, the ultimate human good. Second, Irani's emphasis on the mutually beneficial nature of the dialectic encounter allows him to put forward a nuanced version of Socratic eudaimonism that avoids both an anachronistic characterization of Socrates as a “pure altruist” and an overly egoistic reading of Socratic ethics (188–90). Unlike Gorgianic rhetoric, in which the orator's domination of his audience is a zero-sum affair, the dialectic model of philosophical argument allows for both partners to interrogate their beliefs and desires and to benefit from the exercise of the rational element of the soul in pursuit of wisdom.While Irani's exploration of the connections between the ethical and metaphysical elements of Plato's critique of rhetoric represents an important contribution, some readers will not find all the details of this argument equally persuasive. For example, taking the principle of self-motion as the basis for Socrates's view of his interlocutors as independent thinkers, as Irani does when he claims that Socrates's two speeches in the Phaedrus show “concern for Phaedrus as a self-mover” (178), seems somewhat forced. Socrates adduces the argument about self-motion as proof of the soul's immortality (Phaedrus 245c–246a), but an individual's capacity for independent thought seems not to depend on this view of the soul as a “self-mover” but rather arises from the interaction of the soul's constituent parts and its experiences with the forms when disembodied and traveling in the company of the gods. Others may take issue with his unusually optimistic assessment of Socrates's achievements in the Gorgias: does Socrates really succeed in moving Polus and Callicles “just a little closer to understanding” by “thwarting their desire to win in argument” or in leading Callicles, in particular, “to reconsider his account of natural justice” (187)? The text provides scant evidence for such reconsideration, since the Gorgias ends not with continued argument but with Socrates's mythic account of the soul's experience after death. This mythic narrative, like the myth of Er at the end of the Republic, relies upon fear of punishment—as opposed to rational argument—as a motivation for ethical behavior in life. Socrates's interlocutors in the Gorgias do not respond to the myth, but Socrates himself suggests Callicles's most likely reaction: “Perhaps you consider this account like a story told by an old lady and despise it” (527a).Such reservations, however, do not detract from the overall value of Irani's nuanced treatment of these two central works in the history of rhetoric. Throughout the book, Irani lays out his argument in clear, relatively jargon-free prose that readers will find easy to follow, regardless of their background. Those who are interested in the social and ethical dimensions of Plato's critique of rhetoric will find many insights in Irani's detailed readings of the Gorgias and Phaedrus. In addition, Irani's attention to Plato's theory of the forms and the nature of the soul will provide much food for thought and further debate about the relationship between Plato's metaphysics and his model of philosophical argument.