What brings happiness in old age?
There is, perhaps, no better example of dialectic reasoning in ancient literature than Plato’s own masterwork, the Republic. It is a work of art that reveals itself only to those who have been readied by initiation.
Plato’s dialogues are very possibly the most difficult works in the western tradition, in large part because of Plato’s concern for using the written word carefully and well. The written word can be, he says, “the first step in forgetting.” This would be reason enough to not say exactly what he is thinking, because he knows it is best for us to think for ourselves. Plato, like Socrates was careful to let his partners in discussion come to their own conclusions, each as they were individually ready for them. Both give us food for thought...then wait for us to get around to thinking about it, in our .
We might surmise that Plato’s silence is mere prudence, since his outspoken mentor has recently been put to death for saying too much, but Plato insists that the reason goes much deeper than this. In his Seventh Epistle, he explains that he has never put his deepest thoughts into words because people who don’t truly understand them will nonetheless pretend they do, take them and call them their own, and use them to ends that are not good – as wolves might wear sheep’s clothing.
This is (arguably) also the reason that Aristotle’s ethics (these days called virtue ethics) would have us take care when following extrinsically defined rules and codes, for following directions can bring us to simply fake it, only going through the motions of being a good person…without ever really thinking through what the right thing to do actually is.
And so many ancient writings, especially Plato’s, are deliberately difficult specifically because a virtuous person does not want or need to be given direct answers, but rather to be provoked to think for him or herself. Plato’s dialogues challenge us to ask ourselves -- what do I think? “You be the judge!” Socrates insists at his trial, for the questions they are discussing and the issues that arise in the process of searching for the truth cannot be taught by direction. Indeed, “nothing is an answer if you haven’t asked the question.” This is why dialectic teaching and learning is so important, especially when talking with the young.
In the beginning of this dialogue, Socrates is cajoled into visiting the home of an old friend, Cephelus, where he takes up an extended dialogue with Polmarchus, the son of Cephelus, as well as Plato’s oligarchic (and somewhat bloodthirsty) uncle, Critias, among others. For reasons that become clear in the discussion, Socrates takes up the task of relaying a discussion he’d had the day before with Plato’s older brothers, Glaucon and Ademantus. Being only a boy himself, Plato does not show up in the discussions he records, but we can surmise that he was there, and was a very good listener, foras he spent his life recalling for posterity what he heard growing up at Socrates’ feet.
They start out discussing the regrets of old age when the question arises, What brings happiness in old age?
Cephalus replies that he thinks it has much to do with wealth, and the others tend to agree that living virtuously is much easier when one can afford such ideals. But Socrates wonders aloud whether it matters how you got your wealth? Does it make a difference if you earned or inherited your living, whether you came by it justly or unjustly? For surely neither wealth alone nor living virtuously brings peace of mind or happiness. So they agree you have to have come upon your wealth justly in order to be truly happy with it. But then this brings up the question, what is justice?
Cephalus says he thinks that justice involves telling the truth, keeping promises, and paying your debts – what he calls, taking care of business. (He doesn’t say, but might and perhaps should have, that such behavior comes much easier to a rich person, even to an unjust rich person who might create the appearance of being a good person simply by keeping his accounts in order, than to a poor person, for even a truly good poor person – like Socrates, who never took a single drachma for his teaching.) Socrates does say though that we must be careful here, for words can be slippery, and so to say that justice is, for instance, always keeping promises might lead us to think that a person should always, for instance, return a knife one has borrowed, even if it is to someone who has an appetite to kill -- and this cannot be right. There are exceptions to every rule, and so we must understand such rules and codes as general rules of thumb which must be applied by a thinking person to the particular circumstances before him. Again, a truly virtuous person will be continuously and deliberately thinking through what the right thing to do is in any given circumstance. It may be a good rule of thumb to mind one’s business by telling the truth, keeping promises, and paying debts – but a virtuous person must come to see when it is just to follow the rules, and when doing so would itself be an injustice.
Socrates adds then that to find the essence of justice, or of anything else for that matter, we need more than a mere list of examples – what we need is to figure out what all these examples have in common. It may be right for a person to take care of their own business, but then the question remains, what truly is our business? Is justice, for instance, a rich man’s business?
Polemarchus says that he thinks justice is to do good to friends and evil to enemies. Polemarchus is assuming that one’s friends are good, Socrates reminds him, and that one’s enemies are bad, but – as we use the word friends rather loosely – this may not always be the case. And since we can easily make mistakes about who is good and who is not, we might end up doing good for friends who are themselves not good, and doing harm to good ones. For this reason, helping friends might actually be wrong in a given case, and harming enemies might be wrong too. Come to think of it, Socrates says -- can harming anyone ever be right? Even if it is right to do good for our friends who are good, can it ever be right to do harm to our enemies or anyone else -- even if they aren’t good? Is it ever right to do harm to anyone? Can a good person ever harm anyone justly? Or would only a bad person do such a thing?
Mind you, Socrates doesn’t actually think anyone is ever objectively or permanently ‘bad’ – he does however think that some are sufficiently ignorant of what is good that they become what we would call egoists; or what he calls tyrants or despots. As Aristotle will later add to this discussion (a generation later) that bad habits can thwart good reasoning, but Socrates holds that we can always choose to override bad habits, at least when we come to understand that our own happiness depends upon it. People can change, if they want to; the philosopher’s job is to help them want to. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any purpose in dialogue…for in such discussion lies the power of mutual self-improvement, which is to say, to help one another see that our own true self-interest lies in our being good. Again, Aristotle will later illuminate the importance of personal ideals in this process, for while we are born with both higher and lower potentials, it is our continual choice which we will actualize in a given life. And it is for lack of philosophy – that is, the love of truth – that most of us never do. It is not that we are born bad, but that we are simply never helped (or let) to learn how to be good, or even, for that matter, what good is. But then whose fault is this? Not our nature, and only partly our nurture, but more than both, it is by our choice if and when we miss the mark..
At this point, Thrasymachus (a slave owner and all around scoundrel) jumps into the conversation, arguing that justice is only and nothing but the interest of the stronger. Whatever the powerful say it is, that is what justice means. It is the might to make and enforce rules and laws that determines what is right, he insists. And what’s more, whatever the form of government (whether it is the rule of one (as in kingship or tyranny), the rule of the few (as in aristocracy and oligarchy), or the rule of the many (as in polity or democracy), it is those who make rules who can enforce their wishes, and so can get everything they want. This is wherein happiness is actualized, by getting what we want. And there is no other justice, but what the powerful dictate. Therefore, it is far more profitable for the powerful to be unjust than to be just, for one with power can simply take whatever he wants. And likewise, it is in the interest of the ruled to serve justice as it is defined by those who have the power to reward or punish them. Justice then is whatever the powerful deem to be good for them, and this is what constrains how the poor and powerless should behave.
Really? Socrates wonders. What happens when a powerful person is mistaken about what is good for them? After all, if a fool who does not know what is truly good takes all that he wants because he believes it’s good for him, he may actually be getting something that does him harm…which isn’t really what he wants, right? For instance, this same fool might want wealth so much that he will enslave others to get it, but what happens when such a tyrant finds himself alone with his slaves? Are the terrors he is sure to endure really what he wanted? What’s more, can anyone simply take the kinds of goods that a truly rich person counts among his blessings – for instance, the trust, friendship, and love that a more rational person would want? Or must such things be willingly given?
In this light, does it really make sense to say that the will of the powerful constitutes justice, given that might cannot guarantee that a person is right about the value of the outcome he will ultimately get? And if injustice doesn’t get an unjust person what he really wants, then what good is it, really? Power (he argues elsewhere) is after all the ability to get the good things one wants, and if taking what one believes one wants doesn’t get one the good one really wants, then such a person is not very powerful after all. Injustice is not prudent or wise then, if what a person wants isn’t actually what’s good for them.
Thrasymachus says Socrates is being naïve, and that justice is not prudent either. It’s clear, this scoundrel argues, that people would rather do than suffer injustice, because no one wants to be on the butt end of injustice. So those who are honest and virtuous just make themselves gullible, vulnerable, and useless – all of which makes life not even worth living.
Socrates agrees that being on the receiving end of injustice comes with difficulties, but is it worse or better, he wonders, than carrying it within one? All things considered, it may be better to endure than to deliver injustice, and for reasons the fool may not have considered.
After all (unbeknownst to the tyrant), justice causes harmony in the soul and makes the just person or state more peaceful, confident, and effective in action. Only the just person may truly know this, in the strong sense (gnosis), but as the tyrant craves power so, wouldn’t such a one see this in his interest too? If it turns out that injustice causes disunion in the soul, and makes one god-forsaken, while the just become stronger over time – especially when it comes to achieving their own happiness – then who is truly the fool, and who is truly powerful? And since this will have the same effect on a couple or a state as on an individual, power over others is sure to exacerbate this effect. So if injustice ultimately defeats itself by making a person an enemy to oneself, as well as all others who are just, has the tyrant truly benefit by his so-called power, or has he actually lost out by following his mistaken idea of good? Socrates concludes, for his part, that while honesty may seem gullible and useless in youth, in later years, the tyrants ego will prove to have been self-destructive. By contrast, a wise person’s justice will ultimately prove to have been in his best interest all along.
Socrates goes on at length to argue that the art of true happiness is all about understanding true justice in this way. Certainly art, in as much as it is truly art, aims at perfection, and does not follow the principle of might makes right. Because art is always intrinsically motivated, the artist cannot be forced to create by extrinsic motivation. The true artist will create only out of love of the good. So too the art of happiness is another good that cannot simply be taken, but must rather be earned.
There are two kinds of change, Socrates reminds us -- that which comes from within (artiface) and that which comes from without (nature). Nature’s changes are beyond human power (or were then, at any rate); only human activity, or artifice, is within human control. A system (e.g. organism, or soul, or community, etc.) at its best (i.e. healthy) is invulnerable to change from without, which is to say, there is little or no extrinsic power working on it. If a system is not centered, self-controlled, temperate and balanced, this is when it is vulnerable to extrinsic causes of change. Force is therefore an illusory form of power. Strength amounts to immunity from change that comes from outside of us.
Indeed, the true artist – and life itself is art, after all -- stays within the limits of his art, and does not interfere with the art of others. And just as the shepherd’s art is for the sake of the flock, so governments’ art is for the good of all the subjects, not just the good of the rulers. Likewise, the good of the whole individual is not served merely by the wants of the immediate self, unless the immediate self is listening to the voice of good reason, which will remind one of the ultimate wants which are the ends to which immediate wants are only a means.
Thus, in answer to Thrasymachus’ belief about the benefits of injustice, the art of politics cannot be equal to the power to see to the ruler’s interest, Socrates concludes, and it is for this reason that rulers should not be paid more than fairly. In fact, accumulation of private property ought never to be encouraged at all, Socrates thinks, because both wealth and poverty can be subversive to true art. Extrinsic wealth creates an ulterior motive which distracts the artist from intrinsic wealth, which is a truer good, though only the intrinsically wealthy can know it, in the truest sense of knowing (gnosis). If you set up rewards other than simply doing a job well, you turn artists (that is, children, physicians, or statesmen, or for that matter, anyone doing any job) into something other than true artists. No man can follow two masters, after all, for the time will come when they will compete, and the choice a person makes when deciding which authority to listen to (i.e. one’s inner voice or the voice of unjust authority) that determines a person’s character, one way or another. Here is where taking care of one’s business matters most – and where the true art of happiness has its rewards.
For instance, the physician who cares more about money than good health will do harm if the extrinsic profit is great enough, and so such a person is not a true physician. Likewise, a person who will play dumb to lies when there seems to be some profit to be had in deceit is not a true philosopher (i.e. lover of truth). And for this reason, when it comes to government, we should never encourage guardians to be anything other than guardians, he says, otherwise you’ll have guardians who themselves need to be guarded.
All true artists must be single-minded about their work, free of ulterior motivation other than the quality of their proper function, as is necessary to hit the target of true art. The purpose of any job is to do that thing well, not merely to profit oneself with extrinsic goods. As a true doctor seeks only health, so a true ruler seeks only the health of the whole community, that is, that good of all subjects, and this should be payment enough. We should all be paid fairly for our work, so we can see to the satisfaction of our needs, of course. But if we cannot resist the temptation to take advantage of others needs, then we should leave the job to be done by someone else who can do it better.
For this reason, the function of the law and of good rulers is not to see to the interests of any particular class, but to harmonize the city/state as a whole and the citizens to one another – to the good of all. The task of a good leader is to teach them to cooperate to their common ends, not put them in competition with one another such that some win and others lose.
From this is follows that anyone who aims mainly at being rich, or powerful, or popular is at odds with that principle of justice in their own soul, and therefore should not be allowed to lead or serve, for someone else could do it better. They cannot even rule themselves, after all, why should they be allowed to rule anyone else? In fact, in a good polity, men would avoid, rather than seek office, and the good leader is more likely to be begged by his subjects to take the lead, than to beg his subjects to let him. Conversely, the payment that a just person deserves for not accepting the responsibility of taking office is to be ruled by someone less just than themselves.
"our city…be governed by us and you with waking minds, and not, as most cities now which are inhabited and ruled darkly as in a dream by men who fight one another for shadows and wrangle for office as if that were a great good, when the truth is that the city in which those who are to rule are least eager to hold office...they will assuredly approach office as an unavoidable necessity."(RepC7.520d-e)
Thus, "We require...that those who take office should not be lovers of rule."(RepC7.521b) "All goes wrong when...they set about fighting for power, and this internecine conflict ruins them and their country. The life of true philosophy is the only one that looks down upon offices of state; and access to power must be confined to men who are not in love with it."[RepC p.235]
"[T]he life of true philosophers" looks with scorn on political office.(RepC 521b) But "the heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. That is the fear, I believe, that makes decent people accept power... If there could ever be a society of perfect men, there might well be as much competition to evade office as there now is to gain it; and it would then be clearly seen that the genuine ruler's nature is to seek only the advantage of the subject."[RepC p.29]
Thus, "...the truth is that you can have a well-governed society only if you can discover for your future rulers a better way of life than being in office; then only will power be in the hands of men who are rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that brings happiness, a good and wise life."(RepC7.521)
Knowing what is within human control is key to understanding where our true power really lies, and illuminates what we can and cannot justly accomplish. Understanding this, we see that everyone has a virtue or an art or a job or proper business, a responsibility -- whatever you want to call it, something which, if they don’t do it, simply won’t get done. And it is this purpose of helping the young find their proper art that education should serve. Figuring out what is your responsibility, i.e. what you are good for, is the only way to figure out what is good for you, that is, what justice turns out to mean in your life.
In Socrates case, when asked what he was good for – he laughed and said, pimping – by which he meant introducing people to one another from whom they are likely to benefit. Such friendship is, after all, among the highest of all goods! Indeed, as Socrates ultimate proclaims, “Love is the only thing I ever claimed to know anything about.”
Unfortunately, most of what Socrates argues here goes right over Thrsymachus’ head (as it often does those who are habituated to injustice), but it does not escape the attention of Plato’s thoughtful older brothers. And though Socrates ultimately observes that “one might as well try to shave a lion as try to talk sense to someone like Thrasymachus,” he is always delighted to take up such inquiry with young people, who tend to be more inclined to want to learn.
At this point, Plato’s older brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, speak up, saying that they are not yet satisfied with Socrates’ account. They do not agree with Thrasymachus, of course, but they also do not think that Socrates has made his case clearly enough. They’d like to be more truly convinced that the mere appearance of justice is not enough to make a person happy.
This is an important thing to accomplish, once and for all, they argue, because the effect of this idea on the young – that is, that might makes right – is to become excuse for becoming a rotten human being, and once these habits are established, they are very difficult, if not impossible, to break. Most people wear justice like sheep’s clothing, they say, because there are social rewards for appearing to be just. They learn to pretend to be good to avoid social scorn, but when they think they can get away with injustice, when no one is looking, then nothing will stop them if they think they won’t be caught. Without understanding the true price of injustice (i.e. intrinsic poverty), the souls of the young are easily corrupted.
And what’s more, when people do choose to act justly, even when no one is looking, it is too often because they wish to avoid the gods’ wrath, believing they at least are watching. And to make matters worse, those who lost that faith, or never believed in the gods to begin with, jump to the conclusion that there is no other reason to be just. So we are left with the question, Glaucon and Adaimantus argue, what, if anything, is justice intrinsically good for?
Socrates seems to know, but needs to make a more convincing case, they say, for what he was saying earlier. Is there no other reason to be just, Plato’s older brothers ask, besides the promise of rewards and the fear of punishments? If one can get away with injustice without having to actually be just, then doesn’t injustice pay, as Thrasymachus says? If there are no gods and no punishment to be feared, then why bother being good?
Glaucon uses the story of the ring of Gyges to set up this discussion (which could be the seed of the Lord of the Rings dilemma, by the way). It’s about a shepherd who found a dead body still wearing a golden, and come to find, magic ring. When he put it on his own finger, and turned it inward, he discovered it made him invisible, and so he could get away with anything – or so he thought. So he killed the king, and raped the queen, and stole the treasury, etc. etc. Glaucon says imagine there were two such rings, and that both a just and an unjust person put them on. At that point, it seems the just man would act just like the unjust man because he’s have no clear reason to be otherwise. This he takes as evidence that, if a person were guaranteed to escape getting caught, he would have no reason to be just, and that therefore justice is of no good, except for appearances’ sake. Anyone who wouldn’t take advantage of such a power would be a fool, Glaucon notes that Thrasymachus would argues, and though people may praise him to his face, they would be doing so only to keep up appearances for fear of revealing themselves as unjust and blowing their own cover, and they’d call him a gullible fool behind his back. This is why it is said that human nature is evil, Thrasymachus says, because, given this choice, anyone would choose injustice.
So why, Glaucon asks, is the appearance of justice not enough for happiness? Put another way, he wants to know the true value of justice, apart from all its instrumental value. He wants Socrates to show if and how justice is intrinsically profitable to the individual, indeed, in his best interest, whether rewarded by gods and men or not. Because if justice is only valuable in the eyes of others, then its fair to conclude that human nature is not good, perhaps even intrinsically evil, or at least artificial, and that individuals are only just if and when it serves their own ends. A truly good and just person would be just no matter what, even if he or she is the only person who will know, and even, it must be added, if it will them harm. If it cannot be shown why a person would do this, then it appears that injustice actually is more profitable than justice, and that the unjust will prosper while the just pay a price.
Socrates takes up the challenge. Let’s imagine, he says, both a just and an unjust person with power, and intuit what they will each do with it. He adds (or maybe it was Adeimantus who says this) that, in order to really tell the difference, we have to isolate them completely from one another, strip them both of appearances, such that the just will be, but not seem good, and the unjust will seem, but not be good. Let’s ask, he says, which is better off? Only in this way can we see how much the just person is superior in happiness to the unjust – by comparing the intrinsic rewards and punishments of justice and injustice, the inner consequences, beyond the extrinsic consequences of merely appearing just in the eyes of gods and men.
The subject at hand then is justice in the individual, and to what extent it contributes to happiness in the end of life.
“I fancy it will be no light undertaking,” Socrates says, “so we had better think twice before venturing down this path.”
This is where Socrates proposes that that they imagine a state, which is analogous to a human soul, he says, but the soul is difficult to see from our vantage, whereas the state is large and easier to examine. That way we can see how justice and injustice take root, and then compare them to our own inner worlds.
