One of the things that struck me about Book II was an explicit shift in the methodology of their inquiry. In Book I, Socrates tells Thrasymachus, "Please don't answer contrary to what you believe, so that we can come to some definite conclusion." (346A)
Then in Book II, Glaucon explicitly states in several places that he does not believe the position he is arguing for. "It isn't, Socrates, that I believe any of that myself." (358C) And Socrates accepts his playing devil's advocate.
There are several other early dialogues where Socrates insists that his interlocutors say only what they really believe. In the Gorgias, he says "And by the god of friendship, Callicles, do not fancy that you should play with me, and give me no haphazard answers contrary to your opinion." (500B)
And he doesn't say this just to hostile interlocutors like Thrasymachus and Callicles. In the Crito, Socrates says "Now be careful, Crito, that in making these single admissions you do not end by admitting something contrary to your real beliefs." (49D)
I think this is a real shift in methodology from Book I to Book II, and supports the thesis that Book I was originally a standalone dialogue that was later extended.
(I pulled those two other examples from the first chapter of Gregory Vlastos's book Socratic Studies. Vlastos holds that saying only what you really believe is part of the methodology of the historical Socrates.)
As a point of philosophical methodology, Plato is surely right to make this shift. Our beliefs about justice and other moral concepts are so muddled that we do really do need to look for strong arguments for positions we don't hold in order to get clear about the positions we do hold (assuming we don't abandon those positions altogether on the basis of those arguments).
On the other hand, public discourse, whether in the Agora or on Twitter, has a lot of bullshit - people saying things without any regard for whether they are true or not, to use Frankfurt's definition. Public discourse would be well served by following the methodology of Socrates in Book I.
I only recently encountered the idea that Book I is a standalone dialogue that Plato later expanded, but the text does seem to suggest it. The arguments are much more sophisticated in Book II, and the book even begins with Socrates suggesting he thought the discussion was over, as if justifying the continuation.
One of things that took me by surprise was the regression to mean (359), when we are trying to define Justice. This doctrine of mean is something that is the linchpin for Aristotle's Ethics, and trying to define Justice as a mean between good and evil, i.e. to say being impartial or neutral is something I can agree with, and as Socrates shows how Justice is good in itself, we can also take up Aristotle's view for the mean to be the virtue, we can find justice to be a virtue, therefore be good in itself.
In reading the book and our excellent discussions afterwards, I have to say I'm troubled by the lack of definition for "injustice". To me it has to have more nuance than say "everything that is not just", because there's a spectrum of gray between the black and white ends. Even tyrants have to exhibit justice to the people that immediately work for them, otherwise they'll be overthrown.
Another example is when good people allow injustices of others to occur unchecked.
Do we share the same idea of 'injustice', like we might share the same idea as 'justice'?
Oh I like this thought quite a bit. My assumption from my own says that injustice is when something unfair is allowed to exist… so those good people allowing injustice are, in my books, also unjust. iE anyone not acting justly is by default unjust. But I can see an argument for middle ground or kind of degrees of injustice. If there are degrees of injustice, are there degrees of justice?
In Socrates’ discussion of the role of stories in the education of the perfect guardian, I could think of nothing but Terry Pratchett’s dialogue between Susan and Death (for those unfamiliar, all caps denotes the anthropomorphic Death speaking)
“ "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
I don’t know if Pratchett read the Republic, but so interesting that he makes the argument that education in stories is essential for justice- but as this is my first time reading the Republic, I can’t say if Plato would agree with this argument… and I definitely don’t think Pratchett would look on censorship as favourably! It does seem that Susan would possibly agree that justice is good for its consequences not just inherently good?
Michelle, I like the humor in your passage; it helps to lighten a heavy philosophical discussion. Nevertheless, I don't believe Pratchett will last very long in Plato's republic!
Having just finished chapter three, I feel certain that he would have been among those lauded and then barred from the city on literary merit alone, and that’s before Plato ever even hears Pratchett thinks justice is only a mutually-agreed upon story!
The second thing that stood out to me in Book II looks forward to later in The Republic. The first city that Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus design has division of labor, but no distinct social classes. (This city seems a lot like Annares, to bring Ursula Le Guin into the picture.) Socrates asks of their city, "Where are justice and injustice to be found in it?" (371E) Adeimantus answers "I've no idea."
