A Commentary on Plato's Republic
by Kenneth Quandt
USING THIS WEBSITE
WELCOME to OnPlatosRepublic.com, an interactive website that presents a translation and commentary on the Republic of Plato, for the use of scholars and students hoping to understand this very beautiful work better and better, word by word.
In the far left column you see a scrollable Outline of the Republic including my Appendices, which enables you to jump to a section of the dialogue. Next is a scrollable column of blue Stephanus page numbers that enable you to jump to any page of the text. The main column in the middle, which you are now reading, presents a brief Preface, an Introductory Summary of the Republic, and then my Translation and a few exegetical Appendices. The column on the right presents my footnotes.
Clicking on a footnote number in the Translation instantaneously scrolls the right column to display the selected Footnote. Conversely, clicking on a footnote number in the footnote column scrolls the center column to the passage in the Translation on which the footnote comments. Clicking within a given Footnote on references another Footnote likewise jumps to the other note.
You may use the Find function in your browser to search the entire document for any word, in English and Greek (for the latter you of course need to have a Greek font installed in your computer: I have used GreekKeys Unicode [US], available from the American Philological Association). The Find function recognizes partial words and is neither case-sensitive nor sensitive to diacritical marks.
The entire document is rather large and takes a few seconds to open. The last thing to load is the date stamp shown in numerical format at the left end of the Footer. I do continue to import changes into the text based on better understanding and the suggestions of my readers. In order to ensure that you are seeing the latest version you must empty your browser's cache periodically. To the right of the date stamp you will see my name, which is a link for e-mailing me comments and suggestions. I attribute corrections to their authors and reply privately to suggestions with which I disagree.
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In lieu of discussions about a development or shift within “Plato's thought” lurking behind what Socrates says to Adeimantus and Glaucon, the reader will find me concentrating on shifts in the styles Plato has given to Socrates and his interlocutors for enunciating what they have to say and managing the common endeavor of conversing with each other. Rather than comparing the propositional content of what the characters say in the Republic against a background of theses propounded elsewhere in the corpus, I have tracked Plato's use of background lists, the traditional or received or conventional sets of categories Socrates shares with his interlocutors, which provide both them and us a conceptual platform, a linguistic context, and a structure of anticipation for a conversation on any topic that might arise out of the dramatic occasion of the dialogue – such as for instance the division of goods into psychic, bodily, and external; or the categories of value as being the good, the beautiful and the just. In lieu of applying the formulas of propositional logic and inference to the sentences we encounter I have described the actual transitions from thought to thought which do not need to be logically valid in order to be fully understandable and vivid, the movement of thought as embodied not so much in the words as propositional termini as in the configuration and sequence of such words and the connectives and particles that link them and couch them and set the pace at which thought moves through them. It is not so important to me to wonder whether Plato remembers what he said in an early dialogue as to notice that Glaucon remembers what he himself said two hundred pages earlier, and thereby to recognize a development within the drama of the dialogue that Glaucon himself has recognized, rather than speculate about an external development in Plato's thought. In lieu of seeking to improve what Plato has said, my reader will find me saving and restoring a good number of manuscript readings that most or all editors have improved out of the text.1 In general I have paid attention to the persons Plato has put before us rather than engaging in the shadow play of determining what another person, Plato, might or must have been thinking behind the scenes so as to have them say what they say. The result is that we are vouchsafed a story with great power and truth.
My sense is that I am presenting a reading fresh and new that can stand on its own: in fact, Plato's book is a very great ride. I hope that my many notes will help Plato's reader stay on the horse, register every bump, and savor every leap; and I hope also they will help him experience the conversation as the tennis match it is and watch the ball go back and forth, rather than find himself outside the give-and-take of the conversation and left with the impression so many have formed that he is hearing a series of blasts by Socrates that are unthinkingly cheered, one after the other, by his interlocutor. At the same time I recognize that my interpretation is nothing more than one alongside many, like another book set on the shelf in alphabetical order between the others squinting out to its potential reader through its narrow spine. My efforts will be rewarded if only I can imagine my readers finding some unexpected light in it, as I have sometimes found light in books I came across in a library or bookstore but never heard of, books that for all I knew had been sitting there unopened for years or decades. While I leeave it up to those who are confident of their Greek to make their own judgment, for the general reader I suggest that in the end the most edifying and trenchant and challenging interpretation – whether of Plato or any other author -- will be of the most use to him regardless whether the interpretation is true, and I encourage him to measure my results on that ground alone. In saying this I am only agreeing with Plato, who himself takes great pains to make a similar point near the end of the Republic, when he tries to disabuse his readers of their reverence and reliance on Homer, and encourages them instead to make the best judgments they can about how to live their lives, following with courage and moderation the quiet light of their own reason.
The time and effort I have put into this study would not have been available to me except for the loyal and graceful and canny support of my wife, to whom I dedicate the work,
Laura Myers
conjunx dilectissima sine qua non
INTRODUCTION
Among the Platonic dialogues the Republic is unique for its length, for its personnel, for the breadth and number of topics it reaches out to and passes through, and for the “radius” of the dramatic curve with which it succeeds to bring all this together.
The Laws is longer but Socrates is absent, so that it can only be discursive: there is no interlocutor who does what Socrates always does and will never not do, for which he was loved and hated, ever true to his double commitment of achieving for himself and his interlocutor a rational embrace of virtue, and refusing to allow anything in the conversation to deflect, defer, or demean the pursuit of that goal, in any way at any moment. The Republic is the most sustained exhibit of this commitment and conduct of his in Plato's corpus or anywhere else, and the richest display of the techniques and tactics he employed to those ends, itself being four and five times longer than other great displays such as the Gorgias, the Phaedrus, and the Theaetetus.
As to the personnel, Socrates's principal interlocutors turn out to be Glaucon and Adeimantus, but only after he has gone through distinct and complete conversations with three others, the old man Cephalus at whose home the entire conversation takes place, Cephalus's son Polemarchus who inherits the argument his father leaves him, and Thrasymachus, a teacher of oratory who is visiting from out of town. These latter three are “public” figures – persons we have heard of from outside the dialogue – but the former two, who are the persons Socrates ends up talking with far longer than with the other three, and indeed than with anybody else in the entire Platonic corpus, are persons about whom we know next to nothing. It is not unique for Plato to combine known and unknown interlocutors in one dialogue; nor is it in itself surprising that Socrates would take the time to talk with unknown persons nor likely that a conversation he would have with such persons would be any the less significant or substantial, since it is his relentless management of the “what” and the “how,” rather than the “with whom” he is talking, that makes the conversations so great -- as we learn for instance from his conversations with the unknown Euthyphro and the barely known Meno.2 What is unique about the personnel of this dialogue is that the lesser known interlocutors, who end up playing the principal roles, are persons that are very well known after all, known best, indeed, to one person, the author of the dialogue, for they are Plato’s elder brothers. In telling us about his brothers, this author, who has otherwise done so much to remain “anonymous,” has in the case of this one dialogue laid the suggestion that he is somehow telling us something about himself!
As to the breadth and number of topics the dialogue visits or treats in greater or lesser detail and trenchancy, I have to say what might at first seem farfetched: it reminds me more than anything else of Hegel's Phenomenology. Not only do both books deal with subjects of the highest generality – Plato's Republic raises “the question of how to live one's whole life,”3 and Hegel's book is about everything or the all – but also both authors have a genius for analogy that enables them to reach for a topic that might seem remote, to exploit it as a vehicle for what they want to say, and then to drop it just as fast as they raised it.4
Finally, at the same time that the conversations between Socrates and Glaucon and between Socrates and Adeimantus visit every subject under the sun (including the sun itself!), the entire conversation as a whole accumulates from all these sources a multidimensional and unified solution to the original question – does being just make a man happy? – and a triumphant agreement about the solution, between Socrates and Glaucon at least, its success being set into dramatic relief by the dark foil of a failure between Socrates and Adeimantus. Not only is the main question answered, but even why it was asked and how it was asked comes to be understood, and a provision is made to compensate the world of truth and beauty for the erroneous prejudices against justice that had underlain the formulation of the original question (Moses, too, was commanded to take his sandals off the moment he decided to stop and look harder at the burning bush). The beauty and power of the result that Socrates and Glaucon reach spills over into a coda that demonstrates that their conclusion is so important that it not only trumps the literary means by which Plato or anyone else might reveal such a thing to us, but that it also consigns the problem of death, the ultimate reward of the just and unjust life with which the entire conversation began, to the shadows.
One should next be wondering why or how these four unique characteristics all appear in this one work. Why is it here that Socrates's ministrations are needed for so long? Why or how can so many topics be brought in to help accumulate a conclusion? How can the disparate plurality of these topics be redeemed in a unifying conception? Why is the dialogical work of this most important, this longest and most complex but most unified conversation in Plato's entire corpus of conversations, given over to the author's brothers?
To answer these questions I direct the reader to a fifth unique characteristic of this dialogue, which I left out above: the lengthy speeches of Plato's brothers at the beginning of Book Two (357A-367E), in which they confess – Glaucon more candidly and even ashamed, and Adeimantus from behind a proud mask of resentment – that they desire to love justice more than they love it in fact, and that they fear the consequences of failing to. In many of Plato's so-called aporetic dialogues Socrates spends the whole day working to establish just as much as these brothers already know: that one should recognize he is ignorant and worry about how this will affect his life.5 These two speeches at the beginning of Book Two pick up where the aporetic dialogues leave off.6 There is no other place in the dialogues where Socrates's interlocutor is given so much space to describe a problem and ask for Socrates's help, and no other place where the request is so frank, or is depicted with such dramatic power and psychological authenticity. Add to this that both the brothers speak: when Glaucon is finished Socrates is ready to try to reply but Adeimantus interrupts to tell him he will not let him off so easily (362DE), and adds his own challenge to Socrates -- a criticism of wisdom literature, to which the ensuing conversation itself will have been one of the greatest contributions.
These two speeches are unique in the corpus for the fullness in which they present a theory to be tested at the same time that they present a psychological profile of the speaker, which shows that the theory is not their only problem. The “affect” of the two speeches, if I may use this term in a general way, is far more important and far more recognizable, compelling, and true than the theories and criticisms the young men present. In truth the invisibility Gyges gets from his magic ring is useless, but we do not notice this if we are affected by Glaucon's rhetoric. Adeimantus on the other hand, in complaining about the inadequacies of wisdom literature, is at the same time criticizing his parents for failing to tell him something he thinks he does know after all, but will not own up to knowing. It is exactly because the affect and indirection of their speeches shows the problems are operating deep within the young men that Socrates immediately deflects the conversation away from the questions as the young men framed them and proposes instead to project the question of justice onto the canvas of an imaginary city, in which the problems and anxieties within the individual man are externalized and depersonalized and the question of justice becomes amenable to objective theoretical scrutiny.
In a nutshell, what gives the Republic its heft and its length is the large discrepancy between the brothers' theories that justice might not pay and that education has failed, and the affect with which they present them, a disconnect that both justifies and requires the length of the discussion, under Socrates's tutelage, that ensues. The plurality of topics raised, though as in Hegel reached with easy segues and surprising unobtrusiveness, will in the aftermath be seen to have provided balm for the very anxieties expressed in those affects, and to have calmed the souls of the young men so that they can see further than they had, though in the end Adeimantus refuses to see and at times Glaucon runs out of steam. The general insight gained, about the objective structure of reality and truth in the Sun image and about the subjective structure of the soul that enables man to resonate with it, will marshal all these divagations into a single unifying and climactic image of the inner man within the outer man at the end of Book Nine, a climax that both motivates and gives cover for a coda, Book Ten, that looks back on the literary vehicle by which it was reached so as to surpass it, as well as forward to the afterlife, a worry that now pales in comparison.
DRAMATIC SUMMARY
SOCRATES tells us he was walking back up to Athens, accompanied by his young friend Glaucon. Someone has sent his slave to run up from behind and detain them until his master catches up, to invite them to stay down in the Piraeus and come to his home. The master is Polemarchus, accompanied by Adeimantus, who is Glaucon's brother. The audience for whom this story was written will immediately be struck by the fact that the two tag-alongs, the one accompanying Socrates and the one accompanying the man who has accosted him, are the brothers of this story's author.
Within the house's main room the four of them find Polemarchus's elderly father, Cephalus. He has just come in from conducting a private sacrifice in his courtyard. A few others have already gathered there, including Thrasymachus the teacher of rhetoric visiting Piraeus from Calcedon, who might have come to teach his sons. The old man claims he wants to talk with Socrates, but perhaps only so that he can complain that he does not come down to visit often enough, now that he himself can no longer make his way up to Athens so easily. Socrates turns gracefully away from recrimination about future and past conversations in order to make something of the present one. As an older man, might Cephalus be able to tell the younger men present what lies before them? Cephalus replies, and again his statements describe himself by contrasting himself from others. Yes, he is old – but not as old as those cronies of his make old age out to be by their complaints; yes, he is rich – but riches alone do not make the man any more than Athens made Pericles; yes, he inherited money – but less than his father did whereas he increased the sum he inherited by a moderate amount rather than squandering most of his inheritance as his own father had. Out of all these clever comparisons Socrates’s attention is drawn to what seems to be Cephalus’s moderate attitude about money (in fact, Cephalus was the largest industrialist we know of in the Fifth Century, with a huge weapons factory that employed hundreds). Although most rich persons talk only of money, perhaps Cephalus has some other values he would like pass along? Money, says Cephalus, does has its value, alright, for it enables a man to ensure that he has righted things with men and gods before he dies, so that he can go on to face his death with equanimity. And the moment arrives that always arrives in a conversation with Socrates: the abruptly pertinent but unexpected question the speaker thought he would not be asked nor could be presumed to be able to answer: “What does it really mean to 'right' things?' Surely not, for instance, to return a weapon you had borrowed to its 'rightful' owner, if he had gone mad since the time you borrowed it?”
With this, the easy breeze of words emanating from this seasoned windbag suddenly abates – one has the sense he had recited all these clever witticisms before – in the face of Socrates's disarming question, and just as suddenly our loquacious host decides to leave. He bequeathes to his son, Polemarchus, the debt to explain his position, who will after all, he jokes, be inheriting everything else he has to leave. For his own part he will return to his sacrifices – to set things right with the gods, we suddenly realize in a flash.
His son has no immediate desire to know what “righting things” might mean but does accept the debt his father has saddled him with – as heirs do, as often as not to their detriment. He seeks to corroborate his father's paternal authority by adducing the maxim of the old wisdom poet Simonides, who said somewhere that righting things is doing what one owes or ought to do. Socrates's questions now begin, and require him to modify his thesis over and over again, each modification bringing on its own unforeseen consequences, until in the end his original position turns into its own opposite. The conversation is tedious and unimportant all along, largely because Polemarchus has no personal stake in it. They are arguing in mere abstractions that are only complicated and never clarified by individual instances or examples, and we are served an exercise or a lesson in dialectical exchange, something not entirely worthless in itself. In the end Polemarchus is utterly confused, but the one outcome that is significant is that he has accrued a sense that of joint endeavor with Socrates. Someday they will search for a better answer that avoids the implications of his original position. In short Polemarchus has found something better than the fealty toward his father that had led him to defend his position for better or worse.
Suddenly another person butts in, with a loud and angry taunt: “How long will you two be carrying on this stupid game, Socrates?” It is Thrasymachus, the rhetorician from abroad, chafing to display his artistry to the group. Though he addresses both of them he blames only Socrates, adding the taunt that Socrates's usual ploy is to make a show of asking questions in order to avoid having to give answers of his own. The accusation is meant not to force Socrates to give an answer so much as to capture the attention of the others. The truth is that Thrasymachus wishes to deliver a message of his own to that audience, an “answer,” indeed, that is not truly a thesis to be upheld but an assertion that will scandalize them and move him into the center of attention. The overall message he wants to convey is that it is foolish to worry about appearing a just and upright man, when a person can become the master of all those around him merely by the force of oratory. He interrupted with the demand that Socrates give an answer, but since he must be the center of attention it soon enough devolves upon him to give an answer of his own, the “excellent answer” as he calls it, the answer that “Justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger.”
All he means by this is that for a person to “act justly” – i.e., to limit his own concupiscence – does nothing but provide the strong man, who suffers not such self-imposed limit, an opportunity to increase the sway of his own. But Socrates as usual takes his interlocutor at his word and quickly shows it to be nonsense. What if this strong man who accedes to power unlimited by scruples orders the weaker whom he rules to do something contrary to his own interests? Thrasymachus immediately raises the stakes, at the risk of losing the argument, to thrill the audience even more, by saying the strong man he is talking about cannot err! Socrates subsequently reduces his position to contradiction in a way that reveals to Plato's reader the depth of Thrasymachus's own blindness, forcing Thrasymachus finally to move on to his original plan, the plan he came in with – to deliver a set speech he carries around with him, designed to will bowl the audience over and end all discussion: “Leave off your pussy-footing over these small matters of law,” he asserts, “these procedural niceties and fair play. The real game is to shoot for the moon, and when the people around you see you doing this they will admire you so greatly that they will even enslave themselves to you just for the sake of giving themselves an opportunity to witness the spectacle of a tyrant who never has to look back!” It is by far the longest speech of the night so far.
Completely of a piece with his own description of the strong man, Thrasymachus now stands up to leave, as if he has no more time for the group, but Socrates calls him back. Beyond the issue of defining justice, what he has just now said could have a lifelong effect on a person who heeded it, and so it must not go unanswered. He submits Thrasymachus’s “thesis” to a series of attacks but it is not truly a “thesis” that is being advanced as if on its merits, and the arrows he sets against it hit the mark but do not quench the effect it has had, now that the bell has been rung. Thrasymachus recedes into silence, gloating. We have now undergone a third lesson on the vicissitudes of dialogue, to set alongside the conversations Socrates has had with Polemarchus and with Cephalus.
As we soon learn , Thrasymachus has gotten under Glaucon's skin – again, he ruefully adds. He now engages Socrates in a conversation with an offer he cannot refuse, for his refutation of Thrasymachus was only a seeming refutation not a refutation in truth (Socrates’s favorite distinction): to prove what justice isn’t is not to prove what it is, so he now asks the man he came in with to immunize him for once and for all against such speeches, speeches he hears all too often but somehow can't get out of his head: the argument that justice is nothing but an agreement among the weak and the fearful not to molest one another, though by their nature they would surely do exactly this; the ineluctable sense that if one had a magic ring that made him invisible one would feel no bar against doing all sorts of bad things; and the corrosive sense that if one really wished to believe it is good to be just and bad to be unjust, he will have to prefer the pitiable existence of a martyr – just imagine him, impaled on display – instead of the life of a secretly unjust man universally acclaimed to be great.
Of course, there are blind-spots in Glaucon's confession, as there are in all true confessions. A person voluntarily confesses only when he believes it might lead to a remedy. The argumentative exercises of dodge and parry we underwent during the conversations with Cephalus and Thrasymachus might have prepared us to notice such blind spots as these. How for instance can justice have no “natural” reality of its own, whereas injustice was always there by nature? Apparently “injustice” means violent behavior, not the absence or contradictory of justice. As to the idea that if one had a ring that made him invisible he would not be able to resist committing all sorts of unjust acts, the acts Glaucon imagines in his parable could not have been committed by an invisible man. What he in fact imagines, though it remains subconscious, is that the ring would make him invisible to himself – that is, that he could escape his own conscience. Third, what is it that drives Glaucon to submit the perfectly just man to a series of tortures culminating in impalement, and to put his disfigured body on display before the world? He claims that it will enable the just man to infer that he should have chosen injustice, but it is only the viewer of the impaled corpse that could infer this: the just man he imagines will by now have been reduced to a blinded corpse that will neither see nor learn anything.
Socrates is moved by Glaucon's speech and is ready to reply but Adeimantus interrupts, insisting brusquely that he has something even more important to say than Glaucon. Though the interruption as such is unwelcome Socrates rolls with the punch, and even goes to the trouble of providing Adeimantus a justification: “Let brother help brother.” We are given an occasion to remember perhaps the third brother who wrote the book we are reading, but regardless, what follows is a speech just as long as Glaucon's in which Adeimantus criticizes the way parents rely on wisdom-poetry in the upbringing of their children. The poetry encourages just behavior merely by promising monetary rewards and an afterlife of pleasure, as if there were no subtler goods to desire nor evils to avoid. Worse, although the poetic tradition condescends to acknowledge that to be good is difficult, it praises at the same time such astute behavior as avoids the cost of practicing virtue in this life. And there is more. Certain particularly clever poets suggest the gods can be cajoled or bribed to reverse the punishments meted out in the afterlife, and even to do so after the sinner has passed away. What can we expect an astute and subtle young man who has heard all this to think as he embarks on the path to eminence and success? We therefore need you, Socrates, to prove to us that virtue is its own reward, you who have spent so much of your life on this question, or else we will blame you along with the wisdom poets for failing to teach us to avoid allowing vice into our lives!
The tone of Adeimantus's speech hardly comports with his request. Though he claims so sorely to desire a better poetry and upbringing, his speech is so much driven by a recrimination against his parents that in the end he threatens to extend his criticism even to Socrates, in case he fails to respond adequately (“for you have spent your whole life on these things” – as he will say again in Book Six) regardless whether he is willing to respond, let alone able to, or might not think the questions deserve a response as Adeimantus has framed them. To the extent that Adeimantus is by now old enough to take responsibility for himself, he can no longer hold Socrates or anyone else responsible to answer for him. When in the last part of his speech he depicts the young man's good mind debating with his bad mind and losing, he shows us, unbeknownst to himself, that he has lost the debate in his own mind, so that it is no longer clear whether he truly wants help to do the right or wants instead an excuse for having failed and continuing to fail to do so. We may contrast his importunate manner of requiring Socrates to answer, with the more manly gesture of Glaucon, who knows how to engage his friend Socrates and make him “an offer he can't refuse.” Suddenly the comparison reminds us that Glaucon came in with Socrates but Adeimantus, his brother, came in with Cephalus’s son, Polemarchus.
The brothers' challenges are very different, though they could both be overcome with one response – a proof that a just life is in itself choiceworthy. And yet we already know that more than proof will be needed to satisfy the brothers: Glaucon has shown himself to be seduced by his imagination and Adeimantus has shown an obdurate or recalcitrant despondency that stems from disappointment over the model his father had provided him. Such emotions will thwart them both from acquiescing to mere “proof.” The force of Thrasymachus’s seductive speech had itself somehow survived the rational “refutation” Socrates had amply provided against it. So Socrates must do more. He must bring it about that the brothers come to admire and to love justice, and to desire to be just.
He begins his response to them by doing two things. First, he expresses faith in the brothers – their lineage as sons of Ariston suggests they are of a higher nature than these very cynical speeches would indicate; and second he promises to do all he can on behalf of justice, which has come under attack, and then proposes an indirect method for defending her. Let us in our imaginations populate a City and see where justice resides there, on a larger canvas where it would be easier to see, and only then, using this as a guide, turn back to look for such justice within ourselves. This proposal is fraught with methodological fallacies, but the brothers voice no qualms, and all that matters is whether in the end it will work.We might liken the exercise to a game with toy soldiers, a therapeutic technique indeed not unknown in the psychiatrist’s counselling room.The distancing it provides might give the brothers enough psychic breathing room that each on his own terms might describe at ease what people seen at a theoretical distance ought to do, before they are compelled by the argument to embrace doing such things in their own lives!
Still in conversation with the second brother to speak, Socrates and Adeimantus now populate a City with the figures of artisans that would be required for fulfilling the basic human needs – a cobbler, a weaver, a house builder and a farmer, and a small set of other functionaries for which their trades eventuate a need, such as a smith to make a plow. Once this is complete Socrates asks him, “Where is justice in this picture?” and Adeimantus is not sure but wonders if it might be in the use or need these specialists have for each other. Socrates ignores his answer and decides to fill out the picture of the simple and honest home life of these working persons, even though it has nothing to do with their interrelations at all, a picture replete with the calm tranquillity of the evening meal of mash and vegetables served on broad leaves and eaten on the ground, as they sip a little wine and pray to the gods and sustain their family. The passage is strikingly eloquent – I hear in it the model for the later literary form of the idyll – and perhaps it is the surprising juxtaposition of eloquence and simplicity in what it depicts that arouses Glaucon to interrupt: Socrates has praised their lives as festive tranquillity, but the fare he feeds them lacks any dash. Socrates again takes his interlocutor at his word and adds a host of condiments, like olives and chickpeas, as if it were actually the fare that Glaucon had found objectionable, and Glaucon now objects to his multiplication of delicacies, as if Socrates were throwing fodder into a sty!
What bothers him, as we will see by reading the passage itself, is the vision of men “merely” living their lives and then dying, but Glaucon will not admit this. So Socrates asks, “If the one diet is not enough and the other is too much, what, dear Glaucon, would be just right?” Bashfully he requests “merely the conventional things – tables and chairs if they are not to live in permanent discomfort, and the rather better fare that we have become accustomed to, as well, including – yes – dessert!” Socrates again “goes with the pitch” and adds not just chairs but all sorts of luxuries, over and over again, Glaucon this time accepting them without demur or hesitation. But for the city to provide these will require an expansion and an amassing of wealth that will lead to war – both to defend our own riches but also to provide for our increased “needs” – and so an army is needed, and now Glaucon begins to rue the unforeseen consequences of his desire for the expanding provision of what he had portrayed as merely “basic comforts.” Abashed, he hopes the citizens themselves can do the fighting, and in response Socrates scolds him for failing to recognize the original policy he had reached with Adeimantus, that shoemaking and the other crafts should be specialized, and imagining instead that fighting does not require specialists, as if merely to suit up in armor could make a man a soldier.
The thought experiment of the City has now yielded its first dividend: it has smoked out Glaucon’s concupiscence. But also, because he realizes his hope for an automatic army was foolish, he now accepts responsibility to solve the problem his own proposal brought upon them: What will keep the guards from turning into wolves that consume the flock? It is the Thrasymachean problem of course, viewed from the other side. It seems against nature to imagine a person fierce enough to fight for the city but loyal enough not to molest it. But wait! Within the natural world we witness the dog, which by its nature combines these very elements! We need guards who will likewise blend those same elements of fierceness toward the foreign and loyalty toward the familiar.
In addition to nature there is its old standby, nurture; and the fundamental nurturing of the young itself traditionally falls into the studies of gymnastics and music. Our conversants are managing their research with the aid of conventional divisions or lists that lie in the background of all conversation. As to the children’s study of Music itself (they being yet too young to do gymnastics) music itself breaks down into by convention into the stories of the poems and their “music proper.” On the subtopic of “stories” Socrates coyly asks Glaucon how much time they should devote to it, and this elicits an interruption from Adeimantus who insists they spend all the time they may need to. He is a stakeholder in the question, after all, for he had complained that the poetry on which he was brought up lacked what might have convinced him to choose a just life over an unjust one. A second great dividend has been yielded by the thought-experiment of the City, for now Adeimantus has decided that even if he cannot reform his parents, at least he will try, in theory, to reform the education!
The organization of the stories that Socrates and Adeimantus will now evaluate, is determined by another background list – gods-heroes-men – a triad that constitutes a comprehensive division of who or what the stories might be about. Distinguishing the tales told from what they are told about makes it possible to measure the stories for their truth – not their factual truth for they are of course fictional, but their truth in a more catholic sense. For instance, as for the gods, if we view them as they are in themselves rather than as they have been described in stories, they must be good; and from this we can infer and insist that they are unchanging (changing could only make them worse) and that they have no need to change or to lie or dissimulate. Surely then they would not, for instance, accept bribes. As for the class of heroes, these must also behave well or else they would not be the offspring of gods, but the important fact about heroes is that we can emulate them, since they provide standards for behavior that men can strive to achieve but may understandably fall short of so that men can emulate the heroes without entering into rivalry with each other. For these reasons they are particularly serviceable models.
But as for stories about men, we would beg the original question of our whole Experiment to ask what sorts of human actions are proper, since after all it is the nature of just and proper behavior we are trying to discover, and so we have gone as far as we can on the subject matter of stories. And yet there is another aspect of poetic learning besides story (i.e. logos), namely the aspect of memorization and recitation (i.e. lexis). Adeimantus does not recognize this distinction, and in fact it is not borrowed from the common background like the other divisions we have seen so far, but is perfectly new. It may well become topical for ancient readers of this book, but Socrates has invented it on the spot for the sake of the conversation, in order to provide them the opportunity to investigate how the recitation of poetry might affect an impressionable young man, such a young man indeed as Adeimantus had in his speech depicted arguing with himself. If such a young man must recite the words of unjust, intemperate, or cowardly men in a representative way (as we had heard Adeimantus’s young man trying to do!) he will need to take in these characteristics, into his soul. And so, indirectly, that third element of the background list of story-subjects, the behavior of men, comes back into play through the back door. The two of them conclude that they must control the scope of imitation in the recitation of poetry, lest the young man becomes so convincing an actor as that he convinces himself! The background division of gods, heroes, and men provided the treatment of stories with a beginning, middle, and end, but the net effect is that the very sorts of poems Adeimantus complained about will not be taught to the impressionable youth whom he had envisioned being corrupted, in his speech.
The larger division of which this division was a part, the division between the story aspect and the musical aspect of music, effortlessly bequeathes Socrates his next topic, but it is the identity of his next interlocutor that is the more important news. Just as Adeimantus had intervened to ensure that the treatment of story would be adequate, Glaucon now steps in to insist that the treatment of music receive the attention that he, in turn, wants it to. It is no surprise that this more emotional and sincere young man should feel and confess a weakness for music. And as it turns out, the “characterology” that had emerged in the treatment of stories supplies all the criteria they need for choosing which musical modes and rhythms will be appropriate, for modes and rhythms of course have ethical meanings of their own that correspond to the ethics of the behavior depicted in the stories. Naturally then the modes and rhythms we will be admitting into the education will be those that are heroic and even-tempered, rather than confused and emotional. We might have noticed a general absence of reason in their youthful education so far (though one does feel a suggestion that reason might be the counterpoint to the emotional loss of control that has been avoided throughout), just now reason in a purer sense makes a more explicit appearance in the argument, and it does so in a very new and unexpected way. If the orderliness of the personality can be seen to “translate” into an orderliness of rhythm and tonal scale, there would seem to be an all-embracing orderliness per se, independent of but overarching all its various embodiments. The orderliness embodied in all these media (like all other such “-ness” ’s, if I may put it this way) is a thing to be recognized in and of itself, by reason. We flirt for a moment with the Theory of Forms, and contemplate for a moment an airy vision of our impressionable youths browsing in the ambience of a beauty affecting all the senses, mediated by reason.
Music now complete, the larger division in the background – the division between music in general (which includes both story and what we mean by music these days) and gymnastics – now provides Glaucon and Socrates their next transition, and once again a conventional topic that will organize the treatment, the proper care of the body. We might stop just long enough to reflect that the discourse has been structured at one moment by the subdivision of its own contents but then at another by the interruptions of Socrates’s two interlocutors, and to all appearances this has gone on freely and naturally. The second aspect of nurture, gymnastics, now dovetails neatly with the identity of Socrates’s interlocutor at the moment, since it was Glaucon after all who asked for “garnish” or “dash” and then became enervated with all the delicacies Socrates offered, though immediately thereupon he had quietly acquiesced in the heaping-on of luxuries which in turn caused all the problems that have now devolved upon them to solve. Another dividend has been yielded in the very implementation of the Experiment. Socrates, talking with this same Glaucon, finds himself now in a position to satirize the excessive diets of a luxurious regime and the nursing of disease it leads to; and once he has completed that step he can discover, through recognizing that litigiousness is a sign of corruption and through an interesting distinction between the work of judge and that of the doctor, according to which they should not both be experienced in the problems it is their job to solve, that in all cases it is soul after all that is in charge of body. Though the doctor may learn something about treating disease by himself becoming sick, the judge would do better to avoid any damage the soul with which he must do his judging! The immediate corollary is that the very background notion they had been depending upon, that music is for the soul and gymnastics is for the body, was never quite right, since the purpose of both disciplines is in truth to establish the proper balance and tension within the soul. We may stop just long enough to observe once again that just as a traditional list can give the argument its structure, the argument it leads to can achieve, on its own, the authority to turn back upon and emend that list, just had Socrates had discovered and deployed an unforeseen division between logos and lexis, above.
The education is now complete, and we may now optimize our choice of guards by deciding, with tests of daring and fortitude, which of our young graduates are particularly strong of soul and immune to the sort of enervation that Glaucon himself had suddenly displayed at the sight of the simple life, back in Book Two. Socrates now finishes the story with the myth of metals by which the gradations of natural ability they have discovered through testing their students can be buried from their own consciousness and memory by convincing them that their education was a dream and that it is now on the basis of their inborn “metals” that we have assigned them higher and lower roles in our City. He then caps this preposterous conceit by envisioning the group of them all going forth and finding a proper site for their City, and ushers the guards off to their separate and sequestered camp and their simple beds. In Socrates’s description of their humble regime, the very language that had enervated Glaucon in Book Two returns, and he does fret a little, but Socrates takes a deep breath and brings him over by warning him how easily a person's passions can be aroused by luxury (as indeed Glaucon’s had been, back in Book Two). Glaucon then roundly acquiesces in the severely moderate regime of the guards.In the person of Glaucon, the feverish city has been purged, and the healthy city has been founded!
But there is another brother to convince who now gives voice to his own kind of enervation, admonishing Socrates that he would be liable to ridicule for conceiving of guards that would allow themselves to be deprived of riches, in this way. He avoids confessing these are his own feelings and even feigns they are not, though it becomes plain that they are from the increasingly concupiscent tone with which he lists the items he blames Socrates for keeping from them. Socrates immediately agrees – as usual! – but reminds him that it is not for the guards that they are making the City (though the young men's identification with the guards in the fictional experiment is after all the mechanism by which they are learning and accepting self-improvement, as we have just seen in the case of Glaucon). Wealth does indeed divide a city, and we need unity to make our experiment successful and complete. The quality of the education is the lynchpin of the entire enterprise, as Adeimantus himself had insisted in his big speech and had agreed during the discussion about poetry – but now we see Adeimantus agreeing a little too adamantly. He has little tolerance for persons that become enervated easily and shows a puritanical streak of his own, which Socrates notices and tries to humor into toleration, with little success. It is as much Adeimantus's mood that is being dealt with as it is the finishing touches of the City – or it is both at once.
But now the City is complete – the final details, for instance concerning family organization, can be left to others – and it is time for the young men to find justice in it. Socrates acts as if he will leave this part up to Glaucon and Adeimantus, but Glaucon calls him back and thereby becomes the interlocutor once again. “But Socrates, you promised to do all you could!” – and so he must continue. The movement forward is provided by another background list, the four cardinal virtues: wisdom, bravery, temperance, and justice. Socrates proposes a strangely front-loaded method. If we can find where the city's wisdom is, and where its bravery and where its moderation, and then pick those parts out, the just part we are seeking will be the remainder. The logic of this method is just as questionable as was that of the original method of the large letters, but beggars can't be choosers, and the brothers again express no qualms. First of all, we can surely say that wisdom resides in the rulers who have the education to provide good counsel, and bravery in the guards at large. But moderation is different from those, for it permeates the entire City (vitiating the method of course, since if modesty is everywhere it can’t be pulled out – but nobody notices). And now where is justice? After some beating around the bush it occurs to them that it consists of the parts of the city keeping to their own roles just as they had required the craftsmen to do so early on in the construction of the simple City!
Socrates is not worried about the validity of this argument but only its potential, once it is hypothesized, to explain the soul, which had been the goal of the construction all along, once the young men could be calmed down and attuned enough to appreciate it. To this he will now turn, but immediately there is a problem. If justice in the City is a matter of its several “parts” or groups agreeing to recognize each other's integrity, the soul must itself have parts in order that the justice within it could be that sort of agreement within! This peculiar focus on “parts of soul” requires Socrates (more accurately, it provides him an occasion) to investigate with Glaucon whether the soul does have parts, but of course it will be with, or within, or through all or through part of their own souls that they will be conducting this investigation! Socrates immediately wakens the reason in Glaucon (and in us), both with an extremely abstract argument from the Law of Non-contradiction, and with a prophylactic exercise against captious sophistry, so that he can go on to present a purely rational articulation of the structure of desire. Once these two aspects of soul have been divided from each other it becomes easy to distinguish a willful and spirited third aspect, distinct from each, and so now we have three parts, which we must next try to square up with the three parts of the City that we constructed. Once the rulers are likened to the rational part and the soldiers to the willful one, we have only to realize that the rest of the soul, that is moved through its days by its desires, corresponds to the workers that continually provide the quotidien goods and services upon which life depends.
This hurdle passed, the great question is now prepared: What would justice be, in the soul? If as in the City it is the parts minding their own proper business, then justice would consist of the rational part of the soul, which by nature rules as we have just undergone seeing in the previous argument, managing the rest of soul with the aid of the spirited soldierly part. Reason and spirit will be harmonized to each other by the musical and gymnastic education – a still finer application for that traditional scheme of education than we had seen before, though we had there learned at least that both gymnastics and music are for the soul – and together these two parts will hold the passions at bay and even enslave them, if necessary, lest freed these should foolishly overturn the entire order of the soul.
The conclusion they have come upon has not been shown to be necessary. The argument and its methodology are a house of cards held in place partly by luck. But it is a stunningly convincing conclusion because of the way our souls (the soul of Glaucon and ours as well) have been prepared for it by the highly rational exercise in dividing the soul, the moral of which is tantamount to the same thing: that reason is truly the criterion of and for the soul. Justice, we can aver from the now envigorated center of ourselves, is an entirely personal and inward matter, the triumph of reason over the blind parts of the self. But in case some part of us feels a little vertigo and cavils over our conclusion, some vulgar proofs can be added in corroboration (and Socrates adds them), but the glorious truth is that we have found the order within our selves, unaffected by the behavior of others. As for our treatment of those others, Glaucon now makes the clinching argument, using indeed the very argument-form Socrates had used to shame him for his bashful hope that untrained citizens could step in as soldiers when they could not become shoemakers: the argument from contraries. How could we, who worry that life would be unlivable if our bodies were vitiated, allow our treatment of others to ruin “the part of ourselves that is harmed by vice and benefitted by virtue?”
A height with a vista has been reached, but the rest of the group, suddenly spurred on by Polemarchus and seconded by Adeimantus, will bring the two of them back down, on the pretext that Socrates had not adequately explained the community of wives and children, a point that he had passed by in praeteritio, an hour earlier, to which nobody there objected. We must remember that living the life of the soul, like conversing with Socrates, though always attractive and edifying, can and will be tolerated only in limited doses. Indeed, it is to the credit of the Athenians that they tolerated the admonitions of Socrates for all of seventy years! Always and continually men prefer to return to the “normal” world for relief. But now this “normal” world into which we would escape from the pressure of inward awareness reveals itself, in a height of paradox, to be exactly the public world, the only world into which we can escape from ourselves! It is an unexpected corollary of the insight about the soul we just reached with Glaucon and Socrates, that politics and its range of virtues and vices, which provide a more comfortable range of human hope and despair since the heights are not so high nor likewise the lows so low, has now come into view as the realm not of reality and sunlight but of oblivion and an escape into a conspiracy of blindness.
There is no surprise then that the motion put forth by Polemarchus and Adeimantus, that they go back to the details about the imaginary City, becomes unanimous in the blink of an eye. The event that has the greatest dramatic importance is that even Glaucon joins in, so that Socrates must return to the City-construct even though it is patent to anybody who has understood the previous discussion that the City in now a “ladder thrown away.” The detour that the group suddenly requires him to make is not fatally erroneous – it is not a return into the cave or a turning back into Sheol. In fact, the theoretical medium of the ideal City is plastic and forgiving, especially in Socrates's hands. As usual he feigns to agree with the objection, and now takes up the task of justifying the ideal picture against the scandals that the conventional outlook has complacently put in his path, the threat to which outlook was the main motive for Polemarchus's interruption, a motive strengthened by the seductive distraction of a prurient curiosity regarding sexual matters. Glaucon, by luck (that is, by Plato’s design), will be Socrates’s interlocutor, and the movement and course of the coming phase of the discussion between them will aim to stem the tide of the mob’s stupid laughter, and to re-establish the commitment to reason the two of them had reached before, within Socrates and Glaucon at least, and to allow that commitment to take them wherever it might lead.
Glaucon enjoys the idealistic play at policy-making and moves right through the paradoxes of shared spouses and sexual roles at Socrates's side (and so will we, if Plato is to succeed); but the enjoyment of this dreamy stroll, as well as an occasional flash of theoretical vertigo, remind him of the pragmatic problem, the problem of whether such a scheme can actually be realized. Socrates goes on undaunted and requires Glaucon come along, but finally Glaucon puts his foot down: “If I let you go on you will never get to the question whether all this is feasible!” But even as he says this he himself indulges in more ideal imaginings, at first in praeteritio (and even then bursting the lengths of a praeteritio), but then resolutely stops even himself so as to require Socrates finally to face the question. For once Socrates fights back: “The pressure is not really upon me: let me remind you this whole construction was designed to discover the nature of justice so that whatever result we might reach about the City, that result would redound as an incumbency upon you as an individual to act upon! As such we do not need to know if our City is realizable but whether our construction is correct enough to have yielded a vision of justice. Besides, words will always be truer than deeds, regardless of what people say!”
This is the final dividend of the thought-experiment the brothers acquiesced to join, back in Book Two. If Socrates would provide them a safe medium in which to project an inquiry concerning their personal problems, the results of that inquiry must be allowed to redound back upon them as participants in the experiment. The chickens have come home to roost. Wonderfully, and once again, Glaucon does rise to the occasion and takes the next step upward, as he had at the mention of the humble beds of the guards at the end of Book Three, a step up and back to a radical reliance on reason and the world it knows, in the face of such cavils as Polemarchus and any crowd will fabricate on the barest of pretexts.
But Socrates does not leave it there. Once Glaucon has taken this step he serves him up an even greater paradox than the ones Polemarchus and Adeimantus had served upon him about the sexes and the spouses, a paradox that has nothing to do with those scandals of theirs but rather turns them on their head. Either the Polemarchuses (and Adeimantuses) of this world, if they yearn for politics, must become philosophers, or philosophers – persons, that is, who have made the choice Glaucon has just made – must become the Polemarchuses (and Adeiantuses) of this world. Glaucon's choice to drop his dodge of pragmatism has now saddled him with an incumbency to bear witness to his own rationality in the face of the world, a world that will ridicule him at first and will kill him if necessary – a thing that Glaucon knows, just as he knows it places him into the same small boat as Socrates, and decides to take it on nevertheless: “They will come at you with brickbats but I will fight at your side!” he says to Socrates.
Plato has the others remain silent at the moment this great paradox is introduced, just as he allows Glaucon and Socrates to ignore those others. For the two of them have work to do, namely to decide what this philosopher is – how he is different from the persons that surround him and how this difference requires that he be their leader. The wisdom-lover they have in mind is not to be confused with those types that gad about chasing down spectacles but, if spectacle it must be, those who pursue the spectacle of truth. Their desire for the real truth enables them to recognize that it resides not in the many versions and entertainments that fleetingly embody it, but in the common original these versions fleetingly embody, while the other persons around them are satisfied to repeat their passing brushes with real truth as long as these take place in different venues, and not only cannot follow the discussion about an original beyond them but also resist the mention of any such thing. They are not ignorant, for they keep coming back; and yet they lack real knowledge since they refuse the communion with the invisible truth, or the still small voice, from the beyond. We must identify this middling state of consciousness as opinion and call them not lovers of wisdom, philosophers, but philodoxers, lovers of doxa or opinion – a new term that only our identification of the philosophical orientation as a love that is higher has enabled us to coin. A person who has reached this vista and holds such a large view, assuming he is not deficient in practical knowledge, would surely have the insight and the greatness of soul and clarity about what is truly valuable needed to rule over others, to the point that even Momus, the mumbling god of censure, could find no fault in him!
Glaucon and Socrates have reached another theoretical climax, as they had at the end of Book Four and at the end of Book Three – and again they are brought down by an interruption, once again by Adeimantus. To say the philosopher is beyond Momus only tempted Momus after all, and Adeimantus, who had worried in his long speech how one might make his way to the heights of eminence, now plays Momus himself, employing his usual method of indirection by imagining “somebody” disagreeing, not only with what Socrates has said but also with what he has been doing. “Your way of conversing could lead a person absolutely anywhere; but if you just will stop talking and open your eyes and look around you, you will see that philosophers are weirdoes if not utter scoundrels, and that even the best of men who become philosophical become useless in politics.”
Of course Socrates agrees with his interlocutor, this time in order to buy an opportunity to introduce an image. The philosopher is like a ship's captain as he is seen by the sailors in the boat. Although seafaring is one of the most dangerous of cooperative human endeavors, the sailors are foolish enough to think there is no science of navigation but only aspire to seize the helm and “take charge” though they are unqualified to do so. In their ignorance, all they see at the helm is a man deaf to their scuttlebutt, looking off to the stars and to all appearances blind to the immediate world around him,. This unattractive image of the imprudent mob separates the disdainful Adeimantus from the imaginary objector he was just now hiding behind and requires him to engage once more in the kind of conversation with Socrates that his own imaginary interlocutor had just mischaracterized as misleading. At the same time, the style of Socrates’s subsequent questions becomes more elevated, in a way that might just flatter that penchant for elevated talk that Adeimantus had shown in Book Four. Yes, the philosopher is useless but this is because the mob has no use for him; yes, the would-be philosophical types are crude logic-choppers but this is because they are tinkering interlopers seeking to appropriate her high reputations to themselves, not truly philosophical but only trying to appear so; and yes, many of the better types who have philosophical ability become corrupted, but it is not by the sophistical teachers their parents both hire and blame, but by the seduction of the mob whose moods and desires even these sophists play servant to. It is the seduction of celebrity that is the true problem, a seduction that compels even the parents of the young and gifted to turn them away from contemplation and curry favor among the mob and the world of action and power! Short of divine intervention, only the hobbled and lame can hope to persist in a life of philosophy!
In the midst of all this pother of high indignation we should not fail to notice that the true motive of a parent's mendacious acquiescence in the use of wisdom poetry has in passing been finally been revealed, and it is the same motive as his own motive for corruption. It is a motive he shares with his parents in their use of wisdom poetry in his upbringing. In truth he has no brief with the blamelessly virtuous philosopher that Glaucon and Socrates had described but has only envy that such a person has succeeded to evade the seduction of attempting to “climbing the heights to eminence,” and in the subsequent conversation it is envy that Socrates identifies as the reason people are skeptical about the possibility of philosophical rule, a kind of envy that Adeimantus must himself now overcome.
The introduction of the philosophical orientation required in the ruler was brought on by Socrates’s challenge to Glaucon in Book Five that he drop all reliance on a world of deeds and join Socrates in the truer world of thinking. It was then carried through in the discussion with Adeimantus, where his own sense of shame for choosing the world of deeds over words was exposed as the reason for his objection to the philosophers as well as his complaint against his father and the wisdom poetry. Tactfully, Socrates now turns the glaring light away from Adeimantus and focusses it back onto the “neutral” theoretical medium of the ideal City. Now that they have come to inherit from the ensuing argument philosophical rulers for the ideal City that he and Adeimantus had rounded out back in Book Four, they must find the education that will make their rulers so. We had so far managed to choose the proper natures and give them the proper nurture in music and gymnastics, but beyond nature and nurture there is science, another of the great background lists in the Greek thought-vocabulary. This most powerful and important study, which philosophy will enable them to pursue and which will ensure they have values true and secure enough that they can rule the city correctly, is of course the study of The Good, but what is the good?
Adeimantus acts as if he has no inkling what this Good might be and admonishes Socrates that the group will not let him leave without solving the problem. Socrates’s reply is uncharacteristically abrasive: we saw him adopt such a tone once before, with Glaucon, in the last Book. Surely Adeimantus knows the problem well and needs not rely so heavily upon Socrates. The good cannot be pleasure since some pleasures are bad, and it cannot be knowledge since the value of knowledge would have to be in its knowledge of the good. All other putative goods are good only if and when they share in its goodness. Moreover though men might be satisfied to be apparently just, or satisfied to possess apparent beauty, they are not satisfied to have what is only apparently good but demand no less than the real and true good. After all this problematizing of his, Adeimantus once again presses him for his own personal answer and now Socrates loses his patience. “What am I to do with this fellow?” he asks nobody in particular. Adeimantus ups the ante still further and insists Socrates divulge the answer – since after all he has spent his whole life studying this question (echoing his taunt from Book Two). It does not occur to Adeimantus that the very fact that Socrates has done just this might have something to do with his reluctance to hand him some answer as if it were a matter of information. Socrates could call him back to listen to himself, as Jesus had in his answer to Pilate, “You said it;” but instead he turns on him and demurs to lead him any further: “Why do you press me for some paltry and ignorant answer when you could get a finer answer from somebody else?”
Glaucon does not wait for some retort from Adeimantus but intervenes. He feels Socrates is threatening to quit the conversation! “Proceed as ever you wish, Socrates, and we will follow.” The standoff with Adeimantus has brought Glaucon back on board, and we shall not be hearing from Adeimantus again for quite a while. Socrates now offers to speak about the Good, if he may risk doing so with an image, for now he has an interlocutor who is enthusiastic enough to risk making a mistake rather than being too skeptical for his own good. Before beginning he states his hope not only that he can articulate it but also that Glaucon and the others can take it in and not be misled, for it is an image only. It is like the prayer we hear at the beginning of a sermon, or the prayer we ourselves are told to make when we take up the Bible!
This ultimate object of knowledge, the Good, he now suggests, stands to all other knowledge as the Sun stands to the world around us, as both the sustainer of that world, the reason that it is as it is, and as the cause of our being able to see it. To take the point further and to the very edge of language, with Glaucon (and ourselves) just keeping up, we may say this: Just as the world around us consists of real objects and also their shadows or mere images, so in the realm of knowledge and truth there are the true objects we must come to grasp as ever we can, and also another sort of mental entities that are somehow mere images of them. We must not tarry with these latter, lodged though they are in our minds, or seek to make a system of them, but break through them, back and up to the originals that inspired them, of which they are mere images, just as the philosopher in Book Five desired to pass beyond the series of spectacles to a vision of the truths they all transiently embodied, one after the other.
The world we actually live in can be seen as a whole to exhibit this structure, with the political or socially constructed world within which Polemarchus at that moment at least had wanted to confine us being like a cave darkly lit, in which men live and stare and utter names, unable to turn around and see where things have come from but consigned instead to trying to make a system of these derivative and secondary images showing as shadows on a wall. If you could force one of these prisoners to turn around and lead him back and up and out, how will he react? He will resist at first, but slowly as he is brought out of the cave his eyes will adjust to the light of day and he will behold for once the original world of which those mere derivatives had barely resembled at all, so far cut off from their source that the only kind of sense the prisoners can try to make of them had to consist of predicting the patterns of their relationships with each other rather than their derivation from the original identities they dimly reflect. Next, have this man return to the cave. How laughable he will be, at first, as his eyes again must now adjust to the dark and he can not yet even make out the shadows that all the others count as the real. When once they do adjust, how paltry and pitiable he will see their world to be! He will try out of fellow feeling to tell them about the other world above, of which their cherished world is in truth but a shadow. He knows they will not understand at first – neither did he, as his eyes were adjusting to the light – and so he will persevere any way he can to bring them along. But as he persists their ridicule will escalate until it crosses the line and become violent. In the end they will contrive to kill him, according to the benighted procedures of ther den.
This message had already been broached, in the ascent of Book Four to the vision of inward virtue. The message had indeed met with resistance, first from Polemarchus and then the rest of the company. As for this higher truth, Glaucon already saw a version of it in the distinction Socrates drew, later in Book Five, between philosophy and the “philodoxy” that cannot and will not see beyond the familiar version to the original whose cognition is sustained by thought alone. What has now been brought into focus by Socrates’s argument about the Good and the Sun is that that world of originals is the cause of the world of appearances around us, that as its cause it guarantees that this other world we live in makes whatever sense it does, and that by some upward, backward path of thought we may be able to ascend to it, while to refuse to turn around and do this is to adopt the pattern to which men and society are at present and perennially enslaved, a pattern of life where men would prefer to vie with each other in ignorance and for stakes whose value is in the end illusory, and where nevertheless if these facts should be brought to “public” attention the mass will sooner kill the messenger than seek to escape the prison of illusions they enable each other to share.
The alternative is the upward path, which Socrates and Glaucon already began to take, after Adeimantus fell out of the conversation, and now continue to take together, by a process they have already called discussion, dialogue, dialectic. In truth even that beginning – the image of the Sun as the Good – was a resumption of their conversation at the end of Book Five, which itself was a resumption of the conversation with which they ended Book Four. All these conversations have moved upward because every time their inquiry encountered the dictates of mind, they followed the dictate rather than shirking it or backing off.
It is time now to try that path still further and show what reason can do by doing it. Once again a background list structures the argument, the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics, which became canonical in future centuries but was probably rather new in Plato’s time. In the present inquiry however these separate studies will be made to stand in as media for the mental activity of dialectic, which, we have heard, starts not with assumptions and subject matters but with thoughts, and moves through thoughts to thoughts. Through discussion Socrates and Glaucon find a new use for these subjects, that they can be practiced for purposes beyond their ken. Arithmetic, for instance, is the study of numbers and their relations, but what is a number after all? Merely to get things going Socrates recommends the study of arithmetic for the guards since it will be useful in war, but when they move on to geometry and Glaucon offers the same argument Socrates disallows it, for they learned in the case of arithmetic that the true value of it was in the logic of distinguishing one number from the other rather than in some application. And no sooner does Glaucon recognize the sequence of studies Socrates is recommending as being the quadrivium, than Socrates requires him to revise that course of studies by inserting stereometry in between the second and the third studies since it makes no sense to study the heavenly bodies in motion before you have mastered the study of three-dimensional body per se – this even though the very field of solid geometry does not as yet exist! We meet again but now with more explicit awareness the loose and tentative role played by background lists in Books Two and Three: the argument they enable may well sublate them! As for the next study, the celestial study of astronomy, what makes it divine is not the “elevation” of the objects studied but a “higher” understanding of them that would recognize the supra-material patterns which they only embody.
As they move on to acoustics, the last of the hypothesized four, Glaucon has become exhausted and wishes to be spared the effort of going through another sublation, and being jerked vertiginously upward and backward all over again. Now he wants Socrates simply to tell him the nature of the science of discussion itself to which this review had been presented as a preliminary; but dialectic is the very thing they have been employing. It is tantamount to a request that they stop engaging in dialectic in order to describe it, a virtual contradiction in terms! His request is like the impatient demand Adeimantus had made an hour earlier, but it is out of fatigue rather than importunity and impatience that he makes it.
Socrates now redirects the glare of the discussion away from Glaucon, his partner in the high flight of dialectic, the same way he had redirected it away from Adeimantus near the end of Book Six, by reverting once again to the neutral theme of the ideal City, and suggests they complete their discussion of the rulers' higher education. There is now little reason nor even a motive to complete the picture of the City – just as Polemarchus in Book One had little reason or motive to define justice – but with the guidance of Socrates the discussion can still proceed with grace. The main provision to which they now agree is that they postpone the dialectical occupation Glaucon has just found so difficult to a person's full maturity rather than expose the science or method to abuse among the young, as it currently is abused, not in this case for the sake of its reputation (that topic was covered with Adeimantus in Book Six) but for the sake of the young man himself, who is so vulnerable to "misology" during his younger years, if once in captious argument he finds himself orphaned by the reason he had only learned to imitate and is moved to turn against reason itself.
Indeed we have engaged the higher education of the quadrivium only to leave each branch of that new curriculum behind, just as our original argument had left behind its initial original goal of modeling a City when we found justice to reside not within it but beyond it, within the individual. That discovery had met with resistance (at the beginning of Book Five) because in order to gain virtue we had now to abandon the old sense of our identity which in the Cave image have now seen being held and maintained in existence only by the conspiracy of those who resist being selves, vying instead to rival the identity of others by besting them in a game of shadow-boxing (as Cephalus had in his ripe old age become so adept at doing!), and ready to work in harmony only to annihilate a man who tries to lead them out. Given all we have left behind we have also been left with something, namely the guardians speculation upon whose education provided us a model and a medium for discovering the inner landscape of the soul, and what the soul will do with its de-politicized life. Their participation in the state has become irrelevant even to themselves. It is their participation in truth and reality that is their true purpose and fulfillment in life, and that they should succeed to get onto this path in their maturity is what the policy of postponing the dialectical work is meant to ensure. As to the Experiment, we now witness a “withering away” of the theoretical importance of the City betokened in the policy of allowing those few who have proven able to pursue dialectic viably, to serve in its governance only from time to time, for they have discovered things much finer with which to occupy themselves.
Yet, as we next learn , we have not quite exhausted the uses of the Experiment, and soon enough we will be reminded why. The Just City can now for the second time be declared complete, with its corollary about the just soul having been drawn, and we can return to the continuation of the Experiment that Socrates had proposed at the end of Book Four when Polemarchus interrupted, which perhaps we had forgotten altogether, since the proposal disappeared from view right after it was made. The converse search for the nature of injustice in men might likewise be pursued through contemplating the Ideal one topple and cascade downward through a series of inferior constitutional forms. It is not, like before, a search for justice or a project in imaginary policy-making. Rather the narrative will take on the form of an historical fiction, and so to begin this tale Socrates naturally will invoke the Muses – for who else could tell us “How first the glorious aristocracy began to wobble”?
For the occasion the prose rises to an elevated style. It is the Muses who are speaking, and what they say must be true, since they are Muses after all. This high style continues until the narration of the vicious constitutions is complete. The style is “ecphrastic,” emphasizing description instead of action, and is characterized by the agglutination of circumstantial participles; by diction that is allusive, imagistic and astigmatic (as we shall see); and is driven by an new and improvised methodology not unlike that of the original search for justice in the State. We are meant to watch a cascading process by which one constitution loses its staying power and begins to change until it reaches a stopping point where it assumes a new stable state, and then to look back to find these two things in the individual man, how his personality gives way to change and what he turns into. There is no proof that change is or must be stepwise rather than continuous, for state or for man. It is the Muses who are speaking, telling a story of their own, and we are meant to listen rather than ask questions. There can be no stronger indication from an author who wishes to remain anonymous that something new is “going on,” and by now we should be wary enough to watch for what it might be.
The decline of constitutions begins with an indecipherable but authoritative numerical derivation of the so-called nuptial number, consigning to irretrievable obscurity the mechanism by which the Ideal will inevitably fail, one day. Once the decline can begin, the presentation takes on a specific order and form: first the decline of the constitution and then the corresponding decline in the individual soul. In the event, as we shall see, the institutional “history” is foil for the crucial and new theme, the decline of the personality. A series of constitutions typified by distinct governmental “arrangements” guides the narration of a series of corresponding family generations each typified by a distinct personal lifestyle. The pattern of the personal states are foreshadowed by the patterns of the succeeding constitutions, but the “internal” mechanism that drives the decline in the case of the men is driven by the dynamics of the relation between father and son. As in real life, the son reacts against failures he perceives in his father and shifts course to compensate for them, but ever-more remote for the true order as the sons come to be, they adopt a course even worse than the fathers’. It is exactly the problem Adeimantus in Book Two had begged Socrates to extricate him from. Appropriately enough, as soon as Socrates starts to narrate to Glaucon the first step in the decline of the personality, Adeimantus interrupts with typical rudeness (a disparaging remark about his brother and as usual he is the pot calling the kettle black). Thus he becomes interlocutor once again, and justly it is he who will play witness to the slaughter.
The lesson of the decline, in a nutshell, is that the son is still too young to step up and own his father’s way of life but not old enough to find remedies for what seem to him to be its limitations. In truth we needn’t tarry upon the series of political transformations that severally introduce, foreshadow, and break gently, to Adeimantus and to us, the incremental mutilation of the personality. I will present it unvarnished. In the first case, after we hear how the aristocratic regime slips down from loving virtue to loving the reputation of virtue and becomes a timocracy, we are brought to focus on the men: the “aristocratic” father, who is a philosopher living in a mediocre state, who no longer has anything to do with politics but has achieved the life of sustainable dialectical study (none other than the dialectician we had trained in Books Seven) and how his son will devolve into a mere “timocrat”. Adeimantus, who has taken over as interlocutor after interrupting a moment ago, eagerly interrupts again: “How? How?” The catalyst, according to Socrates, is this son hearing his mother criticize her a-political husband, his father, for being unmanly. It is hard to imagine an experience of higher psychological potency for an adolescent. Abetted by other counsels he decides to eclipse his father by becoming a respectable pillar of the community. But now his treasured self-esteem can become subject to the vagaries of chance and politics. He grows up, and one day he is ruined by shipwreck, meteorological or political, and his son, in turn, who so far had emulated him, is crushed by his father’s failure and devotes himself, resolute and resentful, to amassing enough wealth to become immune from such ruin, adopting for himself the showy style of a Persian monarch, out of cynicism and self-recrimination for abandoning his father's higher outlook. As he matures, in turn, this materialist shuns graceful society as too costly and denies own son a finer upbringing as needlessly expensive; but now having nothing better to want, costly desires begin to simmer secretly within him. The son senses the imperfection of his father's affections – both of his love and his prudishness – and now is prey to certain paramours of desire, which he can succeed at least to moderate, by adopting a regime that gives all aspects of life an equal hearing in a “democratical” way. But then in his own son the lower desires only grow stronger and indeed they contrive with a more devilish plan for him. His naïve commitment to the studiously openminded approach that of his father had vouchsafed him enables them one day to capture him with a fearsome erotic addiction that utterly supplants his personality and set up their own regime within his soul. He has become the instrument of the profligate desires that tyrannize him, and now he even lays hands on his own father so that he can pay the piper!
The sequence, presented as I have without the intervening political transformations, which function both as relief from the appalling stages of the self’s decline and as prelude or foreshadowing of the next step is continually nothing less than mortifying. I daresay all sons and all fathers will find something ruefully familiar at each and every stage. The overarching theme is that fathers are imperfect but that their sons are even more so and it would do well for sons somehow to find ways to adopt what their fathers teach them without resentment for its imperfections and find a way to make more of it rather than less – the very goal that Cephalus had announced for himself (as a financial plan, at least) back in Book One. In addition to the primary lesson that only the true and orderly hierarchy of the soul can in the long run maintain the human personality intact and immunize it from deformation, we have now been regaled with a cautionary warning as to what lies in the future for a person like Adeimantus who still blames his father for his imperfections and hangs around with the likes of Polemarchus, rather than with the likes of Socrates as his brother Glaucon does.
Quietly, at the cold and destitute culmination of this decline, Glaucon resumes the role of interlocutor. For the first time the switch occurs without immanent dramatic motivation or justification, but perhaps we will have recognized that Adeimantus has now learned as much as he can, or will, or deserves to learn, at this stage. Glaucon and Socrates, on the other hand, now have the rest of their work to do, to compare, that is, the just man's life with that of the unjust man and make a judgment as to which is happier, as Glaucon had required Socrates to do back in Book Two, seconded there by Adeimantus. But now the criteria of “judgment” itself must be stipulated. In the course of two or three pages the vocabulary of κρίσις is used twice as many times as it is in the rest of the Platonic corpus! Glaucon's story of Gyges in Book Two, and his slaughter of the just man there, were there formulated as visual images so as to make the judgment easy, but Socrates now advises him that it is only by viewing what is going on inside the man – a viewing which after all has been the greatest burden of the intervening discussion first to introduce and then to articulate and fill out in the most vivid detail possible – that the true judgment can be made. Three arguments ensue that prove in three ways that the tyrannized soul is least happy and the philosophical the happiest, and the proofs, as we might expect, engage more and more intensely the one part of ourselves that alone commands the true criterion of making a true judgment, the λογιστικόν. Finally, and again, as in Book Four, even the realm of pleasure or desire is made to yield to the analysis of reason, which within the argument is shown alone to be capable to declare that pleasure after all is in large part illusory. By a powerful and climactic image of the life submerged in the delusion of animal pleasure we are suddenly brought back to that pigsty of the luxurious city Glaucon had unwittingly brought upon himself, though now it is a phantasmagoria in which beasts, not humans are sitting at the tables he had asked for, eating as if at a trough and raping each other and butting each other, armed with the metal weapons they acquired when an army became necessary. The corollary of their inability to gauge the true value of things is that men vie with and envy each other over distinctions that make not real but merely seeming difference, as we saw them do in the Cave. Reason, conversely, has now won such a total victory that even the degree to which the good man is happier than the tyrannical one can be expressed by a number. By a partly specious proportionalization of appearance and reality concatenated with the number of phases in the decline, the philosophic soul is argued to be 36, or 729, times happier than the tyrannized one. The lofty calculation is then empirically corroborated by a most telling existential observation, that two persons feel the difference in their happiness not only during the day but during the night also, not just every day of the year but every day and night (729 ≈ 365 x 2). The tyrant's life is a waking nightmare!
With this arithmetical conceit, ringing the conceit of the nuptial number with which the Muses’ narrative of the Decline began, the determination of the question is complete. Socrates now invites Glaucon to look back at “that fellow” who had suggested at the beginning that injustice is better than justice if only you can get away with it. They have come so far he can refer to him in the third person though it is Glaucon himself he is talking about! Let us give him an image to contemplate, and see what he would say, an image of the tripartite soul encased in a covering that outwardly looks like a man. The three parts are envisioned in the image as a many-headed hydra representing the desires, a lion representing the spirited part – but for the rational part he imagines another man, a little man within, an invisible man covered along with the other parts by the outer bodily form of a man. It is an image by which the reason is identified with the conscience: the conscience is “who we are” whether anybody sees us or not. The image inverts, therefore, Glaucon's original image of Gyges and his invisibility! And now Glaucon takes to scolding the man that thought injustice could be good, on the grounds that he is betraying that inner man and saying in effect that it is better for him to be enslaved by the hydra than to be its master and find a way to calm it down. The image is corroborated by conventional attitudes about virtue, as was the radically “internal” definition of justice at the end of Book Four. We can even say, if we were to put the ultimate point onto it, as we did at that point also, that it would be better to be enslaved to the principle of reason, or to a rational man for that matter, than to become the rabid tyrant that Thrasymachus had sought to dangle before our eyes! Rather he will prefer the true “politics” of the soul that takes place within, and subordinate all other pursuits to maintenance of that order, just as the man in the simple city allowed his family neither to become too large nor too small. Glaucon grants this sort of man will have rejected the political life (the life Polemarchus sought to defend with his bullying objection at Book Five), but now Socrates will not even allow him to call that the political life: the true politics is the politics within the soul!
For a second or third or fourth or fifth time Glaucon and Socrates have reached a high vantage point, as Socrates had called it at the end of Book Four, and their excess of insight now enables them to elaborate and rectify their outlook on two other matters they had discussed in the earlier conversation: the dangers of poetry, which now can receive a fuller treatment since they have refined their understanding of the parts and internal dynamics of the soul, and a straightforward treatment of the question of rewards and penalties for unjust and just living, which for the sake of Glaucon's theoretical experiment had been hypothetically inverted.
The tradition has been scandalized by “Plato's” criticism of poetry, but it is not Plato's. It is Socrates-and-Glaucon's, and what justifies it is the conclusion to which they have just agreed, for the second time in fact, that the health of the soul is the one condition upon which all other happiness in life depends. Once this is seen, the very picture of listening to a poet talking about the lives of others pales before the prospect of finding and living the order of the soul within one’s own. The warning against poetry culminates in a sickening passage in which Socrates illustrates, with a virtual quotation, that reminds me of Adeimantus’s young man arguing against himself in Book Two, of an argument the λογιστικόν might bring itself to make, under the seductive power of the poet’s work, in order to persuade its own inferior, the proud and willful part of the soul, to allow it to enjoy watching the poetic depiction of viciousness, on the grounds that the vice is the character’s not mine and I do myself no harm to enjoy watching it. It is not the truth or falsity of the argument but the part of us that finds itself making it that matters.
As to the second topic, Glaucon now agrees to pay back the loan that Socrates had made to him when he “lent” him the perverse conceptions that justice might be punished and injustice rewarded. Now in turn Glaucon will give Socrates an opportunity to place our conduct during this life into the largest perspective of truth and reality, the perspective of the sempiternal existence of souls returning to this life to live a life they choose in Hades, a choice they make according to the condition of their souls. Socrates interrupts the astounding report of Er to admonish Glaucon one last time that the only worthwhile study in life is the study that keeps the soul in order, an admonition from which all readers of Plato or any other author and even those who read nothing, can truly stand to profit.
* * * * *
This summary of the plot is completely new, though it is plainly a weave of the oldest of human themes with almost nothing novel in it. It is a story that stands on its own as great, and justifies the reputation the work has accrued to itself. I have tried not to allow the prevailing opinions and confusions about the plot affect or warp my recounting, and have resisted to justify the steps of the account with footnotes citing the passages and interpretations of individual words upon which alone it depends as a whole. That, after all, is the work of the commentary appended hereunder.
Still I should indicate at least the scale of my departure from both the traditional and the scholarly interpretations one will encounter elsewhere. I have found the critique of poetry in Book Ten entirely justified if only one grant the premise that the order of his soul is the only value truly necessary and truly feasible for man to protect. I have found the constitutions in Books Eight and Nine to be mere foil for the painful narration of how the personal soul declines, but Aristotle already had taken them as a serious enough version of Plato’s actual beliefs about political history to criticize them for failing in accuracy. I have taken the run-through of the new quadrivium of studies in Book Seven to be an exercise by which Socrates teaches Glaucon to see what dialectic is, the continual sublation of all assumptions, as he had just presented it to him in theory at the end of Book Six, but many think it presents Plato’s curriculum at “The Academy,” and even that the guardians are figured as future students to be taught by him there. As to the utopian scheme of Book Five with its community of women and radical eugenics, the entire tradition has taken it to show just how far gone an idealist Plato could be, but I have found that it is Socrates’s ad hoc attempt to recall Glaucon to the level of self-awareness – idealistic if you will since the self is invisible – that he had reached at the end of Book Four just before Polemarchus and Adeimantus tried to bring the discussion back down to practical politics. I have taken the long treatment of poetry in Books Three and Two to be Socrates’s technique of showing Adeimantus he is able to take responsibility for what poetry should be like, if it is to be for the sake of bringing up children, rather than merely criticizing his parents; but almost all others have heard Plato giving free hand to an obsessive and quirky puritan attitude of his own about poetry in general. Most extreme of all perhaps, I have seen Glaucon’s objection to the simple life of the “trace of a City” in Book Two as the expression of a deep moral error on his part (an error for which he will in fact apologize in Book Three, as we shall see) rather than to be a completely justified plea for the rudiments of sophisticated living that any decent person would make, as every scholar known to me has taken it to be. The whole thing really got started by my sense that the speeches of Glaucon and Adeimantus at the beginning of Book Two are sincere confessions of troubled young men with very specific personal traits that are flawed but representative. As to the much-discussed methodology of Socrates’s proposals to build a City in Thought, and of his approach to the soul having parts, and on the relation of the parts to the parts of the state, I skirt the issue entirely. It is the result that matters, in each case, and Socrates’s problem is to keep the headstrong and confused brothers in the game, not to pass muster with eavesdropping logicists of future centuries who have no stake in the argument – continually to divert the discussion into a safe harbor within they might feel comfortable to present their best ideas before having to live up to them. It is only in Book Five that Socrates finally requires them to take responsibility for themselves, to allow their construction to reflect back upon themselves and dictate their behavior, and even then it is only one of them, Glaucon, that he asks. When later he tries it with Adeimantus he fails – or rather, Adeimantus does.
For Plato’s dialogical endeavor to succeed, his Reader must come to feel enough of a stake in what is being discussed and the way it is being discussed, and must identify with the interlocutors and their mission intimately enough and with enough urgency, that he feels no urgency to grasp for a private and critical though entirely imaginary relationship with the anonymous and invisible author of the conversation. When the primary fictional scenario fails – and it is an index of Plato’s high and severe calling that it fails far more often than it does in our reading of Shakespeare – the Reader finds himself wondering what Plato is doing, and he will find in the world of Plato scholarship a haven of fellow wonderers among whom he can now choose his favorite. What keeps their discussion alive is that their different theories cannot all be true, so that they can distinguish themselves from each other, while at the same time there so little evidence for or against any of them that they will never be refutable. In such a context, a Karl Popper might say that it counts for something that a complete account can be given without any reference to their work – my work here being the witness.
It is a pity that the precipitate of this secondary conversation finds its way into the expert Introductions that are placed before the Translations, diverting the non-professional Reader from his own fresh access to Plato’s text, spoiling him for instance with notion that he can get behind the scenes and be inoculated against being led down the garden path by Socrates, as Adeimantus says in Book Six, while in truth such guidance places the Reader unbeknownst into something like a cave, puzzling over shadows of what he should instead be enabled, let alone allowed, by the ensuing Translation to see straight on.
THE REPUBLIC
BOOK ONE
(327) Socrates speaks directly to us,7 telling us that yesterday he went down8 to Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston9 to pay homage to the goddess,10 but at the same time11 planning to take in the spectacle12 of the festival since it was being done for the first time. The contribution of the Athenians was beautiful, but the Thracian contribution was no less appropriate.13 Having done their homage and their viewing14 they made off for the city,15 when they were seen from behind by Polemarchus the son of Cephalus who told his slave to run up to them and tell16 them to wait for him. The slave ran up and grabbed Socrates by the coat to tell them that Polemarchus told them to wait for him. Socrates turned around to see where his master17 was, and some clever repartee ensues:
“Look!”18 says the slave, “Here he comes. Just19 stay put.”
“Stay put20 we shall,” says Glaucon, and soon enough Polemarchus arrives with Adeimantus, the brother of Glaucon,21 and some others, coming from the parade, and he says, “I would reckon you’re setting off for the city,22 as if you were leaving the Piraeus?”
And23 you’d reckon right, Socrates replies.
“You do see how many of us there are?”
How couldn’t I?
“So if you do,24 you’ve got to prove stronger than these,25 or else stay where you are.”
So there isn’t a third alternative: that we might persuade you that we ought to be going?
“Could you really persuade people who won’t listen?”
“No way,” says Glaucon.
“So take it that we won’t be listening and act accordingly.”26
(328) “What?27 You don’t know there’s going to be a horseback torch race for the goddess?” Adeimantus asks, interrupting Polemarchus’s tough treatment and turning to persuasion instead, not Socrates persuading them that he ought to leave but they, first Adeimantus and then Polemarchus, persuading him that he might want to stay. The torch race will be a novelty28 and besides29 Polemarchus chimes in, a vigil worth taking in,30 and a dinner before it, where there will be a lot of young people and dialogue.
“So stay and don’t do otherwise,” Polemarchus concludes.31
“Stay it seems we must,” says Glaucon.32
But if that's what seems best, that's what we ought to do, Socrates tells us he said, ending the repartee by acquiescing in the persuasion.
The banter is urbane on the surface but even so it begs the question, Why play at threats? The request for Socrates’s presence is always attended by such anxiety and nervousness, whether his old friend Crito is wakening him at the beginning of the Crito or his young friend Hippocrates at the beginning of the Protagoras. Agathon likewise frets while he waits for Socrates to arrive at his Symposium but tries to hide it. In the most general terms the reason is that Socrates is going to be serious and they want to be also, but they are uncertain they can be and are afraid what it might do to them. A person is eager that his better self be acknowledged and engaged, but would rather have it taken for granted than have to reveal it for what it is. Younger people have an easier time being candid and forthright,33 a large theme in the proem to the Theaetetus, where we see that an older person like Theodorus has more face to lose than a younger one, even though at the same time he, like Cephalus whom we are about to meet, can afford to postpone things the least!
1.A: Arrival and Conversation with Cephalus
They proceed to Polemarchus’s home, where they find his brothers Lysias and Euthydemus, and Thrasymachus the Chalcedonian,34 Charmantides of Paiania, and Cleitophon the son of Aristonymus. Cephalus too was home but by himself, “within.”35 Socrates was struck how very old he seemed, but after all he had not in fact laid eyes on him for some time.36 There he was, sitting on a padded couch, just finished conducting a sacrifice and still wearing his chaplet. The couch was flanked by chairs set in semicircles, and so the company sat down with him.37
As soon as Cephalus sees Socrates he both greets him with a hug and scolds him. “Can’t you ever make it down here, sometimes?38 You really ought to.” Again Socrates starts in the red. “If it were still convenient39 for me to come to you I would, but old age has its ravages and so you should make your way down40 to the Piraeus instead.” Although his bodily desires wane, his desire for talk only waxes. “Besides, I have41 these young men around here.42 So, in all,43 don’t be such a stranger. Visit us as you would visit your friends and even your very family.”44
Socrates politely objects45 that he does take delight from conversation with the very old as well. He would like to hear his elders report46 back what he himself may face in his own old age, and know whether the way of life becomes steep and harsh or easy and broad.47 Cephalus obliges him with an elaborate response that occupies thirty lines and begins with a preamble.
(329)His own outlook on the matter is as follows.48 “Just as birds of a feather flock together, I often gather with my contemporaries. The most of us—they, really—turn it into a griping session,49 with yearning reminiscences50 of the youthful pleasures of sex and drink and feasting.51 They chafe at having been deprived of ‘Oh! such very great goods! Before they had a good life; now they have no life at all.’52 Some of them are even53 so pained54 when their kinsmen55 ridicule them for being such old farts that they’ll launch into a litany of the many evils that old age brought on. If you ask me, I think they’re not blaming what’s really to blame. If old age were the cause I myself would have undergone the same troubles, just by dint of my old age, and so would everybody who has reached this age. The truth is otherwise. Besides my own case, I’ve found others who don’t act like them: Sophocles the poet no less.56 I was standing beside when somebody confronted him with the question, 'Hey, Sophocles, how’s your sex life? Can you still make it57 with a woman?' And he replied, 'Mind your tongue! You can be sure that I’ve escaped enslavement to that mad and violent master.'58 I thought then that the great man had a point and I think so no less now.59 It’s utterly true that age brings on great tranquillity and a freedom60 from these61 kinds of things for sure. Whenever the desires cease to have a grip on us and slacken it’s utterly true that the thing Sophocles refers to happens: one can have62 respite and release from masters many and mad.63 What determines whether this will happen and determines moreover how to respond to the ridicule of one’s kinsmen, is not the age of a man but his character. If a man is balanced and easygoing his old age is only moderately burdensome. If not, both his old age and his youth treat him harshly.”64
As opposed to Cephalus’s friends who lose their composure when confronted by their mudslinging kinsmen, a person with the character of Sophocles keeps his wits about him and slings the mud back, saying, “You’re the one who’s still the slave to pleasure, young man.” The victory consists in the fact that he maintains his composure in his reply.65 Cephalus infers from Sophocles’s example that one's character is responsible for how things go, both with respect to the ravages of aging and the way one handles his troublesome juniors for that matter.66 The character in question he describes with the approbatory but rather vague terms κόσμιος and εὔκολος. Of these the latter seems to have been a byword for describing Sophocles,67 but the salient fact about the two terms is that they describe a manner and disposition exactly opposite to the behavior he has just been criticizing in his contemporaries.68 Cephalus’s message is that they should act like Sophocles rather than acting as they do. He wants us to infer that although one’s character will not retard the advance of old age it makes old age less unpalatable, but his most important point is to turn the tables on his kinsmen, and this is what he means by saying that character helps against mudslinging. In short, the “character” in question is an imperturbable smoothness which might, and probably will, be mistaken for moral competence.
Socrates is amused by Cephalus’s speech and decides to egg him on (329D7-E5). Most people would not accept his claim of moral superiority but would attribute the ease he shows at being old to his wealth. The rich, after all, have “many consolations.”
“Right you are,” Cephalus retorts, “—that they won’t accept it, that is.69 What’s more there’s some truth in what they say, but not as much as they imagine. Just70 think of that great reply Themistocles made to the Seriphian71 who said he was famous only because he was an Athenian: ‘As a Seriphian I’d be unknown; as an Athenian you’d be.’ (330) Just so,72 the same argument can well be used in response to73 those who have no wealth and bear their old age ill, that a good74 man who is poor (like them) might not indeed have an easy time when he gets old; but if a man is a bad man he will never achieve equanimity, whether he is rich or poor.”75
The nature of Cephalus’s argument here is the same as the previous in all relevant details. In structure, a derisive or challenging remark is met not by refuting the charge, but by a counterchallenge that appears to turn the tables on the accuser, using his own terms in a retort against him. Sophocles had responded to a derisive remark about his physical prowess by impugning the moral health of his accuser without warrant. He did not seek to refute the charge. Themistocles had responded to an attempt to deflate his reputation for virtue by asserting without evidence that his opponent had no virtue to inflate, again leaving the charge unanswered. Finally, Cephalus responds to the allegation that it is wealth not virtue that makes him happy, by the flat assertion that regardless which thing makes him happy his envious opponent possesses neither. In each case the underlying charge is left intact and the counter charge is made without warrant. Truth is the one thing that doesn’t matter on either side. Had it been Aeschylus that made the remark to Sophocles, had Pericles said this to Themistocles, had Socrates said this to Cephalus (which in fact he did, though indirectly), the technique could not have been deployed. It relies on being accosted by a presumptive inferior, and in each deployment of the tactic the presumptive superior simply retains his presumptive superiority and the presumptive inferior fails to get a foothold.
This is the world of mudslinging, of the pot that calls the kettle black and the presumptive superior who has putatively forgotten more than the presumptive inferior will ever learn. It is the world of getting the last word. Ultimately, it is the world of self-satisfaction perpetuated, and this is what is appropriate about putting this way of speaking into the mouth of the old man, who will be given the last word by his juniors, and will be taken away once he has uttered it anyway.
Rhetorically, such arguments as these are designed for the onlookers. A presumptive superior has been impugned in their eyes, and it is in their eyes that his superiority must be restored. He restores it by making his opponent look worse than he himself has been made to look. Sophocles makes his opponent look worse by calling into question his morals rather than his bodily strength; Themistocles may have less virtue than he is presumed to have, but his opponent has none. When we pass to Cephalus, however, we might recognize he is no Themistocles! There is no presumptive superiority in him except for his wealth and his superior age. He is neither statesman nor poet. He is not even an Athenian. That he should arrogate to himself even the style of the Sophoclean and Themistoclean defense is something of a reach. The only superiority he can defend himself for enjoying is his wealth. Wealth is after all a good, a member of the third of three traditional categories of good: the goods of the soul (e.g., wisdom), the goods of the body (e.g., strength) and the external goods (e.g., wealth).76 We’ve had all three in this passage, with Sophocles trumping a criticism of his own bodily state with a criticism of his opponent’s moral state, and Themistocles trumping the claim that his external fame overdraws his internal virtue by asserting that his opponent has neither fame nor any basis of for it. Now we have Cephalus, who fends off the claim that wealth is the only basis for his happiness by stipulating wealth can contribute to happiness, but insisting that wealth can’t make a bad person happy. He acquits himself in argument by returning attack with counterattack.
So much is tangled together in Cephalus’s skillful presentation!
Although Socrates allows Cephalus to dispose of the objector in this clever way without a comeback of his own, he does stay on the topic of his wealth and asks whether he inherited most of it or made most of it. Cephalus affects surprise77 at the very concept of being thought a noteworthy businessman and responds by placing himself in the middle as it were78 between Cephalus, his grandfather and namesake, and his father, Lysanias. The former inherited about what Cephalus now has and multiplied it many times; the latter turned all that into something less than Cephalus’s present fortune.79 Cephalus would be satisfied80 to play a role somewhere in between these: to leave to his sons about as much as he inherited – no less than he got, and perhaps a little more.
Socrates explains why he asked his question. Although rich, Cephalus seems not so concerned about money, like those rich persons81 who didn’t earn their money themselves. Those who did always enjoy it twice as much as the others do. First,82 they’re serious83 about money the way a poet cares about his poems84 or a father cares about his sons, seeing it as product of their own efforts—in addition to the enjoyment that everybody takes from using85 it to buy things. It’s bothersome even to bump into86 these sorts since all they want to talk about is money.
Cephalus agrees and Socrates re-agrees,87 so that the conversation comes to a rest for a moment. But money comes up again: Socrates asks him to tell him a little more88 on this topic. “When all is said and done89 what would you say is the greatest good of having a lot of money?”
This question unleashes as long an answer as his first question did.90 Again Cephalus begins by contrasting his own outlook with that of others, but this time the tone is rueful rather than proud. “Let me tell you, Socrates, when a man gets nearer to thinking91 he’s going to die he’s visited by a fear and concern about things that never bothered him before. At first92 there were those well known stories about what awaits us in Hades, how we pay the penalty there for our injustices here. The stories had always seemed so ridiculous, but now they torture93 his soul: Are they true after all? The result is that a person, whether from the weakness of old age or because now that he’s nearer death he has caught a glimpse of what’s to come—be that as it may--94 the person finds himself95 beset with uncertainty and fear,96 and from that moment on he is always going over his accounts and figuring out whether he has indeed done anybody an injustice. A man who thereupon discovers lurking in himself many such acts that he has done97 bolts up from his sleep, as children do, sweating in fear, and passes his conscious98 life with hope forlorn as his constant companion.99 But a man who has (331) a clear conscience has the company of a hope that is pleasant and good, a “nurse for the aged,” as100 Pindar says when speaking of a man who has lived his life justly and piously:101
“Sweet to him she invigorates his heart, the elder’s nurse and companion, Hope, whom mortals rely on most to steer them through the twists and turns of second thoughts.”
Cephalus finds these words very powerful indeed; and we can see he understands them since they repeat what he said before he quoted them, and what he said there was so clearly sincere and heartfelt. Accordingly,102 he would say that money has its greatest worth in connection with this Hope, not for any and every man but for the good one.103 To avoid having defrauded104 a person, even under duress,105 and to avoid106 going off to Hades in fear because you still107 owe a sacrifice to a god or some money to a man,108 in this connection money can be a very important player.109 It has many other good uses, but this one is the most useful of all, at least for a man who has his wits about him.”110
Socrates is pleased overall111 with Cephalus’s account but wants to ask him a question about one thing,112 his reference to justice:113 Can we say so flatly that justice is truthfulness and returning whatever one might have gotten from another, or are these two acts taken in themselves114 sometimes just but sometimes unjust?115 Here’s what I116 mean. Anybody would agree that if one took custody of a weapon from a friend,117 the friend being of sound mind, but then the friend asserted his claim118 to get it back in a crazed mood,119 one really oughtn’t give the thing back under these circumstances, and whoever did would not be a just man, nor120 would he be just for telling the whole truth121 to his friend in such a mood.
Since Cephalus agrees, Socrates can conclude that telling the truth and giving things back can’t be the criterion122 of justice. “No but it IS,” Polemarchus interrupts, “if one is to believe Simonides.” Of course one should believe him, since Simonides is one of the wise poets, and so Polemarchus’s interruption draws our attention away from Cephalus, while Cephalus for his part exploits the opportunity to leave! He announces his departure by bequeathing123 the argument to Socrates and Polemarchus.124 The time has come125 for him to attend to his sacred dealings.126
“But isn’t it to me you bequeath it, being as I am the heir of all else127 that is yours?” Polemarchus interjects wittily.
“Quite!” says Cephalus, laughing, but still he does not tarry.128
1.B: The Close and Extended Epagogé with Polemarchus
Despite the departure of the host the conversation does not end, but continues with a replacement player.129 Socrates turns to the inheritor of the logos and asks him just what he thought was right about what Simonides said about justice.
“It was that giving to each person what is owed him is just.”130
Well, says Socrates, it’s hard to distrust a saying of Simonides, wise and inspired man that he is, and yet it’s even harder131 for me to make out what he means by this, though perhaps you can. Surely he does not mean this thing we just said, that when somebody has placed something into your custody, you should somehow or other132 honor his (332) claim to give it back to him if133 he makes his claim in a crazed state of mind. Yet I presume you’d agree the thing is owed134 to him, the thing he placed into your custody.
“So much is true.”
And yet one was not at all supposed to return it, at the moment when its owner asked for it back in a frenzy?135
“That’s true, one was not.”
So it’s something else that Simonides appears to have meant by saying that it is just to give back ‘what’s owed.’136
“Quite else indeed, since what he thinks friends ‘owe’ to friends is to do them a good turn, surely not137 a bad one!”
Socrates next specifies what138 Polemarchus has now asserted to be Simonides’s meaning. It is not “what is owing” that one gives back if one gives back gold139 to the person who has placed it in his custody, under the special140 circumstances that the giving back or receiving is harmful and that the giver and the receiver are friends. This raises whether we must “give back” to enemies something that is “owing” to them. Socrates retains the terminology even though on the face of it it doesn’t apply, and Polemarchus responds to the strain by repeating the language of owing141 only in order to change it to the language of appropriateness (τὸ προσῆκον). What is owed after all to an enemy from an enemy is, presumably, what is also appropriate: something bad.
As poets often do, the wise Simonides has told us a riddle about justice, Socrates feigns suddenly to realize.142 What he was meaning143 now appears to be that rendering the appropriate thing to each person144 is just, though he used the word “owing” for this.
“What do you think?” Polemarchus churlishly rejoins.145
With the introduction of Simonides several things have happened: Cephalus gets an opportunity to hand over the role of answerer and return to his dealings with the gods;146 the authority of an elder interlocutor which had made Socrates’s acquiescence in a “πυνθάνεσθαι” (informational) conversation appropriate is now passed on to the authority of the wisdom poet Simonides but since Simonides is not present his position must be represented by Polemarchus, with whom Socrates can talk as an equal. As such it is really Polemarchus who becomes the answerer, so that saying what Simonides the wise meant becomes tantamount to saying why he himself was moved to quote him in the first place. Polemarchus prefers to continue this fiction even when what he had represented as Simonides’s position needs to be saved with “clarifications” (332B4). Socrates takes his statement on face value and accuses Simonides of riddling, so that Polemarchus is forced into the position of saying to Socrates, essentially, “Why isn’t it clear to you that he is speaking unclearly?” (332C4). In response to this playful challenge Socrates goes onto the attack, retaining the conceit that it is Simonides who must answer for the implications of the position Polemarchus has lately adopted.
Here begins an exercise of persistent questioning that will continue until 335D13, with a breathing pause at 334A11-B7. The questions and their answers stand in sharp contrast with the conversation we have just witnessed between Socrates and Cephalus, which also consisted of questions by Socrates and answers by his interlocutor. There, the answers were long and complicated and went far beyond the questions, which Cephalus had treated as taking-off points. After all, Socrates had invited Cephalus to “report” to him.147 That kind of conversation reveals much about the answerer but helps the two of them learn little together. Here by contrast the questions are pointed and the answers are brief and pertinent. The give and the take fit each other tightly, and the logical movement of the thought is gradual and explicit, down to the smallest details in the Greek expression. I wish to bring out the details of this movement and show the contours of the thought by a careful consideration of its expression, since I feel that in this case the method is at least as important as its results.
The question with which Socrates initiates this new question-and-answer procedure—the question he would put to Simonides through Polemarchus—is striking: “By virtue of rendering what due and proper thing to whom is a certain craft called medicine?”148 It is a double question and the interrogative pronouns are located in severely subordinate syntactical positions. The formulation of a question—especially in the uninflected languages—usually starts with the interrogative pronoun or adjective, and what is being asked is asked prominently, i.e., early and within the main construction. Here we have a double interrogative pronoun (doubling indicated by their proximity to each other) that is not the subject but the complement of a verb and the verb is not the main verb but a participle. The participle moreover is sandwiched between article and noun in the attributive position. Indeed the interrogative particles hold the most subordinate rank available in the sentence. It is noteworthy that Polemarchus nevertheless has no difficulty understanding Socrates’s question.149
The interrogative pronouns are placed in subordinate positions in order to give something else the ordinate or controlling role, something we might call at a first pass the “form” of the question. The form introduced by Socrates is like a matrix or a chart with three columns: the art, the thing it provides, and the thing to which it provides that thing, according to the proprieties150 of the art. Socrates does not talk about such a chart, nor does he articulate its headings and distinguish columns from rows as it were, but he asks a question whose syntax requires his interlocutor’s mind to create a chart within itself. The question can be answered without Socrates articulating the headings in general terms, exactly because it is a specific question, a question about a specific thing. The case, that is, instantiates the general idea. This use of a case as a springboard to a general idea has given to the exercise of persistent questioning that Socrates has here initiated the name, “induction” (ἐπαγωγή). Polemarchus answers, “The one that renders drugs and a diet to bodies.”
In his second question, once Polemarchus has answered the first, Socrates uses exactly the same syntactical structure and word order. “By virtue of rendering what due and proper thing to what is a certain craft called cooking?” Having then given two questions whose parallelism obviates any need for articulating such headings, and Polemarchus having answered the second (“The one that gives flavoring to food”),151 Socrates can ask a third question, which is the target question,152 the filling-in of the question-form that is relevant to the topic of conversation, namely the proprieties of an “art” of justice. That is, he does not have to generalize with a statement like, “Apparently each art (Item A) renders an appropriate something (Item B) to something (Item C).” The result of the first two questions is that Polemarchus has no trouble knowing where to look for the answer to the target question,153 even though he may not have such an easy time finding the thing.
With the target question we have completed something since we have reached a result, namely an answer to the question that underlay the sequence and that was the purpose of the whole sequence to answer. We may again use our word “induction” (ἐπαγωγή) for this process.
A second induction now begins, again without warning. The only indication it has begun is that Socrates has asked a question. This time the question places the thing asked in a position that is prominent syntactically as well as in the word order (“Who is most able to help sick friends and harm enemies with respect to their disease and health?”). The new “form” adopts elements from the definiens of justice, namely, helping friends and harming enemies (τὸ τοὺς φίλους εὖ ποιεῖν καὶ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς κακῶς [332D7]) and adds new variables: the state that the friend or enemy is in (here κάμνοντας) and the state or goal that the help or harm will bring about (done with πρός – πρὸς νόσον καὶ ὑγιείαν). We may imagine that Socrates has omitted, and that we are to supply, ὑγιαίνοντας with ἑχθρούς, as the state opposite to the state of the opposite parties, the friends. It is noteworthy that he forgoes the vividness he could have gotten by making explicit that the doctor will make sick friends healthy and healthy enemies sick.
Re-use of the example154 of the doctor makes it especially easy for Polemarchus to answer the question, and he reveals this ease by answering with just the one word, “doctor.” This first question answered, Socrates can ask the second, which we may already anticipate will match the first in its form or matrix: “Who is most able to help people going by boat with respect to the dangers of the sea?” The very fact of our anticipation however allows Socrates some freedom155 to compress the espression: τίς δὲ πλέοντας πρὸς τὸν τῆς θαλάττης κίνδυνον (332E1). The only elements in the question are the interrogative pronoun itself and the “variables:” πλέοντας replaces κάμνοντας and (πρὸς) τὸν τῆς θαλάττης κίνδυνον replaces (πρὸς) νόσον καὶ ὑγιείαν. Moreover just as the previous question was abbreviated by leaving out ὑγιαίνοντας, here the pair of outcomes (disease and health) are abbreviated by the term κίνδυνον, representing both ruin and safety on the seas by means of itself designating the whole range of vicissitude.
Again Polemarchus is able to answer with a single word, “pilot,” so that Socrates can ask his third question, which opens with an interrogative, but a neuter interrogative pronoun rather than a masculine nominative: τί δὲ ὁ δίκαιος; What about the just man? (E3). What had been the “unknown” – namely the identity of the person who moves friends and enemies from one state to the other -- is now the “given,” and the unknown is, What is the result that the person with this identity brings about? The move to the target includes a sort of commutation consisting of holding a different variable fixed and deriving the other from it. In asking the question for the result that corresponds to the just man Socrates has occasion to articulate the heading of the variable, namely, ἐν τίνι πράξει καὶ πρὸς τί ἔργον, and to spell out the fixed contents of the form that he had left out in the two example-questions, namely, φίλους ὠφελεῖν καὶ ἐχθροὺς βλάπτειν. The two parts of the heading ἐν τίνι πράξει καὶ πρὸς τί ἔργον correspond respectively with κάμνοντας (and understood ὑγιαίνοντας) / πλέοντας, on the one hand, and πρὸς νόσον καὶ ὑγιείαν / πρὸς τὸν τῆς θαλάττης κίνδυνον, on the other.
Polemarchus has no difficulty understanding the question but answers it with a hint of diffidence.156 His answer reverses the order of the question by telling what activity the just man is most capable of bringing about against the enemy (i.e., προσπολεμεῖν) before telling what activity he is most capable of bringing about for the benefit of the friend (i.e., συμμάχειν).157
Socrates marks a transition with εἶεν, and asks a follow-up version of the two example questions, with a third induction. If the friend and enemy aren’t sick (κάμνουσι from κάμνοντας above) is the doctor of no use? If the friend and enemy aren’t sailing have we no use for the pilot? And so158 if people aren’t at war159 does the just man become useless?160
Polemarchus cannot still161 say Yes. Since the function of the just man had been articulated in the contrast between his treatment of friends and enemies he will naturally be thought of as participating in the tension between friends and enemies as a helper to the former and an enemy of the latter. Hence, Polemarchus overdrew the activity of the just man as being helpful in war, but this leaves the just man “useless” in peace, which is doubly repugnant. Not only do vital questions of justice and injustice arise in peacetime; it is also repugnant to think of the just man as being “worthless” rather than “worthy” at any time.162
Socrates next infers163 from Polemarchus’s response that he is willing to grant him the opposite, that the just (333) man is a useful and worthwhile person in peacetime. But164 there are other peacetime activities, such as farming; and this activity, like medicine and like piloting a ship, has its own outcome, its own goal that it brings about, in this case the acquisition of food.165 Shoemaking too is useful in peacetime, for the goal of acquiring shoes. What then about justice, our target166 case? To acquire what, or to fulfill what need (χρεία, from ἄχρηστος, E7), is justice useful during peacetime?