Note how Socrates describes his true purposes in this discourse by expressing his actual ideal of the healthy community at the outset:
Suppose we imagine a state coming into being before our eyes. We might then be able to watch the growth of justice or of injustice within it. When that is done, we may hope it will be easier to find what we are looking for…”(p.55)
Which is, we remember from the beginning of the dialogue, how to be happy in old age? At which point, they begin describing how “a state comes into existence because no individual is self-sufficing; we all have many needs.”(p.55)
“And having these needs, we call on one another’s help to satisfy our various requirements; and when we have collected a number of helpers and associates to live together in one place, we call that settlement a state… So if one man gives another what he has to give in exchange for what he can get, it is because each finds that to do so is for his own advantage.”(p.56)
Agreeing that “there are no two people born exactly alike, there are innate differences which fit them for different occupations,” that men do better specializing and sharing the fruits of their labors, and that the right work must be done at the right time, they conclude that:
“more things will be produced and the work be more easily and better done, when every man is set free from all other occupations to do, at the right time, the one thing for which he is naturally fitted.”(p.57)
This is what Socrates calls ‘the healthy community’ – in which freedoms and responsibilities are shared by all, and individuality flourishes where each does what he or she is good at.
As important as this is to Socrates entire argument, still, 2400 years of scholars have largely ignored it, and instead take the state they go on to concoct to represent Socrates’ ideal, but nothing could be further from Socrates’ point. Indeed, in as much as the authoritarian utopia they come up with is subject to injustice, it is anything but ideal. It is important to see and keep in mind that Socrates brings these different conceptions of an ideal community to the table for the sake of argument -- as if to say, what is wrong with this picture? Where does injustice set in?
So they start out with what Socrates calls his ideal community – one that appears to be the perfect combination of a market economy and communism. The just economy, he reasons, arises from human needs, because “needs are the mother of invention”. This community has as its primary function the protection and nurturance of children from harm. They imagine a community in which each is free from all other labors to do that which he or she is best capable of doing. Trade plays an important part, and just as a farmer doesn’t have time to make his own shovels, so we must all do what we are best fit for, and divide labor according to natural aptitudes. In such an economy, it stands to reason that labor would be divided according to who is best capable of doing a given job well. Creativity (he argues in other dialogues) is critical to a healthy and growing community and is also a means for individuals to reach their own divine potential and achieve immortality in the process, by creating something that will live on after them and continue to do good. In this way, he bypasses the argument that there is no incentive to work if there is no private property and individual wealth, with the argument that both wealth and poverty are subversive to true art. Doing something for it’s own sake, it’s intrinsic worth, will enable excellence, they conclude, in both the individual and the state.
This element of freedom is very important to remember – because this is exactly what most miss in Plato’s Republic. For example, the acclaimed Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, in the middle of the 20th Century, decided that Plato ought to be exposed for the “fascist” he is.
In “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” Popper talks about Plato’s so-called‘ Guardian State’, calling it:
“the political science of dictatorship…chillingly familiar to students of the Third Reich and Communist regimes from Stalinist Russia to the Cultural Revolution.”
Popper goes on to say that, “Never was a man more earnest in his hostility toward the individual.” Socrates’ ideal is “a totalitarian state with mass conformity,” incorporating “social theories that are offensive in the extreme,” and concludes that Socrates would have viewed the Christian doctrine ‘love thy neighbor’ as “the enemy of his caste state.”
And to make matters worse, Popper’s view has held among philosophers for most of the last century.
Drawing on Popper, Paul Strathern, author of a book (tellingly) entitled ‘Plato in 90 Minutes,’ concludes:
“Plato’s opinions on the topics mentioned above are almost all seriously at odds with the opinions held nowadays by all but earnest bigots and the slightly crazy.”[p.36]
Popper and Strathern’s error? Short attention span!
They (and, given the authority attributed to his view, apparently many others) have failed to notice that Socrates was not advocating this state! He was, rather, holding it up as if to say, “What is wrong with this picture?”
Despite Popper calling Socrates the “enemy of the free individual,” Socrates argues that all should be free to do what they are good at when they choose to do it! Plato is criticized for what looks like an acceptance of inequalities, but as Cairns points out, "In Plato's hands aristocracy meant the rule of the best, from whatever class they came. The able were to receive special training for the responsibilities requiring great ability; the less able were to perform the tasks suitable to their ability. Plato's political theory is an implication of the system of nature, and to call this philosophy aristocratic is meaningful only in the sense that nature is itself aristocratic. But to call any philosophy aristocratic in the sense of class interest is meaningless; preoccupation with the interests of one class to the detriment of others is not philosophy. Philosophy is disinterested or it is not philosophy. When ideas are manipulated for personal ends, for class or group interests, the name for this in Plato's day was sophistry. It was against this that all the dialogues were directed. To accuse Plato of being in league with the sophistic forces that undermined the classical world is an instance of the more subtle misrepresentation of his position." (Plato, Collected Dialogues, p. xvi)
Further evidence for this shows up in Socrates’ discussion of how children ought to be educated:
"There should be no element of slavery in learning. Enforced exercise does no harm to the body but enforced learning will not stay in the mind. So avoid compulsion, and let your children's lessons take the form of play. This will also help you to see what they are naturally fitted for."[p.258]
“Children must devote themselves especially to the discipline which will make them masters of the technique of asking and answering questions...Dialectic study."(p. 255)
"[A] natural gift for Dialectic ... is the same thing as the ability to see the connections between things."(p. 259)
And eventually, "The detached studies in which they were educated as children will now be brought together in a comprehensive view of their connections with one another and with reality."(p. 259)
So a healthy community will find and distribute talents by allowing children to play at what comes most naturally to them, and from youth upwards allow them to explore their intrinsic interests. We will discover if we do this, Socrates says, that there are no two individuals who are alike. And if you allow all citizens to do what comes most naturally to them in this way, then work will take on the character of play, and all things that need doing in a community will get done as well as possible.
And, yes, some will choose to take out the garbage, because there will always be those who prefer to let others do the dirty work in exchange for more free time and less responsibility. (Aristotle calls these ‘natural slaves,’ a term that is easy to misunderstand because we use the word ‘slave’ differently than he did…but more on this later.)
At any rate, does this sound like an enemy of individuality? A recipe for a totalitarian state?
Obviously, much depends here on who chooses work for the citizens. Can a ruler, from his vantage, know what is truly best for individuals? Even if you start with a perfectly just ruler, those who sit on high are ignorant of the critical details which are known only to the workers themselves, so there is the danger that, once routine sets in and administration and license are passed on, rulers will begin to make mistakes in putting individuals into the work that isn’t proper to them.
This is where the proper limit of the authority of the state over individuals begins to show up. In fact, justice requires that decisions must be made at the proper scale of activity. (Which is why Aristotle argues that a just community must have a ‘mixed constitution’, so that every voice can have its proper say.) People must choose their work for themselves.
Much regulation can be omitted, Socrates argues, because well educated people don’t need regulation. But this assumes a collective allegiance to the proper form of education so that people can become their better selves, and won’t need to be told what to do or not to do -- just as artists don’t need to be forced to be creative. It is an intrinsic interest in the joys and even the agonies of creativity that are its intrinsic reward.
This is how to insure, Socrates says, a fair balance of diversity in unity, which will allow the community to be healthy and harmonious. And the origin of retail trade will thus be ruled by freedom of choice and promotion by merit, and remain free of too much wealth or too much poverty in the process, both of which are subversive to work for its own sake – for its intrinsic value. Which is to say, they take the real fun out of it.
Where the catch comes in, Glaucon says, is that “some people will not be satisfied to live in this fair and simple way. What about luxuries?”(p.61)
To which Socrates replies, “Oh, I see, you don’t want to talk about the healthy community, you want to see what the inflamed and diseased state looks like! I really think we should be happy with this, he says, and stay clear of talk of too much wealth and the nagging appetites it creates. But if you want to see what a state looks like once one class is not satisfied with their fair share, then we can, if you like, look closer at the state in which the ruling class is made up of those not satisfied with well enough, but takes from the shares of its neighbors instead. This he calls, the state in heat.
“There’s probably no harm in talking about what a hungry state might look like; indeed, it is sure to help us discover how injustice takes root.[C2.372] The community I have described seems to me the ideal one, in sound health as it were; but if you want to see one diseased and suffering from inflammation, there is nothing to hinder us.”
At which point, a diligent reader will readily notice that wanting more than our fair shares leads them within a single page to the origin of war!
As for injustice: “We seem to have discovered already its origin in desires which are the most fruitful source of evils both to individuals and to states.”[p.62]
As they discover, it is the use of the term ‘mine’ that turns out to be the origin of evil – and private property and the lust for luxury leads some inevitably to create war and tyranny. If only the craving for private property were not implanted in our hearts in our youth as an early age, because children never forget. And if we get the form of education right, then the craving for private property will minimize itself, and they will grow up with a better understanding of a truer form of wealth.
Whereas:
"If a man's person is his only private possession...these men will live in complete peace with one another....disunion comes about when the words 'mine' and 'not mine,' 'another's' and 'not another's' are not applied to the same things throughout the community. The best ordered state will be the one in which the largest number of persons use these terms in the same sense, and which accordingly most nearly resembles a single person...all sharing as a whole in the pain of the suffering part."[C5.461]
“In our community, then, above all others, when things go well or ill with any individual everyone will use that word 'mine' in the same sense and say that all is going well or ill with him and his... And...this way of speaking and thinking goes with fellow-feeling."[C5.463]
For the next five of six books they explore the so-called ‘Guardian State,’ which is founded on growth by means of invading its neighbor’s share. They ask how the unhealthy community functions, and what happens when the word ‘mine’ becomes the dominant motivation and states grow up around the ideal of ownership and class accumulation, all the while still wondering (though apparently too subtly for most scholars to notice), where does injustice set in?
Socrates clarifies in the dialogue Timeaus that he doesn’t endorse this community they imagine in the Republic. There, he says that static ideals of supposedly perfect communities obscure the injustice that is required to support them. To see how they go wrong, you have to set them into motion, to see how they behave and misbehave in times of war and peace.
“The real test of her will be to see how she stands against enemies. Will she be wirey, while others are fat? Will she stand united in each individual, while others are divided in themselves? Will she know her enemies from her friends, and keep her hands off her friends? Or will she have as much internal civil discord as external foreign? And when this happens, will she remember that domestic critics are correctors, not enemies?”
“Such a state would be invincible,” he says, and “…her going to war would be unthinkable…and [yet] inevitable.”(Timaeus)
Still, while Socrates doesn’t endorse the so-called guardian state by this writers lights, he does use this discussion as a means to explore other worthy subjects – like how the diseased state will treat its women and children. In an attempt to temp the boys into contradiction about the kind of state they’d call ideal, he lays out a plan (not unlike that used by the Spartans) where women and children are held in common, and who has children with whom is decided by leaders, etc., asking whether it is a good thing, or not, and whether any of this is consistent with what they agreed to earlier regarding freedom and the healthy community.
It’s important to keep in mind that Socrates does this in part because Plato and his older brothers grew up in an oligarchic family, and thus have conditioned habits of looking up to the Spartans and the nobles (like most Americans do to the rich), and down on the less fortunate, as if they must somehow deserve it. But when the boys seem to say, sure, we like this ‘ideal’, and Socrates doesn’t argue with them, readers tend to get confused, thinking that if he doesn’t argue with them, then he must be agreeing. But Socrates would be the first to remind us that this is a fallacy of false choice; his job is not simply to confront them with his view, agreeing or disagreeing with their own, but to help them to see their own mistake.
Because Socrates is bent on letting people think for themselves, and if they’re wrong, on finding and asking the right questions to help them to see their error, we can’t jump to any conclusion based on what others say in response to his questions. The questioner is dependent on the answerer, he says -- where the latter goes, the former must follow.*
And if this is not evidence enough that the so-called ‘Guardian State’ is not Plato or Socrates’ ideal – consider Socrates’ pronouncement in Book 8 (p.266), where he refers them back to the healthy state -- adding that this was where they lost sight of good sense and everything since (six full books!) has been a digression!
“Let us be like wrestlers, then, who go back to the same grip after an indecisive fall...in order that, by setting the extreme examples in contrast, we may finally answer the question how pure justice and pure injustice stand in respect of the happiness or misery they bring, and so decide to pursue the one and not the other….”(p.267-68)
Remember that the fact that much of the Republic is ‘a digression’ does not discount all that has been said in the meantime. Much of it is critical, and figuring out what Socrates would endorse and what he would not is the exercise that Plato wants us to undertake.
And yet, all this is ignored by so-called Socratic scholars since. Consider the statement made by Paul Strathern (though I hesitate to call him a Socratic scholar, since his is entitled, ‘Plato in 90 Minutes’), who dares to make the claim that:
“Platonism…through the centuries produced a succession of thinkers who understood Plato better than Plato understood himself – the Platonists, the Neoplatonists, St. Augustine, and so forth.”[p.53]
…apparently adding Karl Popper to the list!
Closer to the truth is John Stuart Mill’s observation:
“the title of Platonist belongs by far better right to those who have been nourished in, and have endeavored to practice Plato’s mode of investigation, than to those who are distinguished only by the adoption of certain dogmatic conclusions, drawn mostly from the least intelligible of his works, and which the character of his mind and writings makes it uncertain whether he himself regarded as anything more than poetic fancies, or philosophic conjectures.”[Autobiography, p.19]
Plato’s Republic: Part II
So while discussing what some might call an ‘ideal state’, and building on a conception they’ve taken from the Spartan way of life, Plato’s brothers are wondering about private property, and if women and children ought to be held communally. At this point in any reading of the Republic, students are usually pretty confused. It’s hard to hear what exactly Socrates is saying here because he’s trying to bait Glaucon and Adeimantus into thinking for themselves, therefore, much of what he says is in question form to see whether they agree or disagree. But b/c most translations leave out or misplace the question marks, a first time reader would hear him asserting these things, instead of merely expressing them for the sake of argument. You have to back up sufficiently to hear his complaints and keep his voice in context.
He does say, rather too vaguely, that they are talking about the state to begin to see how it is analogous to the soul, and so, like the soul, it has to be considered one living thing. Therefore, all will hurt for any part, and the whole state will make the individual case its own, from which it follows that any freedom and rights it would give to anyone, it ought to give to everyone. He consistently upholds this idea that justice is doing one’s own business, and that each should be free to do the things or job they do best, and there will be no meddling between arts (e.g. rulers should not interfere in the family, crafts, etc.), from which it seems to follow that one class ought not o interfere with the work of other classes (which is where Popper gets his idea that Socrates is defending a caste system).
But, again, he’s putting this forward to ask, what’s wrong with this picture? Where does this go wrong? So all this is subject to what they say later… (Here’s where a focused and extended attentions span comes in handy… J)
Socrates hems and haws for awhile, but then decides to go on to draw them into the contradiction, as he is so good at. He does agree that it seems to make sense because friends hold all things in common. But he adds again that, for the same reason that they agreed earlier that decisions must be made, not by elites, but at the right scale or level of activity, so it probably wouldn’t work if elders chose who will and will not breed with whom; they’d be bound to make mistakes because it’s what they don’t know that will trip them up. So this would be one place where injustice and evil set in to such a state, but Plato lets us draw that conclusion ourselves, going on to say that s*
Socrates does make the case that such mistakes would be less likely to be made if you let people make free choices about these things themselves. In a truly ideal community, he says, there would be full education for women and men alike, with similar pursuits for similar natures, because they’ve long since concluded that, all things being equal (which they seldom are), women can do the same work as men. Different degrees of goodness are particular to individuals, they argue, not to genders, and natural gifts are found here and there in both men and women alike, so every occupation and education should be open to both and all. And while it may not be our convention to treat women as equals, Socrates says, convention should not stand in the way of good. As in economic and procreation matters, in male and female relations, individuals should be free to follow their own intrinsic pursuits, and in this way, a natural partnership of responsibility and dependence of the sexes will develop.
While unity and public spirit are generally good things, he argues, private interests often lead to discord. But to say that all should share in the interests of each, and to suggests that the state should be like one family, is not to say that they should follow the Spartan ideal. Being ‘slaves to the laws’ may sound good in theory, but is easy to abuse in practice. There is such a thing as taking a good idea too far.
In a healthy community (most translations say democracy, but Socrates argues later on that democracy is the unhealthy form of polity) there ought not to be any masters and/or slaves. In fact, there is no form or essence of master and slave in nature – this is purely a human construct.*
They then get into a discussion about the stories we tell children. The beginning of anything is the most important, after all, Socrates says, because children never forget. Therefore the stories we tell them when they are young leave the strongest impressions, sort of making a case for the butterfly effect of ideas. Children can’t distinguish between allegory and literal stories, so the images they take in are likely to become indelibly fixed in their minds. Therefore, it’s very important that the first stories they hear should be designed to produce the best effect on their character. So first teachers, e.g. parents and grandparents, should tell only true stories, including those about war, because children ought to see war for what it truly is, its true costs and just rewards and punishments.
Socrates worries about stories of the gods, passed down from Homer and Hessiod, that represent the gods as unjust, and yet praise them anyway, saying this sets the wrong example for the young. Since the state exists or the purpose of raising and protecting children from evil, what are we to think about the ‘noble lies’ we tell children about the gods? Myths are false tales, and as such, and when they falsely represent the gods, showing the bad to be happy and the good to be unhappy, they goes against nature and shows a deep misunderstanding of how good and evil work. (Btw, Critias, Plato’s uncle, to whom Socrates is relaying all this, has recently written a piece about how fear of an all powerful god is a good way to keep people under control. We don’t hear about this in the Republic, but it seems relevant…)
All of this is why people take Plato to be advocating censorship, but in fact, all he’s saying is that, not knowing the full truth about the distant past, or the gods, we should make the stories we tell as close to truth as possible – and the truth is that the divine nature is good, and we ought to represent it as such. True stories are uplifting, and they don’t glorify injustice. He’s not saying that the state should control what literature or music is created, only that creative artists and poets ought to take responsibility for what their work teaches. We are improved by good, and harmed by evil, and the rewards and price are greater than we recognize – not just for this life, but for the whole of existence (which may or may not go on after death, Socrates thinks, since we can’t know on this side of it what goes on the other – remember his claim in Apology that being afraid of death is just another way of pretending to know more than we possibly can). Plato is known for his distaste of poetry and comedy, but it’s because it uses pleasure and emotion and rhetoric and the catharsis effect to move people to less than honorable ends, which is the wrong use of power, especially if it bypasses reason. When reason fails to constrain, then these feed the passions, encourage appetites to rule the mind, and in this way, it has the power to do harm to the good itself. It’s a bigger deal than we think, he says. Which is why there’s an ancient quarrel between philosophy and fiction. Socrates says let poetry and fiction encourage human goodness, rather than just promote pleasure. Then there will be no objection to them. Stick to the truth about human nature, he says, which, like the divine nature, is good, and ought to be described as such.
