Plato's Republic, reading discussion
Hello,
I am new here and it seems like a lot of you are veterans who have read this book, but it is very interesting for me. The first philosophical book I read was Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" when I was a teenager and I was hooked on philosophy, heh.
I didn't expect the Republic to be so interesting, I am up to the point where Socrates is getting weird and talking about how the rulers of state should censor books and fairy tales (???) but hopefully he has a deeper meaning.
The book reminds me of Wealth of Nations, in a sense, that it talks about how the economic of a state should be structured and how one person should only have to do one thing (sell, fight, farm, etc)
I'd love it to discuss it further here.
I am new here and it seems like a lot of you are veterans who have read this book, but it is very interesting for me. The first philosophical book I read was Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" when I was a teenager and I was hooked on philosophy, heh.
I didn't expect the Republic to be so interesting, I am up to the point where Socrates is getting weird and talking about how the rulers of state should censor books and fairy tales (???) but hopefully he has a deeper meaning.
The book reminds me of Wealth of Nations, in a sense, that it talks about how the economic of a state should be structured and how one person should only have to do one thing (sell, fight, farm, etc)
I'd love it to discuss it further here.
Comments (61)
I sincerely hope you realize Plato's Republic is not a book on statecraft.
Not at all or not just? I don't know what you mean by statecraft, I was referring to a society built on the republic modal.
My two cents:
Although many other matters are addressed in the Republic, I think its purpose never strays from answering Glaucon when he asks:
But the case for justice, to prove that it is better than injustice, I have never yet heard stated by any as I desire to hear it. What I desire to is an encomium on justice in and by itself. And I think I am most likely to get that from you."
358d
The discussion of the city begins with:
"I will tell you, I said. There is a justice of one man, we say, and I suppose, also of an entire city?
Assuredly, said he.
Is not the not the city larger than the man?
It is larger, he said.
Then, perhaps, there would be more justice in the larger object, and more easy to apprehend. If it please you, then, let us look for the quality in states, and then only examine it also in the individual, looking for the likeness of the greater in the form of the less.
I think that is a good suggestion, he said.
If, then, said I , our argument should observe the origin of the state, we should see also the origin of justice and injustice in it?
It may be, said he."
368e
It is good to keep this framework in mind while considering the "ideal city" as the discussion is also about the other kinds and where they came from. Also observe that while Socrates does stay with his plan to consider the nature of the state before taking up the nature of the individual, he will also proceed to use the comparison the other way to make his argument on the way.
I think what
Quoting Valentinus
Says is generally correct. The Republic is essentially trying to answer the typical Socratic question "what is X?", where "X" is usually a moral virtue. In the case of the Republic, X is Justice. i think any similarities to Smith's project in the Wealth of Nations, which I take to be an early form of social scientific inquiry, are probably going to end up being superficial or coincidental.
However, that said, a comparison of the two works might still be interesting in its own right, even if one accepts the objective of each is significantly different from the other.
Quoting Valentinus
Plato's Republic is about using the example of a state as a means to better understand the individual. It should be read primarily as an allegory on the individual. This should come as no surprise, considering the nature of his other works.
@Dagny said this in the original post:
Quoting Dagny
I believe they are referring to the part where Socrates says one should not allow oneself to have false ideas about God. If one were to read the Republic as a manual for statecraft, this clearly sounds like religious censorship, however Plato was primarily concerned with the nature of ultimate reality which he called The One or The Good. The Republic can be seen as describing the steps one needs to take to prime themselves for a vision of The Idea of the Good. If we then consider the same passage, what Socrates (through Plato) is saying, is that if one wants to experience a vision of ultimate reality, one should never allow oneself to hold false beliefs about The Good, primarily that it is anything other than Good, since this would be akin to denying the nature of reality.
Plato is not for the faint of heart, and I couldn't possibly do it justice in so few words, but I hope I got the picture across.
In The Republic, Plato presents the final versions of all the arguments Socrates has been alluding to and working up to. Justice is a big part of his moral philosophy and does directly deal with statecraft I believe. The tripartite soul is another one that reaches maturity in the Republic and this is more about the individual and morality, which is also an important part of the society. And the opus idea is in the Forms and his metaphysics of the universe and his promoting of dualism.
So I do agree with your post in general but I think that it is an over simplification of the full ramifications of the play.
The key sections in the Republic are first the Analogy of the Divided Line, which outlines in summary form the Platonic epistemology, and the Analogy of the Cave, which is one of the most important passages in the whole of philosophy.
