So, the reading for today... confusing... and personally damaging. As many of you might know, I'm a Philosophy, Creative Writing double major. I have been hurt by one of my loves for loving another. I'm caught in a lovers' quarrel. Socrates tells the poets to get out of his city, but leaves some room for poets to be allowed back into the city. For me, I wonder if Socrates would allow me in the city. Why should I, as some sort of poet, be kicked out of the city and why should I be let in?

We can first say that Socrates’ argument against the poets and painters is that their craft is furthest from truth. They work with images, like the shadows in the cave. I think Zak is right when he said that this has to do with the divided line. These men have opinions that aren’t fueled by knowledge, asking the question “how can a painter properly paint a couch without having any knowledge of a couch?” What a painter is a master of is of colors, and perhaps composition of images. Socrates bigger problem, it seems, is how the receptors receive poetry and paintings. If the public upholds these men as the wisest, as men who know, then we run into the problem of the cave. Those who are chained up accept the shadows displayed by he who displays the shadows. If they indeed do not know “truth” and have a mere weak opinion of “truth,” then those who believe in the displayer of shadows believe without question things that are far removed from the truth. The poet, like the politician, can play to the desires of the public and have fame, renown, glory, success, etc. They perpetuate the ordering of the soul that is not most beneficial, allowing desire to lead rather than the calculating.


The only way they can be let in is if a decent argument can be made for their benefit, and if it is acknowledged by all that poetry, music, and the like casts charm spells. It’s suggested that poetry, and perhaps the things of ‘images,” plays to our lowest parts, and the pleasure they deliver would be greatly missed. An appreciation for poetry is noted here. But only as an acknowledgement and honor to the desiring aspect of the soul, that a well ordered soul sees poetry as a place of desire rather than of the intellect. That’s certainly a low appreciation of art, poetry, and things of images. It excludes them from the intellect, but is poetry and philosophy, or desire and the intellect, mutually exclusive? We have already seen that desire and the intellect complement each other, that desire that is directed towards wisdom is a good thing. The same can be noted for poetry and philosophy. First, we are dealing with a piece of literature, the Republic, and Socrates uses a story to help guide Glaucon.


I think the argument comes down to the relationship of aesthetics to philosophy. To be honest, I have little idea of how to deal with this. But, I think I can say what the negative aspect of this relationship is. At the very least, aesthetics should be noted as something beautiful. Like seeing a Pixar film, the beauty of the images should be appreciated, but only as far as they are pretty, even beautiful, but not the kind of beauty that is associated with philosophy. This is to say, not all beautiful aesthetics is as beautiful as truth, but not all  beautiful aesthetics has no association with the beauty of truth and philosophy. What the “positive” relationship is, I cannot say.

Socratic Power Blues

Many a class meeting ago—in fact, it occurred when our class had only made it through Book I of Republic—the reading was presented to the class that Socrates himself, as an interlocutor, manipulated and tricked the other participants (Glaucon, Thrasymachus, Adeimantus, etc.) into agreeing to the argument that the philosopher was the only individual equipped with the necessary knowledge on how to rule the city. Effectively, in terms of the conversation happening in Cephalus' house, Socrates, in getting them to accept that proposition, has convinced the others that a) reason and persuasion are superior forces than brute force alone, b) whomever is able to provide the best argument will indisputably have the most true account of what justice is, and c) when, eventually, Socrates begins to dominate the conversation by posing statements as questions, and convinces his colleagues that the philosopher-king is the most ideal type of ruler, Socrates has convinced all members present that he himself, having bested the rest of them in dialectic, is the best fit for ruling. The argument goes that Socrates himself held this in mind from the get-go, skillfully besting each in order to accumulate the most power.

Socrates questions the questionable argument in question.

As much as I found that argument unappealing, I took it for what it was: a reading. What I found unappealing to think of was the adjustment that this would require me to make to my perception of none other than Socrates himself, who was presented to me as the absolute personification of philosophy in Apology. The adjustment made would be from that to a man who might sit down at the end of the day and perfect a plot to take over the world with the likes of Bismarck and Machiavelli and Foucault and The Brain. So many readers these days through some strange blend of cynicism and naïveté (as David Foster Wallace repeatedly pointed out, albeit in completely different contexts) attempt to scan Plato for some hint of corruption in Socrates' character. I think that ultimately we have to think about ultimate ends: one is impoverished if one comes away from reading Plato—the man who repeatedly pointed to the idea of a thing, holding it to be the all-encompassing true thing itself—with the assumption that Plato is only interested in making arguments in order to accumulate power (a thing sort of like oratory in that it can be either used for good or for ill) through the character of Socrates.