"... While our (negative) description of the soul is true of her present appearance; we have seen her afflicted by countless evils, like the sea-god Glaucus...But we must rather fix our eyes, Glaucon, on her love of wisdom and note how she seeks to apprehend and hold converse with the divine, immortal, and everlasting world to which she is akin, and what she would become if her affections were entirely set on following the impulse that would lift her out of the sea in which she is now sunken...then one might see her true nature...the soul...to understand her real nature, we must look at her, not as we see her now, marred by association with the body and other evils, but when she has regained that pure condition which the eye of reason can discern. Then you will then find her to be a far lovelier thing and will distinguish more clearly justice and injustice and all the qualities we have discussed. "[C10.611]
Which is why…
"We shall not tell a child that, if he commits the foulest crimes or goes to any length in punishing his father's misdeeds, he will be doing nothing out of the way, but only what the first and greatest of the gods have done before him."[C2.377] In fact, "If by any means we can make them believe that no one has ever had a quarrel with a fellow citizen and it is a sin to have one, that is the sort of thing our old men and women should tell from the first;"[C2.377]
This is why literature and all forms of education ought always to aim to mold character, not harm it; only praise of the good ought to be written if humans wish to avoid being ruled by pleasure and pain. This is also the reason, he argues, that actors ought not degrade themselves by playing evil men (though there might be some good in this to show how evil gets its due, but evil men should play them then, he seems to think.) Only good men should play the roles of good men, because good men don’t look at themselves from outside in, so can’t fake or act or imitate, they can only be real, which is hard for those who are strangers to the feeling of goodness to imitate. Their voice quality too will reflect their internal harmony and sincerity. Such style is an expression of the soul, so cannot be faked. This is why truth is intuitively recognizable to another truthful person, as are lies, but liars don’t know the truth when they see it. (Later he argues that the good recognize both good and evil when they see it, but the evil only recognize other evil.)
Plato has a lot to say about imitation because he’s trying to draw a distinction between the real thing and the mere appearance of it, between the truth and deceit. The fiction writer creates appearances only, part of why he so easily goes astray. Homer is good, as far as his lights actually reach, Socrates says, but when he writes about what he is second removed from, like the gods, then he misses the mark of truth. The real artist who really knows what he is imitating would not be interested in imitation, but would prefer to tell the truth – which is why Plato says that a good person will not make himself the author of stories, but the theme of them. He gets into the idea of ‘creation’ and ‘creativity’ and ‘the creator’ here, saying that there is a sense in which we can ourselves become ‘divine beings’ by creativity, but we must be careful not to create appearances. A painter creates a picture, but it’s once removed from the object being painted itself, so only a copy of the idea. There are three kinds of artists therefore, and the tragic poets are thus thrice removed from the truth, just as the politicians are thrice removed from true kings. The true creator doesn’t bother with appearances in the same way that the ‘true king’ doesn’t bother with politics, which is only the appearance of leadership. So statesmen ought not be imitators, but should do at least that one thing well. This is especially important because the example of excellence in leaders will repeat itself in the population, like the example set by parents is repeated by the child. Wisdom in leaders will become wisdom in the state, as the smallest part will be reflected in the whole. So the one who takes the lead and governs the rest is responsible for the example he sets. (Hmmm…fractals?)
Anyway, as he says, it’s because we teach that wrongdoers can be happy that the effects on the young will be an excuse to do wrong, as Adeimantus argued earlier. So we should reform our mythology to tell our children the truth – that the gods don’t lie or mislead, and that the unjust do not end up happy. He also says that people are not free if taught to believe in and fear hell. Being moved by fear just makes us easy to control. So leave religion to the goddess at Delphi, and take her advice – Know Thyself!
In a healthy state or soul there should be no noble lies, they decide, because untruth is fatal to both, subversive to the proper function of anything. The proper function of the soul, the end or virtue or excellence of it, is wisdom. Untruth is a form of violence, too often used to coerce change in the mind, and deceit is destructive to state and individual alike, giving incentive to manipulate human behavior by way of stories and myths, creating an ongoing battle between self and other control. Without words, there can be no lying, hence the reason god cannot lie, and so cannot be held responsible for evil. The origin of evil turns out to be in human activity, because we have the power to control it, to cause or prevent the harm we cause (hence the distinction they drew earlier between that which nature changes and that which humans can change. God and nature have not evil in them, except where evil itself is being punished. Nature’s course is guided by necessity, not self-interest, and so humans cannot change it. Thus the source of evil is somewhere here inside the choice to act even despite the foreseeable consequences of possible harm to others. In human nature, foresight and freewill give responsibility to human action; we are responsible for the consequences of our actions, and in fact, evil turns out to be simply a category of human action, that which is done, despite knowing the harm it will cause. Actively doing unjustified harm is evil. If not destroyed by our own evil in this way, they say, we cannot be destroyed by another’s. Which is the argument behind Socrates’ claim that no harm can come to a good person. Misfortune will happen, but a good person will bear it nobly, for law and reason are within him, and so he is one of those systems they were talking about earlier that is impervious to change from without. Such a person knows a kind of ‘healing art’, Socrates says, b/c “the sound mind has the power in itself to make the bodily condition as perfect as it can be.”
Thus, he argues, if we had education that helps people improve their souls, every person would be their own best doctor. This is sort of a Taoist take, I think – when the dice are thrown, a just person simply responds with wisdom. Whereas an unjust person will try to make things happen, and in hurrying, will error, and so karma kicks in. They rationalize excuses that pass as reasons for unjustified actions, but bad reasoning is bad reasoning, fooling only fools, if those. Seldom if ever does it fool the self. Self-deceit is just active ignorance. To be deceived about the truth is something no one would consent to, and since justice (they decided in another dialogue) involves consent, deceit becomes the source of injustice in the soul, which destroys the possibility of happiness, because happiness depends on justice in the soul, i.e. it’s internal order, health, proper function. (This connects later with why you can’t really fight evil, you’re more effective trying to promote good.)
All of which is why education needs reform, and why we need a better understanding of human nature. For "education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be in their professions...they aver...that they can put true knowledge into a soul that does not possess it, as if they were inserting vision into blind eyes." The power of imparting comes of harmony, the harmony of soul and body, from the work of a true musician, who knows the essential forms of virtue and vice. As the mind has power over the body, the good soul improves the body as it grows. It is by improving body and mind that virtue develops. Thus every person would be their own best doctor and lawyer, had he better education. The true aim of music and gymnastics is balance, not excess of either, but the mean between them. Right education needs to balance mind and body, music and gymnastics, but it doesn't, which is where our mistake begins. To provide right education, at least for our guardians, we must see better to education and nurture, the one great thing… (guess?)
They then discuss that, just as the warriors art is not equal to statesman's art, b/c a soldier is watchdog -- gentle to friends, dangerous to enemies – but the true guardian must unite these opposite qualities, courage and temperance. For the state needs one with passions controlled by reason to lead it. And it is the philosophical nature which has both courage and gentleness. One who has courage -- knows what is to be feared and not feared, and temperance, is master of himself. When intemperate, unable to resist wants, a man is a slave of self. We need temperance in whole state – then justice is the residue. Courage and temperance must be united, but the problem is, they are rarely found together.
So where to find a leader with both? It won’t be easy, but neither is it impossible, for the genuine philosopher is one who has a passion for truth. And such people do indeed exist. Philosophy is simply the love of wisdom. It is simply curiosity. It is love of learning. The true philosopher is one who is absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, where as the false philosopher is blind and too impressed with human knowledge, the true philosopher knows that no man is to be reverenced more than truth. For “only the man who has a taste for every sort of knowledge and throws himself into acquiring it with an insatiable curiosity will deserve to be called philosopher.” The philosopher is gentle, harmonious, spontaneous, and proportional, and has a good memory. "[The true philosopher seeks true knowledge – desires to distinguish between the idea and the object in which it partakes.[Rap Book V] For the human mind is vulnerable to appearances; things appear smaller or larger, depending on if one is close up or at distance. As light bends in water, appearances can change. Apparent contradictions are everywhere, and we need to have a good measure to trust, to help us reconcile the confusion in order to have unity within self. Appearances are relative, and so confusing, as relative pleasures to pains. A higher wit says no one wants mere appearance, but knowledge. We seek reality of the good, the end of every soul, not the mere appearance of it. This is why our fiction is as likely to be false as true, for the measuring art corrects for appearances only imperfectly. For knowledge of true nature is the only antidote to poetical images that ruin the understanding.
Adeimantus interjects here that we all know philosophers are strange monsters. Socrates replies that this is true enough, and if we had time, we'd figure out the difference in the true and false philosopher, and know which to choose as guardians. But Adeimantus says, you'll never convince Thrasymachus of that. To which Socrates replies, careful, we've only just become friends, Thresymachus and I, and you’ll ruin it. Besides, people aren't convinced because they've only seen conventional philosophy, but general philosophy is different. We've just never seen or heard the real thing, only imitators. We mistake fighters with words, (i.e. Sophists) a thing for which true philosophers don't have time, with true philosophy. If philosophers seem to us useless, perhaps it’s because we don't use them properly. Satesmen ought not also be imitators, but should do only one thing well. Here again, untruth is subversive. It is a form of violence, too often used to coerce change in the mind. Again, people are not free in their choices if taught to fear. They must behave from love of a true model of goodness.
Perhaps the philosophers’ nature is too sensitive, he says, a rare flower, and thus more corruptible for this reason, more vulnerable to injury (b/c natural empathy can turn one inside-out, if one looks from others eyes and finds them looking back in judgment on them). They are vulnerable to worse side of public opinion – the great brute. If they are associated with this, they are likely to conform to it. Whereas if they associate with better side, they may be saved only by the power of god, for capable or reason, same quality that makes philosophy can corrupt him -- great nature capable of great good or evil. Philosophers have a love of essence, of truth, of justice, which are high qualities, but easily distracted. So philosophers are liable to injury. The youth with most gifts will be flattered, and used for others’ purposes. Philosophy attractive to the vulgar, b/c sophisms please the ear only, and there is often a misalliance of words and motives going on, to which the young philosopher falls prey. Or they might be distracted by want of ordinary goods, or even by their own virtues. They could be corrupted by private sophists or the opinion of the world, or compulsion of violent death. Certainly, there are few are worthy disciples. Few hear the voice Socrates hears, because few are able to resist the madness of the world.
States are not conducive to philosophy, which requires a living authority. This is what forces us to admit, he says, that no state will ever reach perfection until...either philosophers become kings, or kings become philosophers. For no state can be happy without an artist after the divine pattern. Finding such a leader is certainly difficult, but not impossible. There might be one somewhere, and when found, the enemies of philosophy will understand, become gentle, when hear the truth. So a philosopher king is not an impossible ideal.
And so: "I was driven to affirm, in praise of true philosophy, that only from the standpoint of such philosophy was it possible to take a correct view of public and private right, and that accordingly the human race would never see the end of trouble until true lovers of wisdom should come to hold political power, or the holders of political power should, by some divine appointment, become true lovers of wisdom."(RepC p.xxv)
"Unless either philosophers become kings in their countries or those who are now called kings and rulers come to be sufficiently inspired with a genuine desire for wisdom; unless, that is to say, political power and philosophy meet together...there can be no rest from troubles, my dear Glaucon, for states, nor yet, as I believe, for all mankind... This it was that I have so long hung back from saying; I knew what a paradox it would be, because it is hard to see that there is no other way of happiness either for the state or for the individual."[RepC p.179]
“The genuine philosopher...[is one] whose passion it is to see the truth." And "...the genuine lover of knowledge cannot fail, from his youth up, to strive after the whole of truth." So our earlier exposition of education is still inadequate, Socrates says. Our guardians must take the longer road to higher learning, which leads up to ideal of good.
To Glaucon's request to explain the good, Socrates says we can't talk about that directly, any more than we can look directly at the sun. We can talk only about the children of the good. He can't say with certainty what he does or doesn't know, but he can say what he thinks. "...the Sun is not vision, but it is the cause of vision and also is seen by the vision it causes...” And just as the Sun is the cause of vision, and seen by the vision it causes, so knowledge and truth are like the Good, but not identical. Just as light makes objects visible, grows and nourishes them. The good is to the invisible world of truth what the sun is to the visible world of sense, it illuminates it, causes generation of being, nurtures its growth. Sight is a complex sense – it requires light before it can be used. The good is higher than science, knowledge and truth, opinion and intellect. It involves insight. We can reach things of the mind through things of the sense, we can reach absolute beauty through our sense of beauty. He contrasts inner/outer beauty here. True love will not mind defects, for true love is temperate and harmonious, fairest of sights, free from vulnerability to baser passions. He who doesn't know how beautiful and just are good is a sorry guardian.
“It was the Sun, then that I meant...[has] the same relation to vision and visible things as that which the Good itself bears in the intelligible world to intelligence and to intelligible objects." "This, then, which gives to the objects of knowledge their truth and to him who knows them his power of knowing, is the Form or essential nature of Goodness. It is the cause of knowledge and truth; and so, while you may think of it as an object of knowledge, you will do well to regard it as something beyond truth and knowledge and, precious as these both are, of still higher worth. And, just as in our analogy light and vision were to be thought of as like the Sun, but not identical with it, so here both knowledge and truth are to be regarded as like the Good, but to identify either with the Good is wrong. The Good must hold a yet higher place of honor... the Sun not only makes the things we see visible, but also brings them into existence and gives them growth and nourishment."[RepC p.220] What the sun is to vision, the good is to knowledge and truth.”
(repeated) Socrates illustrates this by his famous allegory of the cave, in which he describes human life as being like being imprisoned in a cave, where a fire at the back illuminates shadows against the wall made by puppets behind us. We have little choice but to mistake shadows for realities, since this is the only light available to us. So we see first mere images [imagining], then objects [belief], then mathematical objects [thinking], forms [knowledge], then only finally, if at all, the form of the good. The Sun, he explains, is the light of fire; the Good is outside the cave, the light in distance. In order to see it, the mind:
"must be turned around from the world of becoming together with the entire soul...until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essences and the brightest region of being."(Rep 518c)
"[T]he ascent and the contemplation of the things above is the soul's ascension to the intelligible region."(RepC 517b)
"[A] conversion and turning about of the soul from a day whose light is darkness to the veritable day -- that ascension to reality...we will affirm to be true philosophy."(Rep521c)
"[T]he conversion from the shadows to the images that cast them and to the light and the ascent from the subterranean cavern to the world above,"(RepC 532b) is as turning "away from the world of becoming to the world of being."(RepC 521d) "And this, we say, is the good."(RepC 518d) The problem is an excess of light makes going either way difficult, dark to light, light to dark. Hence the reason philosophers seem so strange – they are unable to see in dark, see and understand this world of the cave only at length, after the eyes have adjusted, assuming the ever do. Hence the reason that "those who have attained to this height are not willing to occupy themselves with the affairs of men...their souls ever feel the upward urge..." Socrates says. But "Down you must go then, each in his turn, to the habitation of the others...because you have seen the reality of the beautiful, the just and the good." [Of those to whom much is given, much is required.] Only then will:
"[T]he life of true philosophers" looks with scorn on political office.(RepC 521b) But "the heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. That is the fear, I believe, that makes decent people accept power... If there could ever be a society of perfect men, there might well be as much competition to evade office as there now is to gain it; and it would then be clearly seen that the genuine ruler's nature is to seek only the advantage of the subject."[RepC p.29]
"our city…be governed by us and you with waking minds, and not, as most cities now which are inhabited and ruled darkly as in a dream by men who fight one another for shadows and wrangle for office as if that were a great good, when the truth is that the city in which those who are to rule are least eager to hold office...they will assuredly approach office as an unavoidable necessity."(RepC7.520d-e)
Thus, "We require...that those who take office should not be lovers of rule."(RepC7.521b) "All goes wrong when...they set about fighting for power, and this internecine conflict ruins them and their country. The life of true philosophy is the only one that looks down upon offices of state; and access to power must be confined to men who are not in love with it."[RepC p.235]
Thus, "...the truth is that you can have a well-governed society only if you can discover for your future rulers a better way of life than being in office; then only will power be in the hands of men who are rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that brings happiness, a good and wise life."(RepC7.521)
"Could anything show a more shameful lack of culture than to have so little justice in oneself that one must get it from others, who thus become masters and judges over one?"[RepC p.95
"[T]he life of true philosophers" looks with scorn on political office.(RepC 521b) But "the heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. That is the fear, I believe, that makes decent people accept power... If there could ever be a society of perfect men, there might well be as much competition to evade office as there now is to gain it; and it would then be clearly seen that the genuine ruler's nature is to seek only the advantage of the subject."[RepC p.29]
On Plato’s Republic: Part III
We come at last to the conclusion of the Republic. I hope this extended summary makes it seem worth going back and actually reading Plato’s Republic someday, chances are you will do so in other classes along the way. I promise, if you do so with an open mind, and mindful of what Socrates lived and died for, rather than what merely seems to be the case on the surface, you will get much more out of it than many over the centuries have. But when you do, I hope you will remember in your reading the take I have offered here. It is not the traditional view, but I think you will find it is the more inclusive, and more sympathetic one; that is, truer to the stated intentions and internal consistency of the text, rather than to the mere outside-looking-in and selective view that scholars tend to take. Socrates would warn that taking the word of ‘experts’ about his teaching is to hear it from those who have an interest in keeping it quite and misreading it. In fact, Socrates’ fundamental dictum is that we should always question the authority of experts, for the just are too humble for such pretense, and only the just should be our teachers.
You’ll remember that we left off where Socrates was saying perhaps we should go back to where we began this digression (which turns out to be the end of Book IV). The old path was more excellent, he says, and if what we were discussing earlier was the true form of justice itself, then the others we have discussed since were probably false.
Return to just individual soul, old question -- whether just or unjust happiest? Early on in our discussion, we put away the rewards and glories of justice in order that pure justice could be weighed with pure injustice, they say, to see how they fare whether known by gods or not. Now lets bring them back out again, and see if justice is a friend to the gods and injustice is an enemy. So they ask again, is the just or the unjust happiest?
Socrates (naturally) takes the long, but scenic, route to this conclusion. And gets there by way of a discussion about the evolution of governments. As they grow out of human character itself, he explains, they vary just as natural human dispositions vary. And just as action => reaction, just as in seasons and all life so too forms of government evolve. There are four imperfect forms of government, and one potentially perfect form. Likewise, there are five dispositions of individual minds, and if we place the just alongside the unjust to see the relative happiness/unhappiness of both, it’s easy enough to see which is happiest.
To make a long story short, the tyrant, or egoist, will be at war with himself – and just as a state will fall sick when at war with itself, distracted even when no external cause, so the tyrant may appear more respectable than most from outside looking in, but the harmonious soul will flee him, and from inside looking out, he will be the most miserable scoundrel. . Such 'leaders' plague the city, as drones plague the hive, always stirring up war so that the people need him, or think they do.[i].
Socrates concluded sadly, thinking about Alcibiades perhaps, that “the same effect happens to democrats sons [RepJ BookIX 572], who are "drawn to a perfectly lawless life which is termed by their seducers perfect liberty."[RepJ BookIX 573] “There are appetites which are lawful, and follow the laws of nature and temperate reason,[RepJ BookIX 571] but indulging them, with or without honor, is unjust. Such is the case when, in tug of war between fathers and seducers; fathers lose control over their sons when, in desperation, they attempt to implant a master passion in them – i.e. the idea of God -- "a sort of monstrous winged drone"[RepJ BookIX 573, p.332] to be lord over his lusts when the father isn’t looking. However, not believing in the myth, the boy purges temperance in himself, and this is the way the tyrannical man is generated. Being a slave to his own passions, such a one can't deny his desires. Love moves him, but he is confused about what it is he loves, so he tries everything. And when his desires are greater than his means, he has no higher law to guide him, so will rob his own mother and father if it pleases him.[RepJ BookIX 574]
Such a person learns to cheat and deceive, so knows love only as sex. He only uses his so-called friends, so he draws only those like him to him, i.e. flatterers.[RepJ BookIX 575-576] This is bad enough if he is a private person, who has to live with his own mistakes, but if he lives a life as public person, then all have to endure his lack of temperance.[RepJ BookIX p.335] And just as with slave owners, who protect one another when they’re together, are in terror when they are alone with the slaves and with those who won't suffer one man to be master of another. The public tyrant is then the most miserable.[RepJ BookIX p.340] The unjust is the unhappiest, and when he is a leader, he is our worse nightmare, as well as his own.[RepJ BookIX p.337] In love with power, he only gets worse when he gets it.[RepJ BookIX 579]
Thus, the soul of a tyrant, being in the habit of taking all he wants, is actually the least capable of getting what he actually desires [RepJ BookIX 577]. And like man, like state.[RepJ BookIX p.338] Like the weak and fearful tyrant, such a state will be truly poor and full of fear [RepJ BookIX p.339], and in constant conflict with others. [RepJ BookIX 579] Where the city under a true king is happiest, a city under a tyrant is the unhappiest [RepJ BookIX 576].
