Prichard and But the insistence that justice be shown to be beneficial to the just has suggested to others that Socrates will be justifying justice by reference to its consequences. In fact, both readings are distortions, predicated more on what modern moral philosophers think than on what Plato thinks. At the beginning of Book Two, he retains his focus on the person who aims to be happy.
But he does not have to show that being just or acting justly brings about happiness. The function argument in Book One suggests that acting justly is the same as being happy. But the function argument concludes that justice is both necessary and sufficient for happiness a , and this is a considerably stronger thesis than the claim that the just are always happier than the unjust. After the challenge Glaucon and Adeimantus present, Socrates might not be so bold. Even if he successfully maintains that acting justly is identical to being happy, he might think that there are circumstances in which no just person could act justly and thus be happy.
This will nonetheless satisfy Glaucon and Adeimantus if the just are better off that is, closer to happy than the unjust in these circumstances. See also Kirwan and Irwin After the challenge of Glaucon and Adeimantus, Socrates takes off in a strange direction from e.
He suggests looking for justice as a virtue of cities before defining justice as a virtue of persons, on the unconvincing grounds that justice in a city is bigger and more apparent than justice in a person c—b , and this leads Socrates to a rambling description of some features of a good city b—c. This may seem puzzling. The arguments of Book One and the challenge of Glaucon and Adeimantus rule out several more direct routes.
But Book One rules this strategy out by casting doubt on widely accepted accounts of justice. Socrates must say what justice is in order to answer the question put to him, and what he can say is constrained in important ways.
Most obviously, he cannot define justice as happiness without begging the question. But he also must give an account of justice that his interlocutors recognize as justice : if his account of justice were to require torturing red-headed children for amusement, he would fail to address the question that Glaucon and Adeimantus are asking.
Moreover, Socrates cannot try to define justice by enumerating the types of action that justice requires or forbids. We might have objected to this strategy for this reason: because action-types can be specified in remarkably various ways and at remarkably different levels of specificity, no list of just or unjust action-types could be comprehensive.
But a specific argument in Book One suggests a different reason why Socrates does not employ this strategy. When Cephalus characterizes justice as keeping promises and returning what is owed, Socrates objects by citing a case in which returning what is owed would not be just c. Wrongful killing may always be wrong, but is killing? Just recompense may always be right, but is recompense?
So Book One makes it difficult for Socrates to take justice for granted. What is worse, the terms in which Socrates accepts the challenge of Glaucon and Adeimantus make it difficult for him to take happiness for granted.
If Socrates were to proceed like a consequentialist, he might offer a full account of happiness and then deliver an account of justice that both meets with general approval and shows how justice brings about happiness.
But Socrates does not proceed like that. He does not even do as much as Aristotle does in the Nicomachean Ethics ; he does not suggest some general criteria for what happiness is. He proceeds as if happiness is unsettled.
But if justice at least partly constitutes happiness and justice is unsettled, then Socrates is right to proceed as if happiness is unsettled. In sum, Socrates needs to construct an account of justice and an account of happiness at the same time, and he needs these accounts to entail without assuming the conclusion that the just person is always happier than the unjust.
The difficulty of this task helps to explain why Socrates takes the curious route through the discussion of civic justice and civic happiness.
Socrates can assume that a just city is always more successful or happy than an unjust city. The assumption begs no questions, and Glaucon and Adeimantus readily grant it. If Socrates can then explain how a just city is always more successful and happy than an unjust city, by giving an account of civic justice and civic happiness, he will have a model to propose for the relation between personal justice and flourishing.
There must be some intelligible relation between what makes a city successful and what makes a person successful. It works even if it only introduces an account of personal justice and happiness that we might not have otherwise entertained. Although this is all that the city-person analogy needs to do, Socrates seems at times to claim more for it, and one of the abiding puzzles about the Republic concerns the exact nature and grounds for the full analogy that Socrates claims.
At other times Socrates seems to say that the same account of justice must apply in both cases because the F-ness of a whole is due to the F-ness of its parts e. At other times, Socrates would prefer to use the F-ness of the city as a heuristic for locating F-ness in persons e. Plato is surely right to think that there is some interesting and non-accidental relation between the structural features and values of society and the psychological features and values of persons, but there is much controversy about whether this relation really is strong enough to sustain all of the claims that Socrates makes for it in the Republic Williams , Lear , Smith , Ferrari Rather, it depends upon a persuasive account of justice as a personal virtue, and persuasive reasons why one is always happier being just than unjust.