Platonism seems to me to hold that if we can see the existence of these ideas as the fundamental nature of the world, then we can attempt to make the ideas as physically unseeable things manifest in physical reality—it is hard, though possible. This is the case for other virtues such as the True, the Good, or the Beautiful.

It is contradictory for a man who questioned and developed standards for virtuous behavior among people to boldly claim that in political life, the only important thing for an individual is to accumulate power. The callipolis itself, interlocutors' ordering of the components of the city, and especially the comparison between the callipolis and the ideal human soul make strong arguments against the conclusion that Plato was purely concerned with power.

What I really want in all honesty is for Republic not to be boiled down to the concept of power: that it is power and only power that runs as an undercurrent through all phenomena in human society. In focusing on this as the pulse behind Republic, many individual arguments that fit into the whole of the work elsewhere begin to look somewhat extraneous. As a rule, I am always wary of such readings of texts. It's improper to read so far into the text that one begins to make the work contradict itself where it doesn't actually.

Unfortunately for my reservations, I've since stumbled across a passage that makes an extremely plausible case for Socratic power.

Darth Sidious adds further perspective to the matter.

In the few extracurricular conversations I've had with my peers over this troubling reading of the dialogue, we did not question precisely what kind of power it is that we are talking about; nor have we undertaken the laborious process of philosophically qualifying a definition of the idea of power. It occurred to me that it seemed unmentioned but yet still understood that in class what we were referring to was not power itself, but political power. It essentially does not make much of a serious difference in distinguishing between "political power" and "power" per se, but the thinking of power as specifically "political" brings with it the accompanying connotations of control, authority, obedience, and oppression that necessarily occur when one wields a fuller power against others with less.

It also occurred to me that Socrates himself did not seem to make much mention of the concept; still, however, I worried that behind every other page lurked the possibility that Socrates would finally reveal that he does indeed think of power (political power, that is, with the aforementioned accoutrements) as the ultimate truth rather than justice, truth, beauty, etc.—ideas to which he has referred more frequently in Republic and elsewhere.

In the midst of an argument regarding the nature and role of the philosopher in Book V, Socrates finally directs the focus of the argument to power itself.

"We will assert that powers are a certain class of beings by means of which we are capable of what we are capable, and also everything else is capable of whatever it is capable. For example, I say sight and hearing are powers, if perchance you understand the form of which I wish to speak."

"I do understand," he said.

"Now listen to how they look to me. In a power I see no color or shape or anything of the sort such as I see in many other things, to which I look when I distinguish one thing from another for myself. With a power I look only to this—on what it depends and what it accomplishes; and it is on this basis that I come to call each of the powers a power..." (477c-d)

What both my questions above and the first claim made in the first paragraph of the quote do is acknowledge that there are distinctions of types of power: there are different kinds, different degrees, and different things accomplished, all of which make up a part of power in general. Political power could then be acknowledged as something which exists itself as a distinction, but in general what it looks like is a different matter.

Plato eventually posits through the mouth of Socrates here that, at least in terms of Republic, we are to understand power as an altogether broad quality that exists between people or between people and things: there is essentially a relationship between a person and a second entity. Powers, regardless of what kind, refer to the capabilities of a single thing to do a particular act. In Books I through VIII, this is the only explicit part of the conversation that lingers on the topic; if it occurs elsewhere, it is only in passing.

In terms of sight, one is capable of apprehending the world—the entire world—with just the eyeballs. Should I perceive a target on a tree at an archery range forty feet away, I am capable of doing so. Should we pose a blind man and point him in the same general direction, he would not be able to apprehend anything at all. Until he could touch the target with his fingers, it only exists theoretically.

There is a huge disparity of power in the sight example, in that I am much more capable and thus more prepared for the situation by being able to apprehend the target. In a given event where we were to shoot arrows at the target, I would be prepared to hit it. The blind man might alternatively shoot a wayward human.

This is a way of referring to power that I am willing to accept as at work—even constantly—in Republic. It gets slightly more complicated, however, in trying to apply this to the argument in Cephalus' house: to what kind of power—what kind of capability—are we saying that it is that Socrates has after being roped by Thrasymachus and co. into this nightlong sober symposium to justice?

Well, in a word, it could be many different things: when we're talking about power, we're talking about a measurement of the possibilities that an individual can make manifest as reality in a particular realm. But it begins to make more sense as we continue with the passage from Republic quoted above:

"Now, you best of men, come back here to knowledge again. Do you say that it's some kind of power, or in what class do you put it?"

