We are going to do three things.
Our reading starts in Book 8 where the characters pick up the argument from where they had left it in Book 4. I will describe the highlights of the intervening chapters, especially the allegory of the cave. (The part about the cave is included in the optional readings.)
We will go over Plato’s account of the degeneration of the city in Book 8.
We will talk about Plato’s use of the tyrant as a way of showing that the unjust life is worse than the just life.
The characters note at the beginning of book 8 that they are picking up where they left off in book 4 (543c).
What happened in between?
Socrates maintained that the best city would be ruled by philosophers. Philosophers love knowledge; they want to know how things really are. This led to a digression (for the purposes of political philosophy) into epistemology, the study of knowledge, and metaphysics, the study of ultimate reality.
Mathematical examples the best way of understanding what he’s getting at. If I were to draw a triangle with a box in one corner, you would know that I mean it is a right triangle and that the angle with the box was 90 degrees. Then we could talk about how it satisfies the Pythagorean Theorem, with the sum of the squares of its sides being equal to the square of the hypotenuse: a2 + b2 = c2.
But the drawing isn’t actually a right triangle. No matter how carefully I draw, that angle won’t be 90 degrees. We talk about right triangles by talking about the one I drew even though it is not a right triangle. So what are we talking about? Where is the real right triangle, the thing with a real 90 degree angle and for which it is true that a2 + b2 = c2?
Well, it’s not visible to us. It’s part of a reality that we can understand through mathematics but not the senses. That is what Plato thinks of as ultimate reality: it is what is real behind the world that we imperfectly see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.
The genuinely real things, like the triangle, are what Plato calls forms. Philosophers would study the the forms. Their knowledge would be superior in kind to what everyone else has. This is where the story of the cave comes in.
If you haven’t heard it, you can read it in the optional reading 514-517; it’s only a few pages.
The story about the cave does a nice job of explaining the difference between philosophers and non-philosophers. The non-philosophers think the things they see are real, the philosophers know this isn’t true since they know what is real.
But it raises a problem. Why would the philosophers want to go back into the cave and run things? Why wouldn’t they prefer to spend their time outside the cave, contemplating the forms?
There is one other thing hanging over all of this. Plato is assuming that the philosophers will come to have superior ethical knowledge that is similar to mathematical knowledge. But he can’t prove that this is so.
Plato describes the chain of events that would lead from a just ethical aristocracy to an unjust tyranny. The first move, from the ethical aristocracy to a timarchy (honor seeking city) would happen as a result of an accident that is, sadly, inevitable. Every other city contains the seeds of the city that will replace it. Thus timarchy will lead to oligarchy, oligarchy will lead to democracy, and democracy to tyranny.
I find Plato’s causal stories less interesting than his mindset. He expects decay and, having read him, I realized that I expect progress. I had not appreciated the fact that I think this way; I just took took it for granted. The ability to gain a critical perspective on your own assumptions is one of the virtues of reading political philosophy from another time.
The account of the degeneration of the city also gives us some insight into how Plato thinks the parallel between the city and the soul works. In some cases, he follows what I called the predominant part rule: the city is F because the members of the ruling class are F. Thus, for example, a city is a timocracy because its rulers are timocratic or honor seeking. In other cases, he follows what I called the part-whole rule: a city is F because its citizens are F. For example, a democracy is made up of democratic people.
We have seen this kind of split before. Plato explained said that the just city is wise and courageous because it has wise and courageous people in leading roles. By contrast, he said that the city is moderate and just because these qualities are spread throughout the people who make up the city.
| Rule | Virtues | Cities |
|---|---|---|
| Predominant part | wisdom, courage | timocracy, oligarchy, tyranny |
| Part-whole | moderation, justice | democracy |
This is a case where the analogy between the city and the soul drives Plato to say some things that don’t really make much sense. He says that a democratic person is like a democratic city: fully of variety and change.
