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δι
άν

οι
α

ON ADMIRATION AND WONDER: 
Should We Accept Plutarch's Lives in the Platonic 

City?

GABRIEL AINSA 

Which mental attitudes contribute to justice? And what cultural practices can we foster 
to cultivate them? This is to say, what is the relationship between character, politics, 

and art? In Book X of The Republic, Plato’s Socrates concludes that poetry cannot be allowed 
in a just and well-functioning city since “the only poetry that we can accept into our city 
are hymns to the gods and verses in praise of good men” (607a)1.  The Platonic censorship 
of poetry may seem odd to a modern, liberal audience, especially if we are to interpret 
The Republic as a political work, but a careful reading of Plato's text reveals the censorship 
of poetry to be a crucial thesis in the dialogue with a serious philosophical defense. The 
psychological effects of art, the Platonic thesis states, corrupt the moral character of the 
individual and threaten political justice. If we are committed to ethics and politics, we 
must reject aesthetics—or so the argument goes. But those of us feeling drawn to all three 
commitments may find a champion in the first-and-second-century CE Platonist Plutarch 
and his biographical writings, the Parallel Lives. This rich and complex set of portraits of the 
“great men” of ancient Greco-Roman history pays particular attention to the interactions 
between the soul (psuche) of individuals, political structures, arts and cultural artifacts, and, 

1 Unless otherwise stated, I use the Griffith translation of Plato's Republic and the John Dryden translation of Plutarch's Lives. Citations 
of the Dryden translation are by Life and page number of the Modern Library Edition. On occasion, I will employ the Loeb translation 
or provide my own and specify which translation it is. Citations to the Loeb and Greek are by book and chapter.  



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On Admiration and Wonder

ultimately, philosophy. In this essay, I read Plutarch and his Lives as a text of moral and 
political philosophy responding to the Platonic tradition to which Plutarch feels in debt yet 
free to challenge and improve2.  As I will argue, although Plutarch's description of poetry 
(and other activities and arts, including political ones) follows Plato in his analysis of their 
psychological risks, he does not exclude them from human life. Instead his Lives seek to imitate 
those psychological effects while inviting the reader to adopt a critical attitude towards arts 
and politics. In this reading, the Lives are an exercise in cultivating wonder of the good and 
the beautiful (to kalon) through an aporetic inquiry into human psychology and community.  
 
I will begin with an overview of Plato's arguments against mimetic poetry in his Republic. I 
then turn to Plutarch in the second section, which will begin with a discussion of the Platonic 
theses that led Plato to ban poetry and how Plutarch responded to them. This second  section 
includes Plutarch's discussion of the psychological effects of poetry as well as other activities 
like rhetoric. The third section considers Plutarch's analysis of the end of politics in Numa 
and Lycurgus. I then compare in the fourth section Plutarch's aesthetics and politics, noting 
how they both cause an almost identical passion of "admiration," though in distinct ways. 
This notion of admiration becomes the heart of the discussion in the fifth section, for it is 
this sort of passion that leads Plato to censor poetry. To respond to the problems that come 
with admiration, I argue Plutarch needs to transform it into a more philosophical "wonder," 
which, like admiration, includes not only a perception of the good in the object and a 
desire to imitate, but also an inquisitive impulse to scrutinize and learn the truth behind 
all appearances. I conclude that the Lives intend to cultivate this passion towards public life 
and history, and that it presents a threat to neither human flourishing nor political justice 
 
Plato against Poetry  
We may be inclined to dismiss Plato's dislike of poetry as an outdated capriciousness that 
ought to be ignored. But a careful reading of Plato's text reveals the censorship of poetry to be 
a crucial thesis in the dialogue (if not the central one). Socrates first suggests that the Kallipolis 
should be wary of poetry early in the dialogue and eventually  returns to it in the concluding 
book. In fact, these arguments against poetry bind the dialogue together, for it is in poetry, 
or in what poetry represents, that we find the relation between "city and soul" become 
tangible. Thus, in order to grasp what we should make of the Platonic critique of poetry, 
we must reconstruct the arguments with Socrates not only one-by-one, but also as a whole. 
 
I would like to begin with the whole. What is The Republic, and what does it put forth? 
Platonic dialogues are individuated by the question into which each inquires; in this case, 
what is justice (dikaiosune)? The question, as it begins in the first two books, concerns justice 

2 As Babut (1994) concludes, the evidence for Plutarch's New Academic approach is not to be explained away as a momentary or 
instrumental approach to dismantle the arguments of the Stoics or Epicureans. This seems to be Nikoladis (1997) approach, who 
professes that in Plutarch we see a return to the Old Academy of Plato. But for the French scholar, these moments in Plutarch reveal 
a deeper philosophical commitment to Socratic inquiry, as "la marque d'une expérience authentique, l'expression d'une réflexion sérieuse 
visant à justifier rationnellement, fût-ce de manière négative, la validité d'une foi religieuse en une Vérité supra-rationnelle" (1994, 581). I do 
not commit to either interpretation and leave others to settle this issue; however, as it seems to me, Plutarch is more of a Socratic than a 
Platonist in the Lives, committed to dialectical inquiry into the good, treating Plato and the Greek philosophical tradition as interlocu-
tors on the hand and political history on the other.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

within the individual as an ethical virtue. To the extent that it inquires into the nature of 
justice as a virtue of the individual, The Republic seems to be a work of moral philosophy. 
As such, it is concerned with what individuates human beings and their character; this is a 
question of what makes them good and what makes their souls wholesome and healthy. This 
dialogue would need to look at human beings “from the inside,” to provide a psychology (in 
the literal Greek sense of an account, logos, of the human soul, psuche). However, justice is a 
predicate of an individual as well as of a political structure; as John Rawls put in his Theory 
of Justice, it is the "primary virtue of institutions." This realization early in the dialogue 
prompts Socrates to propose that in order to discover what justice is in the individual and 
whether it makes individuals happy, we must first discover what it is in the city. As such, 
they embark on the project of founding a just and well-functioning city—the Kallipolis—in 
speech. To this extent, The Republic is a work of political philosophy. Some may even use it 
as a manual for lawmakers. But somebody who reads the text merely as a political manual 
would miss that Socrates does return to his defense of the thesis that justice as an ethical 
virtue makes a person happy in itself. This is his end goal, and it is quite telling that the 
beginning and concluding books are concerned with the defense of justice as a virtue to 
be desired for its own sake, while its middle books inspect political regimes. As such, it 
would seem that Plato's political proposals merely serve an argumentative function  in his 
defense of the moral virtue of justice. Under this view, the success of The Republic is the 
application of the concepts and predicates of the Greek's political lexicon to psychology. 
If this is so, we might see the relation between city and soul to be a mere analogy3.  
 