"Whatever people may think, the actual tyrant is really the most abject slave, a parasite of the vilest scoundrels. Never able to satisfy his desires, he is always in need, and, to an eye that sees a soul in its entirety, he will seem the poorest of the poor."[RepC9.578, p.305] "[V]irtue and wickedness are brought about by one's way of life, honorable or disgraceful."[RepC,p.143] And "may I add that it would make no difference if the true character of both should remain unknown to heaven and to mankind."[RepC9.579, p.306]
This is why we need leaders who have eyes that can see into human nature, can see inside at what lives in one’s heart.[RepJ BookIX 577] Such a one will see the soul as she is, not crusted over, like the sea god Glaucus, [RepJ BookX 611] but rather, he or she will look to her love of wisdom, her happiness, how different she could be if she follow this superior principle.
The evils that corrupt the soul are unrighteousness, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance, and if the soul is not destroyed by these moral evils, then she certainly cannot be destroyed by physical evil. Such evil is the necessary consequent of former sins, but poverty and sickness are only seeming misfortune, for the good man all things work together for good. All works together for the good among the good, but since external evil belongs to another, it thus can't hurt the soul. Wisdom is to the soul what food is to the body [RepJ BookIX 585, p.350], and so to be stuck in pleasures of the body keeps one from rising to higher pleasures.[RepJ BookIX 586, p.351] This is what separates the tyrant from the true king.[RepJ BookIX 587, p.353] This is why they conclude that injustice is to the soul what disease is to the body. This might also be proof of the soul’s immortality (and why the number of souls won't increase or decrease).
"Justice is produced in the soul, like health in the body, by establishing the elements concerned in their natural relations of control and subordination, whereas injustice is like disease and means that this natural order is inverted."[RepC p.143]
"[T]o declare that justice pays is to assert that all our words and actions should tend towards giving the man within us complete mastery over the whole human creature, and letting him take the many-headed beast under his care and tame its wildness, like the gardener who trains his cherished plants while he checks the growth of weeds."[RepC p.317]
"[T]he phrase [master of oneself] means that within the man himself, in his soul, there is a better part and a worse; and that he is his own master when the part which is better by nature has the worse under its control."[RepC p.124]
“Only when he has linked these parts together in well-tempered harmony and has made himself one man instead of many, will he be ready to go about whatever he may have to do, whether it be making money and satisfying bodily wants, or business transactions, or the affairs of state... Any action which tends to break down this habit will be for him unjust; and the notions governing it he will call ignorance and folly..."[RepC p.142]
Courage, wisdom, and temperance will control desire, will defend soul from the lessor desires that can destroy happiness. These three in one = justice. He is self-mastering, a judge of oneself, self-regulating, which constitutes the power to bring about his own happiness. Thus, "...the happiest man is he who is first in goodness and justice, namely, the true king who is also king over himself."
"...the lowest depth of wickedness goes with the lowest depth of unhappiness, and that the misery of the despot is really in proportion to the extent and duration of his power, though the mass of mankind may hold many different opinions..." Likewise, "everyone must see that a state is most wretched under a despot and happiest under a true king.” [RepC p.302]
Thus: "Our principle that the born shoemaker or carpenter had better stick to his trade turns out to have been an adumbration of justice; and that is why it has helped us. But in reality justice, thought evidently analogous to this principle, is not a matter of external behavior, but of the inward self and of attending to all that is, in the fullest sense, a man's proper concern."[RepC p.142]
"[O]nly the just man is happy; injustice will involve unhappiness."[RepC1.353, p.39]
In fact, “...the good and just man is so far superior to the bad and unjust in point of pleasure, there is no saying by how much more his life will surpass the other's in grace, nobility, and virtue."[RepC p.315]
Should we not all do well to listen to such a competent judge..."[RepC p.303] And in judging between the corresponding individuals, is it not equally fair to demand the verdict of one who is not dazzled, like a child, by the outward pomp and parade of absolute power, but whose understanding can enter into a man's heart and see all that goes on within? So let us reason with the unjust -- who is not intentionally in error [RepJ BookIX 589], but has never been asked the right questions about what is and is not noble and honorable [RepJ BookIX 590]. Don't blame them for the predominance of their lower nature, but uplift them to be, as far as possible, under his own rule, and baring that, the rule of someone more just.[RepJ BookIX 590] What’s more, "Vice can never know both itself and virtue; but virtue...will in time come to a knowledge of vice, as well as of itself. So it is the virtuous man, as I believe, that will make the wise judge."[RepC3.407, p.97] The true king 729 times happier, one for each day and each night of the year [RepJ BookIX 588, p.354]. In the opposition of desire and reason,[RepJ Book IV] one needs to get the many headed monster under control of reason [RepJ BookIX 588, p.355]. Between the appetitive and rational principles – there is a third principle of spirit, which mediates. The ideal is to have all become one, not three, as in state divided into classes.[RepJ Book IV]. There three classes of men; lovers of gain, lovers of glory, and lovers of wisdom; different objects of pleasure for each, each devalues the others, but only one with experience of all is a good judge of which is best [RepJ BookIX 581]
Therefore, we need an alliance of passion and reason for harmony in the soul. The delight of one who alone knows true being can never be known by the unjust, who goes for different pleasures all together. Thus the higher pleasures are known only to true philosopher, meaning, the lover of truth, sincerity, authenticity, justice.[RepJ BookIX 583] True and pure pleasure belongs only to the wise, and others are only shadows, mere appearances of pleasure.[RepJ BookIX] Both pleasure and pain are motions of the soul, and there is a mean between them which is sometimes at rest. Consciousness exists in the interaction between these and moves between the natural upper and lower and middle region [RepJ BookIX 584, p.349]. And just as health is pleasurable to those who've been ill, so someone standing in the middle having come from the lower would imagine himself in the upper, that is, if has never seen true upper world. So those who enjoy lower pleasures think them higher, for they have nothing higher yet to compare their experience to. Appearance suffice for reality for all, and those who've never seen the true don’t know the difference; only those who have, do.[RepJ BookIX 585] There is a neutral state, by the way, which seems like both pleasure (after cessation of pain), and like pain (upon cessation of pleasure); but this is only relative appearance, not true pleasure.[RepJ BookIX 583, p.347] It is appearance only and not reality, when tried by the test of true pleasures. For many intrinsic pleasures (i.e. smell, music, taste, orgasm) are not relative, but absolute, in that they have no antecedent pain [RepJ BookIX 584, p.348]. For just as there are just and unjust ways to get wealth [RepJ BookIX 591], so there are just and unjust ways to get pleasure. And the law of nature will set into their hearts a guardian, which is true music [RepJ BookIX 591], which will make them take good care of children [RepJ BookIX 591], will put honor in their soul [RepJ BookIX 591], and give them pure pleasure.
Thus, they conclude, to be just is to come as close as humans can to being like god -- to be unjust is the opposite.[RepJ BookX 613] To be just to the end of every action and occasion of his entire life carries off the prize (which Glaucon seemed to think in Book II that the fortunate and clever unjust would win). The unjust may get away with it in youth and think he has benefited for some time thereafter, but he will inevitably be found out and look foolish in the end (and experience all the other horrors you rehearsed in Book II).
So to Thrasymachus he concludes, how could it profit one to be controlled by a monster? No one who does not look within can see how justice profits [RepJ BookIX 589], so does not cultivate the gentle qualities.[RepJ BookIX p.357]
And, besides all the intrinsically good things that justice herself provides – like confidence, goodness, charisma and self knowledge - let’s bring back all the extrinsic gifts that the gods and man bring to the just. In fact, the just person is admired beyond anything the unjust can ever hope for. The unjust will envy the just with an ache he cannot define, almost hating him for the intrinsic benefits he is honored with. And the unjust person will wonder within himself what it is he lacks that makes the just what seems ‘arrogant’ to the unjust, which is really only self-respect, a condition the unjust can never even understand, let alone experience, but they will certainly miss it, though they may not know what they’re missing.
And after death, the rewards and punishments that are the gifts of the gods must naturally increase.[RepJ BookX 614] With this, Socrates closes his discussion with a recollection of the tale of Er, admitting he does not know if the story is true or not, but it might be instructive just the same. Because while we cannot know in this life what will happen in the next, we can speculate about what is likely, and as earlier concluded, we might as well make our fiction as close to accurate as we can.
Er, the son of Armenius, had lay ‘dead’ for ten days on a pile of bodies after a battle. But just as the funeral pyre was about to be lit, Er – whose body had been unaffected by decay - suddenly returned to consciousness. And so Er lived to tell of what he had seen in the other world. [RepJ BookX 614]
Waking up was, he said, like returning from a journey of a thousand years. He had been, as he told it, in a beautiful meadow, a place where many comers and goers gathered to talk together and to tell each other of the places they’d been, stories of heaven and hell from which they have respectively returned.
There was four thresholds in the meadow, he said, two by which the just and good ascended to and returned from heaven, and two by which the unjust descended to and returned from hell. It was the most horrible scene, as he told it, when some tyrant, trying to escape after a cycle, was sucked back in to the vortex for yet another round of his dues, his karma, if you will.[RepJ BookX 615]
Some who had returned told of suffering tenfold for every wrong they had done to anyone on earth, and of living ten lifetimes, ten times in a thousand years, to make up for their past wrongs.[615] But those who returned from that heavenly place talked of glorious joys, and some cried who suffered their memories.[RepJ BookX 614-615]
A new cycle of life was awarded on a first come first serve basis, Er explained. There were an infinite variety of lives to choose from, so enough even for the last comer, and for this reason, genius and destiny were not allotte, but chosen freely.[RepJ BookX 618] [RepJ BookX 619] Virtue is free, they were told, take as much as you want!
Some who come first, not having thought out the whole matter, choose a life of luxury and tyranny. But to hear those who had learned tell it, the best choice is that life which is undazzled by wealth and other temptations to do wrong to others, only to suffer yet worse himself.[RepJ BookX 619] ] Rather than foolishly choose pleasures that are fraught with pain (usually chosen by those who were not yet schooled by trial of experience), comers were cautioned to choose the life of truth and justice from the first, that they might be happy here. For even the habit of virtue is not enough without true philosophy [RepJ BookX 619-620]
This is the knowledge we need, they were told, forget all the rest, and choose always and everywhere as the opportunity arises, the better over the worse life, the good life over the temptations of evil.[RepJ BookX 618] Put an adamant faith in truth and right to avoid the extremes of excess and deficiency, and choose always the mean between the two. This is the way of happiness [RepJ BookX 619]
And so, having chosen their next life, some wisely and some not so, individual souls would pass eventually from the meadow toward center of the universe, which swirled in circles, one inside another, going opposite ways. This cosmic spindle weaved souls together, Er said, as if into the fabric of time.[RepJ BookX 616-617] Each went with their guardian genius, and were drawn into the revolution of the spindle, ratifying the destiny they had chosen, as they passed beneath the thrown of necessity [RepJ BookX p.396]. Then they passed over the plane of forgetfulness and by the river of unmindfulness, and those who drank, forgot what they had seen in the meadow.[RepJ BookX 621] But the tale has been saved, Socrates says, to save us – so that we might choose well how to live, now and through eternity.[RepJ BookX 621, p.397]
[i] Thus arise five forms of state.[RepJ Book IV] From action comes reaction, in forms of government, just as in seasons and all life [RepJ BookVIII 564] By studying how one comes from another we can see how discord arose. They can't last forever, for if something has a beginning, so it will have an end.[RepJ BookVIII p.294]
There are four imperfect forms of government, and one potentially perfect form (Aristocracy), which vary as natural human dispositions vary,[RepJ BookVIII p.292] grow out of human character itself.[RepJ BookVIII 545]
(1) Absolute, as in Sparta and Crete -- generally applauded,[RepJ BookVIII]
(2) Oligarchy -- teeming with evils,[RepJ BookVIII]
(3) Democracy -- "naturally follows oligarchy",[RepJ BookVIII]
(4) Tyranny -- the worst.[RepJ BookVIII]
Likewise, five dispositions of individual minds, place just alongside unjust to see the relative happiness/unhappiness of both.[RepJ BookVIII] --aristocracy -- government of the best, good and just;[RepJ BookVIII]
--timocracy (timarchy -- no good word for it), arises out of aristocracy, [RepJ BookVIII]
--oligarchic man --
--democratic man --
--tyranic man -- tyrants soul[RepJ BookVIII p.294]
Whether short-lived or long-lived existence (when the circumference of the circle will be completed humans can't know, divine birth contained in perfect number, but human birth. As discussed earlier, eventually, guardians who are ignorant of law of births, will deem children to be born ill timed, unworthy to hold their ancestors places.[RepJ BookVIII p.295] Therefore, absolute ruler will fail to take care of the people -- first by undervaluing music and gymnastics => guardians who have lost the power of testing the metal of different quality characters; and there arises discord.[RepJ BookVIII 547, p.295] And the new gov't follows the mean, intermediate between aristocracy and oligarchy,[RepJ BookVIII] And so there will arise a battle between them => individual, not common property, iron and brass characters => money, gold and silver => virtue and the ancient order of things => enslaved their former friends.[RepJ BookVIII p.297] Out of fear of admitting philosophers to power, because now mixed up with other influences, so they turn to those with love of war over peace, who will steal their pleasures from others and run away from the law.[RepJ BookVIII p.297] When the spirit of contention and ambition dominates, the youth become arrogant, and the characters that answer to this form of government are timacratic, not single minded toward virtue, having lost his best guardian, i.e. philosophy; he is instead a lover of power and authority, a soldier, physical lover of gymnastics over music.[RepJ BookVIII p.298] Adeimantus adds: 'Oh, like Glaucon here."
The timacratic youth has its origin when he hears his mother's ambition, bad government in state, so sees that no esteem is paid to those who do their own business, much esteem to busy-bodies, drawn opposite ways, those who nourish the soul and those who encourage his appetite; he does not originally have a bad nature -- but bad company brings it about.[RepJ BookVIII 550, p.300]
Thus arises the oligarchic type of character/state, in which the rich have all the power. Oligarchy comes when accumulation of gold by private individuals ruins timocracy. Then they make laws to suit themselves,[RepJ BookVIII p.301] the more competition to grow rich, the less they think of virtue, so "in proportion as riches are honored and cultivated in a state, virtue and the virtuous are dishonored and neglected.[RepJ BookVIII] Therefore, men become lovers of trade and money over contention and honor.[RepJ BookVIII p.301] and soon they make a law, so that property is the qualification for higher and lower sum as citizenship/oligarchy is more or less exclusive; [RepJ BookVIII 551, p.302] And before long they will be buying offices.
Imagine if a man were allowed to steer the ship because he is rich, rather than because he is the better pilot...i.e. shipwreck = great defect of oligarchy. Another defect of oligarchy, is it’s extreme division of classes, wealth and poverty. Another defect, is that it can't fight single-mindedly, if he arms the people, he’ll end up afraid of them. Also, so fond of money that they are unwilling to pay taxes; yet another evil, helpless when loses property, but also helpless when he has it, not citizens, for neither ruler or subject, but spendthrift; won't fight for anything but money, and won't risk money for anything.[RepJ BookVIII] This is the true plague of the city, like the drone is the plague of the hive, some stingless, end as paupers; others with sting end as criminals. Therefore, the existence of paupers and criminals is due to this evil constitution of the state, i.e. oligarchic;[RepJ BookVIII p.304] And the nature and origin of oligarchic individual, is when ambitious youth turns to avaricious one. This happens often when sons see just fathers reduced to poverty, their appetite makes reason and spirit sit and be ruled. They will have desires of the pauper and the criminal, but will love his money enough to coerce them to behave, so to build a reputation for honesty, but can tell the oligarchic man when he has a chance to benefit from dishonesty (as, say, with an orphan in his charge);[p.306] Therefore, will be at war with himself -- may appear more respectable than most, but the harmonious soul will flee him.[RepJ BookVIII 555, p.307
Ultimately, democracy arises out of resentment among the many for the extravagance of the oligarchy, who ignore their needs and suffering of the many, which makes paupers and criminals abound, and evil blazes these up like fire.[RepJ BookVIII 556, p.309] Contracts have the advantage of compelling citizens to trust and look to their characters, but don't work very well, therefore state falls sick, at war with itself, distracted even when no external cause, [RepJ BookVIII 557, p.310] => revolution, => democracy => election by lot, freedom => diversity => will appear fair and delightful for the moment [RepJ BookVIII p.311-312], but forgiving spirit of democracy gives no direction, no emphasis on truth, beauty, or honor, and so promotes anyone who professes to be a friend to the people, dispensing a sort of equality to the equal and unequal alike.[RepJ BookVIII 558, p.313]
The democratic man grows out of the oligarchic, by process of repressing unnecessary desires.[RepJ BookVIII 558, p.313] The sons of oligarchic man, who, loving money, attends only to the necessary desires (those he can't get rid of) and considers it overindulgence to satisfy unnecessary ones.[RepJ BookVIII 559] The son goes to war with himself, better vs. worst self, sometimes oligarchic principle wins, desire for order banishes other desires.[RepJ BookVIII 560] But...often these are replaced with still other desires, which are fierce and numerous, so son passes from original nature to cynicism about democracy, with its deceits and conceits and unnecessary pleasures, and puts government of self into first these hands, then those, thinking one as good as the other, one pleasure as good as another, with no higher law:[RepJ BookVIII 561, p.317]
Combine excess of oligarchic wealth and democratic freedom => people use freedom to punish rulers who appear as oligarchs. So liberty is vulnerable to becoming anarchy, as if no limit, rulers become subjects and subjects become rulers, and all flattered by scholars; so liberty and equality => tyranny, when intoxicated with freedom.[RepJ BookVIII 562, p.318] For slaves to be as free as masters, and for the sexes to be equal in freedom, is our fondest dream, but...when citizens become oversensitive and impatient, and overreact to the least authority, even the most just, and having no one over them, they cease to care for the laws.[RepJ BookVIII 564, p.320] So oligarchy is a disease only magnified by freedom, as overmasters democracy => divides into three classes, wealthy/drones/working people. The drones feed upon the wealthy, who are squeezable, and plot against the people, deceiving the wealthy to fear the people. Thus, the wealthy become oligarchic, almost against their will. They are a class of idle spendthrifts, followers. Such 'leaders' plague the city, as drones plague the hive.[RepJ BookVIII] And then come the trials and impeachments, and the peoples champion, once protector, becomes a tyrant, and if he tastes blood => a wolf. Always stirring up war so that the people need him, or think they do. But taxing them until they are weak, he begins to grow unpopular.[RepJ BookVIII 566, p.324] Still, the people can't get rid of him, but he can get rid of the boldest and braves among the people.[RepJ BookVIII 567] And in this way, an excess of liberty => excess of slavery => tyranny.[RepJ BookVIII p.320, 329]
But the question remains, is the tyrant happy?[RepJ BookVIII 567, p.325] [See recapitulation of how democratic man generated out of oligarchic parents [RepJ BookVIII p.331], "out of abhorrence of his fathers meanness."[RepJ BookVIII 572] And so again, action => reaction, in forms of government, just as in seasons and all life [RepJ BookVIII 564]
There is, perhaps, no better example of dialectic reasoning in ancient literature than Plato’s own masterwork, the Republic. It is a work of art that reveals itself only to those who have been readied by initiation.