It's not explicitly stated, but it's strongly implied, that this city is an example of a just one.
Then Glaucon complains about the food in the first city, setting in motion the development of the second city, which has distinct social classes.
If you've read The Republic before, you'll know that the second city has three social classes, which is analogous to an individual's tripartite soul, with rational, spirited, and appetitive parts. Justice in the city consists in one class (the guardians) being in charge of the city, and justice in the individual consists in the rational part of the soul being in charge of the individual.
But is there another way in which a soul might be just that's analogous to justice in the first city?
They don't ever say in The Republic (unless I've completely missed it on previous readings), but here's one possibility. One of the doctrines that Socrates holds in a number of the early dialogues is the impossibility of knowingly doing wrong (akrasia in Greek). "No man voluntarily pursues evil, or that which he thinks to be evil." (Protagoras 358D)
On the other hand, knowingly doing wrong seems a very common phenomena. But how is this possible?
One answer (e.g. Donald Davidson's in "How is Weakness of the Will Possible?") is that in cases of akrasia, there must be some division of the mind into multiple parts, such that the part that knows something is wrong is not that part that initiates the wrong action.
In a unified soul (like our unified first city), knowingly doing wrong is not possible. Socrates in the early dialogues implicitly thinks of the soul as unified, which is why he thinks akrasia is impossible. Only with our tripartite souls can the wrong part end up in charge, giving rise to akrasia.
So the first city is one that's analogous to the sort of soul Socrates thought we had in the early dialogues. But our tripartite souls that Plato thinks we have give rise to the possibility of akrasia and injustice.
One part of Book II I think I have under-appreciated in the past is Adiemantus's contribution. Glaucon's speech is obviously powerful, and gives us the very poignant image of the Ring of Gyges as a test for whether people would truly be just absent fear of punishment. But Adiemantus's contribution, while not necessarily philosophically conclusive, sets the problem the clearest: if justice is the kind of good you say it is, Socrates, why does EVERYONE also say that justice is drudgery? If it's sooo good to be a just person, why is it that sources popular, political, and literary universally tell us that it is difficult to be just, easy and pleasant and rewarding to be unjust? Is Socrates alone in his understanding of justice? Is he misunderstanding the world? Or is literally everyone else wrong? Popular stories about what it's like to be a just or unjust person give us no reason, in other words, to expect that being just is preferable, so Socrates has a mountain of contrary evidence and testimony to overcome. Again, this isn't exactly a philosophical argument. Appeal to the masses doesn't prove a case. But it does show Socrates (and the reader) exactly how big of a hill Socrates will have to climb in making his case: it better be very, VERY persuasive.
One point I would have liked to see more pushback from Glaucon on was at 347A, where Socrates proposes a professional military, rather than citizen-soldiers, which is what Athens had. This move is what leads the dialogue down the path of artistic censorship, because Socrates argues that is utmost importance to make sure that the professional military is virtuous, so that it won't turn on the other citizens of the city.
Glaucon does ask "Why aren't the citizens themselves adequate for that purpose?" (I.e. fending off enemies.) And at the dramatic date of the dialogue (around 420 BCE), there wouldn't have been any reason to doubt the effectiveness of citizen-soldiers. The citizen-soldiers of Athens had defeated the mighty Persian empire in 480.
Plato, however, was writing The Republic in the wake of defeat of Athens by the professionalized Spartan military in 404, and presumably this is the reason he saw citizen-soldiers as inadequate.
As our Constitution is now constantly being violated and our First Amendment rights are under all-out attack, I expect that we would be ultra sensitive to any hints of potential threats to our national and personal freedoms; therefore, I am surprised that only one comment so far has raised a red flag about what Plato advocates in Book II.
In this book, Socrates, the thinker who lives by the conviction that an unexamined life is not worth living, abruptly transforms himself into an authoritarian guardian of his imagined utopia. Like other tyrants, he knows well that in order to safeguard his rule he must make sure that the children and youths in his state grow up to be “ideal” citizens. To accomplish this, he must reform education by taking the following actions: “supervise the storytellers”; “select their stories whenever they are fine or beautiful and reject them when they aren’t. And we’ll persuade nurses and mothers to tell their children the ones we have selected . . . Many of the stories they tell now, however, must be thrown out”; and “The young can’t distinguish what is allegorical from what isn’t, and the opinions they absorb at that age are hard to erase and apt to become unalterable. For these reasons, then, we should probably take the utmost care to insure that the first stories they hear about virtue are the best ones for them to hear.”