Socrates seeks to define justice as one of the cardinal human virtues, and he understands the virtues as states of the soul. So his account of what justice is depends upon his account of the human soul. According to the Republic , every human soul has three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite.
This is a claim about the embodied soul. In Book Ten, Socrates argues that the soul is immortal c—a and says that the disembodied soul might be simple a—a , though he declines to insist on this a and the Timaeus and Phaedrus apparently disagree on the question. At first blush, the tripartition can suggest a division into beliefs, emotions, and desires. But Socrates explicitly ascribes beliefs, emotions, and desires to each part of the soul Moline In fact, it is not even clear that Plato would recognize psychological attitudes that are supposed to be representational without also being affective and conative, or conative and affective without also being representational.
The Republic offers two general reasons for the tripartition. First, Socrates argues that we cannot coherently explain certain cases of psychological conflict unless we suppose that there are at least two parts to the soul.
Because of this principle, Socrates insists that one soul cannot be the subject of opposing attitudes unless one of three conditions is met. One soul can be the subject of opposing attitudes if the attitudes oppose each other at different times, even in rapidly alternating succession as Hobbes explains mental conflict.
One soul can also be the subject of opposing attitudes if the attitudes relate to different things, as a desire to drink champagne and a desire to drink a martini might conflict. Last, one soul can be the subject of opposing attitudes if the attitudes oppose in different respects.
Initially, this third condition is obscure. The way Socrates handles putative counter-examples to the principle of non-opposition at c—e might suggest that when one thing experiences one opposite in one of its parts and another in another, it is not experiencing opposites in different respects Stalley ; Bobonich , —31; Lorenz , 23— That would entail, apparently, that it is not one thing experiencing opposites at all, but merely a plurality.
The most natural way of relating these two articulations of the principle is to suppose that experiencing one opposite in one part and another in another is just one way to experience opposites in different respects.
But however we relate the two articulations to each other, Socrates clearly concludes that one soul can experience simultaneously opposing attitudes in relation to the same thing, but only if different parts of it are the direct subjects of the opposing attitudes.
Socrates employs this general strategy four times. In Book Four, he twice considers conflicting attitudes about what to do. First, he imagines a desire to drink being opposed by a calculated consideration that it would be good not to drink a—d.
We might think, anachronistically, of someone about to undergo surgery. This is supposed to establish a distinction between appetite and reason. Then he considers cases like that of Leontius, who became angry with himself for desiring to ogle corpses e—b. These cases are supposed to establish a distinction between appetite and spirit.
In Book Ten, Socrates appeals to the principle of non-opposition when considering the decent man who has recently lost a son and is conflicted about grieving e—b cf. Austin and when considering conflicting attitudes about how things appear to be c—b cf. Moss and Singpurwalla These show a broad division between reason and an inferior part of the soul Ganson ; it is compatible with a further distinction between two inferior parts, spirit and appetite.
In the Protagoras , Socrates denies that anyone willingly does other than what she believes to be best, but in the Republic , the door is opened for a person to act on an appetitive attitude that conflicts with a rational attitude for what is best.
How far the door is open to akrasia awaits further discussion below. First, what kinds of parts are reason, spirit, and appetite? Some scholars believe that they are merely conceptual parts, akin to subsets of a set Shields , Price They would object to characterizing the parts as subjects of psychological attitudes.
At face value, Socrates offers a more robust conception of parts, wherein each part is like an independent agent. Indeed, this notion of parts is robust enough to make one wonder why reason, spirit, and appetite are parts at all, as opposed to three independent subjects.
But the Republic proceeds as though every embodied human being has just one soul that comprises three parts. No embodied soul is perfectly unified: even the virtuous person, who makes her soul into a unity as much as she can c—e , has three parts in her soul. She must, as we shall see, in order to be just.
It is not as though a person is held responsible for what his reason does but not for what his appetite does. There are questions about what exactly explains this unearned unity of the soul see E. Brown There are also questions about whether the arguments from conflict establish exactly three parts of the soul and see Whiting Some worry that the discussion of Leontius does not warrant the recognition of a third part of the soul but see Brennan , and some worry that the appetitive part contains such a multitude of attitudes that it must be subject to further conflicts and further partitioning and see e with Kamtekar Answering these questions requires us to characterize more precisely the kind of opposition that forces partitioning , in accordance with the principle of non-opposition compare Reeve , —31; Irwin , —17; Price , 46—48; and Lorenz , 13—52 , and to examine more carefully the broader features being attributed to the three parts of the soul on appetite, e.