However, I resist an interpretation that would paint Plato as an "individualist" in the sense 
of being merely interested in the "inner city" of human beings. Instead, I read Plato (and 
Plutarch) as an astute observer of human nature, who notices that things outside of us, 
whether art, politics, or personal relationships, can have a strong effect on our psyche. For we 
have good reasons to think that, for Plato, the city-soul relation is one of cause-and-effect4.  
We see this fact in Socrates’ attention to education, as it is through education that law-
makers can influence the character of the citizens. The question of what will constitute such 
an education begins Socrates’ attack on poetry (poesis). This first attack is against the poetry 
of Homer and the tragedians and takes place in Book III, where Socrates outlines pedagogy 
as part of his political project. Thus, these arguments serve to justify the censorship in a 
political community. But his complete attack does not come until Book X, where Socrates 
argues that all arts that perform "imitation" (mimesis) are problematic. I understand both 
instances of imitation to be the same,5 and while the latter argument justifies the ontological 
3 In his famous critique of The Republic, Bernard Williams (1973) seems to think along these lines. For him, the method of Plato relies 
on the assumption of the "analogy of meaning," that "the explanation of a city's being F is the same as that of a man's being F" (159). 
Along with some other premises in Plato's argument, he considers that there is a tension in the background of The Republic which 
threatens the whole project. For, in the last analysis, the contradictions he points out bring forth that "there are grave obstacles to Plato's 
reading back into the city what he needs for his political conclusions" (167).
4 In his interpretation of Plato's Republic, and as a response to Williams (1973), Jonathan Lear (2001) proposes that Plato's problems 
with poetry and Socrates' education program have to do with the psychological "internalization" of "cultural influences" and the 
importance of ensuring that the young do not have any morally harmful externals "for Plato, humans enter the world with a capacity to 
absorb cultural influences. The young psyche is like a resin, able to receive the impress of cultural influences before it sets into a definite 
shape" (171). I follow Lear in his interpretation of the causal relation between city and soul as being a dynamic process of internaliza-
tion and externalization.
5 This is the conclusion of Gabriel Richardson Lear (2011) study in which she argues that, against the standard interpretation, the 



37Issue VIII ◆ Spring 2021

On Admiration and Wonder

and psychological problems with mimesis, the former justifies why these problems are also 
political.

The argument in Book X lies in the Platonic distinction between the "reality" (to ōn) of 
the object and the "appearance" (to phainomenon) of it—an artist can only depict the latter 
(598b). This is true of craftsmen, painters, and even poets. A product of art, then, is an 
imitation of the appearance of reality. The object of the imitation of the poet is human and 
divine life and action—but this is an imperfect imitation, for "they produce an apparition 
(phantasmata) and not the reality (onta)." This ontology has psychological consequences 
in Socrates’ argument—since poets like Homer can neither depict truth nor possess moral 
knowledge, consumption of art cannot take place in the intellectual part of the soul as this 
is the part that engages in true knowledge and reasoning. Instead, when we listen to poetry 
or look at a painting, this activity belongs to the "element in us which is far removed from 
intelligence (phronesis) " (603b). It is for this reason that we may rationally grasp that human 
misfortunes are bearable and yet feel great pity for a tragic character in a play. By stirring 
up certain pleasures and pains related to these passions of anger, pity, love, and so on, art 
cultivates the more passionate part of the soul—it incentives mental habits in the audience. 
Therefore, all mimetic arts, insofar as they are in the business of appearance-making, are 
morally problematic.

Let us now turn to Socrates’ argument in Book III, where he takes on the role of city-
founder. Soon after Socrates founds his city, he turns to the education of the guardian class, 
for he needs to ensure that they will be courageous, gentle, and serve the city well. As far 
as they are asking these questions as the founders of the Kallipolis and for the sake of justice 
in the Kallipolis, the Platonic education program is a political program as well. For the 
cultivation of certain moral and physical characteristics is an institutional interest, and so, 
the fact that Socrates immediately turns to the education of the guardians is quite telling. 
The Kallipolis must provide special attention to what its students are learning if it is to raise 
them to fulfill their appropriate task. As such, we can detect the background assumption that 
certain education leads to certain characteristics; therefore, if institutions control education, 
they control character. Hence, through education, political structures mold the psychologies 
of their citizens. Socrates then starts out with the Greek model of physical and musical 
education, slowly examining what to keep and what to throw out (376d); it is here that his 
attack on Homer begins. His argument here is more specific to epic and tragic poetry: it is 
pleasing to perform and listen to because of its rhythm, meter, and musical qualities; and so, 
when students learn Homeric poetry, we risk that "enjoyment of the imitation gives rise to 
enjoyment in reality" (395c). Yet, his argument in Book III does not amount to much more 
than his later argument in Book X outlined above.

imitative poetry discussed in book III is an instance of the mimetic arts of book X. The problem, she argues, has to do with the 
"appearance-making" of mimesis and the psychological habituation it has on the audience. So, people who often listen to a performance 
of Homer's Iliad, for instance, may make a habit of finding pleasure in the courageous, proud, and violent character-type of Achilles. I 
follow her in my reading of Plato and Plutarch.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

Socrates notes that there are two reasons why they, as founders, need to pay as much 
attention to musical and poetic education: (a) music and poetry have the greatest effect on 
character because they penetrate the psyche through tunes, rhythms, and imagery, and (b) 
anybody with the right artistic education will be brought up to have a certain knowledge of 
what is good and beautiful (401d-402a). It is no coincidence that Socrates' artistic education 
program ends “where it ought to end. Music and poetry ought, I take it, to end in love of 
beauty (eis tà toū kaloū erōtika)” (403c). It is worth noting that, as some of Plato's other 
dialogues like Symposium show, this "love of beauty" is not to be considered as something 
base, as some may interpret erotic desire, but as a certain orientation of the soul towards 
what is truly worthy of one's desire, the kalon. In other words, poetry can influence one's 
desires and values, or, in a more Platonic sense, one's conceptualization of the good. And 
if a city can only be just when each citizen has an appropriate notion of what is good for 
them and the community, founders and rulers must ensure that whichever forces in the city 
may influence the intentional attitudes of the citizens do cultivate the proper desires and 
loves. Therefore, since none of the art that he has experienced truly impresses him, Plato has 
Socrates conclude that their city must censor mimetic art. Homer, Hesiod, the tragedians, 
whose authority Greece has followed for centuries, need be overthrown, for only prosaic 
writing depicting true moral knowledge can serve institutional goals of political justice.

Plutarch on Poetry  
In summary, these are the Platonic arguments for banning poetry from the city that I argue 
Plutarch engages: 

 (1) The moral character of a human soul has partial causes in external   
            forces. 