Is it ever acceptable to brainwash children and suppress freedom of speech through censorship, even when they are allegedly done in the name of the public good? Do we accept President Trump rewriting history to whitewash past and present injustices? Do we tolerate him persecuting people with alternative viewpoints or criticisms? Ironically, Trump shares Plato’s argument that “fake stories” must be prohibited because they make America look bad. And what about authors who refuse to obey? Trump would likely want to deport them or put them in prison; Plato wants to banish Homer and other poets. I, for one, do not want to live in a world without the poetry of Homer and all the subsequent writers he influenced; Virgil, Dante, Tolstoy, Joyce, Eliot . . . .
As I said in an earlier comment, I believe there are two Socrates: the radical thinker and the system-builder. Terry Penner writes in an article in “The Cambridge Companion to Plato”: “Can we make a distinction within Plato’s dialogues between those in which the character Socrates expresses views and concerns of the historical Socrates and those in which he expresses instead distinctive views of Plato himself? There is a tradition within recent philosophy and scholarship that says we can.” I would argue that it is Plato who is speaking like a tyrant in Book II. I would go on to argue that the Socrates who never stops going around to question everybody’s assumptions and beliefs is exactly the type of thinker that we desperately need in these dark times.
I saw the stories argument as more of a thought experiment on how to build the perfect guardian. In real life you would have to consider if altering stories to create the perfect guardian would be good for society as a whole, but Socrates is just taking on that one piece?
The authoritarian tendencies in Plato's philosophy are well known and have been for a long time. For example, Karl Popper, the most influential philosopher of science in the last century, devoted the entire first volume of his two-volume classic THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES to a critique of him. This book was one of the first philosophy books I read when I was a teenager fifty years ago. It must have left a deeper impression on me than I realized.
Fair enough. This is the first time I’ve read more than excerpts. A failing of my university education that even in philosophy classes we never covered a full text.
I’ve read a bit further now and agree that “perfect” city or no, I don’t want to live there, and quite possibly wouldn’t be allowed to.
[360] The rings and their power really had some LoTR vibes. Was Tolkien influenced by The Republic or is this just a coincidence? I though "I've seen that movie" in this section.
[371] "Not at all; he will find people there who seeing the want, undertake the office of salesmen. In well-ordered states they are commonly those who are weakest in bodily strength, and therefore of little use for any other purpose; their duty is to be in the market, and to give money in exchange for goods to those who desire to sell and to take money from those who desire to buy."
I think its crazy how much effort goes into this stuff for the stock market today. It feels like humanity spends a lot of brain power and money on this zero sum type game.
[372] "In my opinion the true and healthy constitution of the State is the one which I have described. But if you wish also to see a State at fever-heat, I have no objection"
This made me think of the Cantillion effect where inflation spreads unevenly through out an economy. When lots of money printing happens it shifts economic activity to more crazy luxurious houses and away from resources for normal people. All of the luxury spending seems like infrastructure would start getting neglected and their enemies will take advantage of them.
As for "the gods" I thought of them as manifestation of some emotion that has the power to override reason. I only know about Greek myths from video games though. Is there some kind of canonical interpretation of these gods and what they are referring to?
When they said "God" I was thinking its something sinister. Having some deity that you can say only does good seems like a very convenient way for these statesmen to act in an unaccountable way.
They can say God in his goodness hates their evil neighbours to justify a war so they can have more dainties, and perfumes, and incense, and courtesans, and cakes as Socrates describes. Their greed can easily be hidden under a taboo and no one can speak out about it even if they knew.
I think Socrates is correct in that the healthy state does not allow itself to reach a fever-state as described. After this admission I think this state is going to run into issues when their defence spending will become neglected.
Tolkien read classics for his first two years at Exeter College, Oxford, before switching to English language and literature. He was certainly familiar with the invisibility ring story from Republic book II.
“He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.” Deut. 32:4
Plato would have liked Judaism, and later on Christianity, I think. A very cursory google search indicates people have wondered if Plato somehow was aware of Judaism, but it seems very unlikely.
That god in his goodness did and does hate evil neighbours, of course.