Polemarchus thinks of business deals where parties with adverse interests come to an agreement (πρὸς τὰ συμβόλαια, A12).167 Socrates responds with a new kind of question, presuming to suggest168 a clarification about what Polemarchus has said: the just man will be useful (in dealing with friends and enemies) not in the role of the person one makes a deal with but as a person helping one to make the deal with someone else.169 Polemarchus accepts the corrective clarification as fully justified,170 enabling Socrates to begin a new sequence of questions.
The new question-form is recognizably a modification of the one we had above,171 but Socrates’s choice of playing draughts as his initial example of the general principle is striking both in its content and in its diction: ἆρ’ οὖν ὁ δίκαιος ἀγαθὸς καὶ χρήσιμος κοινωνὸς εἰς πεττῶν θέσιν. To ask about turning to a “good and just” friend172 for help playing draughts would in itself be almost a ridiculous question except that within the question Socrates suggests the answer is No, since the draughts-master would obviously173 be the proper κοινωνός. Just as obviously the expected answer is, for the first time in this dialectical exercise, “No,” though in a sense No here means Yes. The exemplary content, draughts, is inappropriate and unexpected, exactly in order to make the answer immediately clear.174 What is moreover striking in the diction of the question is the periphrastic formulation of playing draughts, namely, πεττῶν θέσις (“draught placement”). We speak of playing chess rather than of placing the chessmen. So that in addition to our having to make an adjustment to answer No instead of Yes, we have to field a curiously playful expression of the “goal” to be achieved with the help of the κοινωνός. Since the answer to the entire question is nevertheless obvious, we can make an answer, and we do: Polemarchus says, unhesitatingly, ὁ πεττευτικός (B3).
In the next example-question175 we again have a combination of repetition and variation: “Is the just man a more useful and better helper for the placement of bricks and stones (!) than the house builder?”176 The repetition of “placement” (θέσις) suggests a stability in the question-form and also its use with placing bricks is less strange than its use with draughts, but as soon as we feel re-assured that the question-form has calmed down we realize that θέσις, the term that has conferred stability onto the question-form, has been used equivocally. In the first question we had to countenance a strangeness of expression (πεττῶν θέσις) and here we are served up a little joke because of the equivocation.177 In both cases it is semantic freedom that is at work, a freedom made possible by the presence of ideas shared between the interlocutors, behind and despite the words they are using for them.
The next question, as we might expect from its being third, is the target question: ἀλλ’ εἰς τίνα δὴ κοινωνίαν ὁ δίκαιος ἀμείνων κοινωνὸς τοῦ οἰκοδόμικοῦ τε καὶ κιθαριστικοῦ, ὥσπερ ὁ κιθαριστικὸς τοῦ δικαίου εἰς κρουμάτων. Again because the question before it expected a negative, it is introduced by ἀλλά. That it is the target question is confirmed by δή. But instead of repeating the notion of help “toward” (εἰς) the θέσις of something, he begins the statement with the question εἰς τίνα κοινωνίαν. If the just man is not the helpmate for draughts, then for what joint effort is he the helpmate? And as the question unfurls it reveals, as if hidden in its folds, another case that comes into play at the last minute: the cithera player and his θέσις (understood with εἰς κρουμάτων) of musical notes.178
The principle that governs this flow of variations, repetitions and surprises is pedagogical pacing. All teachers go slowly to make sure the student catches on, but once he has caught on the teacher shifts into a higher gear and goes somewhere more quickly. Inserting a last illustrative example even after the target case has been articulated can be the teacher’s way of showing the student that the teacher knows that the student already understands and that he knows it too, or a way of calling back into question the student’s belief that he has come to a resting point. Done too early this move will leave the student in the dust; well timed it will bring him right alongside but still alert.
Polemarchus is indeed keeping up, as the brevity of his answer reveals: εἰς ἀργυρίου. With εἰς, the accusative we have to supply is not the κοινωνίαν that went with εἰς at the beginning of the question, but θέσιν, which we just supplied with the more proximate εἰς κρουμάτων. Among experts who are good helpmates in the “placement” of the various objects with which they severally deal, the just man will be the best helpmate here, in the “placement of silver.” In the previous questions θέσις had indeed been used obtrusively and even equivocally, and so it is used this time. Polemarchus is not talking about which square to place the silver on, nor where to place each piece of silver so as to make a house, nor even the placement of a silver re between a silver do and a silver mi. He is talking about depositing the silver—i.e., placing it simpliciter.179
A result has been reached and an epagoge completed, but Socrates immediately starts another one based on this result, and immediately reveals180 that he means to challenge the conclusion: “Except perhaps not for using silver,181 when one needs help182 to buy or to sell183 a horse. Then it’s the horse expert (sc. who would be a better κοινωνός).”184
Polemarchus’s answer is lukewarm: “So it seems.” Perhaps he is tiring of the attempt to make sense of Simonides’s position. When Socrates continues with “And again185 whenever you need a boat, is it the shipbuilder or the pilot?”186 he answers similarly: “Looks like it.” Unconcerned, Socrates moves on to the target question,187 “When one needs help to use silver or gold to do what, is the just man more useful than the others?” In his formulation of the target question Socrates is careful to replace the comparative “better” with the comparative “more useful,” not only to highlight the connection between the usefulness of the κοινωνός and that of the money, but also because this is the original and exactly pertinent version of the question-form.188 The last minute addition of gold189 to Polemarchus’s silver might just be a suggestion to him that, yes, he must concede that we are back where we began. In any event Polemarchus does concede just this, by answering, “Whenever one needs help depositing it and keeping it safe,” using in his answer the very term with which the whole dilemma began ([παρα]καταθέσθαι).190
The logos, we may now begin to feel, will proceed deliberately to its completion. The time in which we take a stab at saying something in conversation is a different kind of time from the time in which the logos comes to be understood fully or “critically”—as I hope my extensive exegesis of the present page shows.
Inexorably Socrates does continue the questions. To deposit the thing and keep it safe means it’s unneeded. Thus, it is only when191 silver is unneeded (i.e., useless!) that justice becomes useful. Polemarchus accepts the former more readily than the latter192 since the latter comes nearer the absurdity he has been trying to avoid, that justice is useless. Socrates continues with a question that presents itself as parallel.193 When it’s necessary to guard a scythe, then justice is useful, whether one is guarding it for oneself or for another;194 but when it’s necessary to use it, then gardening is the art that is useful. Polemarchus agrees with less enthusiasm195 and Socrates asks whether he will agree196 that when similarly one needs to guard the shield and the lyre197 rather than put them to use,198 then use there will be for justice, but when he needs to use them it will be the hoplite’s art and the musician’s art that will be useful. Polemarchus agrees,199 and Socrates is able to generalize with a paradox: Justice is useless when something is useful and useful when something is useless.
As such justice would seem not to be a very serious thing,200 but Socrates proposes a new tack of questions.201 The man most able to attack in battle, whether it in a boxing match or whatever,202 is also most able to (334) defend; and a man able to defend against and elude203 disease is most able to bring it on. When it comes to an army the man that is good at guarding it is the same as the one that is good at stealing the enemy’s plans and other maneuvers.204 Thus in general whatever someone is good at guarding he is good at stealing, and our just man, who is by definition a guard of silver, has turned out205 to be a silver thief!206 The apparent absurdity of the conclusion is then continued in the inference Socrates draws from it,207 that Polemarchus learned this position not from Simonides like the last one but from Homer himself, who praised Odysseus’s maternal grandfather, Autolycus, for excelling all men 'in stealth and trust.'208 “To sum it all up you and Homer and Simonides all see justice as a kind of stealthiness, as long as it works for the benefit of friends and the harm of enemies. Is this not what you were arguing?” Socrates asks him.
Polemarchus cries uncle in response to all this playful banter. “I no longer know what I was trying to say! But this last part of it that you just said209 I do still believe, that justice helps friends and harms enemies.” For what it is worth, he has dropped his dependency on Simonides and now will present and defend what is his own belief.
Socrates asks, Would you argue210 that friends are those a given person feels to be worthy or those that really are worthy despite what the person feels, and enemies likewise? Instead of making an argument Polemarchus makes an observation: “It would seem that a person likes people that he believes211 to be worthwhile and despises those he believes to be wicked.”212 Recognizing the empiricism Socrates asks whether men in fact err in their judgment of peoples’ worth, in which case they might often feel somebody is worthwhile who isn’t and vice-versa. Polemarchus agreeing then makes it possible for Socrates to infer that for people so disposed, good men would be counted enemies and bad ones friends: would it be just for these people then to help the wicked213 ones and harm the good? From their point of view, yes;214 but in truth, the good ones by virtue of being good215 are also just and as such216 not the kind of people who do injustice. Polemarchus agrees to this as being independently true,217 so that Socrates can draw the conclusion that according to the position Polemarchus has taken,218 to treat people badly who do no219 injustice, is just.220
Polemarchus vehemently221 denies this on the grounds that it is a “wicked” conclusion,222 but instead of stopping to remark on his joke Socrates exploits his vehemence to secure his hasty223 agreement to the converse proposition, that it is the unjust224 whom it is just to harm and the just it is just to help. To this Polemarchus agrees, again on the basis of his reaction to the idea than on the merits of the argument per se,225 which allows Socrates hastily226 to draw an alternate inference that for all those people we mentioned above that misestimate people, it will turn out to be just for them to harm their friends, who in themselves227 are wicked, and to help their enemies on the belief they are good—the very opposite of the position Simonides inspired us to adopt at the beginning.228
Polemarchus fully agrees that this follows and so he suggests that they alter their position,229 and in particular the position that seeming worthwhile or wicked was sufficient to qualify a person to be posited230 a friend or an enemy—a position that he had chosen exactly because he thought it was not a position but an observation. This time, in order to avoid contradiction, he crafts his position more conscientiously: A person IS a friend if he both seems and is worthwhile; (335) he IS an enemy if he both seems not to be and is not worthwhile. Somebody who seems worthwhile but isn’t is only a seeming friend and somebody who seems not worthwhile but is, is a seeming enemy.231 A friend comes to be a person that I ought to like whether I do or not, and ceases to be a person I do like unless I know he is worthwhile, which is unlikely. Socrates recognizes that the purpose of this emendation is to ensure that the good man will be a friend and the wicked man an enemy (forefending against the eventuality of 334D12-E3), and Polemarchus agrees. The suggestion therefore entails that the original thesis must be supplemented.232 Justice is not just doing good233 to my friend and evil to my enemy, but doing good to my friend because234 he is a good person, and harming235 my enemy because he is bad.
Socrates then asks,236 “So there is a time then when it is the mark of a just person to harm anybody, after all?”237 The question imputes the completely new idea that perhaps the just man never harms anyone, and Polemarchus responds with a little impatience238 that “Yes of course there is: he must harm those who are wicked and therefore239 enemies.” Having secured his asseveration Socrates begins to ask him about harm. When it’s horses that undergo harm, do they become better or worse? And better or worse in terms of the virtue of dogs or of horses?240 Likewise when dogs undergo harm they become worse in terms of the virtue of dogs rather than that of horses—so much is true by definition.241 And so when it comes to men we must agree that if harmed they become worse in the human virtue. But the virtue that pertains to man is not the ability to run or hunt, but is being just, so that any man that is harmed becomes more unjust. “So it seems,” Polemarchus allows.
Next, musicians are unable to make people unmusical with their art; nor can horsemen by means of theirs make people unhorsemanlike; and yet242 are we to believe that the just can use justice to make men unjust—or for that matter that virtue as a whole243 can be used by the good to make men bad? No more than we are to believe that the work of heat is to make things cold rather than that that is the work of its opposite, nor of the dry to make things wet rather than of its opposite,244 nor finally245 that the work of the good man is to do harm rather than being that of his opposite. So that if the just man is good246 it is not his work to harm anyone, neither his friend247 nor anyone else, but rather this is the work of his opposite, the unjust man.
Socrates completes the argument by going back to the beginning. If someone tells us that rendering to each his due is just,248 but means249 by this that to enemies what is due is harm from a just man and help is due to friends,250 we now know this man was251 not wise for saying this, since in fact it is not true.252 We have now seen that it is never just to harm anybody. And you and I, Polemarchus, will join hands as partners in battle253 in case someone alleges that Simonides or Bias or Pittacus, or any of the wise and inspired254 greats, ever said so. Polemarchus notices and returns Socrates’s offer of partnership,255 so that Socrates has now enough fellow feeling to confide his own opinion: he would (336) expect such a saying from the mouth256 of Periander or Perdiccus or Xerxes or Ismenius the Theban, or for that matter a rich man who fancies he has a lot of power.257
1.C: Thrasymachus Intervenes
Polemarchus having given his complete258 agreement, Socrates marks a pause in the conversation, and asks what else someone might say justice is.259 The emphasis is on what else, not who else, but it is finally at this point that a certain somebody else gets to put his word in. Thrasymachus has been trying to get control of the conversation several times260 but those sitting beside him had continually restrained him because they wanted hear the discussion through.261 We are given to infer that the very form of the conversation was invalid to him, or was not as important as what he had to say, or both; but these attitudes do not explain his urgency. We are given a direct sense of that in his outburst.262
He crouched like an beast and sprang out at us; Polemarchus and I shook263 to the bones with fear. He blurted out, to nobody in particular,264 “How can two people be so full of it, and full of it for so long?265 What’s with this naive game of pussyfoot you are playing with each other? If you really want to know what justice is, don’t just ask questions and then fix it so that you can make yourself look good by refuting the answers, knowing all along it’s easier to play questioner than answerer. Instead, step up to the plate and say what you think it is.266 And spare me267 from the answer that it is ‘the binding,’ or that it is ‘the helpful,’ or that it is ‘the profitable,’ or that it is ‘the lucrative,’ or that it is ‘the advantageous.’268 Instead be clear and careful in your formulation. You won’t be able to pass off smoke like that on me.”269
Socrates reverts to narration: I was bowled over by what he said and I watched him in fear. In fact I think if I hadn’t been looking at him first270 I would have been struck mute.271 As it happened I already had my eyes on him when he was beginning to get stirred up272 by our conversation, and so I was able to answer him, though my voice trembled some: Don’t be too harsh on us. If this fellow273 and I have erred in the way we have been talking please know it was unintentional. Surely, if it were gold we were searching for we wouldn’t “pussyfoot” with each other and thwart ourselves from finding it—at least not willingly. Since it’s justice we’ve set out to find, a thing more honorable274 than a lot of gold, how can you think we would be going about it275 by giving in to each other in this empty-headed way that you describe276 rather than using all zeal to make it appear?277 Our problem is, we aren’t able, and so we would much more properly receive mercy from a clever person like you than scorn.
Socrates’s response is almost exactly the same length as Thrasymachus’s assault, and surely as dense and well (337) contrived.278 It elicits a guffaw and a sardonic279 smile from Thrasymachus: “There you have it, that famous irony of Socrates!”280 He had warned the group before they sat down that Socrates would try this ploy: unwilling to answer, he would act dumb and do anything to avoid it if anybody asked him a question.281
Socrates offers a riposte: You knew because you are wise.282 You knew very well that if you asked somebody how much twelve was, but forbade283 him and said, “Don’t say that it’s twice six and don’t say that it’s thrice four and don’t say that it’s six two’s and don’t say that it’s four three’s, since I won’t accept such nonsense from you” 284—I’m sure it was clear to you (when you asked it) that nobody answers285 a person asking for information in this way. Instead, if he had said to you “Am I not to answer with these answers, even if they are in fact true? Are you commanding me to lie?” then what would you have said to him?
“This of course being the same as that,” Thrasymachus scoffs.286
It might just be, but even if it isn't, if it appears to be to the man that has been asked, isn’t this the answer he gives287 -- how it appears to him288 -- whether we forbid him to or not?
“So you’ll be doing this, giving as your answer one of the things that I have forbidden?” 289
I wouldn’t be surprised, if my thinking should lead me to do so.
“But what if I exhibit290 as an alternative291 an answer about justice better than all these? What penalty should you undergo?”292
I should undergo what is befitting. What befits a person who is ignorant is to learn from a man who knows. Just so, that’s the “penalty” I propose.293
Thrasymachus won’t quite let go of it. “Isn’t that sweet?294 In addition to learning, you must pay a fine in silver.”
Once I get some, you mean.
“Count it that you have it now,” Glaucon interposes, his first remark since the opening page of the dialogue, and then tells Thrasymachus if money is needed the entire group is ready to ante up for Socrates.295
“Of course—so that Socrates can pull off296 his usual stunt. When it’s his own turn he doesn’t answer, but once the next person does he joins the conversation as cross-examiner.”
The complaining won’t cease so Socrates addresses it directly. It is inconceivable that a person would answer if—let alone the fact that he is ignorant and makes no claim to knowing, but assume he fancies that he knows—if297 all the things he would feel comfortable about298 saying had been barred, and barred by a man of no mean stature.299 Given all this it would be more appropriate for you, Thrasymachus, to do the speaking. You in fact claim to know, and to be (338) able to articulate your knowledge in speech.300 So don’t do anything else:301 rather, do please me by playing answerer at the same time that you avoid begrudging to teach Glaucon here302 as well as the others.
This does the trick, as we immediately intuit when Socrates reverts to his narrative persona, the one that speaks directly to us. All the others, he tells us, urged Thrasymachus to “Do nothing else,” and it was plain to see that he was very desirous of telling, in order to come off well, since he was sure he had a killer answer.303 Nevertheless he made a show of wanting to vie304 over whether he or I should play answerer. In the end he gave in but not without having the last word:305 “There you have it, the wisdom306 of Socrates! When it’s his turn he’s unwilling to engage in teaching,307 and instead he roams about308 learning from others and not even giving them thanks309 in return.”
It is seldom that Socrates allows a flat lie to go unanswered, nor does he do so here. That he learns from people is very true; but that he does not “repay them with thanks”310 is a lie. He pays what he can, and what he can pay is praise. This he pays unstintingly, however, when in his judgment a man speaks well, as Thrasymachus will see once he gives his answer, for surely he’ll speak well.311
So much leaves Thrasymachus little to do but give his answer. “The just is nothing else than312 the advantage of the stronger.313 Where’s the praise, then? See? I told you314 you would be unwilling.”
It’s too soon to say, until I learn what you are saying. What does the formula mean? Certainly I’d be wrong to put the interpretation onto it that315 justice would be for us,316 the weaker, to eat the food that the helps a wrestler who is stronger than us to be strong.
“You are stupid317 to think this Socrates, and are just contriving to construe my statement in a way you might most easily damage it.”318
No, that’s not at all my intention—rather it is to get you to say more clearly319 what you mean. Socrates’s intentional misinterpretation forces Thrasymachus to explain and give a more discursive answer—though of course his one word answer is not vague or essentialist, as he found Socrates's to be, but sensationalist, as we shall see.
“I guess you are not aware, then,320 that cities321 adopt different political forms—some have tyranny imposed on them, some democracy and some aristocracy. In each case it is the ruling element or class322 that runs the place. But323 although they differ from one another these ruling elements all set down laws with a view to their own advantage, since a democracy makes democratic laws, a tyranny tyrannical, and an aristocracy aristocratic.324 In setting down such laws they have in essence declared to the people they rule that the just is what is advantageous to their own regime; and they punish those who step out of line as being lawbreakers and325 unjust. This is what I am pointing to, a common (339) element which can be found in any city you wish to name, namely the ongoing advantage of the established regime. Here you have what actually holds the power, so that any astute326 person will see the writing on the wall wherever he is, that justice is whatever the stronger command in their own interest.”
Now Socrates knows what he means; whether it is true he does not yet know. The position is that the just is “the advantageous”—one of the very answers he was barred from giving – though he must acknowledge there is something more, the supplement “of the stronger.”
“A small supplement perhaps?” 327
Socrates sees the double meaning and he answers it. It is not the size of the addend but whether it is true. That justice is in some sense advantageous Socrates for his part328 already agrees. It is Thrasymachus’s addition that he is not sure about and wants to investigate.329
“Investigate away!”
So I will: Tell me, would you also330 agree that obeying the rulers is just?
“Yes.”
Is the ruling group in all of its many types infallible, or are they able to make mistakes as well?
“It is entirely possible that they should make some mistakes,” Thrasymachus says, his vehemence giving Socrates cover to insert a reason this is true: In their attempt to set down laws, some they set down properly and some they don’t, where properly means they succeed in formulating331 laws that give them an advantage, and improperly if the formulation results in their disadvantage. And then, once they formulate their laws,332 the ruled are to follow them in their actions, their compliance constituting just behavior.
“Yes, of course.”
Well then it’s not only just according to your argument for them to act in the rulers’ advantage, but also the opposite, to their disadvantage.
“Now333 what are you are trying to say?”
Just what you334 are saying, it seems to me. But let’s try to analyze it. We have on the table335 the agreement that the ruling group, in commanding336 the ruled to act in a certain way, err from time to time in the formulation of what is best337 for themselves; but that once they make their command, being the rulers,338 justice consists in the ruled acting accordingly. Isn’t this what we have on the table?
“I do think so,” Thrasymachus says, almost without affect.
Well then think339 this, too, that you have granted that their doing what is disadvantageous to the rulers or your ‘strongers’340 is also just, whenever the one group, the rulers, unintentionally command them to do things bad for themselves, while for the other group you assert341 it is just to do what the former commanded. Does the situation not then necessarily come about, my most wise Thrasymachus, that it is just for them to do the opposite of what you have said to be just? For at that moment what is being commanded is that the weaker ones act to the disadvantage of the strong.
Unlike the argument about the wrestler’s diet this argument has a beginning, middle and end, and Thrasymachus has been participating in it step by step. The very moment the refutation is complete, Polemarchus cuts off our access to (340) Thrasymachus’s response by stepping in to agree with Socrates, just as he had blocked Cephalus from responding to Socrates just when Socrates had made trouble for Cephalus’s argument about paying back.342 In the former case, as soon as Polemarchus had risen in support of Cephalus’s position Cephalus took the opportunity to leave. The dramatic parallel leads us to reflect, and thereby to realize without anybody saying it, that there is no way Thrasymachus will make an exit before he proves to be stronger than everybody. To the extent that we are aware of this, we recognize that the conversation that now intervenes takes place in the ominous shadow of Thrasymachus’s mounting anger in response to what he himself believes in having been revealed for what it is, with all its self-contradictions.
Cleitophon chimes in to counter Polemarchus’s support of Socrates. He is speaking on behalf of Thrasymachus as we can tell not by his defense of the position but by his attempt to imitate Thrasymachus’s derisive and contrarian manner, saying, “As long as you are his witness,” (340A3) by which he identifies himself, by implication, as a witness on behalf of Thrasymachus and invites Polemarchus into a sub-squabble. Then Polemarchus takes up the derogatory language and uses it against Cleitophon, as Socrates had just done with Thrasymachus:343 “Who needs a witness when your man himself confesses that the ruling group on the one hand sometimes commands things bad for themselves, but that for the ruled on the other hand it is just to carry out such commands?”
The two are imitating the interlocutors they admire, in order to advance the logos.344 We get the sense that we can ignore Thrasymachus for a moment and enjoy a little by-play, but we still know he is not going to disappear.
“What you need to know,345 Polemarchus,” says Cleitophon, “is that justice according to Thrasymachus’s formulation346 consisted in responding to the rulers’ bidding with obedience.”347
“That justice was the advantage of the stronger was also348 part of his formulation. The problem is, having saddled himself with both these formulations349 he went on to agree that sometimes the rulers bid350 the weaker persons whom they rule351 to do things disadvantageous to themselves.352 The result of all these concessions would be that justice, as obedience to the stronger, is no more to the advantage than to the disadvantage of the stronger.” 353
“But ‘the advantage of the stronger’ he made to be what the stronger man was quite assured354 was in his interest. His point was355 that it was incumbent upon the weaker to carry this out, and that to do so was justice.”
“But this was not the way the argument actually went,” Polemarchus objects, with complete justification.356
Both interlocutors imitate and both fall short of their models, with Cleitophon hewing so closely to Thrasymachus’s meaning that he forgets to win the spat by packaging it derisively, and Polemarchus doing such a good job of remembering how the argument went that he ends up having no idea where it should go next. Socrates therefore intervenes with the simple proposal to Polemarchus that the disagreement about what he decreed (ἔλεγεν) and what was said (ἐλέγετο) comes to nothing since we can simply ask Thrasymachus what he now says and move on from there.357 With this he turns to Thrasymachus and the digression ends: How about it? Were you making out justice to be what seemed to the stronger to be advantageous, whether in truth it was advantageous or not?
“Hardly! Do you really think I would call a man making an error stronger than the others at the moment he is making the error?”358
I did in fact think this is what you meant when you were granting that the rulers were not infallible but do in fact make some mistakes.359
“Well, Socrates, that’s because you play the sycophant in conversations.360 Just ask yourself:361 Do you call362 a person who is making an error in treating the sick a doctor in respect to the very error he is making? Or an accountant a person who makes an error in calculation just at the moment he makes the error, and in respect to363 the error he has made? I feel we364 do talk this way when we say, ‘The doctor erred’ and ‘The accountant erred’ and ‘The grammarian.’365 But I feel366 that in reality367 each of these individual types,368 to the extent that they really are369 what we designate370 them to be, never errs. And so in terms of accurate thinking—something you of course will never tire to require of us—none of the various worthies we rely on371 errs. It is when his knowledge leaves him in the lurch that an erring expert errs, at which moment he is not really an expert. And so the worthy, whether acting in the role of expert or of ruler, never372 errs while he really is373 ruler;374 although anybody might say, ‘The doctor erred’ or ‘The ruler erred.’ It is in this latter way that you may take the meaning of my answer to you just a moment ago, whereas it is the perfectly accurate375 former answer that is truly the case, that the man who rules, to the extent that he really is (341) ruling,376 doesn’t err;377 and that unerring, he formulates as law what is best378 for himself; and that this law the ruled must carry out. And so, as I defined justice at the outset, so do I define it now: doing what is advantageous to the strong man.”379
Thrasymachus has captured the floor and held it for two minutes. Socrates’s reply sounds Thrasymachean for the way it responds to a long and substantial argument by raising ad hominem matters: “So you think I am playing the sycophant, do you?”
“Certainly.”
You think I was asking380 the questions I was asking as a plot to attack you in conversation?
“I don’t think, I know: and you’ll have no advantage from it. You could neither ambush me nor overcome me with main force in an open attack.”381
I wouldn’t even try, my dazzling friend! But to keep this kind of thing382 from arising between us again, make a clear distinction whether you mean by the ruler and stronger the one of common parlance or the one of the accurate conception as you have just now articulated it, whose advantage, given the fact that they are the stronger, it shall be just for the weaker to carry out.
“The one who, by the very most accurate383 conception, really is384 ruler. Now attack at will and play the sycophant385—I give you full license. Of course you’ll have no success.”
You think me so mad as to try bearding the lion and to play the sycophant against Thrasymachus?
“The fact is you made an attempt just now,386 feckless as you are.”
That’s enough of that, Socrates remarks. Thrasymachus has clearly chosen the strict interpretation, and has vowed unstintingly to defend his position. To achieve this level of resolution is the only value this kind of banter can have for Socrates. Now his testing elenchus can begin: Is your physician in the strict sense a businessman or is he a caregiver to the sick? Mind you,387 talk about the man who really is a doctor in truth.388
“Caregiver to the sick.”
What about a pilot?389 Is the pilot in the proper sense390 the ruler of the sailors or a sailor himself?
“Ruler of sailors.”391
I suppose we shouldn’t be troubled by the thought that he does sail in the ship nor think that therefore392 he is to be called a sailor, since it is not looking to393 his sailing that we call him pilot but looking to his skill and rule394 over the sailors.
“True.”
Now doesn’t each of these395 practitioners have an interest or an advantage?
“Quite.”
And is it not this, namely the interest of each, that skill by its very nature is meant to seek out and provide? 396
“This.”397
So let me ask you, when it comes to the various skills do they have any interest or advantage other than to be as complete and perfect as possible?
“How do you mean this question?”
I mean it this way:398 if you were to ask me whether the body is able to maintain itself as a body on its own, or whether it needs something else besides itself, I would say, “You bet it needs something else: that’s why we have a science of medicine, because the body is burdensome399 and cannot sustain itself. To provide for this and secure its interest is what medicine has been set up to do.” Would my answer seem to you correct if I answered this way?
“Correct.”
(342)But then, to move on to the question I am asking you,400 is the skill of medicine considered in itself burdensome, in turn? Is there any skill for that matter that needs some ability or virtue besides itself the way the eyes need the ability to see and the ears need the ability to hear, and therefore, because they have needs, there is in their case a need for a distinct skill that will seek out and then provide what will avail them to achieve these abilities?401 I ask you, is there likewise in the skill itself some insufficiency, so that402 for each of the special skills there will be a need for another skill that will seek out its advantage, and for this seeking skill another skill in turn, and so on into infinity? Or else403 is it that each plays this role for itself, and tends to its own advantage? Or is it not rather that skill needs neither herself nor another skill to look out for her404 interest to compensate for a burdensome deficiency within herself, since there is neither deficiency nor error of any kind within any skill, nor does it befit skill405 to search out the advantage for any other406 than for the one we have noted above, whose407 skill it is, while in herself she is immune from harm and free of alloy, correct and upright as she is and will be as long as she has her own accuracy as the complete whole that she truly is.408 Is this the way it is or is it otherwise?
His long question, during which he suggests and even advocates an answer, nearly matches the presentation of Thrasymachus’s thesis in length but easily surpasses it in ardency. Socrates, too, it seems, admires what we have come to call the empire of skill, its autarky, its purity, its wholeness and perfection. Thrasymachus cannot but agree: “It is evident that this is the way it is.”
The other shoe is about to drop. Socrates makes the direct inference409 that medicine does not seek the advantage of medicine but of the body; Thrasymachus says “ναί,” the shortest yes-answer available in Greek. Nor does horsemanship that of horsemanship but of horses; nor does any skill whatsoever that of itself—after all it needs nothing besides itself—but of that whose skill it is.”410 Thrasymachus, as if he were not sure whether he was coming or going, re-uses his last answer with the words reversed: “It seems that is how it is.” With ἀλλὰ μήν ... γε, Socrates now asks the question that supplies the minor premise that lets the other shoe drop: “But to be sure it is a ruling411 role that the skills enjoy, and a role of power over that whose skills they are.”412
Socrates at this point does not convey Thrasymachus’s very words to us but reverts to narration and tells us that Thrasymachus with great reluctance said yes; but then he quotes himself as drawing the fatal conclusion: “Therefore413 it is not true that knowledge,414 any knowledge in the world, makes the interest of the stronger its concern, to find and bring it about under its direction,415 but that of the weaker that is ruled by it.”
Socrates again reverts to narration: although Thrasymachus finally agreed to this as well it was not without trying to make a battle out of it;416 but once he agreed, Socrates could continue. It’s no different with the doctor: no doctor, to the extent he is a doctor, seeks and directs the achieving of the doctor’s interest but that of the man who is sick. After all we have agreed that the “accurate” doctor417 is the ruler of bodies, not a businessman,418 just as the “accurate” pilot was a ruler of sailors rather than a sailor himself. So therefore it is not the case that419 a pilot and ruler of this kind at least420 seeks and gives commands421 to achieve the pilot’s interest, but that of the sailor whom he rules. So, isn’t it the case, Thrasymachus, that nobody who holds a position of rule, to the extent that he really is a ruler, either looks out for his own interest or422 makes orders toward that end, but rather that of the ruled and423 whatever person relies on him for his expertise.424 Yes, it is by looking off425 toward that goal and toward what is advantageous to and appropriate for that person that he says what he says and does what he does,426 in each case and in every case.427
(343) It was now clear to them all, Socrates tells us, that they had come to a point where the account of justice had been totally reversed. Thrasymachus now stops playing the role of answerer, and asks a question instead, “Where’s your nanny, Socrates?”
Huh? Oughtn’t you come up with a better answer rather than reverting to questions like that?
“Because428 there you are with snot all over your nose and Nursie’s neglected to take care of her ward429 and wipe you off. You can’t even tell her430 which are the sheep and which is the shepherd!”
Because what? Socrates replies. As before, Thrasymachus has stopped the conversation and arrested Socrates’s attention with name-calling, more derogatory and more inscrutable this time, so that this time can buy a moment finally to launch into his speech, a full statement of the παγκάλη ἀπόκρισις, which he has been chafing to give all along. It is a highly rhetorical speech (343B1-4C8), delivered ex tempore and without any warning as to its length. Finally we get an opportunity to see the professional orator at work.
“Because431 you think shepherds and cowherds look out for the good of the sheep and the cattle and fatten them and take care of them, with some other goal in their sights than the good of their masters and their own good, and likewise432 rulers in the city—the rulers for real433 that is—you sit there with the notion434 that they have something else in mind for their subjects than what a person would be ready to do to his sheep, and that they are on a vigil night and day435 for some other purpose than to benefit themselves. Yes, you are so far from what justice and injustice are and what they mean436 that while “justice” is, as they say,437 “doing right by the other guy,” you are blind to the fact that the other guy in question is the man in charge who rules you, while for yourself there is only harm438 in obeying and serving him; and that injustice439 to the contrary -- the injustice of the strong man -- lords over those of goodly temper who are the just,440 while his subjects for their part work for the benefit of him since he is the stronger, and work only for the happiness of him441 in their role as his servants, and never at all for their own. Take the trouble to investigate, Socrates, my fine442 fool, how the just man everywhere443 has less than the unjust—you really ought to. First of all in private business, whenever the one type embarks on a joint venture444 with the other, you will never find the just man coming away with more than the unjust when they split their profits, but always less. In dealings with the city, when it’s time to pay into the public coffers the just man pays in more, out of the same income, and the other man less, but when it’s time to draw down445 something for oneself, the one gets nothing while the other makes a big haul.446 Just look at447 what’s in store for each of them when it comes to political appointments. For the just man, no fines for misconduct I’ll grant you, but his personal affairs suffer from neglect while from the public weal he profits not at all since he behaves justly, not to mention how he angers his relatives and his friends when they come to him for favors and he turns them away because of his scruples. In store for the unjust man is just the opposite—I mean (344) the sort of man I was just talking about,448 the one who has the power to pull off something big. Use this one as your model if you want to assess just how much more advantageous it is for one’s private fortune to act unjustly than justly. In fact the easiest way to get the picture is to reach449 the man who has gone so far in injustice as to live its perfect version, which450 raises the man who acts unjustly to the highest heights and consigns the man acted upon and unwilling to act that way himself to the depths of destitution. Who is she you ask? Tyranny! She who will not stay at the gains to be got here and there by stealth and force, from the sacred or from the profane, now from the public and now the private, but takes from all these everywhere and all the time—things that is with which if you would deal in a small way, and once get caught, would bring fines and penalties upon you and heavy opprobrium. Just think after all how the petty criminals get named after451 their crimes: temple robber or kidnapper or burglar or swindler or thief! Such distasteful terms! But now look to the man who does not stop at seizing his fellow citizens’ possessions but kidnaps them bodily and makes them his slaves: his name will be none of these; all will call him happy – nay, blessed452-- a man who made it big, not only the very citizens whose lives he took over but also anybody who only hears the story of a man that achieved this total injustice in each and every department of life. People who scorn injustice do so because they are afraid of suffering it, not doing it.
“There you have it, Socrates: Injustice. A thing more strong, a thing more free, a thing more dominant than justice,453 once it comes into its prime.454 As I said at the beginning,455 and it is true in very fact, being just only helps the strong man while being unjust brings profit and advantage456 to oneself.”
1.C.1: Excursus on Thrasymachus’s Speech
We may start with the paraphrasable content of this speech. The ruler’s concern for the ruled is the same as that of the shepherd for his sheep. It is to use them up for his own profit. Justice (insofar as it consists of obeying the ruler’s laws which after all are only orders he has concocted for them to act in ways to benefit himself), boils down to being a choice of the ruled to allow him to do this. He always comes out ahead, because the “just” men, in being duped, allow themselves to fall behind him. How far he can get ahead you can see in the case of the completely unjust man, the tyrant, who has gotten so far as to reduce the men who obey him to slavery, and is thanked and admired for it to boot, not only by those in his thrall but by all that hear of him. People disapprove of injustice because they fear suffering it, not because they are averse to457 committing it.
Beyond what he has said, what he has tried to do? He projects onto Socrates’s pursuit of truth the construction that it is nothing but a ruse to get the upper hand in conversation,458 because he knows nothing but to try to get the upper hand himself.459 Continually he has failed. From the intervening refutation we learn that what will assure his hegemony is clearly not his mastery of the useful arts of a demiurge, arts which Socrates admires for their resemblance to the most useful art of all (knowledge). That he has been refuted by the deployment of such an art only forces him finally to place his cards on the table and make his big move, which is this speech. Though Socrates may be slavishly enamored of art and of its hegemony, autarky,460 and purity, Thrasymachus makes the case for an hegemony, purity, and autarky461 of the self just as it is, elevated and inflated by the self-subjugation of others to the transfiguration of itself into the tyrant, if only it will dare.462 Why it should dare is that otherwise it will be acted upon. Injustice is a game that must therefore be played for keeps, and Thrasymachus will be talking (and talking only) about “playing for keeps” as long as he can breathe. His speech has been an attempt to arouse the two deep seated passions of fear and self-love in his audience and forge an alliance between them that will lead the audience to take the first step in the direction of the unjust life, namely, to agree with Thrasymachus, lest they consign themselves to identify and be identified with the losers.
We know the name of these passions when they are allied (it is envy); and we know the effect of a demagogue inciting them in a mob (it is violence). Prudence then dictates, third, that we stop for a moment and analyze the rhetoric by which Thrasymachus’s speech seeks to arouse such passions. His warrant for making his opening assertions, that the ruler leads the ruled to slaughter (343B1-C1) and that justice is for suckers (C1-D1), is not that they are true but that Socrates is too naive to know that they are. So under the guise of condescending to teach him (D1-2), he launches into his “proof by exhaustion” that the unjust man beats the just, everywhere. Through invidious comparison and vivid depiction he shows how the unjust man wins out, first in private life (D3-6), and then in public (D6ff). His treatment of public life begins by dividing it into what we do for the common weal (i.e., pay assessments: D6-8) and what we can get back (the rather more vague but exciting notion of λήψεις463), and then moves on laterally to the opportunities provided by political office. The lateral movement464 disregards the logic of the division but affords him an opportunity465 to describe in vivid detail the figure cut by the just man, focussing invidiously on how he disappoints his own cronies. When he moves on, as if pari passu, to the unjust man and how he handles public office (ἀρχή) he has finally reached the heart of his speech. He has spent twelve lines (D3-E6) getting to his laudandus and now will tarry with him for twenty four (E6-344C8). When he is done with this part, his speech will be over. The structure therefore reveals that the speech, though it begins as a remedial lesson for the benighted Socrates, is in truth and was always meant to be a praise of the unjust man.
He ushers in this final section and warms up to his ultimate topic with a sort of priamel. He will focus our attention thereby not on any unjust man but the “really unjust one” he has been talking about all along, the one he now can call μεγάλα δυνάμενον πλεονεκτεῖν, and so unveil the frank and unvarnished terms by which power describes itself. He admonishes us that if we really want466 to discern (κρίνειν467) the measure of injustice’s superiority we have to look at this man. But then he stops to replace this man with an even better subject of scrutiny468 (i.e., of praise) the superlatively unjust man upon whom Injustice herself469 has conferred the greatest happiness while those who spurn her she condemns to perdition.470 Who is this Injustice? She is Tyranny!471 She who … – and the sequel has the form of a hymn.
Fourth and finally we must pause to deny the prevalent view that Thrasymachus has a theory in the first place.472 He does not believe that might makes right. If anything he believes that “right” makes might, since some people’s belief in right, in the sense of their believing it is right that they obey laws per se, enables the promulgators of laws to lead them into doing whatever will help themselves and thereby into aggrandizing their own power. He is not a legal positivist: surely he does not himself believe that the legal enactment of laws creates a duty upon the ruled that they obey them. His allusion to governments is merely illustrative and not substantive; the only “government” he cares about is the one in which all institutions have become subordinate to his one unjust man, the tyrant. His entire pitch (παράγγελμα) is a strategy for acquiring power and yet does not have a definition of power beyond a vague image of the “freedom of the tyrant”473 which consists for him of nothing but the willingness of his subjects to obey him. Power, like pleonexy,474 is a merely comparative attribute. Without his cowering subjects and his reputation among persons who have not met him, his power is nothing, for there is nothing it enables him to do that they will not let him do.475 The evidence of its nothingness has been revealed in the movement of the argument to this point, by which Thrasymachus was nearly forced into naked candor when his usual methods of seduction and cajolery failed to stand up in straightforward conversation.
Socrates has assumed the responsibility for keeping the conversation straightforward, both by refusing to take the bait of Thrasymachus's continual insults and by protecting the process of search from the rights and wrongs of captious squabbling, like the squabbling of Polemarchus who is clearly right and Cleitophon who is clearly wrong. The representation of Thrasymachus’s attitude by Glaucon and Adeimantus that we will find at the beginning of Book Two will indeed elevate this attitude to a “position” or a “belief” articulate enough to be tested,476 but they were able to do so not because there lurked a theoretical content in Thrasymachus’s argument but because as Hegel has taught us the very articulation of their own deeply held belief that justice is real and good brings into being the conceivability of the opposite position, that justice is nothing or, if something, something bad.
1.C.2: Socrates’s Reply to Thrasymachus
Such a speech, so long and so emotional, would give its audience pause. Indeed in the aftermath we realize that we are part of its audience. The moment we do, Socrates confirms it for us by reverting to the narrative mode and addressing us directly (344D1ff). Having drenched our ears477 with this speech, he tells us, Thrasymachus got up to leave like a bathman who has poured a tubful of rinse-water over his bathers.478 There was no way the company would allow him to leave. They made him stick around479 and explain his position.480 In particular I myself481 pushed him hard, saying: You redoubtable fellow do you really think you can drop a bomb like that on us and just get up and leave, before you have finished telling us how it’s so or for that matter hearing how after all it isn’t?482 Unless you think trying to get clear on this topic isn’t worth the trouble or has nothing to do with the choices that each of us must make about how to manage our conduct so as to enjoy the best life possible.483
“As though I fancy this thing I have told you is not as I say it is!”484
It seems you do, or else it seems we mean nothing to you485 so that you won’t pay attention to whether our lives will turn out better or worse if we remain ignorant of what you claim to know. But come and take the effort486 to make it clear to (345) us. It won’t go badly at all for you, my friend, considering how many of us there are,487 if you do us this favor. Just between you and me I am not persuaded by what you said: I am not persuaded that injustice is more lucrative488 than justice, and I wouldn’t believe it even if one turned her loose and didn’t try to block her every attempt to have her way. Let her be unjust, my friend; give her the power to injure others, whether by stealth or by open aggression. Still,489 she does not persuade me that she is more lucrative than justice. Now it may just be that I am not alone in coming away with this feeling,490 so take the trouble to persuade us to our satisfaction491 that we are wrong to think it important to pursue justice rather than injustice in the choices we make about our lives.
“And492 how am I to persuade you, if the speech I’ve delivered has left you cold? Shall I grind it up into a pabulum and spoon it into your brains?”
That’s not the kind of help I want from you, by Zeus! You could start by sticking with your position, or giving a warning when you alter it so as not to send us off onto the wrong path. In fact, you’ve just done this, if I may revert to your previous argument for a moment.493 You started by defining the doctor strictly, but then when you moved on to the shepherd you thought you didn’t need to keep to the strict method but had him fattening his sheep as if it were his job not to tend to their interest but to act like a banqueter tending to a feast, or else alternatively as a wholesaler aiming at selling them, as if his job were to make money rather than be a shepherd. The shepherd’s art is preoccupied with nothing but the job its nature has assigned it,494 to promote and provide for this as best it can, while its own concerns have already been taken care of, consisting as they do of nothing but being what it is to be the art that it is. Given all that, I thought we had no choice but to agree that any kind of being-in-charge, to the extent that it truly was a being-in-charge, by its nature and to that extent495 looked out for the interest of nothing but that thing,496 the thing placed under its charge and its care, whether the charge be political or professional. Look at it for yourself: Do you fancy that the rulers you see in cities497—the real rulers I mean—do you fancy they serve willingly?
“By Zeus I not only fancy it but know it for a fact!”498
And yet wouldn’t you agree that people accept other kinds of charge only for pay, as if they saw no good coming to themselves from being in charge, but only for those they took charge of? Will you at least give me this much,499 that (346) we always distinguish one art from another on the basis that what it is able to do is distinct from what the other is able to do? Please don’t answer contrary to your belief,500 my blessed man501—that would keep us from moving forward in our discussion.
“No, that is why: by the ability being different.”
And likewise a benefit is provided by each, a benefit unique to the art itself and not a benefit the others also provide, the way that medicine provides health and piloting provides safety at sea, and so forth with the others?
“Quite.”
And does the art of wage-earning likewise provide the benefit of a wage, this being the ability that wage-earning has. Or would Thrasymachus502 call both medicine and piloting one and the same art? Nay, to the contrary, once you decide as you did before that it’s best to define things accurately and strictly, then if a man working as pilot happens to become healthy by dint of some benefit he derives from sailing in the ocean, you would not begin calling piloting medicine, would you?
“By no means.”
Nor for that matter would you call moneymaking medicine503 in the event that a person making a wage happens to heal somebody.
“By no means.”
But would you call medicine wage-earning,504 if somebody in the course of healing should happen to make a wage?
He denied it.505
But when it comes to the benefit conferred by each art didn’t we agree that it was unique to each art?
“Let that answer stand.”
Therefore in the case of any benefit all artisans enjoy in common, it must by virtue of their practicing, in common, something in addition to their several arts, and it must be from that additional practice that they derive the enjoyment of this common benefit.
“So it seems.”
And in particular we are averring that the event of the artisans being made better off by the wages they earn,506 is an event that derives from their practicing, in addition, the wage-earning art.
To this he agreed, reluctantly.
Therefore it is not from their own several arts that this benefit comes to them, namely getting507 paid. Instead, if we are to pursue the question strictly, medicine produces health and wage-earning produces the wage, and building produces a house whereas wage earning following upon building produces the wage, and all the other arts likewise tend each to its own task and each benefit whatever they are placed in charge of. Conversely in case a wage does not accrue to it following upon its own deployment, is there any sense in which an artisan derives benefit from his art?
“It seems there is not.”
Would you likewise508 say that he confers no benefit in the case when he carries out his task without being paid?
“No, I think he does confer benefit.”
So, Thrasymachus, now it is clear that no art and no charge or rule works at providing a benefit to itself, but as we were saying before509 it works at achieving what is beneficial to the ruled and issues its commands toward that end, ever keeping its eye on the advantage of that other party, since it is weaker, and not on the advantage of the stronger. And that’s why I said just now,510 my friend Thrasymachus, that it’s out of the question511 that a person would be willing to rule if he had the choice, or to become involved in straightening out the messes that other people get themselves (347) into,512 but instead that he demands a wage, since if you are dealing with a person who is going to be effecting his art with skill, he never effects what is best for himself nor issues his commands toward this end if he is commanding what his art requires, but instead toward what is best for the person in his charge. That’s why there needs to be a wage in store for a person if you expect him to be willing to rule, whether the wage be silver, or honor—or a penalty if he won’t.
Socrates thus ends this sustained wave of argument (345E2-347A5) with a quod erat demonstrandum, the solution to the question that began it—the paradox of being unwilling to rule (345E2-3). Moreover, just as that paradox was introduced at the very end of his sustained statement to Thrasymachus about how to behave in conversation (345B7-E2), he here introduces a new paradox at the very close of that solution (the “penalty,” A5-6) which will lead to a third wave of argument. Such suggestive last minute questions enable him to keep control of the conversation.
We are surprised and perhaps relieved that Glaucon now intervenes to react to the paradox. He can understand the two kinds of “wage,” but he can’t see how a penalty can play the part of a wage. Socrates replies that Glaucon must be ignorant of the “wage of the noblest,”513 that causes the most decent persons to rule when they do willingly rule. After all, zeal for high honors or for money lead to a bad reputation, and deserve to, so it’s easy to see514 that good men will not be willing to rule for pay or for honor. If they draw pay in the open they’ll be called hirelings; and they'll be called thieves if they extract financial gains in secret.515 Honor won’t persuade them to rule, since they aren’t interested in being famous. In their case some further compulsion must be brought into play if we are to expect them to rule willingly, or a penalty. Why else have we come to think that it is shameful to seek office and then hang around as an incumbent516 beyond the time the office requires?517 As for a penalty, the greatest they face is being ruled by a worse man518 in case they won’t accept office themselves. It’s out of a fear of this that good men rule, on the occasions they do, and even here they seek office not as one seeks something good with the prospect of benefitting from it but as one facing a necessity since he has no one else to rely on that is better or equal to himself. Think of it:519 if a city of good men ever came to be, the greatest prize would be not ruling, just as ruling is in the existing ones! And there you’d have your proof that in reality the basic nature of the true ruler520 is to seek not his own advantage but the advantage of the ruled. Thus, anybody who knows the difference521 would prefer to be in the position of receiving help from others rather than giving it and having to face all the difficulties attendant upon doing so.522 So, as for this assertion that justice is the advantage of the stronger there is no way for me to agree with Thrasymachus. We can put it aside and deal with it later;523 much more important to me is this declaration he has now made, that the life of the unjust man is stronger524 than that of the just man. How about you, Glaucon? How do you choose between them? Which is more truly said to be the stronger?
“That the life of the just man is more profitable525 seems true to me.”
(348)Didn’t526 you hear how many wonderful things Thrasymachus had to say about the life of the unjust man a few moments ago?
“Sure I heard it. I just don’t believe it.”
Do you think it would be a good idea for us to try to persuade him, if we can find some way, that his argument is false?
“How could I not think it a good idea?”
Come then,527 if our argument should consist of setting off point against point, we listing the wonderful things that a just man has in store, and then he listing more against those, and we another list against that, we’d have to count up all the pros and cons on both sides and weigh how much each of us had put in his own pan. And at that point we’d need some kind of judges who could decide528 which was greater. But if instead we proceed as we did before, securing agreement from each other by question and answer at each step,529 then we would be our own advocates and judges530 all at the same time.
Glaucon chooses the latter method and Socrates turns to Thrasymachus with a question. Come, Thrasymachus, and answer a fresh line of questions.531 Would you say that the perfect injustice you have spoken of is more profitable than justice even if the justice is perfect?532
“Quite so, and for the reasons I articulated above.”533
Come, then,534 how would you answer something like this: of the pair535 you would call one virtue and the other vice, wouldn’t you?
“Of course.”536
Justice on the one hand being537 virtue, and injustice on the other being vice?
“You’re naive538 enough to think I’d think that, when I’ve also argued that injustice on the one hand539 profits, and justice on the other does not?”
But then what would you say?
“The opposite of what you just said.”
Are you calling justice vice?
“I’m calling it a goodliness oh so very fine!540
And therefore541 you’d call injustice badliness?”542
“Just good planning.”543
And for you are they intelligent and worthy,544 the unjust?
“Those, at least, who are able to carry out injustice in its finished form, able to reduce whole cities and tribes of men to subjection under themselves. Poor you,545 you think I’m talking about purse-stealing, which does turn a profit as long as one isn’t caught546 but a profit hardly worth mentioning compared to what I am really talking about.”
No, I do know what you have in mind. What I 547wonder at is how you have injustice playing the role of virtue and wisdom548 and justice the role of their opposites.549
“Yes but that’s exactly where I put them!”
This takes us550 to a level551 where progress552 will be more difficult, and where one no longer has the usual things one can say. If you held the thesis553 that injustice is profitable but then were willing to agree that it is an evil or an ugly thing554 as some others would,555 we would be able to make an argument based on conventionally held beliefs. Instead it’s now clear that you will assert that it is a thing beautiful556 and strong, and will endow it with all the other traits we (349) have traditionally557 associated with justice, given the fact that you have the cheek to place it into the category of virtue and wisdom.558
“Clairvoyant you are!” he said.
Still one must not shrink from the challenge, but press forward in the inquiry for the sake of the argument, as long as I can assume that you are really saying what you think. Between you and me, Thrasymachus, I do believe you aren’t joking but you’re really saying what you judge to be the truth of the matter.559
“What difference does it make to you whether it’s my opinion or not? Isn’t your business just to test the argument?”
No difference.560 Just try to answer me this question, in addition to all these things you have already said:561 When it comes to two just men does one want to have more than the other?
“No way! Such behavior would be impossible for them: they’re too civil—and562 dumb.”
Does he want to have more than what a just way of life will reward him?
“Not this, either.”
But comparing himself to an unjust man, would he feel he deserves more and consider it just to have more than him? Or not?
“Consider as he may and feel as he may, he’d lack the ability.”
That’s not the question but whether, even though he would not believe he deserves more than the just man and not think it a good idea that he get more than him, whether he would believe and think the opposite about the unjust man.
“Yes he would.”
But now consider the unjust man. Does he think he deserves more than the just man and should get more than the just way of life affords?
“That goes without saying since he’s out to have more than anybody563 else.”
So you’re saying564 he’ll have more than the unjust man, too,565 and the unjust life, and will vie to take566 for himself the most of all men.
“Now you’ve got it.”
Well let’s formulate the result this way, then. The just man tries to outstrip not his like but his unlike, whereas the unjust tries to outstrip both indifferently.567
“A formulation568 most excellent!”
But as we agreed569 the unjust man is astute and therefore competent,570 whereas the just man is neither?
“This, too, you put well.”
And you’d say that the unjust man resembles the astute and competent man, while the just man does not?
“How could you expect it to be otherwise than that a person who is of such and such a sort would also resemble such and such a sort, whereas the one who isn’t doesn’t?”
Nicely put.571 We can conclude that each of the pair is like the persons they resemble.
“As I said, how could it be otherwise?”
Socrates’s next steps can be presented consecutively: Alright then, Thrasymachus. Consider a person who’s musical in comparison with572 another who is unmusical. The musical person is astute and the unmusical one not, and by virtue of being astute, competent, or by virtue of not being, incompetent. So also with the doctor. When a musician tunes his lyre he is not trying to outdo a musician in the tightening and loosening of the strings, though he would gladly outdo (350) a non-musician. And a doctor in his prescriptions will not exceed the prescriptions of a doctor or the prescriptions of medical practice, though he would gladly see himself doing better than the suggestions of a man ignorant573 of medicine. Indeed, survey574 the whole field of knowledge and the lack of it and ask yourself whether there is any kind of knower who would arrogate to himself to do more than another knower would, whether in acting on his knowledge or discoursing on it, rather than just the same amount as his fellow would say or do about the same topic.
Thrasymachus with some hesitation agrees with the conclusion on the force of its logic,575 and Socrates can turn to the counterpart of the knower, namely, the uninformed man. Will he not seek to overreach or do more than both the knower and his uniformed fellow? Thrasymachus agrees, with a faintly echoing reluctance,576 but this is all Socrates needs in order to move on to the minor premise he had adduced above: the knowing man is astute and wise577 and therefore he is competent and worthy.578 So the good and wise man will not be willing to overreach his like but rather his unlike and opposite, while the bad and ignorant man will overreach both indifferently.579 But our unjust man overreached like and unlike alike580 whereas the just will never overreach his like but only his unlike,581 so that the just man resembles the wise and good whereas the unjust resembles the bad and ignorant. But we agreed in principle a moment ago582 that whichever sort the one resembles that sort he also is, so that we can now see that in truth583 the just man is good and wise and the unjust is ignorant and bad.584
Thrasymachus’s position has come out backwards. Socrates breaks immediately into the narrative mode to speak directly to us just as he did the last time this happened,585 but this time he lets us see something very new: Thrasymachus did indeed concede586 all this, though not so easily as I have now presented it.587 Reluctant, he had to be dragged along to each step, and the labor made him sweat profusely (it was summer after all); and it was then that I witnessed something I’d never seen before: Thrasymachus blushing!588 Once we had gotten as far as to agree589 that justice is virtue and wisdom, and injustice vice and ignorance, I continued the investigation: So let’s treat this much590 as agreed. We also had asserted that injustice was strong, didn’t we? Or have you forgotten,591 Thrasymachus?
“I remember what I said. Moreover the argument you are now making592 suits me not at all. I have an argument in response, but if I should present it you would surely accuse me of speechifying. Choose then whether you think it best to allow me to say as much as593 I would, or, if you think it best to question me, then question away and I for my part will respond to you as one does to old women when they spin their tales, with ‘Is that so?’ and ‘Yes Mum’ and ‘No Mum.’”594
As long as you respond in no way contrary to your own judgment and belief.595
“I’ll do it, so as to suit you, since you aren’t allowing me to speak.596 But please, is there something more you wish of me?”
Nothing else, by Zeus. If you will do this then do it, and I for my part will do the asking.
“Ask away.”
(351) Ask I will, along the same line of inquiry as before, about what sort of thing justice really is in comparison with injustice. It had been stated that injustice was a more powerful and stronger597 thing than justice; but now,598 if in fact justice is virtue and competence, we shall easily realize that it is also a thing stronger than injustice, especially if injustice is ignorance—a fact no one can fail to know599 any longer. But this simple and straight path600 is not what I have in mind, Thrasymachus. Instead follow me on a different path: Would you say that it is unjust601 for a city to attempt to reduce other cities to slavery, by means of injustice, and so to enslave them, and hold many cities in her thrall?
“How could I not say this? No less that this will the best city do exactly602 by virtue of being most completely unjust.”603
I get it:604 That was indeed the purport of your speech, but here is what I have in mind to ask:605 Will this waxing city achieve this kind of power without justice or does she need justice to pull it off?
“If things were as you have been arguing, and justice were astuteness, then she’d need justice to pull it off; but if as I was arguing she’d need injustice.”
I admire your going beyond “No Mum” and “Yes Mum” and giving a real answer in finished form.606
“It’s because I’m trying to please you.”
And how good that is of you.607 But please me by answering the following: Would you say that a city or an army or pirates or thieves608 or any other tribe that bands together to mount such an unjust attack will have the power to pull anything off if they are treating themselves injuriously?
“By no means.”
But if they are not doing injury to each other won’t they be the more able to pull it off?
“Quite.”
This is because factions come from injustice, as do feelings of hatred and battles among themselves, whereas justice brings about likemindedness and friendship. Wouldn’t you say so?
“Anything to avoid a falling out with you!”609
Again, how good of you, my excellent610 fellow! But take the next step with me. If in fact this is the effect of injustice, to instill hatred into everything it invades, wouldn’t it make men hate each other regardless whether they are free or slave611 if once it finds its way among them, and make them break up into factions so as to make them unable to pull off any joint endeavor?
“Quite.”
But what if it springs up in a pair of men? Will they not begin to differ612 with each other and then hate and become inimical to each other at the same time that they are inimical to the just against whom they are planning their assault?613
“So they shall.”
So finally614 what if injustice invades a single man? Will it suddenly lose its inherent power and effect, or will it still possess it no less than ever?
“Let it possess it no less than ever.”
Since615 as we see616 it has this kind of power I mentioned, that whatever it invades, whether city or family or army (352) or whatever,617 its first effect is to make that thing unable to work with itself because dissension and difference arise within it, and then renders it inimical as much to itself as to any other opponent618 including the just. So that if it invades an individual man it will likewise have this same effect that it is its nature to have, first to make him unable to act due to internal strife and a lack of consensus in himself, and then inimical both to himself and to just persons.619 But let’s note620 that the gods are to be included621 among the just. This would imply that our unjust man will be the enemy of the gods as well, while the just man would be loved by the gods.
“Feast in our argument at will,622 Socrates. I won’t oppose you or else I’ll incur the enmity of these auditors I see about us.”623
Present me my dessert624 then, by continuing to play answerer as you have just now. We’ve finished everything else:625 We’ve seen the just are wiser and more competent and more able to act whereas the unjust are unable even626 to deal with themselves. In fact our rash assertion627 that unjust persons ever yet have acted in concert to pull something off was not entirely correct, for if they were unjust pure and simple628 they would not be keeping629 their hands off each other. The very concept implies630 there was some justice in them after all that enabled them not to be messing with631 each other at the same time they were mounting their attack632 on the others, through which they accomplished whatever they accomplished. It’s clear they set forth on their path of unjust conquest unjustly yes, but only by being semi-evil,633 since people vicious through and through and perfectly unjust634 are likewise perfectly unable to act. So much then, if you allow this revision, have I learned to be the case, contrary to the way you had set it out at first; but whether in addition they live a better life, the just than the unjust, and are more happy, this point we must now approach as we had originally set out to do.635 To all appearances they do, as things now stand in the argument, but we must make a more complete examination of it. After all our subject is not just any old thing, but the question how one must live one’s life.636
“Examine away.”
Examine I shall. Let’s start here. Does a horse have a function? I mean something that it alone can do or does best? For instance there is nothing with which you can see other than with the eyes, or hear with other than with the ears,637 so that seeing and hearing would properly be called the function of the eyes and the ears. Or again you (353) could use a dagger to cut back your vines or a knife or a lot of other tools, but there’s nothing that does so fine638 a job of it as the scythe that was made for this purpose. That’s what I mean by asking whether things have their own special function which they alone do or they do best.639 Now given the function of a thing there is a virtue corresponding to it. To use the same examples, the eyes have a function but also a virtue that enables them to do it, as do the ears. Now can the eyes perform their function if instead of having the corresponding virtue they have the vice instead?
“How could they—for I assume you mean they would have blindness instead of vision.”
Whatever the virtue may be—I’m not asking you to identify it as yet.640 Just answer whether having the virtue they would do their job well in the course of their exertions,641 and having the vice instead they would do it poorly.
“So far what you say is true.”
And so with the ears, deprived of their virtue they would execute their job poorly, and so on with the other cases. But now take the point I am trying to reach.642 The soul has a function that you can achieve by no other thing than soul, and I’d describe the function this way: looking after things and governing and deliberating and all this sort of thing.643 Is there anything else we could properly accord these functions to than to the soul? Can we say they are hers alone to perform?
“Nothing else's.”
But then again644 what about living? Isn’t this a function of soul?
“Most of all, I’d say.”
But we are also saying that soul has its own proper virtue?
“So we are.”
And so could soul execute its function well if she were deprived of her peculiar virtue, or is this impossible?
“Impossible”
Logic then requires645 that with a bad soul one rules badly and takes care poorly, but with a good soul one does well in all these respects.646
“So it does.”
Did we not reach the agreement647 that justice is what constitutes competence and virtue of soul, whereas injustice makes it weak and vicious?
“So we did.”
The just soul will therefore do a good job of living and the just man will live well,648 whereas the unjust man will live poorly.
“So much appears to be true according to your argument.”
(354) Yet649 he who lives well is blessed and happy,650 while he who lives not well is the opposite.
“Must be.”
Thus the just man is happy and the unjust miserable.651
“Let it be so.”
Yet652 being miserable does not profit a man, while being happy does, so that injustice is never,653 my blessed654 Thrasymachus, the more profitable655 life than the life of justice.
“Let so much constitute your feast on the day of Bendis.”656
Don’t fail to take credit for being my host, Thrasymachus, since now you have become tame and have stopped your chafing. Still, the feast was unsatisfying—by my own fault, not by yours. Like a glutton I grasped at whatever dish was brought around before giving the dish that came before the time it deserved. We had set out to discover what justice is, but before discovering the answer I let it go and jumped at the question whether it is a vice and ignorance or a kind of knowledge or virtue.657 Then another argument came upon us, that injustice is a thing more profitable than justice, and I was not able to resist going at that instead of the former. The result is, I haven’t really learned anything from the conversation. As long as I don’t know what justice is I don’t know the first thing658 about whether it should be classed as a virtue or not, and whether the man who has it is not a happy man or a happy one.
END OF BOOK ONE
BOOK TWO
2.A: The Brothers’ Requests
(357) Socrates as we might expect reverts to the narrative mode. He thought he was done with having to659 converse,660 but what came before turned out to be only a prelude.661 It was Glaucon who pressed him to continue, the Glaucon he had been on his way home with, his friend and “student,” whom he warmly characterizes as being even less daunted, or more daunting, than Thrasymachus,662 and who in fact takes issue with him for giving in663 too easily. “Will you be satisfied only to seem to have persuaded him, and not to have persuaded him in reality?” Glaucon asks, reminding his teacher of the sort of distinction of his that later helped get him poisoned.664 Of course Socrates would choose to persuade him in reality, assuming he had the ability. “But then,” Glaucon rejoins in mild reprimand,665 “you are not doing what you would.”666 Again the student turns back upon his teacher the sort of paradoxical challenge by means of which Socrates would draw a person into dialogue. This time he follows it up with the same sort of explanatory apology that Socrates always next gives, namely, an explanation by a series of questions.667
Glaucon’s questions introduce a distinction among good things based on our different reasons for valuing them.668 First are the things we want to have not because we are aiming at what might result from having them but welcoming them in themselves and because of themselves,669 such as joy and the pleasures, as long as670 they are harmless in the sense that nothing results from them other than enjoying having them.671 Second there are the goods that we like672 both in and because of themselves673 and because of their results,674 such as being aware, and seeing, and being healthy. Things like these, presumably, we welcome for both reasons.675 And there is a third type of good,676 among which we would class exercising and undergoing medical treatment when sick, and giving medical treatment for that matter, and all other activities by which one makes money.677 Things like these are toilsome but beneficial. Although in and for themselves we would not accept having them678 we do accept them for the sake of the wages they produce or for the other things that result from them.679
Glaucon presents his division step by step, question by question, with a balance between variation and attention to detail like we saw in Socrates’s questions to Polemarchus. Indeed his imitation of Socrates is quite polished, and Socrates now accommodates him by playing the role of the typical Socratic interlocutor: ‘Yes, I grant that third type too—but what’s all this leading to?’680 Of course it is leading to the question, ‘Into which category would Socrates (358) place justice?’ For his own part681 he would place it into the finest682 category, with the things that a person would want both because of what they are in themselves and because of their future results, assuming the person is really thinking about living a happy life.683
Socrates has taken the bait and now Glaucon can reveal his purpose. “You might think684 it belongs in that category, but most people don’t! Instead they put it into the toilsome category that a person pays regard to685 for the sake of the payoffs and favors that reputation brings,686 while they would avoid it for what it is in itself and what it does, thinking it in truth a bothersome and unpleasant thing.”687 Socrates recognizes this is the opinion of most people as well as being the burden of what Thrasymachus has said in the previous discussion, but confesses that he is somehow slow to learn what is so plain to everyone else. His irony indicates that he is ready to defend his ignorance.
When else has Socrates answered questions rather than asking them?688 Glaucon has brought him to this point, and indeed he has earned a free pass to ask him all the questions he wants: “Listen then to me and see if you might689 agree.” Though he will deliver a series of assertions, they will be subordinate to the enclosing construction, “Is it true, after all, that... .” Clearly he expects a negative answer.
Thrasymachus became calm but not because his position had been adequately refuted. It was as if he had been stunned.690 The questions about justice and injustice still remain,691 and Glaucon desires692 to hear693 answers to them, to wit: What is each and what power694 does each possess in itself and on its own terms by virtue of being present in the soul?695 Leave aside the payoff and the aftereffects!696 Here is how I shall proceed if you please: I will present the Thrasymachean position anew, in three steps. First, I’ll tell what they say697 justice is in the sense of698 where it came from; second, how anybody that practices and observes justice does so not because he wants to, thinking it a good,699 but because he thinks it necessary to do so; and third, that to act this way is plausible700 since the life of the unjust man is better after all701 than that of the just man, as they argue. Myself, I think they’re wrong, and yet I am quite at a loss:·my very ears echo702 with the argument made by Thrasymachus and by a thousand others, but a speech in defense of justice, that she is better than injustice, I have never yet heard the way I want to: I want to hear it praised in itself and for itself, and it's just from you I think I might hear this message.703 So704 now I’ll make a concerted effort to praise the unjust life in order to indicate the sort of speech I want to hear from you, censuring injustice and praising justice instead705—if, that is, you’re willing.706
Socrates’s answer is just right, the answer everybody wants to hear when asking for something. “I wouldn’t have it any other way! What would anybody with a mind707 more readily welcome and enjoy than this topic, whether he’s to do the speaking or the listening?”708 Glaucon is relieved,709 and straight-away he begins.
2.A.1a: Glaucon’s Speech on Justice
“First, their account of the what and whence710 justice came to be.
“In nature,711 they say, doing injustice is good whereas getting it done to you is bad, but the goodness of doing it falls short of the badness of getting it done to you. What happens therefore is that once people have done injuries to and received injuries from each other and have had their taste of both, those of them who cannot pull off avoiding the (359) one and getting the other judge it712 to their advantage to agree among themselves to do neither. And that, these people say,713 is how men began formulating laws and714 compacts among themselves, and calling the behavior that these laws enjoin “lawful” or715 “just.” This is the origin and this alone716 is the essence of justice, a thing that lies between the best, which is doing injustice without paying the penalty, and the worst, which is suffering injustice without being able to exact recompense. Being a thing in between the best and worst, we embrace717 it not as good but as a thing to which we accord value because of our less than superhuman strength to commit injustice.718 After all the man who is able to pull the thing off—the real man—would never make a pact with anybody to desist from both: that, they say, would be madness!
“So much for the nature of justice, what it is or how it came to be, according to this argument. Next, the assertion that the people who practice and observe it do so out of inability of do injustice and therefore719 unwillingly. The best way to see that this is true would be to perform an experiment in thought. Let’s give each of them, the just man and the unjust, the prerogative and opportunity to do whatever they wish, and follow them on their way to see where their desires lead them. We would720 catch the just man in flagrante arriving at the same place721 as the unjust, led there by pleonexy, the desire for more, the thing that all of nature pursues as good, although she is forced off her course by law722 toward an honorification of equality and fairness.723
Here’s the way I might best formulate the opportunity. Give them both the power that once upon a time came to Gyges. He was serving as a shepherd for the King of Lydia when one day a great storm arose and the earth opened up where he was tending his flock. He looked down into it bewildered and then he went down inside. There he saw a bronze horse, among other things according to the story. It was hollow and had little doors that he looked through and saw what seemed to be a corpse, larger than human size, and our man directly724 snatched a ring its finger and climbed out.725 At the next regular meeting of the shepherds where they assemble to amass their monthly report to the king on the state of his flocks, he arrived wearing the ring. As he sat among the shepherds he happened to turn the collet inward toward the inside of his palm (360) and became invisible to them – since they talked about him as if he had left.726 Quite surprised he groped727 for the ring and rotated the collet back outward, and became visible again. He stored this little event away in his mind and later tested to see if it was for real. He would become invisible if he turned the collet inward and visible if he turned it back out.728 He recognized what this meant,729 and soon managed to get himself selected to be one of those who bore the report back to the king.730 Having gained access to the palace he seduced the king’s wife and with her help ambushed the king and killed him and became king himself.731
“Imagine there were two such rings and imagine the just man had one and the unjust man the other. It would seem732 that nobody is made of such adamantine stuff that he would abide in justice and steel himself against laying hands on what belongs to others, once he was granted the opportunity in the market to take jwithout fear whatever he wants; to enter anybody’s house and sleep with his wife, whichever wife he wants; to execute or to free from prison whomever he wants; and in general733 to act like to a god among men. In behaving so his behavior would differ not at all from that of the other man. The two of them would pursue the very same thing.
“One could infer that this experiment in thought gives powerful proof for the notion that nobody acts justly because he wants to but only because he has to and thinks it is no good for him in private,734 since any time a person thinks he will be able to act unjustly that is how he does act.735 As for profit in his private life any man believes he’ll profit more from injustice than from justice, and he believes right—so says the person arguing for this position,736 seeing that if a man comes upon an opportunity like this and once proves reluctant to do wrong and unwilling to lay his hands on what belongs to others, he comes off being the most hapless737 of men in the eyes of those who understand what is going on and a perfect fool, though to each others’ faces they will praise him in order to deceive each other out of their fear of being treated unjustly themselves.
“So much for the second point; now comes the problem of weighing the men’s lives objectively,738 which had been the plausible basis for believing that nobody is voluntarily just.739 We must lay out the two lives beside each other in full detail—otherwise the choice will not be possible.740 And let us extract nothing from the injustice of the unjust man nor from the justice of the just man, but posit them as perfect and complete exponents of their respective practices.741 Let the unjust man act like a redoubtable742 expert—like the top pilot or doctor who can (361) distinguish which jobs he can pull off and which he can’t, who takes on the one but declines to take on the other, as well as having the ability to recoup just in case743 he suffers a slip along the way. Make your unjust man act like that, selecting his acts of injustice astutely so as to avoid being caught, if he is to be forcefully744 unjust. The view must be adopted that the ones who get caught are insignificant persons.745 After all, the most extreme746 version of injustice is to seem just while not being so. So the perfectly unjust man must be endowed with the very perfection747 of injustice, and he must not be deprived but allowed, in his performance of the greatest acts of injustice, to manage at the same time to achieve an equally great reputation for justice. Grant him also that if he does suffer a slip748 he is able to recoup the situation, able as he is749 to speak when persuasion is needed in case one of his crimes is disclosed, as well as to use forceful methods750 wherever that is indicated, relying on his bravery and his puissance, and by calling upon his supply of friends and money.751
“Having posited this one to be of this sort let us set up in words alongside him a statue752 of his counterpart, the just man, a man simple and good753 who wants, as Aeschylus put it, “not to seem but to be” good.754 Now strip him of the seeming, for if we let him appear to be just, honors and rewards will accrue to him by virtue of people thinking him just755 and it will become unclear whether it is for the sake of justice or for the prospect of the rewards and honors that he was756 that way.757 We must strip him naked, rather, of everything but his justice,758 and portray him in circumstances wholly the opposite of the first one’s. Just so, although he has done not a whit of wrong, give him the biggest reputation for injustice so that the justness might be put to ordeal and test759 as to its strength to resist moderation760 by a bad reputation and what it can do.761 Instead let him stay the course, his character unchanging to end, and live his entire life unjust by reputation and seeming but just in reality and truth. Let the two of them reach their respective extremes,762 the one of justice and the other of injustice, so that they might be judged side by side as to which is the more happy.”763
Socrates intervenes (361D4-6) to express consternation at the tenacious vigor764 with which Glaucon polishes off the statues of the two, standing complete before us for us to choose between. He acknowledges that he is trying as hard as he can765 and continues: “What sort of lives await the two of them is not hard to infer,766 and so I will. At the very likely risk that the account will seem somewhat crass767 I want to remind you, Socrates, that it is not I who say all this but those who praise injustice over justice. Here is what they will say, that the just man cutting such a figure as (362) this will be whipped and will be scourged; he’ll be tied up and have his eyes burned out of their sockets and for a coup de grace 768he will be impaled,769 and he will be smartened up so as to aim at appearing rather than being just.770 In very truth, they will say, that line from Aeschylus is more771 appropriate for the unjust man, who in pursuing a kind of action that latches onto the truth and reality of things rather than giving his life over to appearances, does prefer the reality to the appearance—of injustice that is,
“Plowing a deeper furrow with his witsWhence his goodly plots burgeon forth to fruition—”
first, his plot that ruling the city will go to the man who is believed to be just, as well as marriage into any family he wishes,772 and to enter contracts and enter partnerships with whomever he wants, and on all these fronts to be benefitted by exploiting his ability to commit injustice without hesitation. In any contest you can be sure he will come out on top, in private cases and in public ones,773 and will get the better of his enemies, from which will come wealth and the ability to grant favors to his friends and to do harm to his enemies, as well as sacrifices and votive offerings to the gods, ample and showy, that he will subvene for sacrifices and donate to temples.774 In the end he will be tending to the gods better than the just man does, as well as to the fellow men that he chooses to, so that to be god-beloved would more plausibly be his lot than the just man’s. And so, as they claim, Socrates, in the view of the gods and in the view of men life is better775 turned out for the unjust man than the just.”
2.A.1b: Adeimantus’s Speech on Justice
Socrates reverts to narrative. When Glaucon was done he was ready to make a reply,776 but no: his brother Adeimantus intervened, “I don’t presume you somehow think the case for their position has been completed: what needs most to be said has still been left out.”
'Let brother help brother,' as they say.777 Still, what your brother has said has already pinned me to the mat and rendered me useless for rescuing justice.
“Baloney.778 Add the following to what you have to wrestle with. We have to include also779 the arguments that oppose these that Glaucon has made, which praise justice and censure injustice, in order to make it clearer just what Glaucon wants from you. Fathers, you surely know, encourage their sons, and all caretakers encourage their respective wards, (363) that they ought to be just, and do so not by praising justice considered in and of itself but rather the rewards of reputation780 that come from justice.781 Their purpose is that their sons by seeming to be just should accrue, from the very seeming, such awards as Glaucon just went through – offices and marriage and the rest – since they belong to the just man because of the good reputation he enjoys.782 Indeed they widen the ambit783 of the case for reputation by including honorific awards bestowed on men by the gods, a bounty of goods that the gods bestow on the pious,784 as our worthy poets Hesiod and Homer, the one how the gods make a just man’s “oak tree full of acorns at the top and bees in the middle, and make their sheep heavy laden with wool” and lots of other such goods,785 and Homer likewise:786
“Yea, as of a king that is blameless who in reverenceKeeps to the rule of good justice, the black earth bears himBarley and wheat, his trees become heavy with fruit,His sheep bear lambs and the sea provides him with fish.”
Musaeus and his son have added a novel line of goods coming from the gods to men. They lead787 the virtuous down to Hades, provide them couches and outfit a whole party for the pious, with crowns all around and drinking ‘til the end of time. Leave it to them to think it obvious788 that the best payoff for being just is eternal inebriation! Other poets press this theme of rewards from the gods still further, how there will be children and children’s children to survive the man who is pious and keeps his oaths. These are the sorts of terms in which they make their praise of justice. When it comes to the impious and the unjust they stick them into that mud in Hades or they make them carry water in a sieve there, and while they are still living789 they lead their characters into lives of ill repute. They include in their tales of the unjust those very same punishments that Glaucon went through in connection with the truly just but seeming unjust, having nothing else to add.790 So much for the praise and blame of the one and the other.”
Clearly Adeimantus finds praise of justice and the dispraise of injustice that fathers offer their sons to be insipid and inadequate, showing indeed no more inspiration than those who argue the opposite; but he has more to burden (364) Socrates with, “another type of arguments791 one finds in plain speech and from the poets, too.792 Everyone793 avers as if with one voice794 that self-control and justice795 are without question796 fine (though mind you harsh and toilsome),797 whereas798 their opposites are pleasant and ready to hand, with opinion only and convention calling them vile.799 More profitable, too, is unjust behavior than just, in most cases, as they go on to say.800 Knaves that become rich and acquire power801 they count happy and are willing to honor them without scruple, both among themselves and in public venues,802 while the others803 they dishonor and ignore, finding a way to view them as804 basically weak and poor though of course they would grant that they are better people than their counterparts. The most amazing part of these arguments805 is what is said806 about the gods and virtue,807 that the very gods808 in many cases809 have sent misfortunes and a bad life810 down upon the good and the opposite to their opposites.811 There812 are mendicant priests and seers that gain the ear of the rich and persuade them that they can channel powers from the gods, and can use sacrifices and incantations, in case there’s been some kind of misdeed,813 whether his own or his children’s, so as to make it good with a ceremony of pleasing feasts;814 not to mention that in case he wants to bring a little815 trouble down on his enemy’s head (just or unjust, no questions asked), for a small fee he could do some real harm by means of the special816 inducing incantations and constraining spells they have for persuading the gods to serve their wishes.817
“They are able to cite the poets as witnesses818 for all these points, some citing them on the topic of baseness, in order to facilitate819 being bad,
Saying,820 “Evil a man can find in plenty, easy for the taking.The path to it is smooth and near, while on virtue’s pathThe gods have placed sweat at the very start,”821
a path good and long and rough and steep, if you will.822 Others823 call on them as witnesses that gods can be diverted824 from their ways by men, they cite Homer himself, how he said,
“... to prayers even the gods hearken,And by sacrifices and soothing vowsWith incense and libation they are turned by humanPrayers, when one has gone beyond the bounds and sinned.”825
And826 they can produce book after book by Musaeus and Orpheus, children of the Moon and the Muses as they claim. They use them as manuals for their rituals and they get not just individuals but whole cities to believe that there are ways to release them and cleanse them of their wrongdoings through sacrifices and pleasing games for (365) clients that are still alive, and that there are ways that work even for the defunct also (which they call functions827) that absolve those in the world beyond from the evils828 they face there, whereas if they don’t perform the sacrifices those worrisome evils still lie in wait.829
“Given this sample, friend Socrates, of things that are said about virtue and vice and the kind of respect men have for them and the gods have, too, consider what sense the souls830 of the young men who have strong natural gifts and are able to connect the dots831 might make of it all as they ponder what one832 should be like and how one should make his way through life. He would argue, in all probability,833 quoting that line from Pindar: 'Shall it be by justice that I ascend the heights or by the devious ways of deception,' and to live out my life protected from all comers?834 From everything I have heard, to be truly just, unless in addition I seem to be,835 is nothing to the good but only toil and likely onus; to be unjust but careful to achieve a reputation as just, their story gives me a life like a god’s.836 So then, as the wise assure me that appearance and show can defeat even truth837 and that these hold the key to happiness, onto this path must I turn with all my strength.838 Let me build a proud front and wrap myself around with a show of justice before me, but keep in tow behind me that crafty crooked fox of Archilochus the wise.839 Someone840 might object, 'It’s hard to fool all the people all the time.' Yes, I’d say, ease never garnered the greater goods.841 We842 must buck up if we are to achieve happiness, and cling to reason.843 Reason bids us844 to mount an assault against being caught by building up cabals and associations;845 next846 there are the teachers of persuasion we can hire to provide us with skills oratorical and forensic. From these sources we’ll be equipped to persuade our way through some troubles and force our way through others,847 and come off far ahead in the end848 and scot-free. 'But849 the gods you can’t persuade nor can you force them.' But can’t I say in response850 that first of all, if they don’t exist or don’t care851 about human affairs, why should we for our part care852 about eluding them? Alternatively, if they do exist and do care about us, let me remind you853 that our only evidence854 that they do is from the arguments we are reviewing855 and from our poets who sing the genealogies,856 but these very sources tell us also that by means of sacrifices, and by those 'soothing vows' of Homer,857 and by setting up offerings858 to them, they are amenable to being reoriented859 in their outlook and persuaded to think otherwise.860 You must believe those sources in both or believe them in neither.861 Take it862 that we are to believe: then we must commit injustice and make a sacrifice paid for out of the proceeds. After all, if we are to be just we will only have not being punished by the gods863 to look forward to, at the expense (366) of forgoing the proceeds of injustice; but if we are unjust we’ll not only secure the lucre but also, by making our prayers as persons who have ‘o’erstepped the bounds and sinned,’ 864and softening their resolve, we will get off without having to pay a sou.865 'But you’ve forgotten866 how we pay the penalty in Hades for the evils we do here above, whether ourselves or our867 children’s children.' 'But my friend,' he shall reply868 from his enlightened economical point of view,869 'for that in turn I can adduce870 the power and efficacy of the telestic rituals and the releasing gods that the greatest cities extol as do those children of the gods that have become their poets and prophets,871 who872 have laid this information for us.’ What argument could still be made, then,873 by which we would choose justice over a life of great injustice,874 the which875 if only we garner it while maintaining a false gracefulness we shall be pulling off something quite intelligent,876 both in respect to gods and to men, in this life and in the life beyond, in accordance with the argument that is being made by everybody who’s anybody?877
Given all that has been said, what device is left, Socrates,878 for a person to be willing to honor879 justice, assuming he has any power880 at all, whether of soul or of wealth or body or family,881 rather than laughing in ridicule882 when he hears it praised? In fact if someone is able to show what we have said883 is false and conversely possesses solid knowledge that justice is the best thing, he presumably has884 great sympathy for those who are unjust and feels little anger toward them, knowing instead that unless a person is held back from injustice by some aversion in his nature given him by a god, or else by having learned what he knows,885 that otherwise nobody acts justly because he wants to but rather that he condemns injustice out of cowardice or old age or some other weakness that makes him unable to do the deed himself. The proof is simple: as soon as one of these types acquires some ability he abuses886 it to whatever extent he can. And all that I have said stems from the basic claim that incited my brother here and me to put this argument before you, Socrates, namely: ‘My wonderful man, all of you as many as claim to be advocates of the just life,887 going back to the heroes of lore and reaching down to the men of our time, not a one has ever yet condemned injustice nor praised justice other than888 to praise and blame the reputation and honor and the wealth they may or may not confer.889 As for what each of them is in itself and in contrast with the other is able, given its own nature890 to do, by virtue of being present in the soul of the person who possesses it regardless891 whether gods or men notice, nobody yet in verse or in plain speech892 has adequately mounted an account proving that the one is the greatest of the evils by which a soul that has them can be afflicted, whereas justice893 is the greatest good. After all if this case were being made all (367) along from the start by all of you and you were persuading us of it from youth on,894 we would not be guarding against each other doing injustice, but each of us would already be the best guard against himself accepting the greatest of evils into his very home895 by living unjustly.’
“This much and more a Thrasymachus could say or another man like him,896 Socrates, on the merits of justice and injustice,897 perverting their true characters into their opposites,898 a thing most slovenly as it seems to me. For my own part, I have impersonated their position (I have no need899 to hide it from you) and have gone full out900 in doing it because I desire to hear901 the opposite position from you. So don’t just make out for us how justice is more effective902 than injustice but tell us what direct effect they have by their very nature903 on the man that has them inside him, on the basis of which the one is therefore good and the other bad. Leave altogether out of account the reputations for being just or unjust and their effects, as Glaucon insisted. If you don’t leave out the reputations that are deserved and true and904 add the reputations that are false and undeserved we will assert that you are not praising being just but only seeming just, and not censuring being unjust but only seeming to be unjust, and that in doing so you are encouraging905 us to find a way to be unjust without getting caught, and that you agree with Thrasymachus906 that justice is merely somebody else’s good and the advantage of the stronger, and that injustice is beneficial to oneself and unprofitable and disadvantageous only to the weaker. Since after all you granted that justice falls into the category of the greatest goods,907 the ones worth acquiring for the effects they bring about but even more908 for what they bring about in and of themselves909 such as seeing, hearing, being aware and being healthy, too,910 and any other goods that generate good effects911 by their inner nature rather than by the power of reputation,912 so now913 you must praise this aspect of justice, namely, how914 justice in and through its own nature profits a man, and how injustice does him harm. As for the payoffs915 and the opinions, leave them for others to praise.916 I would allow917 others to praise justice and censure injustice in these terms, namely, praise and censure of their reputations and rewards, but I would not stand for it from you—unless of course you should tell me I must918—you who all your life have done nothing but try to understand exactly this.919 Therefore do not show only that justice is more powerful than injustice, but also what each one does to the man that has them in him, the direct effect they have by their own natures whether the man deceives or doesn’t deceive the men around him and the gods, and how the effect of the one is good and the other bad.920
2.A.2: Excursus on the Speeches of Glaucon and Adeimantus
Thrasymachus had enacted an outlook, if you will, until the Socratic elenchus had deprived his role-playing of all credibility. Now Glaucon and Adeimantus attempt to spell out the “mindset” his behavior seems to have embodied, or aroused in them. Their speeches have both personal psychological significance and public political significance.
On the personal level, Glaucon is not satisfied with Thrasymachus’s acquiescence, because he still feels the power of the ideas to which Thrasymachus had been giving voice. He knows their power because he is somehow unable to resist them. His strength and directness at confronting the truth of this power rather than repeating it and passing it on to his neighbor with forceful blustering, as Thrasymachus did, constitutes the bravery for which Socrates praises him. He also believes that the “Socratic treatment” will heal him, and he invokes the Socratic treatment through his imitation of Socratic exhortation. In truth it is not an exhortation but a plea that he addresses to his teacher, a plea to give him the reply he feels, or fears, he cannot himself make.
His presentation of the position of which he wishes to be disabused is therefore tantamount to a confession. The sinner while he sins is under the power of the sin, and his behavior, like the behavior of Thrasymachus in Book One, is the spokesman for the sin. When he confesses his sin he becomes the spokesman for himself. His confession describes the sin. By revealing the sin for what it is he begins to deprive it of its power by disengaging it from the medium through which it operates, namely, his self. Both the brothers confess, or at least reveal, parts of the sinning outlook. How far the confession has taken them is shown by the facts that at the end of Glaucon’s speech he imagines taunting and murdering the good man, and that at the end of his speech Adeimantus performs the vicious attitude with special sophistication in his proposopopeia of the young man defeating himself in argument.
The words Plato places into Adeimantus’s mouth brilliantly characterize the confusion between the confessional and the self-aware elements operating in his mind. Without saying he will, Adeimantus presents his material in three parts equal in length and similar in theme (from men’s arguments about men to the poets’ arguments about gods), the first part a report of the inadequate arguments inculcated in him by those who are supposed to take care of him (362E1-3E4); the second a clever inversion of these arguments that he attributes to strange and nameless persons (363E5-5A3); and the third a conversation within himself in which the clever arguments he imitated win out over the inadequate ones he had been inculcated with (365A4-6B2).
Not all sinners are ready to confess, and not all interlocutors acknowledge being reduced to aporia. Thrasymachus could truculently fall silent instead. It remained for Glaucon and Adeimantus to confess their aporia, and whereas Glaucon gives vent to his feelings, Adeimantus with a complex ambivalence calls upon Socrates for help at the same time that he threatens to hold him responsible for his own confusion. It is this deepening of the issue that Socrates had referred to at the opening of the Book Two when he said that the previous discussion was mere prelude.
The public and political significance of the speeches centers on the point made by Adeimantus that the climate of opinion he and his brother have described affects not only them but also all young men, including young men who do not or will not have Socrates to turn to.921 Unformed young men always have and always will live among less than perfect older men who take it upon themselves, whether as fathers or uncles, out of love and duty and vanity and regret, to guide them into what they see adulthood to be according to their own best lights. Here as elsewhere men’s frailties play a more prominent role than their virtues. The younger see more wrong in their elders than they can see right, and imagine out of inexperience that improvements would not only be readily possible but also have needlessly been forgone. The elders who had once been young had also felt this way, but have since discovered their fathers’ limitations lurking in themselves, and often have reverted, perhaps a little too easily, to their fathers’ ways. They even find themselves willing to lower their sights on behalf of their sons. The discipline required in the young man to accommodate himself to his father’s order (as indeed to any order) hardly suits the moods and energetic rhythms of youth, and his untested desire to improve upon his father’s order might strike an unholy alliance with a less healthy desire to avoid anything that suits himself ill.922 As he begins to mature and begins to realize how very much he owes to the very order he is bent on ameliorating, he may well become impatient with himself and find it more convenient to emulate certain of his father’s peers to whom he owes nothing, though this is only because they have given him nothing, and this in turn only because they do not love him.923 Exactly these dynamics and stages in the transmission of order from the old to the young and from father to son924 is what Adeimantus’s speech describes.925 Public moral culture affects the young, and its agents are parents, cities,926 poets,927 and even the mass of men when they speak in one voice.928 The brothers’ speeches therefore reveal a political problem that is perennial.
Once we recognize the political mechanism of transmission from old to young, we can read the mechanism back into Glaucon’s “Thrasymachean” speech to see how it can work in an individual soul. The world around Gyges to which he can become invisible is the public world in which he is already a partner. He did not discover the power of the ring until the regular monthly meeting of the shepherds, which we may now take to be the analogue to the Athenian citizen’s occasional public duty of serving in the assembly. What made Gyges visible in the first place is his being seen by them; by himself he is neither visible nor invisible. This paradox broaches the sense in which man is by nature a man among men, a political animal.
The thought experiment, therefore, as well as the “theory” of law that precedes it, are only excuses that the inner self makes to itself to escape or to repudiate the reality of the community that the outer self finds itself in.929 Therefore, when Thrasymachus makes this speech in public he is making a public display of repudiating the public world. He is telling the inner conscience of his auditors that society does not exist. He is telling them their true beliefs are invisible. He is fomenting their vanity. To hear this they will of course be required to pay him, and pay him in the coin of the realm. The more of them he can convince the more of them he has ripped off, until perhaps he addicts them all to his seductive doctrine and slavishly they assemble at his feet and call him great and happy.930
There is finally the matter of the philosophical acuity of the speeches. Glaucon’s indignation and conspiracy with the Thrasymachean position has somehow led him to draw, and Adeimantus to continue, a distinction among goods, drawn on behalf of justice, that in itself is profound and unusual. In the end their speeches have articulated the substance underlying Socrates’s inchoate remark at the end of Book One that he has failed to ask what justice is but only asked what sort of thing it is. Their desire to defend justice expresses itself in a critique of doxa. Their ability to imitate both Socrates and the young man connecting the dots shows how things could go either way for them.
2.B: Socrates’s Reply to Glaucon and Adeimantus
The implicit comparison between the brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus and the imaginary youth they wish not to be, and the fact that they are seeking to avoid what they are saying the youth can only be expected to do, given his surroundings, suggests that they have received slightly superior guidance from their elders, and particularly their father, Ariston. On the other hand the fact that the two brothers have resorted to one and the same teacher931 suggests a shared lack of guidance from their father,932 and a shared sense of how to supplement it that in all likelihood they owe to the shared influence of that same father. We are entitled to speculate on the matter because the author of the dialogue is the ever-absent third brother, who moreover has decided to spend his life commemorating the sorts of results he and his brothers might have received from this father’s helper.
It is with their father that Socrates begins his reply to the brothers’ request (367E6ff). As he listened, his admiration for them leaped to a new high933 and he was moved to sing praises to that famous father of theirs934 in the (368) same terms Glaucon’s friend the elegist had done in the opening of his paean to the valiance the two brothers had shown in a battle at Megara:
“Children of Ariston, the godly progeny of a famous man ...”
—for only by a divine intervention might they not have been taken in935 by the argument that injustice is better than justice, given how eloquently they spoke in its defense. I do judge you haven’t been taken in, and my evidence is my general936 knowledge of what sort you are.937 Judging only by the arguments you made I’d be unsure. My certainty only puts me more in a jam938 as to what I should do, for I both have no idea how I can come to justice’s aid, since I thought that what I had said to Thrasymachus was enough to prove that justice was better than injustice, but you did not accept that account; while on the other had there’s no way I’ll give up rescuing939 her either. I shudder940 to think how impious it would be for a man941 to show up942 at justice’s side while she is being impugned, but to beg off defending943 her and fail to come to her aid, if still he can draw breath and make his voice heard.944 The best thing945 to do, then, is to come to her aid any way I can, regardless.
Glaucon and the others urged me to help any way I could and not to let the argument go its own way,946 but to track down through careful examination both what the two things are and what the truth is about their respective benefits. I improvised a beginning:
What we are trying to ascertain947 is not easy948 but calls for a person with sharp vision. Since we are hardly clever949 it seems to me (as I put it to them)950 that we ought to proceed as if somebody had assigned the task of reading small letters from a great distance to people who were not particularly sharp sighted, and then somebody remembered951 that the same letters had been written larger somewhere else on a larger surface.952 What a lucky turn of events this would be! You’d be able to discharge the assignment by first reading the larger letters and only then953 reading the smaller letters to check whether they were in fact the same.954
Adeimantus now steps in to accept the proposal but wants to know what larger thing Socrates has in mind, so Socrates continues. There is a justice that characterizes an individual man, and a justice that characterizes a whole polis. A polis is larger than a man. Assuming the analogy holds,955 the justice that characterizes a city would be greater in quantity, given the larger canvas of the polis, and as such would be easier to apprehend.956 So if you are willing, Socrates says, let us first ask the question what sort of thing justice is as it appears in cities,957 and only then make a (369) close inspection958 to find it in the individual man, seeing if we can see in the smaller object of scrutiny the likeness of what we saw in the larger.
This exegesis of his plan completely satisfies Adeimantus,959 which enables Socrates to add a refinement. If we were to imagine in our mind’s eye960 a city developing from scratch, we might just witness its justice and injustice961 developing right along within it; then once having seen that occur962 we would have reason to hope we could more directly963 apprehend our primary investigandum, the justice that occurs in the individual man.
Adeimantus agrees it would be much easier, enabling Socrates to call the question. Shall we do it then? Actually964 to carry out what we have described might turn out to be a rather large undertaking, so think it over. Adeimantus replies, “The thinking’s been thought,965 Socrates. Get on with it!” 966
With this the mental “construction” of the city begins, which will occupy us for about as long as we have been occupied so far.967 By this point in the discussion the ice has been broken in the social sense. The parties have confessed (or at least revealed) their inner feelings, and the pressure of deciding how to begin is off. Moreover, an agenda has been set out, to which the parties have subscribed with substantial unanimity968 and with eagerness, and a burden has been placed on Socrates to perform (in this sense the pressure is on). With a few swift strokes he has shifted the mood. First, he has agreed to lead, not because he agrees he is able to as Glaucon and Adeimantus believe he surely is,969 but because for him, as for anyone else in his position,970 it would be impious to demur.971 Second, rather than step forth to deliver a set oration according to the manner and the specifications of the brothers, he has suggested a rather rickety and ungainly path of inquiry tailored to require no special competence972 in the group, within which he includes himself. The combined effect of these measures is to magnify the importance of truth and to minimize the importance of the persons searching for it, and a fortiori to minimize the differences among them. The pressure is “off” because we are as dust, but it is “on” since we are dust sub specie aeternitatis. Having thus cleared the air973 Socrates can begin.
2.B.1: Construction of the City in Thought
The974 city comes into existence, I would guess, because of the fact975 that we are not self-sufficient as individuals but need many things.976 This is the initial impetus for settling977 a city. One person will call upon another out of his need for something and the other on another for something else, since they need many others,978 and thus they will gather a plurality of partners and helpers979 into one habitation, for which community we use980 the name polis. The one agrees to exchange what he has with another or to share it,981 thinking it to his advantage to do so.