Plato’s dialogues are very possibly the most difficult works in the western tradition, in large part because of Plato’s concern for using the written word carefully and well. The written word can be, he says, “the first step in forgetting.” This would be reason enough to not say exactly what he is thinking, because he knows it is best for us to think for ourselves. Plato, like Socrates was careful to let his partners in discussion come to their own conclusions, each as they were individually ready for them. Both give us food for thought...then wait for us to get around to thinking about it, in our .
We might surmise that Plato’s silence is mere prudence, since his outspoken mentor has recently been put to death for saying too much, but Plato insists that the reason goes much deeper than this. In his Seventh Epistle, he explains that he has never put his deepest thoughts into words because people who don’t truly understand them will nonetheless pretend they do, take them and call them their own, and use them to ends that are not good – as wolves might wear sheep’s clothing.
This is (arguably) also the reason that Aristotle’s ethics (these days called virtue ethics) would have us take care when following extrinsically defined rules and codes, for following directions can bring us to simply fake it, only going through the motions of being a good person…without ever really thinking through what the right thing to do actually is.
And so many ancient writings, especially Plato’s, are deliberately difficult specifically because a virtuous person does not want or need to be given direct answers, but rather to be provoked to think for him or herself. Plato’s dialogues challenge us to ask ourselves -- what do I think? “You be the judge!” Socrates insists at his trial, for the questions they are discussing and the issues that arise in the process of searching for the truth cannot be taught by direction. Indeed, “nothing is an answer if you haven’t asked the question.” This is why dialectic teaching and learning is so important, especially when talking with the young.
In the beginning of this dialogue, Socrates is cajoled into visiting the home of an old friend, Cephelus, where he takes up an extended dialogue with Polmarchus, the son of Cephelus, as well as Plato’s oligarchic (and somewhat bloodthirsty) uncle, Critias, among others. For reasons that become clear in the discussion, Socrates takes up the task of relaying a discussion he’d had the day before with Plato’s older brothers, Glaucon and Ademantus. Being only a boy himself, Plato does not show up in the discussions he records, but we can surmise that he was there, and was a very good listener, foras he spent his life recalling for posterity what he heard growing up at Socrates’ feet.
They start out discussing the regrets of old age when the question arises, What brings happiness in old age?
Cephalus replies that he thinks it has much to do with wealth, and the others tend to agree that living virtuously is much easier when one can afford such ideals. But Socrates wonders aloud whether it matters how you got your wealth? Does it make a difference if you earned or inherited your living, whether you came by it justly or unjustly? For surely neither wealth alone nor living virtuously brings peace of mind or happiness. So they agree you have to have come upon your wealth justly in order to be truly happy with it. But then this brings up the question, what is justice?
Cephalus says he thinks that justice involves telling the truth, keeping promises, and paying your debts – what he calls, taking care of business. (He doesn’t say, but might and perhaps should have, that such behavior comes much easier to a rich person, even to an unjust rich person who might create the appearance of being a good person simply by keeping his accounts in order, than to a poor person, for even a truly good poor person – like Socrates, who never took a single drachma for his teaching.) Socrates does say though that we must be careful here, for words can be slippery, and so to say that justice is, for instance, always keeping promises might lead us to think that a person should always, for instance, return a knife one has borrowed, even if it is to someone who has an appetite to kill -- and this cannot be right. There are exceptions to every rule, and so we must understand such rules and codes as general rules of thumb which must be applied by a thinking person to the particular circumstances before him. Again, a truly virtuous person will be continuously and deliberately thinking through what the right thing to do is in any given circumstance. It may be a good rule of thumb to mind one’s business by telling the truth, keeping promises, and paying debts – but a virtuous person must come to see when it is just to follow the rules, and when doing so would itself be an injustice.
Socrates adds then that to find the essence of justice, or of anything else for that matter, we need more than a mere list of examples – what we need is to figure out what all these examples have in common. It may be right for a person to take care of their own business, but then the question remains, what truly is our business? Is justice, for instance, a rich man’s business?
Polemarchus says that he thinks justice is to do good to friends and evil to enemies. Polemarchus is assuming that one’s friends are good, Socrates reminds him, and that one’s enemies are bad, but – as we use the word friends rather loosely – this may not always be the case. And since we can easily make mistakes about who is good and who is not, we might end up doing good for friends who are themselves not good, and doing harm to good ones. For this reason, helping friends might actually be wrong in a given case, and harming enemies might be wrong too. Come to think of it, Socrates says -- can harming anyone ever be right? Even if it is right to do good for our friends who are good, can it ever be right to do harm to our enemies or anyone else -- even if they aren’t good? Is it ever right to do harm to anyone? Can a good person ever harm anyone justly? Or would only a bad person do such a thing?
Mind you, Socrates doesn’t actually think anyone is ever objectively or permanently ‘bad’ – he does however think that some are sufficiently ignorant of what is good that they become what we would call egoists; or what he calls tyrants or despots. As Aristotle will later add to this discussion (a generation later) that bad habits can thwart good reasoning, but Socrates holds that we can always choose to override bad habits, at least when we come to understand that our own happiness depends upon it. People can change, if they want to; the philosopher’s job is to help them want to. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any purpose in dialogue…for in such discussion lies the power of mutual self-improvement, which is to say, to help one another see that our own true self-interest lies in our being good. Again, Aristotle will later illuminate the importance of personal ideals in this process, for while we are born with both higher and lower potentials, it is our continual choice which we will actualize in a given life. And it is for lack of philosophy – that is, the love of truth – that most of us never do. It is not that we are born bad, but that we are simply never helped (or let) to learn how to be good, or even, for that matter, what good is. But then whose fault is this? Not our nature, and only partly our nurture, but more than both, it is by our choice if and when we miss the mark..
At this point, Thrasymachus (a slave owner and all around scoundrel) jumps into the conversation, arguing that justice is only and nothing but the interest of the stronger. Whatever the powerful say it is, that is what justice means. It is the might to make and enforce rules and laws that determines what is right, he insists. And what’s more, whatever the form of government (whether it is the rule of one (as in kingship or tyranny), the rule of the few (as in aristocracy and oligarchy), or the rule of the many (as in polity or democracy), it is those who make rules who can enforce their wishes, and so can get everything they want. This is wherein happiness is actualized, by getting what we want. And there is no other justice, but what the powerful dictate. Therefore, it is far more profitable for the powerful to be unjust than to be just, for one with power can simply take whatever he wants. And likewise, it is in the interest of the ruled to serve justice as it is defined by those who have the power to reward or punish them. Justice then is whatever the powerful deem to be good for them, and this is what constrains how the poor and powerless should behave.
Really? Socrates wonders. What happens when a powerful person is mistaken about what is good for them? After all, if a fool who does not know what is truly good takes all that he wants because he believes it’s good for him, he may actually be getting something that does him harm…which isn’t really what he wants, right? For instance, this same fool might want wealth so much that he will enslave others to get it, but what happens when such a tyrant finds himself alone with his slaves? Are the terrors he is sure to endure really what he wanted? What’s more, can anyone simply take the kinds of goods that a truly rich person counts among his blessings – for instance, the trust, friendship, and love that a more rational person would want? Or must such things be willingly given?
In this light, does it really make sense to say that the will of the powerful constitutes justice, given that might cannot guarantee that a person is right about the value of the outcome he will ultimately get? And if injustice doesn’t get an unjust person what he really wants, then what good is it, really? Power (he argues elsewhere) is after all the ability to get the good things one wants, and if taking what one believes one wants doesn’t get one the good one really wants, then such a person is not very powerful after all. Injustice is not prudent or wise then, if what a person wants isn’t actually what’s good for them.
Thrasymachus says Socrates is being naïve, and that justice is not prudent either. It’s clear, this scoundrel argues, that people would rather do than suffer injustice, because no one wants to be on the butt end of injustice. So those who are honest and virtuous just make themselves gullible, vulnerable, and useless – all of which makes life not even worth living.
Socrates agrees that being on the receiving end of injustice comes with difficulties, but is it worse or better, he wonders, than carrying it within one? All things considered, it may be better to endure than to deliver injustice, and for reasons the fool may not have considered.
After all (unbeknownst to the tyrant), justice causes harmony in the soul and makes the just person or state more peaceful, confident, and effective in action. Only the just person may truly know this, in the strong sense (gnosis), but as the tyrant craves power so, wouldn’t such a one see this in his interest too? If it turns out that injustice causes disunion in the soul, and makes one god-forsaken, while the just become stronger over time – especially when it comes to achieving their own happiness – then who is truly the fool, and who is truly powerful? And since this will have the same effect on a couple or a state as on an individual, power over others is sure to exacerbate this effect. So if injustice ultimately defeats itself by making a person an enemy to oneself, as well as all others who are just, has the tyrant truly benefit by his so-called power, or has he actually lost out by following his mistaken idea of good? Socrates concludes, for his part, that while honesty may seem gullible and useless in youth, in later years, the tyrants ego will prove to have been self-destructive. By contrast, a wise person’s justice will ultimately prove to have been in his best interest all along.
Socrates goes on at length to argue that the art of true happiness is all about understanding true justice in this way. Certainly art, in as much as it is truly art, aims at perfection, and does not follow the principle of might makes right. Because art is always intrinsically motivated, the artist cannot be forced to create by extrinsic motivation. The true artist will create only out of love of the good. So too the art of happiness is another good that cannot simply be taken, but must rather be earned.
There are two kinds of change, Socrates reminds us -- that which comes from within (artiface) and that which comes from without (nature). Nature’s changes are beyond human power (or were then, at any rate); only human activity, or artifice, is within human control. A system (e.g. organism, or soul, or community, etc.) at its best (i.e. healthy) is invulnerable to change from without, which is to say, there is little or no extrinsic power working on it. If a system is not centered, self-controlled, temperate and balanced, this is when it is vulnerable to extrinsic causes of change. Force is therefore an illusory form of power. Strength amounts to immunity from change that comes from outside of us.
Indeed, the true artist – and life itself is art, after all -- stays within the limits of his art, and does not interfere with the art of others. And just as the shepherd’s art is for the sake of the flock, so governments’ art is for the good of all the subjects, not just the good of the rulers. Likewise, the good of the whole individual is not served merely by the wants of the immediate self, unless the immediate self is listening to the voice of good reason, which will remind one of the ultimate wants which are the ends to which immediate wants are only a means.
Thus, in answer to Thrasymachus’ belief about the benefits of injustice, the art of politics cannot be equal to the power to see to the ruler’s interest, Socrates concludes, and it is for this reason that rulers should not be paid more than fairly. In fact, accumulation of private property ought never to be encouraged at all, Socrates thinks, because both wealth and poverty can be subversive to true art. Extrinsic wealth creates an ulterior motive which distracts the artist from intrinsic wealth, which is a truer good, though only the intrinsically wealthy can know it, in the truest sense of knowing (gnosis). If you set up rewards other than simply doing a job well, you turn artists (that is, children, physicians, or statesmen, or for that matter, anyone doing any job) into something other than true artists. No man can follow two masters, after all, for the time will come when they will compete, and the choice a person makes when deciding which authority to listen to (i.e. one’s inner voice or the voice of unjust authority) that determines a person’s character, one way or another. Here is where taking care of one’s business matters most – and where the true art of happiness has its rewards.
For instance, the physician who cares more about money than good health will do harm if the extrinsic profit is great enough, and so such a person is not a true physician. Likewise, a person who will play dumb to lies when there seems to be some profit to be had in deceit is not a true philosopher (i.e. lover of truth). And for this reason, when it comes to government, we should never encourage guardians to be anything other than guardians, he says, otherwise you’ll have guardians who themselves need to be guarded.
All true artists must be single-minded about their work, free of ulterior motivation other than the quality of their proper function, as is necessary to hit the target of true art. The purpose of any job is to do that thing well, not merely to profit oneself with extrinsic goods. As a true doctor seeks only health, so a true ruler seeks only the health of the whole community, that is, that good of all subjects, and this should be payment enough. We should all be paid fairly for our work, so we can see to the satisfaction of our needs, of course. But if we cannot resist the temptation to take advantage of others needs, then we should leave the job to be done by someone else who can do it better.
For this reason, the function of the law and of good rulers is not to see to the interests of any particular class, but to harmonize the city/state as a whole and the citizens to one another – to the good of all. The task of a good leader is to teach them to cooperate to their common ends, not put them in competition with one another such that some win and others lose.
From this is follows that anyone who aims mainly at being rich, or powerful, or popular is at odds with that principle of justice in their own soul, and therefore should not be allowed to lead or serve, for someone else could do it better. They cannot even rule themselves, after all, why should they be allowed to rule anyone else? In fact, in a good polity, men would avoid, rather than seek office, and the good leader is more likely to be begged by his subjects to take the lead, than to beg his subjects to let him. Conversely, the payment that a just person deserves for not accepting the responsibility of taking office is to be ruled by someone less just than themselves.
"our city…be governed by us and you with waking minds, and not, as most cities now which are inhabited and ruled darkly as in a dream by men who fight one another for shadows and wrangle for office as if that were a great good, when the truth is that the city in which those who are to rule are least eager to hold office...they will assuredly approach office as an unavoidable necessity."(RepC7.520d-e)
Thus, "We require...that those who take office should not be lovers of rule."(RepC7.521b) "All goes wrong when...they set about fighting for power, and this internecine conflict ruins them and their country. The life of true philosophy is the only one that looks down upon offices of state; and access to power must be confined to men who are not in love with it."[RepC p.235]
"[T]he life of true philosophers" looks with scorn on political office.(RepC 521b) But "the heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. That is the fear, I believe, that makes decent people accept power... If there could ever be a society of perfect men, there might well be as much competition to evade office as there now is to gain it; and it would then be clearly seen that the genuine ruler's nature is to seek only the advantage of the subject."[RepC p.29]
Thus, "...the truth is that you can have a well-governed society only if you can discover for your future rulers a better way of life than being in office; then only will power be in the hands of men who are rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that brings happiness, a good and wise life."(RepC7.521)
Knowing what is within human control is key to understanding where our true power really lies, and illuminates what we can and cannot justly accomplish. Understanding this, we see that everyone has a virtue or an art or a job or proper business, a responsibility -- whatever you want to call it, something which, if they don’t do it, simply won’t get done. And it is this purpose of helping the young find their proper art that education should serve. Figuring out what is your responsibility, i.e. what you are good for, is the only way to figure out what is good for you, that is, what justice turns out to mean in your life.
In Socrates case, when asked what he was good for – he laughed and said, pimping – by which he meant introducing people to one another from whom they are likely to benefit. Such friendship is, after all, among the highest of all goods! Indeed, as Socrates ultimate proclaims, “Love is the only thing I ever claimed to know anything about.”
Unfortunately, most of what Socrates argues here goes right over Thrsymachus’ head (as it often does those who are habituated to injustice), but it does not escape the attention of Plato’s thoughtful older brothers. And though Socrates ultimately observes that “one might as well try to shave a lion as try to talk sense to someone like Thrasymachus,” he is always delighted to take up such inquiry with young people, who tend to be more inclined to want to learn.
At this point, Plato’s older brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, speak up, saying that they are not yet satisfied with Socrates’ account. They do not agree with Thrasymachus, of course, but they also do not think that Socrates has made his case clearly enough. They’d like to be more truly convinced that the mere appearance of justice is not enough to make a person happy.
This is an important thing to accomplish, once and for all, they argue, because the effect of this idea on the young – that is, that might makes right – is to become excuse for becoming a rotten human being, and once these habits are established, they are very difficult, if not impossible, to break. Most people wear justice like sheep’s clothing, they say, because there are social rewards for appearing to be just. They learn to pretend to be good to avoid social scorn, but when they think they can get away with injustice, when no one is looking, then nothing will stop them if they think they won’t be caught. Without understanding the true price of injustice (i.e. intrinsic poverty), the souls of the young are easily corrupted.
And what’s more, when people do choose to act justly, even when no one is looking, it is too often because they wish to avoid the gods’ wrath, believing they at least are watching. And to make matters worse, those who lost that faith, or never believed in the gods to begin with, jump to the conclusion that there is no other reason to be just. So we are left with the question, Glaucon and Adaimantus argue, what, if anything, is justice intrinsically good for?
Socrates seems to know, but needs to make a more convincing case, they say, for what he was saying earlier. Is there no other reason to be just, Plato’s older brothers ask, besides the promise of rewards and the fear of punishments? If one can get away with injustice without having to actually be just, then doesn’t injustice pay, as Thrasymachus says? If there are no gods and no punishment to be feared, then why bother being good?
Glaucon uses the story of the ring of Gyges to set up this discussion (which could be the seed of the Lord of the Rings dilemma, by the way). It’s about a shepherd who found a dead body still wearing a golden, and come to find, magic ring. When he put it on his own finger, and turned it inward, he discovered it made him invisible, and so he could get away with anything – or so he thought. So he killed the king, and raped the queen, and stole the treasury, etc. etc. Glaucon says imagine there were two such rings, and that both a just and an unjust person put them on. At that point, it seems the just man would act just like the unjust man because he’s have no clear reason to be otherwise. This he takes as evidence that, if a person were guaranteed to escape getting caught, he would have no reason to be just, and that therefore justice is of no good, except for appearances’ sake. Anyone who wouldn’t take advantage of such a power would be a fool, Glaucon notes that Thrasymachus would argues, and though people may praise him to his face, they would be doing so only to keep up appearances for fear of revealing themselves as unjust and blowing their own cover, and they’d call him a gullible fool behind his back. This is why it is said that human nature is evil, Thrasymachus says, because, given this choice, anyone would choose injustice.
So why, Glaucon asks, is the appearance of justice not enough for happiness? Put another way, he wants to know the true value of justice, apart from all its instrumental value. He wants Socrates to show if and how justice is intrinsically profitable to the individual, indeed, in his best interest, whether rewarded by gods and men or not. Because if justice is only valuable in the eyes of others, then its fair to conclude that human nature is not good, perhaps even intrinsically evil, or at least artificial, and that individuals are only just if and when it serves their own ends. A truly good and just person would be just no matter what, even if he or she is the only person who will know, and even, it must be added, if it will them harm. If it cannot be shown why a person would do this, then it appears that injustice actually is more profitable than justice, and that the unjust will prosper while the just pay a price.
Socrates takes up the challenge. Let’s imagine, he says, both a just and an unjust person with power, and intuit what they will each do with it. He adds (or maybe it was Adeimantus who says this) that, in order to really tell the difference, we have to isolate them completely from one another, strip them both of appearances, such that the just will be, but not seem good, and the unjust will seem, but not be good. Let’s ask, he says, which is better off? Only in this way can we see how much the just person is superior in happiness to the unjust – by comparing the intrinsic rewards and punishments of justice and injustice, the inner consequences, beyond the extrinsic consequences of merely appearing just in the eyes of gods and men.
The subject at hand then is justice in the individual, and to what extent it contributes to happiness in the end of life.
“I fancy it will be no light undertaking,” Socrates says, “so we had better think twice before venturing down this path.”
This is where Socrates proposes that that they imagine a state, which is analogous to a human soul, he says, but the soul is difficult to see from our vantage, whereas the state is large and easier to examine. That way we can see how justice and injustice take root, and then compare them to our own inner worlds.