"In this one," he said, "as the most vigorous of all powers." (477d)

In pursuing wisdom and knowledge, Socrates inherently attempts to pursue a type of power. In attempting to discern the ways in which the world works, both physically and metaphysically, knowing how to do something or what something is gives one an advantage over another in a distinct way. As "the most vigorous of powers," Glaucon gives us a peculiar wording to describe the swiftness with which knowledge can be disseminated and yet at the same time how quickly it works by itself. The point made by Glaucon is vague, Socrates hardly even dallies on the point, and it can almost be seen as mostly meaningless digression in an otherwise more important conversation about the distinction between knowledge and opinion, leading up to the explication of the Divided Line argument; but it does give perspective and plausibility to the argument that Socrates has set out to gain the most power over the rest in the house: elsewhere he has posited that he wishes to pursue knowledge, and that he is continually ignorant of what is true, good, or beautiful, but in pursuing those in a different way than his contemporaries, the sophists, in every dialectical conversation he is fishing for more knowledge and more wisdom, and thus, vaguely, a bit more power over others. As he continues to learn more from everyone he meets, Socrates continues to accumulate whatever knowledge is in question, expanding his knowledge to the point where, as a power, he is more easily able to provide a reasoned argument than his colleagues. Then he dominates. And this continues for as long as he is alive. Exponentially. Ad infinitum.

Gourmand Buster Simcus has all of the power.

To reiterate: power, the idea, is solely capability for action for Plato. I still hold that Socrates does not wish only to accumulate political power over the rest. (However, it would be amusing if the real thought behind Plato's mind in writing Republic is that Socrates has to philosophically justify why he should be able to leave Cephalus' house.) If there is a power that he is attempting to accumulate, it could perhaps only be rightly understood as philosophic power—that which includes both knowledge and wisdom. And, in that case, it is almost as if Socrates is purely a conduit for reason to lead him wherever the truth is, a slave to the philosophical power that he is developing, only in it to ride the waves. In which case, truth would be the only standard for philosophic power. Truth is the master. 

But whither virtue?

Democracy: What a Peach

A passage I find peculiar is 557e-558a. It summarizes a person that is not forced to do anything, and Socrates defines it as a passing of time that is "divinely sweet for the moment." I'm brought back to a comment earlier in the dialogue that mentions that the best person to rule is the one who doesn't want to but is most capable. With these two passages in mind, I think this is commentary on the philosopher. The philosopher king is never discussed as the person who does not want to rule. It is simply understood that the philosopher should rule because he is most capable and must rule. However, in a democracy, like Athens, a philosopher, like Socrates, doesn't have to do anything— especially rule, make war, or be a judge, though they may be the most capable for some of these things. Anyone, including the philosopher has free will, to choose to do or not do something.

Perhaps we are brought back to a force persuasion argument. In the philosopher king's city, this passing of time that is divinely sweet, is absent. The auxiliaries are compelled by the philosopher to keep the desiring class in-line, having no choice or evaluation in what it is they are upholding for their opinion is supposed to be the philosopher's opinion. They must do their job. The desiring class is forced to do what the philosopher wants by the auxiliaries. The philosopher is appointed to the position of king by the past philosopher king, having been the best in all of their tests. Choice is never mentioned in this city. 

In contrast, the healthy city doesn't mention anything about force, and doesn't really have any comment about choice. People just act according to their nature. Like a democracy though, it seems the healthy city has "the absence of any compulsion" (557e). 

Though I've made these connections, I am unable to make a connection with what "divinely sweet" means, and how the element of divine sweetness relates, or doesn't, to the other cities or rulings.  

The City, Its Virtues, and Its parts

           In Book 4 of the republic be start we revisit the structure of the city to find a better understanding of the city and how justice relates to it. Originally when first exploring the true city we established that a city must be composed of at least 4 people and that each had their own job, each individual focusing solely on their own job, through witch they contributed to the entirety, and benefit, of the city.

From this groundwork we get new additions to this definition. Socrates says that the city is divided into three parts; the guardians, auxiliaries, and moneymakers. But henceforth also claims that the city maintains, necessarily, certain virtues. These are wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. From here we need to understand how each of these virtues applies to the city.

When something applies to a city what does this entail? Since there are many parts of a city should they in turn apply only a needed to certain parts of the city whether it be the guardians or the auxiliaries? I hold against this idea. The city is a composition of people therefore any virtues that is held by the city should in turn apply to everyone who comprises the city.  First of all does this make sense and second of all does this affect an understanding of the goal of each part of the city?

To answer these questions we need to take a look at the goal of the virtues and see how they apply to the goal of the parts.