I've noticed something when Socrates is talking about the stories about the gods that is confusing me a bit. When talking about the gods, Socrates sometime says "the gods" and sometime "god". Is there some kind of singular god in Greek mythology that I'm not aware of? Or is he only talking about the concept of "god"?
The most thorough account of Plato's cosmology is in his dialogue Timaeus. In it he postulates a single creator god, the demiurge, which brought the world into being by shaping pre-existing matter in pre-existing space ("the receptacle"). The demiurge created some lesser gods, and delegated the creation of humans to the lesser gods. It's a pretty wild dialogue.
Timaeus was written after The Republic (and dramatically it takes place the following day). It's impossible to know how much of the cosmology of Timaeus had already been worked out when Plato was writing The Republic, but it seems very likely that at least some of the ideas, such as a single creator god and multiple lesser gods, were already gestating in Plato's mind.
C.D.C. Reeve chooses, in his own independent translation for Hackett (rather than the one he edited and revised, also for Hackett) to translate "ho theos" (literally "The god") as "the gods," arguing that "The definite article is almost certainly functioning as a universal quantifier, as in 'The Swallow is a migratory bird,' which means (all) swallows migrate." Other translations like Bloom preserve the singular religiously as "the god," and I believe Bloom argues that this is a callback to Socrates referring to Apollo as "the god" consistently in the Apology.
It seemed like he wanted only "God" to do good things, so I was thinking it was some metaphor for the state, or like the spirit of the state. He seems pretty comfortable changing the myths around him. If he really believed in a traditional God I would think he'd show more hesitation and fear around dictating what can and cannot be said around him.
Yeah his description of “god” did not seem remotely like Ancient Greek cosmology to me, more like he was inventing a better version that would better suit his new city.
Socrates wanted a simple state without luxury. He admits luxury which expands the state and the propaganda is in context to the doctrine of the professional army.
I think its needed because in order for them to expand their republic they must go to war. If the guardians really knew the truth I don't think they would consent. It might be good for the ruling class, but bad for soliders.
To me it seems like he's building up a strawman to knock down. He admitted as soon as they brought in luxury that it will show us what injustice looks like. The army is necessary for the expansion of their state brought upon by wants.
One of the things that struck me about Book II was an explicit shift in the methodology of their inquiry. In Book I, Socrates tells Thrasymachus, "Please don't answer contrary to what you believe, so that we can come to some definite conclusion." (346A)
Then in Book II, Glaucon explicitly states in several places that he does not believe the position he is arguing for. "It isn't, Socrates, that I believe any of that myself." (358C) And Socrates accepts his playing devil's advocate.
There are several other early dialogues where Socrates insists that his interlocutors say only what they really believe. In the Gorgias, he says "And by the god of friendship, Callicles, do not fancy that you should play with me, and give me no haphazard answers contrary to your opinion." (500B)
And he doesn't say this just to hostile interlocutors like Thrasymachus and Callicles. In the Crito, Socrates says "Now be careful, Crito, that in making these single admissions you do not end by admitting something contrary to your real beliefs." (49D)
I think this is a real shift in methodology from Book I to Book II, and supports the thesis that Book I was originally a standalone dialogue that was later extended.
(I pulled those two other examples from the first chapter of Gregory Vlastos's book Socratic Studies. Vlastos holds that saying only what you really believe is part of the methodology of the historical Socrates.)
As a point of philosophical methodology, Plato is surely right to make this shift. Our beliefs about justice and other moral concepts are so muddled that we do really do need to look for strong arguments for positions we don't hold in order to get clear about the positions we do hold (assuming we don't abandon those positions altogether on the basis of those arguments).
On the other hand, public discourse, whether in the Agora or on Twitter, has a lot of bullshit - people saying things without any regard for whether they are true or not, to use Frankfurt's definition. Public discourse would be well served by following the methodology of Socrates in Book I.
I only recently encountered the idea that Book I is a standalone dialogue that Plato later expanded, but the text does seem to suggest it. The arguments are much more sophisticated in Book II, and the book even begins with Socrates suggesting he thought the discussion was over, as if justifying the continuation.
One of things that took me by surprise was the regression to mean (359), when we are trying to define Justice. This doctrine of mean is something that is the linchpin for Aristotle's Ethics, and trying to define Justice as a mean between good and evil, i.e. to say being impartial or neutral is something I can agree with, and as Socrates shows how Justice is good in itself, we can also take up Aristotle's view for the mean to be the virtue, we can find justice to be a virtue, therefore be good in itself.
