Tuesday 9/17

Tuesday 9/17

Republic, Book IV

Readings

Texts

Discussion Questions

Please note that we are still working through the discussion questions on Book II. I've copied those questions we have remaining from 9/10 (Book II) and 9/12 (Book III) below without adding any more for Book IV, as we are officially at least a full day late. It is likely we will have to drop the Meno, but that's okay!

Fourth Question from 9/10 on Book II: The City and the Soul

Socrates responds to Glaucon and Adeimantus' challenge by proposing a strategy grounded in an important analogy:

That’s well said in my opinion, for you must indeed be affected by the divine if you’re not convinced that injustice is better than justice and yet can speak on its behalf as you have done. And I believe that you really are unconvinced by your own words. I infer this from the way you live, [b] for if I had only your words to go on, I wouldn’t trust you. The more I trust you, however, the more I’m at a loss as to what to do. I don’t see how I can be of help. Indeed, I believe I’m incapable of it. And here’s my evidence. I thought what I said to Thrasymachus showed that justice is better than injustice, but you won’t accept it from me. On the other hand, I don’t see how I can refuse my help, for I fear that it may even be impious to have breath in one’s body and the ability to speak and yet to stand idly by and not defend justice when it is being prosecuted. So the best course [c] is to give justice any assistance I can.

Glaucon and the others begged me not to abandon the argument but to help in every way to track down what justice and injustice are and what the truth about their benefits is. So I told them what I had in mind: The investigation we’re undertaking is not an easy one but requires keen eyesight. Therefore, since we aren’t clever people, we should adopt the [d] method of investigation that we’d use if, lacking keen eyesight, we were told to read small letters from a distance and then noticed that the same letters existed elsewhere in a larger size and on a larger surface. We’d consider it a godsend, I think, to be allowed to read the larger ones first and then to examine the smaller ones, to see whether they really are the same.

That’s certainly true, said Adeimantus, but how is this case similar to [e] our investigation of justice?

I’ll tell you. We say, don’t we, that there is the justice of a single man and also the justice of a whole city?

Certainly.

And a city is larger than a single man?

It is larger.

Perhaps, then, there is more justice in the larger thing, and it will be easier to learn what it is. So, if you’re willing, let’s first find out what sort [369] of thing justice is in a city and afterwards look for it in the individual, observing the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger.

That seems fine to me.

If we could watch a city coming to be in theory, wouldn’t we also see its justice coming to be, and its injustice as well?

Probably so.

And when that process is completed, we can hope to find what we are looking for more easily?

[b] Of course.

Plato often employs such analogical strategies to press inquiry, yet although it may be that we feel we have a better grasp of the nature of the concept examined under analogy, the argumentative strategy is predicated on the analogy holding true enough that inferences drawn by analogy hold. Set out and explain the inferences being drawn between state and soul. Are these inferences licit, or are there important disanalogous features which block them? Use examples to explain your answer either way. What other argumentative strategies might have been employed to discern the essential nature of a moral virtue like justice? Has justice an objective, essential nature, as Plato assumes, or has it no such independent nature, as the sophist Protagoras suggested when he claimed,

Of all things the measure is man, of the things that are, that [or "how"] they are, and of things that are not, that [or "how"] they are not. (DK80b1)

First Question from 9/12 on Book II: The City Austere

Having agreed that the city is the soul of the man writ large, and that by examining the city for justice we can finally find it in the man in responding to Glaucon and Adeimantus' challenge (the Ring of Gyges), Socrates turns immediately to the task at hand (369b):

I think a city comes to be because none of us is self-sufficient, but we all need many things. Do you think that a city is founded on any other principle?

No.

And because people need many things, and because one person calls [c] on a second out of one need and on a third out of a different need, many people gather in a single place to live together as partners and helpers. And such a settlement is called a city. Isn’t that so?

It is.

And if they share things with one another, giving and taking, they do so because each believes that this is better for himself?

That’s right.

Come, then, let’s create a city in theory from its beginnings. And it’s our needs, it seems, that will create it.

It is, indeed.

[d] Surely our first and greatest need is to provide food to sustain life.

Certainly.

Our second is for shelter, and our third for clothes and such.

That’s right.

How, then, will a city be able to provide all this? Won’t one person have to be a farmer, another a builder, and another a weaver? And shouldn’t we add a cobbler and someone else to provide medical care?

All right.

So the essential minimum for a city is four or five men?

Echoing the translation, we might call this the 'minimally necessary city', which even Socrates finds pointlessly minuscule. He proceeds to flesh out what we may call the 'austere city' by reference to the practical necessity of the division of labor. What is his argument, and what are the social roles that must be filled out to obtain a model of a properly functioning austere society?

Second Question from 9/12 on Book II: The City Luxurious

At 372c Glaucon challenges Socrates' Austere City, arguing that it would suffice to sustain life but little more. What about all the good things in life? Fine foods, fine entertainments and arts, athletic and recreational pursuits, and all the other things in life which make it meaningful and a delight to live? Socrates responds with what we may call the 'luxurious city',

It isn’t merely the origin of a city that we’re considering, it seems, but the origin of a luxurious city. And that may not be a bad idea, for by examining it, we might very well see how justice and injustice grow up in cities. Yet the true city, in my opinion, is the one we’ve described, the healthy one, as it were. But let’s study a city with a [373] fever, if that’s what you want. There’s nothing to stop us. The things I mentioned earlier and the way of life I described won’t satisfy some people, it seems, but couches, tables, and other furniture will have to be added, and, of course, all sorts of delicacies, perfumed oils, incense, prostitutes, and pastries. We mustn’t provide them only with the necessities we mentioned at first, such as houses, clothes, and shoes, but painting and embroidery must be begun, and gold, ivory, and the like acquired.