They're both related to the individual. For Plato explains justice to elaborate on his assertion that it is better to be just and spurned than unjust and loved. To describe what justice is, Plato mentions the three parts of the nature of the soul. Reason, spirit and desire. According to Plato, a man is just when his spirit and desire submit to reason and spirit and reason work together to resist desire. He strikes a parallel with the state to illustrate his point.
He finally supports his assertion by saying that an unjust man is ruled by his appetites, which are insatiable and thus the unjust man will never be satisfied. The just man on the other hand is ruled by his reason and by controlling his appetites is much happier, simply enjoying the fruits of his own soul.
Plato is not describing the perfect state. He's describing the perfect man.
Central in Plato's theory on the nature of reality or 'The Good' or 'The One', is how an individual would go about attempting to glimpse ultimate reality and experience 'The Idea of the Good' (since the Good itself is beyond experience). This can be seen as reaching a form of enlightenment.
His theory of Forms he never fully elaborates on, but is indicative of the idea that what man experiences is not reality itself, but merely a reflection of the essential Forms.
That is an excellent point. They both take the viewpoint of the "city" as a whole. They both see different "arts" and their relationship with each other producing different kinds of life for the citizens.
Socrates was telling the story of this Greek character in Homer's book who apparently was sick his whole life and didn't do any work.
He then gives this example:
He then continues:
Was Socrates meaning to say that you must either work or die, and if you don't work and aren't a sufficiently contributing member of society, then you are as good as dead?
In short, justice is personal morality wrote large.
I read that passage to say that we make our decisions upon information we either regard or do not regard as important. How will we make that judgement? We decide all kinds of things without knowing the answer.
Could you elaborate?
Quoting Valentinus
Because in the begininng Socrates and his interlocutors speak about justice and whether it is better and more profitable to be just or unjust and then Socrates jumps into creating this "State" which with little mention to justice which I believe leaves the reader confused.
Although I am not finished with the book yet.
It helps me to go through the arguments with Thrasymachus. He is the one proposing that hiding injustice in the body of what the "state" calls justice is what is going on. If you read the rest in that context, the words mean what they otherwise would not mean. Ideas are not just islands of thought. We think some things and lose or gain something through thinking them.
Let me put it this way. When these arguments first appeared, it was life and death. Either a certain way of talking was how to proceed or it would be shut up, forever.
Could you elaborate? Do you mean that when they first argued about justice they seemed like they were getting mad at each other (at least to me) but then cooled down?
Brilliant explanation and quote.
Just to nit-pick: Best (ariste) city. The ideal is in the realm of the forms.
Quoting Jamesk
That depends on how you read it. It can be read as if there is no justice at the personal level and that justice is the aggregate of all personal morality. That would be the wrong way to read it. The city-state is personal morality written large. Justice is but an aspect of the "best polis" and in that respect but an aspect of the best person.
No, these have a Form. Justice, beauty and goodness in you and me and in society will always be shadows.
Justice and beauty partake in the form of the good. The just city will be just to the extent that it partakes in the form of justice. So too with the just man.
The shadows on the wall of the cave are common opinion. One must turn away from the common opinion in order to see the world as it truly is (ie. behold the forms).
So people and cities do partake in the form of the good and the form of justice. It just takes a philosopher to recognize it.
I never read Plato from such a purely subjective standpoint. I thought that he is also referring to a separate universe that some how impinges on ours. Where do you get your interpretation from? I have so far read Guthrie and Cooper and I never saw it as a purely internal dualism at all, more of a final answer to Parmenides if anything.
Glaucon takes up part of Thrasymachus' argument after the latter was not able to defend himself against the questions Socrates posed. Glaucon observes that it in some sense it was one kind of intimidation being over matched by another kind. The issue of power that underlies the talk about the "strong" is not illuminated by Socrates besting Thrasymachus. So Glaucon is asking for Socrates to not simply win a contest but get rid of the argument for all time. That is the meaning of the first passage I quoted above.
Socrates explains that is a formidable enterprise which will involve a commitment to an investigation that requires patience and resolve to carry out. The brothers agree to follow it under those conditions.
Then Socrates begins as heard in the second quote I gave above.
The rest of the book is the "mentioning" of justice, if you will. We were warned.
You should read The Social Contract by Rousseau! It was eye opening and much more relevant than Plato's Republic. Plato's book seems to based in a hypothetical utopia. Rousseau's was much more practical and provides TONS of historical context that relates to modern day political theory, especially republican thought. I learned so much about why our government is set up the way it is. The social contract theory just blew my mind. Please read it and let me know what you think via PM, would love to discuss.