“so he lives, always surrendering rule over himself to whichever desire comes along, as if it were chosen by lot. And when that is satisfied, he surrenders the rule to another, not disdaining any but satisfying them all equally. That’s right. And he doesn’t admit any word of truth into the guardhouse, for if someone tells him that some pleasures belong to fine and good desires and others to evil ones and that he must pursue and value the former and restrain and enslave the latter, he denies all this and declares that all pleasures are equal and must be valued equally. That’s just what someone in that condition would do. And so he lives on, yielding day by day to the desire at hand. Sometimes he drinks heavily while listening to the flute; at other times, he drinks only water and is on a diet; sometimes he goes in for physical training; at other times, he’s idle and neglects everything; and sometimes he even occupies himself with what he takes to be philosophy. He often engages in politics, leaping up from his seat and saying and doing whatever comes into his mind. If he happens to admire soldiers, he’s carried in that direction, if money-makers, in that one. There’s neither order nor necessity in his life, but he calls it pleasant, free, and blessedly happy, and he follows it for as long as he lives. You’ve perfectly described the life of a man who believes in legal equality. I also suppose that he’s a complex man, full of all sorts of characters, fine and multicolored, just like the democratic city, and that many men and women might envy his life, since it contains the most models of constitutions and ways of living. That’s right. Then shall we set this man beside democracy as one who is rightly called democratic? Let’s do so.” (561b-562a)
But that’s not really the way it works. A diverse, dynamic city is not made up of people whose lives are constantly changing. It is diverse, but its members lead, or can lead, stable lives. They don’t have to replicate the diversity and dynamism of the city inside their own lives. Plato says the opposite because he is trying to show that each kind of city is made up of a particular kind of members and that these members parallel the features of the city in their own lives.
One question that I have about Plato’s description of democracy is why he thinks it’s so bad. It’s the second to last city so it should be the second worst. But the way he describes it makes it sound pretty good.
I continue to be perplexed by this part of the book. Democracy, as Plato describes it, seems pretty good even though, by Plato’s lights, it should be pretty bad.
One specific question I have concerns the ways in which people in a democracy are free. I think it’s worth talking about that in class. Here are some passages to chew over.
“What do you think it [a democracy or democratic city - mjg] defines as the good? Freedom: Surely you’d hear a democratic city say that this is the finest thing it has, so that as a result it is the only city worth living in for someone who is by nature free.” (562c)
“isn’t it inevitable that freedom should go to all lengths in such a city?” (562e)
“the son behaves like a father, feeling neither shame nor fear in front of his parents, in order to be free. A resident alien or a foreign visitor is made equal to a citizen” (562e)
“The utmost freedom for the majority is reached in such a city when bought slaves, both male and female, are no less free than those who bought them. And I almost forgot to mention the extent of the legal equality of men and women and of the freedom in relations between them.” (563b)
“No one who hasn’t experienced it would believe how much freer domestic animals are in a democratic city than anywhere else. As the proverb says, dogs become like their mistresses; horses and donkeys are accustomed to roam freely and proudly along the streets, bumping into anyone who doesn’t get out of their way; and all the rest are equally full of freedom.” (563c)
(I assume the last one, about the dogs and horses, is a joke.)
The members of the tyrannical city is not free: its members are ruled by a tyrant, after all. Plato says that the tyrant is also not free.
First, speaking of the city, would you say that a tyrannical city is free or enslaved? It is as enslaved as it is possible to be. (577c)
Then, if man and city are alike, mustn’t the same structure be in him too? And mustn’t his soul be full of slavery and unfreedom, with the most decent parts enslaved and with a small part, the maddest and most vicious, as their master? It must. What will you say about such a soul then? Is it free or slave? Slave, of course. And isn’t the enslaved and tyrannical city least likely to do what it wants? Certainly. (577d)
Why does the tyrant lack freedom? As with democracy, this is something I would like to discuss.
I very much appreciated our discussion of freedom in democracies and tyrannies. Having thought about it, I think I understand some things a little more clearly.
We identified two ways that democratic people are free.
As Issie and Sean pointed out, they are free from other people. They can do what they want without being under the authority of anyone else.
As I pointed out, they are free from some ethical constraints. That is how I understand what Plato is saying in this passage about a democratic person: “if someone tells him that some pleasures belong to fine and good desires and others to evil ones and that he must pursue and value the former and restrain and enslave the latter, he denies all this and declares that all pleasures are equal and must be valued equally” (561b). (This is quoted in full above.)
Two things struck me about this.
First, both points have to be exaggerated. Democratic people are subject to the authority of others. They have to do whatever the majority decides. As Hobbes is going to point out, the majority can make very capricious decisions: “they banished an Aristides, for his reputation of justice; and … Hyperbolus, to make a jest of it” (Hobbes, Leviathan 21.7).1 Democratic people also have to be bound by ethical rules. They have to abide by majority rule, for instance, rather than just doing whatever they want.