 (2) The end of politics is to cause good moral characters.6

 (3) Poetry is an external force which can cause  a vicious character. 

If we interpreted these theses as Socrates does in The Republic, we would suppose that 
censoring poetry is in the interest of those who structure the political community. Regardless 
of whether we accept them in this manner, these observations become part of the Platonic 
legacy that lurks in the back of Plutarch's works. For instance, his aesthetics suggest a certain 
critique of the arts, but unlike Plato, Plutarch seems more open to the benefits of mimetic 
poetry. And so, in his essay On How the Young Man Should Listen to Poetry, Plutarch is both 
wary of poetry's falsehoods and its damaging effects on youths who listen to it without a 
teacher and critical of those philosophers who turn their backs on poetry and do not take 
advantage of its use (15F)7. As I shall argue, Plutarch seems to believe in the three theses 

6 This thesis is also argued in the Gorgias.
7 In her study of Plutarch's essay, Gómez Cardó (1999) comments on Plutarch's attempt to reconcile his Platonic tendencies and 
poetry; for her, Plutarch asserts that the hedonic task of art is independent from morality, even though it is subservient to it. As such, 
it is the task of the reader to turn the work into something morally productive. She furthermore suggests that something similar takes 
places in Plutarch's composition of the Lives. While I agree with most of her conclusions relating Plato and Plutarch, I cannot help but 
wonder whether Plutarch really does think of himself as stirring up the irrational part of the soul as Gómez Cardó portrays Plutarch's 
interpretation of poetry.



39Issue VIII ◆ Spring 2021

On Admiration and Wonder

stated above, and yet, in a heroic attempt, he takes up the Platonic challenge "to speak 
in prose on her [poetry's] behalf" (607d-e). His Lives, as a work in itself, constitutes a 
philosophical defense of art.

How does Plutarch view these artistic forms and their influence on people—e.g. thesis (1)—
in the Lives? In this Platonic tradition, what distinguishes arts like poetry and painting is 
that they are, prima facie, mere appearances of objects8. They may represent an object that is 
real and true, and the product itself may be a physical object. But we do not say that mere 
ink on a page or colors on a frame constitute the art. Its content constitutes the art and 
individuates its causal power over our mental events. To consume art is an activity that takes 
place within the mind, and so, it is a mental state with certain intentionality. In this sense, 
art is an appearance; its essence is phenomenal. As a subjective experience, it sits in the soul 
and molds our psychology by creating certain upheavals of pleasure, pain, and passion; for 
Plato, this takes place in the non-rational part: "this [irrational] part of the soul he [the poet] 
arouses and feeds, and by making this strong destroys the rational part" (605b). This is to 
say, if we are not careful, poetry may recolor our conception of what is good and beautiful (to 
kalon), inciting desires and behaviors contrary to what justice and virtue demand.

I do not see how we could deny the phenomenology and psychology of art which Plato 
depicts. Plutarch does not, for although they evaluate poetry differently, their description 
of its powers does not differ. His most pre-eminent lawgivers, for instance, freely use the 
psychological effects of poetry for moral and political good. Note Plutarch's emphasis on 
Solon's use of poetry to “to justify his own actions, and sometimes to correct, chastise, 
and stir up the Athenians to noble performances” (Solon 108). He does not even criticize 
Lycurgus for introducing Homer to Spartan pedagogy, for “the few loose expressions and 
actions of ill example” of his poems “were much outweighed by serious lessons of state and 
rules of morality” (Lycurgus 56)9.

Plutarch even generalizes Plato's thesis—for him, though poetry is paradigmatic, any 
sort of art or activity which creates a similar impression on the mind may cause a moral-
psychological change (i.e. in beliefs or desires about the good). Although his philosophical 
ancestor shows a strong contempt for the sophists and orators, Plutarch notes both the 
psychological effects and moral advantage of rhetoric. Rhetoric is “in Plato's language, the 
government of the souls of men, and that her chief business is to address the affections and 
passions, which are as it were the strings and keys to the soul” (Pericles 215). On the other 
hand, Plutarch shows it may serve as moral motivation: "Panaetius, the [Stoic] philosopher, 
said that most of his [Demosthenes] orations are so written as if they were to prove this one 
conclusion, that what is honest and virtuous is for itself only to be chosen" (Demosthenes 

8 This is in line with Plato's ontological argument in book X of The Republic against art outlined above. He takes it further than we do 
here, for he states the painters and poets imitate not the truth of the matter but the appearance (598b). Homer and the tragedians, then, 
are "twice removed" from the actions of human beings and, as such, poetry stands too far from moral goodness to contain any moral 
knowledge (598e-600a).
9 Plutarch may be responding to Socrates' comments against Homer in book X of The Republic when he mockingly compares Lycurgus 
to Homer: "Sparta is better governed because of Lycurgus, and so are many other cities, great and small, because of many other individ-
uals. What about you [Homer]? Which city says that you are its great lawgiver, or attributes it success to you?" (599e).



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

396). Plutarch invoking the authority of a Stoic as famed for his ethical and political works 
as Panaetius signifies that he is not just moved by the illusions of an orator. Rhetoric serves a 
profound moral and philosophical function here, and it can only fulfill that function because 
it creates an appearance of virtue which, like poetry, leaves a psychological impression on 
the audience.

His Lives are full of such examples, but I will not go on. It makes sense that Plutarch would 
feature these moments, considering how rhetoric, poetry, and similar arts are esteemed 
in both his culture and in the cultures that he wrote about. But Plato lived in similar 
circumstances; in fact, he chose Homer as his target because he was such an important part 
of Greek pedagogy at the time. We must suspect, then, that his interest in these arts reveals 
something distinct about Plutarch’s psychology and politics as well as his project in the Lives.

Plutarch on Poetry  
So far, Plutarch obviously grants thesis 1, but seems to reject a strict interpretation of 
thesis 3 (though he eventually will partially accept it). Let us now move on to thesis 2. 
Perhaps Plutarch could have rejected the censorship and contempt for poetry if he thought 
that the feelings, thoughts, and mental habits of people are the business of politics; this 
certainly seems to be a view that modern audiences might be more inclined to believe. But 
quite obviously, this is not Plutarch's view. The ethical ends of politics are a background 
assumption in Plato and more explicitly stated in Aristotle's Ethics and Politics. We should 
not be surprised if Plutarch, who knows these two quite well, thinks similarly. 