Yes, that view is especially reflected in how the tyrannical soul is seen by itself and in the context of rule in the later books.
Your point is well taken regarding separating the ideal from the best.
So let's say that a just city is just, to the extent that it partakes in the true form of justice. And, a philosopher can recognize the true form of justice. But common opinion doesn't behold the true form of justice. Where is the philosopher supposed to find the true form of justice if it cannot be found in common opinion?
In some respects the Republic is a big "hell no" to the idea that the uninformed masses should steer politics.
How this relates to the soul is this: we have many powerful desires within us. We have blind lust, appetite for unhealthy food etc. We also have powerful emotions in us (such as anger). Like the city ruled by philosophers, our logical part should do ALL of the decision making in our lives. The analogy of the philosopher king represents the most reasonable part of our soul directing our lives. We should not give our desirous or emotional elements any decision making power. We should satisfy our desires and emotional impulses as logic dictates.
Also logic doesn't dictate how anything ought to be, or what any actions ought to be taken at all. That always begins in passion, but the heart isn't an appetite, it can be satiated, and it is always other directed. It loves everyone except you -- and it being everyone else and not you, you love it, and not yourself, also. Agape in a convoluted nutshell.
What it means when one believes themselves to be operating completely on logic, is that the passions that are truly calling the shuts just go subterranean.
But keep in mind, his goal is righteousness in the soul. And he repeats often that most are not cut out for his special brand of justice-in-living. Most people are jocks or regular joes just tryin' to get a nut. But some people (very few) are dispassionate by nature. And among those there are some (even fewer) who have strong moral integrity AND are ruled by logic. Plato says to put the wisest in this small group in charge.
Taken like that it is pretty difficult to dispute, it's basically just saying a sane vs an insane person.
Everyone talks about being dispassionate, that is pretty huge, but I think that because the passions elevate the heart, boil the blood, and constantly being in an elevated state will definitely strip the years off of your life span, and being calm and collected is superior to that, but what is superior still is the widest possible range. My resting heart rate is in the 50s, and I can maintain pretty good marathon paces for hours, I think that allowing for high levels of passion also makes higher levels of dispassion possible.
Yeah, I was thinking that, I guess great minds think alike.
Quoting vulcanlogician
But we're talking about "justice" here. Surely Plato didn't suggest that a philosopher might find the true form of justice via mathematics. Didn't he say that we need to apprehend "the good", and the good is analogous to the sun? The good makes intelligible objects intelligible, just like the sun makes visible objects visible.
The others, in the cave, are not apprehending the good, therefore they do not even acknowledge the intelligible objects (ideas or forms), they just acknowledge existence of the shadows cast by the intelligible objects. These cave people live and exist in the realm of opinion. This is relevant to Dagny's question about censorship:
Quoting Dagny
To Plato, these artists are involved in productions which reflect the realm of opinion (described above). These productions, and I've seen this translated as "narrative" before, are three times removed from the good. Starting from the good we have next, intelligible objects. Then the reflections or shadows of these intelligible objects, which are the visible, sensible objects. Then these artists produce a representation of the sensible existence. Since they are three times removed from the reality of the good, Plato believes they ought to be replaced by philosophical work which apprehends the good directly.
Quoting ron
Could you elaborate on that one?
To be honest, I'm probably due for a refresher on the divided line. I've read the Republic twice, scrutinized books IV, V, and VI, , and written several lengthy papers on it, but it's been over a year since I picked it up and gave it a reread.
What most resonated with me concerning the book was the tripartite soul metaphor and the commentary on how political society regards true knowledge/the knowledgeable. (There are plenty of ideas in the Republic that I don't like, but I've always thought Plato might have intentionally made a book that welcomes disagreement, which is one of the Republic's charms.) Add to that the fact that I'm smack in the middle of Phaedo, and I ended up tossing "turning away from the body" in there. Oops.
As for mathematics, my mentioning of it has to do with some contemplation I did recently after reading Meno for the first time. I gave some thought to what Plato was trying to get at with his theory of forms. I don't really grasp the forms too well... it is unclear to me what Plato is trying to say by postulating their existence. Since Meno contains a lengthy discussion of geometry, I had been considering the forms as "real" in the same way mathematical concepts are real. Anyway, it was just another half-baked, half-developed thought. I'm pretty good for those, unfortunately. But thankfully, I'm occasionally on point to balance things out.