In reading the book and our excellent discussions afterwards, I have to say I'm troubled by the lack of definition for "injustice". To me it has to have more nuance than say "everything that is not just", because there's a spectrum of gray between the black and white ends. Even tyrants have to exhibit justice to the people that immediately work for them, otherwise they'll be overthrown.
Another example is when good people allow injustices of others to occur unchecked.
Do we share the same idea of 'injustice', like we might share the same idea as 'justice'?
Oh I like this thought quite a bit. My assumption from my own says that injustice is when something unfair is allowed to exist… so those good people allowing injustice are, in my books, also unjust. iE anyone not acting justly is by default unjust. But I can see an argument for middle ground or kind of degrees of injustice. If there are degrees of injustice, are there degrees of justice?
In Socrates’ discussion of the role of stories in the education of the perfect guardian, I could think of nothing but Terry Pratchett’s dialogue between Susan and Death (for those unfamiliar, all caps denotes the anthropomorphic Death speaking)
“ "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
I don’t know if Pratchett read the Republic, but so interesting that he makes the argument that education in stories is essential for justice- but as this is my first time reading the Republic, I can’t say if Plato would agree with this argument… and I definitely don’t think Pratchett would look on censorship as favourably! It does seem that Susan would possibly agree that justice is good for its consequences not just inherently good?
Michelle, I like the humor in your passage; it helps to lighten a heavy philosophical discussion. Nevertheless, I don't believe Pratchett will last very long in Plato's republic!
Having just finished chapter three, I feel certain that he would have been among those lauded and then barred from the city on literary merit alone, and that’s before Plato ever even hears Pratchett thinks justice is only a mutually-agreed upon story!
The second thing that stood out to me in Book II looks forward to later in The Republic. The first city that Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus design has division of labor, but no distinct social classes. (This city seems a lot like Annares, to bring Ursula Le Guin into the picture.) Socrates asks of their city, "Where are justice and injustice to be found in it?" (371E) Adeimantus answers "I've no idea."
It's not explicitly stated, but it's strongly implied, that this city is an example of a just one.
Then Glaucon complains about the food in the first city, setting in motion the development of the second city, which has distinct social classes.
If you've read The Republic before, you'll know that the second city has three social classes, which is analogous to an individual's tripartite soul, with rational, spirited, and appetitive parts. Justice in the city consists in one class (the guardians) being in charge of the city, and justice in the individual consists in the rational part of the soul being in charge of the individual.
But is there another way in which a soul might be just that's analogous to justice in the first city?
They don't ever say in The Republic (unless I've completely missed it on previous readings), but here's one possibility. One of the doctrines that Socrates holds in a number of the early dialogues is the impossibility of knowingly doing wrong (akrasia in Greek). "No man voluntarily pursues evil, or that which he thinks to be evil." (Protagoras 358D)
On the other hand, knowingly doing wrong seems a very common phenomena. But how is this possible?
One answer (e.g. Donald Davidson's in "How is Weakness of the Will Possible?") is that in cases of akrasia, there must be some division of the mind into multiple parts, such that the part that knows something is wrong is not that part that initiates the wrong action.
In a unified soul (like our unified first city), knowingly doing wrong is not possible. Socrates in the early dialogues implicitly thinks of the soul as unified, which is why he thinks akrasia is impossible. Only with our tripartite souls can the wrong part end up in charge, giving rise to akrasia.
So the first city is one that's analogous to the sort of soul Socrates thought we had in the early dialogues. But our tripartite souls that Plato thinks we have give rise to the possibility of akrasia and injustice.
One part of Book II I think I have under-appreciated in the past is Adiemantus's contribution. Glaucon's speech is obviously powerful, and gives us the very poignant image of the Ring of Gyges as a test for whether people would truly be just absent fear of punishment. But Adiemantus's contribution, while not necessarily philosophically conclusive, sets the problem the clearest: if justice is the kind of good you say it is, Socrates, why does EVERYONE also say that justice is drudgery? If it's sooo good to be a just person, why is it that sources popular, political, and literary universally tell us that it is difficult to be just, easy and pleasant and rewarding to be unjust? Is Socrates alone in his understanding of justice? Is he misunderstanding the world? Or is literally everyone else wrong? Popular stories about what it's like to be a just or unjust person give us no reason, in other words, to expect that being just is preferable, so Socrates has a mountain of contrary evidence and testimony to overcome. Again, this isn't exactly a philosophical argument. Appeal to the masses doesn't prove a case. But it does show Socrates (and the reader) exactly how big of a hill Socrates will have to climb in making his case: it better be very, VERY persuasive.