Now, it is no coincidence that Plutarch chooses to write biographies of statesmen. These are 
figures whose characters and actions distinguished them because of their rarity and publicity. 
They acted in the public sphere and invited others to assess their actions10. For Plutarch, this 
is a philosophical and moral assessment; he tells us: "my design is not to write histories, but 
lives. And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries 
of virtue or vice in men" (Alexander 139). The Lives is an ethical inquiry, and if one is to 
examine what the best life is for a human being, the lives of people known by all is a good 
place to start.

Is it an accident that they are statesmen, then? Or does there exist an intrinsic relationship 
between politics and the human good? On the one hand, Plutarch often considers the private 
lives of his actors and examines their virtue independently of politics; on the other, as a glance 
over the Comparisons would show, his interest lies in their actions in the public sphere and how 
these actions relate to the sort of moral characters these agents have. And though any number 
of the accounts demonstrated in the Lives hides a complexity worthy of inquiry on its own, 
this does not undermine Plutarch's method of examining goodness  through political actors. 

10 I mean this is in the Arendtian sense. The Plutarchian Life is an imitation of Arendtian action in her work The Human Condition, 
which reveals the agent; and note, furthermore, the emphasis on the "public sphere" and "space of appearance" in Plutarch's choice of 
writing on statesmen. It is no coincidence that Arendt theorizes the space of appearance in which human life takes place from the Greek 
polis. Though perhaps we should respect Arendt's distinction between the imitation of character and action already present in Aristotle's 
Poetics. In this sense, the Plutarchian Life differs greatly from Arendtian action and Greek tragedy. On the other hand, Plutarch's Lives 
might problematize this distinction, regardless of his emphasis in the Alexander on character portrait rather than glorious deeds.



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On Admiration and Wonder

But our question is not what the human good is. We are assuming that Plutarch shares the 
commitment of his predecessors to moral virtue and its cultivation as necessary for human 
flourishing. Our question here is whether politics has anything to do with such cultivation 
in Plutarch's theory, either for the statesmen or for the citizens. As such, for now let us 
focus on Lives which analyze the political projects of its protagonists as separately as possible 
from their other personal and social projects, the Numa and Lycurgus. We can read these as 
discussions of the proper ends and means of the lawgivers. 

According to Plutarch, the Romans appointed Numa following the death of Romulus, a 
Sabine, who, in his almost-absurd piety, is unwilling to enter politics. The story goes that 
his father and kinsman exhort him to political activity by convincing him that it is a divine 
command to improve the character of the war-like Romans (Numa 86). Numa's initial 
reluctance resembles that of Plato's philosopher in The Republic, who does not want to 
"return to the cave" and engage in political life, even if her city were better for it. These 
reasons convincing Numa to join politics also do not substantially differ from the kinds 
of quasi-lies that Socrates constructs in order to compel the philosophers of the Kallipolis 
to rule (520b); both appeal to a duty grander than themselves. Thus, Numa's story gives 
us an insight into the correct final cause of political activity. For Numa, this cause “of 
bringing the hard and iron Roman temper to somewhat more of gentleness and equity” 
(Numa 87) motivates his actions throughout his life. His introduction of public religion 
and such offices, his distribution of the Romans and Sabines by trade rather than ethnicity, 
the formation of his calendar, all are done with this end in mind: to instill a certain moral 
character in the individuals and the community overall. In Plutarch's account, Numa 
exceeded all expectation, thereby “[softening and charming] into a peaceful temper” not 
only the Romans, but also the whole of Italy, for "the love of virtue and justice flowed from 
Numa's wisdom as from a fountain, and the serenity of his spirit diffused itself, like a calm, on 
all sides” [emphasis added] (98-99). If Plutarch considers Numa to “join political power and 
the wisdom of a philosopher” (ibid), it is because he can construct the appropriate structures 
in Roman society so as to inspire them to “the love of virtue and justice.” Therefore, he is a 
praiseworthy statesman, for “he is the truest ruler who can best introduce it [such a moral 
character] into the hearts and practice of his subjects” (ibid). His success lies there—the end 
of politics is in the soul of the citizens.

It is no coincidence that Numa is paired with the other lawgiver whom Plutarch praises 
most, Lycurgus. When he takes over Sparta, he radically changes the structure of their polis 
with a moral end in mind. He leaves no aspect of Spartan society unchanged, affecting 
institutions, private property, and sexual relations. However, Lycurgus' greatest success lies 
with the education system that he sets up; he does not write any laws, believing that he could 
secure just citizens for posterity by merely habituating the youth well through an effective 
moral education (Lycurgus 63). For Plutarch, Lycurgus takes the Platonic model to heart: 
politics is not a matter of setting laws and policies, but of psychological conditioning. Rulers 
are the teachers of the ruled; in this model, justice and the well-functioning society do not 



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

arise from a well-laid-out social contract, but from a nation raised to love and desire the right 
things. Plato's Socrates has the same attitude towards his education program in Republic 
II-III.  If we believe Plutarch, Lycurgus' heavily inspired “all those who have written well 
on politics, as Plato, Diogenes, and Zeno, have taken Lycurgus for their model” (80). Yet, 
he adds, political philosophers left merely words behind, while Lycurgus was the “author, 
not in writing but in reality” of a government supposedly oriented towards virtue (ibid). 
Philosophers contemplate the good and live according to virtue in this way, but statesmen, 
too, share in the good, for their actions need to be guided by a higher model of being. 
Plutarch goes as far as comparing Lycurgus to the Platonic God (78): Sparta is the product 
of his work as the universe is that of the Cosmic Maker. The politics of Lycurgus are world-
building with the purpose of creating the right conditions for virtuous activity. In the human 
world, this well-ordered space is as beautiful as the cosmos. There must be something truly 
fine about such a work, and therefore, the hand behind it must have a special knowledge of 
human life and skill comparable to that of the divine.

Furthermore, when Plutarch compares Lycurgus and Numa, he praises them both for their 
performances as rulers. They succeed in giving the Romans and Spartans respectively  a 
proper moral character, even though only Numa does it by persuasion (peithō) alone and 
without force. On the other hand, Plutarch seems to prefer Lycurgus, for Numa fails to 
cement these moral changes long-term—once he is gone, so is the Romans’ serenity. So, 
if Plutarch assesses  their performances according to their ability to cultivate virtue and 
their failure to sustain it, it follows that a good statesman has a functional end in the moral 
character of the citizens. In Plutarch's account, therefore, politics and laws are not to ignore 
any component of the community which could have moral-psychological effects.

Plutarch on the Art of Politics  
Given the end of politics, if we see art as an obstacle to human flourishing, as Plato does, 
should we not censor it? Plutarch's Lives offer a subtle response: this tension between arts 
and politics does not stand. Art and politics are not merely extrinsically related, but share an 
intrinsic nature. In this section, I argue that Plutarch views political activity as a sort of art 
that molds character through its phenomenological nature. 