Recognizing it is our need that brings it into existence let us make up what it looks like. Now the first and greatest need is the need for nutrition, which is a prerequisite to the bare fact of staying alive.982 Second is the need for shelter and third the need for clothing. Our city will suffice to meet these needs with one man a farmer, a builder another, and one a weaver I’d say,983 unless of course984 we add a cobbler or some other provider of bodily needs. Already then we have the absolute minimum of a city, consisting of four or five men. Next, let's ask: Must985 each of them place his own products on deposit for the whole group—the one farmer for instance producing food for four and spending four times the time and labor on the provision of food so as to share it with the others—or should he ignore them986 and produce only (370) one fourth the amount so as to provide for himself only, spending one fourth his time on it and spending the other three fourths occupied with providing himself shelter and a cloak and shoes, so as thereby to avoid987 the complications of communal dealings with others and be rather an island unto himself,988 minding his own business?
“And yet,989 Socrates, one would have to say the way we had it is easy990 in comparison with his way of looking at things.”
His intervention gives Socrates time to notice something else,991 that different people by their very natures are suited to different kinds of action,992 so that the several different tasks are less likely to be done admirably993 if done by one man than if they had been assigned to several men according to their several natures. Moreover, the “right time” for things does not wait for the man: once it passes it is gone forever. The task994 tends not to wait for the leisure of the person tasked with it; instead the person tasked must conform himself to the task and not see his product as a mere by-product995 of his activity. From these arguments,996 production of the distinct items will be more copious, and of higher quality, and easier to manage – if one person does one thing in accordance with his natural gifts and kisses off997 the rest.
Given this new principle we will need more than the four, since the farmer will not be making his plow if the plow is to be a proper998 plow, nor the mattock nor the other tools used in farming. Likewise the builder, and he needs lot of tools, and so with the other two also, the weaver and the cobbler. Woodworkers and brazeners and other such craftsmen will come on as partners and our little city999 will become a rather crowded1000 place.
“Quite so,” replies Adeimantus.
And it still won’t be so very large1001 if we add cowherds and shepherds and the other herdsmen to provide the farmers with draught animals and the builders also for hauling their materials around, as well as to provide the weavers and the cobblers with leather and hides.1002
“But it won’t be particularly small, either, if it is to have all that.”
And yet no matter where we situate our city we will almost certainly need to import some things, so that they will need others to convey to their city items it needs from another city; and the man who conveys1003 these goods to us will come back empty handed unless we provide goods for him to take with him to trade for what he would bring (371) back, items the other city needs; so that the city will need products enough not only for its own needs but also products that will suit those others, both what they need and the right amounts. Hence we will need more farmers and producers of other products within our city,1004 as well as more of those other functionaries in addition1005 to convey goods back and forth—traders that is. And in case the trading requires sea travel we’ll need a whole lot1006 of other experts having to do with boats and sailing.
As to how they will manage the exchange of goods within the city1007—the problem we mentioned above1008 as the reason we formed a community that ended up constituting a city—this they will achieve by selling and buying, so we’ll need a marketplace as well as a currency. Unless all the people who need food show up at the same moment at which the farmer, for instance, is free to bring his goods to the market, the farmer will have to sit there and allow his duties on the farm to languish.
Adeimantus volunteers a solution with an uncharacteristically long speech.1009 No problem! There are certain people who see the need for shopkeepers and take the initiative to fill it. In the better organized cities it is the people who are physically weak and otherwise unskilled.1010 Their job is just to sit there in the marketplace and exchange silver for goods with those who need to divest themselves of something and exchange goods for silver with those who need to buy something.
Socrates rejoins, “So this is the need that brings retailers, so called, into being in the city,” and thus he resumes the lead in the conversation. We distinguish between the buyers and sellers who do the job of1011 staying put in the market place and the itinerant retailers who go from city to city, whom we call traders.1012 And there are still other workers who have little of mental virtue for us to enjoy as their partners, but who make a worthy1013 contribution by their bodily strength. It’s because they sell their needful strength for “hire,” as they call it in their case,1014 that they have come to be called “hirelings,” I guess.1015 To make it complete then our City even has hirelings.1016
2.B.2: Search for Justice in the Thought-City
The City has grown to completion so now we can ask ourselves, Where is its justice and injustice? With which constituent we encountered in our investigation did it arrive?1017 Adeimantus for his part1018 is not sure, unless it (372) consists in the need the constituent members as such1019 have for one another.1020 Socrates hears more despair in his answer than conviction and encourages him. “You might be right but let’s press our inquiry further. We have equipped them; now let us follow their daily regimen.”1021
They’ll pass their days making their food and wine and their cloaks and shoes,1022 and in the building of their houses we’ll find them working shirtless and unshod on the whole during the heat of summer, but well suited1023 with clothes and shoes during the cold of winter.1024 Their nourishment they will take by making meal of their barley and flour of their wheat, and by baking the one and kneading the other they will produce glorious1025 puddings and loaves1026 and lay them out on a mat of reeds or washed leaves, and get down and stretch themselves out1027 for their meal on ground covered with1028 a spread of bryony and myrtle. Such is the feast they will enjoy1029 with their children at their side, sipping a little wine, rustically wreathed and singing their hymns of thanks to the gods. Sweetly they will lie together and make children but only within their means, to avoid penury and war.”1030
The description of the daily life is idyllic in both the literal and what will become the literary sense. Their regimen is inherently rustic and simple, but Socrates goes out of his way to give it an idyllic description, too.1031 His vignette does not describe their dealings with other men, even though it is in these relations that Adeimantus had suspected justice and injustice were to be found. In fact Socrates mentions only that first round of citizens whose job was to fulfill the primary needs, not the διάκονοι nor the μισθωτοί. He places them at their basic tasks of farming and making clothes and shoes, providing thereby for the first and third basic needs, and then he makes his way to their fulfilling the second by imagining how they are clothed when they build their houses.1032 The protection they need from clothes and shoes while working all day in the winter, and the exhausting heat of the summer that makes clothes and shoes more trouble than they are worth, then gives him a segue to following them as they return home for dinner and the evening’s rest at the end of the day. They have “run into” nobody. At home the preparation and presentation of their food is described in striking detail by a continuation of the series of doublets: barley and wheat, meal and flour, baking and kneading, puddings and loaves, serving the food on reed mats or on washed leaves, the spreads strewn with bryony and myrtle, themselves and their children, they are crowned and signing, they avoid poverty and war.1033 The presence of so many pairs is remarkably unobtrusive but their cumulative effect is strong. The pairs describe a life of variety without surfeit, choice without the embarrassment of riches, and regularity without tedium. If the people’s1034 whole life lacks bulk it is not because any of its parts is jejune.
Glaucon interrupts:1035 “You1036 depict the men1037 ‘feasting’ but there’s nothing on their bread!”1038 Socrates accepts the criticism as a correctible oversight, or feigns to: “You’re right, I forgot. They will have something for their bread, too—salt, obviously, and olives and cheese, and leeks and cabbages too, the sorts of things people boil in the country1039 they will boil.1040 Also we will be serving1041 them side dishes of figs and chickpeas and beans, and they’ll be roasting1042 myrtle berries and acorns by the fire and washing it all down with a little wine. So will they live the days of their lives, in peace and good health with any luck,1043 and die at a ripe old age passing on a similar life to their sons.”
Glaucon steps up his tone from satiric to sarcastic: “If it were for pigs you were outfitting a city, Socrates, what else than this would you put in the trough1044 for them?” This rips it. Socrates cannot continue in the same vein but says, “Just what would you have, Glaucon?”1045
Glaucon’s answer is abrupt at the same time that it is evasive: “Just the customary.”1046 Then he tacks on1047 a list: “To ‘get down’ as you put it on couches if they are to have any rest at all,1048 and to dine off tables, and just1049 the garnishes that current people have, as well as the side dishes.”
2.B.3: The Amendment of the Thought-City
“Aha! Now I get it,” Socrates says.1050 It’s not a city whose evolution we are trying to construct, but a city that is also finicky.1051 Maybe that’s better. Looking for a city of this kind1052 might enable us to witness how justice and injustice are sown into a city.1053 The city we’ve already constructed seems the true city to me, as being healthy if I may use the metaphor.1054 But if you all1055 want to, we will start again and investigate a fevered1056 version. It seems the present provisions will (373) not satisfy certain persons,1057 particularly the daily regimen. Couches will be needed in addition, and tables, and the other furniture, and those condiments you asked for,1058 and body oils and perfumes and courtesans and prepared dishes, all the most exotic types1059, and we can no longer posit that the items we just listed constitute the basic necessities, namely houses and cloaks and shoes, but we’ll have to initiate the manufacture of portraits and decorations and we’ll have to acquire gold and ivory and all that.1060
Glaucon quietly agrees, and Socrates continues with the new task. We will have to make the city still larger; the healthy one is no longer adequate.1061 Now we’ll need to fill it to the brim both in bulk and numbers with things that before were less than necessary. For instance, all the different kinds of hunters and the imitators, too, a good number of those who deal in the visual arts1062 and a good number of those who deal in the province of the muses1063—poets and their underlings: rhapsodes, actors, chorus leaders, jobbers, craftsmen for the manufacture of all sorts of gear,1064 down to cosmetics for the women.1065 And besides1066 we’ll need1067 more of those unskilled types, wouldn’t you say, like tutors, wet nurses, feeders, hairdressers, barbers, and also condiment makers and butchers and you know what else? Swineherds! We didn’t have this1068 in our first city since they were not needed, but in this one there will be a new need1069 for this, too, and a need1070 for every other kind of fatted animals that people will be eating.1071
Glaucon takes all this in stride1072 and Socrates continues. “Won’t we have a greater need for doctors1073 than before if we live1074 by this regimen instead of that? And the region we inhabit: it was adequate to support the people before but now it will go from being adequate to being small.1075 We’ll need to annex some land from our neighbors if we’re to have enough for farming and grazing; but so will they, in turn, if they for their part1076 give themselves over to the unbounded acquisition of wealth and overstep1077 the limits of necessity. This can lead only to war. Before we decide whether war does or doesn’t achieve anything worthwhile let’s note that we have now found where it comes from after all,1078 namely from the thing that more than anything else brings the evils that come to actual1079 cities, afflicting both private and public (374) life, whenever it rears its ugly head.1080 A still larger city will be needed, larger not by a small amount but by the mass1081 of an army, which will venture forth in defense of all we have and are,1082 and of what we have lately added, to battle against the invaders.1083
As Socrates becomes more and more animated Glaucon has more and more complacently accepted the additions to the city that Socrates blames him for causing. Finally he hazards a mild1084 objection: “What? Won’t the citizens be adequate to this task just as they are?”1085
Socrates responds to Glaucon’s shift by adding a recriminatory edge:1086 “No way, if you along with the rest of us were right in the agreement we reached in the course of molding our city. We did agree after all,1087 if you remember, that it is impossible for one man to perform many arts well.
“True, we did.”
So, do you think the contests of war do not require the competence1088 of an art?
“Quite so.”
Does the art of competent shoemaking deserve more concern than the art of competent war?
“No way!”
So how1089 on the one hand could we1090 forbid the shoemaker from trying to be a farmer at the same time, and from being a weaver or a builder, but instead allow him only to be a shoemaker, with the purpose of ensuring that the work of the art competent at shoes1091 comes out well, and similarly with the others, in general assign one job to one distinct man, the job that his inborn nature best suited him for1092 and in connection with which we meant him to dismiss the other pursuits and every day of his life work just at it1093 and avoid missing the needs of the moment, and therefore to achieve a fine product and outcome,1094 whereas when it comes to matters of war is there any question whether it is of the utmost importance that such be carried out well? Or is war such an easy matter that a person who farms will be competent at military things also1095 as will a person who makes shoes, and anybody else who works at any other art, although at the same time the world has never known1096 a person competent at checkers or competent at dice,1097 who hasn’t been at it since he was a child but treats it only as a hobby. No, the moment he grabs1098 a shield or some other weapon or tool of the military art,1099 right then and there he’ll be a “sufficient” combatant to use your term,1100 whether for a battle requiring the competence of the hoplite or any other kind, while at the same time there is no other tool that can turn a man into an able craftsman or an athlete by being picked up,1101 nor is even useful to him if1102 he hasn’t also picked up1103 the science of the field in question and devoted himself to practicing it an adequate amount.
Socrates disencumbers himself of three consecutive a fortiori arguments1104 to the effect that specialization is at least as important in war as in the crafts, that practice is required to achieve competence in this art at least as much as in the game of dice, and that the tools of this art are just as useless to a man who lacks knowledge how to use them as anywhere else. The biting tone of these essentially sarcastic arguments adds to the vehemence with which he had above characterized the uncontrollable growth of the city. Both had been brought on by Glaucon's concupiscence.
Glaucon indicates that he agrees with the whole mass of the argument by stating his agreement with the last part.1105 His agreement is more than mere acquiescence. With his brevity he shows a measure of contrition, recognizing that his guess they would be sufficient required something like magic to come true: “Such tools would be worth quite a lot!” They have achieved a truce, and Socrates shifts from criticism and satire to constructive proposal.1106
To the extent it is true that the job of the guards1107 is the greatest job, to that extent it needs the fullest release from all from the other jobs and instead1108 the greatest amount of art and practice of its own,1109 as well as an inborn nature that is able to develop such an ability.1110 In that case our1111 job would be to select the natures whose qualities1112 are suited to guarding the city, if we are able.
“Ours indeed,” Glaucon replies. They have gotten themselves back onto the same page, and Socrates adds his (375) characteristic reminder that the task might be beyond them, but still they must not shrink from it.1113
2.B.3a: The Search for the Guard in the Amended Thought-City
The trouble introduced by Glaucon’s impatient concupiscence at the vision of the plain city will be resolved by their joint search for guards, in two senses. The very reversion to joint search immediately relieves the tension between Socrates and Glaucon, and if the object of that search is found then the order of the “feverish” city can come into focus and the search for justice and injustice within it can take place. At a similar juncture Socrates had offered the novel suggestion of looking for justice on a larger canvas. This time he begins with a riddle: “Do you think there’s much difference in nature between the noble hound and the son of a noble?”1114 Glaucon has no idea what he means,1115 so Socrates has bought himself an opportunity to explain.
Both the well bred youth and the worthy dog need to have sharp senses, and as they sight their prey to be quick at pursuing it, and then once they have caught it to be strong at battling it into submission.1116 The battling moreover1117 will require bravery, and to be brave belongs to a nature that is spirited, whether we are speaking of a horse or a dog or any other animal whatsoever. The will is an unconquerable and invincible thing, and when it is present in a soul the entire soul is fearless and imperturbable.1118 These then are the basic requirements in body on the one hand (senses, quickness and strength), and moreover1119 in soul (willfulness), that are needed in our guards.
Given such natures they are likely to be violent to each other and to the citizens, besides.1120 We need them instead to be gentle and tame1121 to their fellows1122 and to treat their enemies harshly. Otherwise they won’t be around long enough to worry about others defeating them but will have done the deed to themselves. We need to find the character1123 that combines the gentle and the high spirited, whereas the gentle nature would seem to be the very opposite of the high spirited nature. On the other hand our guards cannot be deprived of either and still be good guards. It looks like we’re asking for the impossible, and that good guards will never exist.
Socrates reverts to narrative for the first time in quite a while, to tell us that he sat there puzzled, going over more closely1124 what had been said up to this point, and then remarked, “But of course we’re puzzled, my friend! After all, we were left in the lurch by our original image.” Glaucon of course does not know what he is talking about. “We failed to keep in mind that there do exist natures that we thought impossible, that do combine these opposite attributes.”
“And where are they to be found,1125 pray tell?”
“Well you could see it in various1126 animals, but not the least in the very one we brought up in our analogy about the guard. You must know this about the better dogs,1127 that they have just this character in their nature.1128 Toward the people they are used to and familiar with1129 they are just as gentle as you could wish, but toward those they do not know quite the opposite.”
The instance refutes the impossibility and shows that their conception of the guard is not contrary to nature1130 after all. But now Socrates begs Glaucon to grant him a little more.1131 In addition to being high spirited the person we will have as our guard needs to have a philosophical nature as well.1132 Glaucon hardly understands what this can mean so Socrates a illustrates his meaning with an elaboration of the analogy with the dog: Believe it or not this too is found in the dog, beast that he is. At the sight of an unknown man he becomes irritated even though he has not been abused by him before, but when he sees somebody he knows he feels joy even before he has been given a treat.1133 Glaucon had never focussed1134 on these facts as much as Socrates has, but now that he thinks of it he agrees, and Socrates adds a refinement. The feeling or disposition1135 with which their nature equips them has a subtle aspect that particularly deserves to be called “philosophical” in a literal sense.1136 They feel a distinction between friend and foe at first sight, solely because they recognize the one and don’t recognize the other. To find oneself distinguishing what is one’s own from what is alien on the basis that one understands the former and fails to understand the latter is the very essence of being a lover of what one knows, a lover of learning, and yet1137 this is identical to being a lover of wisdom or a “philosopher.” Let’s take heart1138 then and posit that in the human animal also, if he is to be gentle to his own kind and to those known to him1139 he must have a nature that is philosophical or1140 love what he knows.
Our conclusion is that if the man is to be a competent and worthy guard for the city he will be philosophical and spirited, and quick and strong.1141 Glaucon agrees and Socrates can move on.1142 Let this then be the nature he starts out with.1143 How is he to be raised and educated for us?1144 Do you think our investigating the matter on its own merits1145 will help us reach the settled goal of our entire inquiry—discovering justice and injustice and how they1146 arise in the city—for the pursuit of which goal we should neither pass over anything needful nor include an unnecessary mass of detail.1147
Glaucon’s brother1148 now answered. “I for my part surely expect that this investigation will advance us toward that goal.” Narrowly his response means he would prefer to err on the side of prolixity, but the broader import of his remark is that he wants to join in. Socrates responds, “By Zeus, then, we mustn’t let the question go,1149 even if it might prove1150 to be quite a lengthy one to answer.”
“You can be sure we mustn’t.”1151
Instead let’s go at it in the leisurely manner of the storyteller and educate our men.1152
“So much would only be suitable.”
2.B.3b.1: The Nurturing of the Natural-born Guards: MUSIC (Poetry)
What would their education be like? Socrates begins. In truth it would be1153 hard for us to improve on the time honored division between gymnastic for the body and music for the soul. Of these two the education in music will of course1154 begin earlier.
“Of course.”
Under the heading of music fall discourses, and under the heading of discourse there are two types, true and false.1155
“Yes.”
(377)And we are to raise them on both kinds, but on the false kind first ...
“I don’t understand how you mean that.”1156
You mean you don’t understand that at the beginning we tell our little children myths?1157 This kind of story is false as a whole, though there are elements in it that are true. In educating our little children we start by telling them tales earlier than we assign them gymnastic exercises,1158 and this is what I meant when I just said that music comes earlier.1159
“And you are right.”
What we do at the very beginning has the strongest influence in any undertaking, especially as concerns anything1160 that is young and therefore tender. It is then that it is most malleable, and then that whatever stamp one wishes to impose on it can sink in,1161 no matter what was there before.1162 Therefore we will not casually allow our children to hear any story made-up1163 by anybody,1164 and take beliefs1165 into their souls mostly1166 opposite to the beliefs we will be wanting them to have once they reach maturity.
“No way should we allow this.”
From the start we’ll have to monitor1167 the storytellers1168 and enlist any fine story they compose but exclude any that is not. Then we will persuade the nurses and the mothers1169 to tell their children those we have enlisted and thereby to mould their souls with stories even more profoundly than they mould their bodies with their hands.1170 Most of the stories the caregivers tell these days will have to be thrown out.1171
“Just what sorts do you mean?”1172
In greater tales we will find also which of the smaller tales need to be expelled. It is the traits of the story that matter, since stories with similar traits, whether large or small, will have similar effects.1173
“I agree with that but really want to know what ‘greater’ tales you mean!”
What Hesiod and Homer1174 used to tell us and the other poets as well, for it is these who have composed false stories for mankind and compose them still.1175
“Which ones? and for what fault you find in them?”1176
The fault that must be condemned first and foremost, especially if one lies poorly.1177
“What is this fault you mention?” 1178
Socrates explains by comparing the poet to a painter: he creates a likeness in words of the gods or the heroes and what they are like, and he might botch the likeness the way an artist does when his drawing resembles not at all1179 the original he wanted to draw.
“Obviously it is correct to find fault in this,1180 but how are we saying the stories have this fault and which stories are we saying have it?”1181
First of all, there is the biggest lie about the most important subjects1182 and the story that told it1183 told it poorly: that Ouranos committed the act1184 alleged in Hesiod and that Kronos his son took revenge on him in turn; 378 and worse,1185 the things Kronos is said to have done to his son and suffered from him,1186 even if they were true, would hardly be things to be recited carelessly1187 to the mindless young.1188 The general1189 policy would that they be suppressed altogether; but even if there were1190 some need to tell them, that as few of our citizens as possible hear them, and hear them in secret and only after they’ve sacrificed not just a pig but something large and hard to come by, so that the experience of hearing them might happen1191 only to the fewest few.
“I certainly agree these stories do grate.”1192
And they are not to be told, either,1193 in the city we are building.1194 Nor will we let our young man hear the idea1195 that if he1196 were to commit the most extreme acts of injustice he would be doing nothing out of the ordinary, nor if he punished his father1197 for unjust acts in a most exacting way, but to the contrary that he would just be doing what the greatest and foremost gods do.1198
“He certainly should not by Zeus!” Adeimantus replies, “Even to me they seem unsuitable!”1199
Nor, to be sure,1200 shall we tell them in general that the gods are at war, fomenting plots and pitching battles1201 against each other. Besides being false like the rest1202 we surely1203 need those who are to be guarding the city to hold the belief that it is most shameful to fall easily into discord with each other. We hardly need to depict such tales in our embroidery1204 for them to see, about a Battle of the Giants and other such dissension beeween gods and heroes1205 and those of their own kind. If we are to persuade them that citizen never yet fought against citizen and that to do so would be impious, it is this sort of thing, instead, that the children must hear from their grandfathers and grandmothers; and as they grow older they must compel the poets to write stories nearer to such themes as these. As for the bindings of Hera by her son and the hurlings of Hephaestos by his father when he was about to defend his mother, and all the theomachies1206 we find in Homer, these we will not carry over1207 into our city, neither their themes1208 nor the stories themselves. A young person doesn’t distinguish fiction from facts, and everything that he takes into his stable of beliefs as a young person has a way of becoming indelible and unalterable later on.1209 Given all this, in fact, we should probably do everything we can to see to it that the first things they do hear are the best things possible to hear for becoming virtuous.1210
“That makes good sense,” Adeimantus rejoins, “but what do we say if someone challenges us to say which things have this effect and which are the stories that tell them: which ones could we point to?”
Socrates steps back to remind us he is telling us the story of yesterday’s conversation:1211 “And I said in reply, (379) ‘Adeimantus,1212 you and I aren’t poets. In our present occupation1213 we are founders of a city, and as founders we only need to know the general traits1214 that are to govern the poets’ stories, and if they make stories that go against these guidelines not to abide it. We have no duty to compose stories ourselves.’”1215
“Well then what are the guidelines or traits for stories about the gods1216 that we shall point to?”
I’d say they are about as follows.1217 The god1218 must always be depicted as he truly is, whether in epic or lyric or tragedy. Being god he is good, and so he must be spoken of as such. Now among good things you will find nothing that is harmful, and if not harmful it wreaks no harm and therefore does nothing bad. If it does nothing bad then it could not be the cause of anything bad either. And conversely since a good thing is helpful it will be the cause of faring well.1219 Thus the good is not the cause of everything. Only the good outcomes1220 can be attributed to it, whereas it cannot be blamed1221 for the bad. Therefore god, being good, would not be the cause of everything as everybody says, but is the cause of rather little that affects men1222 and is blameless for most. After all, good things are far fewer than the bad for us, and of the good only god is the cause whereas for the bad we must seek out other causes and not god.
Hence we may not condone this1223 error about the gods, whether from Homer or from any other poet, nor such foolish remarks as
“Two are the pots that stand full of fates at the doorstep of Zeus,The one full of good ones and the other of horrid ...”
and that a man for whom Zeus mixes an allotment from both pots
“Such a man meets evil at one moment and good at another,”
whereas the man for whom he prepares a dose of the one pot1224 unmixed,
“Him does an evil hunger drive through his life on the bright earth.”
Nor that, as if he were our steward, Zeus
“... dispenses both good and evil.”
As for breaking one’s oath or violating a treaty as Pandarus endeavored to do,1225 if someone says it was through the agency of Athena or Zeus that it happened we shall not approve it any sooner than approving the story of a strife (380) and division among the gods instigated by Themis and Zeus.1226 Nor shall we let our young hear the story Aeschylus tells, that
“God plants the cause among mortalsWhenever he wishes to bring their house to utter ruin.”
If somebody composes poems in which we find verses that depict the sufferings of Niobe or of the Pelopids or the Trojans or other such disasters we must either forbid them treating these events as being the work of the gods, or if such events are to be the gods’ doing we must have them invent an account that closes on1227 our current theme instead, and tell the story that what the gods were wreaking was just and good, and that the men benefitted from being punished. The story that people who pay the penalty are pitiful losers1228 and that it was god after all who actually perpetrated the evil deed—these we will not allow the poet to tell. If on the other hand they tell that bad men deserved correction because they were losers, and that in paying the penalty they were benefitted by the gods, that we would allow. As for the idea that god is to blame for an evil that befalls a man even though he is good, this idea we must fight against at every turn, against a person telling it in his own city if his city is to be law loving1229 and against anybody hearing such a story whether he be young or old, whether the story is told in rhyme or prose, since telling such a story is an impious act, and a story that is disadvantageous to us, as well as being at odds with itself.1230
“I vote with you in support of this law,” Adeimantus answers, from the point of view of the citizen Socrates had just referred to:1231 “It is quite satisfactory to me.”
The playful alliteration in his assent gives Socrates his cue formally to adopt this first custom and trait1232 about the gods—that they are responsible not for all that happens but only for the good—and move on to presenting the second trait he1233 has in mind: Shall we imagine that god is a sort of sorcerer and characteristically contrives to make appearances in different forms at different times, sometimes himself actually undergoing change so as to1234 switch out one shape or form for another, while other times deceiving us by creating the appearance that he has done something like this? Or shall we imagine him to be both1235 straightforward1236 and the least likely of all things to (381) depart from his own true form?
Adeimantus finds himself unable to answer and so Socrates asks a question that might help him do so.1237
If something1238 should depart from its own true form, mustn’t it1239 make the transition from the one to the other form either under its own power or else under the power of something else? As for being changed by something else, things that are in optimal condition are least subject to being changed or moved,1240 as we see from the cases of the body being affected by food and drink and exercise, or any plant being affected by hot spells or winds or the other things they undergo: the healthiest and strongest individuals are the least altered. And in the case of the soul the bravest and most mindful1241 one is least subject to outside forces making it anxious and confused1242 and so1243 to alter it. Even1244 in the case of all manufactured equipment and buildings and woven garments,1245 those that were well1246 made in the first place and in this way are in a good condition1247 are least subject to being altered by the passage of time and the other wear and tear they undergo.1248 Thus in general anything1249 that is in a fine state,1250 whether in its nature or due to the craft that made it or both,1251 admits the least degree of change by forces from the outside. God, however,1252 and everything about god, is already in optimal condition;1253 and so in this first way1254 god could not take on1255 many forms.1256
But1257 could he alter1258 himself and change thereby? Does he change himself to a better and finer1259 condition or to a condition worse and uglier than his present one? Given the fact that he lacks nothing in virtue and beauty1260 he could not make himself better, so it must be1261 to the worse.1262 And yet, given this,1263 what god or man would willingly make himself worse in any way whatsoever?1264 Therefore in the case of god as well,1265 he cannot willingly alter himself. Instead, since each god is optimally beautiful and good1266 each in his way,1267 he remains always and honestly1268 in his own proper form.
Let none of our poets therefore tell us that
“... gods change their looks to that of strangers’ garb,And take on all sorts of forms when they visit the cities of men.”
Let nobody tell those lies against Proteus and Thetis, and whether in tragedy or in other poems let nobody bring on Hera completely changed into a priestess gathering alms
“For the life-giving sons of Inachus, the Argive stream,”
nor let us allow anybody to tell all the other lies of this sort.1269 Furthermore, we mustn’t let mothers, distracted1270 by such lies as these, try to scare their children with badly made stories about gods that lurk around at night, withal, making themselves resemble all sorts of strangers.1271 This blasphemes the gods at the same time that it makes our children fearful.
By talking about mothers rather than poets Socrates has gone a little past his immediate target. Going too far is often the signal that it is time to get back to the main point, and this he next does by asking about the second limb of the second trait. Granting that the gods do not change themselves, might they make us think that they do by taking on a kaleidoscope of appearances so as to deceive and bewitch us?1272 Adeimantus only sees that this possibility has not been eliminated1273 and Socrates starts an argument to do so, with a question Adeimantus cannot answer:
(382)Would god be willing to deceive either in word or deed,1274 by holding in front of him a false picture to us?
“I do not know.”
You mean you don’t know1275 that when it comes to true falsehood,1276 if you will allow me to use such an expression, this is a thing abhorred1277 by gods and men alike.
The self-contradictory phrase of course leaves Adeimantus in the dark: “How do you mean?” and Socrates has another opportunity to expatiate:1278 I mean it thus, that deception1279 for the most important of one’s own things, and about the most important things, is something nobody1280 would knowingly1281 choose. It is fearsome above all to have taken that on, there.1282
Adeimantus is still more confused,1283 and so are we. How does deceit become acquiring something somewhere? What is this “most important” by which or for which our deceit takes place,1284 and what are the “most importants” about which, that somehow correspond by their paramount importance to that “most important”? For the moment it is impossible to know what these two “importants” can or do mean, let alone “acquiring” and “that” and “there.”
Now Socrates clarifies, after a fashion. You don’t understand because you think I am saying something deep.1285 All I have in mind is that in one’s soul to undergo deception about what is real and true,1286 and thereby to be in a state of deception1287 and thus in a state of virtual ignorance, and to have, and be left possessing,1288 nothing but falsehood there, is the last thing anybody would abide, and that they abhor such a thing1289 happening in that part of themselves given its nature.1290 Moreover,1291 this phrase “true falsehood” is just the right term for the ignorance lodged in the soul of the person stuck in deception, seeing that the falsity that occurs in statements1292 is an attempt to imitate something that is happening in the soul, an attempt that then congeals into a fixed image,1293 and as such, though false, is not a falsehood through and through.1294
Now as we said, the real and true1295 falsity is something abhorred not only by gods but by men, too. What about the kind of falseness that occurs in speech and thought? When and for whom1296 is it useful enough not to be abhorred? Presumably in both our dealings against enemies during war and in connection with1297 our so-called1298 friends, as when1299 they are raving or otherwise beside themselves and attempt some horrid act: falsehood may then prove useful in the way a drug may for the sake of averting them. Also in connection with the storytelling we have been talking about: Since we1300 don’t have historical knowledge of the aforetimes, by conforming our fiction to the truth as best as we can, so1301 we can derive some use from what is actually false.
“Very much so,” says Adeimantus, his strong agreement enabling Socrates to ask the next question: Of these ways that the false may be useful,1302 which is useful for the god?1303 Are we to say he needs it to substitute for an account of the past that he lacks out of ignorance?1304
“That would be ridiculous!”
So there is no false poet in god.1305 But could it be out of fearing those whom he hates that he would lie?1306
“Far from it.”
But because of their familiars’ foolishness or raving?1307
“But1308 nobody in the group of fools and madmen is a friend to god.”
Therefore there is no purpose for which god would lie, and we can conclude that in every way1309 the spiritual and divine realm1310 is utterly free1311 of falsehood.
From this it is easy to conclude1312 that god is essentially1313 uniform and true both in action and in speech, and neither changes in himself nor deceives others, not by producing appearances nor in what he says,1314 nor in the messages he sends us1315 whether we are waking or sleeping.1316
(383)Adeimantus asserts he has come to see what Socrates says is true, during the very time of Socrates’s argument,1317 and as before1318 his agreement enables Socrates to announce their adoption of a second τύπος as to how the poets must speak of the gods and depict them in their poems: The gods do not mislead us in word or deed, as if they were sorcerers, by changing themselves at their end or by creating false ideas in us at our end.1319 Despite the fact that we praise and approve much in Homer we will not be praising the story of the dream sent by Zeus to Agamemnon,1320 nor the passage from Aeschylus where Thetis asserts that when Apollo was singing at her wedding he
“... foretold the happy fortunes of my children,Their lives full long unknowing sickness:Throughout the paean he talked good omensOf my divine protected luck, and gave me heart.And I was sure that Phoebus’ divine mouthWas free of lie, teeming with art of prophecy.But he, himself who sang, himself who shared the feast,Himself who made these words, himself in deedIs murderer of my son.”1321
When somebody speaks this way about the gods we’ll treat him harshly and won’t provide him a chorus,1322 nor will we let the teachers use his verses in the education of the young, if we want our guards to come out god-fearing and god-like1323 as much as a man is able to be.
Adeimantus accepts these1324 traits and would adopt them as the laws of his city.1325
END OF BOOK TWO
BOOK THREE
(386) Socrates continues, confirming the suspicion we gathered from Adeimantus’s last remark, that he was about to move on to a new topic: As for the gods, these are the sorts of things, as it appears from our conversation, that are to be heard and not heard, straight from childhood by persons who are to turn out1326 honoring gods and ancestors as well as1327 not dishonoring their friendship with each other. But what if they are to be brave?1328 Won’t these things too need to be said, namely, what sort of things will make them fear death as little as possible? or do you think somebody can become brave as long has he holds such dread within himself?
“By God I surely do not,” Adeimantus says.
So do you think a person who believes there is a Hades and that what goes on there is fearsome1329 will be free from a fear of death, and in the thick of battle will choose death rather than defeat and enslavement?1330
“No way.”
Then we must oversee those who set about writing these stories too,1331 and prevail upon them not to take the standard line that what goes on in Hades is all bad, but rather to praise it, since in speaking this way they would be1332 saying things neither true nor useful for preparing persons to be eager warriors. Thus we shall erase all such expressions starting with the following passage which I take1333 from epic:
“I’d rather be a serf in the employ of anotherWho rents his field, a man whose life barely yields a living,Than to rule over all these evanescent shades.” 1334
or the fear that
“The homes of the dead should be laid open to men and to gods,Horrible and dank, that even the gods abhor ...” 1335
or
“Woe! Now I see that there is still life to be lived in Hades’s house,And the likeness of us, too, but nothing by way of wits!”1336
or
“He alone has wits among the fluttering phantoms.”1337
and
“Forth from his limbs flew his soul and made its way to HadesWailing over its fate and the vigor and youth it left behind.”1338
(387) or
“But his soul went below ground and was off and goneLike gibbering smoke.” 1339
or
“As bats in some haunted grotto flit about and gibberWhen one of them falls loose from the clusterBy which they hold themselves fast to the rock, So did these souls gibber and fly.” 1340
As for these passages and all the others like them, we will request Homer and the rest of the poets not to gripe and chafe when we cross them out.1341 It’s not because they lack poetry or fail to please the mass of mankind,1342 but that exactly to the extent they are and they do, they mustn’t be heard by the children and men1343 whom we need to be free in the sense of having learned to fear slavery more than death.
Socrates’s selection of passages moves, without intervening commentary, from statements of what Hades is like made by people who are already there, to observations of the dehumanizing enervation even manly men suffer (more exactly, their souls) as they depart to the place that has such a reputation. The enervation is described onomatopoetically in all three of the last examples,1344 which provides the motivation now to move on to the diction used in scary stories. We’ll throw out that entire vocabulary1345 that expresses fear and foments it too1346—the “Cocytuses” and the “Styxes”1347 and the “lurkers below” and the “withered ones”—all these expressions cause nothing but1348 shivers. There may be a use for them somewhere else,1349 but let’s devote our fears to the good of our guards lest the shivering make them overheated and softer in temper than we need them to be.1350 It is the opposite sort of stories we need to tell them and must cause to be produced.1351
Likewise we will strip away the groans and the wails,1352 of men who are notable. Why? Because a decent1353 man will not be shaken at the death of another like himself, while as for himself we will count him especially self-sufficient and therefore far more able to live a good life on his own than others can, so that he will be least affected by the bereavement of a son or a brother or of his possessions or other such things.1354 He will1355 groan and wail the least and maintain instead the greatest calm when such an event overtakes him, and so we are justified in excising1356 (388) the laments of notable men, reserving them instead for women (though even here not serious women1357) and for any man who is base,1358 so that our young men whom we claim after all1359 to be grooming to rule the land will take umbrage at acting the way such men do.
So we have a new set of requests for Homer and the rest of the poets: not to depict Achilles, who is after all the son of a goddess,1360
“Flopping about now on his sides and now his backAnd finally prone,”
and then getting himself upright and
“Plowing the waves of the barren sea, aimless,”
nor grasping “handfuls of powdery dust and pouring them over his head”1361 nor crying out in general and wailing, the way and the amount Homer has him do. Likewise let’s not have Priam,1362 who is also close to the gods in lineage, calling out prayers as he rolls around in a bed of dung,
“Invoking the names of each man, one by one.”
All the more sternly will we demand they not depict the very gods bellyaching and making remarks like
“Woe is me and broken who bore the best to my sorrow!”
—if truly they are gods, at least—nor dare to depict the greatest of the gods in a way so unlike the way he must be as to make him say,
“Ach! Beloved is the man I behold dragged about the town,How wails my heart to see it!”
or
“Oh me! Oh my! My Sarpedon, the man I love the most,Has met his fate at the hand of Patroclus the son of Menoitius!”
Just imagine after all if the young we are raising heard such remarks as these and did not laugh them to scorn as things unworthy for the gods to say!1363 You’d be wasting your time thinking he would deem such behavior beneath himself, a mere man, if once the occasion arose for him to do so. To the contrary he would stick at nothing but let loose a chorus1364 of lamentation at the least discomfort to himself, and every manner of wailing. And yet this is just the way they must not act, as our argument has indicated to us, and we must stick with that argument until a better looking one1365 comes along. Conversely we will not have them laugh at the least provocation, either. A person who gives in easily to laughter is asking for a sudden switch.1366 No, we don’t want to see men being overcome1367 with laughter, much (389) less the very gods, and so we won’t accept Homer’s line,
“Unquenchable was the laughter among the blessed godsAs they beheld Hephaestus bustling1368 down the hall.”
This we will not accept if we keep to your argument, Socrates says, suddenly pointing to Adeimantus.
“Go ahead and make mine it if you will, and let’s say we won’t accept it,” Adeimantus replies, and with this dramatic wrinkle1369 the treatment of bravery1370 comes to a close.
And yet on truth1371 we must spend no less effort, if we were right to say a moment ago that whereas the gods in fact have no use for falsehood men find it useful the way drugs can be useful. After all we allow only doctors to prescribe drugs, not just anybody. So likewise it will be the rulers of the city if anyone that we will rightly allow1372 to lie for the good of the city, whether their purpose involves enemies or citizens, but everybody else will be barred from it. In fact we will count a citizen who lies to our rulers to have committed an error tantamount to and worse than1373 that of a sick person not telling the truth1374 to his doctor or a person in training to his trainer on matters having to do with what’s happening in their bodies, or to the pilot concerning his ship and his sailors not to answer the truth about how one's own work1375 is going or that of one's fellow sailors.1376
Therefore, whenever the ruler catches somebody lying,
“who numbers among the city's helpers,A seer, a healer of ills, or a man who carves timber,”1377
he will chastise1378 him for bringing a disruptive and baleful element into the city just as if he were bringing it on board a ship.
“Baleful it would be, if the false information becomes the basis for action,” says Adeimantus,1379 again marking a transition to a new topic.
What then of temperance? Shall we not need to provide this for our young men? By my lights its chief elements on the whole1380 are that while they of course defer to the real rulers they themselves play the role of rulers over their own pleasures of drink and sex as well as of eating.1381 And so by my lights we will deem well said the sentiment Diomedes says for Homer:
“Friend,1382 pipe down and listen to what I have to say.”
and what comes next,1383
“the Achaeans moved forward with steady resolveAnd silent,1384 fearing their commanders in silence”
and any other passage like these.
“Well indeed.”
And yet what about this:
“Groggy with wine, with eyes like a dog and the heart of a deer”1385
(390) and what follows—would you say they are well written, as well as any other lines where somebody records wise-cracks made by individual citizens against their rulers, whether in prose or verse?
“Not well.”
Yes, such will surely not help toward inculcating temperance in the young. If besides being inappropriate1386 they are pleasing to hear for some reason this is no surprise. Or how do you see this?
“I see it as you do.”
What about depicting the wisest of mankind1387 saying that in his judgment the finest and most beautiful thing of all is when
“at the ready stand tablesfull of bread and meat, and the steward ladles wine from the mixing bowland pours it into the beakers.”
Do you think hearing this helps the young man’s self-control? Or hearing
“To die of hunger is the most piteous and the worst of fates.”
or hearing that one night while all the gods and mankind slept Zeus was wakeful, and how all his plans slipped out of his mind because of his sexual desire, how he was so distracted by it that when he laid eyes on Hera he would not even wait to take her home but just had to have her right there, on the ground even,1388 and how he said he was subdued by desire as he had never been, not even as when they made their first rendezvous, “deceiving our very parents;” or hearing about the binding of Ares and Aphrodite by Hephaestus in punishment for passions of the same ilk.1389
On the other hand stories and plays about the fortitude of worthy men should be both seen1390 and heard, as when he1391
“Beat his breast and vouchsafed a word to his heart:‘Bear up my Heart, betimes you have borne worse than this...’”
We must not allow the men1392 to be the sort that take bribes1393 out of a love of material goods, nor should we hear the poet sing that
“Gifts persuade the gods, gifts the reverend kings;”
and let’s not be praising the advice that Achilles’s tutor Phoenix gave him when he counseled him to fight for the Achaeans only if they gave him gifts, but if they didn’t to persist in his rage. We should not even expect, nor acquiesce in the statement if someone proposes it,1394 that Achilles himself was so fond of possessions as to accept gifts from Agamemnon nor later on to return the corpse only after receiving an honorific gift but was unwilling otherwise.
(391) Adeimantus notes that to praise such behavior would be unjust, and Socrates tops him by venturing to say1395 that Homer’s derogatory depiction of Achilles is an impiety to boot, as the very being persuaded by such a depiction if it he had heard it from others would be,1396 as likewise it would be to believe that Achilles had said to Apollo,
“You harmed me, Far-darter, you most destructive of all the gods.How I would exact my revenge on you if I had the power!”1397
and that he stubbornly opposed the river even though it was a god1398 and was ready to do battle with it. Or take1399 the story about that other river, Spercheius, and the hair that he had pledged to it, and the claim that he said,
“To Patroclus the hero I would give this hair to be his company”
—to his corpse that is—and that he carried out this deed:1400 none of this should we believe. Also the draggings of Hector’s corpse around Patroclus’s tomb and the slaughterings1401 of live prisoners over his pyre: all these things we will deny as being false nor allow our men to be persuaded that Achilles, son of a goddess and of Peleus, that man so sound of mind and grandson of Zeus, who was then brought up in the hands of Chiron who was so wise, became nevertheless so fully discombobulated as to exhibit two afflictions simultaneously, and contradictory ones to boot: a slavish greed on the one hand and overweening arrogance toward both gods and men on the other.
Nor while we’re at it shall we believe this, or let them say it, that Theseus the son of Poseidon and Perithous the son of Zeus went on a shocking spree of pillaging, nor that any other son of a god and a hero1402 would bring himself to commit acts so freakish and irreverent as they are now being falsely accused of committing.1403 Instead let’s impose the requirement on the poets either to speak of the deeds as not theirs, considering what these deeds are in themselves,1404 or that these men are not the sons of gods, but not let them have it both ways, and not allow them to try to persuade our youths that the gods bring evil into being1405 and that the heroes are no more noble than men.1406 We have said all along such statements are not pious and we proved they are not true when we showed that for evil to arise from the gods is impossible. But above and beyond this such statements are harmful to their auditors. Anybody will tend to forgive himself even though he is vicious, under the force of being persuaded that, “By gosh this sort of behavior is there to be found and always has been, even among
the offspring of the gods,Close kin to Zeus, for whom on the heights of IdaStands a flaming altar of their great Ancestor—Nor is the blood of the daimons far from them.”1407
(392) That is why such stories must cease,1408 since they will engender in our youth nothing but ease1409 in acting badly.
Is there any other kind of story we need to deal with in determining what may be told and what not? We have dealt with how to talk about the gods1410 as well as about the daemons and heroes and the spirits in Hades. The supplement to all this would be stories about men, but we are not yet equipped to dispose of this issue. In all likelihood we will notice1411 that the poets and storytellers say the worst things imaginable about men—that unjust men often come out happy1412 and the just ones are losers, that justice is “somebody’s else’s interest” 1413and nothing but a penalty for oneself—and we will be banning such stories as these and requiring them to tell the opposite sort of tale in verse and prose.
Eagerly Adeimantus buys in with this puritanical proposal, too eagerly. For Socrates now asks, And yet if you agree that this is what we would say, then I will accuse you of having reached already the answer to the question we set about researching before we began our construction,1414 namely, what justice is in itself and what inner value1415 it has for a man apart from reputation and show. We may only decide how to portray just men after we have argued through1416 to an answer to that question; and so accordingly, our treatment of the stories to be told is finished.
Socrates now continues with an obscure statement: We must next turn to the manner of the telling,1417 so that what is to be told and how to tell it shall both1418 have been thoroughly covered. Adeimantus picks up on the etymological figure (using “tell” twice) and replies, “Fine, but you’ll have to ‘tell’ me what you mean.”
Socrates immediately finds a way to make his meaning plain. Everything told by storytellers and poets is in fact a narration of events, whether past, present or future. To this Adeimantus agrees since it is exhaustive,1419 and Socrates can continue: The telling uses either pure narration or narration by imitation1420 or both. Even though this second question is also formally exhaustive Adeimantus cannot agree to it without clarification as to its content.
Now that he has bought room to say what he wants to, Socrates dismisses the fitful by-play by commenting on it: As a teacher I’m a comic figure and unclear to boot—so I’ll tell you what I mean as a person less than clever at speaking would, by giving an example1421 rather than trying to articulate it in general. You know1422 the beginning of the Iliad, where the poet has Chryses beg Agamemnon to release his daughter, how Agamemnon treats him harshly, and how he goes away empty handed and prays to Apollo to avenge him against the Achaeans. In the midst of this section (393) the poet himself says
“and he prayed that all the AchaeansAnd especially the sons of Atreus, the twin shepherds of the people ...”
and says it without trying to divert our attention away from himself as though someone other than he were saying it. But in what follows he speaks as if he himself were Chryses and tries with all his skill to make us think that it is not Homer who is speaking but the priest,1423 with his old man’s way of talking. All the rest of his narrative is composed this same way, about what happened in Ilium and what happened in Ithaca and the entirety of the Odyssey.1424
Given this example, won’t you agree narration is taking place both when one tells speeches and when one tells what comes between speeches, but when one tells the speeches as if he were another person,1425 at that point1426 we will remark that the teller is likening his own manner of speaking1427 as much as he can to the individual whom he has just announced as about to speak.
With this Adeimantus has no problem.1428 “Well,” Socrates goes on, “to liken oneself to another whether in voice or posture1429 is to imitate the person he likens himself to, no?” And Adeimantus agrees with a little impatience: “So what?”1430 It’s in this kind of thing, we can now say,1431 that Homer and the other poets1432 compose their narration “through mimicry.”1433 And Adeimantus agrees roundly and without reservation.
The basic point about mimicry having been made Socrates can now elaborate it so as to reveal its importance to the problem of education.1434 If the poet never hid1435 his true identity he’d come off with a work whose telling1436 was entirely without mimicry. So that you don’t start saying1437 you don’t know what I mean again, let me show you how this could be done. If Homer, after starting out by telling us that Chryses arrived with a ransom for this daughter as a suppliant to the Achaeans and especially to their kings,1438 had not next spoken as if he had become Chryses but had continued as Homer, then the sequel1439 would not have been mimicry but straight narration. It would have gone about as follows—though my illustration will not use meter: I’m not skilled enough at composition for that.
“The priest arrived1440 and prayed, first on behalf of the Greeks that the gods should grant them to sack Troy and be saved, and second that his daughter be released to him in return for the ransom he brought and also out of a respect for the god of whom he was the priest. He said this and although the others were stirred by reverence to concede his request, Agamemnon acted savagely and warned him to leave and never to return, lest the scepter that he had and the god’s chaplet he wore would not suffice him; his daughter would not be released, he said, before she had grown old in his entourage at Argos; and he bid him leave and without making a fuss so that he might (394) make it home safe. When the old man heard this he was stunned and left quietly, but once he got clear of the army he made a great prayer to Apollo, invoking the god’s eponymns and reminding him of his own previous good deeds and asking for a favor back,1441 if ever once he had brought the god joy whether in the building of temples for him or in the rituals of sacrifice: in return for such1442 he begged the god to make the Achaeans pay for what gave him tears, by means of the great one’s shafts.”
That’s what I mean, my friend, by straight narrative free of mimicry!
This is quite a performance, and Adeimantus gets the point,1443so that Socrates can continue. Get this point then:1444 you have the exact opposite of this if you strip away the portions between the speeches and are left with nothing but the exchanges.1445 Adeimantus recognizes Socrates is talking about the type of thing you get in tragedies, so that Socrates can announce they have now completely disposed of Adeimantus’s uncertainty what he meant above when he had said there were three kinds of poetry or storytelling,1446 a kind that is done entirely with mimicry, like tragedy and comedy which he has just adduced;1447 a kind that consists entirely of reports from the poet himself,1448 especially to be found in dithyrambs; and the kind we have just mentioned that uses both, which is to be found in the epic but also1449 in many other genres. With this it has become clear what Socrates had meant by his distinction between what is said and how it is said, and now we may move on to asking whether1450 we need to regulate the poet’s use of mimicry and how.1451
Adeimantus now guesses that Socrates is harboring an unstated intention to exclude drama altogether from their city.1452 At the same time that he acknowledges that they might well be on the verge of an outcome no less radical,1453 Socrates disowns any responsibility or unstated intentions of his own by restating the basic principle that has been governing their conversation ever since the construction of the city began (367E-9C), that they must follow the λόγος wherever it may lead just as a sailor resets his sails to follow the changes of the wind.1454 As long as the movement of the logos follows the wind there is no justification for asking the captain where he is steering it nor even to ask him or anybody else where it is going. Following the wind seems to be the eminent way under the force of an intuition that reason is somehow suited to find truth.
Adeimantus’s agreeing with this principle enables Socrates to take the next step.1455 Shall our guards be good at mimicry or not? Or is this just another case of our old principle that a person might be able to practice one skill1456 well, but that if he tries for many he runs the risk of failing to achieve1457 standing in any of them? The principle applies just as well to mimicry, that one and the same man would never be able to mimic many things as well as he could mimic just one.1458
(395) Therefore it goes without saying that1459 if it is something worthwhile1460 that he is practicing he will not have time to create a lot of mimicries and become an accomplished mimic, given how patent1461 it is that one and the same person can’t even compose the two sorts of mimicry that to all appearances are not that different from one another—comedy and tragedy.1462 You were just calling these products of mimicry weren’t you?1463 And likewise that the same person can’t be a good rhapsode and a good actor at the same time, nor even can one and the same actor play comic and tragic roles.1464 All of these are mere mimicry, and yet it seems to me that the natural ability we have as men is of so narrow a compass1465 that we can’t even master more than one of these sub-types of mimicry, let alone1466 mastering the originals1467 that these mimicries are modeled after.
Thus if we are to preserve our initial argument, that our guards will need to surrender pursuing all the other practices1468 and become polished practitioners of freedom1469 for the city and work at nothing that does not contribute to this end, then they mustn’t be doing anything else let alone imitating it. If they must imitate something let it be what is befitting to these1470 right from their very youth on: men brave and temperate, pious, and liberal and the rest of such behavior.1471 Anything illiberal and slavish1472 let them avoid doing, nor become clever at mimicking that and anything else to be ashamed of, since copying it might make them so themselves.1473 Haven’t you noticed how the mimicry, if they start it young and continue it long, gains a foothold in their character and in their developed selves, in the way they carry themselves and speak, and in their very attitudes?1474 No, we will not allow those we claim to be caring for,1475 the ones we say must become good men, to play the role of females though they are male, neither a young one nor an older, nor a woman griping at her husband or squabbling at the top of her lungs against the gods, strutting how well off she is or engulfed in her crises, her grief, and her lamentations,1476 let alone1477 beset by illness, sexual desire, or the throes of childbirth. Nor female slaves shall they play, for that matter, nor male ones either, behaving1478 as slaves do. Nor play1479 base men I dare say, whether acting feckless and in ways opposite to what we have just described,1480 derogating and making fun and cussing at1481 one another, whether under the influence or (396) not, and doing all the other wrongs that this sort of people do in word and deed both to themselves1482 and to others. And I’d guess we won’t be having them habituate themselves at taking off raving madmen in action or speech,1483 either. To be able to discern a madman is necessary, or one that is base, whether man or woman, but one mustn’t do what they do nor imitate them.1484
Adeimantus agrees by indicating1485 he sees the parts as well as the whole of the argument, so Socrates can continue: And what about men hammering bronze and doing other such jobs, and rowing triremes or calling out the pulls, and all the rest of these sorts of acts—shall they imitate these?
Adeimantus replies, with feigned indignation: “And just how, for men who haven’t even the time to notice such activities?” But Socrates continues, giving himself over to the whole experience: How about neighing horses and lowing bulls, the rushing of rivers, the crashing of the sea, and the rumbling thunder—shall we have them imitate these perhaps?1486 And Adeimantus objects with rising stridency and resolve:1487 “But just now it’s been forbidden them, both to do what a madman does and to take him off.”1488
With these easy questions and extenuated satire Socrates has gotten the buy-in he needs from Adeimantus to attribute the whole position to him, so that he can ask him the next question, which happens to be indecipherable: “If I understand you right let me ask you whether there exists a proper style for a gentleman1489 to use when he has to tell something, and conversely another style opposite to this that a person would rely upon and use who was born and bred1490 in a manner opposite to his?”
Adeimantus of course does not know what Socrates is talking about1491 so Socrates has to explain. “Well, I’d say that the moderate1492 man, when he comes to a place in the story that tells what a good man said or did, will be perfectly willing to report that man’s words by impersonating him and will not be ashamed of this kind of mimicry especially when he’s to imitate him doing things sound and mindful, though when he’s been struck by a disease or by passions or even inebriation or some bad turn of events1493 besides,1494 he’ll pass over it with less detail and a lighter touch.1495 On the other hand when the story reaches a section1496 that deals with a man1497 who is unworthy of him I’d say he will not be willing to liken himself to someone he recognizes as his1498 inferior with any commitment, unless perhaps briefly1499 and for some ulterior purpose, but will feel ashamed to do so both because he has no practice at emulating1500 men like these and because he will feel annoyance at forcing himself into the mould1501 of baser1502 types. Maybe he could play the part for fun1503 but if he thinks about it at all the game would soon be spoiled1504 for him. Instead he’ll1505 revert to the other kind of narration we described above in reference to Homer; he’ll have the style that partakes of both at his disposal, both mimicry and narrative of the general1506 sort, but the mimicry will play only a small part in the long narrative. Or am I just talking on?
Adeimantus reassures Socrates he’s not just talking on—in fact it’s inevitable that the good man acquit himself of speaking in just this way. Securing such complete agreement allows Socrates then to move to the alternative way (397) of talking that he had asked about in the question Adeimantus had not understood before. The man who is not of this nature and nurture,1507 to the degree that he is a man of lesser stature, will go the opposite direction and choose to narrate everything without discrimination,1508 and think nothing beneath himself, so that he’ll make a concerted run at imitating anything that’s there to entertain any and all that will listen, including the extremes we happened1509 to mention above, the rumbling thunder and sound the wind makes and the hail and axles make and the block and tackle,1510 and trumpets, flutes, and piccolos—the voices of all the instruments1511—and won’t stop until he’s performed also the cries of dogs and sheep and birds.1512 This fellow’s style will be the converse of the other’s: the whole thing will be done with mimicry, in gesture as well as voice,1513 with straight narration kept to a minimum.
These were the two types of style Socrates had mentioned above. What he next makes of the distinction is that the one involves “variations”1514 that are small, so that if someone were to supply it with a harmony and rhythm that suited it, the delivery would tend not to vary the key if a man speaks in the upright manner1515 but keep to a single key,1516 since the variations are small, not to mention keeping to a rhythm that likewise follows suit.1517 The alternate type will need an opposite sort of accompaniment, with all keys and all rhythms, if it is going to be delivered in a manner that follows suit, since the type will have all manner of variations. Now all poets and whoever tells a story will either fix on one these two types of delivery or else they’ll fix on some mixture of the two. Should we admit them all into our city, or should we admit only one of the two or only the mixture?
Adeimantus would vote for admitting only the narrator who imitates the decent man without admixture, so that Socrates can afford to voice the protest that the narrator who comes up with a nice mixture is pleasant, after all, and the narrator that imitates the exact opposite type of the one he chose is most pleasant, not only to the children and to their tutors1518 but also to the greatest proportion of the crowd. Adeimantus grants the objection, unmoved.1519 Socrates proffers him the excuse in case they need it that such a man won’t fit in to our city, and Adeimantus grants it.1520 Among us, Socrates continues, on Adeimantus’s behalf, men aren’t duplex nor multiplex, since each of our men practices one thing. Only in a city like ours will we find the cobbler a cobbler and not a captain in addition, and the farmer a farmer and not a juror in addition, and the soldier a soldier and not a businessman in (398) addition, and so forth. If a man should show up on the scene clever1521 enough to fashion himself into many occupations and able to mimic many things and should bring along his poems to display them to us, we would pay him our respects as an inspired and wondrous man and entertaining,1522 but we’d tell him we don’t have this kind of man in our city and it’s against our ways that one should be let in among us,1523 and we’d1524 send him off to the next city after bedecking him with myrrh and a crown of wool, whereas for ourselves we would provide a place for the more austere and less entertaining poet or storyteller1525 who looks instead to utility,1526 one who would mimic the narrative of a decent man and tell stories that fall within the guidelines we set out from the start when we began working on educating our soldiers.1527
2.B.3b.1.a: Excursus on the Treatment of Poetry
With this reference back to the beginning of the treatment of myths and storytelling Socrates suggests the treatment is complete. The treatment started with the content of the stories (λόγος) and ended with the manner of telling them (λέξις), but this does not represent a theory of literature. Neither Socrates in the present context nor Plato from outside the dialogue has much use for an analysis of poetry into its “essential parts” such as Aristotle will provide in the Poetics. The distinction, as distinctions often do in Plato, provides him and his Socrates with the vehicle by which he can arrive at a new vista. There is not only the distinction between λόγος and λέξις, but also within the treatment of λόγος the distinction between tales of gods and tales of heroes. Of course the gods come first, but Socrates deepens their priority by articulating the theme of a divine truth that is primitive and underived. The method of the passage (379A-383C) is severely logical and abstract, as it must be in establishing such a theme. Such a supra-empirical method assumes that the world man lives in is not of his own making and the result reached by this method is that the world he lives in is governed by good.1528 The next phase of the treatment announces itself as promoting virtue in the young (386A), but happens also to treat heroes, who come next after the gods and whom men should emulate. It is a division among the virtues more than anything else that provides the material and range of this account,1529 but as the judgments to include and exclude stories proceed the tone becomes more certain and shows greater indignation at the misrepresentation of those we increasingly expect to be better than ourselves, and the account arrogates to itself more and more authority to promote worthwhile stories.1530 When the division of virtues that lies behind the review of hero stories is exhausted, Socrates exploits the other list that lies behind and governs the treatment so far, the list that begins with gods and then heroes—the list, that is, that would next include men.1531
To ask which stories depict men acting in ways that our young should imitate seems at first to beg the question of the entire construction (392A10-C4) and so it appears that the evaluation of stories is complete. But then under the guise of treating λέξις rather than λόγος,1532 a topic that is putatively related though Adeimantus does not understand why,1533 the question of which men our young men shall imitate is made to return after all. By the vehicle of analyzing poetic delivery Socrates achieves a transition from the subject of emulation to the adjacent subject of imitation, in order to give place for the young man to imagine himself acting like the people he must not act like as well as those he should act like. The previous lessons on emulation have now instilled in him enough sense of self that he is able to make his choice with conviction. That is, though he does not ask it in so many words, Socrates’s question to Adeimantus about the two men who choose one kind of narration or the other (396B10-C3) is a question that asks him which man he would prefer to imitate, himself. Though the question portrays itself as a question about others, it is directed to Adeimantus, and Adeimantus realizes in the end that it is up to him and adopts the metaphor of casting his vote (397D4-5).1534
The overall purpose of the treatment is to awaken and enliven a conviction in Adeimantus to own the good and refuse the bad. The theoretical distance he is afforded, from which he is determining what will affect another than himself, marginally distances him from his own predilections. The material is then ordered so as to transport him toward this greater goal: one background list is dropped and the other adopted in order to lead to it, and an unprecedented distinction in literary analysis between content and delivery is invented merely to advance it to the final step where Adeimantus is asked to imagine himself acting one way and then the other. Meanwhile, his acceptance of the argument is solicited all along, his agreements are acknowledged at each step, and the points reached are accepted by him as his own, culminating indeed in his taking on the governance of the very persons he had complained about being shorted by, in his speech.1535 Socrates persuades Adeimantus in the incremental way that poetry persuades, but this “poem” comes in the form of a live conversation.
The argument Plato here places in the mouth of Socrates would naturally scandalize any reader who believes it represents Plato’s own attitude toward literature. The belief, however, is without justification. The content and the purpose of the argument are Socrates’s not Plato’s. It is part of his answer to Adeimantus’s and his brother’s request to help them resist the fashionable immoralism they confessed at the beginning of Book Two they could not refute, including the abuse of literary authority on which this immorality fashionably rests, which was the principal theme of his current interlocutor. Socrates’s argument pertains not to literature but to the teaching of it,1536 and focusses not on the merits of style or fiction but the influence they wield, for better and worse, on persons young enough still to be indelibly affected by them and still too young to know why. Likewise, an amount of attention that seems inordinate in a less oral “reading” age such as our own, is given to the internal and habituative effects of memorizing by heart not only what is said but who says it and how it is said. A fuller critique of literature per se will be added in Book Ten, which will be seen to depend for its meaning upon the development of the argument in the intervening Books.1537
Resumption of the Text (398C1): Music: Song
Although the background list governing this section in the dialogue craves next that the “musical” part of music be treated, namely melody and rhythm, a major subject has been completed and completed with success. The fact is marked not by an interruption of the sequence—we will indeed move on to music—but by Glaucon interrupting and taking over for Adeimantus. Socrates suggests that nobody would fail to see what needs next to be said on these topics,1538 and Glaucon, who had been silent for some time, chimes in with a laugh, “I guess I’m the nobody1539 since I can’t say just what we’d say—though I could make a guess.” Socrates welcomes his intervention warmly1540 and suggests he would agree that we’d say1541 the following, that song is composed of three elements: words, melody and rhythm. With the element of words, at least,1542 we have sufficiently dealt just now: whether the lyrics be sung or spoken they must conform to the guidelines and the manner1543 we have already set out. As for melody and rhythm, it is their nature1544 to follow the words. Now among the λόγοι we have seen no reason to include wailing and complaint. Which are the melodies,1545 then, of threnody?1546 After all, you are the musician.1547
Glaucon is indeed ready with an answer: “The mixo-lydian and mini-lydian and such modes as these.”
Whatever their names they must be removed, Socrates continues, since they are useless even for women who are meant to be decent,1548 not to mention men. And likewise drinking binges are surely most inappropriate to guards and languorousness and lying about:1549 what are the languid and symposiastic modes?1550
“The Ionian and the certain Lydian ones that are dubbed 'relaxed'.”
(399) Do we have any use for these in connection with men who are to go to war?
“No way. And by the way, the only modes you1551 seem to have left are the Dorian and the Phrygian,” Glaucon replies.
Socrates accepts and dismisses Glaucon's expertise at the same stroke: I don’t know the modes by name. Just try to leave1552 me one that befits the utterances and cadences of a man brave while in military action or in any other activity against his will, or of a man in ill fortune, whether it be meeting injury or death or when some other calamity befalls him,1553 in all such circumstances bearing up valiantly to resist such failing1554 luck. And leave me another, in turn, for a man in peacetime activity, not forced to act but acting freely, whether trying to persuade somebody of something or making requests, whether it be a god he approach with prayer or a fellow man with instruction or admonition, or conversely engaged in receiving a request from another, or instruction, or being put upon to change his mind, how he contains himself and pays attention1555 and subsequently acts in accordance with his own best understanding, not overbold but sound of mind and moderate in all these engagements, acquiescing in the way things turn out no matter how they do. These two modes, for one one must and what one would do, for men in the vicissitudes of failure and success, men moderate and men brave1556—the modes that best portray the utterances made by such as these, leave only these for me!1557
“But you're asking for the very ones left to you anyway,” Glaucon replies, perhaps enjoying his role as keeper of the modes a little too much to be affected by the elevation of Socrates’s sudden eloquence.
Socrates continues: Then we certainly won’t need the polychordic or panharmonic element in our songs and melodies.1558 Likewise we won’t be needing to develop craftsmen to manufacture of polychordic or panharmonic triangulars1559 and plectrums. And will you admit flute-makers and flautists into the city? Or isn’t flute music the most polychordic of all?1560 Isn’t the panharmonic aspect of music what is in fact the special job of the flute to mimic?1561 So all you are left with by way of instruments to be used within the city is the lyre and the cithara, and perhaps in turn a makeshift pipe for the shepherds to use out in the country?1562
“So much at least does our argument indicate,” Glaucon concedes.1563
So much would not be too bare and radical a choice—to choose Apollo, that is, and his instruments over Marsyas and his. In fact, by dog,1564 unbeknownst to ourselves we’re fully engaged in purifying1565 our city, the city that just a short while ago was enervated with luxury!
“Credit our temperate ways,” Glaucon now agrees, with self-critical good humor such as he showed when Socrates chastised him for thinking a spear makes a soldier.1566
So let’s complete the purification.1567 What follows the modes and keys for us is the rhythms, and preventing the pursuit of a needless variety and of all manner of dance steps to go along with them,1568 but choosing which are the rhythms of life moderate or life brave.1569 These once found we’ll require the steps to follow the story of the (400) respective sort of life rather than making up a story of a life that follows the dance and the melody. Once again, as with the modes, I turn to you to specify which rhythms these are.
Glaucon finds himself a little over his head: “By Zeus, I’ve got nothing to say on that topic.1570 I can tell you about the three distinct types of rhythm that weave together to form the various dance steps, just like the four tonic intervals out of which all the modes are composed—so much I’ve witnessed in performance.1571 But as to how one and the next of them have a quality that imitates one or another kind of living and behavior I can’t even begin to say.”1572
Well we can just as well1573 consult our Damon on this, both about which steps comport with a slavish manner and which with rashness or madness and with other vice,1574 as well as about which rhythms are to be retained for their opposites. For myself I think I have heard him use the terms “composite in armor” and “dactyl” and “heroic” too,1575 and classifying them so that the up is equal to the down by means of their becoming short and long,1576 though I couldn’t say how, and again as I seem to remember he was calling one of them iambic and the other trochaic and would attach lengthenings and shortenings. And in some of these types as I remember1577 he would approve and disapprove the dance movements associated with them no less than the rhythms themselves, and sometimes the combination somehow. I can’t really say—but as I was saying we can just as well let this go1578 until we find Damon, since it would a lengthy chore for us to set out all these distinctions.
Glaucon certainly thinks such a task would be lengthy, and Socrates introduces an alternative of his own:1579 Let me suggest instead1580 a distinction that we are capable of making, that well managed dance postures as opposed to the ones that aren’t, correspond to well managed rhythms and rhythms that aren’t,1581 while meanwhile1582 well managed rhythm goes with fine expression (λέξις) and the lack of it with the opposite,1583 as likewise does well managed harmony, if indeed rhythm and harmony go with the story as we have said above, rather than the converse.1584
As for the type of λόγος and λέξις, they follow the character of the soul1585 being portrayed, whereas all these other things follow the λέξις.1586 Therefore story well done1587 and harmony well done and dance postures well done and rhythm well done follow εὐήθεια, “character well done” if you will: real “goodness of character,” not the meaning this term is given when it is it used superciliously to describe mindlessness1588 but rather an entirely mindful state1589 that is literally1590 well and beautifully turned out with respect to its character.1591
Glaucon is right with him1592 and Socrates continues in this triumphant vein. It is these qualities of aptness and propriety in their embodiments that our young must pursue everywhere, if they are to be willing to perform their proper task.1593 Glaucon has less trouble than we might in understanding what Socrates is saying, and he immediately (401) agrees.1594 The embodiments are ubiquitous. Painting is full of such elements as are all the other related arts. Full also1595 are weaving and embroidery and housebuilding and all the manufacture of useful things,1596 and also the physical attributes found in bodies that grow and in plants besides.1597 After all good form and the lack of it are present in all these, and as the formless1598 and the graceless and the inharmonious are kin to a bad story and a bad character,1599 so stand their opposites to the opposite character, the temperate and good, being in turn their kin and imitations.1600
Glaucon assents to all this, recognizing the scrupulous thoroughness of Socrates’s expression,1601 and Socrates goes on. If the good qualities can appear in any product it’s not just poets we must oversee and force to instill the likeness of good character1602 into their works or not allow them to compose among us, but the other craftsmen, too. The element of bad character, with which we are only too familiar1603 – licentiousness, slavishness and gracelessness1604 – we must oversee and check at every turn1605 lest they allow it into their portraiture,1606 their architecture,1607 or into any other manufactured thing. If a man cannot keep them out we won’t let him practice his trade among us. We will not allow our young guards to find themselves among images of evil as if in a pasture, day in day out to browse1608 on them and bit by bit to ingest many things from many quarters, so as to assemble into one place and set up within their souls1609 a huge and evil thing without even noticing it. Instead, we must search and find that other1610 kind of men who have the noble natural talent1611 to track the essence of beauty and grace,1612 and with the help of such as these produce a healthy ambience within which our young man1613 might dwell and draw benefit from whatever1614 is around him from any quarter something might impinge upon his senses for him to see and to hear,1615 an ambience that bathes him with healthy influences brought near from noble climes beyond, so that what he1616 fails to notice, and fails from a boy, is how it gently readies him to experience kinship and friendliness and harmony with stories and with thoughts that also are fine.1617
Glaucon praises this latter way of nourishment as by far the finest, so that Socrates can now capture the meaning in a doctrine. We have to conclude that music is1618 the most influential aspect of the young man’s nurture, and so for the following reasons. The thing most able to seep most deeply into his soul is rhythm and harmony, over which it achieves a most forcible purchase and brings1619 its gracefulness, so as thereby to make the soul a graceful soul, if the nurture is managed properly, and the opposite if not. Moreover when it comes to the things deficient or poorly made or poorly spawned,1620 the person with the finest eye will be the one who was raised properly in that finer pasture and with a proper sense of disdain: besides1621 praising whatever is beautiful and greeting it with joy and taking possession of it for his soul and feeding on such things and thereby himself becoming a man fine and (402) good, he will meet the ugly with proper calumny and hate it even though still young man, before he’s been able to make reason his own;1622 and once reason does arrive he will welcome it and know it already by dint of his special kinship with it and its with him,1623 as long as his upbringing is on this wise.1624
“To me at least these are the goals of musical education,” Glaucon avers.
Let us then consider an analogy.1625 We’ve always thought we have learned our letters once it no escapes us that the individual letters1626 are few, though borne about hither and yon1627 in every and all things they are in;1628 and thenceforward have treated them with equal care whether they are found in things large or small (as if things the small aren't worth noticing!) but instead eagerly approach all instances as needing us to discriminate them, on the grounds that if we can’t do this we still haven’t become literate – just as to the likenesses of letters,1629 if they should appear in water or in mirrors1630 we will not be able to distinguish1631 them from one another until we have become able to distinguish the letters themselves of which these are likenesses. Distinguishing the likenesses depends on the same art and practice as distinguishing the letters themselves.1632 Just so, with the help of the gods,1633 we can hardly become competent at music, ourselves or those guards we must educate in music, before the characters of temperance and bravery and liberality and greatness and what is akin to these as well as their opposites1634 become distinguishable to us, as they are found here and there and borne about in many things, and until we are able to perceive them as being present wherever they are, both the characters themselves and the images of them, and think nothing less of their instances because they are small instead of large,1635 but know instead that distinguishing all these cases belongs to one and the same art and practice.
Glaucon accepts the analogy and finds that what it implies for music is logically necessarily, so Socrates can continue: Wherever instances of fine and beautiful characters occur together, in both a person’s soul and in his looks,1636 homologous1637 and consonant with those ones above1638 by dint of sharing their same type, there you will have an event most beautiful to behold, if you have the eyes to behold it; and since what is most beautiful also1639 incites the greatest love and desire, a man who is competent in music1640 would feel desire for men who are that way as much can be,1641 whereas if there is no music1642 there will be no desire.
“No,” Glaucon answers, “not if the individual's deficiency is in his soul.1643 Yet if the deficiency be bodily, one would tolerate it enough to greet him with an embrace.”1644 Socrates catches on:1645 Glaucon is alluding to boyfriends of his past or present and reveals a certain fastidiousness about physical contact. Socrates grants him the point so as to move on to a new question.1646
Can soundmindedness somehow partner1647 with extreme pleasure?
“How could it, given the fact that1648 extreme pleasure drives a man out of his mind no less than pain does?”
Can virtue in general?
(403) “No way.”
But what about rashness and licentiousness?
“With these, extreme pleasure has more in common than with anything.”
Can you name a pleasure more strong or more intense than sex?
“No, nor more maddening.”1649
But the correct kind of desire desires the orderly and the beautiful in a temperate and musical way?1650
“Quite so.”
Therefore no tincture of madness nor of anything akin to licentiousness, should one prescribe,1651 in the correct kind of desire.1652
“One must not.”
Nor therefore should one add a tincture of this1653 kind of pleasure, nor a sharing in it1654 for the lover and his beloved, if they are to love correctly and be loved correctly.
“Truly by Zeus not a tincture, Socrates.”
Socrates has been careful to secure Glaucon’s agreement at every step, so that he can now hold him responsible for the result, which he presents as a personal challenge to Glaucon: Will you then set down as a law for the city we are founding that the lover may kiss and be with and touch1655 his beloved in the ways a father would his son,1656 for the sake of beauty and its pursuit and with his permission, but for the rest must treat him as a person with whom he has serious business and avoid even the appearance of spending more time with him than such as those would with each other, on pain of sustaining1657 calumny for being unmusical and lacking in culture?
Glaucon agrees to do so, and this personal coda to the treatment of music comes to a close. Socrates, for one, feels they have finished where they should have, since musical matters ought to culminate in the erotics of beauty;1658 and Glaucon agrees for his part, so they can turn then to the other branch of nurture and education,1659 gymnastics.
2.B.3b.2: The Nurturing of the Natural-born Guards: Part Two: GYMNASTIC
Here too we must care for them closely, from their childhood up. I have a sense what needs to be done; investigate it for yourself along with me. It seems to me1660 that a worthy body cannot by means of its bodily virtue1661 make a soul good, whereas conversely a good soul by means of its psychic virtue is able provide a man the best body he can have. If then we have adequately conditioned our young men’s minds we could hand over to them the task of formulating a detailed plan for running the body.1662 All we need to do is give guidance in the outlines. We can avoid tedious length.1663
First of all inebriation1664 will be something they must avoid. We have no room for a guard so drunk1665 he doesn’t know where in the world he is. “It would be laughable that the guard himself should need a guard,” Glaucon replies.
As for food,1666 our men are like athletes taking part in the greatest of contests. Would it then be (404) appropriate that they achieve the condition of the professional athletes we see around us?1667 Probably not, since the athlete is somnolent and has a fragile hold on health. Haven’t you noticed that they sleep their life away, and that when they depart even a mite from their set regimen they get sick in a very big way? We’ll need a more subtle1668 kind of training for our athletes of war, whose very job requires them to be vigilant like dogs and to have particularly sharp vision and hearing as well as being ready to adjust to conditions various and varying when they are on expeditions. We can’t have their health teeter-tottering with the different kinds of water they’ll be drinking and what they eat besides, nor with the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Perhaps the better model for our gymnastic would be something akin to the simple1669 style of music we described a few minutes ago, a gymnastic simple and reasonable, modeled in fact1670 after the activity of war. We can take some tips from our Homer.1671 You know that in his poems he has his heroes under bivouac feasting not on fish (despite the fact that they are at the shore of the Hellespont) nor boiled meat stews but on meat roasted only, which is the most convenient for soldiers since a simple1672 fire can be started anywhere and there’s no need to pack and haul cooking pots. You know that Homer never mentions garnishes and sweets—so much you could learn even from from the other men in training, that a person whose body is going to be in good shape has to keep away from these altogether.
“And they are right, and are correct to keep away from them,” Glaucon vociferously affirms.
I get the impression1673 that a Syracusan table and the Sicilian style of assorted garnish you will not be recommending, if you agree with all this; conversely, the Corinthian maid you will talk down as something not so friendly after all, for men who are thinking of1674 being fit in body;1675 as well as those Attic sweetmeats1676 that are thought to be so pleasant.1677 That whole way of eating and living1678 would rightly be compared with musical compositions based on the panharmonic and polyrhythmic elements.1679 In the sphere of music that kind of variety spawned licentiousness while here in the sphere of the bodily regimen it spawns disease; and simple music engendered temperance in their souls, (405) while gymnastic simplicity engenders health. As licentiousness and diseases fill1680 the city, courtrooms and doctors’ offices start opening up everywhere;1681 and the arts of wrangling in court and doctoring come to be taken seriously once the freer sort of citizens1682 get on the bandwagon and pursue them with vigor.
Truly, there is no more telling sign that a city’s culture is on the decline than a rising demand for doctors and sharp1683 lawyers, not only among the common craftsmen but even among persons who wish to be viewed as properly educated.1684 Don’t you think it ugly to have to conform to some sort of justice cooked up by others as your masters and judges and to make it yours and fit your life to it and to your lack1685 of any inner sense of justice of your own? The only thing more shameful than this is a person who spends his whole life in the courtroom, today a plaintiff and tomorrow a defendant,1686 and worse, persuaded by his utter lack of grace1687 to plume himself on this very point,1688 tells himself1689 how astute he is in the area of injustice,1690 how adequate to make every twist and ready to avail himself of every escape, a constant display of legal acrobatics, ever having himself exempted from paying the penalty, regardless how small.1691 No idea has he how much finer and better it would be to get himself a life and a livelihood that has no need for a nodding juror!
And what shall we say about the demand for doctors to do more than treat wounds and cases of seasonal disease, but in addition to administer to the ravages of inactivity or the regimen we have mentioned? These men full of fluids and the vapors, as full as swamps, require the subtle sons of Asclepius to denominate their complaints1692 as “secretions” and “flatulence”!1693 How disgusting!
Glaucon too has noticed these novel and strange names, and Socrates goes on to make the point that things were different in Asclepius’s time. His actual sons1694 served at Troy, and when they saw a servant maid giving the (406) wounded Eurypylus a preparation of Pamnean wine with lots of barley and cheese mixed in with it, a thing that today would surely be deemed phlegmatic, they made nary a fuss nor a comment to Patroclus who was in charge of the case.1695
“But really the drink was quite out of place1696 for a person in his condition,” Glaucon rejoins.
Not really, if you realize that the entire institution of medical training we now have was unknown before the guild of Asclepiads. Then one day Herodicus showed up. He was a gymnastic trainer that became sickly and contrived to combine gymnastics with iatrics. He tried it out on himself first; only later did it catch on with everybody around him. The result was, he made his dying take a long time.1697 He became the constant companion of his disease, a mortal sickness he could not heal. He spent his whole life treating it and had no leisure for anything else. He’d have a flare-up whenever he departed from his usual regimen but got progressively harder and harder to kill1698 and even made it to old age.1699
“So fine a medal he bore off with his mettle!”1700
Just what you would expect from a person who was unaware that it was not out of ignorance or inexperience of that kind of medicine that Asclepius did not systematize it for his heirs.1701 For he saw that for all well governed men a single duty was assigned to them in their city that they have to perform all the time, and none of them have time to spend their life laboring with illness1702 and treatments, a thing that laughably enough1703 we perceive as valid for our craftsmen, while we fail to see its application to the rich and supposedly1704 happy.
“How is that laughable?” Glaucon of course does not understand so Socrates explains: A builder who is ill will expect to drink a drug from his doctor1705 that will make him vomit the sickness up or void it or have it burned off or cut out of him and be done with it. Let somebody try to assign1706 him a lengthy regimen with compresses to be applied to the head1707 and all that stuff, and he’ll soon enough be hearing from his patient1708 that there’s no time to be sick, and that living that way doesn’t pay off1709, thinking about one’s1710 malady and neglecting one’s work. He’ll get up and bid adieu to that1711 kind of doctor and step right back into his usual regimen,1712 and then he’ll either get better and go on with his life doing his job, or else if his body can’t carry on he’ll be done with the trouble of being alive.1713
“Yes, for this sort of man1714 that would be the right usage1715 with doctors,” Glaucon allows, and Socrates (407) makes sure the reason he agrees is that what made the doctor's advice unsustainable was1716 his inability to work. On the other hand we speak of the rich man as having no such work on his plate, work that would make his life unsustainable1717 if he neglected it—and Glaucon at least hasn’t heard tell of such.1718 But then, Socrates wonders, perhaps Glaucon has not heard tell the teaching of Phocylides, that “once a man has secured his livelihood, he must practice virtue.”1719
“I’d say he should before he’s secured it, too,” Glaucon retorts.1720
Let’s not fight with Phocylides on that point: it’s we ourselves that need to a lesson whether the rich man must concern himself with this,1721 and that life would be unsustainable for the man that does not,1722 or whether nursing one’s sickness1723 though it impedes one’s ability to pay attention in the art of building or the other arts, impedes a man not at all from carrying out what Phocylides suggests?1724
Glaucon is almost beside himself: “It most certainly does pre-empt him, more indeed than anything else does, this supragymnastical and kooky meticulousness about the body!1725 What stomach could it have1726 for managing one’s personal household or for generalships or public office within the city?”1727 And Socrates goes him one better:1728 But most of all for studies, any kind you could name, and for contemplation and inward meditation1729 this attitude makes for hard going. It’s always sensing a hint of a headache or dizziness and blames philosophy bringing it on, so that anytime and anyplace a person practices virtue in her way,1730 it blocks his way. It makes a person think he is sick all the time and is never relieved of the body’s throes.
To return to Asclepius, let us say he knew this well.1731 It was for people who were essentially sound and following healthy regimens but who were sustaining some distinct disease, that he systematized medicine. He found ways by casting out disease with drugs or cutting1732 to prescribe that his patients continue with their usual round of activities, lest he cause harm to the political order. But for bodies1733 that were utterly riddled with disease inside through and through he did not become engaged1734 in prescribing regimens to drain off one humor or infuse another and make the bloke’s1735 life a long evil1736 and enable him in all likelihood to spawn offspring of similar ilk.1737 Instead he deemed that a person who was no longer able to live according to the diurnal cycle of established society should not be treated at all since there was nothing to gain by it either for himself or for the city.1738
“You make this Asclepius out to be statesman,” Glaucon rejoins.
Clearly his sons were, too, exactly because he was. Don’t you see how worthy they proved to be also1739 in war, at Troy, and how (408) they practiced medicine the way I am describing? Do you remember how they treated Menelaus when he was wounded by a throw from Pandarus:
“They sucked out the blood and sprinkled on some drugs”1740
—but as to what he was to drink or eat after the treatment they would have as little to prescribe as they had for Eurypylus, believing drugs were enough to heal a man1741 if his regime before he was wounded was salubrious and moderate—even if he might quaff a mull on a given occasion1742—whereas a life1743 sickly by nature and licentious by habit they deemed worthless both to those who live it and to the other soldiers, and they held that their craft was not designed to serve such as these nor should they in fact receive treatment, not even if they were richer than Midas.
“You make Asclepius’s children out to be quite clever,” Glaucon rejoins.
As one should, and yet the tragedians and Pindar1744 don’t believe us but say that although Asclepius is a son of Apollo, he did take a bribe to treat a rich man though morbidly sick, and for this was struck by lightning.1745 But given what we have said before, we cannot believe both these claims. If he was the son of a god then we’ll conclude he was not a money grubber; and if he was a money grubber he was not the son of a god.1746
Glaucon agrees with all that, partly in order to raise a worry that has now come into his mind.1747 Will Socrates take this radical attitude so far as to deny that the1748 city needs to obtain good doctors? Off-hand it seems to himself that the best qualified would be those who had treated the greatest number of people whether healthy or sick, just as the most qualified jurists are those who have been around the block1749 with the entire range of human types.1750
Socrates replies, carefully, “I am arguing that we must have very good ones indeed—but perhaps you don’t know which people I’d think are good.”
“I’ll know if you’ll tell me.”1751
And I will do so, but mind you1752 your question applies the same formula to things that are dissimilar. As for doctors,1753 they would turn out most clever if right from their childhood, in addition to their formal studies, they should come to know1754 as many bodies as possible and the worst1755 possible, and if they themselves should catch all the diseases and have an inborn tendency not to be healthy.1756 After all, it’s not with a body they’ll be treating a body;1757 if it were, there would be no room for their bodies to be bad or become so either. Rather it is with the soul they’ll treat (409) the body, a soul that has no room to come to be or to be,1758 in a bad state if they are to give good treatment. The juror on the other hand uses soul to rule soul, and soul has no room to take on the effect of constant exposure from youth and familiarity with1759 bad1760 souls or to pursue a full career of unjust acts as if she would come out with a sharp sense for catching the signs of the injustices of others from her own inventory of experiences, as in the diagnosis of diseases of the body. Instead she must come out1761 from youth unexposed to corrupt characters and unsullied by them, if she is going to make her judgment1762 about right and wrong in a healthy1763 way, by means of herself being fine and good. This is why it is good characters that decent people show and simple1764 during their youth1765 and are liable to be taken in by unjust people, lacking as they do any homoeopathic identification1766 with base men that they could use as a standard to measure them with.
“I would certainly agree they do get taken in,” says Glaucon agreeing at least with this much.1767
Socrates makes the crucial argument, that the best jurors are not such young innocents but instead older men, who have gotten to know about injustice only lately1768 and have done so1769 not by a clear and unmediated perception of it residing in their own souls, but only by a lengthy study that makes it out, as an alien thing found in alien souls, now recognizing it for the evil thing that it is.1770 They get there by knowledge and not by experiential familiarity.1771
“No one could say this is not the noblest sort of all to be a judge.”1772
Yes, and a “good” judge, too, to answer the question you asked.1773 In short, what makes him good is having a good soul. His counterpart is a crafty and untrusting man with a large personal record of unjust acts, who would stop at nothing1774 and thinks himself clever.1775 When he associates with men like himself he does seem crafty in his circumspection and the dogged hold he has on the models of evil he holds within;1776 but when he finds himself among men who are good, assuming they are of the requisite age,1777 he seems stupid, suspicious at the wrong moments and unable to recognize a healthy character since he has no model of such a thing at his command.1778 We certainly must not look for a man who is good and smart1779 the way this one is to be our juror, but the former type. Whereas baseness of character could never recognize both virtue and itself, the virtue that comes to belong to an inner nature properly educated will with time get knowledge1780 at one and the same time of itself and of baseness.1781 And so it is this man that turns out to be1782 the wise one and not the bad man.
As for medicine, will you legislate it to follow suit1783 with our juridical art, and fashion the two of them so that (410) they support the citizens that are sound in body and in soul, but as to those that are not fit in body they shall allow them to die and those that have grown incurably evil in their souls their practitioners1784 shall take it upon themselves to put them to death?
“It has become plain,” Glaucon courageously agrees,1785 “that no less than this is the best treatment both for the individuals who receive it and for the city.”
With this agreement from Glaucon, Socrates can move back to the point where this entire digression on doctors and lawyers began:1786 Our young clearly will take care to avoid needing the courts if they do practice the kind of simple music we have said instills temperance; and a man schooled in such music as this will follow a similar inspiration in his choice of gymnastics, so that when it comes time to choose he will select a regime that will keep him out of a doctor’s office except when it becomes absolutely necessary. He will perform his gymnastic exercises1787 for the sake of the spirited aspect of his nature1788 and in order to invigorate it rather than for the sake of physical strength, not as the athletes otherwise tinker with1789 their diet and exercise for physical robustness.1790 Can we also say, Glaucon, that what those who maintain the policy1791 of education with music and gymnastics have in mind is not, as some people believe,1792 that the one would minister to the body and the other to the soul?
The question takes Glaucon by surprise,1793 and Socrates continues: It may just be that it is soul they hold in the forefront of their minds in their design of both. Just focus1794 for a moment on the sort of mental disposition1795 you find in people who have a continuous association1796 with gymnastics but never even a taste of music, and consider in turn those who have developed the opposite disposition.1797 I am referring to the dispositions of the savage and hardness on the one hand and the soft and tameness on the other.1798
Glaucon can finish the idea: “Yes, I see that people who practice gymnastics undiluted1799 come out more violent than they should be, and those that do music only become softer than is becoming1800 for them.”
Yet, Socrates continues, this same violent element is something the young man’s innate spiritedness confers, which if it is nourished properly could become brave, whereas if overfed it would in all likelihood become boorish and harsh.1801 As for the aspect of calmness, surely his innate philosophic element1802 would be the basis1803 for that; but if given too free a rein1804 it would become a softer thing than it should, while if it is nourished nicely it could become calm and decorous.1805 Moreover, as we have seen1806 we needed our guards to have both these aspects inborn. Therefore we must find a way to bring them into harmony with one another. A man so harmonized will have (411) a soul that has become both temperate and brave, while the unharmonized man will have a soul fearful and coarse.1807
Now when somebody surrenders his soul1808 to music and lets it waft its strains over him and flow down into his soul through his ears as if they were its funnels and bathe his soul with the harmonies we have identified as the sweet and soft and threnodic ones,1809 and if he spends his life exuding dolorous hums or beaming with joys1810 inspired by the music, what happens at first is that he softens whatever1811 element of spirit he had1812 in him as one does to temper iron, and makes it a serviceable thing that had been unserviceable because too inflexible;1813 but if he perseveres in his surrender and doesn’t give it a rest1814 but becomes enchanted, the next thing is that he has melted it and turned it to liquid, to the point that he has let his spirit flow out of him and has cut loose the sinews of his soul, and has made himself a “soft soldier.”1815 If his inborn gift of spirit is deficient1816 he runs through this whole process quite quickly. On the other hand if he is high-spirited1817 from birth, by weakening it he makes his spirit reactive, prone now to burst into a rage over small things and quenched then into quiescence. The outcome is we get men choleric and quick to anger, filled with crankiness instead of high spirit.1818
The converse is the man that practices gymnastics a good deal and lavishes time on feasting1819 but never touches music and philosophy.1820 At first, as he gets his body into shape he fills up with attentive vigor1821 and becomes braver than himself.1822 But what if he practices nothing else and refuses all company with the Muse? Even if there was a strain of the love of learning in his soul, the fact that it never gets a taste of study or the investigative hunt1823 and never takes a round1824 with reasoning and the rest1825 of music, it becomes weak and mute and blind,1826 since it is never aroused and never fed, and the perceptions it has are never brought to book and purged.1827 In the end1828 the man becomes a misologist,1829 a man of no music1830 who has given up persuasion and talking things over and makes his way instead with force and fierceness as does a beast, and lives a life ignorant and awkward, halting and graceless.
Glaucon agrees with all aspects of this account, and Socrates can hazard the inference that the tradition needs to be revised. It would seem, I could say, that some god bequeathed to mankind this pair of arts in service to just this pair of elements1831 in them, music and gymnastics in service to the willful and the philosophic, and not to soul and body,1832 at least not primarily, so that these two elements might be (412) harmonized to one another by tightening and loosening the strings until true tonality is reached. Therefore the man who does the finest job of mixing gymnastic with music and administer1833 to the soul in the most tempered way would most correctly be called the most musical and most harmonized in the fullest sense of the term,1834 much more than the man who can tune1835 strings to each other.
In our city likewise there will be a need for a man of this type constantly to serve as supervisor if our government and society1836 is to be preserved, Socrates suggests, and Glaucon fervently agrees. But we have a sense that something has changed. Socrates alludes to the old idea—that the young men we are training are being trained to be phulax or guard—with the notion of “preserving” the city: we had been supervising1837 how to make the guard suitable for just this purpose. What is new is the way his goodness, by which he will supervise the city, suddenly replaces the concern we had to create circumstances that would make him good. That is, we discover the role we had arrogated to ourselves is in reality his role, and with this we realize that in a sense we had, all along, become him, but now in the same sense he has become us! The surprise ends up being the way that Socrates announces that the basic education has been completed, but the very fact that it is complete means we find ourselves near the next step, installing him as guard over the polis. Transitional moments sneak up on us just like this in real life, too!
Socrates next announces what we have just realized. We have arrived at the essential outlines1838 for the education and nurture that we needed to provide. There is no need to treat separately the dances these types will be dancing, nor their chases and hunts and contests in gymnastics and horsemanship.1839 Obviously these activities will be modeled after the ones we have dealt with, and to discover them has been made easy, given what we have done so far. But what must we do next? Presumably it is to decide which among1840 this group of guards will be the rulers and which the ruled.
2.B.3c: Graduation from Guard to Ruler
Criteria have indeed emerged in the course of the discourse that can provide answers to this question, and Socrates adduces them without mentioning where he got them. Of course1841 the older among them should be the rulers and the younger the ruled, but the best of them, too.1842 Glaucon agrees, but Socrates now chooses not to rely on the goodness of the man that they had discovered in the case of the juror, but the goodness of the phylax or guard as such. He proceeds by a quick induction.
When it comes to farmers, are the best farmers the most farmerly ones?
“Yes.”
But now it is a matter of guards. Would the best of these be the most guardly1843 of a city?
“Yes.”
To be guardly the basic attributes one would need are being sound-minded and able, and also being solicitously concerned1844 about the city. Solicitous concern one feels most of all for that which one in fact loves, but what he would most love would be that whose interests he thought were the same as his own, and especially when1845 that thing being well off seems to him to intersect1846 with his being so also, and when not, not. Therefore from out of the whole group of guards we need to select such individuals1847 as will seem to us upon examination most of all and throughout their lives to be occupied with ascertaining what will benefit their city and then doing that with all their energy, and conversely what does not benefit her would be utterly1848 unwilling to do.
“You describe in his very essence the men with the proper orientation,” Glaucon replies.
It seems to me the way we must conduct the examination will be to watch them throughout the stages of their lives, and see if they act in a guardly manner toward this belief, and neither by bewitchment nor by force lapse into expelling their decision and resolution1849 to do whatever is best for the city.
“What is this ‘expelling’ you refer to?”
Say I will. An opinion can leave one's mind either willingly or unwillingly. It is willingly when a false opinion of person upon his learning otherwise, but the departure of a true (413) opinion is always unwilling.
“I understand the case of the willing expulsion, but I still need to learn what you mean by the unwilling one.”
I had to say to him, Socrates tells us,1850 “Don’t you believe, as I do, that men are deprived of good things against their will, and of bad things willingly? Or do you doubt perhaps that being deluded from the truth1851 is a bad thing, and being in possession truth a good? Or do you not agree that believing what is a fact is possessing the truth?”1852
“You’ve made it clear enough1853 that what you say is correct. I consent that it is unwillingly that men become deprived of a true judgment.”
And do they undergo the deprivation either by being robbed or by being bewitched or by being forced into it?1854
“Here, too,1855 I need some guidance.”
Maybe I sound too much like Sophocles.1856 By “robbed” I refer to people whose minds have been swayed by persuasion and to those who have forgotten. From some it is time and from others it is argument that strips away their belief without their noticing. Is that the guidance you needed?
“Quite.”
Then next,1857 by those forced I mean anybody that some kind of suffering or pain1858 causes to change their opinion.
“Again1859 I understand; again you are correct.”
But then1860 the bewitched: I fancy and you could aver without guidance1861 to be those who are led to change their opinion either spelled by pleasure or shuddering in fear.
“Yes, since anything that bewilders can be said to bewitch.”1862
So now you can understand what I was saying a moment ago, that we must search out which are the best guards of the decision1863 they hold within themselves, that the necessity to do that which they judge at each moment is best for the city belongs to themselves to carry out.1864 Indeed we must observe straight from their childhoods how they respond to tasks we put before them that are just the sort that make a person forget or become confused in this kind of resolve, and then select the one who holds to it in his mind and proves hard to delude, and reject the one who doesn’t.1865 Besides tasks there will be labors we set before them1866 and pains to undergo and contests their response to which we will observe with the same questions in mind. And we must also conduct a test for the third kind, for bewitchment. Just as when one leads a colt into a clattering racket or an echoing din to test whether he is skittish, so must we convey them while they are still young into frightful situations, and then in turn expose them to pleasures, subjecting1867 them to an assay more stern than gold to fire, to see which of them is impervious to bewitchment and maintains his poise in all situations, a guard over himself that he truly is, and over the musical education he has learned, rendering himself in all these situations with the rhythm and harmony1868 that is appropriate, so as to prove to be the sort of man that would be of greatest value both to himself and to the city. And1869 the one who has been assayed in (414) childhood and youth and then in maturity1870 and emerges unscathed1871 must be installed in the office of ruler and guard1872 of the city, must be given honors during this life and for his memory be allotted1873 the largest of graves and memorials, while the one who is not of this kind must be dropped. This is how I see the selection and constitution1874 of the rulers and guards of the city, in broad outline and without going into detail.