I also think that there is a physical side to the Forms.
That's a central idea in Platonism, Notice that you have to put "real" in quotes. When you do that, you're doing philosophy! In actual fact, one of the cardinal points of all forms of Platonism is that number (etc) is real but not material; it's a purely intelligible reality. And that is an idea our materialist age has a problem with.
Platonism in the Philosophy of Mathematics, SEP.
The Social Contract theory presented by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau created many revolutionary ideas that gave way to the foundations of modern political theory and government. Modern political theory as in post-Enlightenment that gave way to democratic republics after years of divine monarchies reigning based off of divine power. Republicanism as in classical republicanism, do not think present day "republicans". But republican and democratic origins are linked and can be seen in the videos below. Please read the actual book and let me know what you think. It will change your mindset and give you a solid background on the philosophical origins of the U.S. declaration of Independence, constitution, bill of rights, branches of government, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI1t0dY5zoc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkPrgZtwi3g&t=33s
I mean, he does have his reasons, but generally Plato (and remember, we're only getting Socrates through Plato's eyes) was suspicious of literature. It wasn't real and he regarded it as propaganda.
However, he did have a soft spot for Homer :wink:
I really wouldn't want to live in Plato's/Socrates' republic!
You don't need to read Plato to learn about philosophy, or to be a veteran, whatever is meant by that. And no, there's no deeper meaning, these ancient men had as their primary objective to dominate the masses by forcing ignorance on them. They engineered super men from among the elite to oppress the ignorant masses, and they called it "education".
They were primitive, insatiable and sociopathic and held back human progress for centuries. As far as I'm concerned, every time someone mentions them it's an echo of the massive stumbling block they dropped in the path of our species.
One of the ancient philosophers I really dislikes is Aristotle - he held back science for nearly 2000 years because he made up a bunch of nonsense and every scientist was afraid of discrediting him due to the danger as being viewed as "having no respect for the great men" and being shunned.
Ironically in "free" or "developed" nations today, it's those who cry "more freedom" who inspire the most extensive social and cultural damage, who speak and act most oppressively, who have a stranglehold on much of our legislation, media and education. If "freedom" got excessively drunk one night and had an intense hangover the next morning, that hangover would be far left politics.
Oh boy.... It's pretty obvious you're the one with an agenda here.
Have you read the ancient Greeks? They admit to this openly in their writings, it's not my interpretation or my "agenda". They literally spell it out.
If I did have an agenda though, it would be to argue on behalf of honest and genuine "higher education" for all people regardless of their circumstances. Although I'm aware that in many cases this won't help on an individual level.
Yup, I have. And although they believed in slavery and the superiority of educated men, they had a lot more to say about literally everything else in the world that is not related to that issue, and so dismissing them on those grounds is just narrow-minded. They are the foundation of western philosophy, and if you want to disregard all,of western philosophy, fine, but that's just clearly based on a useless and futile agenda.
I'm not dismissing them from such a narrow view as you suggest.
Let's get out of the way that to claim that someone who has been given something is inherently superior to someone who has not is false, obviously. We're not talking about aptitude for learning here, we're talking about virtue of birthright.
Exclusivity resulted in "founding Western philosophy" on bad ideas. That they were the only ideas available in writing neither makes them sacred nor a solid foundation. The "foundation of Western philosophy" is a meticulous correction of ancient mistakes. Where did I say that I disregard all Western philosophy, please quote it.
Right here you dismiss Plato on grounds of your very narrow reading.
I dismiss these cave men on the grounds of thousands of years of human history and on the grounds of rudimentary statistics and probability, on the grounds of their very narrow writing, not a narrow reading of it. I can assure you it's more reckless to argue on behalf of something you don't understand than to argue against something of which you have some understanding.
Are you going to demonstrate the fallacy of my criticism of exclusivity in education or just casually slough it off while ironically calling my view narrow?
Well, for one you seem to lack an understanding of history if you think the ancient Greeks were cave men.
With regard to the divided line, we should not move up too quickly. Images and imagination are of central importance and at play on many levels in Plato's writings, including the image of the divided line itself.
The philosopher not only banishes the poets from the Republic, he takes their place. He creates his own images on the cave wall, a philosophical poesis, a philosophical poetry.
Socrates talks about the necessity of noble lies. Plato tells one that shaped the western world.
Good one, good argument, you got me. Touché. Thank you for bringing to my attention that ancient Greeks did not live in caves because I had meant it literally--that they literally lived in caves.
You're welcome. :kiss: