'Blessed are those who produce a tyrannical son' | Plato's Republic, Book IX

The penultimate book of Plato's Republic

Today, we continue our read-along of Plato’s Republic, the latest installment in our philosophical read-alongs. Here’s the schedule:

• March 31: Book I

• April 7: Book II

• April 14: Book III

• April 21: Reading Week

• April 28: Book IV

• May 5: Book V

• May 8: Members-Only Zoom Call, 3 PM Eastern

• May 12: Book VI

• May 18: Members-Only Zoom Call, 8 PM Eastern

• May 19: Book VII

• May 26: Reading Week

• June 2: Book VIII

• June 9: Book IX

• June 16: Book X

• June 22: Members-Only Zoom Call, 8 PM Eastern

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In Book IX, Socrates finally does it: he gives an argument for why the just man is happier than the unjust man. This means that we are finally getting around to solving the problem that initiated the dialogue.

Remember that in Book II, Glaucon presented two options:

• The perfectly unjust man enjoys all the benefits of injustice and all of the reputational benefits of justice. He even bribes the gods with sacrifices.

• The perfectly just man enjoys none of the benefits of justice but has the reputation of an unjust man.

He argued that the first was preferable to the second. The unjust man would be happier than the just man. And in the case where the unjust man and the just man both have the reputation of being just, it is plausible to think that it would still be preferable to be unjust: the unjust man would have fewer restrictions on his actions, would be able to get what he wants in a more expedient way. The just man would be able to run the race, but he would be carrying a heavy stone: the burden of being good.

Socrates said that this was wrong. The just man would be happier than the unjust man. This entire book, the whole of the description of this city, is an attempt to show that this is the case, because the city and man stand in a relation of analogy. If Socrates can show that the just city is a happier city than the unjust city, he should be able to show that the just man is a happier man than the unjust man.

So, if you have made it this far in the Republic, let me offer you some early congratulations: you’re now seeing the fruits of our efforts.

Let’s see how Socrates does it.

Source

First, we need to see how the democratic man becomes the tyrannical man.

All people have a ‘terrible, untamed and lawless class of desires,’ including those ‘who appear to be completely normal’ (572b). These desires are often revealed in dreams: murder, incest, and the like. The democratic man is raised by his father, and so values only the money-making desires; later, he encounters those with ‘more sophisticated men’ and he falls into excess of every kind (572c). Because of his upbringing, though, he still ends up in a moderate position, as he is drawn in both directions. This is how he went from oligarchic to democratic.

Now, imagine that he has a son. This son is led into lawlessness (‘“liberty,” as those who are leading him call it’). In order to control him better, those who are seducing him ‘implant in him a kind of lust or passion, a champion of those idle desires which want to consume whatever is available’ (572d-573).

Recall what we learned about champions in Book VIII:

At the head of a tyranny is a tyrant. The people turn to a single individual, a champion, and from this tendency, a tyrant emerges. A champion of the people, once he wins, has no inhibitions.

But here the champion is the desire, not the man. The champion grows, ‘takes madness as its bodyguard,’ and begins to kill off the rational and sensible in the man’s soul. Thus, the democratic man becomes tyrannical. Soon, he has enslaved even his parents.

What has happened with the tyrannical man, very generally, is those tightly-controlled terrible desires – the sorts of desires we all have – comes to dominate all other desires. The soul is completely out of harmony; there is no sense of proportion. Soon, the tyrannical man is ungovernable, even by himself. There is no sense of control.

Tyrannical men, should they stay in a city, commit crimes like theft, housebreaking, robbing temples, and kidnapping. They are also responsible for malicious prosecutions — something Socrates will know all too well (575b). But above all, there is a tyrant at the head of the city: the champion appointed by the people who will, eventually, punish his country should it not prove compliant.

So now, let’s ask: which city would be happiest? A tyrannical city or a monarchy of the sort described originally? The answer is clear, at least to Socrates and Glaucon. The monarchy, governed by a philosopher-king, is happiest.

The tyrant, like the tyrannical city, is unhappy. He, too, is enslaved, impoverished, and insatiable (577d). In fact, the tyrannical man is not the most unhappy — it is the tyrant himself who holds that distinction (578c).

That Love’s a tyrant, I can prove…

This is only the first proof that the unjust man is unhappy. Socrates supplies two others. The second proof relies on a theory of the soul.

