Virtue, according to Socrates, is found in balance. It is the ‘health, beauty, and vigour in the soul,’ while vice is ‘disease, ugliness, and weakness’ (444e).
Just a quick point from me in this chapter. At one point Socrates quickly mentioned something about how if you are "your own master" you are by definition also your own slave, and how that's perhaps not the right way to look at discipline (if anyone remembers the quote better do let me know).
I thought this was another great example of how influential the Republic really is, given that the master slave dialectic is a big part of Hegel's work much much later. Also it's still played out these days with the idea of toxic productivity and being your own boss. And it was only a little aside from Socrates! Really cool to see.
I know the read along has moved forward but I am still thinking on the Greek’s understanding of disease from this chapter. Healthy living leads to health and unhealthy to disease, and health is a virtue, disease is a vice.
So nothing has changed there! I think this must be a foundational/core belief about health in our societies and within medicine, since we do very much tend to the belief that disease is rooted in unhealthy behaviour and vices. If you only follow the right diet, exercise, and do all the other virtuous things, you will not fall ill. If you are not virtuous (fat, for example!) then you must deserve to be ill, and your doctor will just tell you to lose weight. Never mind that aging comes for us all, and with it disability. To say nothing of all the other unavoidable quirks of biology, developing disorders or cancer or genetic diseases and so on that have nothing to do with behaviour at all so far as we can tell.
Thanks for copying my quote from last time, which brought forth some sense of vindication when reading this Book and how Socrates tries to bring it all home.
I agree that we end up in essentially a scenario like The Giver where everyone does what they're best suited for in accordance with that the city needs, but nothing much *happens* other than brute subsistence.
Still, we get to some good points here with needing to defer to reason & wisdom in both our individual and collective affairs. Of course in the modern era there's just as many definitions of reason & wisdom as there are people. There's also the humility in acknowledging you're not meant to rule, but rather to cobble; whereas there is a humility in being called upon and trained to rule which back in Book I, we actually found out that no reasonable person should "want" to do anyway.
Since the papist world is dealing with the succession of Francis right now, I wonder if an analogy in that realm might be worth looking at instead of one that deals with modern ideas of politics, freedoms, states, and so forth. What I mean specifically is that to become the pope you have to go through years of training and climb the ranks all by selection of your peers. The idea being that you have trained your whole life for this role. So similarly to our city, instead of a random person taking office (or a random sense-desire governing your entire constitution, which we call gluttony or addiction) there ought to be those who are most well-suited for so doing being trained from birth to that effect.
If anyone has ever tortured themselves reading a political argument online, you'll usually see some variation of "in a democracy we should xyz!" and a retort that includes "but we're a republic so zyx!" The difference being that a republic is representative (and recalling the name of this book, it's starting to make sense and is irking our more modernist, individualist, purely democratic tendencies.) Perhaps the choosing of the representatives is something that could be further amended in one way or another. With term limits and direct election of representatives from across the population, you run the risk of hunger or lust as your representative due to its persuasive power - but luckily it's only for a little while. With lifetime appointments chosen by peers, you run the risk of ruling at cross purposes with those meant to be ruled - and there's no definite date for respite.
"Moreover, we've heard many people say and have often said ourselves that justice is doing one's own work and not meddling with what isn't one's own."
The problem I have with the definition of justice is that it depends on Socrates' rigorous definition of, and construction of this idealized city. It doesn't account for cases where two or more people cannot do their work because of an exclusive use of of some resource, or a collision between the common good of the city and an individual's affairs.
I believe this city construction oversimplifies the complexity of its residents. People may fulfill many roles or have many occupations, say a father, husband, youth leader (such as Scout master) and carpenter. Limiting them to the one they are best suited to may itself be unjust because enforcing that limitation may itself be meddling.
I'm hoping the book revisit this to see argument so we see it means to be just in Socrates' real world, and not just in this idealized world.
I agree that one of the biggest problems of Socrates’ city is that it depends on handwaving away like… most of how humans actually exist. At what point does a thought experiment become useless because it differs so much from the real?
I was surprised how much this part reminded me of Confucianism. It seems to echo similar themes of harmony, that comes about when everyone does their natural part. (Just to be clear: I'm not very well versed in this by any means and this association is only based on my superficial understanding)
I thought Plato’s definition of courage was interesting- that courage is preservation of what we should fear. I took this to mean that courage is about preserving our highest values at any cost- knowing that the ancient Greeks also thought slaves were cowards because they did not act to preserve their freedom, even if it meant suicide at their capture.
If we value our “just” city most of all, then we should fear unruly guardians, and must maintain the proposed education system at all costs, even in the face of other temptations, fears, luxuries, etc.