Along with the selection comes a nomenclature. The ones we have selected will most rightly be called “guards,” fully prepared1875 to watch both inimical parties outside the city and friendly within, guarding against the one group conceiving and the other becoming able1876 to harm the city. As for the younger ones we had been calling guards before, the ones who have not achieved this title in its new meaning, we will now call “helpers”1877 and aids for the policies1878 of the ruling guards.
2.B.3d: The Establishment of the City
Is there some way we could bring off a certain one of those lies we were saying a while ago are needed on occasion,1879 this time a real whopper1880 -- a lie to get even the rulers to believe if possible but at least everybody else in the city …
“A lie, you say?”1881—
… not at all1882 original with us but borrowed from the Phoenicians?1883 Indeed in the past it has happened1884 in many places, as the poets say and they have succeeded to make it credible, but in our part of the world it has not occurred and I don’t know if it could. I do know that the persuading would be heavy lifting.
“You seem to shrink1885 from telling it!”
Yes, and you’ll see I have good reason to shrink1886 once I say it.
“Go ahead; don’t be afraid.”
So I will—but still I don’t know how I’ll summon the cheek to say it or just how to put it into words.1887 I’ll try first to persuade the rulers themselves and their soldiers,1888 and then the rest of the city, to the effect that what we have put them through by way of raising them and educating them did not really happen after all. Let them judge that what was happening to them and going on around them was all a dream. In fact, at the time, they were underground being shaped down there into what they now are, both themselves and their armor and weapons1889 and the rest of their equipment, and that once they were fully crafted and formed, it was their Mother Earth that yielded them forth from herself. And on behalf of this land they find themselves living in it is they1890 that must now both take counsel, and defend it1891 as if it were the mother that nursed them1892 in case someone attacks her, and must adopt a sense of caring for their fellow citizens as if they were their Brothers of the Earth.1893
“You were right1894 to be ashamed about telling a lie1895 a minute ago.1896”
(415) Yes, with quite good reason.1897 Still, hear the rest of it. 'While you are brothers, as we have said,1898 all of you in the city,’ we’ll say to them in the fable,1899 ‘still, the god who fashioned and formed you, for those of you who are adequate to being rulers, mixed some gold into their1900 makeup, which accounts for their being the most valuable and honored members of the city.1901 Into those who could be their assistants he mixed silver, and mixed iron and bronze in the farmers and the rest of the craftsmen.1902 Given the fact that you have a mother in common,1903 though you will breed true to your species most of the time, cases of silver offspring from gold parents and gold from silver, and similarly among the others.' So, to the rulers among them the god first and foremost gives an admonition1904 to be good watchers after nothing, to guard nothing more earnestly than their offspring, that they have suffered any admixture in their souls of these elements,1905 and in case one of their own1906 offspring shows a trace of bronze or iron, to take no pity1907 on him in any way but assign him to the station proper to his nature and send him off, whether to the craftsmen or the farmers, and conversely if one be born within these latter groups with an ingredient of gold or silver, to honor and elevate the former of them to the station of the guards and the latter to that of their helpers, explaining their conduct on the grounds there is an oracle1908 that the day a guard of bronze or a guard of iron guards the city, that day the city will perish. Can you see a way we can to get them to believe this fable?
“None at all for this first set of them, but to persuade their sons and then the next generation and the rest of men that come later,1909 well ... .”
And it’s all the better for fostering their care for each other and for the city, if I get your drift. We can leave the whole thing to rumor and hearsay1910 and ourselves take the next step, to lead forth our earthborn sons in full armor under the leadership of their rulers. Let us imagine them searching out the best place in the city to locate their own encampment,1911 a place from which they could best control a faction of the citizenry unwilling to obey the laws and from which they could best defend the whole city against invaders from the outside,1912 if an enemy should raid them like a wolf who comes among sheep. Now once they have laid out their encampment and have made the appropriate sacrifices to the gods, let them go to bed1913—right?1914
“Just so,” says Glaucon.
Beds adequate to protect them in the winter as well as1915 summertime?
“Of course—I presume you are referring to their housing.” 1916
If this term can be used of what soldiers have1917 and not money-makers, Socrates rejoins.
(416) “And just what does this add to that?”1918
Let me try to tell you. The most shocking and shameful thing a shepherd could do would be to raise his sheepdogs—his helpers with the sheep that is—in such a way that out of gluttony or hunger, or some bad aspect of character1919 for that matter, the dogs on their own initiative1920 attack1921 the sheep and rather than dogs come to resemble wolves.
“Shocking, of course.”
Must we not then do whatever we can to guard against our assistants1922 doing this sort of thing to the citizens, given the fact that they are stronger,1923 against their coming to resemble fierce despots instead of gentle allies?
“Yes, we must guard.”1924
And would they not be equipped with the greatest measure of a safeguard conceivable if they have been1925 educated well?
“Yes, and you can be damn sure that they have been, in fact!”
Socrates again reminds us that he is talking to Glaucon at that moment, and tells us he said,1926 “We have no warrant to make so strong a claim, my dear Glaucon. What we can be sure of, as we said a minute ago, is that they need to get a correct education—whatever a correct education is—if they are to have the greatest support1927 for becoming tame and peaceful both among themselves and toward the people that are being guarded by them.1928
“And we will say so correctly.”
You will agree then that in addition to1929 this education, any thoughtful person would say that their shelters and all their other possessions or property provided to them must meet the criteria that it will not stop them from being the best guards they can, and will not arouse1930 them to mistreat the other citizens.
“And he will say so truly.”
Having extracted (or secured) Glaucon’s agreement to these criteria Socrates can now present untrammeled a vivid and forthright description of the life and regimen of the rulers and their assistants (416D3-7B4). Apart from the “big lie” he has just taken us through it is the longest continuous statement he will have made all evening,1931 and with it Book Three will come to an end. Everything conspires to make us aware that we have returned full circle to that fateful moment when Socrates last described the people for our viewing,1932 and once we sense the return we recognize in a flash that it is again Glaucon who is witnessing Socrates's description, and we are full of interest, if not apprehension, what his reaction will be, since last time his reaction set us off on a long detour, requiring in fact everything that has come between.
“Observe then my picture1933 of what home life they must have in order to turn out this way. First as for possessions no private wealth will any of them have beyond what it is absolutely necessary. Second, as for their dwellings and stores no part or corner of them will be off limits: anyone who wishes may enter at will. They will be outfitted only as is necessary for men who are athletes of war, both sober and brave,1934 maintaining their stations as guards1935 and receiving from the other citizens a wage for doing so that will leave them no excess at year’s end nor a shortfall. Imagine them1936 making their way to the mess: they will live life in common with each other as men do that are ensconced in an army. As for gold and silver we will tell them they have a divine kind from the gods, stored away forever in their souls. Of the human kind they have no further need, nor would piety allow them to them to mix the divine with the mortal and pollute it, since the currency of the many becomes associated with (417) many impious acts, but the one that they1937 possess is unsullied.1938 Rather, they alone in the city will be barred by Themis from dealing with and even from touching1939 gold and silver, from entering under a roof where they are present,1940 from wearing them,1941 and from drinking out of a silver or golden vessel.1942 Indeed1943 if they follow these rules they might themselves be preserved and preserve the city, but the day they acquire1944 land on their own, and homes and coins, householders and farmers1945 will they be rather than guards, harsh despots rather than allies of the other citizens1946 will they become. Hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against will be the rule and content of their lives – and fearing: fearing many more of those within the city than those without and much more intensely,1947 ever skirting the edge of the abyss and ruin, themselves and their city right along with them.
It is for all these reasons, we shall say, I said, that the guards’ provision must be thus, with respect to their shelters1948 and the rest, and this is the law that we will lay down for them.
“Quite so.”
Glaucon has agreed.
2.B.4: Excursus on Why Glaucon Agrees: a Summary of Sect. 2.B
Book Three may be said to end with Glaucon’s acquiescence, but Book Four begins with Adeimantus resisting this very conclusion and so perhaps it would be better to say that Book Three ends before Adeimantus disagrees. In the pause between we would do well to summarize how we got as far as we did.
The first time Glaucon saw the citizens at home with each other (372AB) he blurted out that their diet was too austere. Socrates’s ready addition of condiments only worsened his mood, a mood that Socrates quickly diagnosed as a feeling of enervated dissatisfaction that reaches for more and only creates havoc in doing so. Perhaps the search for justice in the large canvas of the state would be helped rather than harmed by adding this appetitive aspect to its regimen,1949 but the addition soon leads to a state that finds itself at war, whether to annex the wealth it needs to meet its rising expectations or to defend itself from the rising expectations of others.1950 The army will consist of experts like all the other jobs the citizens do, but how can the person with the natural gifts requisite for this work be kept from becoming an enemy within the city? It seems contrary to nature for violence and loyalty to be present at one and the same time. And yet there it is, in the dog. Perhaps the combination can be found among men after all: an instinctual loyalty to friends alongside an instinctual hostility toward the unknown. If there are humans with such an inborn nature we will educate them to bring their potentials to full strength following the original wisdom of those who first divided paideia into music and gymnastic. We’ll refine the curriculum of poetry to instill deep into them the values we’ll need them to have when they come of age and become our guards, and the curriculum of music to foster the requisite temperaments of courage and moderation. Their physical regimen will be simple such as suits the bodily needs and fits into the life of soldiers, avoiding thereby the diseases of luxury and the need for functionaries who cater to them. We will reintroduce a long-forgotten refinement: Music and gymnastics were set up not for soul and body respectively but both for the development of soul, to balance sensitivity with vigilance and resoluteness with flexibility. Among those we have educated we will select those who are particularly impervious to the forces that would seduce a person from retaining his grip on what he knows to be good and true, and make them our guards, with the others acting as their helpers. Before we set them loose into their brave new world we need to make them forget we educated them. We’ll tell them it was all a dream, and the best of them will get the point and go along with us. These we will persuade to live under the most austere and simplest of regimes and to mess together, in a location suited to protecting the city against invaders from without as well as to keeping a eye on the behavior of those within. We will forbid them becoming involved in the sorts of activities that get people started wanting more. They will not be allowed even to touch gold and silver but be reminded they have something within them that is better far and mustn’t be polluted by the envy of the world. If we are lucky they will remain exempt and unsullied, or else they will lose their integrity and they as well as the state will teeter at the abyss.
This new life certainly lacks garnish (ἄνευ ὄψου was Glaucon’s complaint before). Where before the inhabitants could alternate from one dish to the other and while away the evening singing to the gods and producing children, not too few and not too many, these will own nothing and store nothing away, have no private space, have no tools but what they need for their job, receive a set stipend from which they can save nothing, and eat together. These provisions in fact spell out in the starkest terms a pattern of life the very hint of which was enough to elicit from Glaucon his sputtering objection in Book Two, yet this time he accepts them. What has happened?
Apparently our summary has left out what has happened. Let’s try again.
2.B.4a: Revised Summary of Section 2.B
The luxuries were projected into the theoretical city in response to Glaucon’s anxious reaction against a life-too-simple, which he had difficulty articulating. The remarks he did make were taken literally by Socrates. When as a result an army became needful he was ashamed and expressed the hope it could be supplied from the normal rank and file. Socrates scolded him for his carelessness and required him to stick by their agreement to assign one task to each citizen. But a professional standing army leads to the problem who will guard the guards, so that the very existence of the conceptual state is brought into conceptual jeopardy. Glaucon had by then taken enough responsibility for the outcome that he was relieved when Socrates chanced on the idea of the σκύλαξ, which provided a ray of hope that such a thing is not unnatural, and therefore impossible, after all.
Socrates next suggests that the concern for inborn nature leads to a concern for proper nurture, and Glaucon’s brother Adeimantus jumps into the conversation, quite willing to expend whatever amount of effort is needed on the subject of education (376C7-E1). Socrates then offers another perfectly natural suggestion, that instead of reinventing the wheel they adopt a scheme of education based on the age-old division into music and gymnastics. When the review of the music curriculum becomes a radical review of the poetic tradition, Adeimantus finds himself engaged in the very critique he had begged Socrates to carry out in his large speech. As it has turned out, by helping to formulate the criteria for what poetry the young guards should be subjected to and what not, he is participating in the critique rather than being lectured to by Socrates. After all, Adeimantus cannot be re-educated: at his age he can improve his education only by improving education itself. Somehow his search for a personal solution has become bound up in a solution fit for those younger than he is.1951 Somehow his recognition of the inadequacy of the society around him has been converted into a sense of responsibility to “do something about it.”
The review of poetry re-establishes the authority of truth over opinion as Adeimantus had craved,1952 under the excuse that whatever else humans might get from poetry they will not be allowed to have it at the expense of the gods. Next, on the pretense that he is moving through the ranks, Socrates will treat stories about the heroes. These are the personages that men must emulate. The criterion by which to measure poetry about them is that they be depicted as worthy of emulation.
After heroes come men, the treatment of whom in poetry now is made to submit to a different criterion. Socrates invents a distinction from scratch between logos and lexis, or plot and delivery, in order to move to the next phase of the education of Adeimantus. The fact that the study of poetry includes recitation implies that the student will be required to impersonate the humans depicted, and do so with whatever resources he has as a human himself. If he is asked to do this young, he will have to stretch his youthful sources in their direction. If they are low types he will stretch himself in the wrong direction, to his own detriment. The topic of emulating heroes and imitating one’s inferiors goes to the heart of Adeimantus’s experience and predicament. The false attitude he finds accepted among his peers and justified from traditional poetry has made its way into his own soul to the extent that although he believes it is wrong he does not know how to resist it.1953 By putting him in the position of censor Socrates has given him an opportunity to find a way to resist it, with his help and guidance.
The initial expression of his attitude about the opportunity he is given is his statement about Socrates, whom he idolizes for the way, on this occasion and we can imagine many times before, he has brought him to the edge of his best intuition. That is, he guesses that Socrates is about to banish all imitative poetry (394D5-6). Socrates’s response to this act of transference or projection or imitation, is to turn the focus of the conversation away from themselves and back onto the men they are imagining into existence for the sake of their city, the guards who like all the other citizens must be one thing only and do one thing only. How then can they imitate many (394E)? By focussing on the student-guards he invites Adeimantus to imagine himself a student and recast what his teacher would or should make him recite. By the end of this treatment of lexis or delivery Socrates has Adeimantus fully on board.
This completes the treatment of the stories, the logoi that constitute part of music, as opposed to gymnastic. We must recognize, or else misinterpret the whole treatment, that the great stress placed on the stories is due to an agenda that underlies the discussion of education. What is happening before our eyes is not the promulgation of a theory of education by the great thinker Plato in which an idiosyncratically great amount of stress is placed on plot, but a remediation of Adeimantus’s education conducted by Socrates on Adeimantus in that special manner of his that forces Adeimantus to participate rather than merely receive an edifying story. We have to believe that Adeimantus asked Socrates for help at the beginning of Book Two not only because Socrates had given him answers before but because Socrates had recognized his desire before, and had midwifed it before toward progress in understanding. We have to believe that that is all that Adeimantus expects here, and moreover that that is all that is happening here.1954
The transitions within this putative “treatment of education” are driven by the opportunities Socrates sees for educating his interlocutors, but since his method is indirect he hides this in ready-made categories like the division between gods, heroes and men or between music and gymnastic. After story and its delivery comes musical accompaniment, and while we may be tempted to mine this section for information on the musical ideas of the time, about which we know precious little, Socrates is almost completely unconcerned with the matter, as his punning remark that music must “harmonize” with storytelling reveals at the outset.1955 What will turn out to be important about the transition to music is that Glaucon interrupts and takes over for Adeimantus, since he has a personal interest in the topic. He knows something about it and cares enough that he knows that he does not know enough (398C7-10). His attitude enables Socrates to call upon him as the expert for identifying the modal forms, but clearly it is more substantial matters that Socrates has in mind than these technicalities, as we see when he says, “Leave me at least the modes that go with heroic martial and temperate political behavior,” and then goes on (399AB) to describe the balanced temperament he wishes to see achieved by the musical education of the young guards, with an eloquence and leisureliness that comes close to his description of the city’s inhabitants at the idyllic stage (372AB). Glaucon then has the role of giving his nihil obstat as to which modes will suit these behaviors and does not need to comment directly upon them.
When Socrates closes his review of the modes with some remarks on the musical instruments that will be needed he suddenly realizes what they have been doing is tantamount to a purgation of the city that he had accused of being spoiled. Glaucon shows that he knows it was his own intemperance that spoiled it, with his reply that nothing less than purgation should be expected since they themselves have been acting temperately.1956
They are not quite finished purging the music, however. There is still the matter of rhythm. Of course rhythms will be selected to follow the harmonies just as the harmonies were selected to fit the morals of the stories. Glaucon has the expertise to distinguish the rhythms from one another but confesses he has no knowledge at all about which rhythms go with which life (400A4-7); but Socrates has already enunciated the principle and he defers the details to Damon so that he can move on.1957 The moral states of temperance and bravery must be fostered and their opposites must be suppressed: this much Glaucon can certainly distinguish, Socrates insists. Moreover, he can distinguish these qualities in rhythm and harmony as well as in story. He can see them everywhere, in architecture and weaving and even in the world of plants. While music among all the elements in the environment wields an especially strong influence on the soul, it is rather the overarching and pervasive characters of beauty in all things that we must promote in the climate of our young men. The knowledge that truly makes a man a great musician is the knowledge of these characters in all their embodiments.
Glaucon unhesitatingly agrees with Socrates at each step, even though what is now being said implies that the very kind of musical knowledge he has just boasted of having is of little intrinsic worth. Glaucon has been borne along by the sweep of the argument and the importance of the matters it treats and leaves the details behind.1958 He is moved by inspiration.
Socrates has now used the treatment of music as an occasion to move to a much higher and more final level of study than any traditional curriculum has, would, or even could envision. At the very end of the study comes the recognition that beauty is the province within which eros comes to life, and Socrates adds a coda, both humorous and realistic, on the petty derailment to which the erotics between teacher and student are prone (402D10-3C3). It is of course the harmonious beauty of the soul in the student that attracts the teacher, he remarks, and Glaucon by way of agreeing notes that yes the psychic beauties enable one to look past physical defects. Glaucon shows a trace of fastidiousness here and Socrates comes down upon it like a load of bricks. There is no place for the bodily eros in the psychic and musical eros shared by souls for each other, he argues (402E-3B). You may sit with your boy and hug him but no more than a father would his son. Once Glaucon accepts this corrective Socrates is ready to move on from music to gymnastics.
Given what has just been said we should expect the treatment of gymnastics to receive even shorter shrift; but something else happens that sets the tone. The principle is enunciated that body hasn’t the ability to heal the soul but the soul does the body. Therefore if our guards are intelligent they can prepare the gymnastic rules themselves, with a little guidance from us in the form of a few bold strokes (403D).
The insouciance of this remark is comic, and so is the first guideline. The guards will not be allowed to become drunk: indeed the very figure of the drunken guard is risible. What then follows is not a program of exercise but guidelines for the dietary regimen, and the moral is: Don’t get lost in subtleties. Our guards will eat what the Greeks ate on bivouac in Troy. Under the guise of a treatment of gymnastics Socrates is making a frontal assault on Glaucon’s ὄψα. All that needs to be said is that the diet should resemble in its simplicity the musical harmonies we have retained, and that fancy dishes only lead to excess, license, and disease. The sequence of excesses Socrates here lists off is just a restatement of what he loaded the polis down with back in Book Two, but in the present context he has gotten the upper hand and has placed the whole issue of the diet into the category of the ridiculous. The ensuing treatment satirizes the valetudinarians and reduces their lifestyle to an oxymoronic self contradiction that only the rich can afford.
Besides the rehash there is something new, an extension of the symptoms of excess to include an increased demand for juries (405A6-B1), which moves us distinctly beyond the scope of gymnastics and medicine. The extension is justified by an analogy. That someone should look for justice in the decisions of others because he has no sense of it in himself, is shameful;1959 but how much more shameful that he should specialize in manipulating a false sense of it in the minds of jurors for his own personal gain? Likewise it’s shameful to rely on doctors not for the dressing of wounds and the treatment of seasonal diseases, but for managing an intemperate regimen that makes one exude the odors of a swamp.
The want of inner sense or conscience that is expressed in an undue reliance on the courts and then transmogrified into a high art by the professional haggler, is made the pattern and basis for criticizing a person’s lack of good sense about his own bodily regime and the transmogrification of this bad sense is made into a science of maintaining the body in sickness. The comparison is designed to ridicule a person for having to rely on the flattery of a doctor who dignifies his flatulence with the name of a medical condition;1960 but it has exposed two very telling errors in Glaucon’s speech from Book Two, which assumes one has no inner sense of justice, or presumes one can ignore what inner sense he has, and therefore falls back on defining it in terms of injustice,1961 as well as his portrayal of the haggler as astute rather than destitute of conscience and unable even to help himself.1962 The incontinent eater who only brings trouble onto himself also serves as a counterweight to Glaucon’s image of Gyges, by making Gyges’s self-ignorance inwardly visible, within Glaucon’s conscience, as a counterweight to the invisibility of his sins to others.
Once begun, Socrates’s method of satire and ridicule-by-comparison continues ad libitum, to the point that the working man who is too busy to be sick comes off more noble than the rich man who has nothing better to do with his time than be sick, now that he has made his pile. Glaucon interrupts the satire to ask whether in all seriousness he would go so far as to deny the city needs doctors who are good,1963 given the fact that the doctors Socrates seems to prefer would dismiss most of their patients and let them die. In passing he suggests that the best doctors might be those that had the widest possible familiarity with disease, the same way the best men to have on the jury are those who have spent a lot of time among all kinds of people from slumming with the low-lifers to hobnobbing with the rich. Socrates replies that he does of course want good doctors, but he attacks Glaucon’s extension, in passing, of the “experiential” epistemology to jurors, and with this he reverts to mining the analogy between the juror and the doctor.
What he goes on to say has more to do with jurors than doctors: its relevance to the ostensible topic of gymnastics is minimal, but at the same time it continues the direct education of Glaucon in a manner closely tailored to the ways he is making himself available and amenable to education, namely through his candid remarks and his participation in the dialogue.
Since, as Socrates had said at the beginning, the ruling principle governing the “gymnastics” curriculum is that the mind or soul has the power to improve the body, our physicians may profit as such from empirical familiarity with being sick and being exposed to sickness. The juror’s job, which is knowing the just from the unjust, likewise requires mental acuity rather than physical, but empirical familiarity with injustice through indiscriminate exposure might weaken or contaminate this acuity. What it takes to be the “good” juror that Glaucon alluded to in passing, is therefore that the juror have a good soul and be a good man, in the sense at least of being untainted. The conclusion that a juror cannot afford to be “sick” with a case of injustice is irrelevant to gymnastic but goes to the heart of Glaucon's most compelling argument at the beginning of Book Two, the story about Gyges, which he presented as a case that anyone will judge the same way, along with his subsequent description of the just and unjust men as if they were statues, the very sight of whom, he claimed, made the judgment between them easy. In both cases, as we saw, his presentation is vitiated by his own blind spots.1964
With comparisons from the more palpable world of the body and sickness and diet, Socrates is able to illustrate the less palpable facts of conscience, which are as such more “ignorable” in just the way we are to envy Gyges for being able to ignore his own sins merely because they are invisible to others. Glaucon himself is left with the sole alternative of ignoring Socrates’s argument, but even that alternative is now ruled out since it has been revealed that doing so threatens to disable the part of himself that enables him to participate in the conversation, which, as itself a search for justice, is akin to the work of a juror.
Humor is just the right elixir to get him onto the other side since it operates on the will. On the other hand it can only take him as far as will can take him: to resolution. Understanding will require more work. The prospect of purity and freedom from admixture is just such an appeal to the will, and it is with an appeal on this level to which Glaucon accedes, so as to end Book Three.
END OF BOOK THREE
BOOK FOUR
2.B.5: Objection of Adeimantus
No sooner has Glaucon accepted the conclusion than Adeimantus interrupts to object:
(419) “What will you say in defense of yourself if someone accuses you of making scant provision for the happiness of these men of yours,1965 especially when they themselves could have had it otherwise? The city virtually belongs1966 to them and yet they enjoy none of its benefits,1967 while1968 others1969 are acquiring the fields and building the great big homes,1970 amassing1971 possessions to fill such homes, making private sacrifices1972 to the gods and entertaining foreign guests,1973 and of course as you just mentioned acquiring gold and silver and all the things one customarily expects1974 to find in the lives of those who have really arrived.1975 One could very well say1976 that the name you gave (420) them is all they really are: ‘assistants’ like hired help, who to all appearances are just sitting there on their watches.”1977
The outburst rivals Glaucon’s from Book Two in vehemence but it has its own specific flavor. Just as Glaucon had there “identified” with the citizens in their simple home closely enough to find it calm, Adeimantus here imagines himself being a guard or assistant to the guards vividly enough to feel envy for others than the guard, who aren’t limited by his simple and calm regime, and to fear ridicule by others for forgoing to take advantage of his own opportunities. He articulates his envy in the list, which is a list of external goods that is unique among such lists for the way it stresses private wealth over public accolades.1978 The usual list of external goods includes family, money, and honors,1979 but Adeimantus’s goes on to include the ability to honor the gods privately and to receive foreigners into one’s home. Of all things it recalls Cephalus in his home, his continual use of the private altar he has built, and his request that Socrates come down to visit him from Athens more often. The peculiar isolation of those who “have arrived” is something to be envied from the outside only. Adeimantus’s list therefore expresses envy with an accuracy that evinces some familiarity.
Socrates’s response is not short. Don’t forget to add1980 they’ll be working for their dinner1981 and won’t be receiving a wage in addition to their victuals as the others1982 will, so that even if they wanted to take a sojourn out of town1983 on private business they would not have the wherewithal to do so, nor to pay money for girls1984 or waste it on anything else they might get a hankering for, the way people who are thought to be happy can.1985 There’s this and a whole lot more you have left out of the charges against me.1986 Don’t hesitate to include these also in the list.
“Consider them included,” Adeimantus replies, his vehemence unabated.1987
So you are asking what we1988 shall say in our defense? I think we’ll find our defense by sticking with the same path of inquiry1989 we already set out on. We’ll say that while we would not be surprised if these men did indeed come out quite happy as a group,1990 it’s quite irrelevant since our goal in founding the city never was that any single group within it might be particularly1991 well-off and happy but rather that the city as a whole might be happy as much as possible,1992 so that in a city so disposed we might most likely find justice, as likewise in a city organized worst we might find injustice, and that once we caught sight of justice1993 we would be able to decide the previous1994 question. Our present notion is that we are fashioning and modelling a well-off and happy city, not by selecting a few of the citizens and setting them up to have this quality, but as a whole.
If we were painting a statue and someone came up to us and criticized us for failing to decorate the most beautiful part of the body with the most beautiful colors, since we were using black paint for the eyes instead of the oyster’s purple dye,1995 it would be perfectly reasonable for us to say in our defense, “My strange fellow, don’t adopt the attitude that we must paint the eyes so prettily that they don’t even look like eyes, nor any of the other parts. Focus instead on how well we accord to each part its proper place so as to create a beautiful whole.” Just so in the present application don’t1996 try to make us adorn1997 our guards with a sort of “happiness” that will turn them into something other than the guards we need them to be.1998 We need no lectures1999 on how to swathe our farmers in fancy cloaks and bedeck2000 them with gold, and then to suggest to them that they till the land only if they feel like it, or how to have our potters recline in a pretty array beside the fire to drink and to feast, keeping their wheel within easy reach in case they have a hankering to throw a pot or two, and so on likewise how to make the others into people that have really made it big2001 so that in the end the whole city might enjoy happiness. Advice like that we hardly need! If we follow it our farmer will soon be no farmer, and our potter no potter, nor would the others (421) maintain the postures2002 that came into view as our city developed. Indeed, for the majority2003 of those roles the stakes of maintaining them are rather low. If the leather-stitchers2004 become incompetent or lose their art and pretend to be good when they are not, the city suffers no fearsome consequence; but guards of laws and of the city who aren’t but seem to be can bring the whole city down in a fell swoop, while at the same time they alone hold the keys to her good order and true happiness. So, if we are trying to turn out guards deserving the name by virtue of being the least prone to do harm to the city, whereas a person2005 who speaks the way that man spoke a moment ago intends to turn farmers into happy revellers somehow, as if at a carnival and not in a city,2006 then he must be speaking about something other than a city.2007 What we have to ask is whether it is with this goal2008 in mind that we should institute our guards, that the greatest happiness might accrue to them, or whether as to such happiness as this2009 we must watch2010 how that develops in the city as a whole2011 while as to the “helpers” as you style them2012—our guards that is—we must compel and persuade them to pursue the goal we mentioned before,2013 that they become the best exponents possible of their own special job just like the others. Given the flourishing that would follow for the city as a whole and the goodness of its organization2014 we may leave it up to nature to endow each group with whatever happiness is in store for them to share.2015
To this Adeimantus now calmly agrees and we take a deep breath.2016 The exchange between them so far constitutes something of a proem to Book Four—but Socrates is immediately ready to ask him to grant the brother argument.2017 Of course Adeimantus has no idea what Socrates means,2018 so Socrates asks him to look over to the rest of the city’s workers2019 and consider whether these same things will corrupt them, too, so that they would likewise become evil. “What same things?” Adeimantus asks, though he is the one that brought the offending thing up. “Wealth and poverty” is the way Socrates puts it, the “it” that underlay Adeimantus’s attack a moment ago.2020
“And just how could this happen?” Adeimantus asks with some incredulity.
Here’s how: Once he is rich do you think a potter will still be willing to ply his trade? Won’t he become more lazy and careless than he was before? As such he’ll change into a worse potter. And yet at the same time2021 imagine him being so poor he does not have the tools for his work, or whatever else his trade needs him to have: then too the products he makes will diminish in quality and so will his ability to teach2022 his trade to his sons or whomever else he would pass it on to. Thus wealth and poverty both have the effect of making the products of the trades worse as well as the tradesmen themselves, and we have come upon a second set of things the guards must keep from (422) insinuating their way into the city, wealth and poverty. The one makes for finickiness and laziness and an enervated desire for novelty2023 while the other makes for boorishness and incompetence as well as novelty.
Adeimantus accepts the argument so as to move on to a further point of his own.2024 “If the city has not amassed wealth, how will it be able to go to war, especially against a city that is large and wealthy?”2025
Socrates’s answer to this pressing question is paradoxical and unclear: It would be quite hard against one but against two it would be quite easy. Just think about it step by step. If our city is compelled to fight, the fight will pit our athletes of war against rich men. Compare it to a boxer who has become fully competent fighting against a pair of men who aren’t boxers, but are rich and fat.2026 Don’t you think the fight would be easy even though they are two, since he could dodge the first2027 one that comes at him and with the same move turn to the other and punch him, and then back to the other, over and over again in the heat and exertion of the ring. He’d be able to worst several men, I think, an athlete so well prepared. And yet the wealthy have more boxing in their upbringing than fighting war, so the argument is even stronger when we consider our athletes of war. They could beat double and triple their numbers.
Second, consider what would happen if our city sent ambassadors to one of them but not the other and laid it out plain and simple: “We don’t use gold and silver, and we are not about to take it up either. You for your part do use them. So, make war with us as your allies and take what’s theirs.” Do you think on hearing this they would opt to make war against tough and lean dogs rather than join the dogs in a fight against sheep fat and soft?2028
Adeimantus agrees for his own part2029 that they would not, but still expresses the worry2030 that if one city should indeed accumulate the wealth of the others2031 by confiscating it, the city would by virtue of its sheer size constitute a standing threat against the city that according to our supposition had accumulated nothing.
I envy you your naiveté, Socrates now interposes, if you think you can call anything else a city than the kind of organization we have set up.
Adeimantus needs to have that explained, so Socrates can continue. We have to use a larger and vaguer term2032 for the others. Each one of them is a great many cities and does not make a city itself, as we say in the game.2033 There’s a pair of them at least, no matter where you look, each at war with the other, a city of the poor and a city of the rich. (423) And within each of these cities in turn there is a great number of cities. If you try to treat them all as one you’re lost, but if you recognize they are many cities and distinct, and allocate the one group’s wealth and power and even their sovereignty over themselves2034 to the other group, you will always have most of them as your allies and only a few as enemies. Likewise, as long as your city2035 keeps temperately2036 to the order we have lately designed for it, it will be the largest of cities, not largest in repute and show but largest in truth, even if its army numbers only one thousand men. A city made so large by its unity2037 you will not find among the Greeks or the barbarians, though you will find a large number that seem, but only seem, to be many times larger2038 than this one.
Adeimantus accepts this climactically radical argument with both emphasis and surprise,2039 and Socrates continues in an enthusiastic vein to apply the principle. This then would be just the right criterion2040 for our rulers to use for determining how large the city should be2041 and how much territory it needs so it can forgo acquiring any more. I would say2042 the city may grow only as long as she still is willing to be a unity; beyond this she may not grow.
“Yes: what you say is nicely put.”
So let us add another2043 order to our guards’ list of orders, that they guard by all means possible against all semblance of the city being small or large for that matter,2044 but keep her just the right size and truly unified.2045
“Yes:2046 it’s a trifle2047 of an order we put upon them.”
Yes:2048 but more trifling still I’ll add something we mentioned before, that if one of their own should be born a trifling2049 fellow he’ll have to be sent off to the others,2050 just as if a significant fellow is born among the others he must be sent to the guards. The purpose of this policy was to make it clear that the other citizens also must tend to their own proper jobs in accordance with their own natural gifts, steady in the purpose that by practicing his single job each man should become a single man instead of many, and thus the city in its entirety should grow into a single whole and not many.
“A mere detail,2051 indeed.”
But my dear Adeimantus these things we are enjoining them to do are not many and large, as opinion might have it, but truly trifling2052 every one, if only they keep their eye on “the one big thing”—indeed I’d rather just say the one sufficient thing:2053 education and upbringing.2054 If they are well educated and grow up to be temperate men they will easily be able to discern what is needed in all these areas as well as others we can pass over here,2055 such as the acquisition of wives and marrying them and reproduction.2056 All we need is the general maxim that as much as (424) possible “friends have what they have in common.”2057
Adeimantus agrees with the principle and lofty spirit of this remark,2058 and Socrates can continue, upward. Once it is well begun a city and society2059 progresses as a spiral2060 growing outward. If the worthy nurture and education are preserved they continue to instill good natures in the young, and such worthy types in turn, relying on such an education to spawn still better offspring than their forbears, better even in their inborn nature, as it is with the rest of the animal kingdom.
To put it in simplest terms,2061 those who are to take care of the city must keep a firm grasp on this and not allow it to perish out of neglect. They must guard first and foremost against any innovation in the gymnastic and musical education that runs counter to the order we have established. They must be wary when somebody lets fall the word that
...the song to which men most hearkenIs the one that haunts most lately the lips of the rhapsode,2062
in case he is taken to refer not just to new songs but to new genres of song, and receives praise for such an attitude. In truth one must neither praise such a thing nor try it out, either. One must recognize that change and novelty in the genres puts everything at risk,2063 and that wherever the modes of music change greatly, the modes of political culture2064 undergo a fundamental change along with them, as Damon says, and I agree with him.
Adeimantus completely agrees with Damon, too.2065
Socrates continues with stern resolution: Here then must we build a guardhouse for our guards to inhabit.
Adeimantus is equally stern: “It’s certainly true that relaxation of this type of law can easily insinuate itself unnoticed.”2066
What makes it easy, Socrates adds with fellow feeling, is that the innovation is viewed as if it were merely a playful diversion that has no lasting effect on things.
“Ah yes, no effect at all.2067 Bit by bit it gets established, and then quietly and calmly it invades the mores and the ways people do things. Having gotten this far it begins to show up in the dealings men have with one another, and from the dealings2068 it makes its way into the laws and forms of government, uncontrollably wanton,2069 if I may put it this way, Socrates, until in the end it has subverted every aspect of life both private and public.”2070
Is that how it is? Socrates asks.2071
“Seems so to me.”
So when it comes to our children, as we said at the beginning, we’ll have to make sure they start off with a more orderly sort of play,2072 on the grounds that once the play becomes disorderly the children do, too, and then it (425) becomes2073 impossible for them to grow up to be orderly and serious adults?
“How could it be otherwise?”
So if the early play of the children is properly handled and they admit orderliness into themselves through their musical education it will accompany them and foster their growth in a way that is quite the converse, to the point of restoring aspects of civil order that had gone to seed before?
“Quite true.”
And this is way these people are in fact able to rediscover what might seem minor aspects of law and orderliness that their predecessors had lost touch with.
“What sorts of things do you mean?”
I mean things like young people observing silence in the presence of their elders when appropriate, and observing the proprieties of sitting down or standing up and of serving their parents, as well as minding their grooming and the manner of their clothing and shoes and the whole demeanor of their bodies, and all the other things like this.2074 To legislate these behaviors as such2075 seems silly to me. This isn’t the way such things work,2076 nor would the rules be any more likely to stick simply because they had been formulated in the written law.2077 Whatever the initial thrust of the education2078 the rest follows suit with it, just as like always looks for aid from what is like itself.2079 The process culminates in a finished product spanking new, fully good or fully the opposite. For my part at least I would not legislate such details any further.
Adeimantus thinks he is probably right, so Socrates can go on to expand his point into the area of business regulation:2080 Should we be legislating on the deals that traders make in the agora, and that craftsmen make in their contracts for that matter?2081 Or on slanders and assaults, on the filing of suits and the filling of jury panels,2082 on the question which payments are to be exacted or which are to be deposited,2083 whether into the budget of the market or that of the harbor,2084 and legislate across the board, regarding departments mercantile, municipal, maritime and all the rest? Have we the stomach to do any of this?
“Really there is no excuse for instructing men2085 of the better sort. Most of what we’d want to require by law they will easily discover2086 on their own.”
Yes, as long as, god willing, those basic modes and laws2087 remain alive and well for them.
“And if they don’t the citizens will waste2088 their lives legislating and rectifying2089 things, forever thinking they are on the verge of achieving the ideal.”
You are describing the lifestyle and the outlook of people who labor with an illness but refuse to abandon their (426) deleterious regimen out of intemperance. It’s rich2090 the way they pass their time, always under a doctor’s care but making no progress—unless the elaboration and amplification of the diseases that ails them is progress—forever hopeful someone will prescribe them a drug that will make them healthy. Don’t you think it rich that the one man they have resolved to hate is the man who confronts them with the truth, telling them that until a person cuts down on the drinking and the overeating, on too much sex and too little exercise, no drugs or cauteries or surgeries, nor incantations nor wrappings nor all the rest will do him a bit of good.
“I’d hardly call a man ‘rich’ when he can’t accept good advice,”2091 Adeimantus replies.2092
I can see you don’t count yourself among the admirers of this sort of men.
“You can be quite sure of that.”
And if a city as a whole acts this way you won’t admire it, either. After all isn’t it the same sort of thing when a city forbids her citizens from trying to alter the basic regime2093 on pain of death, whereas anyone who enables themselves2094 to continue in their ways, who caters to their pleasures and foresees their every whim and also can fulfill them, this man will turn out to be good and wise in all the things that matter and will be honored by them.
“Yes it’s the same kind of thing; and yes, I don’t admire them, either, not one bit.”
But focus instead2095 on the people who are willing to abet such cities and encourage them. Don’t you admire their cheek and their ingenuity?
“I do except for those among them that are deceived by these cities into thinking approval of the majority makes them true civic leaders.”2096
Listen to you! Have you no fellow feeling for men2097 like this? If a man had no ability to measure things, if he were faced with2098 a large number of others similarly unable but telling him nevertheless that he is five feet seven, can you imagine he could somehow resist adopting this belief himself?
“From that point of view,2099 no.”
So don’t be so harsh with such people. In their way they live a most charming2100 life, constantly legislating on the sort of things we just mentioned and straightening them out,2101 imagining themselves ever on the verge of putting an end to misdeeds in business while they are blissfully unaware that what they are really trying to do is cut off the Hydra's head.
(427)“And that’s just what they are doing.”
Accordingly my own sense of it was that this kind of lawmaking and this kind of political activity2102 never was the business of a true lawgiver, whether he is working in a well-governed city or a badly governed one. In the latter the effort will not help and will make no difference; in the former everything a lawmaker would introduce could be invented by anybody at all, or else would arise on its own out of habits and usages already in place.2103
“What then would be left do by way of legislation?”
I said to him, Socrates tells us, taking a step back:2104 Our own job is done. It devolves on Apollo in Delphi to legislate what are the largest and finest and indeed most fundamental matters,2105 the building of temples and the conduct of sacrifices, and of all the other ministrations2106 to gods and daemons and heroes; and2107 for the departed in turn, their burial and all the rest that will ensure they remain well disposed toward us. On these matters we have no sure knowledge, nor will we rely on anybody else if we keep our wits about us,2108 and will not hire a special exegete other than the one our ancestors used. It is this god that is the ancestral exegete for all mankind, on such matters as these, delivering instructions from his seat at the omphalos in Delphi.
2.B.6: Search for Justice in the Purified Thought City
Accordingly your2109 founding of the City can be declared complete, my son of Ariston. What is next is for you is to look within it, with the aid of some helping light—call on your brother for help and on Polemarchus and these others—with the hope2110 we2111 might catch sight where justice is to be found within it and where injustice, and how they differ from one another, and which of the two a man needs to acquire if he is planning on being happy in life, without considering whether or not he is found out by any of the gods or by his fellow men.2112
“Baloney,” Glaucon interjects.2113 “You already promised you would conduct the search, saying it would be impious for you not to try to come to the aid of justice any way you could.”2114
You remind me truly, and so I must; but you all must collaborate.
“It goes without saying that we will.”
Alright then, I’ll confess I have a hunch2115 how we might find what we are looking for. If our city has been organized properly then it is completely good. As such it is wise and brave and temperate and just—all four.2116 (428) Whichever of these we find in it, the one that is still unfound is2117 the remainder. That is, say we were looking for one of any four things in something. If we found it then we would be done; but if we had recognized the other three things first then, too, we would already have found what we were looking for since it would be whatever was left over. This is the method we must use in the case of our four things.
Right away we can see wisdom in it, and wisdom in a peculiar way. The city we have described does in fact seem wise to me, since it is well-counselled. Yet this very thing—good counsel—is obviously a kind of knowledge, since it is with knowledge not ignorance that people give good counsel. On the other hand there are knowledges of all sorts present in the city, but the city is not counted wise or well-counselled because of the knowledge of her carpenters.
“No,” Glaucon agrees, “such would be called a city good at carpentry.”
And so it is not because of the city’s knowledge about wooden implements, and her deliberation about how they best should be manufactured, that the city is to be called a wise city, nor because of her knowledge about bronze nor any other of these kinds of knowledge. Nor because of her knowledge of farming: that makes her a city good at farming.2118 Is there then some certain knowledge in the city we just constructed, available to some of her citizens2119 by which she counsels not about some one thing within herself but about herself as a whole, about how she should deal with herself and how with the other cities around her.
“There certainly is,” Glaucon collaborates to say.
Which is it and in whom2120 does it reside?
“It is this guarding knowledge you have articulated, and it resides in these rulers we have just now called perfect guards.”
“And because of the presence of this knowledge what can you call the city?”
“Well-counselled and therefore truly wise.”2121
Now which of the two groups is going to be larger in our city, the bronze-smiths or these true guards?
“The bronze-smiths, by a large measure.”
And likewise of all the other groups that been named after their knowledge, the group of guards will be the smallest of all.
“By a large measure.”
Therefore it will be by dint of her smallest constituent group2122 and the knowledge that resides in them—in the leading2123 or ruling group—that the entire city whose evolution we have witnessed comes to be called wise; and (429) at the same time it is in the nature of things that only the fewest are suited to take part in this knowledge, which alone among all the kinds of knowledge deserves to be called wisdom. Somehow then, I know not how, we have discovered one of the four at least,2124 as well as where it resides in our city.
Glaucon gives him full credit: “Seems to me we have found it in a manner altogether satisfactory.”
Socrates forges on. The attribute of bravery and where it resides so as to confer its name onto the whole city is easy to see. To declare whether the city is fearful or brave anybody would look to that part of her that fights or stands ready to fight on her behalf. The bravery or fearfulness of others than these within her population would not lead to her being called the one or the other.2125 So a city is brave by dint of one part of herself and of her having in this part an ability that through all eventualities will preserve a sense2126 that the things and the sorts of things2127 that are worrisome and dangerous are just the ones the lawgiver has conveyed them to be in the education.2128 Such an ability is just what bravery is.
Glaucon does not quite get it and wants Socrates to say it again.
“I am saying that bravery is a kind of preservation.”2129
“What kind of preservation?”
A preservation of the sense or belief, acquired through her education under our law, as to what things and what sorts of things are dangerous. By its preservation ‘throughout all eventualities’ I meant a man’s keeping it safe and unaltered2130 in times of pain or pleasure and desire or aversion and not losing his grip on it. I can give you an image of what I mean if you’d like.
“I’d like.”
You have seen what dyers do when they want the dye in their wool to be colorfast. First they select and gather from all the many sorts of wool available to them the kind that is naturally white. Then they prepare it—and spare no pains in the preparation, mind you—by treating the wool so that it will take in the colorant as deeply as possible. Only then do they dye it, and the wool that is dyed by this method comes out colorfast, so that laundering is unable to remove the color no matter how much soap is used. If the wool is of another color or is not prepared in this way, it behaves quite differently from this, as you have seen.
“Yes I have: the color washes out ridiculously easily.”2131
Alright then take it that this is the kind of thing we were trying to accomplish2132 when we selected and (430) gathered our soldiers2133 and then set about educating them in music and gymnastic.2134 We were contriving nothing else than that they would be persuaded of the laws and let the laws sink in like dye, so that they would develop2135 a fast hold on the sense of what is to be feared and of other things because they possess the nature and the nurture they need, and so that the dye of their character should not be stripped away2136 by these catalysts that are so terribly good at washing things out:2137 pleasure, more terrible than the lye of Chalastra or the strongest soap, and pain and fear, and desire, which is stronger than any catalyst. This sort of power, this ability to preserve under all circumstances the correct and lawful sense about what is to be feared and what is not, is what I assert bravery to be, and set it down as agreed unless you have some objection.
“Objections have I none. It seems you are taking a stand against the kind of right opinion about the same dangers that can settle in a person without grace of education and relies instead on a fierce and slavish disposition, as lacking lawfulness and not worthy of the name of bravery.”2138
Exactly right.
“I do accept bravery to be what you say it is.”
Yes, accept it as the political kind of bravery and you will be accepting it rightly. We can put a finer point on it at another time if you want: what we have set out to find in the present inquiry is justice. For that purpose2139 our treatment of bravery has gone far enough. There are two more qualities that remain for us to catch sight of within our city, temperance and the goal of it all, justice. How do you think we might be able to find justice so as to avoid the bother2140 of dealing with temperance?
“Well for my own part I neither know how nor would I wish it would come into sight before temperance does,2141 if that would entail that we’d be omitting to take a close look at temperance. So if you want to do me a favor investigate this before you investigate that.”
Surely I do want to, unless it would be quite wrong!2142
“Investigate, then.”
Investigate I will. From my own vantage point2143 temperance appears to have a stronger resemblance to harmoniousness and being in tune than the previous ones did. It is a sort of orderly beauty, a sort2144 of “mastery” over pleasures and desires, as people put it who speak, in the same vein, of one's being “stronger than oneself,”2145 whatever that means. Other things along the same lines are said about it that give us a trace at least2146 of what it is. But there’s something laughable about saying a person is stronger than himself. A person stronger than himself would also be weaker than himself and likewise a person weaker than himself would also be stronger, since all these expressions are referring to the same (431) person. I think what they are trying to say is that in the single man,2147 talking about his soul, there is a nobler something and an inferior something, and that when the part that is nobler by nature holds the ignoble in check, it is this that the expression “stronger than himself” refers to—the expression is used after all by way of praise. But when under the influence of a bad upbringing or association of some kind2148 the nobler part is overpowered by the massive force of the inferior, since it is itself the smallest part, their theory provides them a formula for censure by calling the man in this state “weaker than himself” and unbridled.
Apply this to our youthful city. Definitely you will find the one condition there since you could rightly say she would be “stronger than herself” given the fact that the superior part of her rules over the inferior part, and that therefore she deserves to be called temperate or “master of herself.”2149 Furthermore, the fact is2150 that all the desires and pleasures and pains,2151 multitudinous and variegated as they are, are easy to find in children and in women and in house-servants, not to mention the majority of those reputed to be above such slavish behavior but who are in fact quite trivial persons,2152 whereas in few persons will you meet the plain and moderate2153 emotions which are guided by measured thought aided by intelligence and a right sense of things,2154 namely in the people best born and best raised.2155 This same distribution is there for you to see in our city, too. There, too, the desires of the many and trivial people are kept under control by the desires and mindfulness2156 that reside in the smaller and more decent group. If ever a city deserves to be designated a master over pleasures and desires and master over herself, this one does. As such she also deserves to be called temperate according to this whole argument.
Moreover if there is any city where the rulers and the ruled have the same opinion as to who should be ruling, it will be so in this one, too.2157 If we ask which party exhibits the temperance in holding this opinion, we would answer that both do, so that our intuition a moment ago was right: temperance is by nature like being in tune.2158 After all it was by dint of residing in part of the city that bravery and wisdom rendered the whole city wise and (432) brave,2159 but this virtue does not operate this way. It spans2160 the city as a whole through each individual person and brings them all in concert as if they were singing the same song, the weakest, the strongest, and those in the middle,2161 reconciling all the ingredients, whether the wisdom of the one group or the strength contributed by the other, or the superiority in numbers or wealth or any other aspect of that sort that is contributed by the others.2162 This kind of likemindedness we are quite justified in identifying with temperance, namely, an harmonious resolution between the naturally superior and the naturally inferior elements as to which of the two should in fact2163 be in charge, whether in the city or in the individual man.
So now we have made out three in our city as best we can.2164 As for the remaining one by which a city can share still more in virtue, what shall our account be? I refer of course to justice.
“Of course.”
What we need to do is gather close together and encircle our city as if we were hunters, and pay close attention that justice does not slip past us, nowhere to be seen and therefore no-how understood. She must be here somewhere. Look closely and try to catch sight of her, in case2165 you see her before I do, so that you can point her out to me.
“I wish I could; but I’ll be more help if I follow right behind you, ready to look in the direction you indicate.”
Follow then, and pray2166 for help along with me.
“So I will. Lead the way.”
Oof! The going is tough here and the path dark with shadows. That is,2167 the problem is obscure and hard to think through. Still, we must press on.
“Yes, keep going.”
“I saw something,” Socrates tells us, and then he turns back to Glaucon to say, “Look! Look! maybe we have found a clue and she won’t be eluding us after all!”
“Great news!”
What utter boobs we’ve been!
“Huh?”
It seems she has been bandied2168 about by us from the very beginning and we didn’t see her because we are so ridiculous, as when you find yourself searching for something you already have in your hand. We weren’t seeing her right in front of us because we were looking off somewhere. That’s why we missed it.
“What are you saying?”
This: I think although we have said it and heard it2169 before, we are failing to recognize that in a way we have been discussing justice ourselves.
“Somebody wants to know what you are talking about, and he’s finding your prelude a bit tedious.”
(433) Alright then, listen and see if it makes any sense if I say2170 that the behavior we set down at the beginning as being necessary, when we were founding our city, this behavior is what justice is, or at least a certain type of it is. At the start we said—and we reiterated it several times as you will remember—that each individual must practice just one of the city’s tasks, the task to which his nature best suits him.
“So we did.”
And at the same time the idea that minding one’s own business in the sense of not being a busybody should be justice, is a commonplace we have heard many times before not to mention how often we've said it, ourselves.2171
“So we have.”
Well there you have it. It might be coming into focus that this is what justice is, this minding your business. Do you know how I get there?
“No. Do tell.”
The complement of the three things that we have found in the city, of temperance and bravery and mindfulness, is this I think, a thing whose function or role it is to enable the other three to take root in the city and if once they take root to preserve them, as long as it is present.2172 But we also said that justice would be the one left over after the three had been picked out.2173
“Yes and that was necessarily true.”2174
But if we had to decide which of the three engendered virtues does the most to make the city virtuous, the decision would not be easy. Shall it be the likemindedness2175 shared by the rulers and the ruled alike? Shall it be the sense of what is to be feared and what is not, and its preservation by a lawful attitude we have engendered in the soldiers? Shall it be the mindfulness and vigilance that inheres in the rulers? Or is it rather this that makes the city virtuous by its presence, its presence in the child and in the woman, the slave and the freeman and the worker and the ruler and the ruled:2176 that each was keeping to his own business as the single person he is and was not trying to do many things at once and invade the province of others?
“To decide between them would be difficult, indeed!”
So, we may conceive this ability of each person to mind their own business as on a par with the others for the contribution it makes to the city’s virtue–on a par with her wisdom, temperance and bravery; but at the same time justice as the fourth in the list of the four virtues2177 also has equal footing with these other three. Moreover, try the following argument for this point. Would you assign the job of rendering decisions at the bar of justice2178 to our rulers?
“Of course.”
And will the leading goal and purpose in all their decisions be that the individual parties neither possess what does not belong to them nor be deprived of what does?
“No other than this.”
Since this is the just outcome?
“Yes.”
And so by this2179 argument, too, it would be consistent2180 to argue that the possession of one’s own (434) things and the pursuit of one’s own job is what justice is.2181 See if you think as I do. Think of a carpenter trying to do what a cobbler does or a cobbler trying to do what a carpenter does and of them exchanging their tools or arrogating each other’s privileges2182 to themselves. Or think of one practicing both by taking on all of the other’s things: do you think this would greatly harm the city?”
“Not much.”
But say he is a craftsman by nature or some other kind of money-maker,2183 and that in the midst of his life, enticed2184 by money or influence or the prospect of power or something else of this sort,2185 he tries to make his way into the ranks of the soldier class;2186 or say he is already a member of that class but wishes to make his way into the subclass of those who make and preserve the law even though he is unworthy of the station. Say these two go as far as to take on the other men’s tools and arrogate their privileges to themselves or that they try as one man to take on all the jobs at once. I’d bet you would agree with me that this kind of shifting and meddling would spell the destruction of the city.
“I would completely agree.”
So the three types of meddling and shifting into one another inflict the very greatest harm on our city and would quite correctly be called the most intense2187 kind of evil-doing.
“Obviously.”
And yet the greatest sort of evil-doing would rightly be called injustice, so meddlesomeness is injustice. Let’s go back and argue the other side of it. For the business class, the helper class, and the guardian class all to be “homebodies”2188 if you will, each doing what is his own job in the city, this would as the opposite of that, and would be justice, and would render the city just.
“To me this seems to be exactly the way it is.”
2.B.7: Application of the Civic Justice to the Individual
Let’s not write it in stone as of yet, but if this characteristic should also be agreed to be justice when it enters2189 the individual man then at least we will have reached a consensus:2190 what else would be left for us to say? Otherwise2191 we will try another investigation. But as it is let us complete the line of investigation we conceived of originally, that if we first try to contemplate justice off2192 in some larger thing that has it, then it might be easier to get a sense of what it is like in a single man.2193 We decided this larger thing would be a city and so we founded the best city we could on the conviction that justice would certainly be present if it was a virtuous one. So let us now transfer2194 what came into view2195 off in the city onto the individual man. If the analogy receives our approval, we shall have finished a very fine study. Otherwise, if justice should look different in the individual, we will have to go back and review our construction of the city and find where we went wrong. In fact we might cast some light on the (435) problem by rubbing both the two lines of inquiry together the way we make fire by rubbing two sticks together: maybe this would give us a flash of insight as to what justice is. And then, once the answer has become clear, we can seek to confirm it among ourselves.2196
“You are proceeding in a methodical2197 manner: please do what you have proposed.”
Now if someone refers to a thing that is the same as another as being in a given case larger or smaller than the other,2198 is it in that case unlike the other in the way that it was the same as it, or alike in that way?
“Alike.”
Thus if you compare a just man to a just city he will not differ from it at all in respect to the characteristic of justice they both share, but will be alike?
“Alike.”
Now the city appeared to become just when each of the three natural classes2199 in it were doing their own jobs and minding their own business, and temperate and brave and wise by dint of other kinds of feelings or dispositions in these same three classes. Just so, in the case of the individual shall we expect that if he has these same three natural types or aspects2200 present in his soul,2201 by dint of their having the same feelings and dispositions2202 as the city’s constituents, he correctly deserves the same designations as appeared in the city?
“Logic requires it.”
Once again2203 we find ourselves in a pretty pass,2204 Glaucon, if we now have to decide whether the soul has or does not have three corresponding parts.
“Don’t despair, Socrates. As they say, ‘Fine things are difficult.’”2205
That has become quite obvious! I just want to voice the opinion that by the methods we are now using2206 it is unlikely we will achieve a really fine treatment of this question. It’s another path that leads to that answer, both slower and longer. Still, to continue by this method will at least be on a par with the sorts of answers and questions we have reached up to this point.
“So much would be welcome. Indeed I for one would be quite satisfied for our present purposes.”2207
I too will be quite as satisfied for my own purposes.
“Well then don’t lose your head of steam: get on with it!”
LEMMA: The Internal Plurality of the Soul
Don’t we pretty much have to stipulate that the same characteristics or character-types2208 inhere in the individual as in the city? I don’t know where else the city might have gotten them from.2209 It would be ridiculous to think that high-spiritedness shows up in a city without coming from its individual citizens: in fact we identify this attribute with people in the region of Thrace or Scythia or almost anywhere north, just as love of learning is something people (436) most easily attribute to the environment2210 here in Athens, or the way we associate the love of money with people who live in Phoenicia or Egypt.2211 This is just the way things are and it is not difficult to see that it is so. What I find difficult2212 is the question whether we perform these three different2213 kinds of things with this selfsame aspect of ourselves, or whether there are three aspects and we use the one for the one and the other for the other. Do we learn with the one2214 and become riled up with the other of the resources within us, and do our desiring with a third one, desiring the pleasures of nutrition and sex and all the things akin to them?2215 Or is it with the soul as a whole that we do each of them one after another whenever we act?2216 This will be difficult to decide in a way that passes muster with reason.2217
Glaucon agrees this is the problem and so Socrates proposes to him2218 a way to start deciding2219 whether the same actions belong to each of the psychic elements respectively, or whether they alternate, one belonging to one and another to another.2220 It is to establish a preliminary point, that for the same thing to do or undergo opposites in the same respect and in the same relation and at the same time, is impossible. Thus if we find this kind of thing occurring in the aspects of the soul we will know that the aspects of the soul that do or undergo them are not one and the same thing but a plurality of different things.
“Hmm!” Glaucon says.2221
Watch what I am arguing.
“Well, go ahead and make the argument.”
What I meant was, can one and the same thing stand still and be in motion at the same time and in the same respect?
“No way.”
But let’s refine the point now so that we do not have a falling out as we advance further in the argument.2222 Someone could say, of a man who is standing still but moving his arms and his head, that one and the same man was immobile and moving at the same time, but I fancy we’d say that isn’t the correct way to describe the situation but rather to say that one aspect2223 of him was at rest and one aspect was in motion. The man who made that argument could then add an entertaining subtlety to his case2224 and bring up children’s tops that as a whole2225 are at rest and at motion, held as they are by a pin in one and the same place but spin around it—and likewise anything else that moves in a circle but does not change its location. We will not accept this account either, in this case on the grounds that it is not in the same respects2226 within themselves that they are, at that moment, both at rest and in motion, but rather that they have within themselves a straight (vertical) aspect and a circular (horizontal) aspect2227 and that with respect to the straight they are at rest while in the circular aspect they are moving rotationally, whereas if at some other moment the thing should begin to lean with respect to the straight2228 in any direction—forward, backward, to the right, or to the left—at the same time that it is rotating, that then it is at rest in no way. None of these clever challenges will perplex us therefore, nor ever persuade us that something, if it is one and (437) the same thing, at the same time and in the same respect and the same relation could undergo or be or do opposites.2229
“They certainly won’t bother me, at least,” says Glaucon.2230
To avoid getting forced into a tedious and lengthy scrutiny of each and all of these quibbling controversies2231 merely to prove them false, let us make our start2232 the belief that this is true so as to move to the next point, with the agreement that if ever the matter should appear otherwise2233 then we’ll have to let everything go that we were able to2234 infer from it.
Glaucon agrees and Socrates moves on to apply the principle. Nodding yes and shaking the head no,2235 pursuing something to acquire it and avoiding it, drawing something near and repelling it from oneself2236—these all belong in the group of opposites2237 (whether they be actions or passions does not affect their being opposites). Moreover, thirst and hunger and in short all desires, as well as consenting or choosing deliberately—these all we would place in the former group. That is, in concrete cases we will say that the soul of a desiring man either “pursues” that which it desires or that it “draws to itself” the thing it chooses to have, or in turn that to whatever extent it consents that the thing should be made available to it is “giving the nod” or saying yes about that thing to itself as though someone had put a question to it, revealing thereby its desire2238 to get it.2239 Conversely choosing not and denying consent and feeling no desire2240 we would place in the category of her “repelling” and driving something off from herself and all the other contraries of those.2241
Given all this, let us say there is a common aspect among desires as a group, and that among them considered separately2242 the ones most easy to grasp and talk about are the ones we call thirst and hunger. The one is a desire for drink and the other for food. The question is whether thirst, as such, is a desire in the soul for anything more than for what we have just said? Is thirst a thirst for a warm drink as opposed to a cold one, or for a large drink or a small one, or in general for a drink of any specific kind? Or shall we say instead that if heat is added to the thirst, it would bring on2243 a desire for coolness in addition to the desire for drink, and if coldness a desire for warmth?2244 And that if by the compresence of a large quantity the thirst became a large thirst, it would be for a large one, and if it became small, one for a small one?2245 The fact of being thirsty2246 in and of itself could never ever2247 turn into a desire other than what it is its nature to be, a desire for drink per se, and so also the fact of being hungry a desire for food per se.2248
“That’s how I take it,” Glaucon responds. “In itself each desire is a desire only for the object its nature is for; for this kind or that is the added elements.”2249
(438) So now don’t go letting somebody harass you2250 into thinking we are being less than perspicuous, by claiming that nobody desires drink but always a worthwhile drink, nor food but food worth eating. Everybody of course2251 desires the thing that works, so that if thirst is a desire it is a desire for a drink that will do the job, a good version of what is thirst's inherent nature to desire, as is the case with all the other desires also.
“Yes2252 that fellow’s argument could appear to have some substance.”
But his argument is defeated by a more general and pre-emptive argument that whatever is such as to be “of” something, the qualified version of that thing is such as to be “of” a something similarly qualified, whereas if unqualified the thing is simply “of” the unqualified something.
Glaucon does not get it.2253
Well you get that the larger is such as to be larger “than”2254 something, don’t you? Larger than the smaller, no? But also the much larger is larger than the much smaller, and the larger at such and such time will be larger than the thing that is smaller at that same time. And so it is with the more “in relation to” the less, twice as much in relation to half as much, and heavier in relation to lighter and faster in relation to slower, as well as the hot in relation to the cold and all the things like these.
“That much I get.”
What about types of knowledge? Isn’t it the same here? Knowledge per se is knowledge of learning per se, or however we should style the thing that knowledge is “of.” But knowledge of a certain kind of thing or quality2255 is of that certain quality or certain kind of thing. For instance when the knowledge of making a house came into existence it differed from other kinds of knowledge in such a way that led to it being called “housebuilding.” This name arose from nothing but the specific quality of the knowledge that set it apart from all the others. So it was the “of what type of thing” it was knowledge that made it into the type of knowledge it is in itself. And the case is similar for the other arts and sciences.
“Yes it is.”
Alright then you can say this is what I was trying to say a moment ago, now that you get my meaning, that anything that is such as to be “of” something is, if taken alone and by itself, “of” that thing taken by itself and alone, but if taken as qualified, is “of” that thing as qualified.2256 And I am not trying to say2257 that the qualification of the thing they are “of” maps back onto the thing, which would give the odd result that a knowledge “of” the healthy and the sick would be a knowledge in itself healthy and sick, and that of the bad and good would itself be bad and good.2258 I am only saying that if the object is qualified (in this case the healthy and the sick), the knowledge of it becomes qualified also. The qualification results in the knowledge no longer being called simply “knowledge” but, by virtue of this qualification being added, “medical knowledge.”2259
“I get your meaning and agree.”
(439) So to return to the case of thirst, wouldn’t you place it into the category of things that are “for” a certain something determined by their nature?2260 Thirst, that is, is—
“For drink,” Glaucon volunteers.
And if it is for a qualified kind of drink it becomes a thirst qualified in some way, whereas thirst taken by itself is neither for a lot nor for a little, nor for a good or bad drink,2261 nor for a drink qualified in any way. Rather the thirst for drink as such is thirst alone and thirst as such and is so by its nature as thirst. From this it follows that the soul of a man who thirsts, insofar as he thirsts, is looking to do nothing else than to drink, and desires only this and has an impulse only for this. And so, when2262 something pulls her in the opposite direction while she is thirsting, it would be a second something in her, different from the thing that for its part2263 was doing the thirsting, animalistically2264 driving her toward drinking. For we deny that the same part could act2265 contrary to the same part in the same respect. Likewise it would be better to say of the archer not that his arms push away and draw back the bow,2266 but that the arm that is doing the pushing away is one arm and the one that is doing the pulling back is an other and different2267 one.
Now there certainly are times when people thirst but refuse to drink.2268 We should account for this by saying that there is within the soul of such people an element that says yea to drink and another that says nay,2269 a second element that masters the bidding one.2270 And isn’t it the case that when a preventing element arises in the soul it arises out of calculation and reason, whereas the forces of pushing and drawing approach it through passions and diseases?2271
“So it seems.”
Thus it is not without reason2272 that we will expect these elements to be distinct from and other than each other, and call the one by which the soul reasons the “rational” element and the one by which she feels eros and hungers and thirsts and finds herself stunned by the other appetites2273 “irrational and appetitive,”2274 the companion of satiations and pleasures.
“Not without reason but with good cause would we adopt this way of looking at it.”
Accordingly, then, we have distinguished two types of thing as elements within the soul. As to the element of will and spirit -- the thing that is by which we feel anger -- is this a third or would you consider it similar in kind to one of these two?
“Perhaps it is like the second, the appetitive.”2275
I once heard a story that makes me think otherwise, about a certain Leontius the son of Aglaïon, how he was walking up from the Peiraeus one day along the path outside the eastern wall, and noticed there were some corpses laid out by the executioner, and how he was feeling a desire to look at them but then also became peeved at himself (440) and tried to dissuade himself from doing so.2276 For a good while the battle raged within him, as he shielded his vision; but in the end, overcome by desire, opening his eyes wide, running up to the corpses,2277 “Take yourselves2278 a good look, you wretches!” he said. “Drink in your fill2279 of this splendid2280 sight!”
“I’ve heard that story, too.”
This story shows how anger can on occasion be at war with the pleasures, as if it were one thing at war with another. And we see the same thing elsewhere too, whenever the pleasures try to force a person against his reason. We see the man berating himself and enraged by the element within that is trying to force him, as though the spirited element had allied itself with the reason in a faction against the desires. Whereas to witness it ever making common cause with the desires to work against the reason and its decision that one must not behave so, that I think you would deny you ever see taking place within yourself nor in anybody else either.
“By Zeus I would deny it.”
What about the case when somebody thinks he is committing an unjust act? The more noble the man the less he is able to become angry, despite the pains of hunger and cold and all the rest that he might be subjected to by a man he believes is acting justly in making him feel this way2281—or, as I might put it, his spirit is not wont to be aroused against that man. Whereas what if he believes he has been treated unjustly? Doesn’t the spirit within him fume and grate and take up arms for the cause he judges to be just? Holding steadfast through hunger and cold2282 and all other such suffering he achieves victory, and veers from the path of noble behavior not once until either he succeeds or he succumbs or else, called off by his companion, reason, the way a dog is called off by his shepherd, he can return to calm and rest.
“The spirit is quite alike to this; but let me remind you2283 that it was to dogs we had likened our helpers when we set it down they should hearken to the rulers as to shepherds of the city.”
My meaning exactly! But would you add what I would, that things have turned out the very opposite of what we guessed a moment ago about the spirited element? Then we thought it might be part of the appetitive aspect, but now we are saying that is far from true and that in the factions within the soul the spirit marshals its arms on the side of the rational aspect. Now we must ask if it is other than this, in turn, or is it part of the rational, so that again the soul has not three aspects within it but two, the rational and appetitive? Or rather, just as the city had three species2284 within it—the (441) moneymakers, the assistants, and the counsellors2285—so likewise in the soul this spirited element is a third aspect, by its nature an assistant to the rational element as long as its upbringing does not destroy it.
“Necessarily it is a third aspect.”2286
So it would be, if it should become plain that the spirited element is a different thing from the rational as it became plain it was a different thing from the appetitive.2287
“But for that to become plain is an easy matter,” Glaucon offers. “The fact2288 is, one can see in children that when they are first born they are well equipped with spirit, whereas some of them barely ever attain a share of reason, though most get it after a while.”
Yes—a nice argument.2289 One can observe the same thing in beasts.2290 And then there is that line from Homer we mentioned before,
He beat himself in the chest and thus addressed his heart …
There it is clear as day that Homer depicts the element that does the beating as distinct from the element being beaten,2291 as something that reasons and takes stock of the better and worse distinct from something that is subject to irrational moods.
“So true.”
2.B.7: Articulation of Justice within the Soul
And so step by step we have kept our head all the way through,2292 and reached an agreement founded on likelihood, that the same kinds2293 are found in the city and the same in the soul of each individual, kinds equal also in number. As such it follows that the way a city was wise and by what part of itself it was wise, so also and by the same part must the individual be wise; and that the way an individual is brave and in the part of himself he is brave, in this part and in this way the city also must be brave; and so on, with the other virtues in both cases.2294
Thus in respect to justice, I think we will be agreeing that a man will be just in the same way we found a city to be.
“This too follows, with inexorable logic.”
But let’s be sure2295 we haven’t forgotten how the city was just, how when we considered her a moment ago we saw that2296 it was by virtue of the parts inside her keeping to their own tasks—all three of them—that she was just.
“I’d say we haven’t forgotten this.”
So then it is incumbent upon us to recognize that when it comes to each of us2297 as individuals, whenever the distinct parts within us keep to their own tasks, the individual will be a just person in the sense that he too will be doing what is his business to do.
“Incumbent it is upon us to be mindful of this.”
Now what it befits the rational element in us to do is to rule, by virtue of its being wise and prudent with regard to the needs of the soul as a whole, whereas what befits the spirited element is to be at its beck and call and fight on its behalf. As we said the combination and mixture of music and gymnastics will harmonize these two2298 with (442) each other by inspiring attention in the one and nourishing it with beautiful thoughts and studies,2299 at the same time that it relaxes the other with encouraging words, and tames it with harmony and rhythm.2300 Nourished and educated and taught in this way truly2301 to excel at their own special tasks, this twain of elements will preside2302 over the appetitive aspect, which constitutes the mass portion2303 of the soul in each man and the one least easily satiated by material things,2304 facts the two of them will monitor most closely lest it fill itself up with the so-called pleasures of the body and expand and become strong and then might no longer keep to its own respective work but seek to enslave and rule over2305 elements it is not suited by its own nature to rule, and thereby might ruin the whole fabric of life for all.2306 And against external enemies, also, aren’t these two ideally suited to protect the entire soul and body, the one formulating a plan and the other carrying it out on the battlefield and achieving it with its bravery.
Likewise then in the case of bravery,2307 we will call the individual man brave because of this part – that is, whenever the spirited part in him runs the gauntlet of pains and pleasures preserving and defending the instructions it has received from his reasonings regarding what is critical and what is not; and wise because of that very small part that we just described as ruling2308 within him and passing down the instructions, that for its own part2309 has within itself the knowledge of the true interest of each part and of the common fate they share;2310 and temperate by the friendship and harmony they enjoy with each other when the ruling principle among them and the two of them that it rules share the opinion that it is the rational element that must rule and are free from faction with it.
“Temperance is nothing other than this whether you wish to speak of a city or an individual.”2311
So, as to our main topic, the way or the sense in which2312 the individual will be just accords with our much-stated principle. I would hazard to say that the portrait of justice we now have reached retains every feature2313 we saw2314 it having in its civic version, so that we have no cause think there is a justice other than this.2315 I could always2316 add some more vulgar support for our conclusion, support we can administer in case some aspect in the soul is still at odds.2317 For instance if we were asked about our city and about the individual who by his nature and education is its analogue, whether it, and he, would be likely to embezzle a deposit of silver or gold entrusted to his (443) safekeeping,2318 couldn’t we answer that nobody and no state is more likely to do so than those that are unlike ours? And as for pillaging temples and theft and treachery, whether in the private life of the individual among his friends or the public life of the city,2319 wouldn’t our just city and just individual be exempt from such behavior? Nor could they prove untrustworthy in any way whatsoever,2320 whether in treaties or in personal agreements.2321 Adultery withal, or disregard for their parents, or neglecting their gods2322—these you would expect from anybody else before them. And the reason in every instance is that each aspect of himself that is a part within him is doing what belongs to it to do in connection with ruling and being ruled. Would you then still look for justice to be something else than2323 this power that produces such men and cities as behave in this way?
Glaucon would not, so that Socrates can conclude:
Our dream then has all come true, the idea we said we had had an inkling of, how perhaps, with the guidance of some deity, at the very beginning of our construction of the state had hit upon the very principle and character of justice.2324 And yet2325 what we saw then was merely a likeness of justice—helpful nonetheless2326—the notion that it was proper for a shoemaker to make shoes and do nothing else, and a builder to build, and so forth. The truth of the matter was always this, as it appears, that justice does indeed resemble this,2327 but it concerns not the external conduct of one’s business, but the internal action of what is truly one’s own2328 self and truly his business, that the individual2329 disallows the distinct parts of himself to practice alien jobs nor allows the separate groups or types2330 within himself to interfere with each other’s work, but places his inner house2331 in order, to rule with one part of himself and be ruled with the other, to achieve grace and friendship within himself, to fit the three parts of himself neatly into one and harmonize them like a major triad along with all the other notes of the scale.2332 All this he will bind together and integrate into his single selfhood, temperate and tempered, and when it comes to action withal,2333 whether it have to do with the acquisition of wealth or taking care of his body, or for that matter some civic duty or private business,2334 he will adopt the view that any act is just and beautiful2335 that preserves this inner state and abets it, and will count as (444) wisdom whatever knowledge determines such action, but will count as unjust whatever act tends2336 to weaken it and as ignorance whatever opinion dictates a man to act that way.
“What you have said is completely true,2337 Socrates!”
Alright then, as to the just man and city and as to justice2338 and what it truly is within each of them, if we say we have discovered it I fancy we will not appear to be deceived. So we can move on to injustice.2339 It would need to be in turn a kind of faction among the three parts, a meddlesomeness, a sticking one’s nose into the other’s business and a revolt by one part against the entire soul so as to take over the seat of rule2340 for which it is not suited, its actual nature making it suitable for the role of slave2341 to the part that rules by its very nature.2342 This is the sort of thing we can expect to say, and that the mindless confusion of these parts and their unmoored wanderings2343 are injustice and licentiousness, cowardice and stupidity, indeed baseness in all its forms.2344
As for unjust acts and doing injury,2345 and conversely doing good, what all these really are is already clear in detail,2346 if we can rely on having secured the truth about injustice and justice. They are no different for soul than healthy and unhealthy acts are for the body. Healthy acts after all engender health and unhealthy engender disease; so likewise just behavior engenders2347 justice in the soul and unjust behavior injustice. Engendering2348 health is a matter of ordering the bodily elements to control and be controlled by each other in accordance with nature, whereas engendering disease is to mix up the order of ruler and ruled2349 against nature. Likewise, engendering justice is a matter of ordering the psychic elements to control and be controlled by each other in accordance with nature, whereas engendering injustice is to mix up the order of ruler and ruled against nature.2350 Virtue2351 would therefore be a kind of health and beauty and wellness2352 of the soul, whereas vice is disease, ugliness, and weakness; and good practices2353 lead to the acquisition of virtue whereas ugly ones lead to vice.
Now that we have come this far all that remains is the question whether it pays more2354 to act justly and (445) practice fine things and be a just person, excluding any consideration of whether people notice you really are this way; or to be unjust and act unjustly on the stipulation that one is not caught and forgoes the benefit of being punished.2355
“Well it seems that question2356 has by now become laughable,” Glaucon now volunteers, “once you realize that when body’s inner state decays, life becomes unlivable no matter how much you have of food and drinks, or riches, or rule.2357 Shall we imagine2358 that when the inner condition of the very thing with which a man does his living becomes disordered and feeble, life would still be worth living2359 as long as the person gets to do what he wants except for that one thing that will release him from vice and injustice and enable him to acquire justice and virtue2360—given that that is the nature of their cases as we have now seen?”
2.B.8: Corroborative Coda: Types of Injustice and Types of Constitutions
Laughable indeed,2361 Socrates replies. And yet since we have come all this way we should not quit before we come to see as clearly as possible just how true2362 this conclusion really is. Come along further and see now the full spectrum of vice in all2363 its kinds, a thing by my lights full2364 worthy to behold. In truth I seem to see, from this high vantage point our reasoning has brought us to,2365 a single kind of virtue but a countless array of vices of which four deserve particular mention. As many kinds there are of constitutions so many kinds of souls there may well be, namely five. The first constitution is the one we have lately described and it goes by either of two names: if there arises in it a single man more excellent than the other rulers it is a kingdom; if there are several it is an aristocracy. But still the two are one type, since the number does not require us to change anything of substance in2366 the laws as long as the ruler follows the manner of education we prescribed.
END OF BOOK FOUR
BOOK FIVE
Socrates continues speaking without a dramatic break, directly following up his previous remark.2367 We may wonder why the break in books occurs here, but soon enough we will learn.
(449) Now this kind of city and constitution2368 I would call good, and this kind correct2369 as well as the man of this kind, whereas I would say the others are bad and fall short2370 if we are to measure them against it, both on the civic plane, in terms of the city’s organization, and on the level of the individual man and the makeup of the type2371 of his soul, there being four varieties.
Glaucon asks him to describe the four types and Socrates tells us he got underway doing so and telling how, as he thought, they evolve from one another,2372 when Polemarchus, who was seated behind Adeimantus, reached out and grabbed Adeimantus by the shirt at his shoulder, pulled him toward him, and leaned in so he could whisper something into his ear. All Socrates heard was, “So shall we let go2373 or what shall we do?”
DIGRESSION: Adeimantus’s “Objection” of Credibility
“Hardly!” Adeimantus answered Polemarchus, in full voice; so Socrates had to ask, Just what won’t you let go?
“You!” he said.
And2374 just what do you mean by that?
“You’re slacking, it seems to us. A whole topic, and by no means a minor one, you are pushing under the rug to avoid it treating it in detail; and you imagine that you will get by with passing it over with a mere mention, clumsily I would say,2375 as if everyone knew that the maxim ‘Friends share the things of friends’ could apply also to their wives and children!”
Wasn’t I correct in saying so, Adeimantus?
“Sure—but this ‘correct’ of yours needs just as much explanation in this connection as it does in any other.2376 Tell us the type or character of the sharing. There could be many of these after all. You won’t slip past telling us what you2377 have in mind, I assure you: we have been sitting here patiently2378 waiting for you to give us a description of how the breeding2379 of children is to be managed, and then once they are born how they are to be raised, and your entire picture2380 of this communism of wives and children you speak of. We think that whether this is dealt with correctly2381 or incorrectly will play a large and telling2382 role in the constitution and the city. Since you were about to move on to a new kind of constitution before you had finished with this one, we reached the decision that you (450) overheard us reach, not to let you go on until you have given as full a treatment of this part of your theory as you have of the others.”
“I join in voting the resolution also,” Glaucon chimed in.
“Give up, Socrates,” Thrasymachus added. “It’s a landslide.”2383
The company has succeeded to interrupt the proceedings and Socrates acquiesces and at great length (450A-451B) warns them of the gravity of their interruption, which among other things suggests the digression from the program might be lengthy:
Do you know what have you done in stopping me? Can you realize how big a discussion you are stirring up about our constitution, a discussion that will take us all the way back to the beginning? For my part I was overjoyed to think I was done with the description of it,2384 and satisfied if people would let it lie the way it had been laid down. But now you’ve done you know not what! In calling me to task you are stirring up a beehive of trouble you can’t imagine, something I had hoped I could leave out2385 and avoid a scandal. 2386
“And you thought my friends came here to pan for gold rather than to hear arguments,” 2387said Thrasymachus.
Arguments, yes, but not too long.
“Life itself is not long enough for arguments as important as these,” Glaucon retorts.2388 “So don’t worry about us: press on and treat the questions we’ve put to you any way you see fit. What is the nature of the communism our2389 guards will practice with regard to children and spouses and to child care of the young, during the time between their birth and their education proper when the demands on the parents’ time is maximal. Try and tell us how this will be managed.”
To go through it is a tall task, my happy friend,2390 involving much that is even harder to believe than what we have gone through already. Whether our arrangement is possible would first be doubted, and even if possible, whether it would be the best arrangement. Hence one hesitates even to bring these matters up since to company less friendly2391 we’d look like we are talking about mere dreams.2392
“No need to shrink from it. Your audience is not unsympathetic, nor unduly skeptical, nor ill-disposed toward you.” 2393
Clearly you want to encourage me but you’re doing the opposite of what you want to do.2394 If I believed I was a person who knew what he2395 was talking about your encouragement would be welcome. To speak with knowledge among men serious and friendly about matters most important and dear to the heart2396 is a thing both comfortable and stimulating, whereas to speak without (451) certainty, searching and talking at the same time as I am, is disheartening and scary,2397 not because I might be laughed at (that’s a childish concern2398), but because if the truth eludes me not only will I err but I’ll lead my friends astray along with me, in an area where one can least afford to be deluded. I’ll pay my homage to Adrastus,2399 Glaucon, in connection with what I am about to say. I have a deep sense2400 that manslaughter is a lesser sin than being a deceiver about beauty and goodness and justice as they are preserved in our traditions.2401 It would be better to run such a risk among enemies than friends.2402 Thanks a lot for encouraging me.2403
This last piece of rueful irony gets a laugh out of Glaucon: “If what you say does discomfit2404 us, still we’ll acquit you of it as from a charge of murder and leave you uncontaminated and clear of any charge that you are a ‘deceiver.’2405 Buck up and speak.”
D.1: Community of Men and Women
If the charge of manslaughter is dropped against a man he’s left untainted according to our law, and perhaps the same would apply here as well.2406 We have to go back to issues we perhaps should have treated in the previous context. We could make it all good for now by imagining that since we have finished the manly drama it’s now time to move on to the feminine one,2407 especially given your challenge that we do so.
For men2408 with the inborn nature and education we have specified there is no other proper2409 way to manage having wives and children2410 than to keep2411 to the path we set them on at the beginning. We had conceived of ourselves setting them up as guards of a flock:2412 let’s give them a way to manage childbirth and nursing that follows suit with such guards as those, and see whether it seems appropriate.
Now as to guard-dogs that are female, do we suppose they should join in guarding whatever the male dogs were assigned to guard, and join them in the hunting and take part in all other activities, or do we suppose that the females are to hang around the house and are unable to join in because of their birthing and nursing of the young pups, and leave it to the male dogs to do all the work and caretaking involved with the flocks?
“They are to join in with them in everything,” Glaucon replies without hesitation, “with the proviso that they are weaker while the males are stronger.”
Well, if in general you cannot employ the same animal for the same task without giving it the same upbringing and education,2413 then if we are going to assign the same tasks to the women and (452) the men2414 their education will have to be the same. But2415 the education we gave the men consisted of music and gymnastics. Therefore we have to give these same two arts to the women, including the military training,2416 and they must practice2417 them the same.
“Seems so, from the argument you are making.”
Socrates notices Glaucon’s milder assent2418 and suggests that a lot of things might look laughable in connection with the policies we are now discovering in argument, if they are become the standard practice.2419 To this Glaucon strongly agrees so Socrates follows up by asking which of the spectacles he envisions2420 as the most ridiculous? Or need I ask? Isn’t it the spectacle of naked women working out in the wrestling room right alongside the men, not just the younger women but the older ones as well,2421 like those old men you see in the gymnasium at their workouts, frisky and wrinkled, and unconcerned how horrible they look?
“Yes by Zeus that would look ridiculous, by current standards at least.”
And yet now that we have embarked on talking the thing through2422 we mustn’t fear a whole range of wisecracks the comedians might make in prospect of this alteration of the norm becoming a reality, cracks about the gymnasiums and the musical training and of course the way they handle weapons and mount horses.2423 We based our argument on principles and now we have to continue its course through the rough part of our law, and plead with them to forgo doing their job this time and to act serious instead, reminding them that it was not so long ago, after all, that the Greeks shamed and ridiculed something most foreigners still ridicule to this day, a man being seen naked. When first the Cretans took up gymnastics and then the Lacedaimonians, the clever among us could still turn it into comedy,2424 but once people began to practice the kinds of things that are involved in gymnastics it soon became obvious to them that shedding one’s clothes is better than trying to stay covered up. What had seemed ridiculous in sight was simply wiped away by what was revealed to be best in thought.2425 The moral is, the man is a fool who believes anything is ridiculous besides the bad, and so is the man who sets about ridiculing any spectacle as laughable other than the spectacle of a mindless and vicious person, or zealously keeps in his sights any goal2426 as being fine other than the goal of being good.
To this complex redistribution of priorities Glaucon agrees in every detail,2427 so that Socrates can continue:
We must first reach an agreement2428 whether our project is possible and make place for a debate if others wish to argue against us, whether in jest or seriously,2429 on the question whether in (453) the case of the human species the female and the male sexes are able to share each and all of their activities or can’t share any, or they can share some and not others, and whether the present subject, warfare, falls into the one or the other category. If we proceed from this starting point we would most likely reach the surest conclusion.
We ourselves will have to make the argument for the others if we don’t want the contrary position to be eliminated by default,2430 as follows: “Socrates and Glaucon, you hardly need anyone else to argue with.2431 You yourselves accepted as a principle in your civic designs that in the city you were founding each person must do only what his nature suits him for.”
We did grant it.
”‘Well, is there any way the female is not utterly2432 different in nature from the male?’”
They do differ of course.
”‘Different, then, should be the task they are commanded to do, according to their respective natures.’”
Of course.
”‘So how is it you aren’t making a mistake now and contradicting yourselves when on the other hand you assert that the men and the women must do the same things, given the fact that their natures could not be more different2433 than they are?”
Socrates now turns to Glaucon and asks him, Will you2434 be able to defend us against this argument, my marvelous2435 friend?
“Not right offhand. What I’ll do instead is request2436 that you spell out the argument on our behalf2437 as2438 you did theirs.”
This is just the sort of thing I foresaw coming up, before, when I shrank in fear from touching on the topic of getting and raising wives and babies.2439
Glaucon thinks Socrates feared the difficulty of this argument and arguments like it:2440 “No by God, now I see why! It really doesn’t seem easy to meet.”2441
It really doesn’t.2442 Think about it this way. Whether a person falls into a pool or the wide ocean, he’s going to start swimming either way. So let’s start swimming and hope to survive the wave of the argument, in hopes some dolphin might slip under us and carry us to safety or some other miraculous salvation might come upon us.2443 Can you see any way out of it? We have granted that one and another nature requires one and another occupation, and that a woman’s nature is other than a man’s; on the other hand we are now saying these natures despite all their otherness need to practice the same occupation.2444 Isn’t this the charge2445 we are facing?
“Quite so.”
(454)Let me tell you: This antilogical2446 art is a real humdinger!2447
“Why do you say this?”
Because people fall into practicing it unbeknownst to themselves, thinking they aren’t contesting but conversing. It comes from being unable to analyze what is being said into its constituent meanings and investigating them closely but instead sticking with the mere names of things and attempting to prove the opposite of a statement made,2448 the whole thing done in the spirit of contention rather than communication.2449
“That is indeed something that happens to a lot of people. But you’re not saying it’s made its way into our present conversation are you?”2450
Absolutely. We might be involved in it right now without meaning to be. We are all riled up and eager to fight about the proposition that the same nature must not be attached to the same occupations,2451 as though the mere words of the proposition were all we needed to argue about, but we haven’t done a whit of investigation about what aspect of the natures we had in mind as making one nature different or the same as the other, nor in what relation, when we allocated one or another occupation to one or another nature, and the same occupation to the same nature.
“You’re right, we didn’t think about this.”
Well let me remind you that we could very easily2452 press the question upon ourselves2453 whether the nature of the bald man is the same as the nature of the hairy man. Isn’t it the opposite?2454 And if we accept that it is opposite, then if bald men are doing our cobbling we mustn’t allow hairy men to cobble, or if the hairy ones do then the bald ones mustn’t.
“That would be ridiculous!”2455
Ridiculous for no other reason than that our allocation was not based on any and every sameness and difference in nature. We only sought to watch out for one aspect of differentiation and assimilation among natures, the one pertinent to the occupations considered in their distinct natures. We had in mind for instance that a medical woman and a medical man have the same nature with respect to their soul, while the medical man and building man have a different nature.2456 Thus in the case of the type of people that are women and the type of people that are men, if the types appear to stand out from one another in respect to some craft or other occupation,2457 then we would have to assign one and another occupation to the one and the other. But if their relative competency seems to distinguish them only in that one area, that the female type bears the child and the male type impregnates the female, we have not moved a bit closer to having shown that the woman is different from the man for our current purposes, and so we would continue to believe that both the guards and their wives should be assigned the same jobs.2458
Our next move is to suggest to the man who is upholding the opposite position2459 that he (455) enlighten2460 us on the very point he has assumed: In relation to which craft or art or profession, among those that have a role in our civic setup, is the nature of the woman and the man different rather than the same?
“The question is only fair.”2461
Yes, and now another person might say what you just did, that to give an adequate answer offhand is not difficult, though if a person had a chance to think about it, it would be easy.2462 In that case, let’s ask the man who had been contradicting us to let us take the lead in the hope that2463 we might show him that there is no occupation that is the peculiar work of the woman in the managing of our city. “Tell us,” we will say to him: “Weren’t you thinking that the person who is naturally suited, as opposed to naturally unsuited2464 to a given task, is the one that learns it easily rather than with difficulty? And who after learning even a little soon shows himself able to find the rest on his own, as opposed to a person who even after a good deal of instruction and practice is barely able to retain what he has learned? And whose physical abilities can come to the aid of his mental direction rather than thwart it? Or is it in some other way that you would distinguish the naturally suited from the naturally unsuited in a given field?”
“Nobody would have other ways to argue for,” answers Glaucon on behalf of the opponent.
So, are you aware of any human endeavor in which the race of men is not superior in all these ways to the race of women? Need we spell out a long list2465 of fields like weaving and baking cakes and boiling stews,2466 where the female group might seem to have the edge only to suffer the greatest ridicule2467 when it is worsted?
“You are right to assert the one beats out2468 the other in virtually every field of endeavor, if you view them as groups, though in any given field many a woman is better than many a man. Still, on the whole, the position you have taken is correct.”
So we can conclude there is no particular occupation among those that play a role in settling our city that belongs to women simply because they are women, or to men because they are men. The fact2469 is, the personal characteristics requisite to the occupations are distributed over both the species, so that all occupations can be taken up by a woman and all by a man. Granted, in any endeavor the women are weaker2470 than the men but this fact by itself does not warrant that only men should be assigned the tasks. A given woman, after all, will have a doctorly nature and another will lack it, and one (456) will be musical and another unmusical. But gymnastical, are we not to say, one will be2471 and soldierly, while another is unwarlike and not philogymnastic?
“I at least will agree to this.”
What about a wisdom-loving nature and a wisdom-hating one,2472 or a spirited and a listless?2473
“These too.”
So there will also be a guardly2474 woman and another that is not—the very sort of inner nature we were looking for when we selected out the guardly ones among the men.2475 And so a woman has the same inner nature as a man for guarding the city, except that the woman’s is weaker and the man’s is stronger. And so women of this nature2476 must be selected out alongside men of this nature, to live alongside them and guard alongside them,2477 since in very fact they are meet to the task and naturally related to them.
“Quite so.”
As to occupations, we must assign the same ones to the same natures; and so we have come full circle, back to the original question, and we now agree and share the position2478 that it is not contrary to nature to assign musical and gymnastic exercises to the women among our guards.2479 Our lawmaking was far from impossible after all, nor a mere pipe dream,2480 if in very fact we were laying down laws in accordance with nature.2481 Rather, to the extent that the current way goes against what we have legislated, it goes against nature.
Glaucon agrees and Socrates can continue. Given2482 that we had set out to investigate whether our conceptions were possible and best,2483 now that we have come to agree that they are possible our next task is to reach an agreement whether they are the best. Focus on the question how a woman will become guardly. Will we have one kind of education make the men guardly and another kind make the women so, keeping in mind that the students will have the same inner nature?
“No, one kind will educate both.”
Alright then do you come with an opinion about this?
“About what?”
About a prejudice2484 you might harbor within yourself that one man is superior and the other is inferior. Or do you hold to the idea that all men are equally good?
“Not at all!”2485
So in the city we were founding, which set of men do you imagine we can look to as being the better ones, the guards who were finished2486 with the education we designed or the shoemakers who were trained2487 in the art of making shoes?
“What a ridiculous question!”2488
And you need not answer it.2489 These men are likewise the best of all the other citizens, just as the women that are guards will be the best of the women. There is no better boon to a city than that the women and men born in it be the best possible, and this will be the outcome under the influence (457) of the education in music and gymnastic that we designed. Therefore we legislated not only the possible but the best way a city can be.2490
The proof complete, Socrates can now place a bit of a picture before our eyes.2491 Those among the guards who are women must strip down, since in truth it is virtue that shall be their dress rather than clothing, and they must share the tasks of war and the city's other guardly duties, and these must be their only jobs. From among these duties the lighter ones must be given to the women rather than the men in accordance with the fact that their species is weaker. The man that laughs at the sight of naked women, though they are exercising naked for the most important of reasons, “harvests a crop of wisdom premature”2492 through his laughter, quite ignorant of what he is laughing at and what he is doing.2493 After all the finest of truths is the saying that the useful is what is truly fine, and that the harmful is what is truly ugly—a saying that will never become obsolete.2494
“I agree completely.”
Accordingly let us declare that we have eluded the first wave, as it were, that came crashing down on our legislation concerning women, by means of argument and reason.2495 We have not been utterly drowned for making the law that our guards must carry out all their duties in concert with the guardettes,2496 but rather our reason has enabled us to agree that what reason dictated is a plan both possible and beneficial.
“No small wave it was that you have eluded!”
But you’ll hardly call it large once you see the next one!
“Tell and I’ll see.”
D.2: Marriage and Eugenics
What comes after that law and the others we have set down is the following. These women are to be shared by these men, all of them sharing all.2497 No woman is to live privately with any man. And their children, too, are to be shared: no parent may know which child is his own nor any child his parent.
“This is a much greater challenge to our belief than that was, both as to its feasibility and its very worth as a policy.”
I don’t think the worth of the policy would be disputed—that it would not be a tremendous good that wives2498 should be held in common and children too—if only it were feasible. But I do think the question of its feasibility will incite the greatest dispute.
“Both would incite stiff controversy.”
You’re arguing that the propositions are a pair.2499 I thought I would escape the one if only you thought the measure worthwhile, and all that would be left to deal with would be the other, the feasibility.
“But you didn’t get away with it. So, give an account for2500 both of them.
Uphold my case I must! But humor me just this much: let me take something of a holiday, the (458) way a lazy person is wont to let his mind wander when he’s off walking along enjoying his own company.2501 You know how they think about how much they will enjoy having something they desire, skipping over the hard thinking as to whether it would even be possible to procure it in the first place. Instead, just assuming it is there on hand they decide how to manage all the details, enjoying to think about all they will do with it once it arrives and making their already lazy souls still lazier. I too have by now been getting a little soft and would just as soon shelve that big question, how the provision could come to be, and for now would just say it were possible—if you’ll let me—and lay out a pretty picture how our rulers would manage the thing assuming the arrangement were in place, and how most excellently beneficial the practice would be, once put into practice, for our guards and for our city. This is what I’d like to investigate with you first, if you will allow it, and turn to the other question later.
Glaucon allows it, and Socrates continues the investigation. If our rulers are deserving of the name and their helpers likewise,2502 I’d think that the one group will be willing to do what they are ordered to do and the others to do the ordering, by following our explicit2503 laws in some areas and imitating our lawgiving in areas we left up to them.2504 So in the present case you, who as lawgiver have selected who will be the male guards, will now select who will be the female ones to be their mates2505 similar as far as possible in their natures. Thereupon, given their common habitation and common mess and since none of them has any private prerogative in these regards but instead all are mixed together both in their exercising and in the rest of their training, they will be driven by necessity of a natural sort, I imagine, toward intercourse.
“Necessity indeed, not the geometrical but the erotic kind,2506 which proves more keen in persuading and leading the mass of mankind about.”2507
Quite so, but whether it is mating with each other or any other behavior, to act in a disorderly way is not pious in a city of happy people nor something our guards will suffer them to do.
“To suffer it would not be just.” 2508
So it is clear the next thing we must do is to institute sacred sanctions for marriages, where we would make sacred the marriages that are the most beneficial to the city. (459) But which would these be? Answer me the following question, Glaucon. I have seen hunting dogs in your house as well as a good number of fine birds. In truth, haven’t you contrived a plan with regard to their marriages or mating? Though of course all of them are fine, some of them are better than the rest, or grow up to be. You do not breed them all alike but are particularly earnest about these best ones, and of these best ones you are most earnest not about the youngest of them nor the oldest but the ones that are closest to their prime. If they breed indiscriminately you know full well that they will become worse, whether it be your stock of birds or your dogs. The same would hold for horses or any other animal. Omigosh! This all goes to show how very sharp2509 we need our rulers to be assuming the same holds true for the human animal!
