Rebecca LeMoine, Ph.D.
rlemoine@fau.edu
Assistant Professor
Florida Atlantic University
Year of PhD: 2014
Country: United States (Florida)
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I specialize in Political Theory, focusing on questions of cultural diversity and interpolity justice in Ancient Greek political thought (particularly Platonic philosophy).
Research Interests
Political Theory
Immigration & Citizenship
Conflict Processes & War
Plato
Ancient Political Thought
Cultural Diversity
Cross-Cultural Engagement
Music And Politics
My Research:
My research focuses on the role of cultural diversity in ancient Greek political thought. My latest work challenges the appropriation of the classics by white supremacist groups (e.g., Identity Evropa) and members of the "alt-right". I show that Plato is not against cultural diversity, as commonly believed. In fact, I argue in my book, Plato's Caves: The Liberating Sting of Cultural Diversity (Oxford University Press, 2020), that Plato saw the epistemological value of cross-cultural engagement.
After a long discussion in which the foreign sophist Hippias proves unable to define the beautiful, Plato’s Hippias Major ends with Socrates proclaiming he has benefited from their conversation for he now understands the proverb ‘beautiful things are difficult’. To make sense of this puzzling conclusion, I argue that we must connect Socrates’ claim to have ‘benefited’ from conversing with Hippias to the dialogue’s opening discussion on why it would be ‘more beneficial’ for the Spartans to allow Hippias to educate them. Investigating this link, it becomes clear that the dialogue aims to critique the Spartan ban on foreign education.
Though recent scholarship challenges the traditional interpretation of Plato as anti-democratic, his antipathy to cultural diversity is still generally assumed. The Menexenus appears to offer some of the most striking evidence of Platonic xenophobia, as it features Socrates delivering a mock funeral oration that glorifies Athens’ exclusion of foreigners. Yet when readers play along with Socrates’ exhortation to imagine the oration through the voice of its alleged author Aspasia, Pericles’ foreign mistress, the oration becomes ironic or dissonant. Through this, Plato shows that foreigners can act as gadflies, liberating citizens from the intellectual hubris that occasions democracy’s fall into tyranny. In reminding readers of Socrates’ death, the dialogue warns, however, that fear of education may prevent democratic citizens from appreciating the role of cultural diversity in cultivating the virtue of Socratic wisdom.
In the vast scholarly literature on Plato and the poets, Plato’s engagement with non-Greek poetry has largely gone unexamined. This article fills that gap by exploring the role of non-Greek poetry in the Republic. The main puzzle it seeks to resolve involves reconciling Socrates’ expressed approval of foreign music at the dialogue’s opening with his hostility towards it during the discussion of Kallipolis. I argue that, upon close examination, the music of Kallipolis blends Greek and non-Greek elements. This suggests Socrates intends not to exclude foreign poetry, but, conversely, to ensure its inclusion. Socrates’ insistence that the ideal city not change from a form of music that, as it turns out, harmonizes the Greek and the non-Greek makes sense as a response to the Athenians’ segregation of Athenian and Thracian mousikē during the Bendideia. Kallipolis’ harmonizing of Greek and non-Greek represents an improvement upon Athens’ approach to music. Against the backdrop of the false harmony of the Bendideia, Socrates recommends a musical education that promotes a simple harmony of two cultures. Kallipolis is not Socrates’ final word, however. Rather, it represents a stepping-stone on the way towards the image of the cosmos that replaces the Homeric model: the eight distinct notes of the Sirens—matching the eight notes of the diatonic scale, each corresponding to a particular culture—forming a perfect harmony as presented in the Myth of Er.
Though Plato's Euthydemus is usually interpreted as an unambiguous attempt to discredit the sophists' teaching methods, I argue that the dialogue defends the role sophists play in philosophic education. Read in its dramatic context, the dialogue reveals that sophists offer a low-stakes environment for the testing and development of an important political virtue: moderation. The sophist's classroom facilitates the cultivation of moderation by simulating the agonistic conditions of the assembly or courtroom, where many encounter temptations to bully others verbally. By arousing one's inner bully, the sophists expose the limits of one's moderation. While not sufficient for developing moderation, such self-revelations constitute a necessary part of the process even for a philosopher like Socrates. Ironically, by bringing out the worst in their students, the sophists unknowingly supply a protreptic to philosophy.