It is a very conservative, change-fearing approach. In my professional life I work with companies and people during big change events, and it makes me wonder about Plato’s own constitution and personal experience with change. Fear is not an uncommon response. Is Plato (or Socrates) just being an old man shaking fist at clouds?
But I do like that courage in this worldview requires a cause- very different, I think, from our modern definition which takes bravery and courage to be synonyms and courage is reduced to “feel the fear and do it anyways”.
I love this part of Book IV. It always surprises me and captures my imagination to think of courage as a kind of remembering. But it's not obvious to me that his characterization of courage is of necessity "change-fearing". It is if you have the perfect city (i.e. if by wisdom you've managed to navigate yourself to a state of perfection); but then you really shouldn't change. But given that change is going to happen in a non-ideal world (for an imperfect person like me), the fundamental idea is that courage is the power of the warrior part (the spirited part of soul) to remember wisdom. If wisdom says change is good, then courage should hold onto that even if it seems scary intuitively.
I know what you mean about surprised and having your imagination captured. And it’s only like three lines! “Well of course this is what I think…” I was like wait no that’s a good thought, please go back and say more about that!
I see what you are saying, I think. Courage is oppositional to change in his example city, but not always. In a non-ideal world, courage might be required to effect changes that bring you closer to whatever your ideal is.
However I do think if courage is about preservation, there’s something about it that will be fundamentally opposed to change on some level. It’s inflexible by nature. Abandoning a belief or goal is cowardly, sometimes, and I could see how that knife cuts both ways. I think it must be important to think very carefully about what you hope to preserve, examine it from all angles, and be sure it’s a worthy goal.
It was intended as an aspiration, whatever we take it for.
At that, perhaps the aim was that the guardians would not aspire to the material goods. We've all heard of people who lived quite happily on very little.
I feel compelled to say that Plato does not describe an equilibrium allocation of labor to occupations when he discusses his ideal city-state. The most obvious case is the guardians. There is nothing that repays them for their life of danger and hardship on the face of it. Of course, in real life, the everlasting glory of the successful warrior's campaigns is one form of compensation. But this is not sufficient: guardians must be allowed to retire from war-making. If they are not, then they begin to fail in the execution of their deeds. Edward Gibbon is a notable source of examples on this point. Inclusive of the glory of their work, guardians must value the military life at least as much as other occupations, and likewise for other occupations in their turn. Then the state would be ruled in a realistic equilibrium.
Just a quick point from me in this chapter. At one point Socrates quickly mentioned something about how if you are "your own master" you are by definition also your own slave, and how that's perhaps not the right way to look at discipline (if anyone remembers the quote better do let me know).
I thought this was another great example of how influential the Republic really is, given that the master slave dialectic is a big part of Hegel's work much much later. Also it's still played out these days with the idea of toxic productivity and being your own boss. And it was only a little aside from Socrates! Really cool to see.
I know the read along has moved forward but I am still thinking on the Greek’s understanding of disease from this chapter. Healthy living leads to health and unhealthy to disease, and health is a virtue, disease is a vice.
So nothing has changed there! I think this must be a foundational/core belief about health in our societies and within medicine, since we do very much tend to the belief that disease is rooted in unhealthy behaviour and vices. If you only follow the right diet, exercise, and do all the other virtuous things, you will not fall ill. If you are not virtuous (fat, for example!) then you must deserve to be ill, and your doctor will just tell you to lose weight. Never mind that aging comes for us all, and with it disability. To say nothing of all the other unavoidable quirks of biology, developing disorders or cancer or genetic diseases and so on that have nothing to do with behaviour at all so far as we can tell.
Thanks for copying my quote from last time, which brought forth some sense of vindication when reading this Book and how Socrates tries to bring it all home.
I agree that we end up in essentially a scenario like The Giver where everyone does what they're best suited for in accordance with that the city needs, but nothing much *happens* other than brute subsistence.
Still, we get to some good points here with needing to defer to reason & wisdom in both our individual and collective affairs. Of course in the modern era there's just as many definitions of reason & wisdom as there are people. There's also the humility in acknowledging you're not meant to rule, but rather to cobble; whereas there is a humility in being called upon and trained to rule which back in Book I, we actually found out that no reasonable person should "want" to do anyway.
Since the papist world is dealing with the succession of Francis right now, I wonder if an analogy in that realm might be worth looking at instead of one that deals with modern ideas of politics, freedoms, states, and so forth. What I mean specifically is that to become the pope you have to go through years of training and climb the ranks all by selection of your peers. The idea being that you have trained your whole life for this role. So similarly to our city, instead of a random person taking office (or a random sense-desire governing your entire constitution, which we call gluttony or addiction) there ought to be those who are most well-suited for so doing being trained from birth to that effect.