Note how Socrates describes his true purposes in this discourse by expressing his actual ideal of the healthy community at the outset:
Suppose we imagine a state coming into being before our eyes. We might then be able to watch the growth of justice or of injustice within it. When that is done, we may hope it will be easier to find what we are looking for…”(p.55)
Which is, we remember from the beginning of the dialogue, how to be happy in old age? At which point, they begin describing how “a state comes into existence because no individual is self-sufficing; we all have many needs.”(p.55)
“And having these needs, we call on one another’s help to satisfy our various requirements; and when we have collected a number of helpers and associates to live together in one place, we call that settlement a state… So if one man gives another what he has to give in exchange for what he can get, it is because each finds that to do so is for his own advantage.”(p.56)
Agreeing that “there are no two people born exactly alike, there are innate differences which fit them for different occupations,” that men do better specializing and sharing the fruits of their labors, and that the right work must be done at the right time, they conclude that:
“more things will be produced and the work be more easily and better done, when every man is set free from all other occupations to do, at the right time, the one thing for which he is naturally fitted.”(p.57)
This is what Socrates calls ‘the healthy community’ – in which freedoms and responsibilities are shared by all, and individuality flourishes where each does what he or she is good at.
As important as this is to Socrates entire argument, still, 2400 years of scholars have largely ignored it, and instead take the state they go on to concoct to represent Socrates’ ideal, but nothing could be further from Socrates’ point. Indeed, in as much as the authoritarian utopia they come up with is subject to injustice, it is anything but ideal. It is important to see and keep in mind that Socrates brings these different conceptions of an ideal community to the table for the sake of argument -- as if to say, what is wrong with this picture? Where does injustice set in?
So they start out with what Socrates calls his ideal community – one that appears to be the perfect combination of a market economy and communism. The just economy, he reasons, arises from human needs, because “needs are the mother of invention”. This community has as its primary function the protection and nurturance of children from harm. They imagine a community in which each is free from all other labors to do that which he or she is best capable of doing. Trade plays an important part, and just as a farmer doesn’t have time to make his own shovels, so we must all do what we are best fit for, and divide labor according to natural aptitudes. In such an economy, it stands to reason that labor would be divided according to who is best capable of doing a given job well. Creativity (he argues in other dialogues) is critical to a healthy and growing community and is also a means for individuals to reach their own divine potential and achieve immortality in the process, by creating something that will live on after them and continue to do good. In this way, he bypasses the argument that there is no incentive to work if there is no private property and individual wealth, with the argument that both wealth and poverty are subversive to true art. Doing something for it’s own sake, it’s intrinsic worth, will enable excellence, they conclude, in both the individual and the state.
This element of freedom is very important to remember – because this is exactly what most miss in Plato’s Republic. For example, the acclaimed Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, in the middle of the 20th Century, decided that Plato ought to be exposed for the “fascist” he is.
In “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” Popper talks about Plato’s so-called‘ Guardian State’, calling it:
“the political science of dictatorship…chillingly familiar to students of the Third Reich and Communist regimes from Stalinist Russia to the Cultural Revolution.”
Popper goes on to say that, “Never was a man more earnest in his hostility toward the individual.” Socrates’ ideal is “a totalitarian state with mass conformity,” incorporating “social theories that are offensive in the extreme,” and concludes that Socrates would have viewed the Christian doctrine ‘love thy neighbor’ as “the enemy of his caste state.”
And to make matters worse, Popper’s view has held among philosophers for most of the last century.
Drawing on Popper, Paul Strathern, author of a book (tellingly) entitled ‘Plato in 90 Minutes,’ concludes:
“Plato’s opinions on the topics mentioned above are almost all seriously at odds with the opinions held nowadays by all but earnest bigots and the slightly crazy.”[p.36]
Popper and Strathern’s error? Short attention span!
They (and, given the authority attributed to his view, apparently many others) have failed to notice that Socrates was not advocating this state! He was, rather, holding it up as if to say, “What is wrong with this picture?”
Despite Popper calling Socrates the “enemy of the free individual,” Socrates argues that all should be free to do what they are good at when they choose to do it! Plato is criticized for what looks like an acceptance of inequalities, but as Cairns points out, "In Plato's hands aristocracy meant the rule of the best, from whatever class they came. The able were to receive special training for the responsibilities requiring great ability; the less able were to perform the tasks suitable to their ability. Plato's political theory is an implication of the system of nature, and to call this philosophy aristocratic is meaningful only in the sense that nature is itself aristocratic. But to call any philosophy aristocratic in the sense of class interest is meaningless; preoccupation with the interests of one class to the detriment of others is not philosophy. Philosophy is disinterested or it is not philosophy. When ideas are manipulated for personal ends, for class or group interests, the name for this in Plato's day was sophistry. It was against this that all the dialogues were directed. To accuse Plato of being in league with the sophistic forces that undermined the classical world is an instance of the more subtle misrepresentation of his position." (Plato, Collected Dialogues, p. xvi)
Further evidence for this shows up in Socrates’ discussion of how children ought to be educated:
"There should be no element of slavery in learning. Enforced exercise does no harm to the body but enforced learning will not stay in the mind. So avoid compulsion, and let your children's lessons take the form of play. This will also help you to see what they are naturally fitted for."[p.258]
“Children must devote themselves especially to the discipline which will make them masters of the technique of asking and answering questions...Dialectic study."(p. 255)
"[A] natural gift for Dialectic ... is the same thing as the ability to see the connections between things."(p. 259)
And eventually, "The detached studies in which they were educated as children will now be brought together in a comprehensive view of their connections with one another and with reality."(p. 259)
So a healthy community will find and distribute talents by allowing children to play at what comes most naturally to them, and from youth upwards allow them to explore their intrinsic interests. We will discover if we do this, Socrates says, that there are no two individuals who are alike. And if you allow all citizens to do what comes most naturally to them in this way, then work will take on the character of play, and all things that need doing in a community will get done as well as possible.
And, yes, some will choose to take out the garbage, because there will always be those who prefer to let others do the dirty work in exchange for more free time and less responsibility. (Aristotle calls these ‘natural slaves,’ a term that is easy to misunderstand because we use the word ‘slave’ differently than he did…but more on this later.)
At any rate, does this sound like an enemy of individuality? A recipe for a totalitarian state?
Obviously, much depends here on who chooses work for the citizens. Can a ruler, from his vantage, know what is truly best for individuals? Even if you start with a perfectly just ruler, those who sit on high are ignorant of the critical details which are known only to the workers themselves, so there is the danger that, once routine sets in and administration and license are passed on, rulers will begin to make mistakes in putting individuals into the work that isn’t proper to them.
This is where the proper limit of the authority of the state over individuals begins to show up. In fact, justice requires that decisions must be made at the proper scale of activity. (Which is why Aristotle argues that a just community must have a ‘mixed constitution’, so that every voice can have its proper say.) People must choose their work for themselves.
Much regulation can be omitted, Socrates argues, because well educated people don’t need regulation. But this assumes a collective allegiance to the proper form of education so that people can become their better selves, and won’t need to be told what to do or not to do -- just as artists don’t need to be forced to be creative. It is an intrinsic interest in the joys and even the agonies of creativity that are its intrinsic reward.
This is how to insure, Socrates says, a fair balance of diversity in unity, which will allow the community to be healthy and harmonious. And the origin of retail trade will thus be ruled by freedom of choice and promotion by merit, and remain free of too much wealth or too much poverty in the process, both of which are subversive to work for its own sake – for its intrinsic value. Which is to say, they take the real fun out of it.
Where the catch comes in, Glaucon says, is that “some people will not be satisfied to live in this fair and simple way. What about luxuries?”(p.61)
To which Socrates replies, “Oh, I see, you don’t want to talk about the healthy community, you want to see what the inflamed and diseased state looks like! I really think we should be happy with this, he says, and stay clear of talk of too much wealth and the nagging appetites it creates. But if you want to see what a state looks like once one class is not satisfied with their fair share, then we can, if you like, look closer at the state in which the ruling class is made up of those not satisfied with well enough, but takes from the shares of its neighbors instead. This he calls, the state in heat.
“There’s probably no harm in talking about what a hungry state might look like; indeed, it is sure to help us discover how injustice takes root.[C2.372] The community I have described seems to me the ideal one, in sound health as it were; but if you want to see one diseased and suffering from inflammation, there is nothing to hinder us.”
At which point, a diligent reader will readily notice that wanting more than our fair shares leads them within a single page to the origin of war!
As for injustice: “We seem to have discovered already its origin in desires which are the most fruitful source of evils both to individuals and to states.”[p.62]
As they discover, it is the use of the term ‘mine’ that turns out to be the origin of evil – and private property and the lust for luxury leads some inevitably to create war and tyranny. If only the craving for private property were not implanted in our hearts in our youth as an early age, because children never forget. And if we get the form of education right, then the craving for private property will minimize itself, and they will grow up with a better understanding of a truer form of wealth.
Whereas:
"If a man's person is his only private possession...these men will live in complete peace with one another....disunion comes about when the words 'mine' and 'not mine,' 'another's' and 'not another's' are not applied to the same things throughout the community. The best ordered state will be the one in which the largest number of persons use these terms in the same sense, and which accordingly most nearly resembles a single person...all sharing as a whole in the pain of the suffering part."[C5.461]
“In our community, then, above all others, when things go well or ill with any individual everyone will use that word 'mine' in the same sense and say that all is going well or ill with him and his... And...this way of speaking and thinking goes with fellow-feeling."[C5.463]
For the next five of six books they explore the so-called ‘Guardian State,’ which is founded on growth by means of invading its neighbor’s share. They ask how the unhealthy community functions, and what happens when the word ‘mine’ becomes the dominant motivation and states grow up around the ideal of ownership and class accumulation, all the while still wondering (though apparently too subtly for most scholars to notice), where does injustice set in?
Socrates clarifies in the dialogue Timeaus that he doesn’t endorse this community they imagine in the Republic. There, he says that static ideals of supposedly perfect communities obscure the injustice that is required to support them. To see how they go wrong, you have to set them into motion, to see how they behave and misbehave in times of war and peace.
“The real test of her will be to see how she stands against enemies. Will she be wirey, while others are fat? Will she stand united in each individual, while others are divided in themselves? Will she know her enemies from her friends, and keep her hands off her friends? Or will she have as much internal civil discord as external foreign? And when this happens, will she remember that domestic critics are correctors, not enemies?”
“Such a state would be invincible,” he says, and “…her going to war would be unthinkable…and [yet] inevitable.”(Timaeus)
Still, while Socrates doesn’t endorse the so-called guardian state by this writers lights, he does use this discussion as a means to explore other worthy subjects – like how the diseased state will treat its women and children. In an attempt to temp the boys into contradiction about the kind of state they’d call ideal, he lays out a plan (not unlike that used by the Spartans) where women and children are held in common, and who has children with whom is decided by leaders, etc., asking whether it is a good thing, or not, and whether any of this is consistent with what they agreed to earlier regarding freedom and the healthy community.
It’s important to keep in mind that Socrates does this in part because Plato and his older brothers grew up in an oligarchic family, and thus have conditioned habits of looking up to the Spartans and the nobles (like most Americans do to the rich), and down on the less fortunate, as if they must somehow deserve it. But when the boys seem to say, sure, we like this ‘ideal’, and Socrates doesn’t argue with them, readers tend to get confused, thinking that if he doesn’t argue with them, then he must be agreeing. But Socrates would be the first to remind us that this is a fallacy of false choice; his job is not simply to confront them with his view, agreeing or disagreeing with their own, but to help them to see their own mistake.
Because Socrates is bent on letting people think for themselves, and if they’re wrong, on finding and asking the right questions to help them to see their error, we can’t jump to any conclusion based on what others say in response to his questions. The questioner is dependent on the answerer, he says -- where the latter goes, the former must follow.*
And if this is not evidence enough that the so-called ‘Guardian State’ is not Plato or Socrates’ ideal – consider Socrates’ pronouncement in Book 8 (p.266), where he refers them back to the healthy state -- adding that this was where they lost sight of good sense and everything since (six full books!) has been a digression!
“Let us be like wrestlers, then, who go back to the same grip after an indecisive fall...in order that, by setting the extreme examples in contrast, we may finally answer the question how pure justice and pure injustice stand in respect of the happiness or misery they bring, and so decide to pursue the one and not the other….”(p.267-68)
Remember that the fact that much of the Republic is ‘a digression’ does not discount all that has been said in the meantime. Much of it is critical, and figuring out what Socrates would endorse and what he would not is the exercise that Plato wants us to undertake.
And yet, all this is ignored by so-called Socratic scholars since. Consider the statement made by Paul Strathern (though I hesitate to call him a Socratic scholar, since his is entitled, ‘Plato in 90 Minutes’), who dares to make the claim that:
“Platonism…through the centuries produced a succession of thinkers who understood Plato better than Plato understood himself – the Platonists, the Neoplatonists, St. Augustine, and so forth.”[p.53]
…apparently adding Karl Popper to the list!
Closer to the truth is John Stuart Mill’s observation:
“the title of Platonist belongs by far better right to those who have been nourished in, and have endeavored to practice Plato’s mode of investigation, than to those who are distinguished only by the adoption of certain dogmatic conclusions, drawn mostly from the least intelligible of his works, and which the character of his mind and writings makes it uncertain whether he himself regarded as anything more than poetic fancies, or philosophic conjectures.”[Autobiography, p.19]
Plato’s Republic: Part II
So while discussing what some might call an ‘ideal state’, and building on a conception they’ve taken from the Spartan way of life, Plato’s brothers are wondering about private property, and if women and children ought to be held communally. At this point in any reading of the Republic, students are usually pretty confused. It’s hard to hear what exactly Socrates is saying here because he’s trying to bait Glaucon and Adeimantus into thinking for themselves, therefore, much of what he says is in question form to see whether they agree or disagree. But b/c most translations leave out or misplace the question marks, a first time reader would hear him asserting these things, instead of merely expressing them for the sake of argument. You have to back up sufficiently to hear his complaints and keep his voice in context.
He does say, rather too vaguely, that they are talking about the state to begin to see how it is analogous to the soul, and so, like the soul, it has to be considered one living thing. Therefore, all will hurt for any part, and the whole state will make the individual case its own, from which it follows that any freedom and rights it would give to anyone, it ought to give to everyone. He consistently upholds this idea that justice is doing one’s own business, and that each should be free to do the things or job they do best, and there will be no meddling between arts (e.g. rulers should not interfere in the family, crafts, etc.), from which it seems to follow that one class ought not o interfere with the work of other classes (which is where Popper gets his idea that Socrates is defending a caste system).
But, again, he’s putting this forward to ask, what’s wrong with this picture? Where does this go wrong? So all this is subject to what they say later… (Here’s where a focused and extended attentions span comes in handy… J)
Socrates hems and haws for awhile, but then decides to go on to draw them into the contradiction, as he is so good at. He does agree that it seems to make sense because friends hold all things in common. But he adds again that, for the same reason that they agreed earlier that decisions must be made, not by elites, but at the right scale or level of activity, so it probably wouldn’t work if elders chose who will and will not breed with whom; they’d be bound to make mistakes because it’s what they don’t know that will trip them up. So this would be one place where injustice and evil set in to such a state, but Plato lets us draw that conclusion ourselves, going on to say that s*
Socrates does make the case that such mistakes would be less likely to be made if you let people make free choices about these things themselves. In a truly ideal community, he says, there would be full education for women and men alike, with similar pursuits for similar natures, because they’ve long since concluded that, all things being equal (which they seldom are), women can do the same work as men. Different degrees of goodness are particular to individuals, they argue, not to genders, and natural gifts are found here and there in both men and women alike, so every occupation and education should be open to both and all. And while it may not be our convention to treat women as equals, Socrates says, convention should not stand in the way of good. As in economic and procreation matters, in male and female relations, individuals should be free to follow their own intrinsic pursuits, and in this way, a natural partnership of responsibility and dependence of the sexes will develop.
While unity and public spirit are generally good things, he argues, private interests often lead to discord. But to say that all should share in the interests of each, and to suggests that the state should be like one family, is not to say that they should follow the Spartan ideal. Being ‘slaves to the laws’ may sound good in theory, but is easy to abuse in practice. There is such a thing as taking a good idea too far.
In a healthy community (most translations say democracy, but Socrates argues later on that democracy is the unhealthy form of polity) there ought not to be any masters and/or slaves. In fact, there is no form or essence of master and slave in nature – this is purely a human construct.*
They then get into a discussion about the stories we tell children. The beginning of anything is the most important, after all, Socrates says, because children never forget. Therefore the stories we tell them when they are young leave the strongest impressions, sort of making a case for the butterfly effect of ideas. Children can’t distinguish between allegory and literal stories, so the images they take in are likely to become indelibly fixed in their minds. Therefore, it’s very important that the first stories they hear should be designed to produce the best effect on their character. So first teachers, e.g. parents and grandparents, should tell only true stories, including those about war, because children ought to see war for what it truly is, its true costs and just rewards and punishments.
Socrates worries about stories of the gods, passed down from Homer and Hessiod, that represent the gods as unjust, and yet praise them anyway, saying this sets the wrong example for the young. Since the state exists or the purpose of raising and protecting children from evil, what are we to think about the ‘noble lies’ we tell children about the gods? Myths are false tales, and as such, and when they falsely represent the gods, showing the bad to be happy and the good to be unhappy, they goes against nature and shows a deep misunderstanding of how good and evil work. (Btw, Critias, Plato’s uncle, to whom Socrates is relaying all this, has recently written a piece about how fear of an all powerful god is a good way to keep people under control. We don’t hear about this in the Republic, but it seems relevant…)
All of this is why people take Plato to be advocating censorship, but in fact, all he’s saying is that, not knowing the full truth about the distant past, or the gods, we should make the stories we tell as close to truth as possible – and the truth is that the divine nature is good, and we ought to represent it as such. True stories are uplifting, and they don’t glorify injustice. He’s not saying that the state should control what literature or music is created, only that creative artists and poets ought to take responsibility for what their work teaches. We are improved by good, and harmed by evil, and the rewards and price are greater than we recognize – not just for this life, but for the whole of existence (which may or may not go on after death, Socrates thinks, since we can’t know on this side of it what goes on the other – remember his claim in Apology that being afraid of death is just another way of pretending to know more than we possibly can). Plato is known for his distaste of poetry and comedy, but it’s because it uses pleasure and emotion and rhetoric and the catharsis effect to move people to less than honorable ends, which is the wrong use of power, especially if it bypasses reason. When reason fails to constrain, then these feed the passions, encourage appetites to rule the mind, and in this way, it has the power to do harm to the good itself. It’s a bigger deal than we think, he says. Which is why there’s an ancient quarrel between philosophy and fiction. Socrates says let poetry and fiction encourage human goodness, rather than just promote pleasure. Then there will be no objection to them. Stick to the truth about human nature, he says, which, like the divine nature, is good, and ought to be described as such.