Classical antiquity has become a political battleground in recent years in debates over immigration and cultural identity-whether it is ancient sculpture, symbolism, or even philosophy. Caught in the crossfire is the legacy of the famed ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Though works such as Plato's Republic have long been considered essential reading for college students, protestors on campuses around the world are calling for the removal of Plato's dialogues from the curriculum, contending that Plato and other thinkers in the Western philosophical tradition promote xenophobic and exclusionary ideologies. The appropriation of the classics by white nationalists throughout history-from the Nazis to modern-day hate groups-appears to lend credence to this claim, and the traditional scholarly narrative of cultural diversity in classical Greek political thought often reinforces the perception of ancient thinkers as xenophobic. This is particularly the case with interpretations of Plato. While scholars who study Plato reject the wholesale dismissal of his work, the vast majority tend to admit that his portrayal of foreigners is unsettling. From student protests over the teaching of canonical texts such as Plato's Republic to the use of images of classical Greek statues in white supremacist propaganda, the world of the ancient Greeks is deeply implicated in a heated contemporary debate about identity and diversity. Plato's Caves defends the bold thesis that Plato was a friend of cultural diversity, contrary to many contemporary perceptions. It shows that, across Plato's dialogues, foreigners play a role similar to that of Socrates: liberating citizens from intellectual bondage. Through close readings of four Platonic dialogues-Republic, Menexenus, Laws, and Phaedrus-Rebecca LeMoine recovers Plato's unique insight into the promise, and risk, of cross-cultural engagement. Like the Socratic "gadfly" who stings the "horse" of Athens into wakefulness, foreigners can provoke citizens to self-reflection by exposing contradictions and confronting them with alternative ways of life. The painfulness of this experience explains why encounters with foreigners often give rise to tension and conflict. Yet it also reveals why cultural diversity is an essential good. Simply put, exposure to cultural diversity helps one develop the intellectual humility one needs to be a good citizen and global neighbor. By illuminating Plato's epistemological argument for cultural diversity, Plato's Caves challenges readers to examine themselves and to reinvigorate their love of learning.
Nearly twenty years ago, Martha Nussbaum’s Cultivating Humanity defended the Socratic method as a valuable tool for helping citizens engage in self-examination and thereby become more cosmopolitan or open to diversity. In response, some reviewers suggested the Socratic method may not be suitable for multicultural classrooms, that it may in fact be culturally imperialistic. Three main arguments form the basis of these critiques: (1) the linguistic imperialism critique, which posits that in assuming a particular language in which to frame the discourse (in Socrates’ case, Greek), the Socratic method privileges certain participants and cultural paradigms; (2) the normative imperialism critique, that in requiring participants to think critically and give “reasons” the Socratic method presupposes the superiority of a particular set of norms; and (3) the philosophic imperialism critique, that the Socratic method is intrinsically imperialistic in its attempt to convert participants to the philosophic way of life. Attending to these critiques, this book chapter argues that while the Socratic method is situated in a particular cultural milieu, it works to transport all participants—including the teacher—beyond that context through a shared experience of estrangement.
Review of Jill Frank's Poetic Justice: Rereading Plato's Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).
Review of Kevin M. Crotty's The City-State of the Soul: Constituting the Self in Plato's Republic (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016).
Review of Jonny Thakkar's Plato as Critical Theorist (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018).
Review of John von Heyking's The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship
Review of Hesiod, Theogony; Works and Days, trans. C.S. Morrissey (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2012)
Interviewed by Andy Fitch regarding my book, Plato's Caves: The Liberating Sting of Cultural Diversity (Oxford University Press, 2020).
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