It is worth noting that Lycurgus and Numa cultivate moral virtue in the Spartans and 
Romans not only as lawgivers, but also as examples. Had they been invisible, silent policy-
makers, behind the scenes, they would have failed. In praising Numa for not needing force 
to achieve his goals, Plutarch says: “the multitude, seeing an example of virtue in the greatly 
manifest and shining way of life of their ruler, they voluntarily follow reason and join him in 
friendship and concord” (Num. 20.8, tr. my own)11. What makes Numa a statesman close 
to Plato’s philosopher-king is not only his policies and virtue itself, but also that these are 
open to the Romans, that they see those traits they are to imitate in his “the way of life” (tōi 
biōi), qualified by the adjectives “greatly manifest” (eudelōi) and “shining” (lampōi). Numa's 
11 Since my analysis depends on my translation of the Greek, I provide my own here, "αὐτοὶ δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐν εὐδήλῳ παραδείγματι 
καὶ λαμπρῷ τῷ βίῳ τοῦ ἄρχοντος ὁρῶντες, ἑκουσίως σωφρονοῦσι καὶ συμμετασχηματίζονται πρὸς τὸν ἐν φιλίᾳ καὶ ὁμονοίᾳ τῇ 
πρὸς αὐτοὺς"



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On Admiration and Wonder

life is not just visible (delos), but "abundantly visible" (eudelos), and it stands out as a torch 
(lampas) in the night. Plutarch points us, then, to the publicity and perceivability of political 
actors.

The public, in witnessing the virtuous actions of these statesmen, experience what I call 
"admiration" (thauma)12. The topic for the remainder of the discussion will be exactly 
what admiration is for Plutarch, so I cannot give an exact definition here. For now, we can 
understand admiration as a mental state focusing on the noble qualities of some object 
that is seen or perceived in some way. This object stands out from the rest, as if it were not 
supposed to be there, because of its excellent qualities. Admiration, then, involves pleasure 
and awe. And if the object of admiration is some action, admiration also implies a desire to 
imitate. For these reasons, as we are about to see, the images of great political actors leave 
a certain impression on the souls of those who gaze at them. The end of both political and 
artistic performance is showing the good, noble, and beautiful (to kalon), even if not all such 
projects succeed (they often fail); in addition, they both leave phenomenological imprints 
on the soul. In this sense, the art of politics truly is an art like poetry.

In his preface to Pericles, Plutarch includes a revealing discussion of the difference 
between our attitudes toward artists and virtuous people. He begins with the observation 
that, since the soul (psuche) of human beings “by nature has acquired a love of learning 
(philomathes) and a love of seeing (philotheamon),” we ought not focus on objects unworthy 
of our senses but only those which are “good and beautiful” (tōn kalōn) (Per. 1.1, tr. my 
own). As the eye is nourished by the pleasantness and perception of certain colors, so 
there must exist objects which call our inner eye (dianoian theanasiv) to its “proper good” 
(to okeion auten agathon). For Plutarch, these objects lie in “virtuous deeds” (tois areteis 
ergois). He compares these to a secondary type of deed which does not cause imitation, 
artistic activity. But he describes the feeling of gazing on these two objects as “admiration” 
(thauma). Both refer to the mental state, and a pleasant one for that matter, of a person 
whose soul is contemplating a certain object which seems beautiful, colorful, and even 
good. It nourishes our inner eye through the perception of the appearance of something 
which the perceiving part finds worthy of its attention; namely, noble objects (ta kala). 
 
Regardless of the subjective similarity, there is a fundamental difference between the two 
admirations of virtuous and artistic deeds. Nobody, “at the sight of the statue of Jupiter 
at Pisa, ever desire to be a Phidias [...] for it does not necessarily follow that, if a piece 
of work please for its gratefulness, therefore he that wrought it deserves our admiration 
(thauma)”; on the other hand, “virtue (arete), by the bare statement of its actions, can so 
affect men's minds as to create at once both admiration (thauma) of the things done and 

12 "Admiration" is often a translation for the family of words of θαῦμα in Plutarch's Lives. Its semantic field is varied and requires 
some distinctions, which I make throughout this paper. Overall, it refers to the attitude of people towards an object or person when 
they perceive great and rare qualities in them, sometimes to the point of surprise, puzzlement, curiosity, or desire for imitation. 
For example, Ariadne "was filled with admiration (ἐθαύμασε) at Theseus' athletic prowess" (Thes.19.3, Loeb trans.); when Theseus 
and Perithous meet, each "was filled with admiration (ἐθαύμασε) at the beauty (τὸ κάλλος) and was astonished (ἠγάσθη) at the 
bravery (τήν τολμάν) of the other" (Thes. 30.2); in an argument between Eurybiades and Themistocles, Eurybiades is "struck with 
admiration (θαυμάσαντος) at his calmness" (Them.11.3); and so on.



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desire to imitate the doers of them” (Pericles 202). Art moves the psyche by inciting pleasure, 
by making us contemplate something seemingly beautiful. This we might call “aesthetic 
admiration.” On the other hand, “ethical admiration” stems from the appearance of noble 
actions and includes a desire to imitate the actor. Phidias built great things, but none of 
his works intrinsically suggest that he possessed virtue or motivated his audience to praxis. 
Our aesthetic admiration is for the statue of Jupiter, not Phidias, himself. Furthermore, 
if we desired to be like Phidias, we would desire to be like Phidias the sculptor, not in 
himself. On the other hand, the actions of Pericles cause ethical admiration, and, perhaps, 
admiration for the soul of Pericles himself. Thus, we would not want to live the life of an 
artist like Phidias, but we would want to observe and imitate the life of somebody who acts 
according to justice like Pericles. Or at least, that is the hypothesis tested in the Life of Pericles. 
 
And so, Plutarch, like Plato, separates aesthetics from ethics. However, Plutarch makes 
the former secondary to the latter, for the good person possesses something that the 
mere artist lacks. The noble (to kalon) present in ethics is not merely apparently good, 
but is also actually good, in the sense that it is the proper good of human beings; it is 
that thing that everybody implicitly desires. When manifested in a political actor, a 
person whose actions take place in public, it causes a sort of admiration which, unlike 
mere aesthetic admiration, inspires the spectators to act nobly and, thus, to live well. This 
explains how Numa could pacify all of Italy, even though he only legislated in a single 
city. In contrast, that noble and beautiful object present in aesthetics is more ephemeral, 
and never necessarily actual, for it is, presumably, a mere imitation of the actual good. 
 