"... While our (negative) description of the soul is true of her present appearance; we have seen her afflicted by countless evils, like the sea-god Glaucus...But we must rather fix our eyes, Glaucon, on her love of wisdom and note how she seeks to apprehend and hold converse with the divine, immortal, and everlasting world to which she is akin, and what she would become if her affections were entirely set on following the impulse that would lift her out of the sea in which she is now sunken...then one might see her true nature...the soul...to understand her real nature, we must look at her, not as we see her now, marred by association with the body and other evils, but when she has regained that pure condition which the eye of reason can discern. Then you will then find her to be a far lovelier thing and will distinguish more clearly justice and injustice and all the qualities we have discussed. "[C10.611]
Which is why…
"We shall not tell a child that, if he commits the foulest crimes or goes to any length in punishing his father's misdeeds, he will be doing nothing out of the way, but only what the first and greatest of the gods have done before him."[C2.377] In fact, "If by any means we can make them believe that no one has ever had a quarrel with a fellow citizen and it is a sin to have one, that is the sort of thing our old men and women should tell from the first;"[C2.377]
This is why literature and all forms of education ought always to aim to mold character, not harm it; only praise of the good ought to be written if humans wish to avoid being ruled by pleasure and pain. This is also the reason, he argues, that actors ought not degrade themselves by playing evil men (though there might be some good in this to show how evil gets its due, but evil men should play them then, he seems to think.) Only good men should play the roles of good men, because good men don’t look at themselves from outside in, so can’t fake or act or imitate, they can only be real, which is hard for those who are strangers to the feeling of goodness to imitate. Their voice quality too will reflect their internal harmony and sincerity. Such style is an expression of the soul, so cannot be faked. This is why truth is intuitively recognizable to another truthful person, as are lies, but liars don’t know the truth when they see it. (Later he argues that the good recognize both good and evil when they see it, but the evil only recognize other evil.)
Plato has a lot to say about imitation because he’s trying to draw a distinction between the real thing and the mere appearance of it, between the truth and deceit. The fiction writer creates appearances only, part of why he so easily goes astray. Homer is good, as far as his lights actually reach, Socrates says, but when he writes about what he is second removed from, like the gods, then he misses the mark of truth. The real artist who really knows what he is imitating would not be interested in imitation, but would prefer to tell the truth – which is why Plato says that a good person will not make himself the author of stories, but the theme of them. He gets into the idea of ‘creation’ and ‘creativity’ and ‘the creator’ here, saying that there is a sense in which we can ourselves become ‘divine beings’ by creativity, but we must be careful not to create appearances. A painter creates a picture, but it’s once removed from the object being painted itself, so only a copy of the idea. There are three kinds of artists therefore, and the tragic poets are thus thrice removed from the truth, just as the politicians are thrice removed from true kings. The true creator doesn’t bother with appearances in the same way that the ‘true king’ doesn’t bother with politics, which is only the appearance of leadership. So statesmen ought not be imitators, but should do at least that one thing well. This is especially important because the example of excellence in leaders will repeat itself in the population, like the example set by parents is repeated by the child. Wisdom in leaders will become wisdom in the state, as the smallest part will be reflected in the whole. So the one who takes the lead and governs the rest is responsible for the example he sets. (Hmmm…fractals?)
Anyway, as he says, it’s because we teach that wrongdoers can be happy that the effects on the young will be an excuse to do wrong, as Adeimantus argued earlier. So we should reform our mythology to tell our children the truth – that the gods don’t lie or mislead, and that the unjust do not end up happy. He also says that people are not free if taught to believe in and fear hell. Being moved by fear just makes us easy to control. So leave religion to the goddess at Delphi, and take her advice – Know Thyself!
In a healthy state or soul there should be no noble lies, they decide, because untruth is fatal to both, subversive to the proper function of anything. The proper function of the soul, the end or virtue or excellence of it, is wisdom. Untruth is a form of violence, too often used to coerce change in the mind, and deceit is destructive to state and individual alike, giving incentive to manipulate human behavior by way of stories and myths, creating an ongoing battle between self and other control. Without words, there can be no lying, hence the reason god cannot lie, and so cannot be held responsible for evil. The origin of evil turns out to be in human activity, because we have the power to control it, to cause or prevent the harm we cause (hence the distinction they drew earlier between that which nature changes and that which humans can change. God and nature have not evil in them, except where evil itself is being punished. Nature’s course is guided by necessity, not self-interest, and so humans cannot change it. Thus the source of evil is somewhere here inside the choice to act even despite the foreseeable consequences of possible harm to others. In human nature, foresight and freewill give responsibility to human action; we are responsible for the consequences of our actions, and in fact, evil turns out to be simply a category of human action, that which is done, despite knowing the harm it will cause. Actively doing unjustified harm is evil. If not destroyed by our own evil in this way, they say, we cannot be destroyed by another’s. Which is the argument behind Socrates’ claim that no harm can come to a good person. Misfortune will happen, but a good person will bear it nobly, for law and reason are within him, and so he is one of those systems they were talking about earlier that is impervious to change from without. Such a person knows a kind of ‘healing art’, Socrates says, b/c “the sound mind has the power in itself to make the bodily condition as perfect as it can be.”
Thus, he argues, if we had education that helps people improve their souls, every person would be their own best doctor. This is sort of a Taoist take, I think – when the dice are thrown, a just person simply responds with wisdom. Whereas an unjust person will try to make things happen, and in hurrying, will error, and so karma kicks in. They rationalize excuses that pass as reasons for unjustified actions, but bad reasoning is bad reasoning, fooling only fools, if those. Seldom if ever does it fool the self. Self-deceit is just active ignorance. To be deceived about the truth is something no one would consent to, and since justice (they decided in another dialogue) involves consent, deceit becomes the source of injustice in the soul, which destroys the possibility of happiness, because happiness depends on justice in the soul, i.e. it’s internal order, health, proper function. (This connects later with why you can’t really fight evil, you’re more effective trying to promote good.)
All of which is why education needs reform, and why we need a better understanding of human nature. For "education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be in their professions...they aver...that they can put true knowledge into a soul that does not possess it, as if they were inserting vision into blind eyes." The power of imparting comes of harmony, the harmony of soul and body, from the work of a true musician, who knows the essential forms of virtue and vice. As the mind has power over the body, the good soul improves the body as it grows. It is by improving body and mind that virtue develops. Thus every person would be their own best doctor and lawyer, had he better education. The true aim of music and gymnastics is balance, not excess of either, but the mean between them. Right education needs to balance mind and body, music and gymnastics, but it doesn't, which is where our mistake begins. To provide right education, at least for our guardians, we must see better to education and nurture, the one great thing… (guess?)
They then discuss that, just as the warriors art is not equal to statesman's art, b/c a soldier is watchdog -- gentle to friends, dangerous to enemies – but the true guardian must unite these opposite qualities, courage and temperance. For the state needs one with passions controlled by reason to lead it. And it is the philosophical nature which has both courage and gentleness. One who has courage -- knows what is to be feared and not feared, and temperance, is master of himself. When intemperate, unable to resist wants, a man is a slave of self. We need temperance in whole state – then justice is the residue. Courage and temperance must be united, but the problem is, they are rarely found together.
So where to find a leader with both? It won’t be easy, but neither is it impossible, for the genuine philosopher is one who has a passion for truth. And such people do indeed exist. Philosophy is simply the love of wisdom. It is simply curiosity. It is love of learning. The true philosopher is one who is absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, where as the false philosopher is blind and too impressed with human knowledge, the true philosopher knows that no man is to be reverenced more than truth. For “only the man who has a taste for every sort of knowledge and throws himself into acquiring it with an insatiable curiosity will deserve to be called philosopher.” The philosopher is gentle, harmonious, spontaneous, and proportional, and has a good memory. "[The true philosopher seeks true knowledge – desires to distinguish between the idea and the object in which it partakes.[Rap Book V] For the human mind is vulnerable to appearances; things appear smaller or larger, depending on if one is close up or at distance. As light bends in water, appearances can change. Apparent contradictions are everywhere, and we need to have a good measure to trust, to help us reconcile the confusion in order to have unity within self. Appearances are relative, and so confusing, as relative pleasures to pains. A higher wit says no one wants mere appearance, but knowledge. We seek reality of the good, the end of every soul, not the mere appearance of it. This is why our fiction is as likely to be false as true, for the measuring art corrects for appearances only imperfectly. For knowledge of true nature is the only antidote to poetical images that ruin the understanding.
Adeimantus interjects here that we all know philosophers are strange monsters. Socrates replies that this is true enough, and if we had time, we'd figure out the difference in the true and false philosopher, and know which to choose as guardians. But Adeimantus says, you'll never convince Thrasymachus of that. To which Socrates replies, careful, we've only just become friends, Thresymachus and I, and you’ll ruin it. Besides, people aren't convinced because they've only seen conventional philosophy, but general philosophy is different. We've just never seen or heard the real thing, only imitators. We mistake fighters with words, (i.e. Sophists) a thing for which true philosophers don't have time, with true philosophy. If philosophers seem to us useless, perhaps it’s because we don't use them properly. Satesmen ought not also be imitators, but should do only one thing well. Here again, untruth is subversive. It is a form of violence, too often used to coerce change in the mind. Again, people are not free in their choices if taught to fear. They must behave from love of a true model of goodness.
Perhaps the philosophers’ nature is too sensitive, he says, a rare flower, and thus more corruptible for this reason, more vulnerable to injury (b/c natural empathy can turn one inside-out, if one looks from others eyes and finds them looking back in judgment on them). They are vulnerable to worse side of public opinion – the great brute. If they are associated with this, they are likely to conform to it. Whereas if they associate with better side, they may be saved only by the power of god, for capable or reason, same quality that makes philosophy can corrupt him -- great nature capable of great good or evil. Philosophers have a love of essence, of truth, of justice, which are high qualities, but easily distracted. So philosophers are liable to injury. The youth with most gifts will be flattered, and used for others’ purposes. Philosophy attractive to the vulgar, b/c sophisms please the ear only, and there is often a misalliance of words and motives going on, to which the young philosopher falls prey. Or they might be distracted by want of ordinary goods, or even by their own virtues. They could be corrupted by private sophists or the opinion of the world, or compulsion of violent death. Certainly, there are few are worthy disciples. Few hear the voice Socrates hears, because few are able to resist the madness of the world.
States are not conducive to philosophy, which requires a living authority. This is what forces us to admit, he says, that no state will ever reach perfection until...either philosophers become kings, or kings become philosophers. For no state can be happy without an artist after the divine pattern. Finding such a leader is certainly difficult, but not impossible. There might be one somewhere, and when found, the enemies of philosophy will understand, become gentle, when hear the truth. So a philosopher king is not an impossible ideal.
And so: "I was driven to affirm, in praise of true philosophy, that only from the standpoint of such philosophy was it possible to take a correct view of public and private right, and that accordingly the human race would never see the end of trouble until true lovers of wisdom should come to hold political power, or the holders of political power should, by some divine appointment, become true lovers of wisdom."(RepC p.xxv)
"Unless either philosophers become kings in their countries or those who are now called kings and rulers come to be sufficiently inspired with a genuine desire for wisdom; unless, that is to say, political power and philosophy meet together...there can be no rest from troubles, my dear Glaucon, for states, nor yet, as I believe, for all mankind... This it was that I have so long hung back from saying; I knew what a paradox it would be, because it is hard to see that there is no other way of happiness either for the state or for the individual."[RepC p.179]
“The genuine philosopher...[is one] whose passion it is to see the truth." And "...the genuine lover of knowledge cannot fail, from his youth up, to strive after the whole of truth." So our earlier exposition of education is still inadequate, Socrates says. Our guardians must take the longer road to higher learning, which leads up to ideal of good.
To Glaucon's request to explain the good, Socrates says we can't talk about that directly, any more than we can look directly at the sun. We can talk only about the children of the good. He can't say with certainty what he does or doesn't know, but he can say what he thinks. "...the Sun is not vision, but it is the cause of vision and also is seen by the vision it causes...” And just as the Sun is the cause of vision, and seen by the vision it causes, so knowledge and truth are like the Good, but not identical. Just as light makes objects visible, grows and nourishes them. The good is to the invisible world of truth what the sun is to the visible world of sense, it illuminates it, causes generation of being, nurtures its growth. Sight is a complex sense – it requires light before it can be used. The good is higher than science, knowledge and truth, opinion and intellect. It involves insight. We can reach things of the mind through things of the sense, we can reach absolute beauty through our sense of beauty. He contrasts inner/outer beauty here. True love will not mind defects, for true love is temperate and harmonious, fairest of sights, free from vulnerability to baser passions. He who doesn't know how beautiful and just are good is a sorry guardian.
“It was the Sun, then that I meant...[has] the same relation to vision and visible things as that which the Good itself bears in the intelligible world to intelligence and to intelligible objects." "This, then, which gives to the objects of knowledge their truth and to him who knows them his power of knowing, is the Form or essential nature of Goodness. It is the cause of knowledge and truth; and so, while you may think of it as an object of knowledge, you will do well to regard it as something beyond truth and knowledge and, precious as these both are, of still higher worth. And, just as in our analogy light and vision were to be thought of as like the Sun, but not identical with it, so here both knowledge and truth are to be regarded as like the Good, but to identify either with the Good is wrong. The Good must hold a yet higher place of honor... the Sun not only makes the things we see visible, but also brings them into existence and gives them growth and nourishment."[RepC p.220] What the sun is to vision, the good is to knowledge and truth.”
(repeated) Socrates illustrates this by his famous allegory of the cave, in which he describes human life as being like being imprisoned in a cave, where a fire at the back illuminates shadows against the wall made by puppets behind us. We have little choice but to mistake shadows for realities, since this is the only light available to us. So we see first mere images [imagining], then objects [belief], then mathematical objects [thinking], forms [knowledge], then only finally, if at all, the form of the good. The Sun, he explains, is the light of fire; the Good is outside the cave, the light in distance. In order to see it, the mind:
"must be turned around from the world of becoming together with the entire soul...until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essences and the brightest region of being."(Rep 518c)
"[T]he ascent and the contemplation of the things above is the soul's ascension to the intelligible region."(RepC 517b)
"[A] conversion and turning about of the soul from a day whose light is darkness to the veritable day -- that ascension to reality...we will affirm to be true philosophy."(Rep521c)
"[T]he conversion from the shadows to the images that cast them and to the light and the ascent from the subterranean cavern to the world above,"(RepC 532b) is as turning "away from the world of becoming to the world of being."(RepC 521d) "And this, we say, is the good."(RepC 518d) The problem is an excess of light makes going either way difficult, dark to light, light to dark. Hence the reason philosophers seem so strange – they are unable to see in dark, see and understand this world of the cave only at length, after the eyes have adjusted, assuming the ever do. Hence the reason that "those who have attained to this height are not willing to occupy themselves with the affairs of men...their souls ever feel the upward urge..." Socrates says. But "Down you must go then, each in his turn, to the habitation of the others...because you have seen the reality of the beautiful, the just and the good." [Of those to whom much is given, much is required.] Only then will:
"[T]he life of true philosophers" looks with scorn on political office.(RepC 521b) But "the heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. That is the fear, I believe, that makes decent people accept power... If there could ever be a society of perfect men, there might well be as much competition to evade office as there now is to gain it; and it would then be clearly seen that the genuine ruler's nature is to seek only the advantage of the subject."[RepC p.29]
"our city…be governed by us and you with waking minds, and not, as most cities now which are inhabited and ruled darkly as in a dream by men who fight one another for shadows and wrangle for office as if that were a great good, when the truth is that the city in which those who are to rule are least eager to hold office...they will assuredly approach office as an unavoidable necessity."(RepC7.520d-e)
Thus, "We require...that those who take office should not be lovers of rule."(RepC7.521b) "All goes wrong when...they set about fighting for power, and this internecine conflict ruins them and their country. The life of true philosophy is the only one that looks down upon offices of state; and access to power must be confined to men who are not in love with it."[RepC p.235]
Thus, "...the truth is that you can have a well-governed society only if you can discover for your future rulers a better way of life than being in office; then only will power be in the hands of men who are rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that brings happiness, a good and wise life."(RepC7.521)
"Could anything show a more shameful lack of culture than to have so little justice in oneself that one must get it from others, who thus become masters and judges over one?"[RepC p.95
"[T]he life of true philosophers" looks with scorn on political office.(RepC 521b) But "the heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. That is the fear, I believe, that makes decent people accept power... If there could ever be a society of perfect men, there might well be as much competition to evade office as there now is to gain it; and it would then be clearly seen that the genuine ruler's nature is to seek only the advantage of the subject."[RepC p.29]
On Plato’s Republic: Part III
We come at last to the conclusion of the Republic. I hope this extended summary makes it seem worth going back and actually reading Plato’s Republic someday, chances are you will do so in other classes along the way. I promise, if you do so with an open mind, and mindful of what Socrates lived and died for, rather than what merely seems to be the case on the surface, you will get much more out of it than many over the centuries have. But when you do, I hope you will remember in your reading the take I have offered here. It is not the traditional view, but I think you will find it is the more inclusive, and more sympathetic one; that is, truer to the stated intentions and internal consistency of the text, rather than to the mere outside-looking-in and selective view that scholars tend to take. Socrates would warn that taking the word of ‘experts’ about his teaching is to hear it from those who have an interest in keeping it quite and misreading it. In fact, Socrates’ fundamental dictum is that we should always question the authority of experts, for the just are too humble for such pretense, and only the just should be our teachers.
You’ll remember that we left off where Socrates was saying perhaps we should go back to where we began this digression (which turns out to be the end of Book IV). The old path was more excellent, he says, and if what we were discussing earlier was the true form of justice itself, then the others we have discussed since were probably false.
Return to just individual soul, old question -- whether just or unjust happiest? Early on in our discussion, we put away the rewards and glories of justice in order that pure justice could be weighed with pure injustice, they say, to see how they fare whether known by gods or not. Now lets bring them back out again, and see if justice is a friend to the gods and injustice is an enemy. So they ask again, is the just or the unjust happiest?
Socrates (naturally) takes the long, but scenic, route to this conclusion. And gets there by way of a discussion about the evolution of governments. As they grow out of human character itself, he explains, they vary just as natural human dispositions vary. And just as action => reaction, just as in seasons and all life so too forms of government evolve. There are four imperfect forms of government, and one potentially perfect form. Likewise, there are five dispositions of individual minds, and if we place the just alongside the unjust to see the relative happiness/unhappiness of both, it’s easy enough to see which is happiest.
To make a long story short, the tyrant, or egoist, will be at war with himself – and just as a state will fall sick when at war with itself, distracted even when no external cause, so the tyrant may appear more respectable than most from outside looking in, but the harmonious soul will flee him, and from inside looking out, he will be the most miserable scoundrel. . Such 'leaders' plague the city, as drones plague the hive, always stirring up war so that the people need him, or think they do.[i].
Socrates concluded sadly, thinking about Alcibiades perhaps, that “the same effect happens to democrats sons [RepJ BookIX 572], who are "drawn to a perfectly lawless life which is termed by their seducers perfect liberty."[RepJ BookIX 573] “There are appetites which are lawful, and follow the laws of nature and temperate reason,[RepJ BookIX 571] but indulging them, with or without honor, is unjust. Such is the case when, in tug of war between fathers and seducers; fathers lose control over their sons when, in desperation, they attempt to implant a master passion in them – i.e. the idea of God -- "a sort of monstrous winged drone"[RepJ BookIX 573, p.332] to be lord over his lusts when the father isn’t looking. However, not believing in the myth, the boy purges temperance in himself, and this is the way the tyrannical man is generated. Being a slave to his own passions, such a one can't deny his desires. Love moves him, but he is confused about what it is he loves, so he tries everything. And when his desires are greater than his means, he has no higher law to guide him, so will rob his own mother and father if it pleases him.[RepJ BookIX 574]
Such a person learns to cheat and deceive, so knows love only as sex. He only uses his so-called friends, so he draws only those like him to him, i.e. flatterers.[RepJ BookIX 575-576] This is bad enough if he is a private person, who has to live with his own mistakes, but if he lives a life as public person, then all have to endure his lack of temperance.[RepJ BookIX p.335] And just as with slave owners, who protect one another when they’re together, are in terror when they are alone with the slaves and with those who won't suffer one man to be master of another. The public tyrant is then the most miserable.[RepJ BookIX p.340] The unjust is the unhappiest, and when he is a leader, he is our worse nightmare, as well as his own.[RepJ BookIX p.337] In love with power, he only gets worse when he gets it.[RepJ BookIX 579]
Thus, the soul of a tyrant, being in the habit of taking all he wants, is actually the least capable of getting what he actually desires [RepJ BookIX 577]. And like man, like state.[RepJ BookIX p.338] Like the weak and fearful tyrant, such a state will be truly poor and full of fear [RepJ BookIX p.339], and in constant conflict with others. [RepJ BookIX 579] Where the city under a true king is happiest, a city under a tyrant is the unhappiest [RepJ BookIX 576].