If anyone has ever tortured themselves reading a political argument online, you'll usually see some variation of "in a democracy we should xyz!" and a retort that includes "but we're a republic so zyx!" The difference being that a republic is representative (and recalling the name of this book, it's starting to make sense and is irking our more modernist, individualist, purely democratic tendencies.) Perhaps the choosing of the representatives is something that could be further amended in one way or another. With term limits and direct election of representatives from across the population, you run the risk of hunger or lust as your representative due to its persuasive power - but luckily it's only for a little while. With lifetime appointments chosen by peers, you run the risk of ruling at cross purposes with those meant to be ruled - and there's no definite date for respite.
"Moreover, we've heard many people say and have often said ourselves that justice is doing one's own work and not meddling with what isn't one's own."
The problem I have with the definition of justice is that it depends on Socrates' rigorous definition of, and construction of this idealized city. It doesn't account for cases where two or more people cannot do their work because of an exclusive use of of some resource, or a collision between the common good of the city and an individual's affairs.
I believe this city construction oversimplifies the complexity of its residents. People may fulfill many roles or have many occupations, say a father, husband, youth leader (such as Scout master) and carpenter. Limiting them to the one they are best suited to may itself be unjust because enforcing that limitation may itself be meddling.
I'm hoping the book revisit this to see argument so we see it means to be just in Socrates' real world, and not just in this idealized world.
I agree that one of the biggest problems of Socrates’ city is that it depends on handwaving away like… most of how humans actually exist. At what point does a thought experiment become useless because it differs so much from the real?
I was surprised how much this part reminded me of Confucianism. It seems to echo similar themes of harmony, that comes about when everyone does their natural part. (Just to be clear: I'm not very well versed in this by any means and this association is only based on my superficial understanding)
I thought Plato’s definition of courage was interesting- that courage is preservation of what we should fear. I took this to mean that courage is about preserving our highest values at any cost- knowing that the ancient Greeks also thought slaves were cowards because they did not act to preserve their freedom, even if it meant suicide at their capture.
If we value our “just” city most of all, then we should fear unruly guardians, and must maintain the proposed education system at all costs, even in the face of other temptations, fears, luxuries, etc.
It is a very conservative, change-fearing approach. In my professional life I work with companies and people during big change events, and it makes me wonder about Plato’s own constitution and personal experience with change. Fear is not an uncommon response. Is Plato (or Socrates) just being an old man shaking fist at clouds?
But I do like that courage in this worldview requires a cause- very different, I think, from our modern definition which takes bravery and courage to be synonyms and courage is reduced to “feel the fear and do it anyways”.
I love this part of Book IV. It always surprises me and captures my imagination to think of courage as a kind of remembering. But it's not obvious to me that his characterization of courage is of necessity "change-fearing". It is if you have the perfect city (i.e. if by wisdom you've managed to navigate yourself to a state of perfection); but then you really shouldn't change. But given that change is going to happen in a non-ideal world (for an imperfect person like me), the fundamental idea is that courage is the power of the warrior part (the spirited part of soul) to remember wisdom. If wisdom says change is good, then courage should hold onto that even if it seems scary intuitively.
I know what you mean about surprised and having your imagination captured. And it’s only like three lines! “Well of course this is what I think…” I was like wait no that’s a good thought, please go back and say more about that!
I see what you are saying, I think. Courage is oppositional to change in his example city, but not always. In a non-ideal world, courage might be required to effect changes that bring you closer to whatever your ideal is.
However I do think if courage is about preservation, there’s something about it that will be fundamentally opposed to change on some level. It’s inflexible by nature. Abandoning a belief or goal is cowardly, sometimes, and I could see how that knife cuts both ways. I think it must be important to think very carefully about what you hope to preserve, examine it from all angles, and be sure it’s a worthy goal.
I too much prefer the idea of courage as fearing the appropriate consequences rather than just overlooking one's fear.
It really helps differentiate real courage from recklessness or foolishness
It was intended as an aspiration, whatever we take it for.
At that, perhaps the aim was that the guardians would not aspire to the material goods. We've all heard of people who lived quite happily on very little.
I feel compelled to say that Plato does not describe an equilibrium allocation of labor to occupations when he discusses his ideal city-state. The most obvious case is the guardians. There is nothing that repays them for their life of danger and hardship on the face of it. Of course, in real life, the everlasting glory of the successful warrior's campaigns is one form of compensation. But this is not sufficient: guardians must be allowed to retire from war-making. If they are not, then they begin to fail in the execution of their deeds. Edward Gibbon is a notable source of examples on this point. Inclusive of the glory of their work, guardians must value the military life at least as much as other occupations, and likewise for other occupations in their turn. Then the state would be ruled in a realistic equilibrium.
Yo, this seems like AI.