Note that the difference between the artist and statesman is the difference between technical 
knowledge and practical wisdom13. For Plutarch, a good artist never needs to have any 
practical wisdom to be a good artist, but the technical knowledge needed to produce art that 
will inspire generations to come. A good ruler requires practical wisdom, for she needs to be 
acquainted with the proper ends of human lives and all sorts of activities in order to structure 
the polis well. The statesman inspires noble actions because of this quality. In this sense, the 
human good is more present in the political actor than in the artist. For this reason, to 
gaze upon the Parthenon gives Plutarch a sense of admiration for Pericles—who organized 
the whole project at a political level—and not for Phidias, who merely designed it. For a 
modern American audience, this admiration is akin to the awe that a visitor to Washington 
D.C. may feel when she gazes on the Washington Monument or the statue of Lincoln. 
 
Nevertheless, I suggest that once we return to the subjective point of view, this objective 
difference fades. Like aesthetic admiration and pleasure, ethical admiration is still a passion, 
an affective upheaval disturbing our spirit, desire, and impulses. Psychologically, it seems 
almost identical to aesthetic admiration, as they both play with our mental phenomena 
13 This difference is best outline by Aristotle in book VI in Nicomachean Ethics as the difference between techne and phronesis, but it 
also appears in Letter 90 of Seneca's Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium and book V of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura. This is to say, there is a 
long philosophical tradition in the Greco-Roman world of making this distinction.



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On Admiration and Wonder

and appearances of the good. But this indiscernibility at a psychological level is quite 
useful for us. For if this identity does hold, which it seems to, it follows that if the arts 
are psychologically problematic, then so are politics. Plutarch shows that the psychological 
effects of politics may turn us to the good for human beings. Therefore, by this modus tollens 
argument, we have no reason to be as suspicious of art and to exclude it from human life. 
In this analysis, admiration is a passion, but one whose intentionality turns it towards the 
noble and beautiful (to kalon).

Skepticism  
Our argument states that aesthetic admiration is psychologically problematic if, and only 
if, ethical admiration is; since ethical admiration aims at the noble and beautiful in human 
actions and inspires virtuous activity, it is not problematic, but even positive. It follows 
that aesthetic admiration is not as problematic as some would make it. This argument 
sufficiently  challenges Plato's attack on poetry, which lied on the moral problems brought 
about by the psychological effects of appearance-making. But as the protagonist of the 
public stage, on the eye of all, the political actor also needs to be an exemplary figure and, 
thus, an expert in appearance-making; nevertheless, she does not cultivate vice, but virtue.  
 
It is not enough to say that a political actor is different from a tragic or epic poet in that the 
former displays the actual good for human beings while the latter mere appearance. For in 
fact, both are illusions in one way or another. Whether the admired virtue lies in real people 
or in imaginary characters is not an epistemic distinction which the audience can completely 
make. From the audience's point of view, Numa, Demosthenes, and Homeric poets are all 
performing, causing awe at their actions and pleasure in the contemplation of these scenes. Now, 
perhaps we could say that only truly good actions can cause truly unproblematic admiration; 
but still, the subjective experience of the audience would not register that as we could easily 
imagine that a person admiring Numa and another admiring Alexander could have identical 
mental states.  If they do differ, we might still object that this is not knowable to them. And 
it is in the inner upheavals that the arts reveal their dark colors. However, this response leads 
us to an even more dangerous path, so we should let an interlocutor speak on Plato's behalf. 
 
Politics, the Platonist objector proposes, is psychologically problematic. For politics 
is a space of appearances14. This creates a problem: politics is about our admiration 
for people who, because of their appearance as noble, move us towards a good life, yet 
ethical admiration can also aim at a deceptive object, as aesthetic admiration often does. 
 
For example, the Platonist objector points out, Plutarch does tell us that Pericles, in order 
“to avoid any feeling of commonness, or any satiety on the part of the people, presented 

14 I mean this is in the Arendtian sense of the word: "[the polis] is the space appearance in the widest sense of the word, namely, the 
space where I appear to others as others appear to me, where men exist no merely like other living or inanimate things but make their 
appearance explicitly" (2018, 199). However, for Arendt agents reveal themselves through action and speech in the space of appearance, 
whereas for us now, action in the space of appearance is not sufficient.



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himself at intervals only” (206). In this way, Pericles can preserve a certain mystic image 
of excellence before the Athenians. We stand at awe at his public works and oratory, but as 
far as his actual virtue goes, we have no reason to think that we have any true knowledge 
of it. It is a problem of skepticism: how are we to know that those whom we admire are 
worthy of admiration? Presumably, we could say, we can distinguish the admirable from 
the unadmirable because we have some sense of what the ethical is. But the point of ethical 
admiration in political life is to imitate good characters and learn ethics that way; if we 
already had such moral knowledge, then we would not need political actors to guide us. 
On the other hand, if we do not have such moral knowledge, then it is mere chance that 
we are impressed by the right thing. This is all to say that admiration of virtue seems to be 
necessarily prior to virtue, if Plutarchian politics is to have any purpose, but unless some 
act virtuously purely by chance, virtue is necessarily prior to the admiration of virtue. If we 
rightly admire by chance, even if we have some true opinion about those whom we admire, 
we will never know whether we properly know that such-and-such is the right object of 
admiration. This Menoan paradox, still as theoretical as it may seem, does have practical 
consequences. Younger people, for instance, are the most impressionable, but are also those 
who know the least about good character (insofar as they have not been raised yet); on the 
other hand, they are the ones whom a political leader needs to pay the most attention to in 
her activities and world-building. But once we grant this skepticism as a problem for youths, 
we may realize that, from the epistemic and ethical point of view, those of us who are not yet 
sages are effectively children. The threat materializes when we realize that we have no tools to 
distinguish between what seems good and what is good, especially when it comes to "other 
minds." As such, we are prone to confuse the two. Therefore, the Platonic argument follows: 
if our communities are to cultivate good characters, they cannot risk having deceptive 
objects like poetry, art, rhetoric, or anything that might create the semblance of the good. 
 
Plutarch sees this threat, for instance, in Alexander. Having described an episode in which 
Alexander gets into a disagreement with Aristotle over publishing some of his works, 
Plutarch tells us, with some degree of irony, that “[Alexander] was naturally a great lover 
of all kinds of learning and reading,” for he sleeps with the Iliad and a dagger under his 
pillow, “declaring that he esteemed [the Iliad] a perfect portable treasure of all military 
virtue and knowledge” (Alexander 144). The good for Alexander is disguised as military, so 
Alexander's engagement with the poem becomes an admiration for the figure of Achilles, 
“whose gravestone he anointed [...] and crowned it with garlands, declaring how happy 
he esteemed him, in having while he lived so faithful a friend, and when he was dead, 
so famous a poet to proclaim his actions” (150). It is no coincidence that Alexander's 
vices lie in his love of glory and explosive temper; perhaps had the Nicomachean Ethics 
lay under his pillow, he would have turned out differently. That Alexander thinks of 
himself as a devout lover of wisdom but also carries the Iliad around suggests the extent to 
which the problem of skepticism goes. For poetry disguises itself as presenting something 
desirable and alike to the good and beautiful, but reality might be quite different. 