The Austere City, we're told, is the healthy one. (Why?) Yet Socrates concedes Glaucon's point, that it is better to model the Luxurious City if we are to find in it the sources of injustice and justice. What is the Luxurious City in contradistinction to the Austere City? What must we add to the Austere City?

Now the luxuries of the Luxurious City necessitate the guardians, or so Socrates shortly argues. Why? Why a special class of guardians, and not everyone else simply taking up arms as necessary? What are the essential characteristics of the guardians, and why does Socrates initially conclude that they cannot exist as the discussants describe them? How does he respond to his own argument? What are the traits of the guardian?

Third Question from 9/12 on Books II and III: Educating the Guardians

The latter quarter (give or take) Book II and majority of Book III are given over to the minutiae (said without thereby belittling the depth of discussion) of the education of the guardians. How ought we characterize this education? What are its elements, and its purported outcomes? Why is such a careful specification of the education of the guardians important to the argument at hand--an inquiry into the nature of justice, recall?

Fourth Question from 9/12 on Book III: The Noble Lie

At 389b-d, Socrates argues that, while it is never permitted for a citizen to lie, circumstances can arise that justify lies by the rulers (and the rulers/guardians alone!):

Moreover, we have to be concerned about truth as well, for if what we said just now is correct, and falsehood, though of no use to the gods, is useful to people as a form of drug, clearly we must allow only doctors to use it, not private citizens.

Clearly.

Then if it is appropriate for anyone to use falsehoods for the good of the city, because of the actions of either enemies or citizens, it is the rulers. But everyone else must keep away from them, because for a private citizen [c] to lie to a ruler is just as bad a mistake as for a sick person or athlete not to tell the truth to his doctor or trainer about his physical condition or for a sailor not to tell the captain the facts about his own condition or that of the ship and the rest of its crew—indeed it is a worse mistake than either of these.

That’s completely true.

What is the argument here? Do you find it persuasive?

Then later at 414b Socrates provides an example of just such a noble lie:

[b] Then, isn’t it truly most correct to call these people complete guardians, since they will guard against external enemies and internal friends, so that the one will lack the power and the other the desire to harm the city? The young people we’ve hitherto called guardians we’ll now call auxiliaries and supporters of the guardians’ convictions.

I agree.

How, then, could we devise one of those useful falsehoods we were talking about a while ago, one noble falsehood that would, in the best [c] case, persuade even the rulers, but if that’s not possible, then the others in the city?

What sort of falsehood?

Nothing new, but a Phoenician story which describes something that has happened in many places. At least, that’s what the poets say, and they’ve persuaded many people to believe it too. It hasn’t happened among us, and I don’t even know if it could. It would certainly take a lot of persuasion to get people to believe it.

You seem hesitant to tell the story.

When you hear it, you’ll realize that I have every reason to hesitate.

Speak, and don’t be afraid.

[d] I’ll tell it, then, though I don’t know where I’ll get the audacity or even what words I’ll use. I’ll first try to persuade the rulers and the soldiers and then the rest of the city that the upbringing and the education we gave them, and the experiences that went with them, were a sort of dream, that in fact they themselves, their weapons, and the other craftsmen’s tools [e] were at that time really being fashioned and nurtured inside the earth, and that when the work was completed, the earth, who is their mother, delivered all of them up into the world. Therefore, if anyone attacks the land in which they live, they must plan on its behalf and defend it as their mother and nurse and think of the other citizens as their earthborn brothers.

It isn’t for nothing that you were so shy about telling your falsehood.

[415] Appropriately so. Nevertheless, listen to the rest of the story. “All of you in the city are brothers,” we’ll say to them in telling our story, “but the god who made you mixed some gold into those who are adequately equipped to rule, because they are most valuable. He put silver in those who are auxiliaries and iron and bronze in the farmers and other craftsmen. For the most part you will produce children like yourselves, but, because [b] you are all related, a silver child will occasionally be born from a golden parent, and vice versa, and all the others from each other. So the first and most important command from the god to the rulers is that there is nothing that they must guard better or watch more carefully than the mixture of metals in the souls of the next generation. If an offspring of theirs should be found to have a mixture of iron or bronze, they must not pity him in any way, but give him the rank appropriate to his nature and drive him [c] out to join the craftsmen and farmers. But if an offspring of these people is found to have a mixture of gold or silver, they will honor him and take him up to join the guardians or the auxiliaries, for there is an oracle which says that the city will be ruined if it ever has an iron or a bronze guardian.” So, do you have any device that will make our citizens believe this story?

I can’t see any way to make them believe it themselves, but perhaps [d] there is one in the case of their sons and later generations and all the other people who come after them.

What is the justification for the noble lie? Why must it, in Socrates' view, be told?