Fortunately, the arguments from conflict do not work alone. Indeed, they cannot, as the principle of non-opposition merely establishes a constraint on successful psychological explanations. Appeals to this principle can show where some division must exist, but they do not by themselves characterize the parts so divided. It receives its fullest development in Books Eight and Nine, where Socrates uses his theory of the tripartite soul to explain a variety of psychological constitutions.
In the most basic implementation of this strategy, Socrates distinguishes people ruled by reason, those ruled by spirit, and those ruled by appetite d—e, esp. This simplistic division, it might be noted in passing, fixes the sides for an ongoing debate about whether it is best to be a philosopher, a politician, or an epicure see, e.
But more important for our purposes here, this basic classification greatly illuminates the division of the soul. First, we learn about the organizing aims of each of the psychological parts Cooper , Kahn , Reeve , Moss In Book Four, reason is characterized by its ability to track what is good for each part and the soul as a whole e, c.
In Book Nine, reason is characterized by its desire for wisdom. These are not bifurcated aims. Socrates argues that people are not satisfied merely with what they take to be good for themselves but want what is in fact good for them d. So reason naturally pursues not just what it takes to be good for the whole soul but also the wisdom that ensures that it would get this right. If wisdom is a fundamental constituent of virtue and virtue is a fundamental constituent of what is good for a human being, then wisdom turns out to be a fundamental constituent of what is good for a human being.
So it should not be surprising that the part of the soul that tracks and pursues what is good for the whole soul also loves wisdom. Spirit, by contrast, tracks social preeminence and honor. Finally, appetite seeks material satisfaction for bodily urges, and because money better than anything else provides this, people ruled by appetite often come to love money above all.
The basic division of the world into philosophers, honor-lovers, and money-lovers also illuminates what Socrates means by talking of being ruled by one part of the soul. If one part dominates in you, then aims of that part are your aims.
If, for example, you are ruled by spirit, then your reason conceives of your good in terms of what is honorable. So there are in fact five kinds of pure psychological constitutions: aristocratically constituted persons those ruled by their rational attitudes , timocratically constituted persons those ruled by their spirited attitudes , oligarchically constituted persons ruled by necessary appetitive attitudes , democratically constituted persons ruled by unnecessary appetitive attitudes , and tyrannically constituted persons ruled by lawless appetitive attitudes.
The first three of these constitutions are characteristically ordered toward simple aims wisdom, honor, and money, respectively , but the last two are not so ordered, because there is no simple aim of the unnecessary appetites, be they lawful or lawless. In effect, the democratic and tyrannical souls treat desire-satisfaction itself and the pleasure associated with it as their end.
The democrat treats all desires and pleasures as equally valuable and restricts herself to lawful desires, but the tyrant embraces disordered, lawless desires and has a special passion for the apparently most intense, bodily pleasures cf. Scott , Johnstone , and Johnstone The second complication is that some people are not perfectly ruled by one part of the soul, but are subject to continuing conflicts between, say, attitudes in favor of doing what is honorable and appetitive attitudes in favor of pursuing a shameful tryst.
Socrates does not concentrate on these people, nor does he say how common they are. But he does acknowledge their existence c—d, cf. Moreover, the occurrence of akrasia would seem to require their existence. For if I am perfectly ruled by my spirit, then I take my good to be what is honorable, and how could I be akratic? My spirit and my reason are in line, so there will be no overpowering of rational preferences about what is best by spirit. You might suppose that my appetite could overcome my sense of what is honorable, but in that case, it would seem that I am not, after all, perfectly ruled by my spirit.
Things might seem different with people ruled by their appetite. Certainly, if I were perfectly ruled by appetite, then I would be susceptible to akrasia of the impetuous sort, acting on appetitive desires without reflectively endorsing them as good. If you think that competing appetitive attitudes could give rise to a strict case of standard akrasia, you should recall how Socrates would have to explain these cases of psychological conflict in order to avoid multiplying his divisions in the soul.
Moreover, the dialogue is filled with pointed observations and fascinating speculations about human psychology. Some of them pull us up short, as, for example, the Freudian recognition of Oedipal desires that come out only in dreams c—d. The full theory is complex, and there remain numerous questions about many of its details. Indeed, although his response builds closely on the psychological theory, some broad features of the response could be accepted even by those who reject the tripartite psychology.
In Book Four, Socrates defines each of the cardinal virtues in terms of the complicated psychology he has just sketched. So the unwise person has a faulty conception of what is good for him. A person is courageous just in case her spirited attitudes do not change in the face of pains and pleasures but stay in agreement with what is rationally recognized as fearsome and not bc. So the coward will, in the face of prospective pains, fail to bear up to what he rationally believes is not genuinely fearsome, and the rash person will, in the face of prospective pleasures, rush headlong into what he rationally believes to be fearsome.
A person is temperate or moderate just in case the different parts of her soul are in agreement. So the intemperate person has appetitive or spirited attitudes in competition with the rational attitudes, appetitive or spirited attitudes other than those the rational attitudes deem to be good. Finally, a person is just just in case all three parts of her soul are functioning as they should d12—e2; cf.
Justice, then, requires the other virtues. So the unjust person fails to be moderate, or fails to be wise, or fails to be courageous. Actually, the relation among the virtues seems tighter than that, for it seems that the unjust person necessarily fails to be wise, courageous, and temperate cf.
Cooper You might try to deny this. You might say that a person could be courageous—with spirited attitudes that track perfectly what the rational attitudes say is fearsome and not, in the face of any pleasures and pains—but still be unjust insofar has her rational attitudes are inadequately developed, failing to know what really is fearsome. But Socrates seems to balk at this possibility by contrasting the civically courageous whose spirit preserves law-inculcated beliefs about what is fearsome and not and the genuinely courageous in whom, presumably, spirit preserves knowledge about what is fearsome and not a—c.
So you might say instead that a person could be moderate—utterly without appetitive attitudes at odds with what his rational attitudes say is good for him—but still be unjust insofar as his rational attitudes are inadequately developed and fail to know what really is good. But this picture of a meek, but moderate soul seems to sell short the requirements of moderation, which are not merely that there be no insurrections in the soul but also that there be agreement that the rational attitudes should rule.
Moreover, it would seem to require that the rational attitudes which endorse ruling be ruling, which would in turn require that the rational attitudes are at least on the path toward determining what really is good for the person.
If these considerations are correct, then the unjust are lacking in virtue tout court , whereas the just possess all of the virtues. After sketching these four virtues in Book Four, Socrates is ready to move from considering what justice is in a person to why a person should be just e.
But this is premature. Socrates is moving to show that it is always better to have a just soul, but he was asked to show that it is always better to be the person who does just actions. We might doubt that an answer concerning psychological justice is relevant to the question concerning practical justice Sachs It is easy to misstate this objection Demos , Dahl The problem is not that the question is about justice as it is ordinarily understood and Socrates is failing to address conventional justice.
Neither the question nor the answer is bound to how justice is ordinarily understood, given what happened in Book One. That would require Socrates to show that everyone who acts justly has a just soul, and Socrates quite reasonably shows no inclination for that thesis.
Some people do what is right for the wrong reasons. He may have to establish some connection between doing just actions and becoming psychologically just if he is to give reasons to those who are not yet psychologically just to do just actions, but an account of habituation would be enough to do this cf. The real problem raised by the objection is this: how can Socrates justify the claim that people with just souls are practically just?
First, he must be able to show that the psychologically just refrain from injustice, and second, he must be able to show that the psychologically just do what is required by justice.
The first point receives a gesture when Socrates is trying to secure the claim that harmonious functioning of the whole soul really deserves to be called justice e—a , but he offers no real argument. Perhaps the best we can do on his behalf is to insist that the first point is not a thesis for argument but a bold empirical hypothesis. On this view, it is simply an empirical question whether all those who have the motivations to do unjust things happen to have souls that are out of balance, and an army of psychologists would be needed to answer the question.
That might seem bad enough, but the second point does not even receive a gesture. Socrates does not criticize the Book One suggestion that justice requires helping friends a ff. Otherwise, we cannot be sure that psychological harmony is justice. Unfortunately, Socrates does not give any explicit attention to this worry at the end of Book Four or in the argument of Books Eight and Nine. But there are other places to look for a solution to this worry.
First, we might look to Books Five through Seven. Second, we might look to Books Two and Three. In Book Four Socrates says that the just person is wise and thus knows what is good for him, but he does not say anything about what knowledge or the good is. In Books Five through Seven he clearly addresses these issues and fills out his account of virtue. His account also opens the possibility that knowledge of the good provides the crucial link between psychological justice and just actions.
Socrates does not name any philosophers who can knowledgeably answer questions like that. In fact, his account of how philosophers would be educated in the ideal city suggests that the ability to give knowledgeable answers requires an enormous amount of largely mathematical learning in advance of the questions themselves b—a.
The form of the good is a shadowy presence in the Republic , lurking behind the images of the Sun, Line, and Cave. But it is clear enough that Socrates takes goodness to be unity Hitchcock He explicitly emphasizes that a virtuous person makes himself a unity c—e and insists that a city is made good by being made a unity a—b. The assumption that goodness is unity also explains why mathematics is so important to the ascent to the good through mathematics an account of the one over the many is learned cf.
Burnyeat , why the good is superior to other forms the good is the unity or coherence of them, and not another alongside them , why the other forms are good by being part of the unified or coherent order , and why goodness secures the intelligibility of the other forms they are fully known teleologically. Aristotle Eudemian Ethics a20 and Metaphysics a8—16 and b10— So the philosophers, by grasping the form of the good, will recognize goodness in themselves as the unity in their souls.
They will see that the harmony or coherence of their psychological attitudes makes them good, that each of their attitudes is good insofar as it is part of a coherent set, and that their actions are good insofar as they sustain the unity in their souls cf.
Socrates suggests one way when he says that a philosopher will aspire to imitate the harmony among the forms b—d. Some scholars have understood Socrates to be saying that philosophers will desire to reproduce this order by cultivating more order and virtue in the world, as Diotima suggests in the Symposium Irwin , —; cf.
Waterlow —, Cooper , Kraut On this reading, knowledge of the forms motivates just actions that help other people, which helps to solve the standing worry about the relation between psychological justice and practical justice.
Unfortunately, it is far from obvious that this is what Socrates means. He does not actually say in the Republic that knowledge of the forms freely motivates beneficence. In fact, he says eight times that the philosophers in the ideal city will have to be compelled to rule and do their part in sustaining the perfectly just city d4, d4, e4, a8, e2, b7, e3, b5.
It is possible to understand this compulsion as the constraint of justice: the philosophers rule because justice demands that they rule. But Socrates himself suggests a different way of characterizing the compulsion. He suggests that the compulsion comes from a law that requires those who are educated to be philosophers to rule. There is another reason to worry about explaining just actions by the motivating power of knowledge.
If the philosophers are motivated to do what is just by their knowledge of the forms, then there would seem to be an enormous gap between philosophers and non-philosophers. Brown , Singpurwalla ; cf. Gill , Kamtekar , and Scott Less often noted is how optimistic Socrates is about the results of a sufficiently careful education. Note that Socrates has the young guardians not only responding to good things as honorable with spirited attitudes , but also becoming fine and good.
This optimism suggests that the motivations to do what is right are acquired early in moral education, built into a soul that might become, eventually, perfectly just. And this in turn suggests one reason why Socrates might have skipped the question of why the psychologically just can be relied upon to do what is right. Socrates might assume that anyone who is psychologically just must have been raised well, and that anyone who has been raised well will do what is right.
So understood, early childhood education, and not knowledge of the forms, links psychological justice and just action. Of course, there are questions about how far Socrates could extend this optimism about imperfect virtue among non-philosophers. Perhaps honor-loving members of the auxiliary class have psychological harmony secured by their consistent attachment to what they have learned is honorable, but what about the members of the producing class? Can their attachment to the satisfaction of bodily desires be educated in such a way that they enjoy, in optimal social circumstances, a well-ordered soul?
Do they even receive a primary education in the ideal city? These questions will be considered more fully below and see Wilberding and Wilburn Open questions aside, it should be clear that there are two general ways of linking psychological justice to just action: one that depends upon the motivational power of knowledge in particular and the other that depends upon the early training of a wide range of attitudes in the young.
If one of these ways works, then Socrates is entitled to argue that it is always better to be just than unjust by showing why it is always better to have a harmonious soul. It is possible to find in the Republic as many as five separate arguments for the claim that it is better to be just than unjust, without regard to how other people and gods perceive us.
The first appeals to an analogy between psychological health and physical health in Book Four a—b. And the fifth is the image of the human soul consisting of a little human being reason , a lion spirit , and a many-headed beast appetite b ff.
Already in Book Four, Glaucon is ready to declare that unjust souls are ruined and in turmoil. But Socrates presses for a fuller reckoning. When he finally resumes in Book Eight where he had left off in Book Four, Socrates offers a long account of four defective psychological types. The list is not exhaustive cd, cf. At the end of this long discussion, Socrates will again ask which sort of person lives the best life: the aristocratic soul of Books Six and Seven, or one of the other souls of Books Eight and Nine?
We might expect Socrates and Glaucon to argue carefully by elimination, showing the just life to be better than every sort of unjust life. But they do not. Instead, they quickly contrast the tyrannical soul with the aristocratic soul, the most unjust with the most just. But it does not even do that, since Socrates is very far from portraying the best soul in the least favorable circumstances and the worst soul in the most favorable circumstances.
Socrates and Glaucon characterize the person ruled by his lawless attitudes as enslaved, as least able to do what it wants, as full of disorder and regret, as poor and unsatisfiable, and as fearful c—a. These characterizations fit in a logical order. The tyrant is enslaved because he is ruled by an utterly unlimited appetite, which prompts in him appetitive desire whenever any chance object of appetite presents itself to his consideration. Given this condition, he experiences appetitive desires that he cannot satisfy, either because they are too difficult for him to satisfy or because satisfying them would prevent satisfying other of his desires.
His experience of unsatisfied desires must make him wish that he could satisfy them and feel poor and unsatisfiable because he cannot. Worse, because his unsatisfied appetitive desires continue to press for satisfaction over time, they make him aware of his past inability to to do what he wants, which prompts regret, and of his likely future inability to do what he wants, which makes him fearful.
The result is a miserable existence, and the misery is rooted in unlimited attitudes that demand more satisfaction than a person can achieve. In a nutshell, the tyrant lacks the capacity to do what he wants to do. The philosopher, by contrast, is most able to do what she wants to do, for she wants to do what is best, and as long as one has agency, there would seem to be a doable best. Should circumstances make a certain apparent best undoable, then it would no longer appear to be best.
But this is not to say that the philosopher is guaranteed to be able to do what she wants. First, Socrates is quite clear that some appetitive attitudes are necessary, and one can well imagine circumstances of extreme deprivation in which the necessary appetitive attitudes for food or drink, say are unsatisfiable.
Second, the capacity to do what is best might require engaging in certain kinds of activities in order to maintain itself. So even if the philosopher can satisfy her necessary appetitive attitudes, she might be prevented by unfortunate circumstances from the sorts of regular thought and action that are required to hold onto the capacity to do what is best.
Thus, even if a philosophical soul is most able to do what it wants, and the closest thing to a sure bet for this capacity, it does not retain this ability in every circumstance. Socrates does not need happiness to be the capacity to do what one wants, or the absence of regret, frustration, and fear. Socrates concludes by suggesting that the easiest way to bring the just city into being would be to expel everyone over the age of ten out of an existing city eb.
Socrates picks up the argument that was interrupted in Book V. Glaucon remembers that Socrates was about to describe the four types of unjust regime along with their corresponding unjust individuals cb. Socrates announces that he will begin discussing the regimes and individual that deviate the least from the just city and individual and proceed to discuss the ones that deviate the most b-c.
The cause of change in regime is lack of unity in the rulers d. Assuming that the just city could come into being, Socrates indicates that it would eventually change since everything which comes into being must decay a-b. The rulers are bound to make mistakes in assigning people jobs suited to their natural capacities and each of the classes will begin to be mixed with people who are not naturally suited for the tasks relevant to each class e. This will lead to class conflicts a.
The first deviant regime from just kingship or aristocracy will be timocracy, that emphasizes the pursuit of honor rather than wisdom and justice d ff. The timocratic individual will have a strong spirited part in his soul and will pursue honor, power, and success a. This city will be militaristic. Oligarchy arises out of timocracy and it emphasizes wealth rather than honor c-e.
Socrates discusses how it arises out of timocracy and its characteristics ce : people will pursue wealth; it will essentially be two cities, a city of wealthy citizens and a city of poor people; the few wealthy will fear the many poor; people will do various jobs simultaneously; the city will allow for poor people without means; it will have a high crime rate.
The oligarchic individual comes by seeing his father lose his possessions and feeling insecure he begins to greedily pursue wealth a-c. Thus he allows his appetitive part to become a more dominant part of his soul c. Socrates proceeds penultimately, to discuss democracy. It comes about when the rich become too rich and the poor too poor c-d. Too much luxury makes the oligarchs soft and the poor revolt against them c-e. In democracy most of the political offices are distributed by lot a.
The primary goal of the democratic regime is freedom or license b-c. People will come to hold offices without having the necessary knowledge e and everyone is treated as an equal in ability equals and unequals alike, c. The democratic individual comes to pursue all sorts of bodily desires excessively dd and allows his appetitive part to rule his soul.
He comes about when his bad education allows him to transition from desiring money to desiring bodily and material goods d-e. The democratic individual has no shame and no self-discipline d. Tyranny arises out of democracy when the desire for freedom to do what one wants becomes extreme b-c.
Socrates points out that when freedom is taken to such an extreme it produces its opposite, slavery ea. The tyrant comes about by presenting himself as a champion of the people against the class of the few people who are wealthy da.
The tyrant is forced to commit a number of acts to gain and retain power: accuse people falsely, attack his kinsmen, bring people to trial under false pretenses, kill many people, exile many people, and purport to cancel the debts of the poor to gain their support ea.
The tyrant eliminates the rich, brave, and wise people in the city since he perceives them as threats to his power c. Socrates indicates that the tyrant faces the dilemma to either live with worthless people or with good people who may eventually depose him and chooses to live with worthless people d. The tyrant ends up using mercenaries as his guards since he cannot trust any of the citizens d-e.
Socrates is now ready to discuss the tyrannical individual a. He begins by discussing necessary and unnecessary pleasures and desires b-c. Those with balanced souls ruled by reason are able to keep their unnecessary desires from becoming lawless and extreme db.
The tyrannical person is mad with lust c and this leads him to seek any means by which to satisfy his desires and to resist anyone who gets in his way dd. Some tyrannical individuals eventually become actual tyrants b-d. Tyrants associate themselves with flatterers and are incapable of friendship ea. Applying the analogy of the city and the soul, Socrates proceeds to argue that the tyrannical individual is the most unhappy individual c ff.
Like the tyrannical city, the tyrannical individual is enslaved c-d , least likely to do what he wants d-e , poor and unsatisfiable ea , fearful and full of wailing and lamenting a. The individual who becomes an actual tyrant of a city is the unhappiest of all ba. Socrates concludes this first argument with a ranking of the individuals in terms of happiness: the more just one is the happier b-c. He proceeds to a second proof that the just are happier than the unjust d.
Socrates distinguishes three types of persons: one who pursues wisdom, another who pursues honor, and another who pursues profit dc. Socrates proceeds to offer a third proof that the just are happier than the unjust b. He begins with an analysis of pleasure: relief from pain may seem pleasant c and bodily pleasures are merely a relief from pain but not true pleasure b-c.
The only truly fulfilling pleasure is that which comes from understanding since the objects it pursues are permanent b-c. Socrates adds that only if the rational part rules the soul, will each part of the soul find its proper pleasure da. He concludes the argument with a calculation of how many times the best life is more pleasant than the worst: seven-hundred and twenty nine ae. Socrates discusses an imaginary multi-headed beast to illustrate the consequences of justice and injustice in the soul and to support justice c ff.
Thereafter, Socrates returns to the subject of poetry and claims that the measures introduced to exclude imitative poetry from the just city seem clearly justified now a. Poetry is to be censored since the poets may not know which is; thus may lead the soul astray b.
Socrates proceeds to discuss imitation. He explains what it is by distinguishing several levels of imitation through the example of a couch: there is the Form of the couch, the particular couch, and a painting of a couch ab. The products of imitation are far removed from the truth ec. Poets, like painters are imitators who produce imitations without knowledge of the truth ea. Socrates argues that if poets had knowledge of the truth they would want to be people who do great things rather than remain poets b.
Now Socrates considers how imitators affect their audiences c. He uses a comparison with optical illusions c to argue that imitative poetry causes the parts of the soul to be at war with each other and this leads to injustice cb. The most serious charge against imitative poetry is that it even corrupts decent people c. He concludes that the just city should not allow such poetry in it but only poetry that praises the gods and good humans ea.
Imitative poetry prevents the immortal soul from attaining its greatest reward c-d. Socrates points out that we cannot understand the nature of the soul if we only consider its relation to the body as the present discussion has b-d.
Socrates finally describes the rewards of justice by first having Glaucon allow that he can discuss the rewards of reputation for justice b-d. Glaucon allows this since Socrates has already defended justice by itself in the soul.
Socrates indicates justice and injustice do not escape the notice of the gods, that the gods love the just and hate the unjust, and that good things come to those whom the gods love ea. Socrates lists various rewards for the just and punishments for the unjust in this life a-e. He proceeds to tell the Myth of Er that is supposed to illustrate reward and punishment in the afterlife b. The souls of the dead go up through an opening on the right if they were just, or below through an opening on the left if they were unjust d.
The various souls discuss their rewards and punishments ea. Socrates explains the multiples by which people are punished and rewarded a-b. The souls of the dead are able to choose their next lives d and then they are reincarnated e. Socrates ends the discussion by prompting Glaucon and the others to do well both in this life and in the afterlife c-d.
The Republic has acquired the recognition of a classic and seminal work in political philosophy. It is often taught in courses that focus on political theory or political philosophy. Moreover, in the dialogue Socrates seems primarily concerned with what is an ethical issue, namely whether the just life is better than the unjust life for the individual. These two observations raise two issues. The first is whether the Republic is primarily about ethics or about politics.
If it is primarily about ethics then perhaps its recognition as a seminal political work is unwarranted. Moreover, considering it a political work would be somewhat mistaken.
The second issue is that even if thinking of it as a classic in political philosophy is warranted, it is very difficult to situate it in terms of its political position. Interpreters of the Republic have presented various arguments concerning the issue of whether the dialogue is primarily about ethics or about politics. In Book II, he proposes to construct the just city in speech in order to find justice in it and then to proceed to find justice in the individual a.
Thus, he seems to use a discussion in political matters as a means by which to answer what is essentially an ethical question.
But, Socrates also spends a lot of time in the dialogue on political matters in relation to the question of political justice such as education, the positions and relations among political classes, war, property, the causes of political strife and change of regimes, and several other matters.
Each of these could provide important contributions to political philosophy. Another relevant consideration is that there are several indications in the dialogue that the aim in the discussion is more pressing than the means the just city. Thus, the argument goes, Socrates does not seem primarily interested in discussing political philosophy but ethics instead.
Another related argument indicates that the discussion entails great doubts about whether the just city is even possible. Socrates claims this along with the idea that the function of the just city in the argument is to enable the individual to get a better idea of justice and injustice b-d, a-b. Thus, it is very difficult for us to conclude that Socrates takes the political discussion as seriously as he does the moral question see Annas, Julia.
Platonic Ethics, Old and New. Other interpreters indicate that the Republic is essentially about both ethics and politics among others see Santas, Gerasimos. Plato: Political Philosophy ; Reeve C. Philosopher Kings. Thus, these social reforms seem to be developed for their own sake. In Book VIII he criticizes democracy as an unjust regime and thus he seems to launch a critique against Athenian democracy.
He also adopts several measures in the just city, which were part of the Spartan constitution. Like Spartan citizens, the guardians of the just city are professional soldiers whose aim is the protection of the city, the guardians eat together, and they have their needs provided for by other classes.
But unlike Sparta, the just city has philosophers as rulers, a rigorous system of education in intellectual matters, and it is not timocratic or honor loving. Thus, the argument suggests, in addition to the main ethical question the dialogue is also about political philosophy.
Another position is that even though the discussion of political matters is instrumental to addressing the main ethical question of the dialogue, Socrates makes several important contributions to political philosophy.
One such contribution is his description of political regimes in Book VIII and his classification of them on a scale of more or less just. Another such contribution is his consideration of the causes of political change from one political regime to another. Moreover, Socrates seems to raise and address a number of questions that seem necessary in order to understand political life clearly.
Thus, according to this view, it is warranted to regard the Republic as a work on political philosophy and as a seminal work in that area. A further relevant consideration has to do with how one understands the nature of ethics and political philosophy and their relation.
Since modernity, it becomes much easier to treat these as separate subjects. Modern ethics is more focused on determining whether an action is morally permissible or not whereas ancient ethics is more focused on happiness or the good life. Thus, ethics and political philosophy are more closely linked for ancient thinkers than they may be for us since modernity. Ethics and political philosophy seem to be different sides of the same coin.
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