One point I would have liked to see more pushback from Glaucon on was at 347A, where Socrates proposes a professional military, rather than citizen-soldiers, which is what Athens had. This move is what leads the dialogue down the path of artistic censorship, because Socrates argues that is utmost importance to make sure that the professional military is virtuous, so that it won't turn on the other citizens of the city.
Glaucon does ask "Why aren't the citizens themselves adequate for that purpose?" (I.e. fending off enemies.) And at the dramatic date of the dialogue (around 420 BCE), there wouldn't have been any reason to doubt the effectiveness of citizen-soldiers. The citizen-soldiers of Athens had defeated the mighty Persian empire in 480.
Plato, however, was writing The Republic in the wake of defeat of Athens by the professionalized Spartan military in 404, and presumably this is the reason he saw citizen-soldiers as inadequate.
As our Constitution is now constantly being violated and our First Amendment rights are under all-out attack, I expect that we would be ultra sensitive to any hints of potential threats to our national and personal freedoms; therefore, I am surprised that only one comment so far has raised a red flag about what Plato advocates in Book II.
In this book, Socrates, the thinker who lives by the conviction that an unexamined life is not worth living, abruptly transforms himself into an authoritarian guardian of his imagined utopia. Like other tyrants, he knows well that in order to safeguard his rule he must make sure that the children and youths in his state grow up to be “ideal” citizens. To accomplish this, he must reform education by taking the following actions: “supervise the storytellers”; “select their stories whenever they are fine or beautiful and reject them when they aren’t. And we’ll persuade nurses and mothers to tell their children the ones we have selected . . . Many of the stories they tell now, however, must be thrown out”; and “The young can’t distinguish what is allegorical from what isn’t, and the opinions they absorb at that age are hard to erase and apt to become unalterable. For these reasons, then, we should probably take the utmost care to insure that the first stories they hear about virtue are the best ones for them to hear.”
Is it ever acceptable to brainwash children and suppress freedom of speech through censorship, even when they are allegedly done in the name of the public good? Do we accept President Trump rewriting history to whitewash past and present injustices? Do we tolerate him persecuting people with alternative viewpoints or criticisms? Ironically, Trump shares Plato’s argument that “fake stories” must be prohibited because they make America look bad. And what about authors who refuse to obey? Trump would likely want to deport them or put them in prison; Plato wants to banish Homer and other poets. I, for one, do not want to live in a world without the poetry of Homer and all the subsequent writers he influenced; Virgil, Dante, Tolstoy, Joyce, Eliot . . . .
As I said in an earlier comment, I believe there are two Socrates: the radical thinker and the system-builder. Terry Penner writes in an article in “The Cambridge Companion to Plato”: “Can we make a distinction within Plato’s dialogues between those in which the character Socrates expresses views and concerns of the historical Socrates and those in which he expresses instead distinctive views of Plato himself? There is a tradition within recent philosophy and scholarship that says we can.” I would argue that it is Plato who is speaking like a tyrant in Book II. I would go on to argue that the Socrates who never stops going around to question everybody’s assumptions and beliefs is exactly the type of thinker that we desperately need in these dark times.
I saw the stories argument as more of a thought experiment on how to build the perfect guardian. In real life you would have to consider if altering stories to create the perfect guardian would be good for society as a whole, but Socrates is just taking on that one piece?
The authoritarian tendencies in Plato's philosophy are well known and have been for a long time. For example, Karl Popper, the most influential philosopher of science in the last century, devoted the entire first volume of his two-volume classic THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES to a critique of him. This book was one of the first philosophy books I read when I was a teenager fifty years ago. It must have left a deeper impression on me than I realized.
Fair enough. This is the first time I’ve read more than excerpts. A failing of my university education that even in philosophy classes we never covered a full text.
I’ve read a bit further now and agree that “perfect” city or no, I don’t want to live there, and quite possibly wouldn’t be allowed to.