First, we establish that there are three types of people:

1. The soul has three parts, with corresponding pleasures, desire, and rule.

2. These pleasures are profit, victory, and wisdom.

3. For different people, different parts of the soul operate as ruling elements.

4. Thus, we have lovers of wisdom, lovers of victory, and lovers of profit.

Each of these types will say that their pleasures are superior. So, the lover of wisdom (as one example) views the pleasures of profit and victory as far inferior to the pleasures of wisdom. But the lover of profit will say the same of wisdom and victory, and likewise for the lover of victory. So the question becomes: what standard can we use to settle the dispute?

The answer: we trust the lover of wisdom because he has experienced all of these pleasures. The lovers of profit and victory have never been compelled to learn the nature of things, while the lover of wisdom has experienced pleasure and victory in some capacity. ‘On the grounds of experience, then…he is the best judge out of these men’ (582d).

The unjust man is not a lover of wisdom. And so, the unjust man is not the happiest man.

The third proof begins at 583b. This relies on the idea – not uncontroversial, but plausible enough – that the pleasures of wisdom are lasting in a way that the pleasures of profit and victory are not. In fact, many of the inferior pleasures are merely relief from pain. The pleasures of reflection are sustained and fulfilling.

The unjust man, the tyrant, has a champion in his soul that distorts what he desires, and thus he does not value wisdom. Thus, he is not the happiest man. In fact, when you compare the pleasures of the king and the tyrant, ‘you will find…that [the king’s] life is nine-and-twenty-and seven hundred-fold more pleasurable’ (587d). (This is, admittedly, a baffling section of the Republic, and Glaucon agrees: ‘What a horrendous piece of arithmetic…a real deluge.’)

In order to be happy, we need the part of our soul that desires wisdom to be in control. This makes all other pleasures available to us, though we will not value them highly, and allows us to access these higher pleasures. And, as luck would have it, this parallels the city we have been describing in the Republic.

The final analogy we are given is a many-formed creature composed of many species, one of which is a man and the other a lion. The unjust man, as he behaves unjustly, strengthens and fattens the lion. The just man, on the other hand, strengthens the man. The man is able to make common cause and domesticate the lion, should he be strengthened.

All of this leads to Glaucon’s final admission concerning the happiness of the unjust man: ‘There is no way we can make that claim’ (591a).

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Here are two of my favorite comments from last week.

Wayne raises a worry:

There are two ideas that I struggle with in this section, the unidirectional transition from aristocracy to tyrrany; and the thought that the soul could go through a similiar transition.

With the city-state, Plato's view seems to be that it is inevitable that aristocracy falls to timocracy, then to oligarchy, democracy and tyranny, either because the system itself has flaws which leads to a failure, or that generation following one of the forms of government will react (rebel) with a less ideal form of goverment. Plato doesn't suggest how gets back to a more appealing form of governement; his message seems to be more about preventing change through education.

The city-state as an analog for the human soul kind of falls apart in this chapter for me. He seems to be writing about how the souls of a people in the aggregate may change, but not how an individual soul would change. So that model got left behind.

Let’s break these apart.

1. Is it that implausible to think that things tend toward decay? This seems to be the nature of complex systems. It is much easier to break something than it is to improve it. What it would take to go from, say, democratic to oligarchic is some amount of education — but where does it come from?

2. I think the analogy was done quite well here! Wayne, does your view change in light of Book IX?

And from Raymond, a question of methodology:

I would like to ask a drastically different kind of question--one about epistemology, about how we validate knowledge claims.

Most of the things that Plato talks about in this chapter (e.g., the classification of forms of government; their operations and transformations; the behavior of their citizens, both as individuals and collectives; etc.) would nowadays be considered as falling within the social sciences, especially political science and sociology. The relevant point is this: from the perspective of modern epistemology, Plato's claims would be treated as theories and hypotheses to be supported or refuted by empirical scientific research; in the absence of any empirical data, they would be considered as philosophical speculation at best.

Here's my question: what support has Plato given for his empirical claims in this dialogue? If he hasn't, then are we to take him simply on faith or reputation?

Certainly, there is little empirical evidence about the way regimes change. (Though perhaps they have in mind parts of Athenian history.) But perhaps this is where the analogy works in the other direction? Consider what we know about rearing children and how, to put it very loosely, good kids go bad — the wrong sorts of incentives, being led astray by the promises of pleasure, etc. Does that assuage any of your worries?