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On Admiration and Wonder

 
Now the Platonist can turn our earlier conclusion against us: since admiration in art is 
problematic, then it must be in politics as well. In fact, the Lives are full of such examples 
of vicious public figures inspiring others, sometimes to virtue, other times to vice. Like 
his own hero, Alexander the Great goes down in history as admirable by many; at least 
Plutarch's Caesar, who imitates Alexsander as a hero in an imperial campaign, seems to 
think so (Caesar 206). Similarly, Demosthenes’ rhetoric inspires virtuous actions in the 
Athenians, but Demosthenes is revealed to be corrupt. While Plutarch sometimes calls 
Numa a philosopher-king, at other times he mocks Numa's ridiculous religious habits and 
his failure to secure long-term virtue in Rome. For those of us that grew up listening to 
the bravery of Columbus, it is akin to then learning of the genocides caused by European 
colonialism in America. The list of aporia-inducing ethical ironies goes on. Plutarch's 
masterful presentation of the nuances of the Lives of these so-called "great men'' invites a 
similar reading to Plato's reading of poetry; politics, like poetry, disguises itself as presenting 
something desirable and alike to the good and beautiful, but the fact may be quite different. 
Plutarch, thus, might take the third and final Platonic thesis stated earlier and generalize it 
to not only art, but also politics. They exist, after all, in the world of appearances, which feed 
our soul in ways that corrupt its conceptions of what is good.

Is Plutarchian moral and political philosophy, then, as some have recently called it, a 
“Renaissance of Spartan philosophy”?15 The Spartan response is insufficient, I suggest, for 
even Plutarch has his own doubts about the Spartan polis. Commenting on their slavery 
practices and cruelty towards the Helots, he says, “So that it was truly observed by one, 
that in Sparta he who was free was most so, and he that was a slave there, the greatest slave 
in the world” (Lycurgus 78). But, Plutarch reasons, these practices of hunting Helots, for 
instance, must have begun after Lycurgus, for Lycurgus is too virtuous to have instituted 
them (ibid). Still, with no other evidence to back this claim, Plutarch raises the question 
to the reader: was Lycurgus just because he did not hunt slaves, or did he not hunt slaves 
because he was just? In Lycurgus, Plutarch first suggests that Lycurgus did not begin the 
hunting of Helots, but he refuses to commit to his opinion, bringing this possibility back in 
the Comparison of Numa with Lycurgus, “if we must admit the treatment of the Helots to be 
a part of Lycurgus's legislation, a most cruel and iniquitous proceeding, we must own that 
Numa was by a great deal the more human and Greek-like legislator” (Comparison of Numa 
with Lycurgus 102). Plutarch intentionally leaves readers in doubt. As far as we can know, 
Lycurgus may not have been such a figure to imitate. To dismiss the Spartan objector, not 
even our best example serves to surmount this moral skepticism.

15 Liebert (2016, 226). In this political theory analysis of the Lives, Liebert suggests that Plutarch rejects all of Plato's and Aristotle's 
criticisms of Sparta for being a timocratic state with a "psychological foundation" on "philotimia" (the love of honor) (104); as such, 
Plutarch's Lycurgus' Sparta "redeems timocracy" (124). I highly respect Liebert's comparison of Plutarch's analysis of Sparta as a 
response to Plato and Aristotle, and it seems that he is quite right; furthermore, I take his theory of political form in Plutarch to be very 
insightful. But I cannot help but disagree with his reading of Lycurgus; so, I take Liebert to somewhat represent the Spartan objector 
(though his work contains more nuance).



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

On the other hand, this case illustrates how Plutarch's method may solve skepticism as a 
problem for admiration. If he cannot give a definitive answer to whether Lycurgus was a 
virtuous person and legislator in the last analysis, it is because he does not conjure him up as 
a novelist does in crafting characters. In writing historical biographies, he needs to compare 
sources and draw inferences about factual truths, from which he makes moral conclusions. 
He does not intend to construct false narratives, as we sometimes do with children when 
we need a didactic story. The Lives do not present a mere appearance, but a genuine inquiry 
into the facts of what happened in the past and how to interpret them. Plutarch may be 
writing lives, but these are historical lives. He seeks to know the actions of each figure and 
their moral worth, whether they were in fact worthy of admiration and remain as admirable. 
This is to say, we may grant to the Platonist that a fifth-century Athenian may not know 
whether Pericles is truly admirable. Still, readers of Pericles may have a better grasp of the 
morally relevant facts, dispelling our moral skepticism and thereby bringing us closer to the 
truth about the human good.

The Lives, hence, make us admire correctly. But why have this end? The preface to Timoleon 
suggests that this work is a moral pedagogy for adults; one which proceeds through a critical 
method (325):

The Lives aim to teach virtue through political history, not unlike the way in which the 
Greeks read Homer. But note that there is a selection process taking place—not at an 
editorial level as much, but at a cognitive and psychological one in the part of the reader. 
Each life in Lives requires a critical examination followed by a discriminative process of what 
we ought to learn and what we ought to avoid. For if we could just learn from Lycurgus 
what it means to be good and just, then why write Numa? Why all these comparisons? So, 
the inquiry is not merely historical, but ethical and dialectical.  For a dialectic examines the 
appearance from all sides and pierces through it to find a real, latent object. This explains 
why a reader of any “Life” can neither draw a simple conclusion nor fall in love with its 
hero. We cannot completely admire any of these men once Plutarch has planted the seeds 
of doubt. Was Lycurgus truly just? Was Numa a fool? Did Dion’s and Brutus’ bad fortune 
destroy their eudaimonic projects? The apparent good of these statesmen cannot stand 
Plutarch’s critical scrutiny. He extirpates our passion of admiration for the “great men” of 
the past, and with this gone, so is the possible skeptic confusion.

It was for the sake of others that I first commenced writing biographies; 
but I find myself proceeding and attaching myself to it for my own; the 
virtues of these great men serving me as a sort of looking-glass, in which I 
may see how to adjust and adorn my own life. Indeed, it can be compared 
to nothing but daily living and associating together; we receive, as it were, 
in our inquiry, and entertain each successive guest, view [their stature 
and their qualities] and select from their actions all that is noblest and 
worthiest to know.