“You can assume the same holds true, but what are you worried about?”
It’s all the drugs they’ll need to use. When it comes to doctors, if their patients don’t need drugs prescribed but only need to comply with doctor’s orders as to the right regimen, we recognize that even an inconsequential doctor is sufficient. When they do need drugs we know we need a doctor who is more confident.2510 My point is, our rulers will be needing to use a lot of lies and deception, all for their subjects’ own good, things we spoke of before as being useful the way drugs can be useful.2511
‘‘And right we were to draw the analogy.”
Right as we may have been about it,2512 it plays a role in the areas of marriage and having children that is far from negligible. We have already agreed that the greatest number of matings possible must take place between the best men and the best women, and that the matings between the least consequential men and women must be kept at a minimum, and that we must nurture the offspring of the one set of pairings and not those of the other, if we are to optimize2513 the herd; and that all this has to take place without anyone knowing it except the rulers, if you also want the herd of guards to be as free from contention as possible.
“All that you say is right.”
Then holidays will be appointed by law, in which we will bring the brides together with the grooms, and sacrifices too; and songs (460) will be composed by our poets, fitting2514 to the marriages as they take place. The majority of pairings we will leave up to the rulers with the goals of preserving their numbers against the ravages of disease and war and such, and of keeping the city from becoming large or small. We’ll need a subtle system of lots so that the lesser man we mentioned above should blame his luck rather than the rulers for the way the specific yokings are assigned.2515 Conversely the better youths, for their good efforts in war and elsewhere,2516 we must give all manner of honors and trophies but also an especially generous access to the women and unions with them,2517 so that we might take full advantage of this excuse2518 to maximize the number of children such guards might rear.
“Rightly so.”2519
And when and where the children are born, the ruling constabulary will come and take them, whether it be made up of men or women or both—the ruling positions will be shared, after all, between women and men. The offspring of the good guards they will bear off to a pen and to certain feeders who live there2520 apart from the rest of the city. As to those born to the inferior and any born to the others that have a defect, the rulers will hide them away in a secret hidden place as appropriate.
“So much is in accordance with our conception2521 that the race of the guards is in fact to be kept pure.”
As for nurturing them, these same rulers will be in charge. They will bring the mothers to the pen as long as they are producing milk, using every device they can so that none can recognize which child is her own; and they will supply wet nurses too, if the mothers haven’t enough, but even here will take care that they suckle them for only a moderate time. As to watching them overnight and the rest of the more toilsome duties, these they will assign to nurses and feeders.
“The manner of childrearing you describe is a life of relative ease for the wives among the guards!”2522
So much is only appropriate. We need to move on to what we next set before ourselves,2523 that the offspring be bred when the parents are in their prime. Would you agree with me that the prime lasts about twenty years long for a woman and thirty for a man?
“Which years?”
For the woman, from the age of twenty and until she reaches forty she is prime to give birth for the city. For the man, from the time he has reached the height of his powers up to the age of fifty five he is in his prime to breed.2524
(461) “Well I would say that for both the men and the women these years are the peak years both of body and mind.”
Now if at an age older then this or younger than this a man should engage in breeding for the city, we shall declare such an error impious and unjust2525 and stigmatize him as spawning a child for2526 the city who if it goes unnoticed will be born without the guidance of the sacrifices and the prayers that are to be conducted over each and every marriage by priestesses and priests and by the city as a whole in order to ensure the hopes that from good parents even better children will be born and from useful ones even more useful.2527 We will say instead that the child was spawned in darkness out of a dangerous kind of impulsiveness.
“Rightly we shall.”
And the same law will apply if a man while still in the breeding phase of life should have sex with one of the breeding women without the ruler’s bringing them together. We shall declare that the man has brought a bastard into being for the city, unsanctioned by betrothal and unholy.2528
“Most rightly.”
On the other hand once the women and the men move beyond their prime we will release them to be with whomever they wish excepting, for the men, their daughter and their mother and the daughters and mothers of these, and excepting likewise for the women being with son or father or their sons and fathers; but even though granting them this to enjoin them earnestly to prevent any ensuing pregnancy from coming to full term, or if they are somehow forced to bear the child, to dispose of it with the understanding that such children are not to be raised.
“The provisions are moderate enough and right as far as they go, but how will they separate out which are their fathers and which their daughters?”2529
They will have no way to separate them out. Instead, measuring from the day a man first mates, all the children who are born in the tenth or even seventh month2530 later he will call sons and daughters and they will call him father; and he will call their offspring spaced by like intervals grandchildren, and those offspring conversely will call him grandfather and grandmother. And also the children that were born at the same time that those he calls father and mother bore children, these he will call his sisters and brothers, so as to prevent the eventuality of their being with each other. The law will provide for brothers to cohabit with sisters as long as the lots fall this way and also the Pythian oracle corroborates it.2531
“Perfectly proper.”
So there’s your policy regarding the communism of wives and children in our city. That it is consistent with the other provisions of our constitution and that this is by far the best way it can be, we need next to confirm, with the aid of argument and reason.2532
(462) “By Zeus we do!”
Let me suggest2533 that the best place for us to begin reaching an agreement on this point2534 is to ask ourselves what is the greatest thing we could hope to provide for our city through all our legislation and what is the greatest evil we’d want to avoid, and then to ask whether the legislation we have just formulated fits the outline of the good outcome and contravenes the outline of the bad.
“This seems the best way.”
What greater evil could we name than the one we mentioned before,2535 the city’s being torn asunder and made many cities instead of one? And what greater good than the thing2536 that binds it together and unifies it?
“None other.”
Well, the sharing of pleasures and pains unifies the city, whenever all the citizens feel similar amounts of joy at a good thing happening or pain at the same loss.2537 On the other hand isolation or privacy of feelings tends to break up the city, as when one group is devastated and the other is overjoyed by the same things happening to2538 the city and its constituent parts.2539 I’d say the question underlying these reactions is whether the citizens feel like applying the expressions “It’s mine” and “It’s not mine” to the same things at the same times, and likewise the terms “It’s alien” and “It’s not alien.” In whatever city the greatest number apply the expression “It’s mine” and “It’s not mine” to the same thing in the same way, that city has the best order. Ask yourself just which city operates most nearly the way a single man does, as when for instance one of our fingers is smacked by something.2540 The entire “community”—the body aligned2541 down along its every part with the soul so as to form a single system managed by the ruling principle within her—perceives the event and feels as being its own the pain of the part that is affected, and feels it at the same instant, so that as we put it, “The man hurts in his finger.” The same account applies to any other part of the man, whether it is the pain of a part that is suffering or the pleasure of a part that is feeling relief.2542 In the case of a city like our own, when an individual citizen suffers any good or bad thing, the city immediately recognizes the part2543 that undergoes it as something belonging to itself so as to feel pleasure as a whole or pain as a whole, as the case may be.2544
Glaucon agrees this would obtain in a city that is well ruled at least, and so Socrates can move toward summing up the paradoxical attributes they have agreed to,2545 concerning familial organization, in order to see whether the city2546 as we have constructed it has these attributes or whether another city would be have them to a greater degree. Let us ask first of all, whether there exists in the other cities a pairing2547 of the rulers and the mass, as there is in our city.
“Yes.”
(463) Now everyone refers to each other as citizens, but what is the further designation that the masses in other cities use in addressing their rulers?
“In most it is ‘masters’2548 whereas in the democratic cities they use the generic term you just used as a name:2549 ‘rulers.’”
What will it be in our city? In addition to calling their rulers citizens, what will our mass call their rulers?
“Preservers and public servants.”
And what will our rulers call the mass?
“Their paymasters and providers.”
Whereas in other cities the rulers call their masses what?
“Slaves.”
And what do the rulers call each other?
“Fellow rulers.”
Whereas ours call each other what?
“Fellow guards.”2550
Among the rulers in the other cities can you find any that address some of their “fellow rulers” as relatives but others as non-relatives?2551
“Quite a few address each other as non-relatives.”2552
And where he deems the one that is his relative to be “his own” and speaks of him this way, he deems and speaks of the non-related ones as “not his own.”
“Quite.”
But what about your2553 “guards”? Is there a single one of them who would be able to deem one of his fellow guards a non-relative, or address him that way?
“Not a one. Everybody he runs into he will address as brother or sister, father or mother, son or daughter, or as a forebear or descendant.”
Great answer! Let me ask you to take it further. Would you legislate that they must use the familial names for each other without also requiring that they behave in all the ways those names betoken, as for instance2554 in the case of the father, the way our law requires his offspring to revere him and take care of him and be heedful of him else they will be taken down a notch2555 in the eyes of gods and men as behaving in a way neither pious nor just if they behave otherwise? Will it be such admonitions as these or some others that you would have each and every citizen dun into their ears from a child,2556 not only about the persons they are admonished to recognize as fathers but about their other relatives as well?
“These are the ones they should hear. It would be laughable if the deed did not follow the utterance of familial names.”2557
We may conclude then that in comparison with all cities it will be especially in her that the citizens will sing together2558 this refrain we mentioned just now, when any individual behaves well or ill, and say that “mine own” does well, or “mine own” does ill; and (464) as we said2559 the associated pleasures and pains will follow upon the recognition and assertion of this belief. Likewise it will be especially true of our citizens that they will share and hold in common this thing they call “mine” and will especially share pleasure and pain. But the cause of these facts is this latest addition we have made in the organization of the city, the community of wives and children among the guards.
“Yes, especially.”2560
And yet we agreed that this is the most important good for a city, when we likened the well ordered city to a body and the way the part stands in relation to the whole vis-à-vis pain and pleasure,2561 so that it has become clear2562 that the most important2563 boon for our city is conferred onto it by nothing but our community of children and wives among the public servants.2564 Moreover, the provision is consistent2565 with our previous rule that these must not own private2566 houses or land or any possession, but rather must rely on others for their maintenance and must spend all that they earn for serving as guards and squirrel none of it away2567 if they are to remain real guards.2568
In sum, both what we said before and what we are arguing now makes true guards of them and keeps the city from falling asunder2569 because they call the same thing “mine own,” not one man this and another that, the one man dragging off to his house whatever he can manage to reduce to his possession and sequester from the others2570 and the other off to his, it being a different house,2571 his wife and his children also being different, which then fosters pleasures and pains that are private because they arise from private things. Instead, with one and the same attitude about what is near and dear, each and all of them strain2572 toward unanimity of experience in feelings of pleasure and pain2573 as far as that is possible. Conversely, we’ll hear nothing of lawsuits and complaints against each other, since the only thing they possess separately will be their bodies and all the rest is shared. Their situation will leave them free of all contention to the extent that contention among men arises out of the possession of money or children or family.2574 Nor2575 for that matter will they be the sort who end up in lawsuits2576 over physical assault and battery. We’ll have the policy that it is admirable and just that persons of like age2577 should defend themselves, which has the further effect of requiring them to keep their bodies in shape, (465) a policy that will also provide a way for a man who becomes angry to slake his passion rather than seek to perpetuate and extenuate it in a larger dispute. As to the older man, we have already accorded him the privilege of ruling all younger persons and chastising them,2578 and clearly a young man will not likely try any kind of violence, let alone assault,2579 against an elder, unless the rulers command it, nor I fancy treat an elder dishonorably in any other way. Against that we can rely on two guards to protect him, fear and reverence, the latter barring him from laying hands on what might be his own forebear and the former the fear that others will come to the aid of the man who suffers mistreatment, whether as his brothers or his sons or his fathers. In every way then2580 the laws will provide that the men2581 will live at peace with one another; and as long as these do not fight among themselves there is no danger that the rest of the city2582 will split into factions, either against them or amongst themselves.
These major types of conflict and disorder having been argued away Socrates dismisses the rest with an elaborate praeteritio. Propriety makes me shrink from narrating the most minor evils from which we can expect them to be exempted, the poor man’s2583 need to flatter the rich, the lean times and the weary times when people must bear holding down jobs during the years their children are infants making ends meet to feed their household, sometimes taking out a loan and other times dodging the bill-collector, and handing over whatever money you can make to the wife or to the accountant, trying to set a little something aside—all this and of this sort is too obvious and ignoble to deserve mention.2584
“They are obvious even to a blind man.”
Exempt they will be from all these things. Instead2585 they will live a life more blessed2586 than that most blessed life the Olympian victors enjoy.
“How so?”
The Olympian’s happiness2587 rests on but a small part of what these men have in store. Our2588 men’s victory is the finer one and the maintenance they receive from the public stores more complete.2589 Their victory is the salvation and preservation of the entire state; their maintenance is not dinner only2590 but everything they need in life, with which they are crowned and their children along with them, besides the honors they receive throughout their lives from their own city and the worthy burial that ripe old age will bring them upon their demise.2591
“Quite fine indeed.”
Can you recall that moment in our discussion when we were struck by the argument somebody2592 made that we hadn’t made our guards happy, (466) despite the fact they had the power2593 to take possession of everything that belonged to the citizens? We said I think that making an adjustment on their behalf was something we could postpone in case it came up later, and that our business at that time was to make the guards guards, and the city as a whole as happy as possible, rather than that out of regard for some one group to bend things in the direction of making it happy.
“I do recall it.”2594
Well how does it stand for us now about the life of the helpers?2595 If it has become visible that their life is finer and better2596 than that of the Olympian victors, I doubt that it appears to be on the level2597 of the shoemaker’s life or that of any other craftsman or the farmers.
“No, it doesn’t.”
Instead, what I said then2598 ought to be said now as well, that if our guard tries to be happy in a way that requires him to give up being a guard, and if a life so temperate and secure doesn’t satisfy him—a life we assert is best—and if instead a mindless and adolescent attitude about happiness afflicts him and impels him to use whatever strength he has to appropriate to himself anything and everything he sees around him in the city and bring it under his own roof,2599 then he will come to learn by his own experience2600 how wise Hesiod was to say that the half is more than the whole.
Glaucon’s reply is striking: “If he uses me as his counsellor he certainly will remain with the life role you have described.”
Socrates recognizes the asseverative tone: So you accept the community of wives for the men as we have described it, both as it touches the education2601 of their children and their guardianship over the other citizens, the way the women share in the duties not only by staying on guard with them in the city but also going out with them to war, like dogs alongside them at the hunt,2602 and share everything with them in every way to the extent it is possible, and that in doing this they will be doing the best thing and a thing not contrary to the nature of the female as compared to the male nor contrary to the way nature would have them relate.
“I do accept it.”
So we are left with that other matter,2603 whether after all this sort of communism is possible for the species man as it is for other animals, and if so, how.
“You took the words right out of my mouth.”2604
After all it’s surely clear2605 how they will share duties in war—that they will serve alongside the men in the army and also will muster their children into battle as many as are hardy enough, giving them the benefit that the children of parents in other occupations have, namely, being able to watch2606 what they will be called upon to do when they become fully grown. (467) In addition to watching they are to discharge minor tasks and serve as aids in any military matter, and to apprentice to their fathers and mothers. Perhaps you have noticed how long a potter’s child serves as an apprentice to his father before he is allowed to begin throwing pots himself. Are the potters to take more care with their children’s education than the guards with theirs, by way of their becoming familiar with how things are done through observation?
“So much would be quite ridiculous.”2607
Besides, humans like other animals fight the more fiercely when their own offspring are present.
“That’s true, but Socrates there is a distinct possibility that given the ways of war if they fall in battle their children would perish, too, leaving the rest of the city unable to recover.”
That’s true, but do you mean to take the position that danger is to be avoided first and foremost?
“Not at all.”
So, if we must take a risk shouldn’t it be where they will be made nobler by correction?
“Clearly.”
Perhaps then you think it makes only a little difference and is not worth running the risk, whether those who are to become our military men watch or don’t watch as children.
“No—it makes quite a difference in the way you have argued.”
This much then is settled, to make children spectators of war, so that next we would do well to contrive that they be safe. First of all their fathers, as far as humanly possible, will not be ignorant but cognizant as to which armies pose a danger and which don’t, and they will muster them against the one sort and be more cautious against the other. Second they will assign as their immediate superiors not the least noteworthy among themselves but those who by experience and age are able2608 to function as leaders and teachers. Still it can be objected that the unforeseen always happens, so from the very start we ought to give them wings so that in case it becomes necessary they can wing2609 their way to an escape.
This Glaucon does not understand.
I mean they must mount horses at the very youngest age so that having learned to ride they can be mustered to the spectacle on horseback, their mounts being neither headstrong nor warlike but the fastest of foot and the most compliant to the reins. By this policy they will have the finest vantage from which to view the task that will be theirs, but also the best chance of escaping safely in case the need arises, by following in the train of the elder leaders.2610
“Sounds right to me.”
(468) Well then what about the matter of war itself? What is to be the bearing of your soldiers both toward themselves and toward their enemies. Do you think I have the right idea about this?
“You’ll have to start over and tell me that, too.”2611
As for our soldiers themselves, take the man who abandons his post or leaves his shield or does any of these kinds of things in a base way:2612 mustn’t he be demoted2613 to the rank of craftsman or a farmer?2614
“Quite so.”
And take the man who is captured alive by the enemy: mustn’t we give him over to them as a gift, to make whatever use of their catch they wish?
“Obviously.”
But take the man who achieves valor and makes a good showing: don’t you imagine that first he ought to be crowned by his fellow soldiers and the lads and children also, each and all in their turn?
“Yes...”
And greeted by the hand?
“This too ...”
But would you go further?
“Whither?”
To kiss and be kissed by each and every one.
“Absolutely! And I’d add the law that as long as they are serving in the army nobody may deny them to kiss whomever they want, just in case one happens to be in love with one of them, whether male or female, and thereby will be made all the more earnest at performing deeds of valor.”
With this extended answer Glaucon has hopped onto the bandwagon and added a law of his own, and Socrates is pleased by his answer: Wonderful! After all, we already established2615 that coupling should be made easy and more frequent for the virtuous guards than for the others, and that the assignations of these should be frequent in comparison to others so as to maximize the numbers born out of their stock. And indeed from Homer we have authority for honoring the best of our youth in these ways. He says that after a good showing on the battlefield Ajax was rewarded with a huge rack of ribs, as being the genuine way to honor a man youthful and brave since in addition to being a token of honor he would become stronger by it, too. In this2616 we shall follow Homer. We ourselves in our sacrifices and all such festivals will always single out the better among us, in accordance to the goodness they have demonstrated, and honor them with songs and the things we just mentioned, and in addition with “places at the banquet table and great outlays of viands and drink,” so that in addition to honoring our good men and good women we will elevate their vigor.2617
“I love it!”2618
Alright, then, take the ones who die a valiant death on campaign: won’t2619 we start by saying they belong to the golden race?
“Absolutely!”
So in this we will follow Hesiod who said,2620 when persons of this race come to their end,
(469) Some of them become blessed spirits roaming the earth,Virtuous, warders off of evil, guards for the mortal lot of men.
“Follow we will.”
And won’t we take pains to inquire of the god2621 what are the proper distinctions to be given at the burial of men so divine and godly, and then carry out whatever his exegete directs? From that day forward we will treat them like local divinities, caring for them and paying homage at their monuments. And we’ll adopt this same convention to mark the death, by old age or whatever the cause, of anyone else2622 who has proved eminently good in his life.
“It would only be right.”
How then about their treatment of their enemies?2623
“But what do you mean?”
Start with the issue of reducing the defeated enemy to slavery: does it seem just for Greeks to enslave Greek cities, or should they not condone it in any other city and as much as possible make it their habit and use to spare the Greek race of this treatment, so as to devote their efforts against enslavement by the barbarians?
“The policy of Greeks sparing Greeks is crucial.”
Then they may not possess a Greek slave and should counsel other Greeks against the same?
“Quite so, since thus they would turn their attention more to the barbarians and would keep their hands off each other.”
What about the issue of stripping the dead of anything but their armor, when they have beaten them: how does this stand? Doesn’t it give an excuse to the cowardly not to close with the troops still fighting, as though they were doing something needful when they were in fact poking around the dead bodies, while at the same time this sort of plundering has proved fatal to many an army? It seems illiberal and materialistic to strip a corpse, and the sign of a womanly and petty mind to treat the body of the dead man as the inimical element after his enemy’s soul has departed and left behind only the tool with which it fought? Is their behavior any different from that of dogs that become angry at the stones with which they have been pelted but not at the man who threw them?
“Not a whit different.”
So we must drop the activity of stripping corpses and of denying them to be removed for burial.
“Quite so by Zeus.”
Nor will we be hauling their weapons off to our temples as offerings to the gods, especially not those of the Greeks, if we care at all (470) about the goodwill of our Greek neighbors. Rather we will be apprehensive that some pollution might attend bringing things to the temple that belong to our own kin, unless god directs us otherwise. And what about the matter of destroying Greek crops and burning their houses: how would you have our soldiers behave toward the people they war against?
“If you would tell I’d gladly listen.”
My opinion then is that they should do neither of these things, but only make off with the harvestable food. Do you want me to tell you why?
“Please.”
It seems to me that just as there are two words, war and faction, there are two realities different in their relation to two different things, that which is familiar and kindred, and that which is alien and foreign. Enmity toward the familiar is faction, while enmity against the alien is war.
“Nothing out of line in saying that.”
See whether this is in line, too. I assert the Greek race is familiar within itself and kindred to itself, while it is alien and ungenuine in respect to the barbarians. So when Greeks fight against barbarians or barbarians fight against Greeks we shall speak of them warring as natural war-enemies2624 and call this kind of hostility war. But when this sort of thing goes on between Greeks and Greeks we’ll say that although they are friends by nature Greece is currently afflicted with a disease of factional contention, and we’ll call this hostility faction.
“For my own part I acquiesce in that outlook.”
Now in the case of what we are calling faction, wherever this arises and the city is set against itself,2625 if either of the two parties destroys the crops and burns the houses, think how abominable a thing faction shows itself to be, and how both sides come across as unpatriotic—patriots would hardly dare to ravage their own nurse and mother—whereas to steal the crops is a moderate measure when one party has achieved the upper hand and the other has been quelled, just as it is moderate to conceive that the parties will be reconciled and not forever at war.
“Surely this conception is more civilized2626 than the other.”
But let’s come to it: the city you2627 are founding is a Greek one, no?
“She must be.”
And as such won’t the men be good men and civilized?
“Very much so.”
And won’t they be philhellenes? Won’t they think of all Greece as friendly? Won’t they all have the same temples?
“This too is very true.”
(471) And as such will they not conceive of a dispute against Greeks as being a factional one and not call it a war, but carry on their dispute with the conception that they will be reconciled?
“Quite.”
With good will then they will chastise them, instead of punishing them with slavery or with annihilation, chasteners being their true role rather than belligerents.2628 And therefore they will not ravage Greece,2629 themselves being Greeks, and will not burn houses, and will not go along with the idea2630 that in any given city everybody is their enemy—men, women, and children—but that the people they are angry at are few: the individuals responsible for the disagreement in the given case. For all these reasons they will be willing neither to ravage their land, the majority of the populace being their friends, nor to destroy their homes, but will allow their dispute to go only so far as the point at which the responsible parties are brought to justice by force, on behalf of those who have suffered innocently.
“I do agree2631 that this is the way we should treat opponents that are our fellow citizens, whereas we should treat the barbarians the way the Greeks currently treat each other.”
Shall we set about laying down this law then for our guards, not to destroy the crops or burn the houses?
“Set it down, and set it down also2632 that everything we have said now and before this is fine, too. Just let me say, Socrates, that I am getting the impression that if one just allows you to talk about things like this you will never get back to the topic you pushed aside2633 in order to say all that you have now said, the question whether it is possible2634 for a city with this kind of constitution2635 to come into existence, and if so just how. Since2636 it all would be hunky-dory for the city if only it came into being,—the details you have left out I myself can add, how they would fight more bravely against enemies since they would be least liable to abandon each other, knowing each other as they do and addressing each other by those names, “brother,” and “father,” and “son.” And moreover if the women fought alongside the men, whether2637 in the same formation or stationed further to the rear for the sake of striking fear into the enemy or to provide aid as necessary, I know full well2638 that this would make them unbeatable in every way. On the domestic front moreover2639 all the boons that were passed over,2640 how many they would enjoy, I also see.2641 But, assume that I agree with you on all this and the countless2642 other goods they would enjoy if a city of this kind came into existence and don’t say any more about her! Let us try to persuade ourselves2643 of the thing itself, that it could happen and how, and leave off the other.”
(472) Aren’t you sudden with a counterattack against my story! Have you no sympathy for a soldier?2644 Perhaps you don’t know that the very moment I have barely escaped the threat of two great waves, you are bringing on the largest and hardest one of the three2645 against me?2646 When you see it—or hear it I should say2647—you’ll have plenty of sympathy and see I had good reason after all to shrink from the task and to shudder at the prospect of making an argument so contrary to what people think and of trying to manage a careful investigation2648 of it.
“The more you talk like this the less you will be released2649 by us from telling how this kind of city can come into being. Just speak and quit delaying.”
Could I perhaps2650 remind you first that it was because we were seeking to know what kind of thing justice is and injustice2651 that we got to this pass?
“What of it?”2652
Nothing2653—just that once we do discover what kind of thing justice is, are we to insist that the man who is correspondingly just may not differ from it at all but must be like it in each and every respect? Or will we be satisfied if he is very very close2654 to it and has a greater share of it than the others?2655
“The latter, satisfied.”
Therefore it was as for models that we were searching for what kind of thing justice is in itself2656 and for the consummately just man,2657 assuming there was one, just what sort of person he would be,2658 and conversely for injustice and the man most unjust,2659 so that by contemplating them2660 and viewing whether they are the sort of people as to be happy or unhappy, we would be forced2661 to acknowledge in the case of our own lives that whichever type we were most like, we would be allotted a fate most like the fate of that type. This was our purpose in searching for justice and the just man, and not to prove that such could come into existence.
“All this you now say is true.”2662
Do you think that a man would be any less good a draftsman if in drawing a version of the most beautiful person he produced a completely adequate rendering but was not able to prove that the sort of person he drew could come into existence?
“I would not at all, by Zeus.”
So what about us? Don’t we claim we were fashioning2663 in conversation the model of a good city?
“Quite.”
Do you think we have done any worse a job in our conversing, if we turn out to be unable to prove that it is possible to found the city that was the result of our conversing?
“By no means!”2664
Alright then, that’s the truth of the matter. If in addition I must try in earnest to prove, for your gratification,2665 how and in what way the city might be as possible as possible,2666 then for the purposes of this proof you must grant me these same things.
“What things?”2667
(473) Is it possible for something to be put into action just as it is put into words, or is it in the nature of things that action is less able to attain to truth than speech is, regardless what people might think? Which side do you take on this question?2668
“I grant it.”
So on the one hand, this thing you are trying to compel2669 me to do—having to take what we have reached in our discourse and exhibit it being realized in every detail2670—drop it! Instead, if somehow we realize in ourselves an ability2671 to invent how the city could come closer than close to our ideas, let2672 me declare we have acquitted ourselves of the task of discovering2673 the possibility you are enjoining me to discover. Or will you not be satisfied if you get this much? I for my part would be satisfied.
“But so would I,” Glaucon says, and the discussion has been saved.
D.3: Philosopher Kings or Kingly Philosophers
On the other hand, let’s next try to find and point out just what it is about existing cities that is so poorly managed in practice2674 that they do not have the order we envision in theory, or by what small adjustment a city might come to have the kind of constitution we have designed—at best a single thing or two, or if not as few as possible in number and as minor as possible in the question of their feasibility.2675
“By all means let’s.”
One change I think we are already able to point out2676 that could be made—not a small thing nor an easy one, but feasible.
“What?”
Well now I find myself face to face with that very thing we were speaking of before as the biggest wave. It will be said nevertheless, even if a veritable wave of ridicule and disgrace2677 is likely to engulf us. Consider what I am about to say.
“Go ahead and say it.”
Unless either the philosophers become kings in the cities or the kings or dynasts or whatever their office is called become genuine and competent philosophers,2678 so that the two things, political power and the love of wisdom, become combined in one, and unless all these types who in all their sundry2679 ways pursue one or the other of these two paths separately are compelled to leave, there will be no surcease of ills, Glaucon, afflicting life in the cities, let alone the entire human race. Nor2680 will the city we have envisioned take root or see the light of day before this condition is filled. Nothing other than this it was that I long since demurred to say, seeing as I did that the assertion would go flat against the way people see things.2681 Facing the fact that any other kind of city or constitution than this could not achieve happiness, whether for the individuals or as a whole, is a bothersome thing.2682
He said (Socrates tells us2683), “Socrates! What an utterance you’ve let out!2684 What an idea! Now that you’ve said it you can be sure you’ll be beset by a good many people, (474) not just us nobodies here.2685 They’ll strip off their cloaks and grab whatever comes to hand for a weapon. They’ll gird up their loins and run at you full speed, bent on doing I know not what! You’ll have to defend the argument against them and acquit yourself of their charge, or else you’ll be paying the penalty with the sting of their ridicule.”2686
I have you to blame for it.
“And it was good that I made you do it. But let me tell you I won’t betray you. No, I will ward them off from you any way I can2687 with my good will and encouragement, and I will play a more compliant answerer for you than someone else might.2688 So rely on me for this kind of help and try to prove to the disbelievers2689 that what you say is true.”
D.3a: Definition of Philosopher: Nature
Try I must, since now you have proffered so strong an alliance.2690 What we must do if we are somehow to elude those people you mention is to confront them with a description of who we are referring to as philosophers when we make this daring remark that philosophers must rule. Once that becomes crystal clear, one will have a means to ward them off: by indicating that certain people by their nature are suitable for taking up philosophy and leading the city whereas the others given their nature should not take it up but should follow their leaders. 2691
“The time has come to describe them!”
Come along then and follow me on my path, in hopes we might do it adequately.2692
“Lead.”
Will you need to be reminded, or do you remember, that whenever we say that somebody loves something he must love all of it, if we are right to say so? That we mustn’t see him loving one aspect of it and not another, but see him yearning for the whole?
“Looks like I need reminding: I don’t get it.”
Somebody else ought to have made that remark than you,2693 Glaucon. An erotic should hardly fail to remember that any boy in the flower of youth gives the youth-loving erotic2694 a real bite as it were and moves him as seeming worthy of his solicitous care and affections. Aren’t you prone to act this way toward beautiful boys?2695 The one who is snub-nosed will be praised as “charming;” the hook-nose of the other will be dubbed regal; and the boy in between exhibits the happiest of happy mediums. Darker skin means they’re “manly;” lighter and they are “the children of the gods.” Do you think the term “honey-skinned” was made up by anybody other than a lover too jaded to feel a distaste for jaundice in a boy so long as he’s in the bloom? In sum there’s no excuse you won’t make, nothing you (475) would not say, to win a chance with a boy in his prime.2696
“Go ahead and use me for an example of how your erotic men act; I’ll accept it for the sake of the argument.”2697
Well don’t you see the wine-lovers doing the same thing, coming up with excuses for their affectionate attitude for it no matter which wine it is?
“Quite.”
And honor-lovers: you can see how if they are not able to be the general they take the rank of lieutenant, and that if they are not in a position to be held in esteem by the greater and more important people they will settle for the esteem of lesser and inconsequential ones, showing by their actions that it is honor in any and all its forms that they are desirous of.
“Obviously.”
So grant it or not: Whoever we say is desirous of something, shall we declare him to be desirous of the entire kind of the thing or desirous of one part but not of another?”
“Of the entire kind.”2698
Then when it comes to our wisdom-lover, our philosopher,2699 we shall say he is desirous of wisdom, not of this part as opposed to that but of wisdom as a whole.
“True.”
Therefore when it comes to the person who chafes at doing his studies, especially when he’s young and doesn’t yet know what really matters,2700 we will deny he is philomathic or2701 philosophic, just as we would say that a person who chafes at eating is not hungry and doesn’t desire food and thus is not a “food-lover” but a person who has a bad time with food.2702 While on the other hand the person who indiscriminately tries any kind of learning and welcomes the chance to move into learning activities and just can’t get enough of it,2703 this one we would rightly call a wisdom-lover or philosophic—wouldn’t we?
Glaucon had a reply to this, Socrates tells us.2704 “But you’re going to be including a lot of strange people in the group you just described. All the spectacle-lovers are going to be included since they enjoy really getting to know something,2705 and then there will be the sound-lovers2706 who would make the strangest of company among philosophers since they would never willingly come and listen to2707 a discussion or that sort of thing, whereas they will run to catch performances by any and every chorus at the Dionysian festivals, as if they were in the business of renting their ears out, missing not a single performance whether in a city or in the smallest village.2708 Do we want to say that all these are philosophers, and include among other studious types like these even the students of the various handicrafts?”2709
Not at all. We could call them similar2710 to philosophers ...
“But2711 if you do who will you say are the true ones?”
The ones who love the spectacle of truth.2712
“That’s good as far as it goes; but how do you mean it?”
I mean it in a way not at all easy for somebody else to understand, but you2713 will probably grant me the following point.
“Which?”
Since the beautiful is opposite to the ugly they are two things.
(476) “Of course.”
And if they are two each is one.
“That too.”
So also in the case of the just and unjust, the good and the bad, and any distinct types,2714 the argument is the same. Each in itself is one, but since they are shared by actions and by bodies and by each other2715 they make appearances everywhere2716 so that they appear to be many though each is an individual.”2717
“Rightly said.”
This then is how I make the distinction. On one side there are the ones you have just called the spectacle-lovers and the craft-lovers and practical types,2718 and on the other side there are the people I am talking about who are the only ones that one would rightly call wisdom-lovers or philosophers.
“Can you explain?”
The sound-lovers and spectacle-lovers appreciate pretty voices and colors and shapes2719 and the things that the craftsmen make that embody2720 these, but as for the character of beauty in itself, their thinking is unable to see2721 and appreciate its nature.
“Yes, this is the way it is.”
But the ones who are able to make their way2722 all the way to beauty in itself and see it on its own terms, wouldn’t you say these are far and few between?
“Quite so.”
Then take this person2723 who thinks about beautiful objects but has no thought of beauty in itself nor is able to follow when someone leads him right up to the cognition of it. Would you say this man is going through life in a dream, or waking? Think about it. Would you agree with me about dreaming, that whether asleep or awake the dreamer is believing that what is only similar to something else is actually the thing that it resembles?
“I would say such a person is dreaming.”
Then take the man oppositely disposed, who does believe there is a beauty that is just beauty and is able to contemplate both it and the things that share2724 it,2725 and doesn’t take the things that share to be it nor thinks it to be the things that share it. Do you think this man is going through life dreaming or waking?
“Waking indeed.”
And would we be right to characterize this man’s mentality2726 as the cognition of a knowing person2727 and that of the other as the opinion of a person who is opining?2728
“Quite so”
But what if this latter fellow takes offense at our saying that he is opining rather than knowing and contests2729 the truth of what we say? Will we be able to talk this matter over with him and persuade him calmly, avoiding to allude to the fact that he is mentally imbalanced? 2730
“We must find a way.”
Well then let’s think of what we will say to him. Why don’t we play the listener2731 showing the attitude that if he does have some knowledge we won't begrudge it but would welcome knowing he knows:2732 “Tell us this, does the man who knows know something or nothing?” You answer for him.
“I will answer that the person knows something.”
A thing that is or isn’t?2733
(477)“That is. If it somehow2734 weren’t, how could he know it?”
This much we can safely say,2735 though we could go into further detail, that what completely is, is knowable completely; and that what in no way is, is unknowable in any way.2736
“Quite safely indeed.”
But now consider something in a state as both to be and not to be:2737 wouldn’t it lie somewhere in between being purely and being no-how?
“In between.”
So applying to what is, we had knowledge; and we had ignorance applying to what isn’t.2738 Applying to this in-between thing we should likewise look for something in between lacking knowledge and having knowledge, assuming there are indeed cases like this.
“Quite so.”
We do argue that opining is a distinct something.
“Of course.”
And that it is the same ability as knowledge or another ability?
“Another.”
Therefore opining occupies the position of applying to one thing and knowledge the position of applying to another, in accordance with the different ability that each of the two have in themselves and are.2739
“Yes.”
Now by its nature2740 science applies to what is, and knows that what is, is. But it is necessary I think to draw a distinction before I go on. We say that abilities are the group of things by means of which we are in fact able to do whatever we are able to do and any thing is able to do whatever it is able to do. For instance seeing and hearing are members of the group of abilities, if you understand the idea in what I am saying.
“Oh but I do understand.”
Then let me tell you what I think about them. In an ability I do not see a color or a shape2741 or any of the indicators I use to distinguish one of the things around me2742 from others. In the case of an ability there is only one thing I “look”2743 for: what it applies to or brings about.2744 It is by this technique that I call each of the abilities what I call them, so that an ability that is assigned to the same thing or brings about the same thing I call the same ability, whereas one that is assigned to something else and brings about something else I call by a different name. How about you? What’s your practice?
“The same.”
Excellent!2745 Let’s go back then to science. Would you say science is an ability, considered in itself? Or what group do you put it in?
“Into this group, and I’d say it is the most powerful of all of them!”2746
What about opining? Do we put it into the group of abilities or shall we move it off to some other group?
“Not at all.2747 After all, the thing by which we are able to reach an opinion is nothing but opining.”
And yet a moment ago you agreed with me that (478) science and opinion were not the same thing.
“How after all could a person with any intelligence2748 posit what is infallible to be the same as what is not infallible?”
Fine, and now it is clear that we agree that science is a different thing from opinion. This implies that the two of them by their nature apply to two different things and have the ability to produce two different effects.2749
“That necessarily follows.”
Science presumably applies to what is, as the ability to know the state of what is,2750 opinion being the ability to opine. But does opinion opine the same thing that science knows, so that the known and the opined would become the same thing, or is that impossible?
“That cannot follow2751 from the things we have agreed to. If as we said different abilities apply to different things, and if both of these, opinion and science, are abilities and if the two of them are other than each other, then it is impossible that the object of knowledge and the object of opinion should be the same thing.”
But if what is is the object of knowledge, the object of opinion would be something other than what is.2752 Would you then say that opinion opines what is not? Think about it. Does the person who is opining direct his opining to something,2753 or is he opining but opining nothing?
“Impossible.”
So instead, the opining person opines some thing.2754 But if a non-being, it would most properly be referred to not as some thing but as non-thing or nothing.2755
“Quite.”
We assigned not knowing or ignorance to the non-being thing and knowledge to the being thing, necessarily, so that it is not the being thing nor the non-being thing that opinion opines. Therefore opining can neither be not-knowing or ignorance, nor can it be knowing.
“Seems not.”
So then is it2756 outside the spectrum defined by these,2757 either exceeding knowledge in its clarity or exceeding ignorance in its obscurity?
“Neither.”
To the contrary2758 in comparison with knowledge does opinion seem to you more obscure, whereas in comparison with ignorance more illuminated?
“Quite so.”
So it lies within the spectrum defined by these, and opining would lie between knowledge and ignorance. Yet earlier we said if that something came into view as both being and not being, this kind of thing would lie in between the purely existent and the completely non-existent,2759 and that neither knowledge nor ignorance would apply to it but an ability that would come into view as likewise2760 lying between those two.
“Yes.”
But what has now in fact come into view2761 is that what lies between these two is the ability we call opining.
“Yes it has.”
So what remains for us to discover is what it is that has a share in both being and non-being and therefore cannot properly be referred to as purely being nor purely non-being, so that once it does come into view we will be able rightly to designate it as the opinable, and shall have assigned the extremes to the extreme abilities and the object in between to the in-between one.
“Quite right.”
Alright then, now that we have laid all this down and agreed to it,2762 let the worthy2763 fellow (479) converse with me and answer my questions, that man who refuses2764 to consider beauty in itself or the vision2765 of beauty itself which itself is there, invariant in time, invariant in its relations, and invariant in itself,2766 but instead believes2767 that beautiful things are many, this spectacle-lover who cannot abide2768 anyone saying that the beautiful is one and the just is one and so on. Let him answer the following question: “So,2769 my fine fellow, of these many beautiful things of yours could there be one that will not on occasion look ugly? Of the just things one that will not appear unjust? Of the pious one not impious?”2770
“No,” Glaucon answered.2771 “To the contrary both beautiful and ugly they will necessarily seem, in themselves, and so on with the other attributes you asked about.”
And what about the many twice-as-much’s? Will they seem half-as-much any less than twice-as-much?2772
“No less.”
And the many larges and smalls and lights and heavies, I doubt they will be called by these names any more than by their opposites.
“No,” he answered. “They will forever go on having the one name and then the other.”
Will one of these things ever be, any more than not be, any of the many things people say it is?
“It’s like those double-entendres people bring up at banquets,” he answered, “like that children’s riddle about the eunuch striking the bat, in which they ask with what, on what, what struck what.2773 Things are ambiguous and it's impossible to nail down with the mind whether they are both or neither.”2774
So do you have some way to deal with them? Or a finer2775 place to put them than in between being and not being?2776 After all they are not more obscure than the non-existent so as to appear more than non-existent, nor more obvious than the existent so as to be classed as more than existent.
“Absolutely2777 true.”
We’ve found it then, it seems. Between the irreal and the purely real is where the many things the many believe in drift about—the conventional attitudes, that is, about beauty and the rest.2778
“Discovered we have.”
And we agreed in advance that once this thing-in-between came into view2779 we had to call it the opinable and not the knowable, floating about2780 in the in-between to be captured as it were by the in-between ability.
“We did so agree.”
Therefore about the spectators of the many beauties2781 who have no vision at all of the beautiful nor any ability to follow another person trying to lead them to it, and of the many justices but never of justice itself and likewise with all the rest,2782 we will say they opine everything but know not one of the things they opine.
“We are compelled2783 to say so.”
But what shall we say in turn about those who contemplate the distinct individuals in themselves, invariant in time in their relations and in themselves, and fully real?2784 Will we not say that they are knowing and not opining?
“We are compelled to say that, too.”
And also as to what they welcome and enjoy. For the latter persons it is the things (480) that knowing applies to, whereas for the former it is what opining applies to. Or have we forgotten that they loved and contemplated pretty sounds and pretty colors and the like, but as for beauty itself they could not even bear it somehow2785 to exist on its own.
“We remember.”
So we would not be striking the wrong note to call them lovers of opinion or philodoxers rather than philosophers and lovers of wisdom. Will they be greatly offended by us if we say they are?2786
“Not if they left it up to me,” Glaucon said. “After all, nobody is entitled2787 to be offended by the truth.”
Therefore those who greet the real as it is in itself and in its own individuality must be called philosophers and not philodoxers.
“Completely right.”
END OF BOOK FIVE
BOOK SIX
Book Five began by interrupting the argument of Book Four in midstream; the break between Five and Six is less intrusive since it comes at a stopping point in the argument. With its first words Book Six looks back to the result reached in Book Five from a perspective independent enough from the argument that has just been made that it can remark as if upon reflection that the result there reached, namely, the identification of who the philosophers are, was reached with considerable difficulty.2788 The personification with which Socrates here describes that process is striking: (484) “Those who are philosophers and those who are not2789 has come into view only with great effort, and only after traversing a long path of argument.” His words suggest that the interlocutors (if they are still with him) have passed a hurdle.
Such a remark is not only apt but long overdue, since the entirety of Book Five was a digression brought on by a love for something less than wisdom, a love we are now able to describe as a love of opinion. Before the distinction between these loves had been made clear, Socrates had no basis for saying that questioning or worrying about the community of wives was wrongheaded; or, we may say, if he had said it, it would have fallen on deaf ears.2790 Conversely, now that he has found what the philosopher is, he can go on to articulate what qualifies him to be king, namely the ability to keep the city's conventions close to truth.
Glaucon says a shorter path may not have been easier, a remark by which he thankfully acknowledges every bit of help Socrates has given him and every bit of correction we have seen him undergo and accept. It seems it would not have been easier, Socrates rejoins, “and more, I’d say that the point could have been made even clearer if this were the only question we needed to treat, and there weren’t a host of other topics we have to go through, assuming we stick to our project of comparing the just life to the unjust.”2791
D.3b: Qualifications of Philosopher to Rule
“What comes after this, then?”
What else is there than what comes next?2792 If indeed the philosophers are the ones who are able to latch onto what is always the same in respect to itself and invariant, while those who are unable to do this but wander without an anchor2793 among the plurality of things2794 that take on all sorts of states2795 are not philosophers, the next question is, Which of the two types must be the leaders of the city?
“How would a prudent discussion of that question be framed?”
By asking which of the two groups seems able to guard and preserve the laws and practices of cities, and then to argue for appointing this group as the guards. But isn’t this much already obvious? Is it the blind man or the man with good vision who ought to serve as guard, no matter what he is to guard? And yet how different from blind men are people who are really destitute of any cognition of the reality of things, who have in their souls no clear idea which they can use as a standard, who are unable to look off as painters do to their object as it is and compare from moment to moment what they are painting with what they see and look off to, in its every detail, so as to formulate laws and conventions here among men about the most important matters—the beautiful and the just and the good2796—or else to guard and preserve such laws if they are already set down?
“By Zeus the analogy is very clear.”
Shall it be these then that we would sooner appoint2797 or else those who come fully equipped2798 with a cognition of what each thing is, as long as they give up nothing to the former group in experience nor fall behind them in any part2799 of virtue, besides?
“Strange it would be to select anyone other than these, provided as you say that they fall nowhere short in the other ways, since their excellence in the one matter makes the greatest individual contribution to their superiority.”2800
(485) Then let’s argue how the same people could have both. As we said at the beginning of our discussion of this matter2801 we must first ascertain what their inner nature is. Once we agree sufficiently about this I think we will go on to agree that this one group will be able to have both so that we won't need anybody else to be the city’s leaders.
Let us set it down as agreed that persons of the philosophical nature always desire learning any lesson that sheds light2802 on the kind of reality that always is, that is not consigned to wander2803 according to the ravages of coming to be and passing away;2804 and set down also that they are in love with all of it and would not willingly lose any part of it small or large, more or less honorable,2805 just as we had said before2806 about the lovers of honor and about the erotics.2807
“Right.”
We must next ask whether this, too, necessarily follows given their nature, a general freedom from falsehood and an unwillingness to countenance or commune with falsehood, or whether they hate falsehood and embrace truthfulness.2808
“Seems likely.”
Well it’s not just likely but necessary2809 that the man with an erotic bent greets with joy anything that is related to his darling2810 or is akin to him. Can you point to anything as akin to wisdom as truth would be?
“But how could I?”
So then could one and the same man be by nature a lover of wisdom and a lover of falsehood?
“No way.”
So the man who really is a lover of learning must by his nature yearn for any and all truth, even from childhood. And yet we know that a person whose desires tilt him toward some one thing tends to have desires far weaker for everything else, as though the channels had all been diverted away from them. So for a person whose desires have all been channeled into studies and everything involved with them, all his desires would have to do with the pleasures the soul enjoys by herself and on her own terms, and would desert the pleasures that come through the body, if he were not a makeshift2811 philosopher but a philosopher in truth.
“That is highly inevitable.”2812
Temperate, in truth, this sort of man would be, and completely uninterested in money.2813 The purposes for which money and large expenditure2814 are taken seriously are more fit for others than him to take seriously.
“Just so.”
(486) And here is another thing you must keep in mind if you are going to judge which is the philosophical type and which isn’t.2815 Be on the watch to detect any trace of illiberality. There is no place at all for a fixation on paltry details2816 in a soul that will end up dedicating itself to the pursuit of the larger wholes2817 of meaning attaching to the world that men share with the gods.
“Quite true.”
So the kind of mind that has magnanimity in its nature2818 of a sort that seeks to behold2819 all of time and all of reality, can such a one find human life to be of much consequence?
“Impossible.”
And will such a man find death to be something alarming?2820
“Least of all men.”
So it seems the timid and illiberal type could have no share in the true love of wisdom.
“I judge he could not.”
So what shall we say? A man graceful and indifferent to wealth, neither illiberal nor boastful2821 nor fearful—is there any way he could be hard to do business with or be unjust?2822
“There is not.”
But keep in mind all through2823 your investigation whether a given soul is philosophic or not, to examine whether from his very youth2824 his soul was just and calm rather than uncongenial and rash.
“Quite so.”
And further, I’d guess you won’t leave this out ...
“What?”
Whether it finds learning easy or burdensome.2825 Can you anticipate that a person could properly love something, if the doing of it gives him pain and if he achieves only a small success even with difficulty?
“That couldn't happen.”
And next imagine he can’t keep hold of what he has learned, full as he is of forgetfulness. Is there any way he would not be empty of knowledge?
“You’ll have to tell me how.”
But if his efforts are profitless don’t you think that in the end he will be forced into the position of hating both himself and this kind of activity? So that we can conclude that having a forgetful soul disqualifies a person from being included among those we count adequate for philosophy:2826 rather let us seek a soul that necessarily has2827 a good memory. And also wouldn’t we assert that the unmusical and graceless element can only drag a person toward immoderation? And yet truth or honesty is akin not to the immoderate but the moderate, so that in addition to the other things we will seek a mind both moderate and graceful in its nature, in the sense that its inner nature will be supple enough to approach the vision of reality and truth.
Wouldn’t you say that each and all these attributes we have now gone through are necessary and2828 work hand in hand for a soul to get an adequate and entire grasp2829 on reality and truth?
(487) “Quite necessary indeed.”
And so is there a way for you to bad-mouth a pursuit2830 for which a person would be unfit if he lacked any of these qualities deep in his makeup: good memory, quickness at learning, magnanimity, grace, and a friendly kinship with truth, with justice, with bravery, and with temperance?2831
“Even Momus would find it beyond cavil.”2832
Therefore once people with this inborn nature have finished their education and reached an appropriate age,2833 would it not be into their hands alone that you would put the management of the city?2834
Before Glaucon can answer Socrates’s question, Adeimantus interrupts.
D.3c: Objection of Adeimantus: Philosopher is Useless or Vicious
It is Adeimantus’s fourth interruption. The first one came near the beginning of Book Two, when Socrates was about to respond to his brother's speech about injustice; the second at the beginning of Book Four just after Socrates and Glaucon had reached their hugely important consensus about the guards' regime; the third at the beginning of Book Five, at the behest of Polemarchus, just after Socrates and Glaucon had reached their hugely important agreement about the inwardness of justice. This fourth interruption comes just before Glaucon can agree with Socrates on the large decision that the philosophers are after all the people most fit to rule (484B8-487A8). This time his brother’s interruption pre-empts him from registering his agreement.
“I’ll answer for him, Socrates. Nobody could gainsay what you have said, the way you have said it at least.2835 Let me tell you the reason. The sort of argument you have now made2836 always has a certain effect on people.2837 They get the sense, due to their relative unfamiliarity with your method of question and answer and the way they are being led along bit by bit by each question, that once the small steps are all added together a great reversal takes place and a conclusion is reached quite opposite to what they believed in the beginning.2838 Just as those who aren’t clever at checkers end up being blocked from moving by those who are, so in the end people think they are blocked from making any move in this other sort of game you play, your game not of checkers but of arguments -- though all the while there is no more reason to take it your way than not.2839
“The present instance is a perfect example. Someone might very well say to you that although his reason cannot produce answers to contradict the sequence of questions you have put to him, nevertheless he can plainly see in fact2840 that of all the people who are attracted to philosophy2841—not those that quit after having done it in their youth for the sake of general culture but those who stay on and pursue it more deeply—the majority become weirdoes2842 if not, frankly, perfect scoundrels, whereas the few that seem quite decent, suffer a reversal by this study, which you recommend nevertheless,2843 and are rendered quite useless to their cities.”2844
Socrates tells us2845 he heard him out, and then replied, And do you think the people who say this2846 are deceived?
“How do I know? I'm eager to hear your opinion2847 on the matter.”
You’d hear2848 that by my lights they’re speaking the truth.
“Then how can it be right to say that the cities will no sooner cease from their troubles until the philosophers rule in them, when we have agreed they are useless2849 to them?”
D.3c.1: Response of Socrates: Uselessness
The question you ask calls for2850 an answer in the form of a fable.
“And you just hate2851 to tell fables.”
So in addition to forcing an answer on me hard to prove, you also make a joke at my expense. (488) Be that as it may, hear now my fable. You can enjoy watching me struggle2852 with the genre. The experience of the “people quite decent” whom you adduce, and what is in store for them in their cities, is as harsh a thing as there ever was. To do it justice and explain their plight requires that I assemble many elements into one story, the way a painter paints a goat-stag or another such mixture into a single object.2853 Conceive the following sort of thing took place,2854 whether on many ships or just on one.2855 The shipmaster is a man taller and more robust than the others in the ship, a little hard of hearing and seeing likewise, and it’s about the same as to his knowledge of nautical matters.2856 Conceive of the crew breaking into factions among themselves about the office of pilot,2857 each man thinking it is he himself who should be pilot,2858 though none has learned the art nor could say who taught him nor when he learned it.2859 Indeed what they claim is that it isn’t the sort of thing one learns in the first place, and they’re ready to hang from the yardarm anybody who says it is, while what they see fit to do on their own lights is clamber around the person of the shipmaster,2860 begging him and stopping at nothing to get him to turn the tiller over to them instead. Conceive next, when one day they lose his ear to a competing group, how they turn upon those others and murder them or throw them overboard, and drug the worthy master with mandragora or wine so they can overpower him and they tie him up and find themselves in command2861 of the ship, and how they use up its stores in drinking and feasting and sail a voyage I hardly need to describe.2862
Conceive how all the while they praise with the names of true sailor and captain and expert at ships2863 whichever man among them stood out as a particularly astute collaborator for purposes of landing them in the office of command, whether by persuading or by forcing the shipmaster; and conceive how they castigate the man who did not bring this about as useless—even though they2864 have no clue as to what qualifies a man to be captain, how he has to keep his attention on the time of year and the seasons and the sky and the stars and the winds and all else that plays a role in his art2865 if he is going to govern a ship in truth.2866 Instead, as for executing the task of the captain2867 whether certain people want him to or not, for this task they believe2868 there is no art to be mastered, nor a need for practice nor indeed a need for the very science of captaincy they arrogate to themselves.2869
Now if this sequence of events came about in ships, don’t you imagine that the man who is a real and true captain would in fact2870 be dubbed a stargazer (489) and a fuddy-duddy and a man utterly useless to them,2871 by these men who ride2872 on board the ships that had come into this condition?
“They would indeed,” Adeimantus replies.
Then I'd guess you will not be asking to see the fable being tested,2873 as to whether it provides a likeness of the cities as to their attitude about the true philosophers.2874 Instead, you have learned what I mean.2875 So now you can go back to that man who was surprised2876 that philosophers are not honored2877 in the cities. Teach him this fable and try to persuade him that it would be all the more strange if they were!
“And of course I will teach him,” Adeimantus now replies.2878
And teach him also that you2879 speak the truth when you say that the most decent persons involved in philosophy are useless to the many; but suggest to him their uselessness is to be blamed on those who make no use of them,2880 not on their own being decent.2881 It is against the nature of things2882 for the captain to request the sailors that they be ruled by him, nor do men of skill make their way to the doors of the rich. The man that told that subtle tale2883 was deceived. The true nature of the matter is that a man who is sick, whether poor or rich, must make his way to the door of the doctor; that any man that needs to be ruled makes his way to the door of the man who has the ability to rule him; that a man who rules does not beg the ruled to accede to being ruled, if he has any real benefit to offer. To the contrary, if you likened the current politicians and the way that they rule to the sailors in the story you would not err, nor if you likened the men they call useless cloud-talkers2884 to the ones who truly deserve the name of captain.
“Quite right.”
And so take it2885 from these arguments and these cases that it's not at all easy for the very highest occupation to achieve high standing2886 in the eyes of persons preoccupied with the opposite sort of thing. But by far the largest and strongest slander against philosophy arises because of the behavior of people who claim to be occupied with nothing else than philosophy, the ones that your accuser of philosophy spoke of a moment ago when he dubbed the majority who approach philosophy “perfect scoundrels”2887 in distinction from the very decent persons whom he called useless—and I agreed that you2888 were speaking the truth. Yes?
“Yes.”
D.3c.2: Response of Socrates: Viciousness
So we may say we have fully accounted for the cause of the uselessness of the decent types. Can we move on to say what forces2889 the majority of them2890 to be scoundrels, and see if we can prove that philosophy is not to blame for this either?
“Yes, let’s try.”
Shall our listening and speaking to each other2891 begin by recalling the moment when we were working out2892 what sort of nature a man needed to have to become a person fine and good?2893 His (490) primary guide was truth,2894 as you remember, which he had to be pursuing with all of himself and in every way available to him, lest he come out a braggart and have no share2895 at all in true philosophy.
“This is how the thing was argued.”
“And doesn’t this argument run quite contrary to current attitudes about him?”2896
“Quite.”
“Will we have sufficient warrant to account for this discrepancy2897 by saying that it is by his inborn2898 propensity to measure himself against what is real, given the fact that he is a true lover of learning, and that he would not stop and abide in the world of things men opine about, this world where everything is a many, but would move past them; and that his erotic drive would neither blunt nor slacken before he latches onto the true nature of each thing in its self-same oneness, with the part of the philosopher’s soul that is suited to do so2899—the suitable part being the part akin to it2900—yea, until he finds himself truly in the company of the real and then communes with it, giving birth thereby both to a knowing mind and to a truth known,2901 and so achieves cognition and life in truth and receives his sustenance therefrom, and finds surcease from the travail of his soul like never before.
“The explanation is as warranted as could be.”
So will this man show any hint of accepting falsehood or quite to the contrary will he hate it?
“Hate it he will.”
Yes: as long as truth is doing the leading, I doubt we would ever find ourselves saying that a chorus2902 of evils follows in her train.
“How could it?”
Rather, that a disposition healthy and just follows her, which temperance also follows.2903
“Correctly we would say that.”
And so there is no need to try and recall2904 and then to marshal all over again the entire chorus of virtues that accompany the philosophical nature. You remember the corollaries of bravery, magnanimity, ease of learning, memory.2905 And after you interrupted me to say that any man will be forced to agree with what we were arguing but that if he closed his ears to argument for a moment and opened his eyes to look at the people the argument was about, he would see some of them were useless but the majority of them were scoundrels in every way a man can be a scoundrel,2906 we decided to look into the cause for this slander so that now our question became, “Why in the world are most of them bad?”2907 pursuant to which we have now recalled the description of the nature found in those truly deserving the name of philosopher, and have set out the marks that necessarily distinguish it.
“That is what has happened.”
This then is the nature whose debilitation we must come to see,2908 the causes of its debilitation and how it is destroyed in the majority of men (though a small part of mankind escape vice somehow and end up being called not base but useless). After that we must in turn (491) behold the natures that imitate2909 this one and try to settle into her task and occupation, and watch how, given the natures of soul they actually have, they have landed in an occupation unworthy2910 and quite beyond themselves, and how because so often they act awkwardly2911 they have brought upon philosophy the reputation you describe, among all men everywhere.
“What are the types of corruption you speak of?”
As far as I am able I will try to go through them for you.2912 At the outset I think everyone will agree with us that an inborn nature of this sort, possessing all the attributes we have just now constellated2913 if the man is to be perfectly philosophic, appears seldom among mankind and only in a few; and yet the forces that can corrupt these few are many and powerful.
“Yes—what are they?”
You might be most surprised to hear that each and every aspect of the soul’s nature that we praised can destroy the soul that possesses it and estrange her from philosophy: bravery, temperance and all the rest we listed off.
“Strange indeed to hear.”
But that’s not all. The things people commonly count as goods can also work corruption and estrangement: beauty and wealth and strength of body and a family influential in the city, all that sort of thing—you know what I mean in outline.
“I know the contents of the list. What I’m keen to hear is a more complete statement of what you are saying about them.”2914
Grasp the problem in general: what I am saying will become obvious and you’ll no longer find my prelude2915 strange.
“How do you suggest I do this?”2916
Take any seed and shoot,2917 whether plant or animal: we know that if it does not get the particular nourishment suited to it, or dwell in the right climate or region, the more robust the individual is the more dire is the shortfall. After all, evil is more opposed to the good than it is to the not-good. So there is reason to believe that the best nature, when placed in an environment for which it is relatively unsuited, will come out worse than an insignificant one.
“Reason there is.”
So, Adeimantus, shall we infer in the case of souls, too, that if the ones that are best by nature get a bad education, they will tend to turn out exceptionally evil? Or do you imagine that great acts of injustice and the stronger and purer2918 strains of evil are the effect of bad education in a paltry person rather than that of a braver stripling,2919 and that weaker natures will never have much of an effect, whether for good or for ill?
“No, I agree.”
(492) Alright then, as to the type of man we posited as philosophical, if he does get the education that befits him he will necessarily grow up to reach the very pinnacle of virtue;2920 but if he’s of good breeding and stock2921 and fails to receive the proper nourishment then he goes the opposite way, unless some god intervenes on his behalf.2922 But perhaps like most people2923 you believe that the young we see spoiled are somehow2924 spoiled by certain sophists, to any degree worth mentioning, those ones their fathers hire,2925 rather than believing that it is the very people who make this argument who are the most redoubtable sophists2926 and do the most effective job of educating,2927 so as to make a person into whatever they wish him to be, not just young but old, and men and women, too.2928
“Just when2929 do they do this?”
Whenever they're gathered in a huge throng2930 -- in the assembly, the courtroom, the theatre, the battlefield, or any other gathering2931 en masse2932 – and with a great hullaballoo they heap disparagement on what is being said or being done, or praise it for that matter just as long as they do it with excessive hooting and applause and stamping of feet, and cause the rocks and walls that surround them to echo their sentiments and double the decibels of their elation and their disapproval. In an environment like this what mood do you think a young man’s heart takes on, as the saying goes?2933 What manner of education received in private, do you think, can2934 hold its own against a public scene like that? What education, do you think, will not be submerged in the deluge2935 of such angry clamor or gleeful exaltation, and not be borne off in whatever direction its current flows, so that he will aver2936 the same things are beautiful or ugly as they, and follow them in any and every2937 one of their pursuits, and become like them?2938
“Much compels one to say so, Socrates.”
Yet something less than the ultimate compulsion.
“What compulsion is that?”
The compulsion in deeds with which these sophist-tutors2939 add to their compulsion in words when words fail to persuade. Perhaps you are unaware that if a man does not go along with them they remedy the matter with disenfranchisements, fines, and deaths?2940
“I am quite aware.”
Can you point to some other sophist than the mass, who by teaches some special lessons in private2941 will tug hard enough in the opposite direction to overcome them?
“My guess is there is no such person.”
And you’re right. Even trying to oppose them is foolish. A man’s character cannot, nor ever has—and never will, I’d guess—come out with some alien attitude toward virtue, contrary to the one that the “education” of this crowd produces2942—the human part of his character, at least: the divine spark in a man I won’t “put it past” as the proverb goes.2943 Indeed one can be sure that if a man does survive (493) and turns out as2944 he should in such a political environment,2945 we’d have to say it was the work of the gods.
“I’m of the same opinion.”
But I’ve another thing we should opine.2946
“Which?”
Every one of those private hirelings that these people call sophists and think of as rivals,2947 themselves teach nothing but these same opinions held by the many, the opinions they opine while they are gathered, and they call these opinions wisdom. It’s as if there were a huge beast2948 nourished to great strength, and somebody were getting to learn what made it angry and what it desired, and how to approach it and just how to pet it, and at what times it becomes most fierce and when most tame and from what causes, and what it means by its particular grunts and growls, as well as what sounds another can make to calm it down or stir it up. Say he had learned all this by hanging around the animal for a long time, and called what he learned “wisdom” and set to systematizing it and teaching it to others, utterly ignorant as to whether the animal’s beliefs and desires2949 were beautiful or ugly, good or bad, just or unjust. Instead he applies these terms2950 as mere names in accordance with the great animal’s beliefs, calling whatever it2951 enjoys good and what it hates bad, and has no further brief on the good and bad as such but simply identifies the animal’s requirements with the just and the beautiful. As to the truth about the necessary and the good2952 and how much they differ from one another, this he has never come to recognize and thus could never teach it to another. By Zeus can you imagine having such a person for a “tutor”?
“I can only try.”
Yet would you judge such a person to be any way different from the man who believes wisdom is getting to know the anger and the pleasures2953 a motley crowd of people fix upon when they gather, whether about painting or music or politics for that matter?2954 Whatever one sets out to display to them when they are gathered, whether it is a poem2955 or some other product of one's craft or a civic policy, if he makes the majority his master more than he needs, a Diomedean necessity makes their needs his needs, and forces him to do whatever the people in front of him will praise.2956 On the other hand, that these things are good or beautiful in truth, have you ever heard one of these orators give an argument that was not utterly ridiculous?2957
“Never have and never will.”
So keep all this empirical material in mind and think back to that other thing, the beautiful in itself as opposed to the many beautifuls, or any thing-of-such-and-such-a-character, for that matter, as (494) opposed to the many suches: is there any way the mass will tolerate2958 let alone adopt the outlook2959 that they exist and have any significance?2960
“Far from it.”
So it is impossible for the mass to be a philosopher?2961
“Impossible.”
And necessary that those who practice philosophy2962 be disparaged by them?
“Necessary.”
And disparaged also by these businessmen who work the crowd2963 and desire to please it for their own profit?
“Clearly.”
Given all this what hope do you see that the philosophical nature2964 can continue with its activity and make its way through to the goal?2965 Consider what we have already established. We’ve agreed that aptitude to learn, good memory, bravery and magnanimity2966 belong to this nature. As such, this sort of man even in childhood will stand out as best among the children, especially if his body should develop in a way that matches his soul. His family and fellow citizens will be planning to press him into civic service or the family business once he comes of age. Indeed they will subordinate themselves to him with requests and honors, trying to get an early purchase on his potential and flatter him on the come.
“That is indeed what tends to happen.”
So how do you expect him to react to such circumstances, especially if he comes from a big city and from the wealthy and noble class, and he’s good looking and large in stature to boot? Will he not be filled with the highest hopes, feel assured he will be able to make his mark among Greeks as well as foreigners, and elevate himself to the very pinnacle, full in his proud outline but empty of intelligence within?2967 And how do you suppose a person in his condition would react if you approached gently2968 and told him the truth, that for all he has, he lacks intelligence, that he needs this, that this is something a person cannot acquire without becoming a slave to the process of its acquisition. Do you suppose he will find this litany easy2969 to hearken to?
“Far from it.”
But if in fact,2970 given his inborn virtues and natural kinship with ideas and discussion, he had the insight2971 to see this is true, and he changed direction and was drawn toward philosophy, what do you suppose those other people would do as they watched his usefulness2972 to them coming to an end as well as their association with him? Would they stick at any act or any statement, or would they instead say and do whatever they could,2973 both to him in order to prevent his being persuaded and to the persuader to keep him from succeeding, whether by private intrigue or by public enactment and suit?
(495)“Much compels them to do so.”2974
And so is there any way the young man will practice philosophy?2975
“Barely.”
So now you can see2976 that we were not making a vicious argument2977 when we said that the very components of the philosophical nature, if raised in a bad environment, can in a way be responsible for its falling away from the practice of philosophy, they and the conventional goods, too—namely, wealth2978 and the related apparatus.
“No, the argument was quite a correct one.”2979
So there you have it, how many and how great2980 the forces that destroy and corrupt a man best endowed by his nature to pursue the greatest of callings, an endowment already rare among mankind, as we claimed;2981 and how it is from such sources that the greatest malefactors in politics and in private life flow forth, as well as those who accomplish the greatest good if they have the luck to flow in a different channel, whereas a man of slight natural gifts has never had a great effect whether in private or public life.
“Quite true.”2982
And now that those who were best suited to pursue her have fallen away and left her neglected and unfulfilled,2983 behold how instead they for their part go on to live lives unsuited to themselves and untrue, while she is left behind by them like an orphan bereft of her proper family, the prey of unworthy interlopers who handle her shamefully and bring ill repute upon her, that scornful reputation you repeated above, how those who commune2984 with her are in some cases utterly incapable men but in most cases are men capable of many evils.2985
“These are indeed the criticisms one hears.” 2986
And likely true for that matter. Men of lesser natural gifts see the field wide open before them, a field still full of high sounding talk and pretensions.2987 Like men who break out of prison and run to a temple for asylum they gleefully drop their tools to hop, skip, and jump over to philosophy, those of them at least who were especially clever at their particular specialty. For in comparison with the trades, given what they are, philosophy retains her lofty repute despite how poorly she fares. It is this esteem they are after, though the majority of them come to her with an incomplete endowment of natural gifts, and come from jobs that have left their mark not only on their bodies the way such work tends to do, but also have left their souls puny and enervated,2988 inevitably so.
In your judgment do they make any better a spectacle2989 than the bronze smith that has come into some silver,2990 a little bald man who just emerged from his shackles and out of the bathhouse2991 spanking clean, decked out in a brand new shirt like a groom, just now rich enough to marry the daughter his master left behind unprotected and destitute?2992
(496)“No better at all.”
Then tell me what sorts of offspring such men as these are likely to father? Can they be anything but illegitimate and insignificant?
“Much compels them to be.”
What should we say then about people who are unworthy by their natural endowments to receive education? When they approach her and commune with her so outmatched, what sorts of thoughts are likely to be engendered, and what opinions? Would they not be the sort of clever claptrap one would find only appropriate coming from them, but nothing that is authentic or worthwhile by virtue of its connection with true mindfulness?2993
“Utterly true.”
Utterly small then is the remnant of persons left to commune with philosophy on her level. Perhaps he is a person protected by exile so that he can remain the noble and well raised character he was,2994 enough bereaved of corrupting influences that he can continue in philosophy’s company according to his natural inclination. Perhaps a person of large soul born in a city so small he can despise it and look beyond, or may be he is the rare case of the person who out of his superior makeup despises the trade he finds himself in and deserves instead to approach her.2995 So also perhaps could the so-called bridle of our friend Theages enable one to stay in contact with her. In his case he was completely qualified to fall away from philosophy2996 except that nursing his sicknesses2997 held him back from participating in political affairs. My own case of the nay-saying daemon is not worth mentioning: while it’s possible somebody else in the past had such a sign, it’s just as likely nobody did.
Now those who find themselves2998 among this small population and have tasted this possession, so sweet and ambrosial, and conversely have recognized the madness of the crowd for what it is, and know that virtually everybody involved in politics is involved for unhealthy reasons, and that one will find no ally there he could call to his side in defense of a just cause so as to save it, but that he is a man fallen among a pack of beasts, as it were, unable either to join them in their nefarious plots nor to pit himself against them as one man against all, and that comes to know before he could achieve any gain for his city or his friends by fighting on their behalf he would end up useless both to himself and to the others2999—once he weighs all these facts in his mind and keeps quiet and minds his own business, and like a man taking shelter behind some little wall from a storm of dust and hailstones borne by the winds, and watches the others take their fill of utter lawlessness,3000 he is satisfied to make his way through this life staying clear any way he can from the contagion of injustice and impious acts3001 and looks forward to his release from it with good hope, joyful and at peace.3002
(497)“But to finish life having achieved this much would be no mean feat.”3003
But neither would he have achieved the great feat he could have, chancing as he did to live in a city not suited to him. In a suitable one he will3004 conversely grow to greatness and save both his own friends and the common weal. But3005 as to the topic of philosophy, why she has gotten this reputation and how it is an unwarranted one, I feel we have said about the right amount,3006 unless you have something to add for your part.
D.3d: Government by King-Philosopher is Possible
“No, I have nothing to add on those topics, but which of the existing kinds of government are you thinking is suited to philosophy?”
Not a one, and that’s what I am complaining about, that among the existing ways of organizing a city none is worthy of the philosophical nature, and also about the way nature is skewed and altered, the way a foreign seed planted in some new environment has a tendency to leave its own qualities behind and is forced take on local ones. This strain, too, at present, is barely holding on to its own proper nature and powers, but is falling away from them and taking on a new character. When it takes root in the best kind of city, best as itself is best, we all shall come to see that this city was something truly divine all along, and that other cities are merely human, measured by the natures of their citizens and the kinds of institutions they have. Clearly your next question will be which kind of city this is.
“Wrong! It wasn’t this I was going to ask but whether this best city is the one we have created in our conversation or some other type.”
In most respects it is indeed that city, but there was that one thing we mentioned before, that the city would need always to have a certain something in it that would preserve the idea of the constitution that you3007 had in mind when as her lawgiver you laid down her laws.
“Yes that was mentioned.”
Mentioned it was, but left insufficiently clear. I was afraid it would make you all try to obstruct3008 me, by which you would make clear how long and arduous the demonstration would be, a thing you have since already done.3009 Mind you this last question, too, will not exactly be easy.3010
“Which?”
The question how the city is to remain involved in philosophy so as to avoid its own demise. All great projects are plagued with vicissitude. The saying is very true: fine things are difficult.
“Nevertheless, let the demonstration reach its goal and completion, by this last becoming plain.”
It’s not a lack of desire that prevents but if anything3011 a lack of ability. You’re sitting right next to me and so you can see how eager and committed I am to try. Watch now with what eagerness and daring I speak when I broach the idea that exactly the opposite of the current practice with regard to philosophy must become the city’s rule.
“How is that?”
Currently, those who take it up at all do so as lads, (498) soon past their childhood but before they have to become householders and breadwinners.3012 Just as they approach the most difficult aspect of the practice they leave it off, and yet think of themselves as fully philosophized (that most difficult aspect I refer to is the work with arguments). After this when now and then they are encouraged to sit through a course of lectures by others who are occupied with philosophy, the times they go to the trouble of accepting the invitation they put on airs of superiority for doing so, as having time to spare for such things. As old age approaches, with some exceptions, the flame is quenched more finally than the sun Heraclitus talks about,3013 to the point that they never rekindle it.
“And how must it be instead?”
Quite the opposite.3014 While they are lads and young they should be engaged in a youthful version of education and philosophy,3015 and they should lavish special care on their bodies during the time they sprout up and become virile, so as to render it a secure support for their philosophy. When they come of age and the soul begins to reach maturity, they should increase the gymnastic that strengthens the soul.3016 And when their physical energy begins to wane and they divert what is left of it away from politics and military activities, at that point they should be put out to pasture and allowed to do nothing else unless they have free time,3017 if they are to live a happy life and after death to take on a role in the world beyond that befits the way they lived.
“I have to admit you are making your case with eagerness; but I’ll bet the majority among3018 your auditors are even more eager to strain against what you say and are not about to be persuaded in the least, starting with Thrasymachus.” 3019
Don’t try to stir things up between Thrasymachus and me, who've just now become friends and before were never enemies anyway.3020 No, we won't give up trying one bit, until we either succeed at persuading both your man Thrasymachus and the others,3021 or give them some little advantage in their next life, when they will be born again3022 only to encounter such arguments as these all over again.
“A time of course not so far off.”3023
Not far off at all when you measure it against all of time.3024 As to your point that the many3025 are not persuaded by this course of reasoning, that’s not surprising. Their eyes have never witnessed what thought has now borne witness to,3026 though they have seen such neat contrivances made of mere words3027—like the jingle we just now chanced upon. It is a man whose life jibes3028 with and is assimilated to virtue as nearly as human substance can allow, in action as well as mind, (499) ruling in a city virtuous in all his ways, that they have never beheld,3029 not one nor many.3030 Or do you fancy they have?
“No way have they seen that!”3031
Nor for that matter,3032 my blessed3033 friend, have they witnessed enough of arguments beautiful and free3034 with their ears,3035 the sort that seek after truth straining with vigor any way they can for knowing’s sake and admire only from afar3036 the dazzling subtleties and eristic trickery that stab at3037 opinion and at defeating and castigating others, whether in the law courts or in private gatherings.3038
“Nor these have they heard.”
“So now you can see3039 my reasons and see what I saw coming when, before, I made the argument despite my apprehensions,3040 forced by truth herself to continue,3041 and asserted that no city, no type of government, nor for the same reasons any individual man,3042 could ever reach his full potential unless and until these philosophers I describe, few as they are, scoundrels not a one nor useless though they are currently acclaimed to be, came by some conspiracy of chance and compulsion to put on the mantle of taking care of the city whether they wanted to or not, while the city for its part became heedful of them;3043 or else3044 if it chances that the sons3045 of persons currently holding the offices of rule and kingship, if not the incumbents themselves, fall stricken with a genuine passion for genuine philosophy by some stroke of divine providence. To argue that either or both of these two alternatives is impossible of realization seems to me entirely unreasonable. If it were, we could justly be ridiculed for confusing vain dreams with argumentation – don’t you think?
“I do.”3046
Then you’ll have to agree that if ever it has devolved out of necessity on those best qualified for philosophy to take on the care of the city at some time in the infinite stretches of the past, or if it is devolving on them currently in some clime foreign and far removed from our purview, or for that matter shall so devolve in the future, we will be ready to champion that event as proof that the constitution we have reached through reason has been possible, or is, or at least will be, just as soon as this Muse comes to prevail in a city. Indeed, our city in words is not inherently impossible of realization,3047 nor are the conceptions impossible to which our reasons lead—though even we would agree with others that realization would be difficult.
“You and I may both see it this way ... ”
But the many? Were you going to go on to say3048 they would not?
“Perhaps.”
Bless you Adeimantus, don’t come down so hard on the many.3049 I warrant you3050 they’ll have a different attitude3051 if only the argument be made to them not in condescension but with encouragement, defusing their prejudice against the love of learning—made that is by you3052—as to who you say the philosophers are, and if you show them in detail, (500) as we have done just now,3053 their special natural gifts and the sorts of things they concern themselves with in life, so that they will not assume you are talking about the ones that they have in mind. Or are you going to deny that even if they do stop to think about it they won’t change their attitude and answer differently?3054 Do you think a person responds harshly to a person who is not harsh or begrudges a person who does not begrudge him, as long as he himself is generous and mild in the first place?3055 I am going to anticipate your answer3056 and assert that it is only in some few that we find a disposition so harsh, not in the mass at large.
“I fully concur with you on this.”3057
And will you concur also on the central point, that who is to blame for their harsh attitude toward philosophy are those interlopers that rush in as a mob and slander their own kind,3058 who like to stir up hatred and trade only in gossip,3059 behaving all the while in ways that least befit philosophy?
“I will indeed.”
And I presume, Adeimantus, that the man who applies his thought to3060 the things that truly are has no leisure3061 to lower3062 his gaze to the dealings of men and to squabble with them and fill himself up with envy and rancor.3063 Instead it is ordered things forever invariant that he looks off to and contemplates, which each dispense with mistreatment and with suffering it likewise,3064 remaining harmonious in their manner instead and reasonable: he imitates these objects and conforms himself to them as far as he is able. Or do you imagine there is some way to avoid imitating the thing a person dwells with and admires?3065
“Impossible.”
With the divine and with the orderly our philosopher by definition dwells: orderly and divine he therefore will become, to the extent a human can. Slander we will always have with us.3066
“Always indeed.”
But if some by some necessity he were forced to bring what he looks off to and sees beyond into practice3067 and into the realm of human character, and to establish it in private and public life rather than merely conforming himself to it, do you imagine he would fail in the craft3068 of producing temperance and justice and the other virtues in their public3069 forms?
“Hardly.”
But if hoi polloi come to perceive that what we are saying about him is true, will they chafe at the philosophers and disbelieve us3070 when we say that a city can by no other means achieve happiness than by assigning its portrait to be painted by artists3071 who follow the divine model?
“They will not be harsh if they actually do perceive3072 this; but (501) what is this portraiture you bring up?”
Imagine them taking up the city and the human mores found within it as if it were a canvas, and first let them wipe it clean—a thing not at all easy to do, but you recognize that whether it’s easy or not the painters I have in mind will differ from others in being unwilling even to take up the portrait of the individual man or his city and to lay down the outlines of any laws, before they are either handed over a blank slate or have wiped it clean themselves.
“And they are right to insist.”
Thereupon won’t they begin to sketch the outlines of the constitution?
“Of course.”
And as they work to fill in the picture wouldn’t they be continually looking back and forth, off to the just by nature and the beautiful and the temperate and all rest, and then back toward the version of it that3073 they are introducing into the world of men by mingling and mixing from the palette of men’s activities and occupations a version that is human, but3074 taking as their clue at every point what Homer3075 called the godlike or3076 godly element that finds its way into human form. I imagine here and there they would make erasures and try again until they had rendered the human characters as dear to the gods3077 as they can be rendered.
“The drawing at least would be quite fine.”
Are we making any headway at persuading those people you3078 described a while ago as ready to run at us full speed, that this is the character of the person we were praising in their presence as the portrayer of constitutions,3079 on account of whom they chafed at us for giving over the cities to him? Having now heard what we actually have in mind are they becoming milder?
“A lot milder if they are sober about it.”
In what step after all3080 could they could dispute what we say? Perhaps the philosophers are not the lovers of reality and truth?3081
“To dispute that would be absurd.”
That their personal nature described by us is not kindred3082 to the best?
“This too they cannot dispute.”
That if the environment3083 affords this nature the appropriate exercises and activities it will turn out virtuous and philosophical, if any nature could? Or is it more likely the other types will turn out that way, the ones we distinguished3084 from the true philosophers?
“Presumably not!”
So will they still react with violence3085 when we argue that unless and until a city falls under the command of the philosophical type there will be no surcease of ills afflicting both it and its citizens, nor will the constitution we have described in our leisurely tale become perfect in fact?
“With less violence perhaps.”3086
Are you willing to say more than that, not only “With less,” but that they have become (502) entirely tame and fully persuaded, so as to make them accept the conclusion out of shame if nothing else?3087
“Very much so.”
Then let it be that these people of yours have now been fully persuaded of our position. But further, could anyone raise the objection that kings or whoever hold the offices of power will never in fact have an offspring endowed with the philosophical nature?3088
“No one could.”
Assuming then that such are born, could anyone argue that there is an overwhelming necessity that they become corrupted? That it is difficult for them to be saved even we agree; but that throughout the full stretch of time, out of all the men there were and are and will be not a one will be saved: could anybody argue this against us?
“Just how could he argue it?”
And yet a single such man would be able, assuming his city were persuaded as we have persuaded these, to bring into perfect completion all these changes that are now thought unbelievable.
“Able he would be.”
Able since as ruler he would institute all the laws and practices we have established in our argument—unless somehow it is impossible that the citizens should be willing to act according to them.
“This is no way impossible.”
And as to the things we found reasonable, would it be somehow shocking or impossible that others should find them reasonable also?3089
“I at least don’t think so.”
And that they are the noblest measures, in addition to being possible, we have sufficiently proved in what we have said.
“Sufficiently.”
Thus the argument compels3090 us now to say that as to legislation what we have established by argument is the best arrangement, if it could actually occur, and that for it to occur is difficult but is not impossible.
“So it compels us.”
Now that this argument has reached its goal with no strength to spare, we must cover the remaining issue. How we are to ensure, through their course of studies and their exercises and activities, that the preservers of the constitution we need will actually be there for us, and what are the age criteria for their taking on these various tasks and studies?3091
“Cover it we must.”
My clever trick came to nothing, my attempt to avoid the distasteful difficulty about the assignment of wives, and the production of children and the installation of the rulers,3092 knowing as I did how the truth about them, when fully revealed, would be met with harsh resentment.3093 The need to go through these subjects as such3094 arrived regardless, and the questions about wives and children have been successfully answered. As to the question of the rulers we need to shift our position and begin again.3095
We had said, if you remember, (503) that our guards had to show their patriotism through tests of pleasure and pain; that they had to show they were able to maintain their belief and dedication to the city’s interests in the face of toils and fears and any other shock; that the man who proved unable would be dropped from the group;3096 that the one who emerged unscathed3097 like gold tested in fire was to be installed3098 as ruler and given honors during his life and to be memorialized after death3099 with monuments. So much had we established when the conversation got off its path and began to lie low in fear of stirring up what we now find ourselves in the midst of.
D.3d.1: EXCURSUS on Socrates’s Summary (502D4-503B4)
We have to stop eavesdropping on the conversation and speak amongst ourselves about the accuracy of Socrates’s portrayal of what has happened, since we, too, have been witnesses and therefore participants to some degree in this conversation. Indeed, though he is absent from the conversation, Plato’s presence consists exactly of this, that he has made us feel as if he is not there but that we are direct participants in the conversation of his characters.
First (502D4-6) there is the fact that Socrates includes the paradox of the philosopher king among the paradoxes he had sought to avoid bringing up, although this paradox was not in fact raised by Polemarchus and the others at the beginning of Book Five, nor even alluded to in what they make Socrates “promise” to explain about his statement at 423E. Both this final paradox and, in all strictness, the first paradox of women and men sharing the job of ruling, which, with the term κτῆσις, Socrates incidentally omits to mention at this point, were not among the things Polemarchus asked about but were inserted into the treatment by Socrates himself.
Second, Socrates now speaks (502E2-503A7) as if the point at which the conversation began to avoid dealing with paradox was all the way back at the end of Book Three when the rulers among the guards were being selected, after which he produced a picture of the rulers settling their encampment in a geographically appropriate place (412B8-417B9) and living in simplicity. It is true that the argument was interrupted at this point, not by Polemarchus and his request that Socrates take up what he has postponed but by Adeimantus and the objection that was provoked in him by the very image of their simple life. Socrates, he complained, had not made the rulers as happy as he should have (Book Four, init., 419A1ff).
Socrates’s response to Adeimantus became a treatment, in partnership with him, of how the internal order of the city made it a unified whole, and this led to a second culmination of the construction of the city (ᾠκισμένη ..., 427C6). It was at the end of that treatment that Socrates casually passed over the issues of wives and children (423E), and there the conversation was nevertheless able to move on, to what had been agreed upon as being the next thing, the search for justice in the city en gros (427E6-434C) with Glaucon taking on the role of interlocutor, and then to the experimental application of the versions of the virtues en gros to the soul (434D-445B). The experiment produced the unexpected discovery that justice and the rest of virtue is an inward state rather than a mode of interpersonal behavior, a result that in all strictness made the construction of the city obsolete (443B7-444A6).3100
Socrates at that moment (444C4ff) had suggested that from the heights they had reached (σκοπιά, 445C4) they would do well to revert to civic models en gros so as to firm up their result by studying the forms of vice as they might appear in other kinds of states. It was this reversion that provided Polemarchus with a plausible foothold for his scandalizing challenge, the objection that he provokes Adeimantus to voice on his behalf, that Socrates should hardly move on to the other types of state until he has given a fully adequate account of this one (Book Five init., 449C2-50A2). There is a certain mendacity in their claim that they had long since been waiting for Socrates to treat at greater length what he chose to pass over at 423E (πάλαι περιμένομεν, 449D1) since there were many opportunities for them to bring this up along the way; but quite apart from that, the intervening discovery of the inward character of virtue made this objection totally irrelevant and therefore impertinent.
In his summary of what has happened here in Book Six, Socrates speaks as if he has forgotten his conversation with Adeimantus at the beginning of Book Four although it was during this conversation that the paradoxical points were mentioned (423E). Also, he speaks as if he had long been suppressing the topic of the philosopher king and indeed as if his continuation with the original program, to find justice in the state en gros and then to project it onto the individual, were part of his evasion. How are we to account for these seemingly careless inaccuracies?
Scholars’ treatment of the dramatic transitions in the dialogues tend to take for granted the ones that make sense and to explain away the ones that don’t as a literary apparatus by which Plato inserts himself into the conversation so as to expatiate on something that suits his fancy, despite the fact that such self-insertions would utterly vitiate whatever dramatic value the conversation might otherwise be accumulating. If on the other hand we read the book as it presents itself, attentively, seriously and liberally, it becomes plain that Polemarchus at the beginning of Book Five meant to bring on a scandal by pointing to 423E, and that he succeeds to spread the sense of scandal to Adeimantus and through him to Glaucon. Socrates immediately expresses his dismay and warns them this query is only the tip of the iceberg, because he recognizes that the interruption is a huge regression from the heights they had reached (445B4-5), that the construction of the city as a mediating metaphor for discovering virtue had failed to take root deep enough to have served its purpose, and that the fact that his virtual wards, Glaucon and Adeimantus, have been distracted from the teaching will require remedy through an elaborate and indirect argument, whether it be by restoring, resuscitating, and remedying the metaphor, or by some other method. As we saw, his treatment of the paradoxes in Book Five consisted not in making them less paradoxical but in requiring his interlocutor Glaucon to rise by increments above the doxic level on which scandal operates, and rely more and more radically on reason in the face of ridicule, culminating in his own introduction of the most incredible notion that such reliance implies, the paradox of the philosopher king, and Glaucon’s resolution to be his ally against the indignation, anger, and even mob violence that such a notion would arouse.
With Adeimantus in Book Six a second drama takes place. The moment Glaucon is about to agree that the philosophical type is beyond reproach Adeimantus cannot abide it but interrupts to say, ‘Nobody can gainsay the clever and manipulative questioning method of Socrates; and yet it has nothing to do with the truth, as even he would see if he simply opened his eyes and looked around him (487B1-C6). The fact of the matter is, philosophical types are mostly weirdoes and scoundrels, or at best incompetent.’
The charge against philosophers and philosophy, whoever and whatever he takes philosophers to be, is also a charge against Socrates, though attenuated. In fact Adeimantus has brought the very charge of argumentative sophistry – making the weaker argument the stronger --that will be brought against him at his trial. In essence, Adeimantus has accused Socrates of the same things Thrasymachus accused him of in Book One, except that Thrasymachus was brash, confrontational and crass, whereas Adeimantus’s remarks are circumspect, attenuated, and attributed to anonymous personages.
We may not simply ignore the motive for his interruption. At the very least Adeimantus is playing the devil’s advocate—Socrates certainly is thinking so when he asks whether Adeimantus himself thinks the charges are false or true (487D6-7). But when Adeimantus says he does not know and wants to know Socrates’s response regardless, he passes over acknowledging that he is playing devil’s advocate exactly in order to cast the focus onto Socrates and require him to defend his position regardless of his own motives. Moreover, just as Thrasymachus had found Socrates’s conversation with Polemarchus tediously peaceable,3101 Adeimantus seems to be provoked and peeved by the sweet description of the blameless (Μῶμος, 487A6) philosopher and the chorus of virtues that Socrates and Glaucon, by an easy-going kind of associative logic, have assembled on his behalf.
In his response Socrates as usual disarms the belligerent edge of his interlocutor's complaint by agreeing with the charges,3102 and then subsequently refuting and defusing them one by one. Useless the philosophers indeed are—to those who will not use them; corrupt the young philosophers do become—the moment they abandon philosophy; scoundrels you will surely find bearing the banner of philosophy—exactly because certain paltry types clamor there under false pretenses; weakness it is that prevents them from acting unjustly, a weakness that keeps climbing up to the podium in the courts. In order to reverse each of Adeimantus’s points Socrates unburdens himself of an unsolicited sociology of knowledge and discourse in a democratic regime,3103 deploying a remarkable panoply of images3104 and high rhetoric well suited to the brother so easily preoccupied by the evasions of literature.3105 Indeed if we ask for a model of the well bred young man with philosophical potential who is spoiled by the power of public opinion and his parents' respect for it, it is this very man who complained in Book Two that his parents failed to require him to do the right thing. The most Socrates can do is then to re-draw all the conclusions he had reached with Glaucon and to require Adeimantus (and his imaginary objector) to accept them one by one, and locking each door as they pass through it to prevent his going back on what they have agreed to (501C4-502C8).
Once this course is complete Socrates reaches the summary we have stopped to analyze (502D4ff). He expresses relief at completing a task that he knew all along would be unpleasant in the face of the envy and discomfort it would incite if it were taken up with all seriousness—bringing now into the open the motives behind the resistance against the argument and the interruption these motives led to.
It is because he is responding to these dramatic undercurrents that Socrates includes in his summary the controversy of the philosopher king along with the others, and this is why in the course of drawing Adeimantus himself out of the quagmire (498C5-500D2) he can more and more explicitly identify the motive of Polemarchus’s interruption as envy and resentment,3106 caused by and directed against free philosophical inquiry, in the very deployment of which the lives and values of most persons, and perhaps more importantly any group of persons, are shown by comparison to be of little worth. Although Polemarchus leads Adeimantus to assert they have been waiting for Socrates to return to the community of wives, it was more likely the radical conclusion of Book Four that provoked him to interrupt when he did, which also and for the same reasons accounts for the success of his interruption among the rest of the company.3107 And as to the reversion all the way back to Book Three as if Book Four and the crucial application of the imaginary city to the soul with its paradoxical conclusion had not taken place, the reason is that Socrates is now proposing to revert to the imaginary city, picking up the guardians right where we had left them. For now, in the intervening argument, we have discovered these guards need to become philosophers.
To return to our Silent Partner in all this, the only indications Plato gives us of the undercurrents at work are negative ones. He has contrived the dramatic detail that Socrates cannot hear the words with which Polemarchus incites Adeimantus to interrupt (449B5), and he has his Socrates forbear to speculate on what Polemarchus might have said to affect his interlocutor and his ward. Instead the two of them, Plato and his Socrates, leave it to us to fill in the blanks.
D.3e: Establishing the Philosopher as Ruler: His Education
Though we shuddered to assert what by now we have braved, we may now go further to assert this culminating thesis also, that to perfect our guards we must adopt the policy of making them philosophers (503B3ff).
“Let it be asserted.”
Imagine in your mind’s eye3108 how far and few between you will find them to be. After all, the natural endowments we required them to have only seldom congeal in a single person but most often show up scattered among many. People good at learning with good memories and quick and sharp wits and the other virtues that come with these don’t tend, if3109 they are vigorous and large-minded in their habits of thought, to be the sort that are willing to live life moderately, calm and steady.3110 Instead these sorts are driven in all directions by their vigor, and whatever ingredient of stability they might have had is utterly expelled. Conversely, the more stable characters who do not adapt easily to change—the very types you would employ in positions requiring trust and imperturbability in the face of the dangers of war—exhibit these same characteristics when they study. They are stolid and slow to learn as if they had been drugged, and they tend to get drowsy and full of empty yawning3111 when it is time to go through their lessons. Still, we blithely insist they be fine and good in both ways3112 as a condition of their having any share in advanced studies and the honor of holding office.
“And it is right that we should.”
Don’t you imagine this condition will be filled only seldom?
“Of course.”
Then we must test them not only with the toils and fears and pleasures we mentioned before,3113 but also must add tests we there passed over,3114 and require them to exercise3115 their minds in a wide spectrum of lessons so as to investigate3116 whether their natural endowment will enable them to bear the greatest lessons also, or will (504) shirk3117 them as they might have done in the other areas we tested.3118
D.3e.1: The Greatest Study
“Well I certainly agree with you it would be appropriate to try and ascertain this. But tell me what are these ‘greatest lessons’ you refer to?”
Do you remember the part of the discussion when we had set out three aspects or parts of the soul3119 and were working our way together3120 through justice, temperance, bravery and wisdom to find out what each was in itself?
“If I forgot that I would justly be denied to hear the rest of what you have to say.”3121
Do you also remember what was said just before this?
“Just what?”
We argued3122 that although we could get the very finest insight about them by taking a longer and more circuitous way, a route that would make them completely manifest, we were able also to achieve an exposition that would follow suit with the character of the arguments we had made up to that point. You two3123 said that this would be satisfactory, and so this was the way the argument was carried out, a way that in my opinion lacked something in accuracy3124 but was satisfactory to you two, unless now you say otherwise.
“I thought it perfectly meet, and so it appeared to the others as well.”3125
And yet, my fine friend, to measure what is meet in such topics as these by a measure that lacks even a whit of the real and the true3126 can hardly be meet, itself.3127 An imperfect measure can’t be the measure of anything. Still, some are of the opinion3128 that the argument is sufficient as it stands and that we do not need to take the investigation any further.
“Yes, a good many suffer from that opinion—out of laziness.”3129
Yet this weakness must not be allowed to be present alongside the other attributes we look for in the person whose job is to guard the city and its laws!
“So it seems.”
Well there you have it, Adeimantus. The longer path is what a person of that sort is going to have to take.3130 He’ll have to study just as hard as he practices gymnastics. Otherwise, as we were just saying,3131 he will never reach that greatest object of study that he of all people must learn.
“I presume you are claiming3132 that the studies we have already done are not the greatest, but that there is something higher than justice and the other values we have talked about?”
Not only is the subject greater: our method to reach insight about it may no longer be a sort of sketch-work3133 we used before but must now be of the finest accuracy. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous after all if we should strain over getting things of smaller importance just right,3134 but when it came to the greatest matters we should deem that something less than the greatest accuracy was adequate?
“That is a perfectly fine attitude to adopt3135 – but as to this “greatest study” you have in mind and its subject matter, do you think anybody is going to let you off3136 without asking you to tell what it is?”
I hardly think so – and why don't you go ahead and do the asking?3137 Surely you’ve already heard the whole tale several times, but just now it has slipped your mind—or else you are too busy (505) thinking3138 how to hassle me with clever repartée. I suspect it’s the latter, since you’ve heard several times that the Idea of the Good3139 is the greatest object of study, the thing by their involvement with which3140 just acts3141 and the rest become useful and beneficial. And you know more: that I am about to say also that we lack an adequate insight into this subject, and that if we lack this insight, even if we conceivably master the rest you know it will be worthless for us to do so, just as possessing3142 something without goodness is useless. Unless of course you think there is some gain3143 in possessing per se, regardless of whether the possession is a good one,3144 rather than thinking that to be mindful and knowing3145 of everything there is to know, absent the good, is a knowledge not at all beautiful or good.
“By Zeus not I!”
Then let me add something else you certainly know, that most people are of the opinion that the good is pleasure, whereas the more subtle types think it is mindfulness.3146 And that yet those who hold this latter position are not able to demonstrate what kind of mindfulness it is but in the end are reduced to saying it is mindfulness of the good.3147
“Yes, a ridiculous outcome!”3148
Obviously it is, if on the one hand they criticize us for not knowing what the good is but then they make an argument to us as if we knew. For they say that mindfulness is per se a mindfulness of good, as if we should be able to construe what they mean by this collocation simply on the force of their mouthing the word “good.”
“Exactly right.”
And as for those who define the good as pleasure, how can their position be any less fixed and sure3149 than the alternative? Don’t you think they would have to admit there are pleasures that are bad? But then they would have to agree that the same thing is good and bad.
“Very much so.”
Although the topic is obviously clouded with controversy,3150 it is likewise3151 obvious that when it comes to the just and the beautiful3152 most people accept conventional beliefs in how they act, in what they own, and in what they believe,3153 even if the beliefs are not true, and yet that when it comes to the good nobody is satisfied to get only what is believed to be good but they seriously seek out what really is. Belief, in this one case, fails to be enough and is credited not at all.
“Very much so.”
This thing that every soul pursues3154 and3155 makes the goal of every action it takes, even though aware of it only by intuition and quite unable to get a decent grasp as to just what it is, nor even able to consign the matter to some stable prejudice as we can in other matters, while on the other hand because of its insufficient grasp it fails also to garner whatever is good in other things—are we actually3156 to (506) leave the best of our citizens, too, in the dark about a matter of so great and fine, into whose hands we shall be entrusting all?3157
“Hardly.”
But as to the just and the beautiful it's surely clear that if what is good about them is unknown, the guard they have secured for themselves will be of little worth unless he does know. Yet my intuition3158 tells me no one will know the former before he knows the latter. We can say therefore that our city will have received its finest crown if such a man should be her overseer3159 as does know this.
“So it must be. But as to you, Socrates which position do you take in the dispute? Do you say it is knowledge, or pleasure, or some third thing?”
What am I to do with you,3160 Adeimantus! You made it perfectly clear3161 some time ago3162 that the opinions of others on these matters would not be passing muster with you!
“Nor does it seem right to me that a person should be able to recite the opinions of others but not his own,3163 if the person has been working on the problem for such3164 a long time.”
And does it seem right to you for that “person” of yours3165 to speak on matters of which he is ignorant as if he were knowledgeable?
“Not at all to speak as knowledgeable but having a notion of them to be willing to tell what his notion is.”
Really! I said to him.3166 You are unaware, I presume, that opinions unsupported by knowledge are ugly and shameful, every single one. At best they are blind—or are you of the opinion that a person who holds a true opinion without intelligence3167 is any better than a blind man walking in a straight line?3168
“No better.”
So, would you want to contemplate things that are ugly, whether as being blind or as being crooked,3169 if you could3170 hear things bright and beautiful from others?
“Please, in the name of Zeus!” Glaucon said. “Don’t stop3171 just when you are on the verge of reaching the goal!3172 We will be satisfied with the kind of treatment you provided us before when you dealt with justice and temperance and the rest.
As if I, too, would not be quite satisfied to produce such a treatment!3173 And yet I fear I shall prove unable and that my reward for showing such eagerness might be to cut a ridiculous figure.3174 In any event, let us, my wondrous3175 friends, pass over for the time being3176 the question what goodness might be, itself and on its own. To reach an account of what I think just now about that is quite beyond the impetus and inspiration of our present inquiry.3177 Instead, I will consent to describe what seems to me its offspring and its nearest likeness, if you would welcome3178 this, or else we can let the whole thing go.
“Nay tell us! You can make good on giving us an account of the father some other time.”
D.3e.1a: The Sun
(507) Ideally I wish I had the ability to remit the whole account and you the ability to receive it,3179 rather than just the yield as I now propose. Do then receive and take in the following as the yield and offspring of the good itself, but take special care that I not unintentionally shortchange you with a counterfeit, in the account I am about to render.3180
“We will take all the care we can—just speak!”3181
So I will, as long as I can rely on your agreement3182 with several points I will remind you of, that have already been argued both here and elsewhere many times.
“Which points?”
The plurality of beautiful things and the plurality of good things and all the other specified pluralities that we speak of3183 as existing and distinguished from each other by our reasoning.
“We do speak thus.”
And the itself-beautiful3184 and itself-good and all the other distinct singularities3185 we posited just now as pluralities,3186 these also we posit in accordance with each one’s single characteristic; and recognizing the characteristic as a singular self-same reality, we speak of each of them as what that characteristic “really is.”3187
“So we do.”
And we speak of the pluralities as being objects of sight but not of intelligence3188 and conversely the pure characteristics as objects of intellect and not of sight.
“Right on all four points.”3189
With what part of ourselves do we see the objects of sight?
“With our vision.”
And likewise with hearing we hear the audibles and with the other senses we sense all the other sensibles?
“Yes—and so?”
Well, have you ever recognized3190 how much more exceedingly3191 lavish the fashioner of our senses made the power of seeing and being seen?
“I can’t say I have.”
Well look at it the way I do. Is there something additional that hearing and sound need, different from the two of them, for the one to hear and the other to be heard, such that if this third something is absent the one won’t be doing any hearing and the other won’t be heard?
“No, nothing.”
And I’d guess that of the other senses many—not to say all—don’t need anything, either. Can you mention one that does?
“I can’t.”3192
But with vision and the visible,3193 don’t you recognize3194 that it needs a supplement?
“How so?”
Say the ability to see resides in a given person’s eyes, and say the person is trying to use it; and say there is color3195 in the things he is trying to apply it to.3196 If a certain third thing is absent whose very nature is uniquely suited to just this situation, are you aware that vision will see nothing and that the colored things will be invisible?
“What is this thing you are saying they need?”3197
Just the thing you3198 know by the name of “light.”
“Yes, what you are saying is true.”
Therefore it is not by an insignificant kind of measure3199 that the yoke is superior that connects seeing and the ability to be seen, (508) to the yokes of the others, unless of course light is a thing of little honor.
“Well it’s far from being a thing of little honor.”
And which of the gods in heaven can you thank for being in charge of this, whose light makes sight able to see so admirably and the visible things to be seen?
“The same one you do3200 and everybody else does: the Sun is obviously the god you are asking after.”
And is not sight by its nature related to the Sun as follows?
“How?”
Sight is not the Sun, neither in itself nor in the seat where it occurs, the thing we call the eye.
“Of course not.”
And yet the eye is the most sunlike3201 of all the organs of sense.
“Very much.”
And the power that the eye has it receives as an influx from the Sun as if parceled out to it.
“Quite so.”
And can we not say conversely that the Sun is not sight, but while responsible for sight it comes to be seen by the sight that it caused?3202
“So we can.”
So now you have my account3203 of the Good’s offspring, which the Good gave birth to as an analogue to itself in the sense that the relation the Good has in the intelligible realm with the intellect and the things that are intellected,3204 is exactly the same relation the Sun has in the visible realm with seeing and the things that are seen.
“How? Take me through the steps in more detail.”
In the case of the eyes, as you know,3205 when you stop looking at things whose colors the day casts its light upon but turn instead to those upon which the glares of night3206 are cast, their vision becomes dull and becomes like that of the blind, as if their ability to see were corrupted.3207
“Yes indeed.”
But then when the sun shines down upon such things, the eyes see distinctly and in these same3208 eyes the power of sight seems to be3209 present.
“And so?”
So also conceive3210 the analogous element3211 I have in mind that resides in the soul. Whenever it succeeds to focus upon something on which the light of truth and reality shines, it achieves intelligence3212 and comes to know it as such, and appears in itself to possess mind; but when it attends to a thing riddled with shadows and darkness—something in the realm of coming to be and passing away3213—it opines and loses its edge, taking on opinions topsy turvy,3214 and in turn acts like something that has no intelligence.3215
“Yes, like that.”
Alright then:3216 This thing that does supply the truth to the things that can be known and the power to the knower to know them you may say is the Idea of the Good.3217 Since it is responsible3218 for both knowledge and of truth,3219 although you may think of it as being one of the known truths,3220 still—however fine these two things knowing and truth may be—if you adopt the view instead3221 that in itself it is distinct from them and finer still than they you will be adopting the correct view; while as to knowledge (509) and truth, as in the analogy it was proper to think of light and vision as being sunlike while believing either of them to be the sun was incorrect, so also here it is correct to think of both these as being good-like whereas to believe either of them is good in itself is not correct. Instead, one must honor the good as having a greater3222 way of being.
“The beauty you describe it to have is far beyond us, if in addition to providing us what knowledge and truth we have it holds a rank above them in beauty! For I take it you do not mean to be giving the palm to pleasure.”3223
Be still, clever boy! Instead let’s take the analogy further. You will be able to say that the sun not only provides the visible world with its ability to be seen, but also provides its coming to be and growth and nourishment, while itself not being the coming to be3224 it enjoys.
“How after all could it be?”3225
Likewise then, for the realm of things known, not only is their knowability conferred upon them by the good, but also their existence and what they are is added to them, while in itself the good is not a what but rather beyond whatness, because of its having been there before they were and having the power to make them what they are.3226
“Apollo! What a dazzling beyonditude!”3227 said Glaucon, with a big laugh.
You asked for it, forcing me to present my thoughts on the subject!
“Yes and I won’t let you stop, either. Go through the simile of the Sun again if there is something else in it you’ve left out.”
Oh well, there’s plenty I’ve left out.
“I won’t let you leave out the least detail.”
I imagine I will leave out quite a lot; but I will say as much as I can under the present circumstances,3228 and will leave out nothing as far as in me lies.
“Yes, don’t!”
D.3e.1b: The Line
Alright then conceive3229 of this. As we are saying, there is a pair of entities and the one is sovereign over the noetic kind or region3230 while the other is sovereign3231 over the visible (I won’t call it “the heavens” lest you think I am making a play on words).3232 Are you with me so far? A pair3233 of types, the visible and the intelligible?
I’m with you.
Alright then3234 thinking of them as a line cut into two unequal3235 sections, cut each section by the same proportion as the original—the section representing the seen world and the section representing the intellected3236 world—and you will be able to represent, in the relation of their degrees of clarity and unclarity,3237 first in the seen world, by the one subsection, likenesses, under which I include first shadows (510) and then images that appear in water and in anything else that is dense and smooth and shiny3238 in its constitution, and all the rest of this sort of thing, if I have made my meaning intelligible.3239
“Quite intelligible.”
Alright then, as to the second subsection posit it to be what the first subsection3240 resembles: the animals we see around us, all the plants and everything that falls into the category of artifact.3241
“I so posit.”
Would you be willing to assert that this section is also3242 divided in accordance with its subsections’ relations of truth and the lack thereof: that as the opined stands to the known, so also does the thing that has been made to be alike stand toward that to which it was made to be alike?3243
“I certainly would.”3244
Then consider in turn the noetic3245 section, also, how it is to be subdivided.
“How?”
Such that one subsection would be where3246 soul finds itself3247 compelled, using as likenesses the things that were imitated before,3248 to investigate by starting from things taken for granted,3249 unable3250 to make her way source-ward to its cause3251 but only end-ward to its effect; while in the other subsection, in turn, the source-ward one3252 toward a source not merely taken for granted, she escapes taking things for granted3253 and makes her way free from the likenesses connected with the other subsection3254 using ideas alone and moving through ideas alone.
“Well that I did not quite get!” 3255
Then let’s try it again,3256 since having heard this preliminary version you will have an easier time understanding.3257 I imagine you are aware3258 that people who work3259 in geometry and calculations and other such specialties, taking for granted the odd and the even, and the geometrical figures and three kinds of angles, and other things akin to these according to the particular paths of study, acting that is as if they already knew these and making them as such3260 their hypotheses—that such people feel no incumbency to give any further account of them to themselves or to others,3261 as if apparent3262 to anyone; and instead proceeding from them as if from a true source and cause,3263 leaving that question behind3264 but going through the steps and maintaining consistency, that they conclude with the step they originally set out to search for.3265
“Yes, yes. This much I am aware of.”
Well is it also true to say that they use3266 the ideas you can see with your eyes, and focus their arguments on them,3267 although they are not thinking3268 about these but about those other things3269 that these resemble, making their arguments for the sake of the quadrilateral itself and the diameter per se, not the one they draw? And so it is in the other specialties. These objects3270 that they mold or draw3271 as such have shadows and images in water, but they turn them back into images again,3272 whereas3273 the purpose of their investigation is (511) to catch sight of those other things in their very truth, things which a person could never see except by the vision of thought.3274
“What you say about them is true.”
Accordingly3275 I was saying3276 that although this was noetic3277 in character, soul3278 necessarily becomes involved in investigating it by taking things for granted, moving not source-ward since she has no way to rise above her hypotheses and escape them, but instead uses as images the objects3279 they had also been likened to by what was below them3280 despite the fact that in comparison to those below they had always been honored and valued for their clarity.3281
“Now I understand what you are saying about the section that is under the control of3282 the geometrical technique of inquiry and kindred specialties.”
Move on then to understand what I was saying3283 about the other section of the noetic3284 part, that it is the part that reasoning unaided3285 attaches itself to by its ability to converse,3286 treating hypotheses not as causes and principles but literally as hypotheses—things to step on and use as places to set off from,3287 toward3288 the place where assumption becomes unnecessary, to the beginning and source of them all,3289 and grasping this then to follow back down consecutively its consequences, and staying in that mode3290 to descend to the end,3291 using no apparatus3292 of perception in any way at all3293 but only pure ideas moving through ideas to ideas, so as to reach its culmination in ideas.3294
“I am understanding, though not adequately—after all it seems what you describe in words is a complicated thing to carry out in actions. But I do3295 understand that you are drawing a distinction to the effect that the portion of the real and the noetic contemplated by the power of dialogical thinking3296 is more clear3297 than the object of the so-called3298 special arts, in which the principles or starting points of thought are simply what they take for granted, and where, though they are indeed compelled to use thought rather than the senses to contemplate3299 what they are contemplating, since their study does not move up to the source but down from what they have taken for granted, you judge that they never achieve intelligence3300 about them even though3301 they were by nature intelligible all along if connected with the source;3302 and you use this word ‘thinking’ for the state of mind in which the geometricians and the others like them find themselves to be, rather than intellection, as if thinking were something in between3303 opinion and intelligence.”3304
You have taken it in quite adequately.3305 Just add this for me: to the four sections of the line there correspond four kinds of psychological event.3306 The experience of intelligence3307 corresponds to the highest section; to the second corresponds the experience of thinking. Give the name of trusting to the third and guesswork to the last, and then rank them in a proportion, with the experiences sharing in truth by the same proportions as the sections share in clarity.
“I understand, I acquiesce in your assertions, and I rank the experiences as you recommend.”
END OF BOOK SIX
BOOK SEVEN
D.3e.1c: The Cave
(514) Next, Socrates tells us he said,3308 you must conceive of the human condition3309 as it pertains to learning and ignorance by likening it to the following sort of experience.3310 Imagine humans living underground in a sort of cave that is open onto the light back in the rear with a long pathway extending all the way through. They have been living here since childhood with arms, legs and heads3311 bound so that their bodies are fixed in place and they can only look forward. Turning their heads around is out of the question due to the way they are bound,3312 and what light they have3313 is the glare3314 of a fire burning above and at some distance behind them. Up between the fire and the prisoners there is a pathway alongside which you can see a low wall has been built, like the one puppeteers have in front of their audience,3315 behind which their puppets move back and forth.
“I get the picture.”
Then add men to your picture, on the other side of the wall, who move objects back and forth that protrude above it—all kinds of artifacts and human statuettes (515) and animal ones, too, made of stone and wood and all sorts of stuff; and have some of the men accompany the movements of the objects they are carrying with voices or sounds, the way puppeteers do,3316 while others keep silent.
“Strange is the image you conceive of, with strange prisoners.”
Strange like us.3317 First of all, do you think people in their situation would ever have seen anything of themselves or of each other besides their3318 shadows, cast by the firelight onto the cave’s wall in front of them?
“How could they, if they have been forced to hold their heads immobile throughout their lives?”
And what do they see of the objects3319 being borne back and forth? Isn’t it the same? So if they were able to converse with each other wouldn’t you assume that their way would be to call by the same names as the things that are actually present behind them the very things they were seeing?3320
“Necessarily.”
And what if there were an echo in the cave that bounced off the wall opposite them? If one of the items moving by made a sound do you think they could help but assume that what was making the sound was the shadow moving by?3321
“By God I’ll bet they would assume that!”
So in every way3322 people so situated would take the real and true to be nothing but the shadows of the artifacts.
“Quite necessarily.”
So contemplate now what it would be like for them to be freed from their bonds and healed of their mindlessness3323 by a change in their condition3324 along the following lines. Say the bonds of one of them were one day loosed and he was forced abruptly to stand up and turn his head around and start walking and to look upward toward the light: in trying to do all this imagine how he would be pained and because of the glare3325 would be unable to make out3326 the objects whose shadows he had been watching.3327 How would he react if someone told him that all he had seen before was sheer nonsense,3328 but that now his very vision had improved3329 because he had come somehow closer to reality and in turning around had become oriented toward things more real?3330 Especially if that someone went on to point out the separate3331 objects he saw moving by and asked him to discuss3332 what each of them is? Don’t you think that the man would be at a loss3333 and find himself thinking the things he had seen before were more authentic3334 than what he was now being shown?
“Very much.”
And if he forced the man to gaze directly at the light, that he would feel pain in his eyes and try to avoid this by turning back to the things he had been able to take in before, and would find himself believing that these latter were actually more distinct and certain3335 than the things he was now being shown?
“Yes.”
But if one continued dragging him by main force out of that place, along the ascending path so steep and awkward to climb, and did not let up before he had dragged him all the way into the light of the sun, that he would be miserable and (516) bothered all the while he was being dragged along and that once he had reached the light his eyes would be so full of sunbeams that he would be unable to see even one3336 of the things he was just now told3337 were the real and true things?
“Unable, if you mean3338 right away.”
He’d need to become accustomed to it if he was to see the things above him. At first he would have an easy time making out the shadows, and then the images in water of men and the rest,3339 and later the things themselves; after this, the things in the sky and the sky itself he would be more able to contemplate at night, since he would be looking toward the light of the stars and the moon, than during the day when he would be looking toward the sun and its light. And then finally the sun, not appearances of it in watery places nor in any alien seat3340 or medium, but itself on its own terms and in its proper place would he be able to make it out and contemplate it in its true nature.
“Necessarily.”
And next he could put all this together and conclude that it is this that provides us3341 the seasons and the years and is the custodian of everything else in the region of the visible, as well as being the cause somehow of those things he and his comrades had been staring at before.3342
“Clearly this is the conclusion he would reach after that process.”
And as he now recalls his original habitation, and what passed for wisdom there, and the men who were then his fellow prisoners,3343 do you think he would he count himself lucky for the change he had since undergone, and feel pity for the others?
“Quite so.”
And if they had conferred honors and praise on each other in their world3344 and gave an award to the person sharpest at making out what was moving on the wall3345 and most capable of remembering which things come earlier and which later and which at the same time, and was thereby better than anyone else at guessing what would be coming next, do you think our man would feel a desire to be among them and would envy those upon whom the honors were conferred, and office and privilege, or do you think he would feel what Homer says, that he was perfectly ready to “work in a field for a daily wage as a hireling to a sharecropper,” or to undergo anything for that matter before being a member of that world of opinion and living the way he had before and they still do?3346
“I think he’d much sooner accept this than live like that.”
And so conceive one more thing for me. If our man went back down and returned to his original seat would his eyes become full of darkness3347 when he had just arrived from the sunlit realm?
“Surely they would.”
And if he had to compete all over again at dilucidating3348 those old shadows with the others who had remained prisoners all the while, (517) as long as his sight was still blurry and his eyes had not adjusted, wouldn’t he become a laughing stock to them—unless the adjustment took place very quickly? The word would be that he took a trip upward only to return with his vision spoiled, that even trying3349 to go up is not worth it, and that anyone who should try to loose their bonds and lead them up,3350 if only they can get their hands on him,3351 deserves to be killed?
“Very much so.”
Now this image, Glaucon, must be applied in its entirety to the ideas we set out in argumentative form, before. Liken the medium or seat of the appearances3352 to the dwelling place of the prison and the light that the fire provides in it to the power of the sun. Think of the journey upward and coming to see the things above as the soul’s upward path into the noetic world and you will grasp what I am hoping for3353—since that’s what you desired to hear from me. God knows whether my hopes are realistic. But this is how it appears to me by my own lights -- that in the world accessible to knowledge the finishing step is the Idea of the Good;3354 that to behold her is only barely possible; that once she is grasped and seen one must come to understand how for all things she is the cause of what is proper and fine3355 in them after all,3356 by virtue both of her giving birth3357 to light in the visible world as its master and lord, and as herself being master in the noetic world as well, providing it with truth and understanding; and that it is this that a person must come to see if he would act and behave mindfully whether as an individual or as a public servant.3358
“I have the same sense, to the extent that I can grasp so large a conception.”
Then get the sense also, and be not bewildered by it,3359 that those who have gotten this far are not willing to pursue the things of the human world below. Instead, their souls always drive them toward pastimes3360 in the upward realm. No less than this is to be expected if here, too, our image describes the way things really are.
“No less indeed.”
What then? Do you find it at all surprising that a person who leaves his godly studies behind and moves back to the human realm cuts a sorry figure3361 and at first makes a ridiculous spectacle as if he were dimwitted, if he is compelled while he is still adjusting to such darker surroundings, to argue in the courtroom or some such place about the shadowy versions of the just or about the objects3362 that cast such shadows, and to contend in close argument not about justice but about the presuppositions held about it by people who have never yet seen true justice3363 for what it is?
“Not surprising at all.”
(518) In fact, if a person were intelligent about it he would be mindful that when it comes to the eyes there are two ways they become confused due to two different causes: when people go from light into darkness and when they go from darkness into the light. If he had the sense that the same thing might happen with the soul, and if he saw a soul confused and disturbed because it was unable to attain a clear picture3364 he wouldn’t laugh without thinking but would first try to determine whether the soul in question had just arrived from a more luminous3365 way of life and found itself surrounded by darkness because it had not yet adapted, or whether it might have moved from a life of relative ignorance into a more luminous state and was now overcome by the glare of greater brightness; and accordingly he would count the one soul happy for what had happened in its life3366 and would pity the other; and if he chose to laugh his laughter would be the less laughable3367 than if it were directed toward a soul that had proceeded away from the upper region and out of the light.
“Your argument is extremely fair!”
Well then this is the way we must think about these things, if what I am saying is true. Education is not the sort of thing certain people go around advertising3368 it to be, when they claim that they can install knowledge that is merely absent in the soul, as though they were able to put sight into blind eyes.
“So they do claim.”
But what we have now argued indicates that when it comes to this power present in a given individual’s soul, this instrument by which any individual3369 comes to know something,3370 that just as an eye that is unable to see until the whole body is turned toward what is luminous and away from what is dark and obscure, in the same way this instrument needs to be turned along with the entire soul, away from what is becoming and toward what is real to the point that it is able to endure contemplating3371 the most luminous aspect of the real, which by our argument is the good. An art to bring about this and this alone is what education would be, an art of “turning around,” knowing how to contrive that the soul be re-oriented effortlessly and permanently,3372 rather than of implanting sight into it, since it had this ability all along but was improperly oriented and not looking in the direction it needed to.
“So it seems.”
So you must realize that whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul are more or less similar to those of the body, which are such that although they were not present before they can be instilled by measures of habit and practice, the virtue of intelligence, since it never loses its potency, belongs to a thing altogether more divine.3373 Instead, depending on the soul’s orientation it becomes either useful and worthwhile or useless and harmful. (519) Perhaps you have noticed, of men who are said to be evil but also wise, how forceful is the gaze of their little soul and how sharp and penetrating its perception of whatever it directs its attention to, since it is not their power of sight that is corrupt but rather its being forced into the service of corruption: the more acutely it perceives the more harm it can accomplish.
“Quite so.”
If this aspect of such a nature was being held in check from early childhood and had been dealt a thorough pruning with respect to those congeners of its development that act like leaden weights, the things alike to eating and other such pleasures carried to the point of indulgence so as to bend the view of the soul downward—and if conversely, having been relieved of these, it was being reoriented toward true things, then it would be those things that this same element in these same men would be seeing, so very acutely as they see what they are now turned toward.
“That seems likely.”
And isn’t it likely, in addition to being necessary according to the logic of what we have argued, that we should neither entrust the city’s care to the uneducated whose experience of truth is still inadequate nor to those who have been allowed to devote their life to their exercises3374 and carry their education through to completion,3375 since the former lack an overarching orientation in their lives that would guide everything they would do both public and private, while the latter, if it were up to them, would not do anything, expecting as they do a happy sojourn to the Islands of the Blessed even in this life.
“True.”
D.3e.2: The Greatest Course of Learning
So our work is cut out for us, as founders of the city.3376 We must select those with the noblest natural endowment and compel them to make their way to the study that we have just now called the greatest one, to see the good and to climb that upward path.3377 But once they have reached the top and achieved an adequate3378 vision of the good, we must not grant them the privilege they are now granted.
“What would that be?”
The privilege to stay where they are, and to refuse to take the path back down3379 among their fellow prisoners and share in the agony of their lives and its glory, for better or worse.
“So we’re3380 to do them the injustice of making their lives worse although they could be better?”
You’ve gone back on remembering3381 that our law is not concerned to make one group fare particularly well but contrives instead the welfare of the entire city, by fitting (520) its citizens to one another by means of persuasion and force, so that they will contribute what they individually have to the common goods, the law itself3382 having engendered such men as these in the city, not so as to allow them take whatever path they might wish but to press them into an employment that will strengthen the city's unity.
“It’s true—I did forget that principle.”
And while you’re at it, note that we won’t be doing them an injustice after all,3383 these people who became philosophers under our regime. To the contrary we will have a perfectly fair argument by which to require them to care for the others and act as their guardians: “Yes, it’s well and good that in the other cities persons who have turned out like you take no share in the bothersome toils of their cities. They show up spontaneously and without the help of their cities’ laws, and it is perfectly unobjectionable that what grows up independently and has no need for others to nourish it should be less than eager to pay somebody a fee for its nurture. But you are the products of us, and we have bred you as if in a swarm3384 to be leaders and kings over yourselves and over the rest of the city. Better and more fully educated as you have now become than they, you are likewise more able to participate in both3385 kinds of life. It is incumbent upon you therefore to take the path down, each of you in his turn, down into the community of the others, and to accommodate your vision to their dimmer sphere. Once you have become used to it you will be able to see a thousand times better than they and will recognize the likenesses they live among for what they truly are and what truth they have, knowing of what they are likenesses by dint of having yourselves beheld3386 the truth about what is beautiful, what is just, and what is good.3387 In this way our city, and your city, will have a waking life, not the sleepwalking life the majority of cities now live3388 with their internecine shadowboxing and clamoring for rule, as though ruling were a great and good thing. In fact the truth is more like this: the city whose rulers are drawn from those least eager to rule necessarily lives the best and most faction-free of lives, whereas the city that gets the opposite kind of rulers lives quite the opposite.”
“I quite agree with that.”
Will our nurslings fail to be persuaded by us once they have heard this? Will they be unwilling to share in the toils of the city, each taking his turn at it, although spending the majority of their time together in the pure unsullied world?3389
“Impossible! Being fair they will accept our command as fair!3390 And above all they will each in fact approach the task of ruling as a necessity, quite the contrary of the rulers you find in any other city.”
So here is the crux of the matter, my companion. Once you discover there is a better life (521) than ruling for the persons whose job it will be to rule, then it will be possible for you to have a well ordered city, since only in this city will the rulers be persons truly wealthy, rich not in gold but in what a happy man needs to be happy, namely, a way of living that is good and mindful. On the other hand if it is the poor that make their way into public life,3391 driven by their lack of personal wealth, as if here somehow is the place to acquire the good that life can afford, then it will not be possible. Then the office of rule becomes an object of contention, and contentious war among kindred, internal to the polis, destroys both those who fight to win it and the rest of the city to boot.
“Quite true.”
Can you name any other life that looks down upon political office with disdain3392 besides that of the philosopher truly so called?
“By Zeus I cannot.”
You can be sure in any case that we must not have lovers of rule per se3393 courting it, or else rival lovers will arise to contend with them.3394 So what other men will you force into the role of guarding our city than the ones who are at once the most mindful of the ways a city is well ordered and at the same time enjoy other honors than the political ones and a life better than that of the political man?
“Only these.”
Would you have us investigate, then, how such men will be produced,3395 and how someone will lead them up to the light just as some are said to have made their way out of Hades and into the place of the gods?
“How could I not?”
This, then, will not be a matter of how the sherd turns3396 but how to turn a soul, away from a nocturnal sort of day3397 upward toward a true day, true because it ascends to the real, a path we shall assert is true philosophy.3398 We need to investigate which of the3399 studies has the power to do this. What study could have the effect of drawing3400 the soul away from the world of change and becoming, toward the world of being and truth? Something popped into my mind right as I asked that question: we did say that we needed them to be “athletes of war” even from a young age, didn’t we?
“So we did.”
So the study we are looking for must pay attention to this aspect in addition to that one.
“What aspect?”
That the study be better than useless3401 for military men.
“Well yes, if that is possible.”
They’ve already received their training in gymnastics and music; but gymnastics was dedicated to the realm of what comes to be and passes away,3402 in the sense that it managed the growth and decline of the body; and so this one isn’t the study we are looking for. (522) But how about music, as much of it as we covered it then?3403
“Well,” Glaucon replied, “that was the counterpart of gymnastics, if you remember, training our guards in respect to their characters and habits, its harmony giving them a kind of harmoniousness, but not knowledge, and its rhythm a kind of grace, and in its stories something akin to these along the lines of personality traits,3404 both the stories that were fables and those that were more true than false.3405 But as for a study that led3406 toward the sort of thing your are talking about there was no trace of it there.
You recall most exactly what we said. In truth the musical training had no trace of it. So again, my clever Glaucon,3407 what study would be of this sort? The effect of all the crafts seemed to be exhausted in their practical application ... 3408
“Of course they are. And yet what other study is left, apart from the studies of music and gymnastics and preparation in the trades?”
Alright then, if there’s nothing for us to latch on to outside them, let’s latch onto something that touches them all!
“What would that be?”
The following for instance, a common element all crafts make use of, as do all processes of thought and all sciences,3409 something that every person has to learn at the very outset.
“What?” he said.
This simple matter of distinguishing one from two from three.3410 What I mean in general terms is number and calculation. Don’t you agree with what I say about this, that everything from craft to science3411 must have a grasp of it?
“Quite so.”
Even the military art?
“Necessarily.”3412
Agamemnon, in the tragic plots at least, is always being made out to be a most laughable general by Palamedes. Or don’t you know how Palamedes claims he discovered numbers and established the organization of the armies on the field at Ilium and counted out the ships and all the rest for the first time, creating the impression that before this the army was simply innumerable and that Agamemnon, as he would have us believe,3413 did not even know how many feet he had since he would not have been able to count. And yet if all that were true, what sort of a general do you think he could have been?
“A strange one indeed, if that were true.”
Must we then set it down that being able to count and calculate is a study that is necessary for a military man?
“Above all else, if he is to know anything at all about the organization of his troops, let alone be a man instead of a brute!”3414
Think3415 whether you view this study the same way I do.
“How’s that?”
(523) My guess is this study falls among the studies we are looking for, which by their nature lead toward intelligence, but that nobody makes the right use of it while in itself it really and truly is something that draws the mind toward being.3416
“Why do you think so?”
I’ll try to make clear to you how I see it.3417 Look at the distinction I use, according to my own personal judgment, to decide which things are conducive to the goal we have in mind and which are not. Come alongside me and give your verdict on it yea or nay. That way we might get a clearer sense whether the truth is the way I am guessing it is.3418
“Show me.”3419
Show you I will if you can get my meaning: One kind of things in our perceptions do not call upon the intelligence to make a closer study, since they are adequately distinct for us3420 by dint of perception, whereas another kind calls for the intelligence to help them with an investigation any way it can since perception produces nothing at all solid.3421
“Things seen at a distance is clearly what you mean, or trompe l’oeil.”
Actually, you didn’t grasp my meaning.3422
“Well then what do you mean?”
In the class of things that do not call upon the intelligence I place everything that does not produce an opposite perception at the same time. Everything that does I place into the class of things that do call upon the intelligence, cases where perception fails to show that something is this any more than its opposite, whether the thing happens to be impinging on the perception from nearby or from a distance. But here’s a way you will see more exactly what I mean. These fingers you see3423— we say they would be three in number: the little finger, the ring finger, and the middle finger?
“Quite.”
Recognize they are being seen up close,3424 mind you, as I make my argument. But my point is the following.
“What?”
First, a finger each of them appears equally to be, and in this respect at least each differs from the others not at all whether it is seen as being in the middle or is seen as being at the end of the row, and whether as black or white, as fat or slender, and so forth. In all these respects the soul of most people would not be compelled to call upon the intelligence3425 to answer what a finger is, since the vision gave no indication whatever that the finger is the opposite of what a finger is.
“No it did not.”
And so it is reasonable to say that this kind of thing is not something that calls upon or wakens the intelligence. But as to their largeness and smallness, does vision adequately see that? Can we still say that it makes no difference to the vision whether the finger is in the middle rather than at the end? And similarly as to fatness and slimness or softness and hardness, does it make no difference to the sense of touch? Consider the other senses, too: isn’t it the case that they indicate these attributes in a deficient way? (524) Isn’t it more like the following,3426 taking them one by one, first the sense that is assigned to hardness: isn’t it also assigned to softness? Doesn’t it pass along a message to the soul that the same thing is hard and soft in the course of its perceiving?
“Yes.”
Isn’t it unavoidable, at least in a situation like this, that the soul now finds itself at a loss to know what this3427 perceptual faculty means by hardness when it asserts that the same thing is soft also? And the sense of the light and the sense3428 of the heavy, what light and heavy can mean if it sends a signal that the heavy thing is light and the light thing is heavy.3429
“In very fact such messages would seem absurd to the soul, and such as to require further inquiry.”
And so it is reasonable to say that in such cases the first thing the soul would do is call upon its ability to calculate and upon its intelligence to investigate3430 whether the things about which these reports are coming in are one or two.3431 And if it becomes clear to the intelligence that they are two, it also becomes clear that each of them is one, over against the other.3432 If each is one over against the other and taken together they are two, the intelligence will see that as two3433 they are separated, since if they were unseparated3434 it would not be seeing two things but one.
“Correct.”
Sight, too,3435 saw large and small all the while, but saw them jumbled together3436 rather than separate; and yet it did so with enough clarity3437 that the intelligence was compelled to look, in its turn, at the large and small and see they are not jumbled together but distinct,3438 opposite to the way that vision saw them.
“True.”
And was it from such an experience as this that it first occurred to us to ask what these two really are after all,3439 largeness and smallness.
“Exactly so”
And it was pursuant to this question that we distinguished between an intelligible version and a visible version of them?
“Perfectly correct.”
Well, that is what I was just now trying to argue when I said that some things are solicitous of thought3440 while others are not, and drew the distinction by calling “solicitous” those things in the perceptual world that can occur together with their opposites and saying those that don’t are not stimulants of intelligence.
“Now I get your meaning, and it seems right in my judgment.”
So, to which of the two groups does number and the one3441 belong, in your judgment?
“I don’t see3442 the answer.”
Just3443 go back to what we have already said by way of preliminaries and add it all together. If the object is sufficiently3444 grasped in and of itself, whether by sight or some other sense, it would not function as a lure toward truth and reality, just as we were saying about the finger. But if there were always something contradictory in the way it looked, so that it kept giving the appearance that it was no more one thing than its opposite, an agent capable of further discrimination would be needed and soul would have no choice3445 but be in a quandary about it and would stir up reflection within itself, and would confront3446 itself with the question, “What after all is it that makes a thing one thing?” Thus, the study of the one is among the things that (525) spur a person on and reorient him toward a vision of reality.
“To be sure, the visual sight of the thing3447 does have a lot of this element in it. When we look at something we see it as a unity and as an indefinite plurality3448 at one and the same time.”
Yes, and if so much is true about the one, aren’t all numbers subject to the same problem?3449
“That’s unavoidable.”
But we have already agreed that calculation and arithmetic are wholly occupied with the study of number.
“Quite so.”
So it is now plain that this study spurs one on to the truth of things.
“Exceedingly so.”3450
Therefore we may conclude that this belongs among the studies we are seeking. A military man must learn it for the sake of managing his formations; a philosophical man must learn it because it is incumbent upon him to fix his grasp on being and truth as he rises up out of becoming, on pain of never becoming logistical.3451
“That is how it is.”
But as it happens our guard is both a military man and a philosopher, so it is appropriate that we legislate and try to persuade those who are to take part in3452 the highest tasks of the city, to make the study of calculation one of their pursuits3453 and to become engaged in it3454 not only in a casual way but to reach, through this study, a vision of the nature of numbers by the operation of pure intelligence, and practice it not for the sake of buying and selling as wholesalers or retailers do but for the sake of war and to enhance soul’s facility to turn away, on its own, from the world of becoming toward truth and reality.3455
“You put the matter very well.”3456
And yet it has popped into my mind just now as the study of calculation was being described, that it has a special subtlety to it and broad application for our purposes, if a person practices it for the sake of being a knower rather than a retailer.
“Just how?”
Just in the way this was taking place in our conversation,3457 how vigorously this study drives the soul upward, if you will, and forces her to ask and answer questions about numbers in themselves, but will not allow one to conduct the investigation at all if he directs his attention toward numbers to which the soul has access by sight, numbers embodied. Perhaps you are aware, if you think back3458 how persons behave who are clever at calculations, that if one proposes in argument to divide the true unit they make a laughing stock of him and won’t allow it; and that if you try to break it into pieces by main force they call it multiplication,3459 changing their stance as necessary to prevent what is a unit from ever seeming multipart rather than one.
“That is quite true.”
(526) What do you think would happen, Glaucon, if someone asked them, “Whatever strange3460 numbers are you people talking about where the one is the way you claim it is, each and any one equal to any other,3461 differing from it not in the slightest way and having no parts within itself?” What do you think would be their answer?
“I’d answer that they are talking about numbers that are accessible to contemplation only and can be dealt with in no other way whatsoever.”3462
And so do you see that this study might in very truth be necessary for us, since it has become obvious3463 that it compels the soul to employ intelligence unmixed in the pursuit of unmixed truth?
“It bears repeating3464 that it really does do this.”
And more, have you ever looked into this, how those who are natural mathematicians3465 are also by nature sharp in all branches of learning, and that even those who are slow, if they are trained in this field and do the exercises, they become sharper than they were before, quite apart from any practical gain that might accrue to them?
“That is true.”
And yet you’d have to look far to find a study that imposes greater toil upon the person who learns and practices it,3466 and you wouldn’t find many. Because of all this we must not leave this branch of study out. Those who are by nature best must be trained in it from youth.
“I agree.”
So now we have set down one branch of learning. Second3467 we can investigate whether the next3468 study is appropriate for our purposes.
“Which do you mean? Geometry?”
Just so!
“To judge at least3469 by how important it is for military matters it is clearly appropriate. Think of its application to the layout of the battlefield and to planning the capture of areas, and in the massing of troops and their deployment in long defiles, and all the other ways they configure3470 their armies in actual3471 battles and marches, how much better a man would do this with geometry than he could without it.”
But really, for these purposes a very small part of geometry and calculation would suffice.3472 As to the much greater and more advanced part of it we must ask whether it somehow promotes our other purpose, making him see more easily the Idea of the Good.3473 But we know that what promotes that goal is anything that requires soul to reorient herself3474 toward that area we mentioned, where lies the most happy3475 aspect of reality, which she must catch sight of any way she can.
“Quite correct.”
So if the study forces her to behold being it is appropriate, but if becoming it is not.3476
“We, at least, assert that this is so.”
(527) But this point nobody will dispute against us if he has even the least experience in geometry, that within this science there is a thoroughgoing contradiction between its reasonings and the way they are expressed by those who practice it. The way they express what they are doing is as ridiculous as it is unavoidable for them,3477 as if they were carrying out some action and trying to bring about some result: they speak of “squaring” something and “extending” something and “applying” something. Despite all this verbiage the fact of the matter is that they practice the entire study for the sake of knowledge.3478
“Right in all respects.”
And must we reach agreement3479 about this in addition?
“About what?”
That it is for the sake of a knowledge that is a knowledge of what always is3480 rather than of something that somehow comes to be at one moment and passes away at another.
“An agreement easy to reach,3481 since geometry is knowledge of what is always true.”
And so, my noble man,3482 it would be a lure for the soul toward the truth, and would bring about the soul’s achieving a secure orientation for philosophical thinking upward in areas where3483 at present we wrongly have a downward one.
“It would do so quite a lot, indeed!”
So just as much as can be we must set down the command that those who serve in your City of the Fine3484 may no way avoid the study of geometry. For indeed even the byproducts of this study are not unimportant.
“Which are these?”
The ones you mentioned relating to the military, but more importantly3485 toward the goal of advancing in all fields of study we know from experience that the man who has taken up geometry is head and shoulders above the rest.3486
“Above in every way, by Zeus.”
And so shall we set this down as the second branch of study for our youths?
“Let’s.”
Shall astronomy be third, or do you think not?
“Well I at least would say so.3487 Being more perceptive about the seasons that belong to the months and the times of year3488 is appropriate not only in farming and in sailing but equally so in military command.”
What a push-over3489 you are, worrying about hoi polloi and how they might judge you to be requiring useless3490 studies! In truth it is not an easy matter but quite hard to believe that in these fields of study a certain instrument of the soul is purified for anyone who studies them and is rekindled though it tends to be3491 ruined and blinded by everything else we do, an instrument more crucial to be preserved than ten thousand eyes.3492 For only with this instrument may truth be seen. Among people that agree with you about this they will find what you say inexpressibly wonderful, but those who have no perception of it in their experience will simply think you are talking nonsense since they see no other benefit worth mentioning accrue from their study. So (528) at this point you have to decide3493 which of the two groups you are talking with, or decide that you are not so much speaking to either one3494 but that your main purpose in making these arguments is for your own sake, though you would not begrudge a person the benefit of the conversation, if he could somehow profit from it.
“I choose this latter alternative, that it is in largest part for my own sake3495 that I am arguing, in this conversation of questions and answers.” 3496
Then move back a bit from what we were saying before. Just now we mistook what comes after geometry.
“By taking up what?”
By taking up, after the plane, the solid already orbiting in the heavens, before taking up the solid per se. The correct way, after the second dimension, is to take up what comes next,3497 the third, the dimension of the cube and of what has depth.
“That makes sense, Socrates, but as far as I know solid geometry hasn’t yet been adequately established as a field, so as to be taught!”3498
And there are two kinds of reasons it hasn’t. First, since there isn’t a single city in the world that thinks it worthy, it is researched only half-heartedly while in fact it is quite difficult. Second those who would research it need a supervisor without whose aid they would never discover it, but for a supervisor to arise at all is difficult, and even if he did, in the current state of things the people who had the ability to research such a subject would be too arrogant to obey him.3499 On the other hand, if a city unanimously supervised the study and held it in high esteem, then the researchers would obey and the subject matter itself would soon yield to the efforts of consecutive and concerted research and the wonders of its truths would be revealed. In fact even now, although the majority dishonor it and only obstruct its progress and the people who pursue it have no sense of its usefulness to mankind,3500 it still enjoys some currency by dint of its charm, so that it would not be a complete surprise that it should come to light.3501
“Well I have to agree that its charm places it in a class by itself, but tell me more clearly what you were just now saying. First, you set down the study3502 of plane figures as geometry.”
Yes.
“And you placed astronomy next, but then retreated.”3503
Rushing to get through everything quickly I only delayed my progress!3504 Although the study3505 of the dimension of depth was next in order, since inquiry in that subject is so laughably ignored,3506 I leapfrogged over it to astronomy, which studies the motion of that dimension. Instead, we must make astronomy our fourth course of study, and proceed as if that the study we now left out is there after all, functioning as its prerequisite—assuming the city does pursue it.
“Likely it will. And let me say, Socrates, in response to the criticism with which you just blind-sided me about my praise of astronomy being so vulgar,3507 that now I’ll praise it in accordance with the way you are doing your research3508 instead. (529) It seems clear to everybody that this study3509 forces the soul to look upward, away from the things of this world and off toward yonder.”
Clear to everybody but me, perhaps. This is not how I see it.3510
“How then do you?”
To me it seems that the way it is now practiced3511 by those who mean to elevate it into philosophy,3512 actually causes the soul to look downward.
“How can you say this?”
You have a redoubtable3513 conception of the upward way of study that you have accepted for yourself. In fact, if you saw someone tipping his head back3514 and contemplating decorations in the ceiling and trying to make one of them out, you might just believe that it was with intelligence and not with his eyes that he was contemplating them. And your belief might be fine, and mine too simple-minded.3515 I for my part cannot believe that any kind of study makes the soul look upward besides the study of being and the invisible,3516 and that whether he gapes upward or squints downward, as long as it is something in the world of perception he is trying to learn about, he could never learn anything, since none of these things have a science. To take it one step further it is not upward but downward that his soul is looking, even if he studies lying on his back, swimming on shore or at sea.3517
“I deserved that: it was right of you to strike me down. But what did you mean about how astronomy should be studied contrary to the present practice, if they are to learn it in a way beneficial with respect to the goal we have described?”
Here’s how. These stars and decorations3518 in the vault of heaven, elaborate as they are,3519 since they in fact fall within the visible world, he should believe to be the most beautifully and most perfectly disposed things in that class, but to fall far short of the class of the true things: the motions3520 of which true speed and the true slowness, in true number and in paths that are the true figures are the measure, such motions are they moved in, and move the things within them;3521 all of which is ascertainable by reason and thought but not by sight. Or do you think they can be seen?
“No way.”
So one must use the decorations visible in the vault of heaven as models for the study oriented toward those3522 things. It’s the same as if one came upon diagrams drawn wonderfully well by a Daedalus or some other artist or draftsman,3523 drawn to perfection. A person who saw these, if he had experience in geometry, would recognize the fineness of their production, but it would strike him3524 as ridiculous to accord them the seriousness appropriate to primary3525 objects of study, as though by so doing one3526 would discover within them the truth about the (530) equal or the double or any other ratio.
“Of course it would be ridiculous.”
But if he is an astronomer in a literal sense don’t you think he would feel the same way when he contemplates the movement of the stars? He will adopt the conventional view3527 that as ever they could best be arranged, so has the maker of heaven arranged them, both in whole and in part,3528 but when it comes to the equality of day and night and their relation to the times of the months and of the year, and of the other stars in respect to these and in respect to each other, don’t you think he would consider a person strange for being so credulous as to believe that these factors behave with perfect regularity and that there should be no shift in speed even though the objects in question have bodies and are perceivable, and that he is seeking to grasp the truth of them by all means possible?
“So it seems to me at least,3529 now that I hear you make the case.”
Therefore it will be by using the visible objects as the occasions3530 for contemplation that we will practice astronomy, just as we did geometry, and we will have no further use3531 for the objects we see in the sky—if, that is, our engagement with astronomy shall truly make the soul’s inborn talent for mindfulness something useful instead of useless.3532
“You are imposing labors many times greater3533 than the work now done by astronomers.”
And yet by my own lights I think we will do the same in the other fields as well if it will be of any worth to us, as lawgivers, to do so. Still,3534 can you mention a field in which such an injunction would be appropriate?
“Not off the top of my head.”3535
But look:3536 motion comprises not one but many types, as I understand it. Some smart person would be able to list them all, but even by our lights there are two that are obvious. Besides this one3537 there is its counterpart: just as the eyes find themselves attached3538 to the astronomical phenomena, the ears are attached to the harmonic one. These two sciences are brothers, as the Pythagoreans say, and we agree.3539 Shall we include this field, or not?
“Yes we shall.”
Since it’s a large task we can call on experts to inform us3540 how to talk about harmony, as well as any other field in addition to the ones we have listed, but through it all we must take care of what is ours.3541
“What ‘ours’ do you mean?”
To keep those we are to raise up from trying to learn something fruitless on our watch, fruitless in the sense that it fails to reach3542 the place where everything must ultimately reach, as we were just saying in the case of astronomy. Or perhaps you are unaware (531) that teachers of harmony make a mistake analogous to theirs, that they labor endlessly to find patterns within and among audible harmonies and timbres just as the astronomers3543 did with visible objects.
“Yes, by the gods it’s quite funny the way they act!3544 They talk about something they call minims and have a funny way of cocking their head3545 so they can hear just right, as if they are trying to eavesdrop on a note next door to the one that’s there. Some of them talk about picking up still a further echo and that this is now the minimal interval and must be the basis for harmonic measurement, while others disagree and say they already sound the same. But both of them give precedence to the ears over the mind.”3546
I see you are talking about the way those worthies3547 assault the strings of the lyre as if to test them by cranking them tight on the pegs—we could pursue the image further, about3548 beating the strings with a plectrum and the condemnations or denials or flattering answers the strings answer back, but I resist the desire since it isn’t these I was asking about, but the people who deal with harmony. They make the same mistake as the astronomers, in the sense that while they seek the numbers corresponding to these instances of audible consonance, analogous to the visual symmetry of astronomy, they never ascend to using the audible consonances as the occasion for taking the next step, asking which numbers are the consonant3549 numbers and which are not, and why they aren’t or why they are.
“It’s a superhuman undertaking you describe!”3550
Call it helpful, rather, in the search for the beautiful and the good.3551 Trying to track such a thing down3552 for any other reason is useless.3553
“That much I can certainly agree with.”
And yet by my own lights3554 if this, and the rest of the path of learning we have now set out, does reach the common and general interrelation of things with each other, and does bring them together into one account that articulates how they are akin to each other, then going through them does contribute something in the direction we want our wards to go and the trouble we take with them would be worth the toil.3555 If not, they would be useless.
“I would guess3556 you are right, Socrates; in any case the work is huge.”
You mean the work of the prelude or what? Or have we sufficiently grasped that all we have said is a mere warm-up3557 for the main piece3558 we have to learn? After all I don’t expect you think the people who are clever in these fields3559 are as yet dialecticians,3560 do you?
“Not at all, by God, except in the rarest of instances.”
But do you think persons unable to give and take arguments back and forth3561 will ever achieve the insight we require our guards to achieve?
“I would have also to agree they will not.”
(532) Have we then come to the main song we have to sing, which the faculty of asking and answering can perform,3562 the which, although itself intelligible, the faculty of seeing could imitate, mutatis mutandis, in the sense as we said before of its attempting to contemplate the real animals in the light of day, and then the real stars in the heavens, and then to culminate in viewing the sun itself? Likewise, when someone endeavors by the activity of discussion free from all the senses and through reasoning alone to set out for3563 the truth of what things are, distinct and in themselves, and slackens his efforts not at all until he grasps goodness in itself by means of intelligence itself,3564 then it is that he has reached the true goal and end3565 of the intelligible world and participation in it, just as the man in the image3566 reached the height and culmination of vision.
“The analogy is perfect.”
Well, don’t you call this the dialectical path of inquiry?
“Of course.”
But meanwhile, I said, the liberation from the bonds and the reorientation away from the shadows and toward models that cast them and toward the light behind; and then the ascent out of the cave into sunlight and day; and then the phase of at first still being powerless3567 to contemplate the animals themselves and the plants of that world but able to contemplate them instead as they appear reflected in water and as divine3568 shadows of realities, no longer3569 the shadows of mere models produced by a light likewise3570 mere and shadowy when measured according to the analogy of fire to sun—as to this, the entire curriculum and activity of specialized studies that we have now gone through truly has the power to achieve it and to drive the noblest element of soul upward and outward, toward its vision of what is best3571 in reality and truth, just as in the analogy the most acute element in the body moved toward the vision of what is most clear3572 in the somatic and visible realm.
“For my part I accept this account; and yet fully to accept it in every aspect seems difficult to me. Still and again, to refuse to accept it seems difficult also.3573 Nevertheless—the question after all is not just something we are to hear the answer to at the present moment, but something we must climb back up to again and again—let us posit this to be as it has now been argued and move on to the central song of it,3574 and try to go through that in the same way we went through the several arts of the prelude or the preamble to the law. Explain what is the manner of the power of discussion, what are its parts and what in turn are its methods. If you do, then we will know the pathways that will take us to the place where we can finally rest, having come to the end3575 of our journey.”
(533) No longer will you be able to follow me,3576 friend Glaucon,3577 thought surely there is no shortfall of eagerness on my part.3578 No longer will it serve to look at an image of what we are talking about, but itself instead, its truth unadorned,3579 as it appears to me at least: whether it is truly the truth we have as yet no warrant to insist. Still, that it looks something like this we must insist, won’t you agree?3580
“Obviously.”
And ought we not also insist that the power of dialectic could reveal itself only to a person who has worked on the studies that we have just gone through? That otherwise this coming into view could never happen?3581
“On this, too, we deserve to insist.”
We can say at least that on the following point nobody will take the trouble to squabble with us,3582 when we say that it is some other method than theirs that tries to achieve a grasp what each of the eaches is in itself.3583 All the other specialties are directed either to the opinions of men at large and their desires, or else toward producing things that grow or things that are put together,3584 or it is toward the maintenance of things growing or fabricated that they have been directed.3585 As to the rest, the ones we did agree were involved in getting a kind of grasp on being and truth—geometry that is and the others that follow in her train3586—we now see that they dream about being and truth but that it is impossible for them to see it waking3587 as long as they allow the hypotheses they use to be unassailable and absolute just because they are unable to derive them.3588 After all, if a person’s beginning point is something he does not know and his conclusion as well as the intermediate steps are woven out of what he does not know, how could such a tissue of consistency3589 ever become knowledge?
“There is no way it can.”
And is it not the dialectical procedure alone that makes its way3590 by doing just this, ousting and relativizing3591 the hypotheses so that it can achieve its grounding and certainty in the real beginning and principle? It alone that gently coaxes3592 the eye of the soul out of the alien mud in which it is interred unbeknownst to itself3593 and leads it up out of the ground, using as servants in the task of its reorientation those specialisms we went through. We have become inured to calling them sciences though they need a different name, more clear3594 than opinion yet fuzzier3595 than science. We called it “thinking” in the account before,3596 but quibbling about the name is hardly what concerns people who have such important matters lying before them.3597
“Surely not.”
All we need is a name that somehow distinctly indicates the mental state in soul that we are describing. As such, it will suffice as before to call the first condition one’s soul might find itself in3598 science or knowledge, the second thinking, the third (534) trusting, and the fourth guesswork; to pair up the last two under the term opinion and the first two under the term intelligence; to take opinion as dealing with becoming and intelligence with being; to say that as being stands toward becoming, intelligence stands toward opinion; and that as intelligence stands toward opinion, knowledge stands toward belief and thinking stands toward guesswork. As for the ratio and division into pairs that likewise applies to their objects,3599 the objects of opinion and the objects of intelligence, we can pass it over to avoid multiplying the relations that we have already gone through.3600
“I am sure I agree about the others, to the extent that I follow.”
But would you also call him a “dialectician” who tries to reach3601 an account of each thing in its true essence, whereas the man who has no account, to the extent he is3602 unable to give answers either to himself or to another person3603 questioning him, would you deny that he lacks intelligence about the thing?
“How could I affirm that he possesses it?”
And does the same apply to the good?3604 Whoever is unable to articulate what it is in argument, and to separate out from everything else the Idea of the Good as such,3605 and unable as in a battle to keep fast hold on it throughout all the challenges he can bring, keenly arguing and testing the matter not on the level of opinion, but of truth and knowledge and running the entire gauntlet without a slip in his reasoning3606—will you deny that such a man knows the good as it is in itself, let alone knowing anything that is good?3607 Will you affirm that if he latches on to an example3608 of goodness it is only with opinion that he grasps it and not with knowledge, and that he sleepwalks and dreams his way through his life here, and before he ever wakens from it he will have reached Hades anyway, the place where his oblivion will be final.
“Yes by Zeus, I do affirm all that!”
So to the contrary, in the case of these children of yours3609 whom you are nourishing and educating in our argument, if you should raise them in fact you would not allow them, if they lack expression the way geometrical lines can be incapable of expression,3610 to be empowered as rulers of our city to decide the highest matters. In fact you will set down a law that your charges must engage in this aspect of education most of all, since it will enable them to engage in questioning and answering with the very greatest mastery.
“Such a law I will set down, but only following you.”3611
Does this dialectical art seem to you, as it does to me, the very coping stone for the studies, placed in3612 the top of their arch, and that beyond this no higher study can properly be added—that with dialectic the whole business of education achieves (535) its goal and final form?
“Yes it does seem so to me.”
D.3f: Selection of Guards to Receive this Higher Education
So what is left for you to do is the allocation. To which of the guards will we assign this course of study and how will we choose?
“Clearly that’s what’s left.”
So do you remember the last time3613 we made a selection of rulers, and what qualities we used as criteria?
“Of course I do.”
In general you may imagine the same sorts of natures are to be selected here—the most stalwart and bravest are to be preferred and the best looking ones as far as possible3614—but in addition we now need to seek among them not only those redoubtable and robust in his moral character3615 but also in those respects that are conducive to the kind of education I have just now described, which they must also have.3616
“And what would you list among these elements?”
An inexorable tenacity3617 for their studies, my divine fellow, must they have in ready supply, and must have no trouble learning. Mind you, souls are much quicker to recoil from demanding studies than from gymnastics, since the pain and labor involved in study belongs to the soul alone and she cannot ask the body to share it with her.
“True.”
Also they must have strong mental grasp and never flinch,3618 indeed must take to all kinds of hard work3619easily—or is there some other way3620 a person will be willing to endure the rigors of bodily training and then cap it off3621 with such an extensive curriculum of learning and practice?
“Nobody would unless he were of the finest nature in every respect.”3622
We may support3623 our claim by saying again3624 that what is wrong these days, and the reason philosophy is dishonored, is that she is not being approached on the level she deserves. The illegitimate should never have taken her up, but only the genuine.
“What do you mean by this?”
First as to the dedication to work. The man who takes up philosophy must not be lame, industrious about one half of the work, but lazy about the other. We get just that when somebody labors long in gymnastics or hunting, industrious in all the things that are done with the body, but is he willing to study? No! Willing to listen to instruction3625 or to hunt for the answer? No! He’s averse to industry in all these areas. The lame man must be replaced by the man who walks with both his legs, as to his willingness to work.
In respect to truth also we have to require that his soul not be maimed, like one that despises intentional falsehood and is uncomfortable carrying it in herself and sorely bothered when others she is with are lying, though she accepts the involuntary sort of falsehood3626 with gladness and although discovered to be living benighted, feels neither vexation nor scruples that she is wallowing in ignorance like a pig in slop.
(536) As to temperance and bravery and generosity and all the other parts of virtue, here no less must we be on the watch as to which man is illegitimate and which is genuine. Whenever an individual person or a city lacks complete3627 command at assessing such things they end up becoming involved with people lame and illegitimate in all these areas, unbeknownst and subject to chance, the individual with respect to his friends and the city with respect to its rulers.
“That is quite true.”
It is our job then to take special caution with all these matters. If we escort men sound of limb and sound of mind into a course of study and exercise as great as this, then justice herself will have no brief against us and we will preserve our city and its way of life. But if we bring in men of another ilk3628 we will get an outcome quite the opposite and at the same time bring still greater ridicule down onto philosophy.3629
“And that would truly be shameful.”
Yes it would … but perhaps I am being a little ridiculous, myself.
“How’s that?”
I forgot that in truth it's only play we are involved in, and I got myself too worked up and overwrought3630 on behalf of philosophy. There she was in my mind’s eye as I was speaking, and I saw her being dishonored by the mudslingers! I think I got more excited than I needed to and out of anger toward those who were to blame, I spoke too seriously.3631
“It hardly seems so to me, as your auditor at least.”
It does seem so to me, as the speaker. But let me add something else, lest we overlook it. In our previous selection we gave precedence to elders.3632 That won’t work here. We must not accept Solon’s proverb that a person who is aging is able to learn a lot.3633 In fact he’s less able to learn than he is able to run. The largest efforts and indeed the majority of efforts great or small, are done in youth.
“Necessarily.”
Accordingly, arithmetic and geometry and the rest of the studies that prepare the mind for dialectic must all be put before our wards while they are still young, so as to avoid any impression that the teaching is being forced upon them. A free man must not feel anything slavish in the pursuit of his studies. Physical labor is no less beneficial for the body even if done under duress, but if you force a lesson on the soul, it just won't stick.
“That is true.”
So don’t force-feed the studies on your children, my fine fellow. (537) Make learning a kind of play for them. While you're at it you’ll be able to observe what their individual aptitudes suit them for.
“That makes sense.”
Do you remember that we also said we should escort the children into war as observers on horseback, and bring them near the scene of the battle as long as it was safe so that they could have, as it were, that taste of blood we use in training our dogs?3634
“I do remember.”
So in all these – work, study and danger – those that can keep at it without breaking their stride must be placed in a single group.3635
“At what age?”
Not before they are released from basic gymnastics. During those two or three years nothing else3636 can be done, since fatigue and drowsiness are anathema to study; and besides, the gymnastics course itself is another3637 one of the tests, and a significant one, for revealing what kind of person an individual will turn out to be, by the way he handles exercise.
“Of course.”
But after this period those picked out as superior among the twenty year-olds will receive greater honors than the others, and the smattering of studies to which they had been exposed in their childhood must then be drawn together by them, into a synoptic vision that recognizes the kinship of all the studies with each other as well as with the nature of being and truth.3638
“Only this kind of learning is well founded and solid, in the persons who achieve it.”
And it is the greatest test, too, for the aptitude for dialectic and the lack thereof. The man with a synoptic3639 understanding is able to conduct a dialogue whereas the man who lacks that understanding cannot.
“I see it the same way.”
These are the things you must have in mind as you investigate which among them would be most qualified in these ways and also stalwart in their studies in addition to being stalwart in war and in lawfulness besides.3640 And once they have reached the age of thirty you will choose in turn a subgroup and give them still greater honors and you will investigate them, using their ability in dialogue3641 as the touchstone, to ascertain which of them is able to let go of what he sees with his eyes and the rest of his senses and make his way to being by following the path of truth.3642 During this stage of the process, my friend, there is need for especially cautious guarding.3643
“But why?”
Haven’t you noticed what a bad thing is happening these days in the practice of conversation and dialectic, and how many people are afflicted by it?
“What would that be?”
How utterly lawless they are.3644
“Quite so.”
Are you surprised by the condition they have fallen into? Don’t you feel sorry for them?3645
“But how could I?”
Here’s how. Imagine an adopted child, raised in great (538) wealth by a large and powerful family and surrounded by flatterers, and imagine that when he grew up and became a man he found out that his parents were not those who claimed to be and that he also could not find his true parents. Can you guess how he would feel about the flatterers and those who had adopted him unbeknownst, both before he found out he had been adopted, and then after he learned it? Would you like me to tell you my guess?
“I would.”
My guess is that when he did not know the truth he would hold the father and the mother and the rest of those he had believed were his family in higher esteem than the flatterers, and that he would be less inclined to see them as inadequate in some way and less inclined to do or say something unlawful to them, and less inclined to disobey them in major questions than to disobey the flatterers.
“That seems likely.”
But when he finds the truth my guess is that he would lose his esteem for his putative family and cease to take them seriously, but would extend these same feelings toward the flatterers instead and would obey them a lot more than before, and would adopt their manner of living, and would make no effort to hide his association with them. As for that “father”3646 and the other family members so-called he would never give them a second thought, unless he were by nature a very decent person indeed.
“You describe what is likely to happen in every detail; but how does this metaphor apply to the men who have taken up the study of dialectic?”
Here’s how. As children we all have accepted certain beliefs about the just and the beautiful—beliefs we were brought up believing just as sure as we were brought up under the regime of watchful parents, beliefs we believed and respected on authority.
“Yes, we did.”
And aren’t there certain other ways of behaving quite contrary to the behavior these beliefs prescribe, pleasurable ways that try to flatter our souls and seduce us into their clutches, but succeed at persuading no one who has a any grain of decency in him? Instead, people honor those ancestral beliefs3647 and treat them as authoritative.
“All that is true.”
Alright then. Imagine a young man to whom all that applies. Say the question moves upon him,3648 “What is beauty?” He answers with what he heard from his authorities, but the ensuing discussion completely refutes it with reason and refutes it many times with many refutations. Argument fools him into3649 believing that the way he had been told to behave is no more3650 beautiful than ugly—or no more just than not, nor good rather than bad, and so on with all the other values3651 he had held in particularly high esteem. How do you think he would act toward those things3652 in terms of honoring them and taking them on authority?
“Necessarily he would no longer honor them as he had, nor believe them.”
Once he no longer accepts these as honorable and familiar3653 ideas, as he did before, but not as yet has discovered what things truly are just and good and beautiful, is there any other (539) way of life he is likely to verge toward than one that flatters him?
“There is not.”
And in the end we will find him lawless, although he was lawful before.3654
“Necessarily.”
Now isn’t it perfectly likely that this sort of thing will happen to the novice at conversational argumentation? And doesn’t it call for a good deal of sympathy?
“Even pity, I’d say.”3655
And so in order to avoid feeling such pity for your thirty year-olds, isn’t it necessary that you use every precaution in managing the way they take up the practice3656 of argument?
“Quite so.”
But one measure you can take consistently and rigorously is to keep them from any involvement in dialectical argumentation while they are still young? I doubt it has escaped your notice how the younger lads, upon their first exposure to dialogue, make a game of it reducing it to the gimmickry of refutation and controversy, and how they imitate the people that refuted them by themselves refuting others3657—how whomever they bump into they treat him the way puppies treat their toys, dragging them around and ripping them to shreds.
“I see it all too often.”
Once they have refuted many3658 and themselves been refuted by many, don’t they end up losing all of the convictions they had before? And as a result don’t they draw slander upon themselves and upon philosophy in general, from everyone else?3659
“Quite true.”
But once he is older he would not be willing to join in this madness, and instead would imitate the person who wants to participate in dialogue and investigate the truth of things rather than the person who plays at refutation just for the sake of the game.3660 He will be more moderate in his own3661 behavior and bring honor to the practice of dialectic rather than its opposite.
“Correct.”
And don’t all the foregoing requirements serve also as measures that will secure this, that only those who are temperate and steady by disposition should be allowed into the study and practice of dialogue, as opposed to the way it is now, where anybody and everybody can approach it3662 regardless of his suitability?
“Quite so.”
It will suffice that they continue participating in argumentation with unremitting concentration and do only this, as the complement to the exercise in gymnastics for the body, but for a period twice as long.
“Do you mean six years or four?”3663
It doesn’t matter—make it five. What matters is what comes next: you’re going to have to send them back down into the cave and require them to take positions of rule in military affairs or civic offices that young men can handle, so that they not fall behind others in their experience.3664 And in these duties too3665 (540) you will have the opportunity to test them as to whether they can hold the center despite being drawn in every direction, or whether they start to wobble.
“How long a time do you set down for this?”
Fifteen years. Once they have reached the age of fifty, those of them that have made it through intact and have excelled in all these areas of study and in every kind of action must be led at last to the final thing,3666 and be compelled to lift the gaze of their soul to it alone, which supplies light to everything. And once they have seen the good for what it is in itself and can use it as their model and standard they are to spend the rest of their lives enhancing the order3667 of the city, and of the citizens, and of themselves,3668 taking turns with their peers. The greater part of their time they will tarry3669 with philosophy, but when their turn comes around they will move into the political realm and apply themselves to the laborious toil3670 of ruling, each in his turn and for the sake of the city, viewing the task not as something fine,3671 but as something necessary, all along the way teaching others to be like them so as to leave replacements for themselves in the city when they make their way off to the Isles of the Blessed and take up habitation there.3672 You must have the city raise up monuments to them and public festivals too, and if the Pythian so dictates3673 they must receive the treatment of divinities, and if not then as men happy3674 and godlike, that have been favored by the gods.
“It is as if you have sculpted perfect statues3675 of the men who will rule.”
And the women also, Glaucon. Don’t take anything I have said as applying to males more than to females, as long as their inborn characteristics are adequate.
“You are right to correct me, if in fact they will share everything on an equal footing with the men as our narrative explained.”
Well then, do you two3676 acquiesce and agree about the city and its constitution, that our account is not entirely a pipe-dream but, although difficult, is possible of realization – but only by one way: once3677 those who are philosophers in truth come into power in the city, whether many or one, and scorn the honors associated with rule as slavish and worthless, but concentrate instead on the right, and on the honors and rewards that derive from it, and on the just as the greatest and most needful element, and once they carry out a thorough instauration of the city they found themselves in by serving justice and extending its influence ...
“How?”3678
Once they send everyone in the city who is older than ten (541) into the countryside, sequester the younger children from life with their parents and bring them up in their own ways and laws as we went through them before. This is the way,3679 you have agreed, that the city and constitution we have described, having most quickly and most easily been established, would be a city with a happy life and a city whose populace, spawned by this constitution, would enjoy the greatest of boons.
“Very much the greatest; and how it could come into existence, if ever it should,3680 you seem to have articulated completely.”
Would you say that our arguments about the city in question and the man corresponding to it are by now quite enough?3681 It’s clear I presume what sort of man we mean for him to be.
“Clear indeed, and I would answer your question by saying it seems to me complete.”3682
END OF BOOK SEVEN
BOOK EIGHT
D.4: Transition from the Digression back to the Original Project
A climax has been reached, and not reached. The question about the Good has come into view as the basis of all knowledge and value, but the question has not been answered. It is not a question whose answer can be laid out before the questioner, as Adeimantus had insisted Socrates attempt to do for him (504B-6C), but an experience of seeing which the questioner must undergo, with or without help. In his approach to the vision under the guidance of Socrates, Glaucon ran out of gas (532DE). The moment he required Socrates to give him such an answer, Socrates suddenly halted the dialogical ascent and pushed him no further.
Not all was lost. The goal of all studies had at least been identified, and a segue opened up to lead them to the residual problem of deciding which of the guards would be advanced to the higher studies and at what pace (534D3ff). But settling that matter did not move us out of the long shadow cast by Glaucon’s failure to reach the Good. Socrates’s acquiescence in that failure has introduced a new movement in the action and a new color to the whole proceedings. Up to that point we had always, by hook and crook, moved forward, by going around, through, or over the obstacles, sometimes positing a good enough approach to keep the inquiry going in hopes it might be improved upon or corroborated later. Because of the ultimacy and primacy of the question that has now been passed by, the vitality and the hopes of the inquiry have come up against a limit, perhaps an internal limit, and the spirit of the occasion declines precipitously.
Paradoxically, these heights had only been reached by dint of Polemarchus’s essentially anti-philosophical interruption at the beginning of Book Five, when he had encouraged Adeimantus to encourage Glaucon to divert Socrates from the path they were on. Polemarchus’s emulous and scandalizing accusation, that in proving that inner virtue is all that matters Socrates had raised intolerable paradoxes, has now been dispensed with. Socrates’s response in its characteristic way aroused a still greater paradox than that of the equality of women and the community of wives: the paradox that rule must be handed over to philosophers if ever the city is to be ordered well. Glaucon rose to the higher plane of the argument, in Book Five, after he had gotten over the paradoxes stirred up by Polemarchus; and then in Book Six, Adeimantus, after a greater recalcitrance characteristically greater than Glaucon's, came around to accepting it, too.
Soon after Adeimantus accepted the conclusion, he became belligerent and Glaucon interrupted the conversation because was afraid Socrates was threatening to quit.3683 We have come to know the two brothers, how Glaucon’s hasty enthusiasm might not carry him all the way to the goal,3684 and how Adeimantus’s cynical candor brings with it a burden emulousness and pride.3685 We may ignore Polemarchus’s reaction to what has transpired over the last three Books since he is not a party to the basic dilemma,3686 but we may not so easily forget Adeimantus’s chilly reaction to the way Socrates sought to frame the question of the Good, nor imagine that Socrates can, either, since in addition to Adeimantus’s being an equal partner to Glaucon in the current endeavor (362D6), he is no less a son of Ariston, Socrates’s contemporary and fellow Athenian citizen, than Glaucon (367E6-C3). To forget Adeimantus is to forget the goal of the inquiry, which was not to found an ideal state, but to show the truth about the just life so that young men like Adeimantus or Glaucon would choose it.
These then are the matters still unresolved at the end of Book Seven, where Socrates already in effect prepares for a return to the question reached at the end of Book Four by reminding both Glaucon and Adeimantus3687 that they have now surmounted the fear of paradox and agreed to the viability and the necessity of a state ruled by philosophers, which takes us back to the beginning of Book Five where Polemarchus had stirred things up.
2.B.8: Unjust Cities and Injustice in the Man Resumed
(543) Socrates does not speak to us, but does indicate to us that he is continuing to talk to Glaucon.3688
Alright then. We can rely on3689 these matters as agreed, that in the city that is going to be settled in the top3690 way, the women will be held in common, the children will be held in common, and the entire education will be done in common; likewise their activities will be common, in war and in peace, and among the guards the ones that will be kings are those who have proved to be the best in philosophy and at war.
“All that is agreed.”
But there was more that we agreed to, as I remember:3691 that once the rulers have been appointed they will lead their soldiers to a place where they will settle into housing3692 of the sort we described3693 that would hold no private possessions for any one of them and would be open to all.3694 And in addition to such quarters as these we also carefully reached an agreement about what possessions3695 they should have.
“Yes, I remember that we were thinking none of them should possess any of the things that the others3696 do, as things are now, but that in their role as athletes of war3697 and guards they should receive pay from the others for their guarding service to cover their board for the year, for which in return they must watch over themselves and the rest of the city.”
You say rightly what we agreed to. But come—since we have finished our policy regarding that,3698 let’s recall what we were saying when we were diverted onto the path that brought us here, so that we might pick up where we left off.
“It’s not difficult to remember,” he said. “Then, just as now, you were discussing what to talk about once you had completed the discovery of the best city, and you were saying that you posited3699 the city you had described to be a good city, as well as the man who resembled it—though to all appearances you were able to tell us about an even better city and a better man to tell us about—(544) but3700 that the other forms of government are flawed in that they differ from this correct3701 model. The types of government worth discussing and observing for their flaws were four in number,3702 you said, as I remember, as well as the types of men that correspond to them, and that we should discuss them so that once we have seen all of the types of men and we have agreed about which of them was the most virtuous and which was the most vicious, we could go on to investigate whether the best of these men was also happiest and the worst the most miserable, or whether things were otherwise than this. Then, the moment I was asking you what were the four constitutions you had in mind,3703 Polemarchus and Adeimantus interrupted. You shifted to their subject3704 and that’s how we got to where we are now.”
You've remembered everything, said I.
“Alright then just as in wrestling, resume the same hold3705 and try to say what you were about to say when I asked you that question.”
Let’s just see if I can.
“I really want to hear3706 what you are saying the four constitutional forms are.”
You won’t have a hard time getting to hear them.3707 The ones I have in mind each in fact have a reputation,3708 as follows. First3709 of all the one that most people3710 praise: the Cretan and Laconian type of constitution. Second and second also in praise is the one called oligarchy, a constitution fraught with evils.3711 Next,3712 the one that diverges from this and arises next in the order:3713 democracy. And then3714 comes tyranny, the whopper of the bunch that surpasses3715 them all, the fourth and last disease that a city can suffer.3716 Or perhaps you see some other type of constitution, distinct and salient? As for dynasties3717 and purchased monarchies and other such arrangements, they fall somewhere in between these.3718 One finds them no less among the foreign races than among the Greeks.3719
“I have certainly heard of some strange ones.”
Now do you recognize that likewise among men3720 there must exist the same number of types as the number of constitutions? Or do you imagine that constitutions are born out of oak and stone3721 somehow, and not out of the personalities that are found in the cities, which force everything else that could go either way to gravitate in their own direction?
“I imagine them coming from no other place than there.”
So that if the types of city are five, then the ways individual men’s souls are set up3722 would also be five.
“Go on.”
Now the man who resembles the aristocratic3723 constitution we have already described, the one we have declared to be good and just3724 in the correct sense.
“So we have.”
(545) Should we then next describe the inferior types, the man emulous of victory and of honor whose soul is set3725 in a manner corresponding to the Laconic constitution,3726 and the oligarchic type in turn and the democratic and the3727 tyrannical, so that once we have seen what the most unjust man is like we can compare him to the most just man and complete our investigation of the question about how unmixed justice stands in comparison with unmixed injustice, as to the happiness or misery of the man who possesses the one and the other? That way we can decide whether to believe Thrasymachus and pursue injustice3728 in our lives, or believe the argument that is emerging in the course of our discussion3729 and pursue justice.
“That is exactly what we should do.”
Should we proceed as we did the first time, by looking for the character first3730 in the constitutions rather than in the individuals on the grounds it is easier to see there,3731 and investigate first the philotimic constitution (I know no current term for it other than this:3732 let’s call it timocracy or timarchy3733) and then in comparison with this investigate the man of like character; and next to describe oligarchy and the oligarchic man; and again, by using democracy as a reference, to contemplate the democratic man; and then fourth to arrive at the city ruled by a tyrant and having beheld its nature to direct our attention in turn to the tyrannical soul, all in the attempt to become adequate judges3734 of the matter we have set before ourselves to decide?
“No one could fault3735 how reasonable it is to proceed in this way, namely, to view them and then3736 to judge between them.”
2.B.8.a: Timocracy and the Timocratic Man
Alright then let’s proceed, and try to say how timocracy might evolve out of aristocracy.3737 Or is this much3738 true without qualification, that when any constitution, no matter what kind, undergoes an alteration,3739 the alteration arises entirely3740 from the part of it that rules, due to faction arising within it, whereas conversely as long as that part maintains a consensus within itself, even if the part is quite small, the constitution can’t be disturbed?3741
“Yes, that’s true without qualification.”
So then how will our3742 constitution undergo change? How, that is, will the helpers and the rulers3743 fall into faction against each other and amongst themselves?3744 Shall we take our lead from Homer and pray to the Muses to tell us “How first3745 did faction befall it?”3746 and then claim that they are answering us in their haughty way with tragic elevation, treating us as children and putting us on, as if their answer were serious?
“And what would that sound like?”
(546) Like this: “Hard it is to change a city founded so firm as yours; but since all that came to be will meet its end, here, too,3747 an arrangement3748 so fine as this cannot abide forever, but will dissolve. The dissolution is on this3749 wise: not only in the world of earthbound plants3750 but also for earth-roaming animals there come times of fertility and times of infertility, for soul as well as body, whenever the solstices and nadirs of the planets in their circular paths attach to one of them or another, now short of life to the short-lived and then opposite to the opposite.3751 In the case of your race the times ideal for rich progeny and of barrenness, those men, though they be wise, whom you nurtured to be the city’s leaders, will have no advantage from reason and sense to hit upon. They will miss these moments and soon or late will spawn children at a time they should not. Now the portion of the divine race3752 that is begot has a cycle whose length is well set by a perfect number,3753 but for the human it is just when first augmentations, dominant and dominated, having attained three lengths and four termini, consisting of things alike and things unalike and of things waxing and things waning, show themselves to be assignable and expressible in terms of one another. Of which the first ratio of one to the other a third again as great, linked to a five-some, yields a pair of harmonies when increased threefold, the one a product of equals multiplied by one hundred and the other equal in length if measured the one way but longer if measured the other, the one a hundred of the numbers got from the rational diameter of the five-some less one in each case, and less two if irrational, and the other a hundred of the cubes of the triad. Entirely geometrical is this number, and as such it holds the key to this sort of thing, the better as opposed to the worse times of birth. When these3754 your guards do not know, but breed bride with groom inopportune, neither gifted nor lucky3755 will the offspring be; and from this litter the forebears will install in office of rule the best of them, unworthy though they be; these in turn will enter the seats their fathers occupied and us, for the first time, they will now neglect, guards though they are, estimating their involvement in music at less than its worth, and second gymnastic, whence your young will turn out less cultured for you.3756 Subsequently in ruling they will lose their edge3757 at assaying Hesiod’s division, which we also share, of the races gold and silver, bronze and iron. (547) Instead, iron will mate with silver and bronze with gold3758 and variation will infect the scene and inharmonious irregularity,3759 which gives birth wherever it occurs to war and enmity. Lo, such is the source of faction,3760 wherever it occurs.”
“If they say this we’ll declare their response to be correct.”
How could they be any less than correct, being Muses?3761
“Well what do the Muses say comes next?”
“Faction born among them (they will say), the two pairs of races pulled,3762 as you might imagine, the iron and bronze toward moneymaking and the acquisition of land and house, and gold and silver,3763 and the other in turn, those golden and silvern,3764 since they felt no poverty but are rich by their inner nature,3765 tried to lead the souls of the guards toward virtue and the original3766 state of affairs. After forcing and pulling against each other they arrived3767 at a compromise by coming half-way.3768 The city’s land and homes they would take over3769 as their private possessions, while those who previously had been protected by them as3770 friends reciprocating with their support, they would now reduce to the role of slaves, as dependents within their compounds and as serfs3771 on their lands, while they themselves would look after war as well as keep an eye on3772 them.”
“This shift does seem to me to have its origin here.”
And would you agree that this governmental form is something in between aristocracy and oligarchy?
“Quite so.”
So once it makes the shift, what will things be like under the new regime?3773 Isn’t it clear that in some ways it would imitate3774 the previous constitution but in others it would imitate oligarchy, since it lies between them, and that in still other ways it would be unique?3775
“Just so.”
On the one hand, in the way the city honors the rulers, and the way the group that fights for the city abstains from farming and artisanry and the rest of moneymaking,3776 and3777 they are provided with a common mess and they practice their gymnastics and their military3778 exercises—in all these respects this regime will imitate the previous one.
“Yes.”
On the other hand, in the way the city fears elevating the wise into positions of power, insofar as it no longer possesses3779 persons undividedly and totally dedicated3780 to wisdom but mixed only, and tends instead to rely on willful and single-minded3781 types, persons more suited by their inner nature (548) to war than to peace and to managing peace with trickery and deception3782 because of its dedication to being perpetually at war,3783 in these ways doesn’t the regime take on a character unique to itself?
“Yes.”
But they’d be3784 desirous of material possessions like people who live in oligarchic regimes,3785 holding gold and silver in high honor, fiercely but in secret,3786 since now they had acquired treasure3787 and household rooms where they can hide it, and walls also to surround their compound, with private lairs within them where they might lavish money on their wives3788 and on any others it may please them to.
“Quite true.”
But also stingy about material possessions since they accord them high rank although acquiring them behind the scenes, spendthrifts with the money of others because of that desire and indulging their enjoyment in secret, disobeying the law like children who go behind their father’s back, educated as they were not so much by persuasion as by compulsion,3789 because of their habits of neglecting the true Muse that teaches with arguments and philosophy and of holding gymnastics in greater esteem than music?3790
“You are describing a regime that is throughout a mixture of good and bad.”
Mixed it is, with one thing most salient3791 since here the willful part of the soul holds sway: everywhere you see the love of victory and the love of honor.3792
“Emphatically so.”
This, then, is how this regime would arise and this is what it would be like, to describe it in outline and not in full finish and detail, since it will suffice to view the most just and most unjust man on the basis of the outline whereas it would be an endless task to work our way through every type of regime without leaving anything out.
“This is the right way to do it.”
Then what is the type of man that corresponds to this regime? How does he arise and what is he like?3793
“In my opinion,” Adeimantus said, “he would verge quite close to this Glaucon here,3794 at least in his constant desire to win.”
Maybe so in that respect; but he would seem to me not to resemble him in the following.
“Which?”
He has to be more headstrong,3795 I said, and less enamored of culture, though fond of it still, and he has to enjoy listening to speeches, but not be so good at speaking himself.3796 Also, toward slaves (549) this sort of man would be3797 violent as opposed to treating them as insignificant the way an adequately educated person would, whereas toward free men he would be gentle3798 and overly heedful of the persons in charge; a lover of rule and of honor, with the view that attaining office would not come to him from speaking and all that is related to it but from actions,3799 actions military and related to the military, a lover of gymnastics and a lover of hunting.3800
“That is indeed the character that goes with that regime.”
And as for material possessions won’t this fellow despise them while he is young, but as he gets older come to embrace them, not only because of his inborn materialism but also because he has lost the unsullied3801 orientation toward virtue since he has left behind the best of safeguards?
“Which?” asked Adeimantus.3802
Reason blended3803 with music, which alone by its indwelling presence can preserve what virtue a man has.
“A cultured answer3804 you give.”
So this is what the spirited3805 timocrat will be like, resembling a city of that type; but3806 as to his evolution it will be as follows. Imagine3807 a young man who is the son of a father who is good3808 and lives in a city that is not well governed, a father who avoids its honors and offices, its lawsuits and all the rest of that sort of business, perfectly willing to accept less than his due3809 if only he can avoid trouble—
“But tell me about the son ...”3810
When first he hears his mother complaining that she has a husband who is not one of the rulers, and how she is outclassed by the other women because of this; that she sees he is less than whole-hog at moneymaking and doesn’t even fight back when slandered in suits private and public,3811 but takes such things lying down;3812 how she notices3813 it is with himself he is always preoccupied and as for herself he neither honors her nor dishonors her; how, depressed by all this, she says that his father is unmanly3814 and a pushover and goes on and on3815 with all the rest that women are wont to say about this kind of husband.
“They do go on and on, always with the same complaints,” Adeimantus said.
Are you aware that sometimes3816 the slaves also in such a household3817 will talk about such things with the sons in secret—and who but these would seem to the sons to have their best interests in mind?3818 When they notice that somebody owes the father money whom he does not track down or that somebody has done him an injustice, they admonish the son that once he grows up, he will of (550) course go after all these sorts and be more a man than his father is.3819 Then he goes out of the house and encounters attitudes similar to these,3820 and sees that people who mind their own business in the city are called fools and are not given the time of day, while those who mind what is not their own3821 are honored and praised.3822 Then comes the fateful moment3823 when our young man, hearing and seeing all those sorts of things and hearing also what his father is telling him and watching how he behaves, which he knows so well3824 in comparison with the behavior of the others, at one moment dragged in the one direction and at the next moment in the other, with the father ever seeking to nourish the reasonable part of his soul and make it grow and the others ever stimulating his desiring part and his will, since his natural heritage is not that of a vicious man but he has by now become inured3825 to vicious associations with the others, as a result of their opposite pulling, one fateful day he moved3826 to the middle3827 and he conferred the office of rule within him onto the middle part, the one that likes to win, the thumoeidetic, and thereby he became a haughty3828 man who loves honor.3829
“Well, you seem to me to have made very smooth work of telling us how he comes to be.”
Have we then found the second regime and the second man?
“So we have.”3830
2.B.8.b: Oligarchy and the Oligarchic Man
And shall we next tell of “another man aligned with another of the cities,” as Aeschylus would put it3831—or, better—to keep with our program—tell the next city first?
“Quite so.”
Oligarchy would I think be the city that follows this last type.
“But tell me what kind of an arrangement you take oligarchy to be.”3832
It is the regime that requires3833 persons to meet a property qualification, where the rich are the rulers and a poor man has no share of governing.
“I get it.”
Is our first task3834 to tell how the change takes place3835 from timarchy3836 to oligarchy?
“Yes.”
Well even a blind man can see how it happens.
“How?”
That private treasure house3837 filling up with gold that each of them has, is what destroys this kind of regime. The first step is that they contrive expenditures and lavish the money on themselves,3838 perverting the laws rather than obeying them, both on themselves and their wives. Next, the one sees3839 the other doing it and becomes envious, and the one works to make his own wealth comparable to the other’s.3840 There you have it: they move further and further in the direction of moneymaking, and the more they come to honor this, the less they honor virtue. Don’t you agree after all that virtue and wealth are dead set against each other like weights in the scales of a balance, always tipping in opposite directions?
“Quite so.”
(551) If wealth and the wealthy are valued in the city, then virtue and the good are devalued.3841
“Clearly.”
But whatever3842 is honored is practiced and improved, whereas what has lost favor is neglected.
“That’s how it goes.”
And so in place of being men who love victory and the honor to which it leads, they end up becoming3843 lovers of moneymaking and the material possessions it provides.3844 The rich man they praise and admire and elevate into office, and the poor man they disenfranchise.3845
“Exactly.”
Then it is that the fateful step is taken.3846 They set by law a financial requirement as the definitive criterion of the oligarchic regime—the more oligarchic the regime the higher the requirement and the less oligarchic the lower—and proclaim that office will not be available to a person that does not possess the determined amount of money. This policy they manipulate into existence by force of arms unless they had already established it by intimidation. Isn’t this the way it goes?
“Yes it is.”
And can we say that establishing that policy is what virtually constitutes the regime?3847
“Yes, but what is the character3848 of the regime? What are its distinct shortcomings, as we put it?”3849
First of all3850 this thing we just mentioned: What is the quality of that fundamental policy? Look at what it would be like if one selected pilots on the basis of a property requirement, and never entrusted the job to a poor man even if he were the most qualified of pilots—
“A poor3851 voyage they would make of it!”
So also in the case of any other kind of leadership position?
“I do think so.”
Would you except the position of leading a city, or would you include this also?
“The city most of all, to the extent that this kind of ruling is the most difficult and the most far-reaching in its effect.”
Then this is the first shortcoming oligarchy would have, and this is how great that shortcoming is.
“Clearly.”
But is the following any less grave?
“What?”
The fact that this city cannot be one but must be two cities:3852 a city of poor and a city of rich, both living in the same place and always plotting against each other.
“Not at all less grave.”
But the following, too, is hardly fine, that they are unlikely to be able to fight much of a war, since they would be forced into choosing either to employ the masses and by arming them to make them more fearsome than the enemy, or to forgo employing them and show themselves on the battlefield to be oligarchs in the literal sense,3853 having but few men under their control, not to mention their reluctance to impose a war levy on themselves since they love their wealth so much.
“Far from fine.”
So that brings on the thing we were berating a while ago: dabbling in many (552) fields, where the same man farms and makes money and fights in war at the same time.3854 Has that practice now come to seem proper in the case of this regime?
“Not at all.”
But observe whether, evil as all those evils are, this regime will be the first to allow the very greatest evil of all.
“Which?”
The lack of any bar to keep3855 a man from assigning everything that is properly his3856 to others, nor to keep others from taking possession of it, him having given it all up and living in the city as a nobody who plays no3857 proper role, neither moneymaker nor artisan, nor horseman nor soldier,3858 left only to be stigmatized3859 as destitute and helpless.
“It will be the first.”
There is nothing to prevent this happening in the oligarchical3860 cities. Otherwise, the one group would not be super-rich and the other group totally poor.3861
“Right.”
But consider this: when the man that became rich in this way lavished his wealth, was he then of any worth to the city in respect to the jobs we just mentioned?3862 Or would we say that although the man seemed to be one of the rulers, the truth was he was not a ruler, a man who tends the state,3863 but just a man who spends his stake?
“So he seemed, but in reality he was just a spender.”
Would you want to say about him that just as in a beehive a drone showing up is a sign that the swarm is sick,3864 so also for this sort of a drone to show up in one’s hearth and home3865 is a sign there is disease in the city?
“I would, indeed, Socrates.”
Now, Adeimantus, when it comes to the drones with wings, God made them all to lack stingers; but of these earthbound ones some are without stingers while others have very fearsome stingers indeed. The stingerless ones end up in their old age to be the beggars we see in an oligarchy, but it is from those that have stingers that oligarchy’s infamous3866 scoundrels come.
“Very true.”
It’s therefore clear that in a city where one sees beggars, there also lurk thieves and cut-purses and temple robbers and perpetrators of all such evils as these.3867
“Clear it is.”
Would you say you see beggars in oligarchical cities?
“One would not go far wrong to say everybody is a beggar, except for the rulers.”
Perhaps then we may imagine there is also a good number of scoundrels that have stingers in such cities, whom the powers that be must take care and use force3868 to constrain.
“Imagine we may.”
Shall we to blame their presence in the city on its lack of culture, stemming from the faults in nurture and in the defining principle of the regime?3869
“So we shall.”
So then would this be the quality of the oligarchical city and this the scope of the evils to be found there,3870 allowing that perhaps there are more?3871
“Close enough.”
(553) So we can say we have finished off this regime, too, the one they call oligarchy, which appoints its rulers according to a property requirement. The man that resembles it we must next investigate, how he evolves and, once evolved, what he is like.3872
“Quite so.”
Most likely,3873 the oligarchic man evolves out of the timocratic man we saw before as follows. The timocrat has a son. At first he emulates3874 his father and follows in his footsteps, but then he sees him suddenly run aground in his civic career as on a reef,3875 and watches as all that he owns and all that he is3876 is squandered,3877 though he had been a general3878 or held some other high office, and how then he is dragged into court by sycophants for further harm,3879 and executed or exiled or stripped of office3880 and everything that was his own.3881
“Likely.”
His son has seen all this, has felt the pain of all this, has lost his family wealth,3882 and now – out of fear, as I imagine – he ousts the love of honor headlong from its throne3883 in his soul along with that haughty will that supported it. Now humbled by his poverty, toward moneymaking he turns, and greedily.3884 By scrimping and saving and hard work he gathers wealth. Don’t you think a person so disposed would at that moment choose to install into that now empty seat of honor in his soul his epithumetic and materialistic part, decking it out with turbans and necklaces and waist-swords as if it were the Great King?3885
“I do.”
While on the other hand the rational and the willful elements he now stations, prostrate on the left and right at the foot of the throne, to wait on desire’s beck and call, disallowing3886 reason to calculate or investigate anything but how to turn less money into more, and allowing pride to admire nothing and honor nothing but wealth and the men that have it, and to take pride in nothing3887 but the acquisition of things and whatever conduces to it.3888
“There is no faster or more irreversible3889 way than this for a young man to turn from a lover of honor into a lover of wealth.”
So is this the oligarchic man?
“Well at least we can say that he was transformed out of a man that was like the kind of regime oligarchy resulted from.”
Then let’s investigate whether he would be like the resultant regime.3890
“Let’s investigate.”
(554) First of all3891 would he resemble it in the way he cares about money more than anything else?3892
“Obviously.”
And in his being stingy and industrious, allowing himself to indulge only those of his appetites as are necessary, but avoiding any other kind of outlay and subjugating3893 any other desire to his will as being foolhardy.
“Quite so.”
As a grimy3894 person, always thinking how to come away from every encounter with a gain, as an amasser of fortune of a sort that the masses of men in fact admire,3895 wouldn’t3896 such a man be the very likeness of this sort of regime?
“I, at least, agree with you on that. We surely can say that money is held in highest honor both by the city and by the man of this type.”
After all I would guess he has hardly paid any attention to culture.
“I think not, or else he would not have appointed a blind man3897 to head the chorus nor be holding him in such high esteem.”3898
Well put—but consider this: Don’t we have to assert that dronelike3899 desires will arise in him because of his lack of education,3900 some of them beggarly desires but others villainous, though both are being forcibly held down at the behest of his overall concern?3901
“Quite so!”
Do you know where you can catch sight of their3902 villainy in operation?
“Where?”
The way such a man acts as guardian of an orphan3903 or anything else it befalls him to manage where he has a golden opportunity to do harm and injury.3904
“Truly.”
From this it’s clear that in the rest of his dealings with others, where he has the opportunity to accrue a good reputation by appearing to be a just man,3905 it is by a certain kind of violent decency3906 that he contains the villainous desires that lurk within him rather than by persuading them that this is the best course or by taming them with reason. Instead it is out of necessity and out of fear that he does so, cowering at the prospect of losing all that wealth3907 of his.
“Yes, he does this a good deal.”
But I’ll aver it by Zeus, my friend: whenever they see an opportunity3908 to squander the wealth of others you will witness the dronelike desires3909 that lurk within them.
“Yes, and powerful ones.”
And so such a person is not free from faction within. He is not a single man but a sort of doubleton, with his desires set against his desires, the better ones usually mastering the worse ones.3910
“That’s how he is.”
For these reasons I’d guess a man of this sort would cut a finer figure than most, even though the true virtue of a soul like-minded and harmonized3911 within would have eluded him completely.
“Seems so to me, too.”
(555) And yet because of his inward stinginess he would be an insignificant3912 rival for any civic prize or other endeavor in emulation of finer things,3913 and unwilling3914 to part with his money merely to burnish his reputation by engaging in such contests,3915 fearing that he might rouse desires within him that would be wasteful after all3916 and might muster them to his side in a grand alliance to achieve high things,3917 but fights instead3918 the oligarch’s war,3919 a minority of the elements within himself fighting against everything else that he is, so that he ends up a rich3920 loser.3921
“Just right!”
And so, I said, can we doubt any longer the similitude according to which our niggardly moneymaker is aligned3922 with the oligarchical regime?
“Not at all.”
2.B.8.c: Democracy and the Democratic Man
Democracy then we must next investigate, both out of what turn of affairs it arises and once it has3923 what its character turns out to be, so that again we can get to know the turn of the corresponding man and bring him alongside the others for our judgment.3924
“If we did, we could say we were proceeding in a way consistent with ourselves.”3925
As to the evolution3926 from oligarchy to democracy, do you think it somehow has to do with this, that the appetite and desire for the thing they set before themselves3927 as the good is insatiable, namely this idea that one must become the richest he can?
“Just how?”
Since they hold the position of rulers because of the great wealth they have acquired, the rulers will not be willing to curb the young,3928 who do after all become unruly,3929 with rules forbidding them from wasting and losing their own inheritance – so that by themselves investing in what belongs to such persons and buying them out, they might become still richer and enjoy greater credit.3930
“Exactly.”3931
Is it not clear that, from this point on, the city’s policy of honoring wealth is incompatible3932 with a policy of acquiring3933 a decent measure of self-control in her citizens? That one or the other must be neglected?
“Tolerably clear.”
Well, does the misguided concern3934 you see in oligarchies,3935 and their lassitude as to intemperate behavior, sometimes drive3936 even virtuous persons into poverty and destitution?
“Quite often.”
So there they sit, inactive in the city but armed as it were3937 with their stingers, some of them owing money to keep what they have, others already bought out and disenfranchised,3938 and still others who both owe and have nothing, despising and plotting against those who have acquired what was theirs, and others like them.3939 A New Way becomes the object of their yearning and desire.
“That’s how it is.”