           

            To recap the virtues are Wisdom, Courage, Moderation, and Justice. Wisdom as we have commonly encountered is the use of knowledge. This could be in regards to what is better or what is beneficial but the general idea is that we need knowledge to sort out the good and to make good decisions towards a topic. Courage in this case was defined as “ the preserving of the opinion produced by law through education about what- and what sort of thing-is terrible” (The Republic of Plato 428c).  So courage is thus maintaining the view of what is good. Moderation is stifling individual desires to focus on the good of the city. And Justice is focusing on ones own art for the city, mind their own business as to not hinder the work towards art they or others are doing. Can these apply to all parts of the city or must we designate specific applicability?

            All virtues should apply to all parts of the city, primarily because none of these virtues are independent of each other. To have courage you need to have wisdom to understand what view to maintain. The maintained view is necessarily justice, for the maintained view cannot be an injustice. This means that wisdom is needed for both justice and courage, and in turn justice for courage.  Furthermore to remain just you need moderation to keep one from becoming unjust. And you need justice, courage and wisdom, in order to know how to moderate yourself.  And moderation applies to all other virtues because moderation is the application of these virtues to maintain the virtues.  This connection isn’t circular; it’s more like a net. These virtues are all individual stands that interconnect to support each other and work as a whole for the function of the city. This means that they apply to the parts of a city just like a net on an object. All the parts of the net work together to cover an object, just as all the virtues apply to all parts of the city.

            Does this make sense? In regards to the parts all virtues should apply uniformly. Each part has its goal. One Rules, another produces foods, another goods, some trade, there are many arts that are attended to in a city, and each has its place in the city. Now with the virtue of justice all parts will attend to each, their own, art and mind their business as to not lessen themselves or others in their arts. But at the same time to accomplish this they must use moderation in their desires in order to diminish their interference with the progression of art. But must also use in conjunction courage and wisdom to understand the limits of what is good in and for their art as well as what is bad.  Without all four virtues justice cannot be achieved.  In fact in order for the structure of part in a city to be successful the utilization of all four virtues must be necessary for any part of the city.

            In summary, though there are different parts of a city with different goals for maintaining the whole, the four virtues, which define a city, must be universally applied to all parts in order for the city to be just. This is because all four virtues are connected and support each other in such a way that they are reliant on each other. And in turn for the three part of the city to remain separate and focused on their goals successfully they need the use of all four virtues.

The Use of the Philosopher

We all know that Socrates is a philosopher, but as he attempts to find out what justice is, and what a just city looks like, how does the philosopher fit in? In what ways would a philosopher be beneficial to this hypothetical society?

The main interaction in Book I takes place when Socrates is debating with Thrasymachus over whether or not it benefits an individual to be just, regardless of the rewards one would possibly receive. Thrasymachus initially states that justice is simply the advantage of the stronger, and the stronger thus has every right to take advantage of those who are weak. He soon changes from this definition of justice, saying that it actually is injustice, but that being unjust is much more advantageous to an individual than being just. As Socrates uses reason to try and prove that justice is beneficial both to the individual and a society, Thrasymachus uses persuasion, which is often emotional, to try and prove his point that injustice serves the individual much better. It is easy for us to view this as philosophy versus rhetoric, or reason versus power. It is much easier to sympathize with Socrates simply by looking at this distinction, and also because we are reading a book written primarily about him, with an initial assumption that he is right. It would be much easier to be persuaded by rhetoric if we were present and able to be impacted emotionally. We still must ask ourselves if the use of philosophy can really lead us to the correct answer.

Thrasymachus leaves and no one, especially Socrates, seems to be satisfied with the conclusions (or lack thereof). Glaucon and Adeimantus both believe that it is good for an individual if he or she is just without reward, but they would like to be convinced as to why this is. They give Socrates a thorough argument for injustice, and want him to prove them wrong. They then go about looking at justice taking place on a larger scale than individuals, that is, a city, in order to see it more easily. They construct a small city in which every individual does his or her own part to help, such as farming, making clothing, etc. The individuals are specialized in their own tasks, allowing for the perfect practice of each one. The city thus has all of its basic needs taken care of, and the people are comfortable and live well, with no issues arising. This being said, Glaucon is not satisfied, because the people all live comfortably, but without any sort of delicacies. They then must add things that must be done to meet these new needs, and more people to take care of them. Because they now need more things, they must go outside of their borders in order to get some of these things. This causes the need for trading with other people, and because they no longer simply desire the things they need for survival and comfort, sometimes the things they desire take priority over the things they need. This also means that some people will receive less than others. This, combined with the desire for things that other cities have, causes unrest inside and outside of the city. The city must then have people to build up an army and be able to both invade other lands and protect itself. This leads Socrates to claim that there will be need for guardians. He says that the guardians will need to be able to distinguish from those who are friends and those who are enemies. The guardian would need to have knowledge of such things, and therefore would need to be a lover of learning. Socrates claims then that the guardian must be philosophic, in addition to "spirited, swift, and strong" (376c). The definition of a philosopher is a lover of wisdom.