[360] The rings and their power really had some LoTR vibes. Was Tolkien influenced by The Republic or is this just a coincidence? I though "I've seen that movie" in this section.
[371] "Not at all; he will find people there who seeing the want, undertake the office of salesmen. In well-ordered states they are commonly those who are weakest in bodily strength, and therefore of little use for any other purpose; their duty is to be in the market, and to give money in exchange for goods to those who desire to sell and to take money from those who desire to buy."
I think its crazy how much effort goes into this stuff for the stock market today. It feels like humanity spends a lot of brain power and money on this zero sum type game.
[372] "In my opinion the true and healthy constitution of the State is the one which I have described. But if you wish also to see a State at fever-heat, I have no objection"
This made me think of the Cantillion effect where inflation spreads unevenly through out an economy. When lots of money printing happens it shifts economic activity to more crazy luxurious houses and away from resources for normal people. All of the luxury spending seems like infrastructure would start getting neglected and their enemies will take advantage of them.
As for "the gods" I thought of them as manifestation of some emotion that has the power to override reason. I only know about Greek myths from video games though. Is there some kind of canonical interpretation of these gods and what they are referring to?
When they said "God" I was thinking its something sinister. Having some deity that you can say only does good seems like a very convenient way for these statesmen to act in an unaccountable way.
They can say God in his goodness hates their evil neighbours to justify a war so they can have more dainties, and perfumes, and incense, and courtesans, and cakes as Socrates describes. Their greed can easily be hidden under a taboo and no one can speak out about it even if they knew.
I think Socrates is correct in that the healthy state does not allow itself to reach a fever-state as described. After this admission I think this state is going to run into issues when their defence spending will become neglected.
Tolkien read classics for his first two years at Exeter College, Oxford, before switching to English language and literature. He was certainly familiar with the invisibility ring story from Republic book II.
“He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.” Deut. 32:4
Plato would have liked Judaism, and later on Christianity, I think. A very cursory google search indicates people have wondered if Plato somehow was aware of Judaism, but it seems very unlikely.
That god in his goodness did and does hate evil neighbours, of course.
I've noticed something when Socrates is talking about the stories about the gods that is confusing me a bit. When talking about the gods, Socrates sometime says "the gods" and sometime "god". Is there some kind of singular god in Greek mythology that I'm not aware of? Or is he only talking about the concept of "god"?
I noted that in the footnotes of this post, too. I'm not completely sure what is going on.
The most thorough account of Plato's cosmology is in his dialogue Timaeus. In it he postulates a single creator god, the demiurge, which brought the world into being by shaping pre-existing matter in pre-existing space ("the receptacle"). The demiurge created some lesser gods, and delegated the creation of humans to the lesser gods. It's a pretty wild dialogue.
Timaeus was written after The Republic (and dramatically it takes place the following day). It's impossible to know how much of the cosmology of Timaeus had already been worked out when Plato was writing The Republic, but it seems very likely that at least some of the ideas, such as a single creator god and multiple lesser gods, were already gestating in Plato's mind.
C.D.C. Reeve chooses, in his own independent translation for Hackett (rather than the one he edited and revised, also for Hackett) to translate "ho theos" (literally "The god") as "the gods," arguing that "The definite article is almost certainly functioning as a universal quantifier, as in 'The Swallow is a migratory bird,' which means (all) swallows migrate." Other translations like Bloom preserve the singular religiously as "the god," and I believe Bloom argues that this is a callback to Socrates referring to Apollo as "the god" consistently in the Apology.
It seemed like he wanted only "God" to do good things, so I was thinking it was some metaphor for the state, or like the spirit of the state. He seems pretty comfortable changing the myths around him. If he really believed in a traditional God I would think he'd show more hesitation and fear around dictating what can and cannot be said around him.
Yeah his description of “god” did not seem remotely like Ancient Greek cosmology to me, more like he was inventing a better version that would better suit his new city.
Socrates wanted a simple state without luxury. He admits luxury which expands the state and the propaganda is in context to the doctrine of the professional army.
I think its needed because in order for them to expand their republic they must go to war. If the guardians really knew the truth I don't think they would consent. It might be good for the ruling class, but bad for soliders.
To me it seems like he's building up a strawman to knock down. He admitted as soon as they brought in luxury that it will show us what injustice looks like. The army is necessary for the expansion of their state brought upon by wants.