Meanwhile the moneymakers, averting their gaze and as if not even to notice them, pricking with infusions of silver whichever citizens have not yet given in,3940 reaping for themselves a yield and offspring many times greater than the principal sum and progenitor,3941 engender an ever larger and (556) ever poorer class of drones3942 in the city.
“How could it be anything other than large?”3943
And yet by the policy aforementioned they are not willing to put out the fire spread by such an evil—preventing citizens from putting what is their own into whoever’s hands they want3944—nor by the following, a means by which such maladies are resolved in accordance with an alternate law.
“What law?”
The law that comes second after that one, and constrains the citizens to practice virtue.3945 For as long as law and custom enjoin that with certain exceptions citizens enter contracts at their own risk,3946 it would seem that business in the city would be less unscrupulous, and less therefore would the sorts of evil we are now contemplating be spawned3947 in it.
“Quite a lot less,” he said.
But as it is,3948 and because of all we have said, this is the way the ruled are treated by the rulers in this city—And how do they treat themselves and their own?3949 As to their sons, wouldn’t they be an enervated bunch, untested in bodily exercises as well as the exercises of the soul, so as to be3950 weak at standing up against pleasures and pains, and slothful?
“Obviously.”
And themselves completely negligent of the other things3951 besides making money, and feeling a commitment to practicing virtue no greater than do the poor.3952
“No greater at all.”
So given this division of roles in the population, any time the rulers and the ruled come alongside one another, whether on the byways or at some kind of gathering, perhaps on an embassy or in the army, sailing together or mustering together, or indeed in the moment of danger itself,3953 so as to view each other—when3954 this time the poor do not go unnoticed by the rich3955 and instead in all likelihood3956 a lean man, poor3957 and sunburnt, arrayed in the battle line beside a rich man lily-white3958 with an extra portion of flesh not truly his own,3959 notices3960 how full of asthma and inability that man really is:3961 do you think he can avoid coming to the conclusion that it is because of the weakness and cowardice of his own group3962 that men of their ilk are rich? And that when they are in their own company they pass the watchword amongst themselves, “We own these guys3963—they’re nothing.”
“I know full well that they do this.”3964
Just as a sickly body needs only a small push from the outside to catch a disease, and sometimes even without external impetus can fall out of sorts with itself, so a city analogously disposed3965 needs little provocation,3966 whether because the one party brings in some oligarchic allies from abroad or the other party some democratic ones, to fall sick and be at war with itself, sometimes becoming hobbled by faction even without external stimulus.
(557) “That is often quite enough.”
Democracy itself, as I see it, arrives once the poor become victorious, killing some of the opposite party and exiling others, and sharing the civic organization and its offices on equal footing3967 with those that remain, the choice of officers now3968 done by drawing lots, for the most part.
“This is truly the policy that establishes democracy, whether it is instituted by arms or only out of fear, the other party escaping into exile.”3969
Then what is the turn of the civic management that these men adopt?3970 How, that is, does the character of this regime differ from the others?3971 Already3972 it is clear that the man who corresponds to the regime will turn out to be of a democratic sort.
“Yes, it is clear.”
So, first of all they will become free: the city will come to be full of freedom and candor,3973 and a latitude or license will arise in it to do whatever one wishes.
“This is what is said about democracy.”
But wherever there is latitude each person would clearly design his own life according to his own private3974 preferences.
“Clearly.”
So a veritable kaleidoscope of human types would arise under such a regime as this.
“Nothing to prevent that.”
This one might just be the most beautiful of the regimes.3975 Like a robe decked out with the dyes of many flowers,3976 this city, bedecked with a rainbow of character-types,3977 might seem the prettiest. Think of the way children and women3978 feel when they contemplate highly decorated things: the majority very well3979 might judge this regime to be the most beautiful.3980
“Could well be.”
And it really would just the place, my dazzling friend, to look for a regime.3981
“Just what do you mean by that?”
Just that it includes all the types of regime because of its licentiousness: indeed, a person who has a mind to design a city, as we ourselves were doing, might himself do well to visit a democratized city,3982 to choose whichever style3983 of city pleases him, as though he were visiting a showroom of regimes,3984 and having chosen it to move on to3985 its realization.3986
“At least he’d have no lack of models3987 to choose from.”
But the fact that there would be no requirement to rule in this city, not even if you3988 were able to rule,3989 nor to be ruled in case you wish not to be, nor to go to war when others are at war, nor to observe a treaty just because the others do, nor conversely, in case some law prevents you from ruling or acting as judge, that you may both rule and judge no less, (558) if that's what enters your mind3990 – wouldn’t this be a sweet and blessed way to pass the time at every moment?
“Maybe so, for a while.”3991
And this: Have you seen how delightfully mild the judicial condemnations3992 sometimes prove to be? Or have you not yet witnessed how, when men3993 have been condemned3994 to death or to exile in such a regime, they hang around no less and keep popping up3995 in your midst, with3996 nobody caring or noticing if one of them haunts the place like a spirit returned from the grave?
“Yes, and many of them.”
And the clemency3997 that is all her manner with no hint of sticking at details, though she does take umbrage at the policies we argued for, high-toned and self-important, when we were establishing our city,3998 that unless a person had a nature far and away3999 superior he could never become a good man, without having played since childhood in beautiful surroundings and practiced and exercised himself in all such things. How large-heartedly4000 she tramples down all such admonitions wholesale4001 and gives no second thought to the background of a person who is working4002 to make his way into politics,4003 but grants him her esteem if only he claims to have the people’s interest in mind.
“So very impressive,4004 I’d say.”
Not only this then but a lot of allied qualities would democracy provide, and would be4005 a sweet regime to all appearances, free of rules and fascinating for its variety,4006 allocating4007 a kind of equality to all whether they are equal or not.4008
“What you say is all too familiar.”4009
Then look at the individual,4010 and what he is like in private. Or should we first investigate how he evolves, as we did with his regime?4011
“Yes.”
Isn’t it this way? That stingy oligarch would have a son raised up on the same character traits as his father.4012
“How else?”
So he too, by using force to control those pleasures he feels within himself that expend resources but make no profit, the ones that are called non-necessary ...
“Yes... yes...”
Would you have me make the distinction between the necessary desires and the non-necessary more clear before continuing, so that we might avoid obscurity in our conversation?
“I would.”
Those we cannot conceivably avert would rightly be called necessary, as well as those that leave us with a net benefit, since in both cases it is necessary to our nature that we pursue them. Do you agree?
“Yes.”
It is appropriate that we use the term “necessary” of them.
(559) “Appropriate it is.”
But what about those that a person could be released from if he worked at it from his youth, which also4013 as long as they are still present in him achieve nothing of value, as well as those that in fact do the opposite?4014 Wouldn’t we do well to call these non-necessary?
“Quite well.”
Shall we select a model of each so as to have a grasp of what they look like?
“We ought.”
The desire to eat, up to the amount that promotes health and well-being, and the desire for food itself4015 and relish4016—would these be necessary desires?
“I think so.”
The desire for food, on the one hand, is necessary in both senses: that it is beneficial and that it is able to stop4017 a man from living.4018
“Yes.”
And the desire for relish is necessary also, if it advances well-being in any way.4019
“Quite so.”
But what about the desire that goes beyond this, the desire for all and sundry things you can eat,4020 which can be disciplined from youth and brought along to give up most of such things, and is harmful to the body and harmful also to the soul with respect to its mindfulness and temperance? Would this correctly be called non-necessary?
“Most correctly.”
So these latter we will call luxurious and the former thrifty since they help us thrive4021 in our work.
“Naturally.”
And shall we draw the same distinction in the case of the sexual and the other desires?
“So we shall.”
As to the man we were just calling a drone, weren’t we talking about a person who is full of such pleasures and desires as these and is ruled by the non-necessary ones, whereas the man who is ruled by the necessary ones was stingy and oligarchical?
“Yes, of course.”
So let’s return to the question how the democratic man evolves out of the oligarchic one. To me it seems in most cases4022 to take place as follows.4023 The young man has been raised as we said4024 under the uncultured and stingy4025 regime of his father. If one day he tastes the honey of the drones4026 and falls in with certain agile brutes,4027 clever ones that are able to procure for him pleasure of all types, all decked out and adjusted to every taste,4028 that’s the day his transformation begins, from the oligarchic4029 order within him toward a democratic one.
“Irresistibly.”
So now, just as the city underwent4030 a transformation with the help of an alliance between one of the parties within her and certain outside elements that were similar to that party, so also our youth undergoes a transformation when a group of desires working from the outside aids the faction of desires within him to which it is akin and similar.
“The analogy is exact.”
But if a counter-rescue should be carried out by some ally of the oligarchic element within him,4031 whether from his father or even other family members who chastise him and reproach him,4032 (560) then we have faction and counter-faction and a battle arising within him against himself.
“Clearly.”
And I imagine that sometimes the democratic element gradually yielded4033 to the oligarchic, and of the pleasures some4034 perished and others went into exile4035 while reverence and respectfulness resumed hegemony as it were4036 in the young man’s soul, and calm order4037 was established in him once again.
“It does happen sometimes.”
But at another time, I imagine,4038 though such desires were exiled, others like them were subtly coddled by the father’s ignorance of how to rear his son, and thereby flourished widely and became strong.4039
“That sort of thing does tend to happen.”
And they drag them back to those same associations and through secret intercourse with them they give birth to a teeming offspring.
“Obviously.”
Finally,4040 however, they captured that part of the young man’s soul we may call the acropolis, recognizing how empty it had become of studies and activities that are fine4041 and thoughts that are true, which are after all the best sentries and guards4042 for the men upon whom the gods smile,4043 residing in their minds.
“So they truly are.”
Now false and flattering4044 arguments and opinions4045 instead of those ran up and seized that place in such a man.
“Quite so.”
And so does he return to those Lotus-eaters4046 and live with them openly,4047 so that if someone now4048 should come to rescue that stingy part of his soul, those braggart thoughts lock the gates of the royal4049 compound within him and tolerate neither the alliance that is already at hand4050 nor even admit the embassies of elder statesmen4051 as if theirs were merely the counsels of unauthorized4052 individuals. Instead they themselves beat everyone back in battle:4053 what was reverence they now call stupidity and exile it disenfranchised; sobriety they call unmanliness, and heap ridicule upon it and drive it out; moderation and graceful expenditure they dub homely and illiberal4054 and drive it abroad with the help of a surfeit of unbeneficial desires.
“Very much so.”
And once they have evacuated of such dispositions and cleansed4055 the soul of this young man who is now in their thrall and is undergoing an initiation4056 in their powerful rites, the time has arrived for them to restore hubris from exile4057 and anarchy, profligacy and irreverence,4058 all bright and brilliant with a great entourage and crowned,4059 and usher them in with praise and seductive names:4060 hubris now they call astuteness,4061 anarchy freedom, profligacy generosity and the brash the brave.4062 Isn’t (561) this the way that a man, while he is still young, evolves from being a person raised within the confines of necessary desires into4063 a freedom, or a lassitude, that admits pleasures non-necessary and non-beneficial?
“You’ve made it crystal clear.”
As to the way he goes on to live his life, he no longer countenances a distinction4064 between necessary and non-necessary pleasures in the expenditure of whatever he has by way of money, strength and attention.4065 If he is lucky and his rites of debauchery4066 do not take him too far,4067 and if he grows a little older and survives the turmoil of youth, and if he takes into himself some measure of the pleasures lately exiled4068 and surrenders less than all of himself to the pleasures that lately invaded him, then, having placed all his pleasures onto equal footing,4069 he glides along4070 in life, conferring authority over himself onto whichever of them befall him as if by lot,4071 now to one of them until he is sated of it and then to the next,4072 scorning not a single one but nurturing them all without prejudice.4073
“Exactly.”
And as for true reasoning4074 he accepts it not,4075 nor4076 does he admit into his citadel the argument, if someone should make it, that some of the pleasures go with desires fine and good4077 but others are attached to knavish desires, and that one ought to practice and honor4078 the one kind but chastise and constrain the other. All such argument he sweeps aside with the flat refusal and assertion that all pleasures are worthy4079 and each must be given equal standing.4080
“If he is so disposed he will very truly act that way.”
And so he will live his daily life enjoying whatever pleasure comes his way, one day drinking and carousing while another day it’s water only and some slimming down.4081 One day you’ll see him working out at the gymnasium, and another leisurely and carefree;4082 and sometimes he’ll spend a day working on his4083 philosophy. Not seldom he will do some politics, popping up to say or do4084 whatever enters his head. One day he envies some enemies and he wants to start a war; another day it’s the moneymakers and he turns to that.4085 The one thing he won’t have in his life is order of any kind, nor will any norm impinge upon the way he lives it: instead he will just glide along4086 telling himself how sweet life is, how free it is, nay, how his life’s a blessed4087 thing.
“You have utterly described the life of the man who embodies the isonomic4088 ideal, if I may put it that way!”
And I fancy we could add that it is a life of many faces, packed with the greatest number of traits. And the man that corresponds to it is beautiful for his variety, just like this city, a man whom many men would envy for his life and many women4089 alike, seeing him to possess the very greatest sampling4090 of personalities just as that city had of regimes.
“That is the man.”
Is it then this sort of man that must be associated4091 with democracy, so that4092 he would rightly be called the democratic man?
(562) “Let him be so associated.”
2.B.8.d: Tyranny and the Tyrannical Man
The most beautiful of the regimes and the most beautiful of men is all that remain for us to treat: tyranny and the tyrant!4093
“Obviously.”
Come then, by what turn4094 does tyranny arise? That it evolves out of democracy we hardly need argue.
“Hardly.”
Would you say that the way4095 tyranny arises out of democracy is similar to the way democracy arises out of oligarchy?
“How do you mean?”
The thing that the citizens had set before themselves4096 as the good and had served as oligarchy’s very foundation4097 was superwealth,4098 no?
“Yes.”
But the insatiable desire for wealth and the neglect of the other things4099 due to their moneymaking destroyed the regime, as we saw.4100
“True.”
Isn’t it the case that what democracy defined as the good, and an insatiable desire for it in turn, is the undoing of this regime as well?
“But what are you saying this regime set before itself as the good?”
Freedom, I said.4101 This is on everyone’s lips in a democratized city,4102 how it is the most beautiful state of affairs4103 so that here alone can a person bear to live given his sense that it is his natural state to be free.4104
“Yes, one hears that slogan4105 all the time.”
So, as I was now about to say,4106 does the insatiable desire for this sort of thing and the consequent neglect of the others4107 cause a transformation of this regime, also, so as to bring on a need for4108 tyranny?
“How?”
My sense is that, given the democratized city’s thirst for freedom, one day it happens that evil stewards are in charge4109 and serve up an undiluted draft of it and the city will become inebriated by a serving too large of a wine too strong, so that its rulers, such as they are,4110 unless they are terribly mild and given to providing a very wide berth indeed to freedom, chastisement4111 will hear from the city, expressed in the complaint4112 that they are bloody oligarchs.4113
“This is what they do.”4114
And the city trashes4115 those who heed their rulers as being servile nobodies,4116 but praises and honors rulers that act like subjects and subjects that act like rulers, not only in their public role but also in their private lives.4117 Isn’t it inevitable that in a city like this the gospel of freedom will spread to every quarter?
“How could it be otherwise?”
And inevitable that it seep into private households also and end up instilling anarchy4118 even in their animals.
“How are we to describe such a thing?”4119
Like this: That the father accustoms himself to be like his child and fears his children, while child comes to be like father and feels neither shame nor fear in the face of his parents—all this in the name of freedom.4120 Metic will be placed on an equal footing with citizen and citizen with metic, and foreigners likewise.(563)
“This is indeed the direction things go.”
Not just these things but other things down to the most minute4121 detail. The teacher in this situation fears and flatters those who come to his classes4122 while those who come treat their teachers with little respect, even down to the youths’ treatment of their tutors. Indeed the young will arrogate to themselves the manners of their elders in every way, and constantly contend with them in all they say and all they do, whereas those advanced in age will think again about being so stern toward the young and allow themselves to become suffused with their ingenuousness4123 and charm by imitating their ways, so as not to be unappealing, let alone be thought of as despotic.
“Quite so, I’d say.”
But, I said, the furthest extent4124 of freedom, my friend, and the widest can spread in such a city, is when it reaches the slaves, and they, male and female alike,4125 are no less free than the owners who bought them. And we can hardly forget to mention how extensively the policy of equality and freedom permeates the relations of women to men and of men to women.
“Have we come to the point when, as Aeschylus put it, ‘we will utter what just now rose to our lips?’”4126
We certainly shall, and here is how I will put it: Regarding the status of animals domesticated by humans, how much freer4127 they are in this city than another one could hardly believe, unless he has visited a democracy.4128 In a democracy the proverb that dogs resemble their mistresses4129 becomes true literally and extends also to their horses and their asses, who come to adopt the free man’s gait and proudly bump into whomever they encounter on the path if he does not stand aside for them. And likewise in all other ways the tribe of animals becomes fully free.
“It’s as if you were reading my mind!4130 That very thing happens all the time to me when I take a walk in the country!”
But do you recognize the chief effect of all these things as they come together, how soft and weak they make the citizens’ soul, so that if someone introduces a measure that smacks at all of service4131 they chafe at it and will not abide it? In the end you may be sure they will pay no heed even to the laws, written or unwritten, all for the sake of disallowing any trace of despotism to arise in their midst.4132
“I am quite sure of it.”4133
This then is the source, a state of affairs no less fine and thrilling,4134 from which tyranny springs,4135 as it seems to me.
“I get what you mean by thrilling, but what happens next?”
The same sickness4136 that arose in oligarchy and destroyed it, here also, by growing larger and stronger out of democracy’s freedom, ends up enslaving it.4137 In truth, after all, anything done in excess brings on a large reversal in compensation. This is how the weather works; it holds in the world of plants and animals;4138 so also does it hold in political regimes.
(564) “Likely so.”
So it is likely that an excess of freedom would change into nothing else than an excess of slavery, in both the personal sphere and the civic.
“Likely indeed.”
So that’s why it is likely that tyranny comes about from no other regime than democracy, from the very height of freedom a slavery most far reaching and savage.4139
“That is only logical.”
But this is not what you were asking me about—but rather what was the sickly element,4140 spawned in oligarchy, that now acts upon democracy so as to enslave it?
“Right.”
It is that element I was describing as a breed of lazy and spendthrift men, among whom the bravest are the leaders while the less manly ones follow4141—this group we are likening to drones, some having stingers and others not.
“It was a fitting simile.”
These two groups cause trouble in any regime, just as phlegm and bile do in bodies. The city needs a good physician or lawgiver,4142 no less than the hive needs a competent honey-maker who plans above all to prevent them from arising, but if they do to see that they are rooted out of the group as fast as possible, honeycomb and all.
“Yes, by Zeus, any which way one can.”
So let’s approach the problem this way in order to make out what we are looking for more distinctly. Let’s divide up the democratized regime into three parts in our argument—three parts which actually are its constituent parties.4143 First there is the group that lassitude engendered in it to be no less large4144 than in the oligarchic regime.
“Yes.”
But it is far stronger and far more intense in this regime than it was in that one. There, because it was not held in honor, it got no exercise and was not strong; but in a democracy this is the group that is in charge,4145 except for a few others, and the most intense and energetic members of the group do the speechifying4146 while the rest swarm close around the rostrum and make a large hullabaloo4147 that keeps the other side from being heard, so that everything that happens in the management of the city is determined by this group—apart from a few others.4148
“Quite so.”
But there is another element that is always set apart from the mass.
“Which?”
Though everyone including the mass works at their jobs, those who are most gifted by nature4149 tend to become the most wealthy.
“It’s likely.”
And have the most honey so as to be the easiest quarter from which the drones can harvest it.4150
“How after all could someone extract a lot from those who have little?”
Such rich persons as these I imagine are called the garden4151 of the drones.
“Virtually.”
(565) The mass or the deme would be the third part, those who work on their own and mind their own business, unnoteworthy for their possessions though they constitute the largest party in a democracy and so the one that has the final say in a vote of the assembly.
“Yes it is, but they are hardly willing even to assemble, unless they can get some share of honey.”
But a share they will have, as long as the bosses4152 are able to expropriate wealth from the “haves” and distribute it to the deme, keeping of course the lion’s share for themselves.4153
“And this is how the deme gets a share of it.”4154
But the “haves” are forced to defend themselves,4155 by speaking in the assembly and agitating any way they can, these ones from whom the bosses are expropriating money for their own use.
“How can they avoid it?”
The result is they are assailed4156 by the others as being oligarchs plotting against4157 the people, though they have no revolutionary4158 pretensions at all.
“Yes.”
And in the end, when they see that the deme has no culpable role in all this, but that it is unaware of what is going on and has been deceived into mistreating them by those who are slandering them, then it will come about,4159 whether they planned it or not, that they will fulfill the slogan and act the part of oligarchs4160—all this through no fault of their own since this evil, too, is the work of that same drone, which stung them.4161
“Certainly.”
Impeachments,4162 judgments, and contests between the two groups ensue.
“Quite a lot of them.”
Doesn’t the deme usually fix upon just one person4163 to be the boss4164 over itself, head and shoulders above all others, and throw its support behind this one and confer great powers on him?
“Usually.”
So this much then is clear: whenever a tyrant is created he comes from this class of bosses and springs up from no other root.4165
“Very clear indeed.”
So then what is the beginning point for the transformation4166 from protector to tyrant? Or is it clear that it is when he first does that thing that the person did in the tale told4167 about the temple of Lycaean Zeus in Arcadia?
“Which tale is that?”
The tale about a person who tastes human innards, a single bit of it mixed in with the entrails of other sacrificial animals—that a necessity will be upon him4168 to turn into a wolf. Have you not heard this story?
“I have.”
Is it not so also with the man that is boss and protector of the deme and holds in his thrall an enthused and unanimous crowd?4169 Assume he fails to avoid shedding the blood of his own tribe,4170 but in the course of bringing the usual4171 trumped-up charges and dragging into court he commits an act of blood guilt, the act of snuffing out the life of a man,4172 and so has a taste of kindred blood with the tongue and impious mouth that made the case,4173 and banishes from house and hearth, causes to be (566) executed, and hints at the forgiving of debts and the redistribution of lands.4174 It becomes necessary in the case of such a man, indeed a matter of inexorable fate, that he will either perish at the hands of his enemies or else he will become a tyrant—will turn, that is, from a man into a wolf?
“Yes, there is no way to avoid it.”
And this is the how the Warrior against the Wealthy4175 arises?
“Yes.”
If he is exiled but then restored through force of arms4176 by the city’s enemies, he returns as a finished4177 tyrant.
“Clearly.”
On the other hand if they are unsuccessful in their attempt4178 to exile him or to bring on a judicial execution by slandering him in the city, they prepare an unvarnished death for him to be carried out in secret.4179
“This is the sort of thing that would happen.”
And at this juncture the Tyrant's Plea arises, discovered anew every time people come this far down the road, the request4180 that the deme provide a personal bodyguard in order to keep the Champion of the People4181 from getting killed.4182
“Quite so.”
And the deme, combining their fear that anything should happen to the great man with a high-spirited lack of concern about their own situation,4183 grants the request.
“Quite so.”
And when the man who has money witnesses this state of affairs and sees that having money constitutes grounds4184 for his being called an Enemy of the People,4185 that is the moment, my friend, that he, according to the oracle that Croesus received “along the sandy bank of Hermus, flees and stays no longer, no longer fearing the lot of a coward.”4186
“He would hardly be given a chance to fear that lot for long!”
To the contrary he would be arrested and given4187 a sentence of death.
“Necessarily.”
While the boss, far from “lying magnificently prostrate, once a magnificent man,”4188 has brought down many others and now stands tall in the city’s chariot,4189 once a mere boss but now a tyrant fully formed.
“How will he not do so?4190
Should we then describe the happiness4191 of the man and of the city4192 where such a brave human4193 is spawned?
“We certainly should.”
Will we not expect that in the first days of his reign he greets everyone he happens upon with a glad hand and a warm laugh, and while4194 he does not declare himself tyrant he makes a lot of promises, both in private and in public? He cancelled debts and redistributed the land,4195 and to the people and those in his entourage, one and all, he makes himself out as merciful and mild.4196
“So he must.”
But then, I fancy, we can only expect that4197 once he has dealt with the inimical forces abroad by appeasing some and destroying others and from those quarters things quiet down, he is always stirring up a some war or other, first of all4198 so that the deme will find itself in need of a leader.
“Likely.”
(567) And also so that having been impoverished by special assessments the people are too busy paying for things to foment plots against him?
“Clearly.”
Also, I’d guess, if he notices certain persons in whose hearts the spirit of freedom seems to stir and suspects they might not acquiesce in his rule, to secure him cover4199 for destroying them by handing them over to the enemy—are all these reasons why a tyrant is always having to stir up war?
“Always.”
But doesn’t his behavior bring on4200 hatred for him among the citizens?
“How could it not?”
And bring on also that the inner elite that helped him seize power and still have some power to give voice to their indignation at these goings-on, confronting both him and each other—at least the most macho4201 of them?
“Likely.”
Then root them out one and all, must the tyrant, and get rid of them,4202 if he is going to stay in power,4203 until nobody of any worth is left, whether friend or enemy.
“Clearly.”
He has to look very closely and ask himself: Which of them is brave? Which is large-minded? Who’s aware of what’s going on? Who is rich?4204 So happy is his estate that he has to think of each and every one of these as an enemy, whether he wants to or not, and carry out plots against them until he purges4205 the city.
“A pretty purgation,4206 one would have to agree.”
Yes, and opposite the type doctors use when they purge a body. They strip away the worst and leave the best, whereas he does the opposite.
“Yes, it seems he must if he is to retain power.”
It’s a blessed necessity4207 then that binds him, constraining him to choose between living with men who are most of them worthless, indeed good at hating him only, and living not at all.
“Such is the necessity that binds him.”
Now isn’t it the case that the more he incurs the hatred of the citizens by acting this way, the greater the number of spear-carriers he will need and all the more loyal?
“Of course.”
Which group will be loyal to him? From what quarter will he summon them?
“They’ll make a bee line for his doorstep in great numbers if he offers them their pay.”4208
Drones, then, by the dog, you appear to be suggesting4209—a whole new set4210 of them, foreign and motley.
“So I do.”
But whom can he find closer to home?4211 Wouldn’t he be willing—
“What?”
The slaves: to steal them from the citizens, free them, and replenish the ranks of his bodyguard with them.
“You bet. These are sure to be his most loyal types.”4212
So it really is a blessed fix you are putting the tyrant into, if for stalwarts trusty and true he is (568) stuck4213 with such as these, now that he has killed the ones he used before.
“Yet these are the sort he is stuck with.”
And think how they admire him, these companions he has accrued, and how these newly enfranchised citizens associate with him while all decent men despise him and shun his company.4214
“Why wouldn’t they?”
So it’s not for nothing that while tragedy in general seems a wise thing, Euripides stands out signal among the group. It was he that uttered an expression intimating a fine4215 insight: “Wise the tyrants by their company with the wise.”4216 By “the wise” he meant these men with whom the tyrant associates.
“That’s not all: he praises tyranny as being godlike4217 and many other things like that, not only he but the rest of the poets, too.”
And yet you will have to admit that since they are wise themselves, the composers of the tragedies accept and acknowledge the position we have taken,4218 we and anybody else that engages in politics the way we do, that we shall refuse to admit them into our state since their remarks propagandize for tyranny.
“I daresay they will acknowledge us, at least the more subtle4219 among them.”
But elsewhere do they roam, I daresay, moving from city to city,4220 drawing their huge crowds, producing their shows with hired4221 voices high-sounding and persuasive, and the effect is that they draw the constitutions of the cities they visit toward tyranny and democracy.4222
“Quite so.”
And can’t we go further and say that what money they make4223 for such performances and what honor they enjoy comes mostly from tyrants, for very good reason, and second after that from democracy, whereas any higher up they go in the ranks of the regimes the more does the honor they would garner flag, as if it were winded by the climb.
“Very much so.”
But we’ve digressed. Let’s go back to that army the tyrant assembles, fine and large and variegated and changing all the time. How does he pay to maintain it?
“Obviously, if there are sacred treasures in the city he will use them up, liquidating them to defray expenditures as they arise and reducing thereby his need to tax the deme.”4224
And when these come up short?
“Then, clearly, he will fall back on his patrimony to support him along with the people he drinks with,4225 male and female.”
I get it.4226 You mean that the deme that spawned the tyrant will be nurturing him as well as his associates.
“By a redoubtable compulsion it will be forced to do so.”
But4227 what are you saying? What if Father Deme becomes vexed with him4228 and argues it’s not right for the son to live off the father once he has grown a beard and that it’s the other way around: that the son is to take care of the father – and that he hardly raised him and set him up in life for this, (569) that once his son got to be big and strong, he, the father, would be enslaved to those who were his own slaves after all, and have to support both them and him along with whatever hangers-on they brought along with them!4229 Rather, Father Deme would say, it was so that the son would become the boss and deliver him from the rich4230—the “noble class” so-called.4231 Accordingly the Deme now orders4232 him to leave the city along with his entourage, the way a father kicks his son out of the house along with his crowd of drinking buddies.
“Zeus be my witness, from that moment forward4233 the deme will learn4234 what sort of beast it gave birth to and coddled and raised up,4235 and that a weaker man is driving out stronger ones.”4236
Now what are you saying?4237 That he would dare lay hands on his father and even strike him if he did not obey, this tyrant?
“Yes, but only after stealing his weapons.”
A parricide, then, you are making the tyrant out to be, harsh in the nurture of his elders. This is the point at which the regime comes to acknowledge that tyranny is what it is,4238 and the deme, in its attempt to avoid even the most fleeting sense of enslavement4239 as free men,4240 would now according to the proverb4241 find itself subjected to the nightmare of slaves under a dynasty, switching out the mantle of great but immoderate4242 freedom4243 for the rags of a slave's most harsh and bitter enslavement.4244
“Yes indeed, that is how it goes.”
So, I said, can we rightly say we have sufficiently covered how tyranny evolves out of democracy, and, having evolved, what it is like?
“Quite sufficiently.”
END OF BOOK EIGHT
BOOK NINE
2.C.5: Tyranny and the Tyrannical Man, continued
(571) The man himself, then, is all that’s left.4245 We have to investigate the tyrannic person, both how he is transformed4246 from the democratic man and, once the transformation takes place, what sort of man he turns out to be and how he lives, whether he is a miserable soul or a blessed4247 one.
“Yes indeed this last type is still left.”
Do you know what else I still feel is lacking?4248
“What?”
A question about the desires, how many they are and what are their types. I don’t think we have drawn enough distinctions; and in case we don’t, the investigation we are trying to conduct will lack clarity.
“Is there still4249 time?”
Yes there is, and let me tell you what it is I want to explore. Of the general class of non-necessary pleasures some of them seem to me unruly, of a sort that very well might afflict any individual but, upon being chastised by rules and the better desires along with argumentation,4250 can be reduced to nothing in some men or diminished in number and strength, though in others they be left rather strong and numerous.
“But tell me just what desires4251 you are speaking of in this way.”
The ones that4252 are wakened when it is time to sleep. On nights when all the rest of his soul dozes, as much in him as is rational and tame and rules that part,4253 while the beastly and savage part, brimming as it may be with food or drink, cavorts about and drives sleep off and seeks to rove4254 and satisfy still more its own way of being. You know that at such times this part of him will dare all things, as if it had been unbridled and released from all the stays of shame4255 and mindfulness. From the thought of trying to sleep with Mother4256 it would not shrink, nor with any other human or god or beast. It would murder its own kin and there is nothing it would abstain from eating.4257 In general there is no act of mindlessness and shamelessness4258 it would pass up.
“Your description is very true.”
But when a person is keeping himself in a state healthy and temperate4259 and goes to sleep after a wakeful day in which he feasted his rational part on arguments beautiful and studies too, and reached a mindful harmony within himself, and as to his desiring part4260 he neither deprived it nor overindulged it4261 in order that it might settle down and sleep rather than harass (572) his noblest part, whether with joyful enthusiasm or painful moanings, but allow it to study and reach for a glimpse of4262 something it does not know and has not seen, whether something from the past or the present or the future;4263 and likewise as to his willful part if he has calmed it down and is not trying to go to sleep just after a fight with somebody, his anger still stirring within him: if rather he has quieted those two parts and it is the third he sets stirring, where mindfulness dwells, and takes his leave of the day in this state, I’m sure in these circumstances he has the best chance of grasping some truth in his dreams and is least vulnerable to unruly visions.
“Utterly and completely4264 correct.”
Well that statement took us rather far afield! What we want to recognize is this, how there really is4265 a dangerous, wild and unruly type of desire in every man, even in some of us that are to all appearances quite moderate men, and that what proves this beyond a doubt4266 is what happens in our sleep. Think about it—am I making any sense? Do you agree?
“Yes I do agree.”
So call to mind the demotic4267 man as we described him. In our account of his evolution4268 he was raised from youth under the regime of4269 a stingy father who honored only those desires that made money, but despised the non-necessary desires as being devoted to play and pretty show.4270 But falling in with certain more subtle types4271 who are equipped with an overflowing supply4272 of the sorts of desires we have just described, and lurching toward hubris wholesale and that class of pleasures out of hatred4273 for his father’s stinginess, and yet having as he did a nature better than those who would corrupt him, tugged now in both directions, he adopted a middle path and moderately, withal,4274 as he thinks, indulging in any and all4275 pleasures, he lives a life neither slavish nor unruly,4276 the life of an oligarchical man become demotic.
“That’s how he was raised and our opinion of what became of him,4277 given his nature.”
So now posit this man getting older and having a young son who has been raised in the environment of his own habits, in turn.
“I posit him.”
And set down4278 all the same sorts of things happening to him as happened to his father. He’s led into unruliness wholesale while those who lead him there call it freedom untrammeled; his father, with the help of his household, abets all those desires that played a compromise role for him,4279 while the others apply their counter-support.4280 But once these tyrant-making magicians4281 resolve that there is no other way4282 they can get the young man under their spell, imagine them4283 now contriving to implant into him an erotic desire that will rule as a boss and protector of the easy-going (573) desires that were content to browse on whatever comes their way,4284 a drone large and winged, if you will pardon my metaphor for the master drive4285 that such magicians have at their disposal?
“It’s just right.”4286
Imagine now4287 the other4288 desires crowding4289 around him with their frenzied buzz, steeped in4290 fragrances and myrrh, and festive headdresses, and wine, and the special pleasures that are let loose in gatherings of that sort,4291 how, having swelled him up and fed him4292 to the very peak of anticipation, they implant a stinger of yearning into the drone.4293 Then it is, withal,4294 that He arrives, protected by the raving and madness that surrounds him, and roves with his stinging yearning, this Boss and Protector of the Soul.4295 Let him come upon any trace of an opinion in the man that worries about worth4296 or a pleasure that still countenances any shame:4297 he murders it to4298 banish it from his presence,4299 and he is not finished until he purges away all native temperance4300 and fills the soul instead4301 with a frenzy he imports from the outside.4302
“Utterly and completely have you described the evolution of the tyrannical man!”4303
Is this why Eros has all along been called a tyrant?
“In fact it may be.”
And wouldn’t you say that when a man becomes drunk he takes on a tyrannical state of mind?4304
“I would.”
And that a man who is raving or in a disturbed state4305 is wont to try, let alone imagine himself able, to rule not only over men but even over gods?4306
“Quite so.”
But4307 he becomes a tyrannical man in the true sense of the word when he becomes a drunk, an erotic and a melancholic in his very nature and in his daily activities.4308
“In the fullest sense.”
Alright then, this is how the son becomes the tyrannical type of man;4309 what’s his life like?
“Now that you’ve asked, let me in on the answer!”4310
Let you in I will. I imagine that what’s next is festivals among them and revels and cornucopias and consorts,4311 all those over whose soul Eros holds tyrannical sway, having made his home4312 within.
“Necessarily.”
And there is a proliferation of various off-shoot desires showing up every day and night,4313 needing a lot of resources to satisfy them?
“Many indeed.”
So they quickly deplete4314 whatever income there is.
“Of course.”
Next come loans and draw-downs from the principal.
“Yes.”
And once all these sources dry up won’t you necessarily have on the one hand the desires, teeming thick in their hatchery and groaning ever louder to be satisfied, and the men on the other, goaded on like a herd as it were4315 by all those pleasures, Eros himself leading them one and all4316 as if they were his bodyguard, to rove amuck on the lookout for anything they could part from whoever owned it, whether by deception or (574) main force.4317
“All too true.”
They will need to pillage4318 from every quarter or else4319 suffer greatly the pangs and the throes of withdrawal.
“So they will.”
And would you say that just as the pleasures that have increased in him have hogged4320 a greater share than the original4321 regime of pleasures did and stolen the resources that supported them, so also he will think, although himself a young upstart, that he deserves to get the better of his father and his mother and, in case he has spent all that is properly his own, deserves to take money from them as if it were an allocation to himself from his patrimony?4322
“But then what happens?”
If they do not acquiesce to him, would he at first try to steal the money and deceive4323 his parents?
“Absolutely.”
But say he fails at that: would he next simply pillage them by force?
“I daresay he would.”
Behold4324 them, then, Adeimantus, haggling and battling with him, old man and old woman as they are.4325 Would he proceed with care and try to spare them,4326 lest he do something rash and tyrannical?4327
“I’m not too sanguine about the parents’ prospects if they have a son like this.”
In Zeus’s name,4328 Adeimantus! For the sake of the love he has newly won from a consort gratuitous and at his option4329 instead of his mother’s love that has been a given in his life4330 since before he can remember, and for the sake of a new and ripe companion he just met instead of that dried-up old father he has always had to deal with, of all his friends the hoariest and the most ancient,4331 would you say that a young man like this would bring blows against them? Would he enslave4332 the latter on behalf of the former, in the event that he brought them under the same roof?
“Yes he would, may Zeus be my witness.”4333
How blessed it is and above the human plane to give birth4334 to a tyrannical son!
“Very blessed, indeed.”4335
What happens when he is exhausting his parents’ reserves, the pleasures calling him from within having by then organized themselves into a perfect swarm?4336 First he will assail the wall of another man’s house, or steal the cloak from a man out on a walk late at night. At the next stage he’ll clean out a temple.4337 In all these acts the opinions he had held from a child about what was fine and what was ugly, accounted all along to be beliefs that are just,4338 will now face off against feelings freshly liberated4339 from enslavement, pleasures that play the bodyguard for Tyrant Eros, and these will conquer those with the Great One’s help, pleasures that before would break out only in dreams and during sleep when he was still himself and still lived under the laws and his father with a “democratized” conscience.4340 Now that he has been tyrannized by Eros, the man he would only seldom be and only in his dreams he now becomes, in waking life and every day.4341 There is no murder he will abstain from no matter how horrid, nor any horrid feast, nor any horrid deed.4342 (575) Instead tyrannic4343 Eros ensconced within him lives without rule and law, himself the only rule there is,4344 and drives the man who has him inside4345 as if he were the city he ruled, into every act of abomination, and strengthens thereby both himself and the violent disturbance4346 that surrounds him, fed from both the outside through evil associations and from within by what has been released and liberated by similar4347 habits of his own. Isn’t this the manner of such a man’s life?4348
“It certainly is.”
And as long as the men of this ilk are few in a given city while the mass have pleasure under control, they might go into exile only to return as bodyguard to another tyrant or become mercenaries in case there is a war somewhere. But if they keep quiet and peaceable they perpetrate a host of petty evils right within the city.4349
“What sorts of acts do you mean?”
They steal, they break and enter, they cut purses, rob clothing, pillage temples and kidnap people.4350 Sometimes you’ll find them spreading rumors, if they have a gift for speaking,4351 or hiring themselves out as perjured witnesses, or arranging bribes.
“Petty are these evils only4352 if the perpetrators remain few!”
It’s only in comparison with large things that small things are small; just so, if you take all these evils together, large and small, in comparison with the tyrant, they don’t hold a candle,4353 measured against the baseness and destitution he brings about in a city. Really it is when the number of such men in a city become large as well as the number that follow them in their ways, to the point that they recognize that together they constitute the mass. Then it is that, with the help of the deme’s mindlessness,4354 these become the persons that give birth to a tyrant, namely that one man we mentioned whose soul has the strongest and most dominant4355 tyrant4356 within him.
“He is the likely choice, since he would be most able to be tyrannical.”
If, that is, they yield to his rule willingly.4357 If however the city does not acquiesce, then just as he was chastising his parents a moment ago, now it will be his fatherland that he upbraids by mobilizing his new companions if he can, and once the city is enslaved under the sway of these he will have it in his care and foster it,4358 what was once his motherland as the Cretans put it or fatherland as we do. So much would be the final achievement and outcome of the desire that drives a man of this kind.4359
“So it would, in every respect.”
But consider how these men behave before they come to power.4360 First, in all their associations they either require the others to flatter them and be ready to do anything to help, or in case they do need something from somebody (576) they themselves do the fawning and unscrupulously adopt any pose or guise to seem close to him and kindred,4361 though once they have succeeded4362 they show a nature quite alien to that.
“Very alien indeed.”
So it is that all through their life they are friend to no man, now lording it over the one and then subservient to the other, while of freedom4363 and friendship the tyrannical way of being4364 never gets a taste.4365
“Quite so.”
And would we be justified to say these men are untrustworthy, too?4366
“Quite justified.”
And unjust we would most rightly call them, if our previous agreements about justice are correct.4367
“Quite so.”
Let’s sum up it up: the man we described having a nightmare is what this worst of men is like in his waking life.4368 The person who turns out this way is the one who becomes completely tyrannical inside4369 and then becomes the actual monarch, a law unto himself.4370 The longer he occupies the post as tyrant the more fully his personality becomes tyrannical.
2.B.9: Comparing the Just and Unjust Lives
“Necessarily,” said Glaucon, taking over Adeimantus’s position.4371
And whoever seems to be the basest, won’t he also seem the worst off? Whoever acts as tyrant the longest and the strongest, won’t he become that way in the strongest and longest lasting4372 way in very fact, despite the fact that common folk will likely hold in common an opinion that differs from this?4373
“Necessarily it is as you4374 say it is.”
Now can’t we say that the man who is most tyrannical shares a similitude4375 to the tyrannical regime, and a demotic man something similar to the democratic, and so forth with the others?
“Of course.”
And that as the one city stands toward the other in terms of virtue and in terms of happiness, so also does the one man stand toward the other?
“How could it be otherwise?”
So what can we now say4376 is the standing of the tyrannized city toward the monarchical city of the type we described at the beginning?
“They’re perfectly opposite: the one is the best and the other is the worst.”
2.B.9.a: First Comparison
I won’t ask you which you mean—that’s obvious. But as to happiness and misery:4377 would you judge4378 them the same or different? And let’s not allow ourselves to be dazzled by fixing on the image of the tyrant as a single man, or of him and his small entourage: we have to enter the city and observe it as a whole,4379 to immerse ourselves4380 and view it from the inside, and only then4381 hand down our opinion.4382
“Your stipulation4383 is proper, and it’s clear to anybody that there is no more miserable government than a tyranny, nor a happier one than monarchy.”
If I insisted on the same stipulation4384 when it came to judging the men would you still think it (577) proper?4385 To insist, that is, on using such4386 a person to judge between them as has the ability in his mind to put on4387 the character of a man and see what he is like inside, and not become confused by looking at him from the outside as a child would,4388 seeing the facade4389 that tyrants are at such pains to maintain, but rather to insist that he be capable of seeing through such things? That is, if I felt it is a man like him we all need to listen to, a man who has the ability to judge and has lived in the man’s home and has been right at his side,4390 an eyewitness of his domestic dealings, and who sees how he treats each4391 member of his household, the circumstances under which he could be seen stripped bare4392 of his impressive trumpery, and then witnesses in turn his behavior in public affairs of crucial moment;4393 and if we were to instruct him after he had seen all this to report back his brief4394 on how the tyrant stands relative to other men on the spectrum of happiness and misery—
“Absolutely proper would such a stipulation be,4395 both about the man as well.”
So, would you be willing that we put ourselves forward as numbering among those4396 who are able to make a judgment and count ourselves as already having had the encounter with men of this sort,4397 so as to be able to say we have on hand4398 such a person as can render answers4399 to the questions we are asking?
“Quite so.”
Alright then come along with me and investigate the matter as follows. Call to mind the similitude between the city and the man, and by looking close up at each of them tell me the experiences4400 of the one and the other.
“What experiences?”
First, as to the city, will you declare the tyrannical city free or enslaved?
“As enslaved as ever it could be.”
And yet can you see in it masters who are4401 free?
“So I do, but this is a minor part. To speak of it as a whole and indeed to speak of the most decent part of it, it is abjectly and miserably enslaved.”4402
So then if the man is similar to the city, wouldn’t we necessarily find the same arrangement or proportion in him, so that4403 a great amount of slavishness and illiberality4404 would fill his soul, and that just those parts of the soul that were the most decent would be enslaved, whereas a small part, the part most bothersome and insane4405 would be playing the role of master.
“Necessarily.”
So will you declare this soul to be slavish or free?
“Slavish I would say, for my own part.”
Now isn’t it the case that the enslaved and tyrannical city is least able to do what it chooses to do?
“Quite.”
So the tyrannized soul likewise will least be doing what it chooses,4406 to speak of the soul as a whole.4407 Goaded on by the sting of desire against its will, it will be filled with anxiety and regret.
“Unavoidably.”
As to wealth will the tyrannical city of necessity be wealthy or poor?
“Necessarily poor.”
(578) So the tyrannic soul likewise must always be beggarly and insatiable.4408
“Yes.”
What about the experience of fear? Won’t this kind of city as well as this kind of man4409 necessarily be full of fear?
“Very much so.”
Of moaning and wailing, of pleas and pains, will we find more here than in any other city?
“Nowhere else.”
How about the man? Do you think there are more of these sorts of things in any other man than there are in the man driven mad by desires and lusts, this tyrannic man of ours?
“How could there be?”
My guess is that it was by considering all these instances and others like them4410 that you reached the judgment not only that the city is the most miserable of all the cities—
“And wasn’t I right?”4411
Right indeed!4412 But as to the man in turn, the tyrannical one, what would you say about him if you now consider all these instances?
“By far he is the most miserable of all the others.”
Ah—but this time you’re not quite right.4413
“What!?”
I fancy this man is not yet the one who is the most especially miserable.
“But who else could be?”
I have somebody in mind that you might think is still more miserable than he.
“But who?”
A man who is of this tyrannical type but who does not live out his life as a private citizen but rather is so unlucky that by some calamity he has it laid on him to become tyrant!4414
“I get the sense that what you say, given what we said before,4415 is true.”
Yes, but sensing and fancying is not what we need in this area. We need an investigation by the sort of reasoning we mentioned.4416 After all our inquiry touches on a question of greatest import, the difference between a good life and a bad life.4417
“That is most correct.”
So then see whether what I have to say has any substance. It seems to me we must reach an understanding by an investigation that proceeds from the following aspects of the topic.
“From which?”
From looking at an individual case of those private citizens that live in the cities who have enough money to afford having many slaves. These people have something in common with the tyrants, namely that they rule over many—though they differ in terms of the number that that man4418 has.
“Yes they differ.”
Have you noticed that these men are not anxious and do not fear their slaves?
“What after all would they have to fear?”
Nothing—but do you understand the reason?
“Yes—it is that the entire city is ready to come to the aid of any individual citizen.”
Well put. But think of this. Say there was some one man who had fifty slaves or more and some deity whooshed him away from his city and set him down with his wife and children in some desolate place, along with his possessions including his slaves, a place where no fellow citizen would be coming to his aid. What sort of fear would he feel and how great would the fear be, both for himself and his children and wife, that they might be murdered by the slaves?
“Utter and total fear,4419 I’d say.”
(579) Wouldn’t he find himself in a position where he would have to fawn over his very slaves, and make them a lot of promises, and even grant them their freedom for no good reason,4420 so that he would end up being a toady to his own underlings?
“He would have to do this, or perish.”4421
And what if that god surrounded him with a lot of neighbors who would not abide a person who presumes any man may be master over another,4422 who if they found such a person would impose upon him the gravest of punishments?
“In that case he would be even more completely bad off4423 than before, hemmed in on all sides by enemies.”
Wouldn’t you say that, while it is in a similar sort of prison our4424 tyrant finds himself confined, his personal character4425 being such as we have described it—hemmed in, that is, on all sides by all sorts of fears and cravings—that, gluttonous though he is in his soul,4426 he is the one person who cannot enjoy a sojourn out of the city to visit the festivals that others enjoy4427 as free citizens;4428 that instead he is holed up4429 in his own house and lives, on the whole, the life of a woman; that he is able only to watch in envy while his fellow citizens get out of the city and see something wonderful abroad.4430
“True in every detail.”
So in terms of such ills as these, a greater harvest4431 is reaped by the man who not only is badly governed within—the man you just now judged to be the most miserable, the tyrannical man—but who also lives out his life not as a private citizen but constrained by some stroke of luck to assume the office of tyrant:4432 who attempts to control others while at the same time he is unable to control himself, like a person afflicted with disease whose body cannot take care of itself, being in addition disallowed private rest and peace, and being required instead to spend all his time haggling and struggling with the trouble made by other bodies?
“In every detail your description is a perfect and true likeness,4433 Socrates.”
And so, dear4434 Glaucon the experience4435 of such a man is entirely4436 miserable, and in comparison with the type of man you judged to have the harshest of lives the one who in addition occupies the role of tyrant has a life still harsher.
“Obviously.”
So the real truth of the matter, though some may disbelieve it,4437 is that the man who is an actual tyrant is actually4438 a slave in the blandishments and the servilities4439 he is bound to carry out, and a flatterer of the basest of men. He is revealed to be a man whose desires are no way satisfied, who lives in the direst of need, a poor man in truth -- once a person has the competence4440 to view his soul as a whole -- and to be living his life in constant fear, tormented always and shot through with pains, if that is his own life is to resemble the disposition of the city over which he rules. And he does resemble it, doesn’t he?
“Quite.”
(580) And shall we further freight him with the thing we mentioned before,4441 to be bound by necessity both to continue to be, and to become more so than before he became ruler, an envious man, untrusted, unjust, friendless, godless, a haven and nurturer of every manner of evil -- and to top it off, because of all these things, that besides misery of being a man unlucky in his own life he makes those around him as miserable as himself?4442
“Nobody who has a mind will gainsay your conclusion.”
Come then and make a declaration yourself on the entire matter, in the manner of a paramount4443 judge: Who is it that holds the first rank in happiness, and who the second, and so on for all five: the kingly man, the timocratic, the oligarchic, the democratic, and the tyrannical.
“The judgment is easily rendered. I find them to rank in virtue and the lack thereof, and in happiness and its opposite, in the very order you just trotted them out on the stage.”
Shall we hire a herald then, or may I myself have the honor of proclaiming that the son of Ariston has judged the best4444 and most just man to be the happiest, and that this is the most kingly man, ruling as king over himself; and has judged the worst and most unjust man to be the most wretched, and that this is the man who while inwardly most tyrannical holds also the position of tyrant both over himself and over his city.4445
“Let it be announced by you.”
And am I to announce in addition the proviso, “whether or not they escape the notice of men and gods as to what sort of persons they are”?4446
“Announce it in addition.”
2.B.9.b: Second Comparison
Alright then, this can serve us as one demonstration.4447 Look now to my second one, if I may have leave to present it.4448
“What demonstration is that?”
The following.4449 Since the soul of the individual man, just like the city, is divided into three kinds,4450 the rational part of it will hearken to still another proof.4451
“And what is the proof?”
This: to the kinds, which are three, belong three pleasures one belonging to each, and likewise three desires and three regimes.4452
“How would you describe them?”
The one part was4453 according to us the part by which a man learns; the second is the part by which he is angry and willful; as to the third, because it takes on many forms we have not fixed on any single name to call it though we did4454 describe it as being the largest and strongest part that a man has in himself. Remember?4455 We called it “desirous” because of the forcefulness of the desires associated with eating and drinking and sex and things like that, and also “moneyloving,” as you know, since it is by money that (581) such pleasures are usually procured.
“And right we were.”
If we should also4456 say that the pleasure and the love of this part is a love for profit,4457 would that give us a single and reliable rubric for the pleasure involved, for the sake of our discussion, so that it would mean something between ourselves whenever we should refer to this part of the soul; and in characterizing that part as a money-loving or profit-loving4458 part, we would be calling it by an appropriate name?
“It seems so to me, at least.”
And what about the willful part? Don’t we agree that it is always driven toward mastery and winning and achieving a good reputation, speaking on the whole?
“Quite so.”
So that if we should call it victory-loving and honor-loving would this be appropriate?
“Perfectly appropriate.”
But as to the thing that enables us to learn, everyone can see that it is always oriented and committed as a whole4459 to knowing the truth in all matters, and that money and honor concern it the least of these parts.
“Quite so.”
Accordingly, in calling it learning-loving and wisdom-loving we would be speaking correctly?
“Of course.”
Is it also4460 the case that one or another of these parts functions as any given soul’s ruling principle, one for the souls of some men and another for the souls of others as the case may be, whence in fact we classify men themselves as being one of three primary types: lovers of wisdom, lovers of victory, and lovers of wealth?
“Obviously.”4461
And the pleasures are likewise three, to be listed under4462 these loves, one each?
“Quite.”
Are you aware that if you were to go up and ask each of these three types of men, one by one, which of these three lives is the most pleasant, that each will4463 praise his own far above the other two? First,4464 the moneymaker4465 will declare the pleasure of being honored or the pleasure of learning to be worth zero4466 in comparison with making a profit, unless of course one of them produced some silver.4467
“True.”
What about the lover of honor? Won’t he deem the pleasure one gets from money to be crass, and as for the pleasure from learning, unless the lesson brought honor he would deem it smoke and nonsense?4468
“That’s how it is.”
But the lover of wisdom—What do we imagine his attitude is about the other pleasures as compared to that4469 of knowing the truth and what it really is, and of being in this state of awareness for its pleasantness, all the time?4470 Does he not think the others far removed and call them “necessary” in the new sense4471 that in himself he can take them or leave them4472 except for the operation of necessity?4473
“One must know well4474 that that’s his attitude.”
Now when a dispute arises4475 among the separate parts of the soul about their several pleasures, and about the actual life that the pursuit of each entails—not, mind you, a disagreement about which is the finer and which the better,4476 but only about which is (582) more pleasurable and less painful4477--how will we be able to know which of the three men is speaking more truly than the others?
“I really don’t know how to answer that.”
Go at it as follows: By what faculty ought4478 one judge things if they are to be judged well? By experience and by thoughtfulness and by argument?4479 Could someone have a better means of judging4480 than these?
“How could he?”
Then ask this question: of the three types of men which one is most experienced in all three of the pleasures we mentioned? Would you say the lover of profit, by virtue of studying truth itself and how it holds,4481 is more experienced in the pleasure of knowing than the lover of wisdom is experienced in the pleasure of profitting?
“There’s a great discrepancy there. For the one man it is inevitable that he has had a taste of both the one and the other4482 pleasure from childhood, whereas for the lover of profit, as to his learning the inner nature of things and how they are, and of the pleasure that comes from this and how sweet it is,4483 there is no necessity that he has tasted it so as to4484 know it from experience. To the contrary, even if he were eager to do so he would not find it easy to do.”
Therefore the lover of wisdom far surpasses the lover of profit at least, in his experience of both their respective pleasures.
“Very much so.”
How does he measure up against the lover of honor? Is he more inexperienced in the pleasure that comes from being honored than the other is in that which comes from thinking?
“How could he be?4485 Assuming a man succeeds at doing whatever his nature drives4486 him to do, it comes to all4487 men for the types they are. In fact, the rich man is praised by most,4488 as well as the brave4489 man and the wise man. Thus as to the pleasure that comes from being honored all three types are experienced in this. But of the vision of reality and the pleasure it brings, it is impossible for anybody to have had a taste4490 except for the lover of wisdom.”
Well then, as far as experience goes the most able of men to judge their merits is this one.
“Very much.”
But isn’t it he alone that will have used his mind in the course of accumulating that experience?
“Obviously.”
And we may also say4491 that the very instrument by which judgment perforce4492 is made is an instrument that belongs not to the lover of profit nor to the lover of honor, but to the lover of wisdom.
“Which instrument is that?”
We did say, didn’t we, that one must make a judgment through the use of reasoning?
“Yes.”
Well reasoning is this man’s instrument most of all.
“Undeniably.”
Now if it were by using wealth and profit as the criteria4493 that things were best judged, then whatever things the lover of profit praised and dispraised would necessarily be judged most truly.4494
“Very necessarily.”
And if by using honor and victory and bravery,4495 whatever the lover of honor and victory?4496
“Clearly.”
But since4497 it is by means of experience and mind and argument ...
“Necessarily, whatever things the lover of wisdom and of argument4498 praises are most truly4499 judged.”
(583) Therefore, while there are three distinct kinds of pleasure, the pleasure of this part of the soul—the part we learn with—would be the most pleasurable; and the man among us in whom this part is the ruling part has the most pleasurable life.
“What else can we expect?4500 After all it is as the man whose praise is definitive that the lover of wisdom praises his own life.”
And which life is second and which pleasure, according to our4501 judge?
“Clearly the pleasure of the military and honor-loving man, since he is closer to his4502 than he is to that of the lover of gain.”
And the pleasure of the profit-lover comes in last?
“It’s hardly a surprise.”
2.B.9.c: Third Comparison
So that makes two wins in a row for the just man over the unjust. As for the third victory, which in the Olympian manner is to be dedicated to Zeus at Olympus the Preserver,4503 focus now on the pleasure of everyone but the mindful man,4504 and behold how it is not even true-blue4505 pleasure but something impure and a sort of optical illusion,4506 as I seem to have heard it said by some wise man.4507 Wherever I heard it, this would be the greatest and most dispositive fall.4508
“Yes it would, but what is it you are saying?”
Here is how I will discover whether it is true: by searching while you play the answerer.4509
“Go ahead and ask.”
Go ahead and answer. We say, don’t we, that pain is the opposite4510 of pleasure?
“Quite so.”
And do we say there is a state of feeling that feels neither joy nor pain?
“We do indeed.”
As a state in between the two, is it a sort of quiescent state of the soul poised in the middle4511 as to these feelings?
“Just so.”
Now can you recall the way sick people talk while they are sick?
“What way?”
They say that nothing is more pleasant than being healthy although they4512 had failed to notice that it was the most pleasurable thing before they were sick.
“I do recall this kind of talk.”
And as to people that are in the grip of excruciating pain, are you familiar with them saying that nothing is more pleasurable than their feeling of pain coming to a stop?
“I do hear this.”
And in other cases likewise, many cases of this kind, I’d guess you have observed4513 it happening to men that as long as they are in pain, not being in pain and a quiescence of it they praise as being the most pleasant thing, rather than having pleasure.
“The reason is, at that moment this state becomes somehow pleasurable and4514 welcome, though it is really quiescence.”
Likewise, when a person suddenly ceases to feel enjoyment for that matter, this quiescence of pleasure will be4515 painful.
“Somehow.”
What we were saying is in between the two of them, therefore, namely the quiescent state, will at some moment be the two of them, both pain and pleasure.4516
“So it seems...”
But is it possible that if4517 something is neither, it can become both?
“I would say not.”
And yet the pleasurable event that arises4518 in the soul as well as the painful event are both of them motions,4519 aren't they?
“Yes.”
(584) Whereas the neither-painful-nor-pleasurable is a quiescence, in truth, as being centered between them, as we just saw.4520
“So we did.”
Well then how can one properly hold the position4521 that not hurting is pleasurable, or not having pleasure is miserable?4522
“There is no way to do so.”
And so this thing is not really,4523 but only appears, in comparison with what hurts, to be pleasurable, and in comparison with the pleasurable to be painful at that moment – this quiescence.4524 There is no validity in these appearances4525 when it comes to what is the truth about pleasure; instead they belong to the order of bewitchment.4526
“The logic4527 implies it.”
Then inspect the pleasures that do not stem from pains, in case you are sitting there thinking4528 that the nature of pleasure is just the cessation of pain, and of pain the cessation of pleasure.
“Where do these stem from? Which pleasures are they?”4529
There are many of them other than the ones we have been considering, especially the pleasures having to do with smell, if you will. These can arise suddenly and overwhelmingly even for a person who has not just then4530 been suffering pain; and conversely when they cease they leave behind no pain at all.4531
“You speak most truly.”
So let’s not be persuaded that pure pleasure is the surcease of pain,4532 nor pain the surcease of pleasure.
“Let’s not.”
And yet the ones that reach the soul through the body,4533 though still spoken of as pleasures4534 and though perhaps greatest in number and power, do fall into this category as being releases from pain.
“Yes they do.”
And don’t the feelings that arise out of expectation before things happen, as pre-pleasures and pre-pains,4535 have the same status as these?
“The same.”
Do you see what they are like? Do you know what might be a good image4536 for them?
“What?”
You believe, don’t you, that in nature4537 there is an high region and a low region and also a middle region?
“I do.”
Do you imagine that a person who was being borne from the downward toward the middle would think he was being borne anywhere else than upward? And once he came to a stop in the middle if he looked back to the place from which he had been borne, would he think himself to be anywhere else but up, assuming he had never yet seen4538 the truly upward region?
“By Zeus4539 I really do think the person you describe would think4540 nothing else but this.”
And then, if he were being borne back, would he think he was being borne to the downward region, and would he be correct to think so?
“Of course.”
And would he be subject to such thoughts4541 because he lacked experience of what really is the truly upward region and the true middle and true downward?4542
“Clearly.”
So would you be surprised, likewise, that persons lacking experience4543 of truth are generally left with unsound opinions, and that in particular they are so disposed toward pleasure and pain and what lies between them4544 that when they are borne in the direction of the (585) painful they both truly think4545 they feel and in fact they do feel pain, but when they are borne away from pain and toward the middle they think they feel a very strong access4546 of4547 fulfillment4548 and pleasure, and that4549 just as one who looks off to something gray in comparison with black without the experience of something white, so they in looking off to pain in comparison with the painless and lacking the experience of pleasure, are deceived in thinking they feel pleasure?
“Zeus be my witness,4550 I would be more surprised if it were not this way!”4551
Try looking at it this way, for what it’s worth.4552 If we think of feeling hungry and thirsty and similar feelings as emptinesses4553 in the bodily state, would you say that ignorant mindlessness4554 is a correspondingly psychic state of emptiness?
“Quite so.”
And would the person be filled by taking in nourishment (in the first case) or acquiring4555 understanding (in the second)?4556
“Of course.”
Which filling up is the truer of these two? Is it the filling of what is less real or of what is more real?4557
“Obviously of the more real.”
So which of the two categories do you believe partakes of the more pure reality,4558 things like food and drink and relish4559 and nutrition taken as a whole, or the category of true opinion and knowledge and intelligence and virtue as a whole?4560 Here is how to make the judgment:4561 Is the category of things that are connected to4562 what is always the same and deathless and true,4563 and that are themselves like that and undergo what changes they undergo4564 in a medium of that character, are these in your judgment more real,4565 or the category of things that are connected to what is never the same and is mortal, which are themselves of this latter nature and which move in a medium of this latter kind?
“The category of the invariant4566 is far more real.”
Does the reality of the invariant partake in reality any more than it partakes in knowledge?
“Not at all.”
Or in truth?
“Nor that.”
But if it partook any less in truth, would it not also partake less in reality?
“Necessarily.”4567
Now on the whole do the kinds of things that have to do with4568 caring for the body partake less in truth and reality than the kinds of things that have to do with caring for the soul?
“Much less.”
And does body considered in itself4569 partake less than soul?
“I think so.”
As to the thing that is filled with things more real and that is in itself more real, is it more really filled than the thing with less real things that is itself less real?4570
“How could it not be?”
So let us conclude that if being filled by things that are naturally appropriate is a pleasurable thing,4571 then what is more really filled in the sense of being filled by things more real4572 would cause an enjoyment in a person more real and true by means of a pleasure that is true, whereas what partakes of4573 things less real would both be less truly and securely filled and would share in a pleasure less reliable and less true.
“Most necessarily so.”4574
(586) So when it comes to persons who have no experience4575 of mindfulness and virtue4576 because they fill their hours attending feasts4577 and such things, to apply our likeness,4578 they are borne around within the lower region and then back up to the middle region, wandering disoriented4579 throughout their lives. As to going beyond the middle toward what is truly above, never yet have they glanced thither nor been borne there, and so4580 they never have really been fulfilled with the real, nor4581 have they tasted the pleasure that is certain and pure.4582 Instead, like browsing cattle, their gaze fixed downward and posture earthward prone, they graze at their tables4583 as if feeding in pens,4584 and hump. But they want more than they get4585 and they kick and butt each other with horns and hoofs4586 of iron; they kill each other out of an insatiability that stems from the fact that it is not with reality, nor is it the real part of themselves, which4587 contains and protects4588 them, that they are continuously striving be fulfilled.4589
“Flawless and uncanny your description of most men’s lives!”4590
And aren’t they also4591 condemned to commune with pleasures that are contaminated with pain, mere likenesses and illusions of the pleasure that is true, magnified by their juxtaposition with each other so that they appear stronger than they are, and that incite rabid desires for themselves in mindless persons and come to be objects of contention among them, the way Steisichorus says4592 the mere picture of Helen became an object of contention among the men at Troy, since they didn’t realize it wasn’t truly she?
“It is inevitable that they became such.”
What about the willful part4593 of the soul? Won’t the same sort of thing4594 necessarily take place with any man that strives to “stay the course” strictly on its own narrow terms,4595 whether by means of envy to satisfy his love for accolades, or by force to indulge his love of winning, or by anger to gratify his unsociability,4596 since he will be pursuing a fulfillment from honor or victory or will without the guidance of reason and intelligence?
“The same sort of thing will inevitably take place here as well.”
Then shall we brave4597 the assertion that, of the desires that attach to the part of the soul that loves lucre as well as those that attach to the part that loves victory, those souls that pursue such pleasures in concert with knowledge and reason and achieve the pleasures that the mindful part directs them to,4598 will in fact achieve the truest versions of such pleasures they are capable of enjoying, seeing that they are following truth, and pleasures akin4599 to their nature, assuming that what is best for each part4600 is what is most akin to its nature.4601
“But clearly the best for a thing is the most akin!”
Therefore, if the soul as a whole follows the part that loves wisdom, eschewing internal strife, each of the several parts has in store4602 not only that it will be doing its own proper work and in that sense be just, but also in each several part4603 that it will garner the pleasures that are its own, that are best for it, and that are in that sense the (587) truest pleasures it is capable of.4604
“That much4605 is clear.”
And more, if one of the parts perhaps4606 subdues4607 the soul, what lies in store for that part is not only that it will fail at finding its own proper pleasure but that it will compel the other parts, besides,4608 to pursue a pleasure that is foreign to them and is not true.4609
“So it is.”
Consider the element that is farthest separated from4610 from reason and the love of wisdom: would it have this effect most of all?
“Yes, by a large margin.”
And what is farthest away from reason is farthest also from orderliness and law?
“Clearly.”
And did we not come to see4611 that what stood farthest away were the erotic desires of the tyrant?
“Farthest indeed.”
And closest were the temperate desires of the kingly4612 type?
“Yes.”
At the furthest distance, therefore, from pleasure true and kindred, stands the tyrant; closest stands the other man.4613
“Necessarily.”
And therefore the tyrant’s life will be the least pleasurable whereas the king’s will be the most.
“Very necessarily.”
Now, do you know the margin by which the life of the tyrant is less pleasant than that of the king?
“I will if you tell me.”4614
There are three pleasures, one of them genuine and the other two counterfeit,4615 with the tyrant crossing the line beyond even the counterfeit ones,4616 a fugitive from law and reason4617 who shares his home with a bodyguard of other pleasures as if they were his slaves.4618 To say by what amount he loses out in pleasure will not be very easy,4619 but can it perhaps be done in this way …
“What way?”
We said4620 that the tyrant stands in third position after the oligarchic man, if I may remind you that the demotic man stood between them.
“Yes.”
So likewise does he live in the company of a third-rank image4621 of pleasure as measured in terms of truth, if what we have just been saying is true?
“So he does.”
But the oligarchic man in turn stands in third position after the kingly one, if we place the aristocratic and the kingly man into the same category.
“Third indeed.”
So by the numbers the tyrant stands at a triple remove, tripled,4622 from true4623 pleasure.
“Clearly.”
The distance of the tyrannical pleasure would then be the square of the length of three?
“Obviously.”
And in accordance with the factors involved, the total distance would require a third multiplication4624— clearly4625—measuring how far removed he ends up being.
“Clearly—to the logistical part4626 of us.”
And if one tries to calculate by what degree of the truth of his pleasure the king, conversely, is separated from the tyrant, he will discover that he is living a life seven hundred nine and twenty times more pleasurable, by carrying out the multiplication, and that the tyrant is more miserable by the same interval.
Such a dispositive cadence of syllables have you (588) poured forth,4627 to span the immense discrepancy between the two, the just man and the unjust, with respect to their pleasure and pain!
Immense but true, and appropriate as a measure of their lives to boot, to the extent that it makes sense to measure their lives as a quantity of days and nights, adding up to months and years.4628
“But it certainly does.”
And if it is by so great an amount that the good and just man wins out over the bad and unjust one,4629 think how immensely more he will win out over him in the gracefulness of his life, in its fineness and in its virtue.4630
“Immensely indeed, by Zeus!”
2.B.10: Conclusion
Alright then. We’ve come to a point in our conversation where we ought to review the arguments that brought us here. The position was advanced at the beginning that it profits a man to do injustice if he is completely unjust but has the reputation of being just.4631 Was this not the position?
“Yes it was.”
Then shall we now engage him4632 in conversation, since we have now reached an agreement about what effect4633 living justly has and what effect living unjustly?
“How?”
Let’s mold in words an image of the soul, so that the person4634 who argued that position can see with his eyes what sort of thing his position implies.4635
“Whatever4636 sort of image have you in mind?”
An image like those kinds of strange creatures4637 that mythology speaks of aforetimes,4638 a monster like the Chimaera and like Scylla and Cerberus, and other such in which many types of animal have somehow grown together into one creature.4639
“They do occur in myths.”
Alright then, mold first the image and type of a variegated beast with many heads, heads of animals both tame and wild, configured in a circle all about its body, and able to sprout all these from out of himself.
“The work of an awfully clever sculptor, you suggest; but since it’s easier to mold a picture in words even than in wax and other such materials, consider it molded.”
Mold next the image of a lion and the image of a man,4640 and make the first of the three the largest by a good deal, and the second second in size.4641
“These are easier, and I’ve molded them up.
Now connect the three of them and make them into one, as somehow grown together.
“They are connected.”
Now mold a single outer image-work in the likeness of a man, that encases these, so that to a person unable to see what’s inside,4642 he sees only the casing and it appears to be a single animal, namely a man.
“The surrounding casing has been molded.”
So let us now say, to the person who was arguing4643 that it profits this man we have placed before him to live unjustly and that just behavior helps him not at all, that what that person is saying is nothing else than4644 that it profits this man to provide a feast for the variegated beast within him and make it strong along with the lion and the rest in him that holds these together,4645 and that it profits him (589) to starve out the man within and make him so weak that he can be dragged about in whatever direction the other two parts lead, and that it profits him to do nothing to reconcile the parts to one another and make them friendly but rather to allow them to nip at each other and be at war among themselves until they eat each other up.
“Yes, all this is what the person who praises the unjust life would in fact be asserting.”
Conversely the man who argues that justice is profitable would be4646 arguing that one must do whatever things and say whatever things4647 will bring it about that the man inside will become sovereign over the whole man4648 as far as that is possible, and manage the many-headed beast the way a farmer does his field, nourishing what is tame and cultivating it4649 but preventing the wild weeds from growing, and by fostering the natural alliance4650 he has with the lion, taking all the parts together in common cause4651 under his care and making them friendly both to each other and to himself,4652 in this way4653 will cause himself to flourish.4654
“Clearly this is what the man who praises justice, on the other hand, is saying.”4655
So in every way4656 the man that praises justice would be speaking the truth whereas the man who praises injustice would be telling a lie. Whether the person is looking for pleasure or for laudable benefit,4657 the praiser of justice has the true answer whereas the man who dispraises it, dispraises it falsely without even knowing what it is that he is dispraising.4658
“No, he doesn’t, in my judgment, not at all.”
So then let us try to persuade him gently4659—his error after all is unwitting4660—by asking him, “My very good fellow,4661 would we not agree that our notions of what is fine and what is shameful4662 have been convened because of just such considerations as those?4663 Have we not convened as fine the things that bring under the control of the human element in us—perhaps we should call it divine4664—those aspects of us that are beastly by nature?4665 And do we not condemn as shameful what enslaves4666 the tame element in our nature to the service of the savage?” Will he agree or what?
“He will agree if he listens to me.”4667
Is there any way, then, on the basis of this argument, that a person can profit from seizing gold unjustly,4668 if the consequence will surely be that in the very act of seizing the gold he will be enslaving the noblest part of himself to the most loathsome part? Or would you say that if in seizing the gold he were enslaving his son or his daughter4669 and enslaving them to men evil and violent, it would not profit him to seize the gold even by the cartload under that condition; but that if he enslaves the most divine part in him4670 to the part most godless and polluted without a second thought,4671 are you going to tell me he is not a wretch, withal?4672 Or that he accepted a bribe of gold on condition of a ruination somehow (590) less stunning than Eriphyle did when she accepted the golden necklace on the condition of her husband’s death?4673
“I’ll answer on his behalf and say it is a much more stunning ruination indeed!”
And don’t you think that incorrigible behavior had its bad name all along4674 through just such considerations, because it lets loose the fearsome element within the a man, as conceived in this Image, that beastly element so huge and many-headed,4675 to rove about beyond due measure?
“Clearly.”
And arrogance and rashness: are these not4676 condemned, when4677 they rouse the lion and the snakelike element4678 in us and concentrate its energies disproportionately?4679
“Quite.”
And enervation and softness: is it not on the occasion of the loosing and slackening4680 of this same element4681 that they are censured, when they inject fear into it?
“Obviously.”
Flattery and slavishness4682 also, when a person subjects this same element, the willful part, to the beastly mob in him, and inures it to playing the patsy4683 at the behest of its insatiable desire for money, and so from its youth as a lion4684 allows it to turn into an ape?4685
“Quite so.”
And repetitive physical work:4686 why do you suppose it bears the opprobrium it does? Or shall we say it does so whenever someone4687 has a weak endowment of the noblest element of the soul, so that he may be4688 unable to govern the beasts within himself but fosters them, and proves incompetent to learn anything more than how to coddle4689 them?4690
“So it seems.”
And in order that a man of this type should be ruled by an element alike to the one that rules the noblest man, do we agree he ought to be slave4691 to that noblest man, the man who does have the divine element4692 in himself functioning as his ruler, and do we say so not because we think the slave ought be ruled for the sake of harming him as Thrasymachus thought about the ruled,4693 but because by our lights it is better for any man to be ruled by the divine and the mindful element, first and foremost if it belongs4694 to him as his own within himself, but failing that if it belongs to someone else that is placed in charge over him, in order that4695 all of us might become alike as far as possible and friendly with each other, by virtue of navigating our way by the same element or principle.4696
“And we are right to think it for this reason.”
Law makes it clear that this is what its purpose is, being as it is the ally of all citizens in the city,4697 as does also the principle by which we rule4698 children, not to allow them freedom until we have as it were established a regime4699 within them as if in a city and until by serving and nurturing the best element (591) in them by means of the best element within ourselves we have set up a similar guard to be our substitute and likewise rule within him:4700 then and not before do we grant him his freedom.4701
“They do reveal this to be their purpose.”
Is there any way,4702 then, that we will be able to assert and defend the position that it profits a man to act unjustly or behave unbridled or to commit any ugly act4703 on the grounds that although he becomes a baser person by it, he shall realize a gain in wealth or some other kind of power?4704
“There is no way.”
Or to assert that it profits a man who has done wrong to get away unnoticed and not pay the penalty? Isn’t it clear that although the man who goes unnoticed becomes even more base, the man who is caught and chastised has the beast within calmed and tamed while the tame element is set free from its thrall, and that his soul as a whole thus reaches the order of its best nature4705 and takes on a state more honorable,4706 in its acquisition4707 of temperance and justice along with mindfulness,4708 than that of a body that has acquired strength and beauty along with health, more honorable indeed by the measure that soul is worth more than body?
“I agree completely.”
And a man, if he is intelligent, will adopt a manner of living in which he directs everything that in him lies to this single goal,4709 first4710 by honoring those studies that will render his soul able to reach this state, and accounting the others worthless?4711
“Clearly.”
And second, surely, he will manage the condition and nourishment of his body not to cater to savage and irrational4712 pleasure with the result that his life takes on an orientation toward this alone, but rather, disregarding his health and revering not at all the fashionable worry4713 about becoming strong or healthy or good looking—unless4714 such pursuits will redound in favor of his retaining temperance—instead he will always be seen to tune the body only for the sake of the role it is to play in the symphony of the soul.
“Yes he will, if he is going to be musical4715 in the true sense of the word.”
And will he not do likewise4716 with respect to maintaining order in his material acquisitions and harmony?4717 As to the sheer bulk4718 of his wealth, the envious emulation4719 of the masses will not dazzle4720 him into trying to increase it endlessly, and take on endless4721 evils thereby.
“I think not.”
To the contrary he will keep his eye fixed4722 on the regime within himself.4723 He will guard4724 against disturbing some aspect of himself by having too much money or too little.4725 This4726 will be his compass for steering4727 the safest course he can, saving some now and spending some then.4728
“Clearly he will.”
(592) And as to honors he will keep his eye fixed on the same standard, partaking in and tasting willingly whichever of them he deems4729 will make him a better man; but whichever he deems will weaken the basic order within he will avoid whether in his private or his public life.
“I conclude he will be staying out of politics,4730 then, if he really cares about this.”
No, by the Dog: he will do politics, and vigorously so, at least in the city that is his own, though not in all likelihood in the city of his birth,4731 absent a divine intervention.4732
“I get it: he will do the politics we have now just done, founding a city in the world of thought, since I’d guess you’ll find it nowhere4733 on earth!”
Nay in heaven, perhaps,4734 it has been laid up,4735 as a model for the person who chooses to view it there and use what he sees as a pattern to civilize himself.4736 It makes no difference whether it exists in some place, nor if it ever will, since it will be the politics of this city alone that he would practice and no other.4737
“I would expect nothing else.”
END OF BOOK NINE.
BOOK TEN
We feel no need to ask why Book Nine ends where it does. Even without the back-references and allusions to the beginning of the conversation and the general ascent reminiscent of the ascent at the end of Book Four, the sheer elevation of the argument and its importance for our lives may easily have allowed us to forget that we are hearing an account of what happened yesterday, in the Piraeus, at the house of Cephalus; and even after we remember this we find ourselves still forgetting that the conversation never happened! Instead, as soon as Book Ten begins we might wonder why more conversation is needed since the argument is complete, except for the fact that we have heard nothing from Adeimantus since the end of the Decline (576B). It is Socrates who continues the conversation and so we listen; and he begins by acknowledging things might seem all done by asserting they are not.4738
3.A. Poetry Revisited
(595) Truly, I can say, of the many ways I see in my mind that we organized it4739 with consummate correctness, upon reflection I admire especially our provision concerning poetry.
“What provision do you have in mind?”4740
Our refusal to admit any and all of poetry that was imitative. That it is consummately important not to admit it has now become even more evident, as it seems to me,4741 because of our analysis of the soul into parts distinct from one another.
“How so?”
As I would put it to you personally4742—I trust you won’t denounce4743 me to the writers of tragedy and all the others that are mimetic artists—a mutilation of the mind is what all these sorts of things effect,4744 of anyone in their audience that has not been inoculated against them by a knowledge of what these things are in fact.4745
“But what is it you are thinking about as you make this remark?”
Say it I must, though a distinct love and respect for Homer that I have always felt since my youth tends to hold me back. Of all these fine and high and tragic mimetics he seems to be the first teacher and fountainhead,4746 and yet one must not hold a man in higher honor than the truth—so as I said I must speak.4747
“Quite so.”
Hear then what I have to say—or better, answer my questions.
“Ask away.”4748
3.A.1: The Nature of Imitation
Can you say what imitation is, in general? I myself do not have a particularly clear sense of what it is really about.
“And so4749 you think I will have a clear sense!”
It would not be so strange that you should. Than sharper viewers (596) persons looking with duller sight often see things earlier.4750
“That much is true, but as long as you are present I don't have it in me to hazard4751 some answer that might strike my fancy. No, you do the looking.”
Would you be willing, then, for us to begin our investigation4752 in the way that has become usual for us? We usually posit for ourselves a single and distinct character corresponding to the distinct but plural4753 things to all of which we refer with one name. Do you follow what I am saying?
“I follow.”
So posit4754 any of the pluralities you wish. For instance there is a plurality of couches and a plurality of tables.4755
“Of course.”
But when it comes to the ideas or characters corresponding to these artifacts, there are two: one of couch and one of table.
“Yes.”
And is it our usage to say, of the makers of each of the two artifacts, that it is by looking off to their idea that4756 the one manufactures couches and the other manufactures tables, actual ones that we can use, and so on for the rest. After all none of the makers manufactures the idea itself: how could he?4757
“No way he could.”
But now see what name4758 you would give to the following sort of maker.
“Which?”
The one that makes all the things that each of the specialized craftsmen makes.
“A clever and amazing man he would be.”4759
That’s nothing: as I go on you’ll be all the more dazzled.4760 This craftsman is able to make not only all artifacts but also all the things that come up out of the ground, and fashions all animals including himself, and in addition the earth and the sky he fashions, and the gods and the things in heaven and the things in Hades beneath the earth, one and all.
“Well, you are talking about an utterly amazing sophist.”4761
So you don’t believe me? Tell me: do you altogether rule out that such a maker could exist, or could there be a certain manner in which a person could become a maker of all these things, though in another4762 not? Don’t you realize that even you yourself could be able to make all these things, in a certain manner.
“And just what is this certain manner?”
Nothing difficult, in fact a manner that can be produced4763 quickly and anywhere. The quickest4764 way in fact is to get your hands on a mirror and carry it around, pointing it in every direction. Right then you’ll produce a sun and the things in the sky; right then you’ll produce an earth; right then yourself and all the animals and artifacts and plants and the rest we just listed off.
“Sure, appearances of them, but certainly not ones that really exist in truth.”4765
Well put, and put in a way that advances the argument.4766 After all,4767 you would include the painter among those who produce in this way, wouldn’t you?
“Of course.”
But you will affirm, I think, that what he makes are not true things, though in a certain manner even the painter makes a couch—no?
“Yes, in the sense4768 that it is the appearance of a couch, he too makes a couch.”
(597) But what about the couchmaker? Didn’t you just assert that it is not the idea that he makes, which we speak of as being “what it is” to be a couch, but a sort-of4769 couch?
“So I did.”
So if it is not “what it is” that he makes, he would not be making the real thing. Instead he is making something like the real thing that is not really it.4770 If someone should assert that the work of the couchmaker, or that of any other kind of craftsman, is a completely and perfectly real thing, in all likelihood his assertion would not be true.
“No it wouldn’t, at least in the judgment of people that make it their business to talk as we do.”4771
And so let’s not be surprised if the product is also rather unclear4772 in respect to its truth.
“No, let’s not.”
Would you like to look for the nature of the imitator we are trying to understand,4773 in terms of this example?
“If you think so.”
It turns out there are three kinds of couches: one that really exists in nature4774—which I imagine we would say was the creation of god, if anybody.
“Nobody else.”
Then there is one that the carpenter made.
“Yes.”
And one that the painter made, correct?
“Granted.”
Painter, couchmaker, god: three kinds of masters responsible for three kinds of couch.4775
“Yes, three.”
Now as for god, whether he did not want to or there was some necessity constraining him not to make more than one couch in nature, he made one and one alone,4776 that selfsame couch that is what it is to be a couch. Two that are like each other,4777 or more than two, were not created by the god nor is there any chance they might sprout up on their own.4778
“Why?”
Because if he should make two only, a third would suddenly appear de novo, of which those two would both in turn have the character,4779 which third thing would therefore be what it is to be a couch, and not those two.
“Correctly argued.”
Knowing this, as I imagine, and having in mind to be truly the maker of what it truly is to be a couch rather than to be a sort-of couchmaker of a sort-of couch, he created a couch in its singular distinctness to exist by nature.4780
“So it seems.”
Would you then have us call him the creator4781 of this or something along these lines?
“The usage would be correct if he has made this and all the other things so as to be ‘by nature.’”4782
What are we to call the carpenter? A “manufacturer” of a couch?
“Yes.”
Should we likewise call the painter a manufacturer or maker of this sort4783 of thing?
“By no means!”
But then what is he to the couch?4784
“By my lights it would be fairest4785 to call him an imitator of the things of which those two4786 are makers.”
Alright then, I gather that you are calling the man who deals with what belongs in the third generation from nature an imitator.4787
“Quite so.”
Therefore the tragic poet will fall into this category of yours, if in fact he is an imitator, and will be at a sort of third remove from the king4788—the true by nature4789—as will all the other imitators.
“He probably would.”
Alright then, we have reached an agreement about the imitator.4790 Now answer me the following question using (598) the painter as example. Do you think he tries to imitate that distinct thing in itself that exists by nature, or does he try to imitate the works4791 of the craftsmen?
“The works of the craftsmen.”4792
Do you mean as they are or as they appear? I need you to specify this further.
“What do you mean?”
The following. Take a couch, when viewed from the side or from the end or whatever angle: does it differ in itself from itself or does it not differ at all but appears in different ways?4793 I’m asking in general, not just about couches.
“The latter: it takes on different appearances but differs4794 not at all.”
So focus on just this point. Toward which is the art of painting set up by nature4795 with respect to the thing4796 it draws: toward the real, how the thing really is, or toward the appearance, how it appears? Is it of appearance or of truth4797 that it is an imitation?4798
“Of appearance.”
Then it is somewhere far from truth, and what in fact enables it to imitate so many things is that in a way it barely4799 needs to grasp the thing4800 it imitates, and merely mere a likeness of it to boot. For example we say that the painter is going to paint a shoemaker4801 for us or a builder or any other worker4802—though he knows nothing of their trades;4803 but nevertheless for children at least4804 and foolish men, too (assuming he is a worthy painter), if he paints4805 a carpenter and shows it to them from a distance he would delude them into concluding it was a real carpenter.
“Of course.”
Instead we have to adopt the following attitude in all such cases. Anytime someone tells us that he encountered a man that knew all the trades and all the other things that each individual type of person knows, and had mastered them all with no less finish than anybody else, we mustn’t sit still for such behavior4806 but tell him he is something of a fool, and that apparently what he encountered was some kind of magician or imitator4807 and was deluded by him into concluding he was omniscient,4808 since he was unable to make his own test of the person’s knowledge or lack thereof, and see whether it was an imitation.4809
“Exactly right.”
3.A.2: Critique of Poetry as Imitation
So mustn’t we next investigate4810 the art of tragedy and its great leader Homer, since we do hear people say4811 that these poets “know all the trades, know all human matters having to do with virtue and vice, and know divine matters to boot?4812 After all”—they say— “it is necessary that a good4813 poet, if he is to compose a fine piece on some subject, compose on a subject he knows, to be sure, or else4814 be unable to.” And so we must inquire carefully whether – being imitators these persons they have encountered4815 – they have come away from their encounters deluded, and though they have seen their works they still (599) do not perceive about them they are at a third remove from reality and truth, and would as such be easy to compose for a person who does not know the truth, since after all4816 it is appearances and not the realities4817 that they are composing. Or is it the case that there is4818 something to their claim, that in truth their “good” poets do have knowledge of the things they write about so “well,”4819 as so many people think.
“We must indeed conduct the test.”4820
Now do you imagine that if a person had the ability to make both the object that is to be imitated and a likeness of it,4821 he would allow himself to become serious about the manufacture of likenesses and adopt this as the goal of his life, thinking that having this he would have the best of things?4822
“Myself I do not.”
And yet at the same time I imagine that if he should have4823 real competence about the things that he also imitates, he would far sooner get seriously involved in real acts4824 than the realm of imitations.4825 He would be involved in an effort to leave behind deeds great and many, as memorials4826 to be remembered by; and he would be eager to be the person praised rather than the person praising.
“I imagine so. Both the honor and the usefulness of the two are hardly on a par.”
So when it comes to all the other things4827 let’s not require Homer or any other of the poets— as we would for instance if he were4828 a physician and not just an imitator of physicians’ talk – to answer the question, What men has any poet, whether current or aforetimes, known to have made4829 healthy, as Asclepius did? nor What group of medical students has he spawned,4830 like the progeny that great man spawned.4831 And let’s not ask them about the other skills,4832 either: let all that go. But when Homer tries to talk about the greatest and the finest subjects,4833 about wars and generalships and the organization of cities and about the way a man is educated, then I’d say we have every warrant4834 to question him by way of information, “Friend Homer, if you are not at the third remove from truth when the subject is virtue4835 and not a manufacturer of images4836—which for us became the definition of a mimic—but are in fact at the second remove, and thus were4837 able to judge which sorts of behavior make men nobler or baser both in their private lives and as citizens, then tell us about4838 a city that achieved a nobler organization because of you,4839 the way Lacedaemon did because of Lycurgus and many cities large and small did, because of many other men? When it comes to you, what city claims you as a man who became a good lawgiver and brought benefit to it? Charondas Italy can claim and Sicily, and we claim Solon:4840 but which when it comes to you?” Will he be able to mention4841 one?
“I imagine he won’t. The very Homerids have no such tales to tell about their favorite.”4842
(600) But perhaps there’s a war4843 during Homer's life,4844 whether run by the great man, or he served as an advisor, that is commemorated4845 as having been well fought?
“Not a one.”
But4846 often you hear tell of practical applications stemming from a wise man’s insights,4847 something that can readily be translated into the arts or other activities—like the stories about Thales4848 and Anacharsis?4849
“Nothing at all like this.”4850
But let go the public sphere. Isn’t there some story about him becoming an overseer of the education of some individuals or other4851 during his life, who were much pleased by their association with him and handed down to their descendants a “Homerical” way of living, the way Pythagoras in his own person was such a signal success at this and likewise had successors even down to the present day, calling themselves “Pythagorean” for the way they live their life, and who went on to stand out4852 in the other departments of human affairs?
“Nothing like that, either, even in lore. As for 'associates' of Homer’s all we have is Creophylus, Socrates; and as for his education, if anything it is more ridiculous even than that name of his,4853 assuming the stories about Homer are true.4854 They say he largely ignored Homer even while he was alive.”4855
So the story goes, indeed. But then can you imagine, Glaucon, that if in fact Homer was able to educate men and make them better out of an ability not just to imitate such things but to know and judge things, that he would not, after all,4856 have amassed a lot of associates and would not be honored and loved4857 by them, while conversely Protagoras of Abdera and Prodicus of Cos4858 and that whole slew of others prove able so to dispose the individuals they spend time with personally, during their own lives, as to make them feel unable to take the first step in managing even their own households and cities4859 before they themselves supervise them with their instruction, and are so fervently loved4860 for this wisdom of theirs that these people do everything short of carrying them around on their shoulders; whereas when it comes to Homer after all, assuming he was able to benefit men in their pursuit of virtue, and Hesiod for that matter, are we to believe that the men of their time would allow them to go hither and yon performing their epic lays and would not cling to them more than to their gold and try to prevail upon them to come and be in their very homes,4861 and if they failed would themselves take on the tutors' job of escorting children4862 to their lessons wherever they might hold them, until by eavesdropping on their education4863 they had their fill of what such men have to teach?4864
“I think what you say is entirely true.”4865
So, shall we set it down that all the poetical men4866 from Homer forward4867 are imitators of images or likenesses4868 of virtue and of the other things they write poems about, and that they never actually come in touch with the truth;4869 and that rather, as we were just now saying,4870 the painter will create what looks like a shoemaker, (601) both to himself4871 who is ignorant of shoemaking and4872 to an audience likewise ignorant, who train their eyes only on his use of colors4873 and shapes.
“Quite so.”
And I suppose we would make a similar assertion about the poet, that he would color in, as it were, the colors and quality of the several arts from his palette of words and phrases,4874 ignorant all the while of everything but the techniques of imitation, so that to others likewise ignorant,4875 contemplating only his statements, his poems would seem—as for instance if he were talking about shoemaking in meter and rhythm and rhyme—would really seem quite well done,4876 as also they would if his subject were the conduct of a war4877 or anything else—so great a charm do these elements naturally have in themselves.4878 After all if you strip away the musical color from the poets’ works and look at what is being said in and by the language, well, I’d guess you know what their qualities are, since I’m sure you’ve witnessed4879 the effect.
“So I have.”
So is it like the faces of boys who are youthful but not so good-looking, and what happens to their looks once the bloom has left them?
“Exactly.”
Move on, then, to the following point. About this maker of likenesses, this imitator: we say he knows nothing of the reality but only the appearance, no?
“Yes.”
So we ought not leave it half said:4880 let’s get a complete picture of it.
“Say on.”
A painter will for instance paint the reins and the bit.
“Yes.”
But the maker4881 of it will be the cobbler4882 and the smith?
“Quite.”
Now when he set about painting was the painter knowledgeable about how4883 the reins should be and how the bit? Or is it the case that even the maker does not know—the smith and the cobbler,4884 that is—but that there is another man that does, the man who knows how to use these things—the horseman, that is, and he alone.4885
“Quite true.”
And shall we not say that this applies to everything?
“How?”
In any individual case there are three skills, the one suited to using the thing, the one suited to making it, and the one suited to imitating it.
“Yes.”
Isn’t the virtue and the fineness and the correctness4886 of any specific thing, whether it be a piece of equipment or an animal or an action,4887 determined by the use for which it was contrived or for which its nature suits it?
“So it is.”
Therefore we can be quite certain that the person who makes use of a given thing is the most qualified by his experience to act as4888 messenger and report back to its maker4889 what was good or bad4890 in the manufacture, based on the use that he puts it to?4891 For example a flautist reports back to the flute maker about the flutes he has made, whichever makers4892 are assisting him in his flute-playing. He will direct the maker as to what qualities the flutes he makes must have, while the maker in turn will serve his need.
“What else?”
So the one, because he knows, will report back4893 which flutes are worthy and which are poor;4894 while the other by trusting4895 him will manage his manufacturing?
“Yes.”
Therefore, for one and the same artifact the man who makes it will have a justified trust4896 about whether it is fine or poor,4897 by virtue of associating with the knower and of being constrained (602) to wait upon the knower’s4898 instructions, whereas the man who uses it will have knowledge.
“Quite so.”
But as to the imitator, which will it be? Will he have knowledge about what he paints gotten from using it, knowledge as to whether or not he is drawing something fine and correct,4899 or4900 will he have correct opinion4901 by virtue of being constrained to wait upon the knower and to receive instruction how he is to draw it?4902
“Neither.”
Therefore he will neither know nor have correct opinion, our imitator, about what he imitates, as to whether it is fine or poor.4903
“It seems not.”
Amusing then would be the figure our mimic cuts in his atelier, and the wisdom4904 he deploys in the course of making what he is making!4905
“Hardly amusing.”
And yet he will move right along with his imitating nonetheless,4906 in perfect ignorance about what makes things poor or serviceable.4907 Instead, as it seems, the aspect of things that appears to be fine and pretty4908 to the many, who likewise know nothing,4909 will be the aspect he imitates.
“What else?”
Alright then. We have reached agreement on the following points, as it appears: that the imitator knows nothing worth mentioning about what he imitates; that instead4910 his imitation is play and not serious; and that the persons who have taken up tragic poetry in iambs and in dactyls are imitators par excellence.4911
“We have indeed.”
By Zeus!4912 When it comes to4913 this imitating that they are involved in—it’s about something at a third remove from truth?
“Yes.”
3.A.3: Effect of Poetry as Imitation
What about what it affects?4914 Over which aspect of man does imitating wield its power?4915
“What sort of aspect are you talking about?”4916
About the following:4917 An object of a certain size appears, for us men, not to be equal in size if we view it from a close distance and from a far distance.
“You’re right, it doesn’t.”
And the same things appear bent and then straight when we look at them in water and then out of water;4918 and concave and convex for that matter, when you add the contribution that colors4919 make to sight’s moorless wanderings.4920 Indeed sight clearly presents nothing but confusion in the soul, and this weakness in our nature is further exploited by the application of optical illusions so as to make way for boundless bewitchment, as does the manufacture of mechanical marvels and other4921 such contrivances.
“It’s true.”
Would you say that measuring and counting and weighing have come into existence4922 to aid us in such difficulties, so that mere appearances that occur in us, of larger and smaller and of the more and of the heavier, do not hold sway,4923 but rather the thing that calculated and measured and weighed?4924
“Of course.”
But at the same time4925 you would have to agree that the performance of these tasks would belong to the logical element within the soul.
“To this element indeed.”
But to this aspect, when it measures and declares that the one thing is larger or smaller than the other or equal, things might at any time4926 appear quite contrary to sense, and they do so at the same time about the same things.4927
“Yes.”
And haven’t we said that having contrary opinions about the same thing in the same part of oneself is impossible?4928
“We did, and we were right to do so.”
(603) So, the element of soul that believes what contravenes measure could not be the same as the one that knows the measure.
“It could not.”
And meanwhile4929 the aspect of the soul that puts its trust in measure and calculation4930 would be the noblest4931 aspect of the soul.
“Obviously.”
And so the part that opposes this part would, oppositely,4932 be one of the mean elements4933 in us.
“That follows.”
Alright then. The step in the argument I was trying to secure your agreement to by means of that opening question,4934 was this, that the painter’s kind of making, and mimetic creations in general, not only4935 produce something that in fact is far from the truth, but engages4936 an aspect of ourselves that is likewise in fact far from mindfulness, and plays courtesan and lover with it in a way that is up to no good4937 and false, too.