"Whatever people may think, the actual tyrant is really the most abject slave, a parasite of the vilest scoundrels. Never able to satisfy his desires, he is always in need, and, to an eye that sees a soul in its entirety, he will seem the poorest of the poor."[RepC9.578, p.305] "[V]irtue and wickedness are brought about by one's way of life, honorable or disgraceful."[RepC,p.143] And "may I add that it would make no difference if the true character of both should remain unknown to heaven and to mankind."[RepC9.579, p.306]
This is why we need leaders who have eyes that can see into human nature, can see inside at what lives in one’s heart.[RepJ BookIX 577] Such a one will see the soul as she is, not crusted over, like the sea god Glaucus, [RepJ BookX 611] but rather, he or she will look to her love of wisdom, her happiness, how different she could be if she follow this superior principle.
The evils that corrupt the soul are unrighteousness, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance, and if the soul is not destroyed by these moral evils, then she certainly cannot be destroyed by physical evil. Such evil is the necessary consequent of former sins, but poverty and sickness are only seeming misfortune, for the good man all things work together for good. All works together for the good among the good, but since external evil belongs to another, it thus can't hurt the soul. Wisdom is to the soul what food is to the body [RepJ BookIX 585, p.350], and so to be stuck in pleasures of the body keeps one from rising to higher pleasures.[RepJ BookIX 586, p.351] This is what separates the tyrant from the true king.[RepJ BookIX 587, p.353] This is why they conclude that injustice is to the soul what disease is to the body. This might also be proof of the soul’s immortality (and why the number of souls won't increase or decrease).
"Justice is produced in the soul, like health in the body, by establishing the elements concerned in their natural relations of control and subordination, whereas injustice is like disease and means that this natural order is inverted."[RepC p.143]
"[T]o declare that justice pays is to assert that all our words and actions should tend towards giving the man within us complete mastery over the whole human creature, and letting him take the many-headed beast under his care and tame its wildness, like the gardener who trains his cherished plants while he checks the growth of weeds."[RepC p.317]
"[T]he phrase [master of oneself] means that within the man himself, in his soul, there is a better part and a worse; and that he is his own master when the part which is better by nature has the worse under its control."[RepC p.124]
“Only when he has linked these parts together in well-tempered harmony and has made himself one man instead of many, will he be ready to go about whatever he may have to do, whether it be making money and satisfying bodily wants, or business transactions, or the affairs of state... Any action which tends to break down this habit will be for him unjust; and the notions governing it he will call ignorance and folly..."[RepC p.142]
Courage, wisdom, and temperance will control desire, will defend soul from the lessor desires that can destroy happiness. These three in one = justice. He is self-mastering, a judge of oneself, self-regulating, which constitutes the power to bring about his own happiness. Thus, "...the happiest man is he who is first in goodness and justice, namely, the true king who is also king over himself."
"...the lowest depth of wickedness goes with the lowest depth of unhappiness, and that the misery of the despot is really in proportion to the extent and duration of his power, though the mass of mankind may hold many different opinions..." Likewise, "everyone must see that a state is most wretched under a despot and happiest under a true king.” [RepC p.302]
Thus: "Our principle that the born shoemaker or carpenter had better stick to his trade turns out to have been an adumbration of justice; and that is why it has helped us. But in reality justice, thought evidently analogous to this principle, is not a matter of external behavior, but of the inward self and of attending to all that is, in the fullest sense, a man's proper concern."[RepC p.142]
"[O]nly the just man is happy; injustice will involve unhappiness."[RepC1.353, p.39]
In fact, “...the good and just man is so far superior to the bad and unjust in point of pleasure, there is no saying by how much more his life will surpass the other's in grace, nobility, and virtue."[RepC p.315]
Should we not all do well to listen to such a competent judge..."[RepC p.303] And in judging between the corresponding individuals, is it not equally fair to demand the verdict of one who is not dazzled, like a child, by the outward pomp and parade of absolute power, but whose understanding can enter into a man's heart and see all that goes on within? So let us reason with the unjust -- who is not intentionally in error [RepJ BookIX 589], but has never been asked the right questions about what is and is not noble and honorable [RepJ BookIX 590]. Don't blame them for the predominance of their lower nature, but uplift them to be, as far as possible, under his own rule, and baring that, the rule of someone more just.[RepJ BookIX 590] What’s more, "Vice can never know both itself and virtue; but virtue...will in time come to a knowledge of vice, as well as of itself. So it is the virtuous man, as I believe, that will make the wise judge."[RepC3.407, p.97] The true king 729 times happier, one for each day and each night of the year [RepJ BookIX 588, p.354]. In the opposition of desire and reason,[RepJ Book IV] one needs to get the many headed monster under control of reason [RepJ BookIX 588, p.355]. Between the appetitive and rational principles – there is a third principle of spirit, which mediates. The ideal is to have all become one, not three, as in state divided into classes.[RepJ Book IV]. There three classes of men; lovers of gain, lovers of glory, and lovers of wisdom; different objects of pleasure for each, each devalues the others, but only one with experience of all is a good judge of which is best [RepJ BookIX 581]
Therefore, we need an alliance of passion and reason for harmony in the soul. The delight of one who alone knows true being can never be known by the unjust, who goes for different pleasures all together. Thus the higher pleasures are known only to true philosopher, meaning, the lover of truth, sincerity, authenticity, justice.[RepJ BookIX 583] True and pure pleasure belongs only to the wise, and others are only shadows, mere appearances of pleasure.[RepJ BookIX] Both pleasure and pain are motions of the soul, and there is a mean between them which is sometimes at rest. Consciousness exists in the interaction between these and moves between the natural upper and lower and middle region [RepJ BookIX 584, p.349]. And just as health is pleasurable to those who've been ill, so someone standing in the middle having come from the lower would imagine himself in the upper, that is, if has never seen true upper world. So those who enjoy lower pleasures think them higher, for they have nothing higher yet to compare their experience to. Appearance suffice for reality for all, and those who've never seen the true don’t know the difference; only those who have, do.[RepJ BookIX 585] There is a neutral state, by the way, which seems like both pleasure (after cessation of pain), and like pain (upon cessation of pleasure); but this is only relative appearance, not true pleasure.[RepJ BookIX 583, p.347] It is appearance only and not reality, when tried by the test of true pleasures. For many intrinsic pleasures (i.e. smell, music, taste, orgasm) are not relative, but absolute, in that they have no antecedent pain [RepJ BookIX 584, p.348]. For just as there are just and unjust ways to get wealth [RepJ BookIX 591], so there are just and unjust ways to get pleasure. And the law of nature will set into their hearts a guardian, which is true music [RepJ BookIX 591], which will make them take good care of children [RepJ BookIX 591], will put honor in their soul [RepJ BookIX 591], and give them pure pleasure.
Thus, they conclude, to be just is to come as close as humans can to being like god -- to be unjust is the opposite.[RepJ BookX 613] To be just to the end of every action and occasion of his entire life carries off the prize (which Glaucon seemed to think in Book II that the fortunate and clever unjust would win). The unjust may get away with it in youth and think he has benefited for some time thereafter, but he will inevitably be found out and look foolish in the end (and experience all the other horrors you rehearsed in Book II).
So to Thrasymachus he concludes, how could it profit one to be controlled by a monster? No one who does not look within can see how justice profits [RepJ BookIX 589], so does not cultivate the gentle qualities.[RepJ BookIX p.357]
And, besides all the intrinsically good things that justice herself provides – like confidence, goodness, charisma and self knowledge - let’s bring back all the extrinsic gifts that the gods and man bring to the just. In fact, the just person is admired beyond anything the unjust can ever hope for. The unjust will envy the just with an ache he cannot define, almost hating him for the intrinsic benefits he is honored with. And the unjust person will wonder within himself what it is he lacks that makes the just what seems ‘arrogant’ to the unjust, which is really only self-respect, a condition the unjust can never even understand, let alone experience, but they will certainly miss it, though they may not know what they’re missing.
And after death, the rewards and punishments that are the gifts of the gods must naturally increase.[RepJ BookX 614] With this, Socrates closes his discussion with a recollection of the tale of Er, admitting he does not know if the story is true or not, but it might be instructive just the same. Because while we cannot know in this life what will happen in the next, we can speculate about what is likely, and as earlier concluded, we might as well make our fiction as close to accurate as we can.
Er, the son of Armenius, had lay ‘dead’ for ten days on a pile of bodies after a battle. But just as the funeral pyre was about to be lit, Er – whose body had been unaffected by decay - suddenly returned to consciousness. And so Er lived to tell of what he had seen in the other world. [RepJ BookX 614]
Waking up was, he said, like returning from a journey of a thousand years. He had been, as he told it, in a beautiful meadow, a place where many comers and goers gathered to talk together and to tell each other of the places they’d been, stories of heaven and hell from which they have respectively returned.
There was four thresholds in the meadow, he said, two by which the just and good ascended to and returned from heaven, and two by which the unjust descended to and returned from hell. It was the most horrible scene, as he told it, when some tyrant, trying to escape after a cycle, was sucked back in to the vortex for yet another round of his dues, his karma, if you will.[RepJ BookX 615]
Some who had returned told of suffering tenfold for every wrong they had done to anyone on earth, and of living ten lifetimes, ten times in a thousand years, to make up for their past wrongs.[615] But those who returned from that heavenly place talked of glorious joys, and some cried who suffered their memories.[RepJ BookX 614-615]
A new cycle of life was awarded on a first come first serve basis, Er explained. There were an infinite variety of lives to choose from, so enough even for the last comer, and for this reason, genius and destiny were not allotte, but chosen freely.[RepJ BookX 618] [RepJ BookX 619] Virtue is free, they were told, take as much as you want!
Some who come first, not having thought out the whole matter, choose a life of luxury and tyranny. But to hear those who had learned tell it, the best choice is that life which is undazzled by wealth and other temptations to do wrong to others, only to suffer yet worse himself.[RepJ BookX 619] ] Rather than foolishly choose pleasures that are fraught with pain (usually chosen by those who were not yet schooled by trial of experience), comers were cautioned to choose the life of truth and justice from the first, that they might be happy here. For even the habit of virtue is not enough without true philosophy [RepJ BookX 619-620]
This is the knowledge we need, they were told, forget all the rest, and choose always and everywhere as the opportunity arises, the better over the worse life, the good life over the temptations of evil.[RepJ BookX 618] Put an adamant faith in truth and right to avoid the extremes of excess and deficiency, and choose always the mean between the two. This is the way of happiness [RepJ BookX 619]
And so, having chosen their next life, some wisely and some not so, individual souls would pass eventually from the meadow toward center of the universe, which swirled in circles, one inside another, going opposite ways. This cosmic spindle weaved souls together, Er said, as if into the fabric of time.[RepJ BookX 616-617] Each went with their guardian genius, and were drawn into the revolution of the spindle, ratifying the destiny they had chosen, as they passed beneath the thrown of necessity [RepJ BookX p.396]. Then they passed over the plane of forgetfulness and by the river of unmindfulness, and those who drank, forgot what they had seen in the meadow.[RepJ BookX 621] But the tale has been saved, Socrates says, to save us – so that we might choose well how to live, now and through eternity.[RepJ BookX 621, p.397]
[i] Thus arise five forms of state.[RepJ Book IV] From action comes reaction, in forms of government, just as in seasons and all life [RepJ BookVIII 564] By studying how one comes from another we can see how discord arose. They can't last forever, for if something has a beginning, so it will have an end.[RepJ BookVIII p.294]
There are four imperfect forms of government, and one potentially perfect form (Aristocracy), which vary as natural human dispositions vary,[RepJ BookVIII p.292] grow out of human character itself.[RepJ BookVIII 545]
(1) Absolute, as in Sparta and Crete -- generally applauded,[RepJ BookVIII]
(2) Oligarchy -- teeming with evils,[RepJ BookVIII]
(3) Democracy -- "naturally follows oligarchy",[RepJ BookVIII]
(4) Tyranny -- the worst.[RepJ BookVIII]
Likewise, five dispositions of individual minds, place just alongside unjust to see the relative happiness/unhappiness of both.[RepJ BookVIII] --aristocracy -- government of the best, good and just;[RepJ BookVIII]
--timocracy (timarchy -- no good word for it), arises out of aristocracy, [RepJ BookVIII]
--oligarchic man --
--democratic man --
--tyranic man -- tyrants soul[RepJ BookVIII p.294]
Whether short-lived or long-lived existence (when the circumference of the circle will be completed humans can't know, divine birth contained in perfect number, but human birth. As discussed earlier, eventually, guardians who are ignorant of law of births, will deem children to be born ill timed, unworthy to hold their ancestors places.[RepJ BookVIII p.295] Therefore, absolute ruler will fail to take care of the people -- first by undervaluing music and gymnastics => guardians who have lost the power of testing the metal of different quality characters; and there arises discord.[RepJ BookVIII 547, p.295] And the new gov't follows the mean, intermediate between aristocracy and oligarchy,[RepJ BookVIII] And so there will arise a battle between them => individual, not common property, iron and brass characters => money, gold and silver => virtue and the ancient order of things => enslaved their former friends.[RepJ BookVIII p.297] Out of fear of admitting philosophers to power, because now mixed up with other influences, so they turn to those with love of war over peace, who will steal their pleasures from others and run away from the law.[RepJ BookVIII p.297] When the spirit of contention and ambition dominates, the youth become arrogant, and the characters that answer to this form of government are timacratic, not single minded toward virtue, having lost his best guardian, i.e. philosophy; he is instead a lover of power and authority, a soldier, physical lover of gymnastics over music.[RepJ BookVIII p.298] Adeimantus adds: 'Oh, like Glaucon here."
The timacratic youth has its origin when he hears his mother's ambition, bad government in state, so sees that no esteem is paid to those who do their own business, much esteem to busy-bodies, drawn opposite ways, those who nourish the soul and those who encourage his appetite; he does not originally have a bad nature -- but bad company brings it about.[RepJ BookVIII 550, p.300]
Thus arises the oligarchic type of character/state, in which the rich have all the power. Oligarchy comes when accumulation of gold by private individuals ruins timocracy. Then they make laws to suit themselves,[RepJ BookVIII p.301] the more competition to grow rich, the less they think of virtue, so "in proportion as riches are honored and cultivated in a state, virtue and the virtuous are dishonored and neglected.[RepJ BookVIII] Therefore, men become lovers of trade and money over contention and honor.[RepJ BookVIII p.301] and soon they make a law, so that property is the qualification for higher and lower sum as citizenship/oligarchy is more or less exclusive; [RepJ BookVIII 551, p.302] And before long they will be buying offices.
Imagine if a man were allowed to steer the ship because he is rich, rather than because he is the better pilot...i.e. shipwreck = great defect of oligarchy. Another defect of oligarchy, is it’s extreme division of classes, wealth and poverty. Another defect, is that it can't fight single-mindedly, if he arms the people, he’ll end up afraid of them. Also, so fond of money that they are unwilling to pay taxes; yet another evil, helpless when loses property, but also helpless when he has it, not citizens, for neither ruler or subject, but spendthrift; won't fight for anything but money, and won't risk money for anything.[RepJ BookVIII] This is the true plague of the city, like the drone is the plague of the hive, some stingless, end as paupers; others with sting end as criminals. Therefore, the existence of paupers and criminals is due to this evil constitution of the state, i.e. oligarchic;[RepJ BookVIII p.304] And the nature and origin of oligarchic individual, is when ambitious youth turns to avaricious one. This happens often when sons see just fathers reduced to poverty, their appetite makes reason and spirit sit and be ruled. They will have desires of the pauper and the criminal, but will love his money enough to coerce them to behave, so to build a reputation for honesty, but can tell the oligarchic man when he has a chance to benefit from dishonesty (as, say, with an orphan in his charge);[p.306] Therefore, will be at war with himself -- may appear more respectable than most, but the harmonious soul will flee him.[RepJ BookVIII 555, p.307
Ultimately, democracy arises out of resentment among the many for the extravagance of the oligarchy, who ignore their needs and suffering of the many, which makes paupers and criminals abound, and evil blazes these up like fire.[RepJ BookVIII 556, p.309] Contracts have the advantage of compelling citizens to trust and look to their characters, but don't work very well, therefore state falls sick, at war with itself, distracted even when no external cause, [RepJ BookVIII 557, p.310] => revolution, => democracy => election by lot, freedom => diversity => will appear fair and delightful for the moment [RepJ BookVIII p.311-312], but forgiving spirit of democracy gives no direction, no emphasis on truth, beauty, or honor, and so promotes anyone who professes to be a friend to the people, dispensing a sort of equality to the equal and unequal alike.[RepJ BookVIII 558, p.313]
The democratic man grows out of the oligarchic, by process of repressing unnecessary desires.[RepJ BookVIII 558, p.313] The sons of oligarchic man, who, loving money, attends only to the necessary desires (those he can't get rid of) and considers it overindulgence to satisfy unnecessary ones.[RepJ BookVIII 559] The son goes to war with himself, better vs. worst self, sometimes oligarchic principle wins, desire for order banishes other desires.[RepJ BookVIII 560] But...often these are replaced with still other desires, which are fierce and numerous, so son passes from original nature to cynicism about democracy, with its deceits and conceits and unnecessary pleasures, and puts government of self into first these hands, then those, thinking one as good as the other, one pleasure as good as another, with no higher law:[RepJ BookVIII 561, p.317]
Combine excess of oligarchic wealth and democratic freedom => people use freedom to punish rulers who appear as oligarchs. So liberty is vulnerable to becoming anarchy, as if no limit, rulers become subjects and subjects become rulers, and all flattered by scholars; so liberty and equality => tyranny, when intoxicated with freedom.[RepJ BookVIII 562, p.318] For slaves to be as free as masters, and for the sexes to be equal in freedom, is our fondest dream, but...when citizens become oversensitive and impatient, and overreact to the least authority, even the most just, and having no one over them, they cease to care for the laws.[RepJ BookVIII 564, p.320] So oligarchy is a disease only magnified by freedom, as overmasters democracy => divides into three classes, wealthy/drones/working people. The drones feed upon the wealthy, who are squeezable, and plot against the people, deceiving the wealthy to fear the people. Thus, the wealthy become oligarchic, almost against their will. They are a class of idle spendthrifts, followers. Such 'leaders' plague the city, as drones plague the hive.[RepJ BookVIII] And then come the trials and impeachments, and the peoples champion, once protector, becomes a tyrant, and if he tastes blood => a wolf. Always stirring up war so that the people need him, or think they do. But taxing them until they are weak, he begins to grow unpopular.[RepJ BookVIII 566, p.324] Still, the people can't get rid of him, but he can get rid of the boldest and braves among the people.[RepJ BookVIII 567] And in this way, an excess of liberty => excess of slavery => tyranny.[RepJ BookVIII p.320, 329]
But the question remains, is the tyrant happy?[RepJ BookVIII 567, p.325] [See recapitulation of how democratic man generated out of oligarchic parents [RepJ BookVIII p.331], "out of abhorrence of his fathers meanness."[RepJ BookVIII 572] And so again, action => reaction, in forms of government, just as in seasons and all life [RepJ BookVIII 564]