Therefore, the philosopher is the person who is knowledgeable and educated enough to make the right decisions in a city's time of crisis. This fits right into Socrates' belief that a city should be ruled by a group of individuals who are strong and wise in practicing reason (philosopher kings). This leads us to question, though, if the city had not gone down the path of additional desires beyond necessity (from the "true city" to the "feverish city"), would the philosopher be necessary at all? Without disorder and disagreements, does the philosopher have a place in the city? In the true city, where every need is met and every individual does his or her own part, is every person a philosopher due to a great understanding of what is just, or does justice come into play at all? I would argue that in such a city, the people are not doing their part because they are wise and know what is right and what is wrong, but rather because that is all they know. They realize that if they do what they are specialized at doing, and if everyone else does the same, there will be no problems. They have never been faced with issues of inequality, nor had the desire to. Therefore they have no sense of what is right and wrong, just of the way in which they do things, which happens to work. This being said, we should keep this question in mind: is philosophy only useful in situations of unrest?

Advantage and Reason

In the first book of the Republic, Socrates explores the definition of justice within the context of the political community. The problem we seem to be wrestling with in class is the degree to which this definition is limited to such a context. It has been said that Socrates represents the Philosopher (or reason) while his opponents represent tyranny. Before we more closely consider the concept of "advantage" as it relates to Socrates and Thrasymachus, I think it is important for us to understand Socrates' motivations for entering into such a conversation with Thrasymachus. Plato does a good job of masking Socrates' intentions throughout most of the dialogue, as his interlocutors become frustrated with their discussion, and Socrates' lack of commitment.

In the beginning of the Republic we see a clear conflict between force and persuasion, as Polemarchus orders Socrates and Glaucon to stay in the city. They ultimately decide to stay, but only after having been persuaded to do so. This tension seems to have important implications for the rest of the book. Later on, as Socrates converses with Thrasymachus, he articulates the just person's reluctance to rule, as "the good aren't willing to rule for the sake of money or honor" (347b). This reluctance seems to mirror Socrates' reluctance to stay in the city at the beginning of the dialogue. The just person, or the philosopher, as we may understand, rules only out of the fear of instead being ruled by someone who is unjust. In the same way, we can understand Socrates to be entering into the conversation only out of a commitment to the power of reason and persuasion.

In the second book Socrates shifts roles from deliberator to teacher, as he discusses justice now with Glaucon and Adeimantus. The two young men have close ties with the tyrants, and represent potential future leaders. Though he begins with a familiar sort of noncommitment, it seems important to Socrates to inculcate a particular commitment to justice in the young men. Considering this together with Socrates' discussion with Thrasymachus, it seems like Socrates has indeed reluctantly entered the political sphere, though not as the aforementioned just man. Rather than assert himself as the just ruler out of fear of the tyranny of Thrasymachus, Socrates attempts to serve justice while escaping the dreaded political life.

With all of this considered, I would argue that Socrates does seek to establish the advantage of reason, yet in a particular and important way. Socrates does not establish himself as the reluctant ruler in this discussion, but instead fights for reason over power without appeals to his own legitimacy as ruler. Socrates does what ultimately leads to his execution, and inculcates the future rulers with a commitment to reason and justice.

Blogging Plato's Republic

This semester, students in Wabash's Senior Seminar will be reading Plato's Republic and blogging regularly about the questions and provocations that arise from the dialogue.  This summer I blogged my trip to Greece and I found that my regular engagement with the blog prompted my thinking and forced me to articulate thoughts that might otherwise have been left inchoate.  Thus, this blog will serve as a place to consider ideas at length and in depth outside of class discussion in a way that will both further issues raised in class and allow for us to pick up new concerns not mentioned in class in subsequent class meetings.  This informal low stakes setting of a blog will in conjunction with class lecture and discussion allow students to work out difficulties as preparatory for writing longer papers.  Students are asked to blog once every three weeks and to comment on their classmates' posts when not blogging themselves.  Successful posts will engage closely with the text (with reference to specific passages), drive the conversation in an important direction, and connect to the larger themes of the dialogue.