Second, the tyrannical person is also free in both senses. The tyrant is not under the authority of anyone else and he is free of all ethical constraints, even the ones that the members of a democracy abide by.
Nonetheless, Plato describes the tyrant as being less free than the members of a democracy are. Why?
I don’t know the answer. There is something about the fact that the tyranical person has given up all ethical constraints that seems to make a big difference. It’s also possible that Plato thought it was significant that the tyrant lives in fear of others and cannot count on their aid. These are the effects of being known to be unjust and so I think they should be out of bounds if the project is to answer Glaucon’s challenge. I say that because the whole point of Glaucon’s challenge was to show that justice was desirable apart from its effects on one’s reputation. But it still might have some bearing on Plato’s reasons for thinking that the tyrant is not free.
Does Plato’s argument address Glaucon’s challenge? I think the answer is no.
Here is how Thrasymachus describes as an unjust person.
“Consider him [a person of great power] if you want to figure out how much more advantageous it is for the individual to be just rather than unjust. You’ll understand this most easily if you turn your thoughts to the most complete injustice, the one that makes the doer of injustice happiest and the sufferers of it, who are unwilling to do injustice, most wretched. This is tyranny, which through stealth or force appropriates the property of others, whether sacred or profane, public or private, not little by little, but all at once. If someone commits only one part of injustice and is caught, he’s punished and greatly reproached — such partly unjust people are called temple-robbers, kidnappers, housebreakers, robbers, and thieves when they commit these crimes. But when someone, in addition to appropriating their possessions, kidnaps and enslaves the citizens as well, instead of these shameful names he is called happy and blessed, not only by the citizens themselves, but by all who learn that he has done the whole of injustice.” (344a-c)
And here is Glaucon’s unjust person.
“we must suppose that an unjust person will act as clever craftsmen do: A first-rate captain or doctor, for example, knows the difference between what his craft can and cannot do. He attempts the first but lets the second go by …. In the same way, an unjust person’s successful attempts at injustice must remain undetected, if he is to be fully unjust. Anyone who is caught should be thought inept, for the extreme of injustice is to be believed to be just without being just. And our completely unjust person must be given complete injustice …. We must allow that, while doing the greatest injustice, he has nonetheless provided himself with the greatest reputation for justice. … If any of his unjust activities should be discovered, he must be able to speak persuasively or to use force. And if force is needed he must have the help of courage and strength and of the substantial wealth and friends he has provided himself with.” (360e-361a)
I can see how the unflattering portrayal of the tyrant in Book 9 applies to the character that Thrasymachus describes. But Glaucon’s unjust person seems less like a raving addict than someone who is coldly calculating but extremely controlled.
To put it another way, Plato’s claim about the tyrant is that you need some sort of constraints in order to live a good life. I think he’s probably right about that. Plato also assumes that the constraints have to be ethical ones. That is more questionable, in my opinion.
These passages do a nice job of stating Plato’s beliefs.
Here is one on the good life for an individual.
“Then can’t we confidently assert that those desires of even the money-loving and honor-loving parts that follow knowledge and argument and pursue with their help those pleasures that reason approves will attain the truest pleasures possible for them, because they follow truth, and the ones that are most their own, if indeed what is best for each thing is most its own? … Therefore, when the entire soul follows the philosophic part, and there is no civil war in it, each part of it does its own work exclusively and is just, and in particular it enjoys its own pleasures, the best and truest pleasures possible for it. … But when one of the other parts gains control, it won’t be able to secure its own pleasure and will compel the other parts to pursue an alien and untrue pleasure.” (586d-e)
This one is about what a good city is like.
“it isn’t the law’s concern to make any one class in the city outstandingly happy but to contrive to spread happiness throughout the city by bringing the citizens into harmony with each other through persuasion or compulsion and by making them share with each other the benefits that each class can confer on the community. The law produces such people [guardians] in the city, not in order to allow them to turn in whatever direction they want, but to make use of them to bind the city together.” (519e-520a)
Finally, we have an implausibly precise claim.
“if someone wants to say how far a king’s pleasure is from a tyrant’s, he’ll find, if he completes the calculation, that a king lives seven hundred and twenty-nine times more pleasantly than a tyrant and that a tyrant is the same number of times more wretched.” (587e)
This is what you should know from today’s class.