49Issue VIII ◆ Spring 2021

On Admiration and Wonder

But Plutarch cannot turn his readers into cynics, lest we learn nothing good. Indeed, that 
deceptive admiration is gone, but Plutarch leaves us with a justifiable, philosophical wonder. 
This is the thauma familiar to readers of Plato’s Theaetetus or Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It 
borders admiration in its being a psychological predicate. For Plutarch’s language suggests 
that he judges his own work to have a certain psychological effect as well (Timoleon 325): 

 "My method, on the contrary, is, by the study of history, and by the familiarity  
 required in writing, to habituate my memory to receive and retain images [in  
 the soul (tais psuchais)] of the best and worthiest characters." 

Like Homer’s poetry, Lycurgus’ policies, or Numa’s prayers, Plutarch’s Lives are meant to 
leave certain impressions on our minds. In that sense, they have a phenomenology and, thus, 
incite passions. However, Plutarch distinguishes them from the phantoms of Democritus 
(ibid), granting his characters a greater ontology than that of Homer’s Achilles or the 
Demosthenes of the Crown. “These images of the best and worthiest” are somewhere in 
between imitation and reality and fluctuate between the two. As such, Plutarchian wonder 
is a mental state which, puzzled by the appearance of a seemingly great life, contains a desire 
to inquire and learn what lies beneath—it is an admiration transformed by aporia. As a 
sub-species of admiration, it aims at the ethical good and noble actions, but, perceiving 
the aporetic tensions lurking in human affairs, this wonder incites to seek the truth in 
moral and political life. As such, none of Plutarch’s “heroes” sufficiently portray virtue 
on their own; instead, they  collectively form an exemplar of virtue for us to recollect 
and imitate when needed. Once deconstructed, the “images of the best and worthiest 
characters” constitute a picture which an active intellect needs to put together. Arguably, 
an infinite amount of Lives would be needed to find a perfect account of goodness, but the 
asymptote nature of virtue merely confirms which attitudes we should have towards those 
who exhibit them. The right way to engage with great deeds, then, is not to merely rejoice 
in them as a beautiful painting, nor to imitate them as perfect models, but to investigate 
them. For, as Plutarch concludes his preface to Pericles discussed earlier, “the Good” (to 
kalon) inspires “the spectator (ten theaten)” and “forms his character” not merely through 
“its ideal representation (ti mimesei) alone, but through the investigation (tei historiai) 
of its work it [to kalon]” [emphasis added] (Per. 2.3, Loeb trans.). Only then can the 
appearance of goodness become something less deceiving than mere poetic phenomena16. 
 
Thus, as Plutarch teaches us to read poetry in On How the Young Man Should Listen to 
Poetry, in the Lives he teaches us how to properly admire political actors. Still, the Lives are 
not essays, but a form of literature not dissimilar from Homer. Plutarch’s writing imitates 
the ways of life, actions, and souls of human beings—he often compares himself to painters 
or sculptors creating a portrait. The Lives are more than mere prosaic hymns to good 
16 Ultimately, this interpretation would place Plutarch with the New Academics like Arcesilaus, Philo, and Cicero than the supposed 
orthodoxy of the Old Academy. This is not to say that Plutarch has no Platonist dogma, as Babut (1994) resists or Nikolaidis (1997) 
insists; rather, this interpretation is in line with Hadot (1995)'s placement of Plutarch with these New Academics (it is worth noting 
though that Hadot does not analyze Plutarch's works himself but merely follows Babut): for Hadot, what characterizes these Academics 
is a return to a more Socratic philosophical discourse that is "critique, interrogatif et aporetique" (1995, 217). We might imagine the 
dialectical examination of Lives as a "spiritual exercise" in the Hadotian sense.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

people; Plutarch embellishes his writing with his skills in rhetoric and poetry, and his subjects 
are ethically complex at best. And through this imitation of their ways of life, he provokes 
psychological upheavals, the passions of admiration and wonder. But this latter passion does 
not completely lie in a part of the soul “far from the intelligence (phroneseōs),” as Plato thinks 
all passions induced by imitative arts do. Plutarchian wonder does have a phenomenological 
nature identical to a dangerous passion, whether it aims at artistic sublimity or moral and 
political excellence; still, ultimately, this wonder is an inquisitive disposition, cultivating a 
love of goodness and wisdom in the person. It is what the Stoics called an "ethical emotion" 
(eupathos). In a word, Platonic philosophy may begin in Plutarchian wonder. As a pedagogical 
exercise in critical thinking, Socratic inquiry, and moral formation, this aesthetic work is not a 
threat to either ethical or political life. Perhaps Plato would not welcome Antony or Alexander, 
and perhaps a certain reading of the Lives would dismiss it as promoting an ideology of “great 
men”. I propose a contrary reading: the Lives critiques ideology and forms neither admirers of 
“great men” nor lovers of honor and power, but critical thinkers who want to discover what 
is good and just, and are aware of our individual moral fallibilities and epistemic limitations. 
Therefore, it also serves as a blueprint of how to engage with art and poetry, our political history, 
and, ultimately, one another. Even Homer's Iliad, American presidential debates, conversations 
at a bar, or Zoom dates may have some goodness, if done correctly. Plutarch exhorts us, on the 
one hand, to not let our admiration and love of objects mesmerize us and destroy our sense of 
what is good. On the other, he also tells us not to expel them either from human affairs, but to 
engage with these wonderful things in our everyday life as interlocutors. Certain Platonisms may 
tell us that this passionate engagement is dangerous to our mental health and communities. But 
our conversation with Plutarch's Platonism concludes that the wonder we may feel for poetry, 
politics, and even other people in our lives, when cultivated correctly, is not just conducive to 
philosophy, but to ethical flourishing and political justice as well.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition, 2nd ed. First published in 1958. Facsimile of the 

first edition with an introduction by Margaret Canovan and foreword by Danielle Allen. 
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Babut, Daniel. "Du scepticisme au dépassement de la raison: Philosophie et foi religieuse  
chez Plutarque." In Parerga, 549-581. Lyon: MOM Éditions, 1994.

Gómez Cardó, Pilar. "Plutarco y la Poesía: del Estado a la Escuela." In Plutarco, Platón 
y Aristóteles: Actas del V Congreso Internacional de la International Plutarch Society  
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López y Rosa Ma Aguilar, 365-382. Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 1999.

Hadot, Pierre. Qu'est-ce que la philosophie antique? Éditions Gallimard, 1995.



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On Admiration and Wonder

Lear, Jonathan. "Inside and Outside the Republic." In Essays on Plato's Psychology, edited 
by Ellen Wagner, 168-201. Boston: Lexington Books, 2001. 

Liebert, Hugh. Plutarch's Politics: Between City and Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge 
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Nikolaidis, A.G. "Plutarch and the Old, Middle and New Academies." In Plutarco, Platón 
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