“Completely correct.”
But as a mean consort consorting with a mean element in us, mimetic art gives birth to offspring likewise mean.
“Likely so.”
And does the point I made apply to visual art only or does it apply to the art of audible creations as well, which we do after all4938 call poetry?
“Likely this kind of making would be analogous.”
But let’s not rely on what is likely based on an analogy drawn from painting but penetrate to the very aspect of our mentality4939 with which poetry as a mimetic art4940 consorts, and see whether this element is a mean one or a serious4941 one.
“We really ought to.”4942
Let’s set the problem4943 as follows: it is people in action that mimetic art imitates,4944 either in compulsory acts such as in war or the voluntary acts of peacetime,4945 and then the attitudes they form in the aftermath4946 as to whether they did well or poorly, and whether, at every stage, they are troubled or they are joyful.4947 Was4948 there anything beyond this?
“Nothing.”
Now is it the case that in all such matters a man is undivided in his attitude? Or, just as in the experience of vision he felt a conflict because he had opposite opinions within himself at the same time about the same things,4949 so too in the realm of human action does a man feel internal conflict and fight with himself? My memory tells me that on this point at least there is no need for us to talk our way to an agreement4950 since we adequately4951 talked through all of those conflicts before, how our soul fairly teems with countless numbers of such simultaneous contradictions as these.4952
“Correct we were to agree.”
Correct indeed, but what we there4953 left out we must finally go through, as it seems.
“What was that?”
Take the decent man4954 who is dealt a piece of bad luck such as losing his son or some other thing people make much of: he will bear it more easily than the others, as we agreed.
“Quite.”
But now let us look further into this. Will he be afflicted by it not at all, or, that being impossible, will he measured4955 his reaction to the pain?
“The latter is closer to the truth.”
(604) So tell me this about this man: do you think he will fight with his pain and have more strength to hold off against it more while he is being observed by his peers, or more once he is off by himself, alone in his own company?
“Presumably he will do much better as long as he is being observed.”
But once he is alone I’d guess he will dare4956 to give vent to all sorts of utterances that he would be ashamed for others to overhear, and would do all sorts of things he would never let anybody see him4957 doing.
“That’s how it is.”
Now isn’t it reason and lawfulness4958 that consistently counsel him to contain himself, whereas the part dragging him to indulge his suffering is just the suffering he is undergoing?4959
“True.”
Since an opposing tension arises within the soul of the man, about the same thing and at the same time, do we assert that he4960 is necessarily two?
“Of course.”
And is the one part ready to obey the law wherever the law leads it?
“How so?”
Well, the law argues4961 that the finest4962 course of action is to stay as calm as possible in times of crisis and not to become disturbed since, while it is not yet clear4963 what will end up being good or bad about what is happening and things are not in any case improved by taking them hard, nothing in human affairs is of any great moment or importance, anyway, while the very thing we most need to avail ourselves of under the emergent4964 circumstances is made the harder to call into play by our being aggrieved.
“What very thing do you mean?”
The ability to deliberate about what has come about and, as if it had been a throw of the dice, to conform our affairs to the way the dice have now fallen4965 in whatever way reason requires4966 will make the best of the situation; not to waste time constantly patting the wounded part and wailing but instead to accustom the soul to turn its attention as quickly as possible toward the task of healing and restoring the thing that has fallen or become ill, and dispel the moaning dirge with the medical art.4967
“Such would certainly be the best of ministrations4968 against the vagaries of luck.”
And isn’t it the case, as we are saying, that the best part of ourselves is ready to follow4969 this rational course?4970
“Clearly.”
While the part that leads us toward recalling the experience over and over4971 and is never able to get enough4972 of moaning over it is irrational, we shall say, and feckless, and the friend4973 of timidity.
“So we shall say.”
And does the one provide a great and varied spectrum of material for imitation—this excitable part—while the mindful and quiet strain within the self, since it always remains pretty much the same, is neither easy to imitate nor even when imitated4974 is at all easy to grasp directly4975 for what it is, especially in the midst of a rambunctious assembly of all sorts4976 of people such as you encounter in a theatre. For them what is being depicted is alien to their experience.
(605) “I will completely agree with this much.”
Indeed the mimetic poet is not naturally suited for this aspect of the soul nor4977 is his bag of tricks4978 set up to please that part, if he is to succeed with the crowd.4979 Rather he is suited to the excitable and multifaceted aspect since that aspect is so easy to imitate.
“Clearly.”
Won’t you agree4980 that we would now4981 have sufficient warrant to try to restrain him and treat him as the counterpart to the painter? In fact, both in the way he composes things that are mean in comparison with the truth and in the way he consorts with an aspect of soul likewise mean4982 rather than with the noblest part, his likeness to him is fixed.4983 So now we would be right not to admit him into the city we had set out to make well governed, because it is this aspect of the soul that he arouses and nourishes, and by so strengthening it tends to destroy the soul’s rational element,4984 just as when in a city a person brings evil men to power and betrays his city and undermines the finer4985 citizens: likewise, shall we say, the mimetic poet implants an evil regime4986 within the soul of the individual man in his private life, gratifying the mindless aspect of his soul which is unable to tell large things from small and finds the same thing at one moment important and at another paltry, because the poet is fashioning mere likenesses,4987 and himself stands so far removed from truth and reality.
“Very much so.”
But mind you we have not yet lodged the greatest accusation against his art. The fact that it is powerful enough with very few exceptions4988 to mutilate4989 even decent persons, is, I should think, particularly horrible and dangerous.
“How would it not be, if truly it does that!”4990
Hear what I have to say, and then decide.4991 Imagine the noblest among us4992 listening to a recitation of Homer’s poetry or some other tragic poet imitating one of the heroes suffering and spinning out a long speech to accompany his wailings, surrounded by singing4993 and the beating of breasts. I would guess you are aware how we enjoy the recitation and surrender ourselves to it as we are borne along in sympathy, and then in all seriousness4994 we applaud the poet as a “great” poet4995 because he brought us to this state.
“I am aware—how could I not be?”
But think, when some matter of great concern4996 happens to one of ourselves,4997 how in our case we take pride in showing the opposite reaction—staying calm and bearing through it with strength, that is—thinking4998 that this is the sign of a “real man,” whereas it would be womanly to act in the way we praised just now.
“I do think so.”
So is this praising such a fine thing after all? To sit there watching a man act in a way one would be ashamed to act oneself, and instead of having one’s stomach turned by it4999 to enjoy it and praise it?
“No, in Zeus’s name! The praise flies in the face of reason, as it seems”5000
(606) Right you are, especially if you should view the case a certain way.5001
“What way?”
If you should consider5002 that the element in us that in the one case was forcibly5003 being held back in our own time-of-trouble, starved of the opportunity to have a good cry and to slake its desire to mourn and satisfy5004 itself, which by its very nature it desires to do, is in the other case the very element fulfilled and gratified by the poets; while meanwhile the part of us that by its very nature is the noblest but by dint of inadequate schooling or habituation5005 lets down its guard against this mourning part and, since in truth it is someone else’s sufferings that it sits and watches from a distance5006 and since it redounds not at all to his own5007 dishonor if some other man who claims to be virtuous should mourn inappropriately, that he should approve of the poem and pity him. To the contrary he believes that now he only profits5008 from that feeling5009 – namely, the pleasure he was avoiding in his own case – and he would not acquiesce in being deprived of this pleasure as a result of shunning the entire poem.5010 Indeed I imagine few people5011 can reckon that one necessarily takes home with himself something of what he receives abroad5012 in the sense that by nourishing the pitying element in himself, though on cases remote5013 from himself, he has strengthened it,5014 so that it is not easy for him to keep it under control5015 when the case is his own.
“Quite true.”
Doesn’t the same argument apply to the ridiculous, too? If5016 you would deem it shameful that you yourself should do some ridiculous act,5017 but if attending a comic performance or for that matter reading in private5018 you find yourself overcome5019 with pleasure5020 rather than aversion to it as base, you are behaving the same way as in the case of the pitiable. The part of yourself that at first you were holding in check from wanting to act the clown, since you feared you would come to be thought a crass person, you now release,5021 and with that rash act5022 you face the likelihood of being carried away before you know it, and turning out to be a comedian5023 in your own right,5024 after all.5025
“Very much so.”
And it applies also to sexual drives and anger, and to all the appetites and the pains and pleasures that arise in the soul, which do in fact attend us in all the things we do, as we aver,5026 that these are the sorts of things that are brought about by the operation5027 of mimetic poetry on us. It nourishes them by irrigating them when they should be parched,5028 and enthrones them as rulers within us though they should be ruled in order that we might become nobler persons and therefore happier rather than worse and more miserable.5029
“I cannot gainsay you.”5030
And so,5031 Glaucon, I said, whenever you encounter5032 those fans5033 of Homer who brag that all Hellas owes its education to this poet,5034 and that his works should be taken up5035 and studied for their help in the organizing5036 and teaching of human affairs, and that this one poet5037 is the guide to follow in managing every aspect of one’s personal life, you should greet them in a friendly manner and with admiration,5038 recognizing they (607) have achieved what goodness they can, and grant them that Homer is surely the most poetic5039 of tragic poets and also the first among them;5040 but know at the same time that you can accept no more of his work into your city5041 than his hymns to the gods and his praises of good men.5042 If you accept the sugared Muse5043 and her poems both short and long,5044 it will be pleasure and pain that will sit in twain5045 as rulers over your5046 city, rather than law and public consensus ever adjusted by the best dictates of reason.5047
“Very true.”
So let this stand as our defense and explanation5048 that, looking back on what we said about poetry, it was reasonable after all for us to send her packing5049 given what we have now discovered to be her true nature: reason forced us5050 to this conclusion. And let us not omit to tell her,5051 in order to pre-empt a charge of rancor or unsophistication being brought against us, that a dispute between philosophy and poetry is not after all a novel5052 thing. We hear for instance of that “hound noisesome at her master” who bawls;5053 of a man “great with his empty declarations of foolishness;” of the “mob putting the strong arm on men so very wise,”5054 and that men of “rarified meditations” for all that5055 go begging.5056 You could multiply instances at will showing that the opposition of these poets5057 is nothing new. But in the face of all that5058 let us put ourselves on record saying that as far as we are concerned, if the poetry of pleasure working through imitation should have an argument according to which it ought to have a place in a city whose laws and customs are good,5059 we would restore5060 her gladly—after all we are quite aware5061 how enjoyable it is to surrender to her charms. In the meanwhile, to betray what we see as the truth5062 would be impious. After all, aren’t you charmed by her just as I am, my friend,5063 particularly when you behold her powers as deployed by Homer?
“You can be sure of that.”
And5064 under those circumstances5065 would she rightly be restored to the city, having presented a defense whether in melic meter or any meter she chooses?5066
“Quite so, she would.”
And I guess we would grant a forum even to her sponsors,5067 those who themselves lack poetic talent but love and support poetry nonetheless, to present speeches on her behalf unmetrical and plain, to the effect that she is not only pleasant but also beneficial to constitutions and to the lives we humans lead.5068 And we will listen with patience and clemency. Great will be our gain, after all, if she proves to be not only pleasant but also useful.5069
“Yes, how could that be anything but a gain for us?”
But if on the other hand she does not, you and I will be stuck, my friend.5070 Just as those who have fallen in love with someone5071 sometimes get the sense that their love is not beneficial to them and must force themselves to stay away from their beloved cold turkey,5072 so will we. Because of the way a desire for such poetry was indeed engendered5073 in us by the nurture and culture we received from (608) our worthy5074 political institutions as children, we shall indeed5075 be glad for her to come across as5076 most noble and true,5077 but as long as she is unable to defend herself5078 we will sit in her audience chanting to ourselves this argument we are making as an incantation,5079 and take care not to fall back into a love both childish5080 and common. We know from our experience5081 that such poetry5082 is not to be taken seriously as though it had some truth to tell of great import, but something that a member of the audience must listen to with care, out of a fear for the effect it might have on the city within himself;5083 and that he must adopt as his own rule and custom5084 what we have said about poetry.
“I agree with you completely.”
Great is the struggle, dear Glaucon5085—truly it is great,5086 nor small as people think, this struggle whether a man turns out good or bad: so great that5087 the enticements5088 of honor, nor of money nor office, nor those of poetry for that matter,5089 can compensate a man for neglecting justice and the rest of virtue.
“I do agree with you, given the discussion we have been through; and I think anyone else would too.”5090
3.B. The Rewards of Virtue
But still we have not discussed the greatest prizes such virtue holds in store,5091 both for the present and in the future.
“You might be suggesting a greatness barely manageable, if there are others greater than the ones already spoken of.”5092
Yet what could be great in such a small amount of time? Even the entirety of one’s time from childhood to old age would be a small amount measured against all of time.5093
“Virtually nothing!”
So then5094 do you think for an affair5095 that is deathless one ought to take it seriously with a view to the length of a life but not with a view to all of time?
“No, but I do5096—yet what is this 'affair' you are talking about?”
Have you not perceived5097 that the soul we have is immortal and will never perish?
He looked into my eyes5098 and said, bewildered, “By Zeus I have not; but you — can you prove it?”5099
3.B.1: Immortality of the Soul
Unless I’m wrong;5100 and I think you can prove it, too.5101 It’s not hard.
“But to me it is! I’d be happy to hear about this 'not hard' thing from you.”
And hear it you may.
“If only you say it.”5102
Do you call some things bad and some good?
“I do.”
I wonder if you think the same thing about them as I do.
“What is that?”
Anything that destroys or corrupts is bad; but what preserves and benefits5103 is good.
“I do think that.”
Would you also say there is a bad and a good for each specific type of thing? The eyes, (609) for instance, have ophthalmia5104 and the body as a whole has disease; for grain mildew, rotting for wood, for brass and iron there is rust and, as I am arguing, for just about5105 everything there is an illness or evil5106 fit to it by nature.
“I would agree.”
And would you say that when one of them afflicts its object it makes it poorer5107 and in the end destroys it entirely and kills it?5108
“Of course.”
So the evil natural to each type of thing and the cause of its becoming poorer5109 tends to kill it, and if it shall fail to do so there is nothing else left5110 to destroy it. After all, its good will not do so, nor would that which is neither bad nor good for it.5111
“How could they?”
If then we find some specific type of thing for which there is indeed some ill that makes it worse off, but which is not able to demolish it though it tends to debilitate it,5112 will we not from that moment on5113 know that for the thing of this nature, nature has provided no demise.5114
“It is likely so.”
Alright then, for the soul isn’t there something that tends to make it bad?
“Quite so: just the things we have been speaking of—injustice and incorrigibility and timidity and ignorance.”5115
So would any of these demolish and destroy it? Be mindful not to let us be deceived by the notion that in the case of the man who is unjust, and witless,5116 that when he is apprehended for his unjust acts it is by his injustice that he is destroyed,5117 his injustice being the badness that pertains to soul.5118 Instead go at it this way: Just as in the case of the body the ill of the body corrupts and destroys it and takes it as far as not even5119 to be a body any more, so also in the case of all the things we have just spoken about, through the agency of their specific evil and its deleterious presence and indwelling, they approach the very cessation of the being what they are.5120 Is that not so?
“Yes.”
Then take up the case of the soul and examine it in a parallel way. When injustice and the rest of vice is present in it, does this by its presence and indwelling degrade the soul and snuff it out to the point that it finally leads it to death and separates5121 it from the body?
“No way does it go that far.”
But the alternative would make no sense, that the baseness that belongs to some other thing destroys a given thing while the baseness that belongs to the given thing does not.
“No sense at all.”
Realize, Glaucon, that neither it is by the baseness of food,5122 whatever we are to identify as the evil proper to that particular thing, whether that it is past its prime5123 or rotten or whatever, that we think a body must be destroyed. Rather, if once the baseness peculiar to food implants into a body the peculiar cause of body’s5124 ruination, we will declare that because that happened the body perished by the agency of5125 the evil that belongs to it, in turn, that evil being disease. (610) But we will never judge that it is by the agency of food's evil, food being one thing, that a body, being another thing than food, has been destroyed—by the agency that is of an evil foreign to it--unless that evil implants body's own5126 evil into it.
“We would correctly so judge what you are arguing.”5127
By the same argument then,5128 unless the baseness of body implants the baseness of soul into soul, let’s never accept that by some evil other than the one assigned to soul the soul can perish,5129 absent the soul's own proper baseness—by the evil, that is, of a thing alternate to the thing that the soul is.
“So much is reasonable.”5130
Accordingly, let us either attack this position by showing our reasoning is bad, or as long it remains unassailed let’s never say5131 that by fever or5132 by disease in general, nor by cutting the throat, if you will, nor even if someone should cut the whole body up into tiny pieces,5133 that soul comes any the nearer5134 to perishing, unless and until someone demonstrates to us that because5135 of what the body undergoes, the soul, in and of itself and distinct from body,5136 becomes more unjust or more impious.5137 If however a foreign evil5138 arises in some other thing while the evil peculiar to the specific5139 thing does not arise in it as a byproduct,5140 let us not allow anyone5141 to say that the thing perishes, whether soul or anything else.
“But you can be sure nobody will ever prove this, that while persons are in the process of dying their souls become more unjust, because5142 of their dying, that is.”
But if ever someone braves going toe to toe5143 with us on just this point and tries to argue that a person who is dying does get worse and worse even in respect to his virtue,5144 thinking that by this stratagem5145 he might avoid being compelled5146 to agree that our souls are immortal, we will clearly require him to warrant5147 that if what he says is true, then injustice is fatal to the person who has it5148 as if he had a disease, and that by its agency, as the thing whose nature it is to kill5149 a person, the person that elects injustice will die, those most strongly the sooner and those less strongly more leisurely -- rather than thinking as we did just now5150 that although it is because of this injustice he has elected that he dies, it is nevertheless by the agency of others, those who impose the just penalty, that unjust persons come to die.
“But by Zeus5151 injustice will then turn out to be a thing less than thoroughly horrible5152 if by his lights it turns out to be fatal to the person who elects it,5153—for the implication is that it would portend for him a final surcease from evils. To the contrary, by my lights injustice will prove to be quite the opposite of that: it will be a killer alright, but of other men,5154 while as to the man afflicted5155 by it it will hobble him still further with nothing but robustness and vigilance to boot5156—so far from being deadly has it contrived to stake its claim.”5157
A fine argument you make! As long as its own baseness and specific evil is not strong enough to kill (as he says) or destroy (as we say) the soul, there is all the less basis to believe5158 that an evil associated with the destruction of something else will destroy the soul or anything else5159 besides what it is appointed to destroy.
“All the less, in all likelihood.”
And as long as it is not destroyed through the agency of any5160 evil, whether (611) its own evil or an alien one, then it is necessary5161 that it is a thing always existent; and if always existent, immortal.
“Necessary indeed.”
Then let’s take that to be the truth5162 of the matter. If it is, then you can see5163 that souls are always the same.5164 For they could not become fewer if none of them perished. Nor could they become more numerous, for if any type of immortal things were to become more numerous it could only be by drawing off the mortal supply, and sooner or later everything would end up immortal.5165
“True.”
So we won't accept those implications5166--the argument won’t allow us to5167—nor that in its truest nature5168 soul is such a thing as to teem with any great variegation or with disuniformity and quarrelsomeness and self-contradiction within itself.5169
“Why do you say this?”
It is not easy for a thing to be eternal if it is composed of parts that are many according to a formula that is less than the fine5170 -- eternal as our argument has now seen5171 the soul to be.
“It seems not likely.”
So as to the fact5172 that the soul is immortal, the present argument and the others require it to be true.5173 But as to its character in very truth,5174 one must not view it in its mutilated condition5175 as we for our purposes have been trying5176 to do, beset by its community with the body and by other evils.5177 Instead its character must be carefully discerned5178 with our reasoning ability as it truly is5179 when it becomes purified,5180 and thus reason5181 will discover it to be a thing that on its own is far more beautiful, and will see through to the essentials5182 that underlie the many forms and aspects of justice and injustice5183 and the rest we have now gone through. Instead, while we have told the truth about it as it presently appears,5184 we have adopted5185 a view of it beset, just as when people seeing5186 Glaucus of the Ocean5187 have a hard time making out his original nature. Of what had formerly been his body’s distinct parts, some have now been broken off and others worn down and utterly mutilated by the action of the waves; and in their place barnacles and seaweed and pebbles have grown upon him, so that in effect he resembles some kind of a beast rather than what he was in his true nature: so also with the soul, we are conceiving of her5188 being beset by myriad evils. Enough of that, Glaucus … Glaucon, I mean.5189 Instead, we must look off thither.5190
“Whither?”
Toward her love of wisdom and her philosophy.5191 We must conceive5192 what things she tries to grasp5193 and the kinds of consorts5194 for which she strives, recognizing her kinship5195 to what is divine and immortal and everlasting, and what character she takes on by virtue of her zealous and undivided5196 pursuit of a thing of that character, taken up as she is and delivered by this impulse of hers5197 from out of the sea,5198 and knocked clean all around of the rocks (612) and the barnacles5199 that have grown onto her during this earthly smorgasbord of a life she is living, growths earthy and rocklike, various and rough,5200 regaled by the feasts5201 that count for happiness during her sojourn here. Then and there one might for once5202 catch sight of her true nature, whether it is manifold or simple,5203 and whatever the whys and the wherefores of her existence may be.5204 But for the present we may count ourselves to have done a decent enough job of reviewing the aspects she shows and the life she undergoes during her human period.5205
“Thoroughly decent, indeed.”
3.B.2. Redress for Withholding Praise from Virtue
And5206 while we have resolved the other matters in our discussion,5207 can we say that all the while5208 we have succeeded to avoid praising5209 any payoffs and good reputation that stem from acting justly of the sort you two5210 had found in Hesiod and Homer, but rather we have discovered that justice all by itself is the best thing5211 for the soul in itself,5212 and that she must behave justly regardless whether she has the ring of Gyges on her finger as well as Hades's helmet on her head.5213
“Most truly we have done what you say.”
Then will it no longer5214 create a scandal,5215 Glaucon, if now we should add to those reasons the payoff5216 that justice and the rest of virtue provides to the soul, and say how great it is and what kind it is, both from men and from the gods, while still the man is living and after his life is through?5217
“Certainly it will not.”
Will you two then5218 pay back the loan you borrowed from me in our conversation?5219
“What in the world are you talking about?”5220
I did front you your argument by conceding that the just man appear unjust and the unjust man just.5221 You requested5222 that I do it; and even if it were impossible to hide the truth from gods and men, still you said it had to be granted for the sake of the argument so as to enable5223 us to judge justice in comparison to injustice. Or perhaps you don’t remember?
“That I should forget would be less than fair.”5224
Then since the judgment between them has been rendered, I now enter a counterplea on behalf of justice, that we now agree with each other to grant her the reputation5225 she enjoys in the judgment5226 of both gods and men, so as to enable5227 her to receive her prize and garner the things people confer by dint of her good name on those who have her, since our argument has already shown us what goods she herself confers on them by dint of her real and actual presence, and how she does not disappoint and delude5228 those who strive5229 to attain her.
“Your counterplea5230 is justified.”
3.B.3a: Rewards for Virtue in this Life
First then will you allow me to take back my concession5231 that the gods are hardly unaware, as gods,5232 which men are just and which unjust?
“We pay that back herewith.”
But if the gods are aware which is which, then the one would be god-beloved and the other hated by them, as we agreed5233 at the beginning of our discussion.
“That is correct.”
But as to the god-beloved man won’t we agree that as many things as come from the gods, (613) they will all come to him in the best way possible, assuming he does not have in store some compulsory bane5234 set down on him because of a previous transgression.
“Quite so.”
This is what we must assume about the just man, whether he falls into poverty or illness or another of the things that shortsighted mortal insight counts5235 as evil: Given who he is,5236 everything will turn out good while he is still living or at least5237 once he is dead. For the gods never neglect a person who tries in earnest to become just, and who by practicing virtue makes himself like god5238 as much as human substance will allow.
“One who is like this would probably not be abandoned by another who is like him.”
And for the unjust man mustn’t we adopt the opposite outlook?
“Emphatically so.”
Such then would be the prize granted by the gods to the man who is just.
“That is surely what I believe.”
What about the prizes men can give? If it is the truth we are now supposed to tell,5239 this is how I see it. The clever unjust5240 behave like runners who run well on the way out but not the way back. Quick as rabbits they leap out of the blocks but by the end they cut a ridiculous figure, holding their heads between their legs and running off the track without a wreath. The real contenders keep running to the end; they take the prize and receive a wreath as crown. Isn’t this the way it usually turns out when it comes to men who are just, that upon completion of any particular undertaking or common endeavor, or of a whole life for that matter,5241 they achieve a reputation that is good and carry off the rewards men have to offer?5242
“So true.”
And so will you tolerate5243 my saying about these men the same things you had said5244 about the unjust? For now it is I who will say that the just, in their later years, “come to rule in their own cities, and to hold the offices they wish to hold, and to marry out of whatever family they wish or into whatever family they wish.”5245 Indeed everything you said about them I now say about these.5246 Conversely, when it comes to unjust people, speaking on the whole,5247 while they are young nobody notices they are bad but in the home stretch they are found out and repudiated as ridiculous and then become miserable old men, scorned by foreigners as well as citizens, and are whipped, and as you had said, apologizing that it was crass to say so (and you were right to apologize), “and next5248 they will be placed on the rack and have their eyes burnt out”—Take it you have heard me also give voice to all that, saying that the unjust men suffer it. Just look and see if you will tolerate5249 all this.
“Tolerate it I will: what you are saying is just!”5250
And so the question of what prizes, rewards and gifts5251 are made available by gods and (614) men to the just man while he is still alive, in addition to those other goods justice provides him in and by herself, have now been listed?
“Quite so. How fine and secure5252 they are!”
3.B.3b: Rewards in the Afterlife: The Myth of Er
Yet these are as nothing, in number or in greatness, when measured against those that await the two men5253 after death. These too must be heard so that the two of them be paid back in full what the account we finished still owes5254 us a turn to say5255 about them.
“I would hope you would tell them to me as to a person who would find such a telling more pleasant5256 to hear than most any other.”
Well let me say first5257 I won’t be giving you a Response to Alcinous,5258 but the story of a man no less signal than he for his strength and courage:5259 Er the son of Armenius,5260 a member of the tribe of Pamphylus. He died, one day, in a battle. The corpses around him had been rotting for ten days when they were picked up, but he was picked up fresh. They took him back to his home town and while they were preparing to bury him on the twelfth day and had laid him on the pyre, he came back to life; and once he did,5261 he told what he had seen on the Other Side.5262 He said that:
When it had gotten out of himself,5263 his soul went on a journey with a crowd. They all5264 came to a rather enchanted area where there were two chasms5265 next to each other, opening into the earth below, and two others opening into heaven above. Between them sat judges. Once these had made their decision they would order5266 some of the men5267 to continue on their journey by the chasm up and to the right5268 that led to the heavens, after marking them on the front5269 with the particulars of their judgment; but the unjust men they would send to the chasm down and to the left leading into earth, these too having received marks indicating all their wrongdoings, but on their backs. When it was his own turn to approach, they told him that his5270 fate was to act as messenger to mankind about the Other Side, and that they were imposing on him the task to listen and watch all that was going on in that place.5271
There he saw the souls leave into the two chasms, down into earth and up toward heaven, once the judgments were made on them, but over at the other two chasms souls were emerging,5272 coming up and out of the one from beneath, full of smoke and dust, and down out of the other from heaven, souls all clean and pure.5273 And each of them as they arrived seemed to have made a great and long journey. They were pleased to be coming back to the meadow and camping there as in a festival.5274 Those that knew each other from before greeted and inquired after each other with gladness, the ones that had come up from earth asking what heaven had been like and those from heaven what it had been like below. They told their stories in detail, the one group (615) wailing and brought to tears as they recalled all the horrid things they had suffered and had seen5275 in their sojourn into the earth below—it took a thousand years after all—while the others told how pleasant their experience was5276 and how it was almost too beautiful5277 to bear.
Their stories were long, Glaucon, and so they took a long time to tell, as he said; but the main thing was this. For all the acts of injustice they had ever committed and all the persons they had wronged, they had been punished in turn, for each and every one of them, and for each act they were punished tenfold—ten times one hundred years, this being the length of a human life. The policy5278 was that they pay tenfold for each act of injustice, and that5279 those who were responsible for a mass of deaths because they had betrayed whole cities or armies or had enslaved a mass of people or were proved accessories in bringing on another such horrid state of affairs,5280 would pay for each deed by suffering ten times the pain they had inflicted on all those persons; just as if, conversely, they had committed good deeds and had shown signs of being just and pious they would be provided what was due to them by the same formula.5281 As for persons who had just been born and lived a life too short to do anything5282 Er had other things to say but they aren’t worth recalling.5283
He did go into detail about the still greater rewards that lie in wait for persons who have committed acts of impiety and of piety, toward the gods and toward parents, and the act of suicide. He got onto this topic5284 in the course of telling how he came upon two people one of whom was asking the other where Ardiaeus the Great was to be found. This Ardiaeus had become tyrant in a town in the district of Pamphylia some thousand years ago. According to the story he had murdered his aging father and his older brother5285 and had committed a lot of other impious5286 deeds. Er said that the man who was asked answered by saying,
He has not returned, and don’t waste your time thinking he will.5287 For in fact we saw many things in that place5288 and among them was this: when we came near the mouth of the chasm to make our way back up, having suffered all we were allotted to suffer there, we suddenly caught site of him, and of others too, of whom the great majority were tyrants5289 though there were also persons who had committed huge5290 sins in private life. They5291 thought they were about to go up but the mouth of the chasm would not let them. Instead, every time a person irremediably base as they were would try to go up, or someone who had not yet paid all the punishment due,5292 it would make a belching sound. Men were stationed there, savage and fiery as they appeared, to stand watch and hearken to the call. Some they would pick out and lead them on their way, but Ardiaeus and the others with him they bound up, (616) arms, legs and head, and threw them down on the ground and flayed them, and then dragged them off the path to the side and scourged them with nettles, and to all the passersby would indicate why and wherefore these men were about to be thrown into Tartarus.
The man went on to tell, said Er,5293 that of all the many and varied fearsome things they had undergone there, one was more formidable than all the rest, the fear that just as one was making his way upward the belch would sound, while conversely the greatest relief came when it remained silent at one's passing. So much about the judgments and the punishments: for good deeds also there were corresponding rewards as well.
The people were to rest in the meadow for seven days5294 and on their eighth day, depending on when they arrived,5295 they were to get up and march on. After four days’ walking they reached a place from which they beheld a column of light that extended all the way from the heaven above down to earth, like a rainbow if anything but the light was purer and brighter. This they reached with another day’s walk, and Er along with them,5296 and standing in the midst of it they could see that it stretched down from tributaries of light tied at their ends to the heavenly vault. They came to see5297 that this light was the girdle of heaven—that like the girding of a trireme this light held the whole revolving vault together. From its extremities was stretched the spindle of Necessity, through which5298 all the revolutions of the spheres were governed. The spindle's staff5299 and its hook were made of the strongest of metals,5300 but its whorl was a compound of this and other kinds. The nature5301 of the whorl was as follows. In its outer appearance it resembled the ones we have in our world,5302 but you need to make a mental picture of it based on his description.5303 It was as if within a large whorl that was concave and had been hollowed out smoothly, another just like it was fitted within, as large on the outside as the other on the inside, like those measuring cups that fit into one another; and that there was a third within the second and a fourth, and so on, with four others. There were eight whorls in all, as he said, each lying within the next5304 with the lips of the cups appearing from above as circular bands, whereas from the back side and beneath they formed a single whorl with the staff in the center. As to the staff, it pierced clean through the eighth.5305 The first and outermost whorl had the broadest circle of a lip,5306 and the sixth had the second broadest; third broadest was that of the fourth, and fourth that of the eighth; fifth came that of the seventh, sixth that of the fifth, seventh the third and eighth the second.5307 As to their coloration5308 the first was speckled,5309 the seventh was brightest -- so bright that (617) the eighth had its color projected on it by this one.5310 The circle of the second (and the fifth) were similar in hue, yellower than those; the third was the whitest; the fourth was light red; and second in whiteness was the sixth.5311 He said that as for what it did, the spindle revolved in a circle, as a whole, but that within the whole which was moving that way, the seven inner circles revolved gently backward5312 the innermost and eighth going the fastest in that direction, then the seventh sixth and fifth at the same speed; third5313 fastest in this motion was the fourth, or so it appeared to him and his group5314 since it would turn back on itself,5315 fourth was the third and fifth was the second. He said that the whole spindle was being spun5316 in the lap of Necessity, and that on its circles stood Sirens, one on each, each singing a distinct note in a distinct timbre, and that the combination of all eight notes made a consonant chord;5317 and that there were three others there, stationed around the spindle at equal intervals, each sitting on a throne: the daughters of Necessity—Moiras—gowned in white and filleted with crowns, Lachesis and Clotho and Atropos,5318 and that these were singing in tune with the Sirens’ chord, Lachesis singing the past, Clotho the present, and Atropos the future. And he said that Clotho would grab onto the outer circle with her right hand and push it along, leaving off betimes, and that Atropos in turn would reach into the inner ones with her left and likewise leave off, while Lachesis would grab now one and then another, with one and then the other hand.
What happened when his group arrived there was that they had to approach Lachesis right away, where her Spokesman made them stand in formation. He reached into her lap and brought forward a bundle of lots and of life models, stepped up onto a sort of high podium, and declared the following:
Necessity’s Daughter, Maid Lachesis speaks:5319
“Souls that live for a day, another mortal generation begins its circuit, a harvest for death.5320 To you a genius5321 will not be assigned by lot: by you a genius will be chosen.5322 Who draws5323 the first lot, let him be first to choose a life, which thereafter will be his by necessity. Virtue is nobody’s to own:5324 one may accrue a greater or lesser share of her in accordance with the amount he honors or dishonors her.5325 The blame belongs to the chooser; god is blameless.”5326
Once he uttered these words, Er went on, the Spokesman cast forth the lots into their midst, and each picked up the one that fell at his side except himself (the Spokesman wouldn't let him). As soon as they picked them up they knew where they stood in the order of choosing. (618) Then the Spokesman took up the life-models and laid them out before them on the ground. There were far more lives than souls and they made up a great variety, with lives of every type of animal, especially5327 the human and all the kinds of life a human can live. There were careers of tyrants, some that held their power to the end, others that were interrupted in the middle because they ran out of wealth or were forced into exile, and some that ended up living the life of beggars. Conversely5328 there were lives of distinguished men, of those esteemed for their bodies in terms of its beauties or its strength and vigor,5329 and those esteemed for their family connections and the excellences5330 of their forebears, as well as lives of men undistinguished in these ways, and models of women’s lives as well. The order of their individual souls5331 was not set out in the models: the way the soul turns out is determined by the choosing of the life she does;5332 but all the other attributes were there to choose among, mixed also with degrees of wealth and poverty and degrees of health and sickness, or indifferent amounts of these.5333
This is the moment, it seems to me, dear Glaucon,5334 when everything hangs in the balance5335 for a person’s life. Because this is so, we must each of us disregard all other studies and devote our energies to learning just this5336—whether by his own research or by becoming a student, if he proves able to learn of or to discover5337 somebody that can enable him to master – through distinguishing which life is worthy and which is base, to learn to choose at every moment and at every turn the better as opposed to the worse alternative among the possibilities available. We need truly to know,5338 by taking into account all the aspects of life we have just listed5339 and what their effects are on the goodness of one's life,5340 how they work together and how separately:5341 just what effect beauty has when it is blended5342 with less or more wealth in connection with this or that kind of soul,5343 what effect noble birth5344 and ignoble birth,5345 and private pursuits or public office, physical strength and weakness, being quicker or being slower at learning, and all the other habits of soul either inborn or acquired: what is the combined5346 effect all these things have when they congeal in idiosyncratic mixtures—so that he will be able to make a fully reasoned5347 choice,5348 from all the types and ranges of attributes recognized for what they are5349 and keeping his sights on the development5350 of the soul, between5351 the worse and the better course of life, calling5352 worse the life that leads the soul off in the direction of becoming more unjust and better the life that leads it to become more just. Knowing this he will dismiss all other considerations.5353 We know that he will, because now we have seen that this choice is the only one that really matters5354 for a man, during his life as well as hereafter. (619) He must hold to this outlook and opinion with adamancy as he makes his way to Hades,5355 so that there as here he will not be dazzled5356 by the accoutrements of wealth and other such evils5357 and so that he will avoid falling into tyrannical ways and other such types of conduct, committing many unhealable evils and suffering still more of the same himself, but instead will have the measure by which to choose a middle life among such things5358 and to avoid excesses in either direction, both for the life we live here,5359 to the extent he is able, and throughout his sojourn in the world hereafter as well. After all, this is the path by which a man turns out to be as happy as man5360 can be.
Just so,5361 at that point in his narrative our Messenger from the Other Side reported that the Spokesman5362 made the following pronouncement:
“Even for the last to come forward, if he choose mindfully and live conscientiously,5363 a life lies in store for him satisfactory, not bad. Let not the first to choose be careless, let not the last despair.”
With this he who was first to choose went directly for the life of the most powerful tyrant. Mindless gluttony led him to make the choice, and he made it without a second5364 look and a complete perusal so that he failed to notice that it contained the predestiny5365 of eating5366 his own children and other evils. Once he had the time to look again5367 he beat his breasts and wailed about his choice, and did not acquiesce in the admonitions of the Spokesman5368 since he blamed not himself for the evils that were to befall him but bad luck, or the geniuses, or indeed anything and everything but himself. Er said that he was one of those whose sojourn had been in heaven, a man who had lived his previous life in accordance with an orderly regime5369 and had what virtue he had by habit and without philosophy;5370 and indeed it seemed that virtually5371 as many of those that made this sort of mistake had come from heaven as had come from the other place, unexercised as they had been there in toils and pain, whereas the majority of those who had sojourned in the lower place, given the pain they had undergone and that of others they had witnessed,5372 were not making their choices so precipitously. Because of this, a virtual5373 reversal of good lives for bad took place for the majority of souls, the luck of the lots contributing as well.5374
After all, if at every turn from the moment of his arrival to live his life here5375 a person maintains a healthy philosophical dedication5376 and his own lot does not fall among the very last ones, then there is every reason to believe, on the basis of the reports we are receiving from the life on the Other Side, that he will not only be happy in this life but also that the circuit of his journey from here to there and back will not be earthbound and rough but smooth and heavenly.5377
This spectacle,5378 he said, was very much worth witnessing, how in every case the souls (620) would choose their lives—pitiable, laughable, amazing.5379 Most of the time they would choose in accordance with the perspective of their former lives. He saw the soul that had been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan, unwilling out of its hatred for the female sex (he had died at women’s hands) even to be gestated by a woman. He saw5380 the soul that had been Thamyras choose the life of a nightingale; he saw a swan undergoing a transformation into the life of a human that it chose, and many other musical animals likewise.5381 The twentieth soul to choose chose the life of a lion. It was the soul of Telamonian Ajax, trying to avoid becoming a man since he remembered the contest for Achilles’ armor. After him came Agamemnon, and he too out of hatred for the human race and what he had undergone exchanged his human life for the life of an eagle. Halfway through came the soul of Atalante, and having witnessed how greatly a male athlete was honored it could not pass by the chance to become one but grabbed5382 that life. After that he saw the soul of Epeius, Panopis’s son,5383 entering the life of a female craftsman. Far down the list and among the last he saw the soul that had been the ridiculous Thersites5384 donning the form of an ape.
As chance had it the very last lot fell to the soul of Odysseus! Now healed of its prideful behavior, by its memory of the punishment it had suffered,5385 it went to great lengths to find a life of a private man who minds his own business, and almost had to give up before he found one, discarded and buried under a heap of others, and it remarked that even if its lot had been first it would have done the same, and selected this life with gladness. Moving on, he saw souls from other kinds of beast turning into men and into each other, the unjust ones becoming wild beasts and the just ones tame and all the possible combinations in between.
Once all the souls had chosen their lives they approached Lachesis in the same order, and he said that Lachesis assigned each to the genius it had chosen and sent the genius along with them to guard over their life and guarantee that the fate they had chosen would be fulfilled. The genius5386 in turn would first escort the soul to Clotho and place it under her hand as the agency that causes the spindle to turn, with the purpose of confirming the fate the man5387 had chosen; next, once the man had attached himself to his fate, it would lead him to the spinning work of Atropos in order to make what Clotho had woven impossible to reverse. Irreversibly from there he went beneath (621) Necessity’s throne, and once he got through that, and all the others had likewise gotten through, all of them together made the journey to the plain of Lethe5388 through a desert perilously hot and choking dry. It was barren of trees and all else the earth yields. Since it was already late in the day the group of them5389 camped there, on the bank of the River Careless, whose water no vessel can hold.5390 Everyone was required to drink a measure of this water but those whose mindfulness did not protect them drank more than their measure. As they drank they would forget everything. Then they settled in and went to sleep, and in the middle of the night there was thunder and the earth shook, and suddenly everyone was borne off in many directions like so many shooting stars, upward and back into life. He himself, as he said, was prevented from drinking the water, but even so he had no idea how in the world5391 he made it back into his body—all he knew was that at dawn5392 he looked up and saw himself lying on the pyre.
And there you have it, Glaucon: that is how the story was saved instead of5393 perishing; and it could save us, if only we believe and hearken to it, and will indeed make an auspicious crossing of the river Lethe and avoid polluting our souls.5394 But if we believe and hearken to what I myself5395 am saying, and believe that the soul is deathless and as such is able to endure all the evil that may befall it as well as all the good,5396 then we will always be cleaving to the upward path5397 and mindfully5398 be practicing justice at every turn,5399 in order to be friends to ourselves5400 as well as to the gods5401 both while we dwell in this place and also the day we garner the prizes that justice has to yield5402 and gather them up as athletes do their trophies; and in order that both in our life here and on the sojourn to come of a thousand years, the which we have now described,5403 we might fare well.5404
END OF BOOK TEN
END OF PLATO'S REPUBLIC
APPENDICES
Appendix 1: 393D-394A: Socrates's Direct Narration of Iliad 1.12-42
Iliad 1.12-42
..... ὁ γὰρ ἦλθε | θοὰς ἐπὶ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν
λισσόμενός τε θύγατρα | φέρων τ’ ἀπερείσι’ ἄποινα,
στὲμματ’ ἑχων ἐν χερσὶν | ἑκηβόλου Ἀπόλλωνος
χρυσεῷ ἀνὰ σκήπτρῳ, | καὶ λίσσετο πάντας Ἀχαιούς15
Ἀτρεΐδη δ`μάλιστα δύω, | κοσμήτορε λαῶν
“Ἀτρεΐδαι τε καὶ ἄλλοι | ἐϋκνήμιδες Ἀχαιοί,
ὑμῖν μὲν θεοὶ δοιν | Ὀλύμπια δώματ’ ἔχοντες
ἐκπέρσαι Πριάμοιο | πόλιν, | εὖ δ’ οἴκαδ’ ἱκέσθαι·
παῖδα δ’ ἐμοὶ λύσαιτε | φίλην, | τὰ δ’ἄποινα δέχεσθαι,20
ἁζόμενοι Διὸς υἱὸν | ἑκηβόλον Ἀπόλλωνα.”
Ἔνθ’ ἄλλοι μὲν πάντες | ἐπευφήμησαν Ἀχαιοί
αἰδεῖσθαί θ’ ἱερῆα | καὶ ἀγλαὰ δέχθαι ἄποινα·
ἀλλ’ οὐκ Ἀτρεΐδη | Ἀγαμέμνονι ἥνδανε θυμῷ,
ἀλλὰ κακῶς ἀφίει, | κρατερὸν δ’ ἐπὶ μῦθον ἔτελλε·25
“μή σε, γέρον, κοίλῃσιν | ἐγὼ παρὰ νηυσὶ κιχείω
ἢ νῦν δηθύνοντ’ | ἢ ὕστερον αὖτις ἰόντα,
μή νύ τοι οὐ χραίσμῃ | σκῆπτρον καὶ στέμμα θεοῖο·
τὴν δ’ ἐγὼ οὐ λύσω·| πρίν μιν καὶ γῆρας ἔπεισιν
ἡμετέρῳ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ, | ἐν Ἄργεϊ, τηλόθι πάτρης,30
ἱστὸν ἐποιχομένην | καὶ ἐμὸν λέχος ἀντιόωσαν·
ἀλλ’ ἴθι, μή μ’ ἐρέθιζε, | σαώτερος ὥς κε νέηαι.”
Ὣς ἔφατ’, ἔδεισεν δ’ ὁ γέρων | καὶ ἐπείθετο μύθῳ
βῆ δ’ ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα | πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης·
πολλὰ δ’ ἔπειτ, ἀπάνευθε | κιὼν ἠρᾶθ’ ὁ γεραιὸς35
Ἀπόλλωνι ἄνακτι, | τὸν ἠΰκομος τέκε Λητώ·
“κλῦθί μευ, ἀργυρότοξ’, | ὂς Χρύσην ἀμφιβέβηκας
Κίλλαν τε ζαθέην | Τενέδοιό τε ἶφι ἀνάσσεις,
Σμινθεῦ, εἴ ποτέ τοι | χαρίεντ’ ἐπὶ νηὸν ἔρεψα,
ἢ εἰ δή ποτέ τοι | κατὰ πίονα μηρί’ ἔκηα40
ταύρων ἠδ’ αἰγῶν, | τόδε μοι κρήηνον ἐέλδωρ·
τείσειαν Δαναοὶ | ἐμὰ δάκρυα σοῖσι βέλεσσιν.”
Socrates's Direct Narration of this Passage (393D-394A):
Chryses arrives in priestly vestment and suppliant posture, his chaplet placed on his sceptre, and delivers his "prayer" to the Achaeans and in particular the two Atreids who rule them. The Achaeans at large would concede to his wishes out of piety but not Agamemnon, who has taken Chryses's daughter to himself as an emblem of his honor as leader (even to raise the issue of the other Atreid's consort would be unseemly). Instead he becomes angry and warns Chryses to get out, and stay out, of his sight. He expresses his willful refusal to grant the priest's request for his daughter in the proudest way possible, with a prediction that the priest's daughter will grow old in his court and in his bed back in Argos. He closes by again telling Chryses if he wants to save his neck he'd better leave. The old priest acquiesces and leaves without a response, but once out of earshot of the army he finds himself in the earshot of Apollo and delivers a second "prayer," this time a prayer both skillful and efficacious to a more welcoming audience, the very god of whom he is priest. He asks Apollo to repay previous services to him by using his far-darting shafts to make the Achaeans pay for the tears that they have made him shed.
Analysis
In Homer the episode has annular structure, with Chryses's two pleas ringing the refusal of Agamemnon, which is itself a ring since it consists of a threat that he will kill the priest, a refusal of his plea, and a reiteration of the threat. The "prayer" to the Achaeans (Homer says λίσσετο and Plato ηὔχετο) consists of two steps clearly set apart in both versions by μέν and δέ (though Plato avoids the slightly distracting δέ that intervenes in Homer's line 19, by using αὐτούς). First Chryses prays that the gods grant them success at Troy and a safe return home, and second he prays that they give him back his daughter in consideration of his ransom and his special relation to Apollo. The prayer to Apollo likewise consists of two parts, done not with μέν and δέ but with a very formulaic condition: "If ever I gave you joy, then come to me to assuage my need today." This standard form of kletic prayer will become the basis for the kletic hymn-genre that we subsequently find in dactyls and lyric meters alike, with its calling to the god by his names (ἐπωνυμίαι), its evocation of his nature and good will for previous service (ὑπόμνησις), and then its pressing request for help at the present moment. The "prayer" to the Achaeans seeks to persuade them in a similar way. First Chryses does the Achaeans the favor of praying that the gods (not just Apollo) grant them victory and therefore safe return; and only then does he ask them for a favor in return, the return of his daughter. Instead of pointing to past services he has rendered to the Achaeans he makes a request to the gods to give them benefits in the future.
The Achaeans, like Apollo, are assuaged by the request (both authors bury their description of the Achaeans' response in a verb that describes their disposition: Homer says ἐπευφήμησαν αἰδεῖσθαι (τε καὶ) δέχθαι [22-3] and Plato says ἐσέβοντο τὸν θεὸν καὶ συνῄνουν [393E4]). μέν / δέ is used by both authors to contrast the mood of their response with the mood of Agamemnon's. Rather than being assuaged (the technical term in the context of prayers to gods is ἱλαρός), his mood changes in the opposite direction (Homer: οὐκ ἥνδανε θυμῷ / ἀλλὰ κακῶς ἀφίει κρατερὸν δ’ ἐπὶ μῦθον ἔτελλε ... || Plato: ὁ δ’ Ἀγαμέμνων ἠγρίαινεν ἐντελλόμενος ...). In response to Chryses' solicitous concern about the Greeks' safe return home he feigns concern over the safe return of Chryses to the rock under which he's been hiding. This close correspondence sets into higher relief the difference between Chryses' power and Agamemnon's, to which Agamemnon here alludes by saying that Chryses will not find his priestly vestments "sufficient" -- a prideful and threatening litotes. He counts the far-darting Apollo to be too far absent to be a threat and speaks as if only his emblems are present. With a similar highhanded tone he replies to Chryses' request not by owning up to refusing but by predicting that his choice will indelibly change the future. Not only will the Achaeans win the war and return home safely, but also Chryses' daughter, he claims, will grow old in his bed, far from her father and fatherland. We of course know he won't even live to see his bedroom but will suffer a fate that has to do with something he did to another helpless daughter. We see in his prediction the height of hybris and blind folly.
Homer has placed his prediction in the center of their exchange by his favorite device, ring structure. The telling structural feature is the repetition of Agamemnon's threat against Chryses' person, which Plato preserves. In Plato's version the dramatic irony of Agamemnon's blindness is depicted by the way that his σῶς οἴκαδε (394A1) echoes Chryses' σωθῆναι. Homer achieves a similar effect with Agamemnon's σαώτερος ὥς κε νέηαι (32) echoing Chryses' εὖ δ’οἴκαδ’ ἱκέσθαι (19). Though a mere summary could have dropped the repetition of the threat, Plato's "metaphrase" into prose retains it and the ring structure, and by doing so it reproduces the dramatic irony.
Homer's uses about 120 words (if we measure from about v.16 to v.32) to Plato's 130. He had laid the important detail about Apollo operating at a distance (14), had mentioned in advance (14) the priestly vestments that Agamemnon will refer to (28); and has made it clear that Chryses is preparing to ask for his daughter by dint of ransom and piety, not in order to pray for Greek victory which is mere suasion (13-14). But even within the total of 120 words there are many beat-filling epithets and modifiers (ἐϋκνήμιδες, Ολύμπια δώματ’ ἔχοντες, Δίος ὑιὸν ἑκηβόλον, ἀγλαά, κοίλῃσιν, πολυφλοίσβοιο, τὸν ἠΰκομος τέκε Λητώ) which are capped by the sedes and eponyms in the prayer to Apollo (37-9), where Plato speaks abstractly (τάς τε … ἀπαιτῶν, 394A3-4). That Homer can fit all this in with so few words is a measure of his swiftness, which is all the more impressive since Plato's slightly longer version is itself nothing if not economical and direct.
Whether mutatis mutandis the ametrical metaphrasis is as pleasing as Homer's dactyls is not the right question to ask, since Socrates is so far just illustrating how a story can be told in different ways. Even later he will not be proposing a reform of poetry but an improvement of certain students' textbooks, not students who are being groomed to study comparative literature in college but a special set of students who need to be prepared to embrace good morals once they grow up and find out what good morals are (377A12-B9). Socrates defuses any impression that he is trying to supersede Homer by deferential (but not slavish) borrowings of Homer's language (ἄποινα, 393E2; ἐντελλόμενος, E5; possessive ἅ, 394A6), while at the same time his own prose is very fine, in the clean and clear way that “the march of the syntax is made to hew closely to the march of the ideas” (H.Weil). The only instance of prolepsis or hyperbaton occurs in the climactically placed central sentence, Agamemnon's prediction (393E7-8).
Where Homer can achieve emphasis and comparison by the placement of caesura, Plato has the resources of subordination and parallel syntactic structures. The list of good deeds is done in Plato's ametrical prose with ἢ ἐν ναῶν οἰκοδομήσειεν ἢ ἐν ἱερῶν θυσίαις (394A4-5), parallelism in syntax being set off by variation in rhythm; whereas in Homer's monostichic dactyls we have … εἴ ποτέ τοι χαριέντ’ ἐπὶ νηὸν ἔρεψα, | ἢ εἰ δή ποτέ τοι κατὰ πίονα μηρί’ ἔκηα (39-40), a doublet with parallelism of tmesis, but with a characteristic tendency toward amplitude makes the second limb fill out the line and then allows it to spill over unforeseen into the next stichos with ταύρων ἠδ’ αἱγῶν. Homer can employ metrical means to have Chryses compare the Greek goal of sacking Priam's city (πόλιν) with his own goal of retrieving his beloved daughter (φίλην) by placing these two words into halting caesurae in successive lines (19-20); whereas Plato for his part can compare the first and second parts of Chryses's prayer to the Achaeans with a chiastic ordering of participle and main verb (ἑλόντας σωθῆναι | λῦσαι δεξαμένους καὶ αἰδεσθέντας, 393E1-2). Homer's οὐκ … ἥνδανε θυμῷ ἀλλὰ κακῶς ἀφίει κρατερὸν δ’ ἐπὶ μῦθον ἔτελλε (24-5) would be counted standard parataxis that Plato's prose should be expected to reproduce with hypotaxis, and it does (ἠγρίαινεν ἐντελλόμενος, 393E5). Conversely, ἐσέβοντο καὶ συνῄνουν (393E4) counts as an hendiadys in the naturally hypotactic Plato, whereas in the same place the usually paratactic Homer achieves striking effect by the use of an uncommon subordination that is ultimately a constructio ad sensum (ἐπευφήμησαν [22] with dependent infinitives borrowing ἐπί from ἐπινεύειν: cf. Munro ad loc.).
There is nothing in the art or the rhetoric of Homer that Socrates eschews in his metaphrase except for direct quotation of the speakers' words. It is his need to avoid this that requires his striking use of the future optative ἐπαρκέσοι (393E7) in reported speech, and his strikingly abstract and technical description of the the κλῆσις (ἀνακαλῶν καὶ ὑπομιμνῄσκειν καὶ ἀπαιτῶν, 394A3-4); and we may note in ὧν δὴ χάριν (A6) with its only half-conscious pun on κεχαρισμένον a harbinger of a kind of self-conscious punning that prose will ever fall prey to in its revolt against its own plainness.
END OF APPENDIX ONE
Appendix 2: ἀλλόκοτος
καὶ πάνυ ἀλλόκοτους γιγνομένους ἵνα μὴ παμπονήρους εἴπωμεν (487D2-3).
The term occurs few times in only a few authors: once in the Hippocratic Corpus, once in Sophocles, once in Thucydides, twice within a few lines in Aristophanes, but seven times in Plato (Euthyd.306E, H.Maj.292C, Leg.747D, Lys.216A5, Prot.346A2, Tht.182A, and here (Ernesti [s.v.] claims to find ἀλλοκόταιος in Eur. but it is absent from Allen's Concordance).
The lexicographers give it a range of meanings. Timaeus glosses with ἐξηλλαγμένον where Phryn. ad loc. (apud Ruhnken) adds κυρίως μὲν οὖν οἱ τὸν νοῦν βεβλαμμένοι καὶ ἔμπληκτοι ἀλλόκοτοι καλοῦνται. Also Phryn.PS p.14,28 (apud Ellendt, Lex.Soph., s.v.): σημαίνει μὲν κυρίως τὸ παρηλλαγμένον τῆς καθεστώσης διαίτης καὶ τρόπου … ἤδη δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν τὰ σώματα παρὰ φύσιν διακειμένων. Κράτης δὲ ἐπὶ ονείρατος ἠλλαγμένου καὶ τερτώδους. Ernesti glosses [1] monstrosus, prodigiosus; [2] inusitatus; [3] absurdus, rationi non consentaneus; [4] peregrinis moribus praeditus; and Bekker (378.31) gives ἐναντίον, ξένον, ἀλλοφυές, ἀσυνάρμοστον, ἀλλότριον. Two etymologies are given: ἀλλο + κότος (i.e., ὀργή: e.g.Phryn.PS p.23B) and ἀλλο + τόκος (i.e.partus e.g.,Ernesti, Passow).
At Thuc. 3.49.4, it describes the mission of the first ship sent by the Athenians to Mytiline, i.e., to kill all adult males, which ship οὐ σπουδῇ πλεούσης ἐπὶ πρᾶγμα ἀλλόκοτον, was overtaken by the second ship later sent to stop the mission on the force of Diodotus's speech against Creon. In Soph. (Ph.1191) the chorus uses it to describe the sudden change in Philoctetes's mind when after sending them off he calls them back: the scholiast thinks it means nothing but ἕτερον or ἐναντίον, but it also expresses the awkwardness the Chorus feels in the face of this suffering noble man. In Aristoph.Wasps (47 and 71) it describes an inauspicious dream in which Theorus turns into a crow and twenty lines later it is used to characterize the strange disease of loving-to-be-on-a-jury. In Hippocrates (Fract.1) it describes a rare fracture.
The Platonic uses are objective and subjective. It can describe how the climate can have an "inauspicious" effect on the development of a person, as in Leg.747D6 (where it's opposite is ἐναίσιος), or the "weird" noun ποιότης, which is both abstract (like θερμότης) but also general. Or it can describe offensive behavior, such as, in Prot.346A2, that of a "cranky" father that the loyal son must nevertheless defend out of filial piety rather than condemn as being inherently πονηρός (n.b., A5); or, in H.Maj.292C5, the conversational behavior of the importunate interrogator (ῥήματα χαλεπά τε καὶ ἀλλόκοτα) that Socrates hopes to come back to, with an answer he will have extracted in a more kindly way from the wise Hippias. In Lys.216A5 (whether we read ἀλλοκότως with the corrector of T (Burnet's t) or ἀλλόκοτων with mss. BT [as a genitive of the mark] or ἀλλόκοτον with Baiter and Burnet) it describes the perversely tendentious behavior of the ἀντιλογικοί who will jump on us just as soon as we assert that opposites love opposites, by saying that the opposite of love is hate so that love would love hate and hate would love love. It appears at the end of the Euthyd. (306E6-7A2) when Crito returns to the question how he should bring up his sons (306D). From Socrates he keeps coming to the realization that it is foolish to worry about their wealth or whom they marry more than their education (παιδεία), but every man he has met that professes to educate boys, such as the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus we have been watching, each seem to him πάνυ ἀλλόκοτος, ὡς πρὸς σὲ τἀληθῆ εἰρῆσθαι, ὥστε οὐκ ἔχω ὅπως προτρέπω τὸ μειράκιον ἐπὶ φιλοσοφίαν (306E6-7A2).
Obviously the context of these last three passages is closest to that of our present passage, where the term is used to describe how the clever arguer makes us feel. The fourth from last, however (Prot.346A2), is important in showing the relation between ἀλλόκοτος to πονηρός: it suggests that ἀλλόκοτος acknowledges the effect of the actor's behavior on others without taking the further step of condemning his nature, which is exactly parallel to Adeimantus's εἰ μὴ παμπονηρούς here (Crito sees fit even to apologize for the milder expression, πάνυ ἀλλόκοτος).
In short, the term expresses embarrassment about how to react to someone else's behavior. The embarrassment makes its meaning hard to pin down since its rhetoric is to express vague disapproval and hope the interlocutor will simply agree. When push comes to shove condemnation is not far behind, and so for a person like Callicles who succeeds in avoiding embarrassment, the use is the beginning of a critique of the wierdo philosopher that will end with a vision of him being brought into court and proving unable to answer scurrilous charges (484C5-6D1). Conversely, Crito who in a sense can only feel embarrassment since he cannot internalize and come to posses the outlook he always takes on merely by being with Socrates (ὅταν σοὶ συγγένωμαι οὕτω διατίθεμαι,5405 Euthyd.306D6ff; compare the entire dramatic situation of the Crito), uses the term to express his discomfort with those who practice philosophy too far. At least he (as opposed to his counsellor on the previous page, a mere speech writer who like Callicles wants to erase the reputation of philosophy altogether in order to seem the wisest) believes there is a difference between philosophy and what Socrates has now reported to him that the brothers have been doing; but he will not internalize what philosophy is securely and bravely enough to rely on it in the upbringing of his sons. The term ἀλλόκοτος comes to his aid to apologize for his fear to rely on the apolitical truth of the good life that always seems true to him when he is with Socrates, but which he never can remember when he isn't.
END OF APPENDIX 2
Appendix 3: Style Shift in Book Six (490ff)
1. The Transition from Glaucon to Adeimantus.
Book Six talks about philosophy as if it had a recognized meaning just after Book Five ends by asking for and inventing a definition of it as if it were a term that needed defining. In Six there is a concept of an ἐπιτήδευμα τῆς φιλοσοφίας; there is the verb, φιλοσοφεῖν; and there may even be a hint of doxographical history (in the expression, γένεσις καὶ φθορά). This seems something of a leap to me, something that might for the first time justify the almost unanimous sense among commentators that the whole Republic is a patchwork of pieces written at different times, rather than the delicate and psychologically acute account of the brothers' gradual acquiescence to reason and rise into philosophical commitment and responsibility -- or failure at these things -- that it has been so far. This primary story line is indeed continued, with the intervention of Adeimantus (his third, in the wake of Glaucon being carried along by Socrates's argument, and indeed the first intervention where he explicitly objects to Socrates's method as if it were imperious).
It appears as if perhaps Adeimantus is finally going to be dealt with -- whatever this might mean. Since the speeches at the beginning of Book Two we have been able to detect a difference about him: he is pre-occupied with the opinions of others where Glaucon is impressionable; he is more worried about what others will say than moved by what Socrates has just said. And to the extent that it is not just Socrates but Socrates and his interlocutor that on any occasion reach the position, the problem may be not that he is afraid of trusting Socrates but of trusting himself and his own credulity. We may then become interested in observing how such preoccupations will affect the way he participates in live conversation. Will his concern for others' opinions distract him from thinking on his feet, and prevent him from following the logos wherever it leads, and ultimately from letting go his fear of being convinced?
His description of the position that Socrates's interlocutor finds himself in, that it is as if one were playing draughts with an expert and suddenly finds himself hemmed in (487B7-C3), reveals just this sort of fear. Moreover, what he introduces as his means of escape from being hemmed in by the dialectical process with Socrates is plain empirical experience (as if it were a matter of deeds over words and sight over thought), though in fact what he goes on to adduce as the controlling fact is nothing but the confused and unanimous belief of hoi polloi.
In all, then, the "non-academic" drama continues. Plato is still absent. The mind behind the talk is still Socrates's, and the agenda behind the conversation is still his avuncular work of encouraging maturity and hope and courage in the brothers. But since Book Five we have reached a height in the subject matter that will no longer wait around for validation or corroboration by public opinion.
The theme of Book Five had been finding the courage to withstand ridicule and take one's inner vision seriously. The challenge against Socrates at the beginning of the Book stemmed from a failure of nerve in the face of the radically inward definition of virtue reached at the end of Four. In Glaucon, his interlocutor during the subsequent Book, Socrates then aroused a desire to participate in the description of the ideal arrangement, and then made him carry his end of the conversation afterwards (472B3-473B3). In this access of erotic inspiration the great paradox of the philosophic king or the regal philosopher was introduced, and a distinction between philosopher and philodoxer began to explore its plausibility. Book Six then began as a continuation of this exploration, with the "next" question (484B3), whether this philosophical type would in fact be best qualified to take the job of guard that had been envisioned in the polis they had constructed (this even though the theoretical purposes for developing that polis had already been exhausted, and any allegiance to its existence in perpetuity had become gratuitous). Glaucon is still the interlocutor. In a great wave of enthusiasm and sustained reasoning he and Socrates infer that the philosophical occupation is so admirable that its exponent is even beyond the reach of envy (Momus, 487A).
At this moment Adeimantus intervenes with a two-fold objection. On the one hand the method by which Socrates led Glaucon to reach this result is deceptive and unfair; on the other the result reached is patently false. And yet the method he criticizes is nothing but conversation (which as such he can only fault in the aftermath for not involving him, a deficiency that will shortly be remedied), and the falseness he sees as patent ends up resting only on the general opinion of hoi polloi, which turns out to be an inarticulate misperception that Adeimantus himself will soon abandon after all, when he is led to see that the uselessness of the philosopher consists in the fact that hoi polloi have no use for him and that the knavery of philosophical types is due the fact that the types in question abandon her, in fact, to curry public favor instead.
Throughout his rebuttal of Adeimantus's supposedly "patent" objections, Socrates continues the theme of patency in contrast to thought, surface appearance in contrast to the world within, external result in contrast to invisible cause. In fact his first argument is addressed to the mind's eye: it is an image (the sailors, ship, and captain: 488). His next step is to examine what for Adeimantus had been a throwaway point, the allegation that most "philosophers" are scoundrels (489Dff), and he finds the accusation to be based on an opinion entirely wrong even though widely held, wrong when we behold the eros and the activity of the true philosopher, which now Socrates for the first time describes in stunning terms (490A8-B7).
It is with this stunning paragraph that his response to Adeimantus takes on the new style that this Appendix is meant to characterize.5406
2. The New Style.
In the wake of the extended simile of ship, captain and crew, the new style is characterized by an unsettled tension between extravagant and ampliative metaphor on the one hand and prolepsis, hyperbaton and self-interruption on the other -- as if a deeper urge to praise the beloved in elevated terms on the one hand can easily surrender, on the other, to impulses the laudator feels along the way.
2A: Certain characteristics evince that the speaker's own desire to participate in the truth he has been called upon to describe, undermines his success and even trumps his concern to be clear.
Hyperbaton:
ὅ γε ὄντως φιλομαθής (490A9)
πολλοῖς and ἑκάστοις (B1)
τῆς φύσεως (B3)
Self-Interruption:
προσήκει δὲ συγγένει (B4)
Courting obscurity:
By aposiopesis: ᾧ (B3, B5)
Bold metaphor and unprepared extravagance:
μιγείς, γεννήσας (B5)
λήγοι ᾠδῖνος (B7)
νοῦν καὶ ἀλήθειαν (B5-6)
2B: In the sequel to this striking statement about the philosopher's pursuit of truth and reality, in which Adeimantus wholly concurs, down to the place when Socrates judges that he has said enough about where the slander against philosophy came from (490B8-497A8), the elements of this new style become only more ubiquitous and elaborate:
Prolepsis:
ἣν τοίνυν ἔθεμεν... (492A1)
ἀπολλύναι αὐτοῦ (494E3)
οἷς μάλιστα προσήκει (495B8)
ὅμως γὰρ δή … φιλοσοφίας (495D4-6)
προαπολόμενος (496D4)
Hyperbaton:
οὔτε ἀγαθῶν οὔτε κακῶν (491E6)
αὐξανομένην (492A3)
ἃ δοξάζουσιν ὅταν ἁθροισθῶσιν (493A8-9)
κατανενοηκέναι (subj. of omitted εἶναι) (493D1)
οὐ καταγέλαστον (493D8-9)
οἵ τε οἰκεῖοι καὶ οἱ πολῖται (494B9-10)
καὶ τοὺς ἰδιώτας (495B4)
ὡς ἀληθινῆς ἐχόμενον (ms.D: 496A9)
εὐφυές (496B6)
κατασχεῖν (496B7)
ἄνθρωπος (496D2)
Nested word order (Prolepsis and Hyperbaton combined):
αὐτοί τε βίον οὐ προσήκοντα οὐδ’ ἀληθῆ, τὴν δὲ … ἄλλοι (495C1-3)
ἀτελεῖς μέν … λελώβηνται (495D7-8)
διὰ πενίαν καὶ ἐρημίαν τοῦ δεσπότου τὴν θυγατέρα μέλλοντος γαμεῖν (E7-8: δ. placed early to make θ. seem his revenge)
τῶν κατ’ ἀξίαν ὁμιλούντων φιλοσοφίᾳ (496A11-B1)
nested circumstantial participles (496B1-3)
τούτων … οἱ γενόμενοι … καὶ τῶν πολλῶν αὖ … ἰδόντες τὴν μανίαν
(genitive of subject, then of object: 496C5-7)
οὔτε ἱκανὸς ὢν εἷς πᾶσιν ἄγριος ἀντέχειν (496D3-4)
nested circumstantial participles (496D5-9)
Self-interruption:
ἢ οἴει ... (491E3)
ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐκ νεανικῆς (491E4)
ἢ καὶ σύ ... (492A5)
ὅτι καὶ ἄξιον λόγου (492A7-8)
ἢ οὐκ οἶσθα (492D6)
θεῖον .. ἐρεῖς (492E5-493A2)
πέρα τῶν ἀναγκαίων (493D5)
ὀλίγης καὶ ἄλλως γιγνομένης (495B2)
Courting Obscurity
By Paradox:
inverted use of ἀνάξιον (491A2 [cf.inverted ἄξιοι, 495C5])
492A6-B1 (about the sophists)
double-entendre on ἀνάγκη (492D2)
κενοῦ / ἐμπιμπλάμενον (494D2)
δουλεύσαντι (494D6)
κενήν … μεστήν (495C9-D1) immediately mixed with a
simile (D1-2) followed by another metaphor
(ἐκπηδῶσιν, D3)
Primary predication accorded to subordinate participle (ἐφιέμενοι, D7): cf. Riddell, Digest §303.
the bronze and silver at 495E4-5
By Omitting Words:
sc. εἶναι with κατανενοηκέναι (493D1)
sc. ἐστί with ποιεῖν (493D6)
sc. ἐστί with ἀδύνατον (494A4)
sc. φιλοσοφία with οἷς μάλιστα προσήκει (495B8)
sc. εἰκός ἐστι with ἀκοῦσαι (496A7)
sc. τῆς φιλοσοφίας (proleptically from αὐτῇ) with ἀναξίουςπαιδεύσεως, meaning τῇ παιδείᾳ ἀναξίους (496A5)
Bold Metaphor and Simile:
σπαρεῖσά τε καὶ φυτευθεῖσα (492A3-4)
echoing rocks (492B9-C1)
κατακλυσθεῖσαν … κατὰ ῥοῦν (492C5-6)
extended simile of the beast (493A9-C6)
συγγενὲς λόγων (494D9, relying on 490B4)
κάμτηται καὶ ἕλκηται (494E1)
ῥυέντες (495B5)
ὀρφανὴν συγγενῶν (495C2-3)
Collapsing metaphors: imprisonment, job, slavery (495D1-E8)
συγκεκλασμένοι τε καὶ ἀποτεθρυμμένοι (495E1)
elaborated simile of the bald tinker (495E4-8)
εἰς θηρία … ἐμπεσών (496D2)
οἷον ἐν χειμῶνι … ἀποστάς (496D6-8)
Unprepared Extravagance:
ἀπεργάζεσθαι οἵους βούλονται εἶναι (492B1-2)
ὑψηλὸν ἐξαιρεῖν (494D1)
σχηματισμοῦ καὶ φρονήματος κενοῦ … ἐμπιμπλάμενον (494D1-2)
ἀνθρωπίσκοι (495C9)
τεχνίον (495D4)
μανίαν (496C7)
οὐδεὶς οὐδὲν ὑγιές (496C7-8)
καταπιμπλαμένους ἀνομίας (496D8-9)
τόν τε ἐνθάδε βίον … καὶ τὴν ἀπαλλαγὴν αὐτοῦ (496E1)
Pleonastic Parallelism:
πανταχῇ καὶ ἐπὶ πάντας (491A4)
τοιαύτην φύσιν … καὶ πάντα ἔχουσαν (491A8-9)
ὀλιγάκις … καὶ ὀλίγας (491B1-2)
σπαρεῖσά τε καὶ φυτευθεῖσα (492A2-3)
διαφθειρομένους τινάς / διαφθείροντας δέ τινας (492A6-7)
νέους / πρεσβυτέρους, ἄνδρας / γυναῖκας (492B2-3)
γίγνεται / γέγονεν / μὴ γένηται (492E3)
σωθῇ τε καὶ γένηται οἷον δεῖ (492E6-493A1)
λέγων … ἐρεῖς (493A1-2)
anaphora of ὅπῃ with τε … καί (493B1: cf.Denniston, 512)
πολλῶν καὶ παντοδαπῶν (493C10-D1)
ampliative variation (in the lists at 493D4 and 494C5-7)
ἀνέξεται ἢ ἡγήσεται εἶναι (494A1-2)
πλούσιός τε καὶ γενναῖος / εὐειδὴς καὶ μέγας (494C6-7)
πᾶν μὲν ἔργον πᾶν δ’ ἔπος λέγοντάς τε καὶ πράττοντας (494E3-4)
ὄλεθρός τε καὶ διαφθορά (495A10)
τοσαύτη τε καὶ τοιαύτη (495B1)
τῆς βελτίστης φύσεως εἰς τὸ ἄριστον ἐπιτήδευμα (495B1-2)
καὶ οἱ τὰ μέγιστα κακά … καὶ οἱ τἀγαθά (495B3-5)
σμικρά / μέγα (495B5-6)
οὐδὲν μέγα οὐδέποτε οὐδένα (495B5-6)
οὔτε ἰδιωτὴν οὔτε πόλιν (495B6)
οὗτοι .. οὕτως (495B8)
ὀνειδίζειν τοὺς ὀνειδίζοντας (495C4)
οἱ μὲν οὐδενός, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ πολλῶν (495C5)
series of six participles (κτησαμένου … μέλλοντος: 495E5-8)
ἀναξίους / μὴ κατ’ ἀξίαν (496A5-6)
διανοήματά τε καὶ δόξας (496A6-7)
οὐδὲν γνήσιον οὐδὲ φρονήσεως ἀληθινῆς ἐχόμενον (496A8-9)
τὰ μὲν ἄλλα … ἡ δὲ τοῦ σώματος (496C1-3)
ἤ … τινι ἄλλῳ ἢ οὐδενί (496C4)
Studious Non-parallelism:
ὀργὴν καὶ ἡδονάς (singular / plural: 493D1)
τὸ εὖ πεφυκέναι καὶ τὸ συγγενὲς τῶν λόγων (494D9-E1)
οὐ προσήκοντα οὐδ’ ἀληθῆ (495C1-2)
ἤ που / ἤ / βραχὺ δέ που / εἴη δ’ ἄν / τὸ δέ (496B1-C3)
ὡς ἡδὺ καὶ μακάριον (496C6)
ἀδικίας τε καὶ ἀνοσίων ἔργων (singular/plural: 496D9-E1)
μετὰ καλῆς ἐλπίδος ἵλεώς τε καὶ εὐμενής (496E2).
Echoic Wordplay and Homoioteleuton:
προκαταλαμβάνοντες καὶ προκολακεύοντες (494C1-2)
τὸν τοιοῦτον ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις (494C4)
καὶ ἰδίᾳ ἐπιβουλεύοντας καὶ δημοσίᾳ … καθιστάντας (494E6-7)
ἐκ δεσμῶν λελυμένου, ἐν βαλανείῳ δὲ λελουμένου (495E5-6)
γενόμενοι καὶ γευσάμενοι (496C5-6)
2C: Socrates concludes the section (496A11-7A8) by asserting that whereas the philosopher can only survive in normal cities by lying low, he will, conversely, flourish if chance should place him in an appropriate environment, leading Adeimantus to ask him which of the existing types of city would be appropriate (497A9-10). His response to Adeimantus (497B1-E7) continues in this higher style.
Hyperbaton:
κατάστασιν πόλεως φιλοσόφου φύσεως (double hyperbaton, 497B2)
Self-interruption:
δῆλος ... (497C3-4)
Courting Obscurity:
By vague expression:
δεήσοι τι ἀεὶ ἐνεῖναι … λόγον ἔχον τῆς πολιτείας (497C8-D1)
By metonymy:
ὧν ὑμεῖς ἀντιλαμβανόμενοι δεδηλώκατε (497D4-5)
Bold Metaphor:
στρέφεσθαι καὶ ἀλλοιοῦσθαι (497B3)
ὥσπερ ξενικὸν σπέρμα (497B3-5)
Unprepared Extravagance:
θεῖον (497C2)
Pleonastic Parallelism:
τά τε τῶν πόλεων καὶ τῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων (497C2-3)
προθύμως καὶ παρακινδυνευτικῶς (497E5)
2D: He next offers a σύγκρισις or comparison of the way cities currently manage philosophy with the way they ought to (497E9-498C4). Some twenty-five of these stylistic features occur in the space of twenty lines:
Prolepsis
καὶ ἄλλων τοῦτο πραττόντων (498A4)
Hyperbaton
οἱ φιλοσοφώτατοι ποιούμενοι (498A2)
ἐθέλωσιν (498A5, with καί in A4)
πρέπουσαν (498C4)
Nested Construction
πλησιάσαντες αὐτοῦ τῷ χαλεπωτάτῳ ἀπαλλάττονται (AbaB: 498A2)
Self-Interruption
λέγω δέ … λόγους (498A3)
ἐκτὸς δή τινων ὀλίγων (498A7)
Courting Obscurity
By Vague Expression:
τὸ περὶ τοὺς λόγους (498A3)
By Omitting Words:
sc. τὸ ἐθελειν with μεγάλα ἡγοῦνται (498A5)
sc. μόνον with πάρεργον (498A6)
sc. χρόνῳ with ἐν ᾧ (498B5)
Bold Metaphor
ἀποσβέννυνται / ἐξάπτονται (498A7-B1)
τὰ ἐκείνης γυμνάσια (498B7-8)
ἀφέτους νέμεσθαι (498C1)
Unprepared Extravagance
τοῦ Ἡρακλειτείου ἡλίου (498B1)
τὴν ἐκεῖ μοῖραν (498C4, relying on 496E1)
Pleonastic Parallelism
οἰκονομίας καὶ χρηματισμοῦ (498A1)
βλαστάνει τε καὶ ἀνδροῦται (498B5)
ἐν ᾧ / ἐν ᾗ (498B5,7)
πολιτικῶν … καὶ στρατειῶν (498B8-C1)
Echoic Wordplay and Homoioteleuton
ἁπτόμενοι (ad init., 497E9) / ἐξάπτονται (sub fin., 498B1)
μειράκια … καὶ παῖδας / μειρακιώδη παιδείαν (498B3-4)
ἐκτὸς δή τινων / ἐκτὸς γίγνηται (false contrast: 498A7, C1)
πάρεργον / μὴ πάρεργον (pseudo-contrast: 498A6, C2)
τῷ βίῳ τῷ βεβιωμένῳ (498C3-4)
Adeimantus acknowledges Socrates's spirited enthusiasm (ὡς ἀληθῶς μοι δοκεῖς λέγειν γε προθύμως) -- but only to warn him that his audience might be even more eager to disagree with what he says, starting with Thrasymachus (498C5-8).
END OF APPENDIX THREE
Appendix 4: ἴσα / ἄνισα (509D6)
A is the lower sub-cut of the lower cut
B is the upper sub-cut of the lower cut
C is the lower sub-cut of the upper cut
D is the upper sub-cut of the upper cut
Proof that B=C whether we read ἀν’ ἴσα or ἄνισα:
According to 509D68, A/B = C/D = (A+B)/(C+D), if we read ἀν’ ἴσα,
A+B=C+D and A=B and C=D.
Thus:
A+B = 2B and C+D = 2C by substitution of equals, and
2B = 2C by substitution of equals, and
B=C, QED.
But if we read ἄνισα, given A/B = C/D = (A+B)/(C+D), then
(1) A/B = C/D implies by cross-multiplication that AD = BC and
(2) A/B = A+B/C+D implies by cross-multiplication that AC+AD = AB+B2 and
(3) C/D = A+B/C+D implies by cross-multiplication that C2+CD = AD+BD.
Thus,
AC+BC=AB+B2, by substituting (1) into (2); and
C(A+B) = B(A+B) by factoring, and
C=B by common division.
Therefore B=C, QED.
Similarly,
C2+CD = BC+BD, by substituting (1) into (3); thus
C(C+D) = B(C+D) by factoring, and
C=B
Therefore B=C, QED.
END OF APPENDIX FOUR
Appendix 5: 511C3-D5 as a dialogical response to what has come before.
Glaucon feels at first unsure, but as he tries to show what he has understood he produces a very adequate summary indeed, which even advances beyond Socrates's articulation of the position, as a close analysis of his words will show:
1) 511C4-6
Here is his opening remark: σαφέστερον εἶναι τὸ ὑπο τῆς τοῦ διαλέγεσθαι ἐπιστήμης τοὐ ὄντος τε καὶ νοητοῦ θεωρούενον ἢ τὸ ὑπὸ τῶν τεχνῶν καλουμένων (511C4-6). τὸ σαφές was the index for cutting the lower half of the line (509D9) but it has not been used since except for the passing but important use of its synonym ἐναργέσι at 511A7, the relevance of which Glaucon here shows he caught, that if the shadows below are so obviously less perspicuous in meaning, the specialists should not be willing to rely on shadows or images in their pursuit of the noetic originals (the perfect participles [511A8] are concessive).
His restatement of the comparison mentions the superior method first. For the first time the goal of the simile is mentioned first and described on its own terms rather than in terms of what is beneath it. Up until now Socrates has presented the foil first -- from the periphrastic description of the originals as 'that of which there had been images or imitations,' to the description of the technical before the philosophical kind of thinking, to the description of the visual images used by the specialties as imagized versions of what had been imagized below.
In short, Glaucon has gotten the final point as well as the first one. He now refers to the upper part of the line as τὸ ὄν τε καὶ νοητόν (C5-6), which combines the first designation of it (as νοητόν, 509D4; and νοούμενον, D8) with the second (from 510A9 [ἀλήθεια], which itself referred to the argument at the end of Book Five: he replaces the term ἀλήθεια with ὄν). His term θεωρούμενον is new. It is inspired by the fact that the term he would otherwise use, ζητεῖν, has in the course of the argument taken on the sense of seeking without finding (510B5, E3, and 511A4). Likewise, he had already (511B2) characterized geometrics and calculations and the rest, which Socrates had generalized with the term μέθοδος (510C5), as τέχναι, because of the instrumentalism with which their method is described (χρᾶσθαι, 510B4; the behavior described at C3-6; προσχρῶνται κτλ, D5-511A1; χρᾶσθαι, 511A4), but by now he tires of any hint of approbation the term may carry and adds καλούμεναι (C6).
2) 511C6-D5
Socrates's description of these μέθοδοι and his analysis of the alloy of thought and observation that they involve, came in two parts which occupied about fourteen lines (510C3-D3 and D5-511A1). Glaucon now restates them in just over six (C6-D5).
The first part he covers with the three-word statement that their hypotheses are allowed to take the position of ἀρχαί (C6-7: cf. 510C3-D1). The second part (510D5-511A1) he re-does much more extensively (C7-D2). Of them he says, 'Although forced to operate with thinking because sensation cannot "see" the things they are looking for, their grasp is limited because they do not move source-ward but from arbitrary starting points; and the result, in your judgment, Socrates, is that they never grasp with the mind what they always would have and could have grasped, if connected with that source.' At the point it comes to their noetic competency, he distinguishes what has been Socrates's description from his evaluation of them, and continues in this vein by remarking (D2-5) how Socrates is using a special term for this hobbled kind of thinking (similar exigencies had led Glaucon himself to introduce the terms θεωρεῖσθαι and θεᾶσθαι, and had made him question his own use of the term τέχναι): 'You have called "διάνοια" this peculiar situation the geometers and their ilk find themselves in (he avoids now the term τέχναι) rather than intelligence, as if διάνοια were something halfway between opinion and intelligence.'
His remarks add structure to what Socrates had been able to say in the give-and-take of conversation, and also include a re-application of the language of betweenness they had used together at the end of Book Five. His re-use of this result fits exactly with the proportion of the Line itself since the second and third parts of the four (which are really two sides of one coin) lie between the first part (shadows, the paradigm of change and opinion) and the fourth (the forms, the paradigm of knowledge and reality).
END OF APPENDIX FIVE
Appendix 6: Dialectic in the Search for Dialectic in Book Seven
The dialogue with Glaucon employs the techniques and discovers the guidelines and rules for dialectical procedure. Socrates is leading, and the drama consists in watching how closely and how far Glaucon can follow. The goal of the method, dialectical competence, is at the same time, in Plato's dramaturgy, the means for achieving success – as the following sets of observations show.
1. τὸ δὲ ἐννοῶ λέγων ἅμα (521D4): the fortuitous beginning point that might yield a result.
2. Review of known μαθήματα which evinces criteria at the same time that it excludes the likely candidates (521D13-522B1).
3. Glaucon gets the lesson from Socrates and repeats it (ἀντίστροφος) on his own (he refutes μουσική as a candidate [522A3-B1] after Socrates had refuted γυμναστική [521E3-5]). He relies on Socrates's remark at 518D9-19A1, reminded of οὐδέποτε ἀπόλλυσιν (518E4) by γιγνόμενον καὶ ἀπολλύμενον at 521C3.
4. The exhaustion of givens leads to a new question, the language of which moves upward (κεχωρισμένον, 522B7; ἐπὶ πάντων τεινόντων B9; τὸ κοινόν, C1).
5. At 523A5-10 Socrates invokes the dialectical method of joint scrutiny as a way to acquire a clearer sense whether a δόξα (523A5: cf. παρ’ ἐμαυτῷ, μαντεύομαι) is true. ἱκανῶς itself (523B1) is accepted as the criterion.
6. The qualified answer (B5-6) reveals that Glaucon actually does not (οὐ πάνυ) understand what Socrates meant and affords Socrates an opportunity to fend off future misunderstanding by refining his meaning (523B9-C4)
7. ἐπέρεσθαι (523D4) reveals that the way the soul initiates an ἐπίσκεψις (B1, B3) is itself to initiate a dialogue.
The language of shared thinking is both loose and tight. It is scrupulous about new points but can afford to be casual on the whole, relying on shared motives and shared understanding which can be checked any time either party wants to. Once a point is grasped, the language can vary, substituting new words for old -- and it does. The thought can move to the next point without apology or demarcation. At some points Socrates/Plato even shows a penchant for intentionally courting ambiguity as if to require the reader to keep up with what the interlocutors are already doing, and not to rely on words that were said before (e.g. the use of διάνοια at 511A1) All this is quite different from the language and courtesies we expect and find in an author who is writing for an absent audience consisting of persons he does not know, so as to help them understand and agree with what he wants to say to them for some reason. Plato gave us an extended opportunity to watch, as eavesdroppers, what is loose and what is tight in dialogue, during the long elenchus of Polemarchus in Book One. In the first closely argued passage in the paideia we have typical instances of less than systematic and perfectly dialogical expression. Cf., for examples, nn., , , , , .
END OF APPENDIX SIX
Appendix 7: Method and Style in the Decline of the Polis, and their Aims
1. BACKGROUND: METHODS SO FAR
2. METHOD IN BOOK EIGHT
2A. The List of Regimes
2B. Succession of Regimes
2C. Regimes are Projections of Personality Types
2D. The Personality Types
2E. Alteration Stems from the Ruling Part
2F. Order of Treatment: Evolution and Outcome
3. STYLE IN BOOK EIGHT
3A.1: Timocracy, the Regime (547B2-548C7)
3A.2: The Timocratic Man (548D6-550B7)
3B.1: Oligarchy, the Regime (550C8-552E10)
3B.2: The Oligarchical Man (553A6-555B1)
3C.1: Democracy, the Regime (555B3-558C7)
3C.2: The Democratic Man (558C8-562A2)
3D.1: Tyranny, the Regime (562C4-569C8)
3D.2: The Tyrannical Man (Book Nine, 571A1-575A7)
3E: A Note on the Evaluation of Plato's Style in Antiquity
4. WISDOM IN HINDSIGHT
4A: Decline as Disorder among the Constituents of State and Soul
4B. Political Decline as a Vehicle for Developing a Pathology of the Soul
4C. The Decline as a Study in the Relation of Fathers and Sons
5. THE WORK REMAINING
1. BACKGROUND: METHODS SO FAR
Our long conversation has come to consist of several sustained investigative projects. The over-arching project, formulated a few pages into Book Two, was to compare the life of the just man with the life of the unjust man, in order to test the scandalous assertion of Thrasymachus that the unjust life is good not bad, and happy not unhappy, a thesis given touching and problematic credibility by the confessions of Glaucon and Adeimantus at the beginning of Book Two.
The task was to come up with a picture of the just life and investigate its happiness and compare it to the unjust life and its happiness, and immediately Socrates proposed as a method that they look for a just city, on the grounds that the justice of a city would be easier to see than the justice of a single man for persons whose eyesight is less than perfect, since it would be spelled out in larger letters. The construction of such a city occupied only three pages (369-372), but the conversation derailed when Glaucon found the simplicity of their lives tedious. Adding what he wanted made the thing spin out of control and quickly (in two pages) called for the institution of guards, to protect it from trouble within and trouble from without. The paradox whether such guards could be found (quis custodiet custodos?) was tentatively solved by the image of the dog, who combines the contradictory qualities of fierceness and loyalty; given men of such an inborn nature, the question becomes their nurture: how to educate them.
Beyond this point, the units of investigation became larger. Formulating the education in music and gymnastics, including digressions, occupied approx. thirty three pages (376E-412B); the search for justice in the state and the soul, in Book Four, occupied about eighteen (427D-445A); Socrates's response to the Polemarchus's challenge of paradox, in Book Five, took about twenty two pages (449B-471B), which were extended at the last minute by about ten pages due to his own inclusion of the extra paradox of the philosopher king (473-487).5407 Socrates's offer to attempt to describe the guards' final knowledge, now that they were to be philosophers, occupied about thirty five pages (504B-541) and spread itself out into four subparts (Sun, Line, Cave, Curriculum). At the beginning of Book Eight he and Glaucon revert to the project the two of them agreed to pursue, at the end of Book Four, just after the image of the just man and the just state had been reached -- namely, to develop conceptions of regimes (πολιτεῖαι) lesser than this best one down to the worst, as a means to find their corresponding men, so that the original purpose, to compare the happiness of the best man's life with worst man's, could be achieved.
These larger units of discourse are presented dramatically, as investigations shared by Socrates and his two interlocutors, now with the one and then with the other. The tradition of commentary has turned them into something more like treatises written by Plato for the edification of his readers, as well as for their criticism, largely because such commentary has become a conversation among commentators. Conversation always objectifies its subject in order to ensure that it has something to talk about, but the talking is the live part.5408 This truism makes paradoxical the fact that the platonic dialogue genre succeeds in creating an illusion of life, so that the dialogues always resist being reduced to objects that might provide subject matter for other conversations and any reducing for such purposes always, and always palpably, leaves something behind that is vital to the meaning. It is safer and more conservative, therefore, to see the dialogues as nothing but verisimilar conversations on which we have been allowed to eavesdrop.
I re-warm this old interpretative chestnut only because what gives these subsections of the Republic their structure, these investigative projects adopted by Socrates and his interlocutors, is first and finally the questions the two of them feel pressed to ask each other, their shared sense of what would constitute an adequate treatment, their willingness to digress, and their willingness to change horses midstream. We have seen that when the commentators find themselves explaining Socrates's long responses to Polemarchus's challenge in Book Five by imagining that Plato is taking an opportunity to vent his feelings about contemporary politics, they have really missed the boat. In fact what happens is that Socrates starts by responding to the anti-philosophical demagoguery of Polemarchus but finishes by requiring Glaucon (and us) to take philosophy more seriously than ever, by posing the ultimate "paradox." Also, when commentators imagine that the discussion of the specialisms in Book Seven is Plato's announcement of a curriculum for his "Academy," they do so at the expense of neglecting or simply missing the drama and humor of Glaucon's struggle and ultimate failure to keep up with Socrates.
Looking for the answer to a question or set of questions is not the same as treating a subject matter. We have become so completely inured to identifying question-and-answer with the treatise (Aristotle paved the way with his pseudo-dialectical technique of exposition), along with the authoritative-author scenario it assumes (here again Aristotle is a founder), that we are too ready to view a live conversation made up by the author Plato, as being a treatise by Plato himself, whoever that is. For instance -- and indeed it is the first instance in the Republic -- in order to answer what sort of education would foster and balance the essentially unstable inborn element of fierce loyalty, Socrates begins by asking Adeimantus whether paideia includes music and gymnastic, and whether music includes tales and tales include true and false ones. These questions provide a structure for the ensuing investigation, charting how it can move from part to part. We saw moreover that background lists (god--hero--man and the list of the four virtues) could effortlessly and implicitly guide the questioning just as a division of a treatment into chapters according to the divisions within the subject will come to do in the more formal treatises of later authors, starting (again) with Aristotle. But it is important to recognize that Plato had no literary precedents for such a treatment, and that besides, his own decision was to burden himself and at the same time lavish upon himself the hypotheses of fiction and verisimilitude rather than to adopt the ex cathedra method of specialists with their hypotheses such as Socrates criticizes at the end of Book Six and again in Book Seven (533CD). This, Plato leaves to Aristotle.
The upshot of all this is to remark that at every moment within the structures we have encountered in the several investigative projects that make up the Republic so far (excluding Book One and the two responses to Adeimantus's objections [4.419-427 and 6.487-504]), we have always had a clear sense of where we are and where we are going, in the sense that we could step back from the immediate flow of the conversation and see what we treated before and what we are supposed to treat next, both within the sub-investigation and within the whole investigation. Indeed the structure has allowed the conversation to be interrupted by the characters' interventions, objections, catcalls, and dubitations, without destroying the investigation or erasing the incremental results and progress it has made, which have been preserved and can be carried forward. On the one hand, going into unnecessary detail has been postponed to avoid tedium (Damon and χωρεία in Book Three; the other "motions" in Book Seven); on the other hand, the interest of a new topic has never been sacrificed merely for the sake of systematic balance or completeness, nor has an objecting voice been silenced for the sake of continuing to develop some doctrine without interruption. Larger undertakings, such as formulating a new παιδεία in Books Two and Three or the review of existing fields of study in Book Seven, have relied on traditional divisions such as the distinction of the four virtues, or on new distinctions such as the distinction between λόγος and λέξις in poetry and the list of subjects forming the quadrivium; but while such divisions or formulae have provided a starting point they have not been allowed to limit the treatment (witness the discovery that both music and gymnastics are for the sake of the soul [Book Three], and the stunning insistence that we have no business doing astronomy until the essentially non-existent study of stereometry has been worked out![Book Seven]). Socrates's attempt to describe the Offspring of the Good, like his presentation of the conditio humana vis à vis knowledge and truth in the Cave Allegory (514A2), relies on analogy; but even here the analogies are allowed to be imperfect in order to accommodate the shift in the landscape achieved during the very investigation for which analogy provided an expository structure.5409 Polemarchus's attempt to bring down the high-flying inspiration reached by Socrates and Glaucon at the end of Book Four (ἀπὸ σκοπιᾶς, 445C4) with his trumped-up scandal about the community of wives, is "over-trumped" by Socrates's praise throughout Book Five of reason and of its dictates regardless of ridicule, culminating in the most paradoxical assertion a Greek could make, that λόγος is realer than ἔργον (473A1-4) and the kindred paradox that kings must become philosophers, or that philosophers, such as Socrates and Glaucon have been deciding they really are during Book Five, will inherit the responsibility of becoming the rulers and setting things right, if ever they will be set right at all.
2. METHOD IN BOOK EIGHT
With all this in the background we move, in Book Eight, into a new investigatory project, a project which Socrates and Glaucon had agreed to attempt at the end of Book Four: to develop conceptions of regimes (πολιτεῖαι) that deviate from this best one, so as to find their corresponding men, and then to solve the original problem, by comparing the happiness of the just man's life (corresponding to the best regime) with that of the unjust man (corresponding to the worst) to decide which life is happier.
Given all we have seen, we should by now anticipate that the investigation will unpredictably combine the methodical and the imaginative. Being quite long (544-576: 31 pages not counting Stephanus's gap between Bk. 8 and 9) it needs a structure so that as before we will know "where we are" all along, and be able to continue to the next point, but from all we have seen we should anticipate5410 that the structure adopted will be allowed to yield to interruption and modification as the investigation proceeds. We may illustrate how this tension between form and content will play out, under a few separate headings.
2A. The List of Regimes
First of all the very list of πολιτεῖαι, like the list of studies in Book Six, is half systematic and half arbitrary.5411 It includes a constitution that does not even have a generic name (the Spartan or Laconian). Socrates rules out others as mere halfway houses (544CD), without giving a definition of a whole house, if you will; but just as soon as he does he uses exactly the notion that timocracy is a halfway house between aristocracy and oligarchy as a means to isolate its essential attributes (having something of the former regime, something of its own, and something of the latter regime, oligarchy, a something that Socrates has no trouble supplying even though oligarchy has not yet been treated: 547D-8C, esp.548A5-B2).
2B. Succession of Regimes
Although Socrates justifies the method of finding the regime first, on the grounds that this will make it easier (ἐναργέστερον, 545B4) for us to see the corresponding character written small in the individual man5412 he applies the method with discretionary laxity (548C10-D4); and though even there he had without justification slipped in the idea that the way to find the regime is to trace its evolution (γιγνομένην, 369A5), he gives no justification for his further decision to assume that the present regimes evolve, not from nothing nor from myriad historical circumstances, which is more likely the truth, but from one another. To the contrary, he acts as if it were so much in the nature of things for regimes to succeed each other and to do so in the very order he has adopted that we will be able, once the evolution stops at a given state of affairs, to discover what the nature of this resultant regime is by simply stepping back and looking at it. In one instance, however, Adeimantus feels free to request, and Socrates is perfectly ready to supply, the institutional definiens or criterion (κατάστασις, ὅρος) by which he designates a regime an oligarchy -- namely the institution of a property requirement for participating in government -- before the regime has been seen to evolve from its forbear (550C10-D2).
2C. Regimes are Projections of Personality Types
Though he acts as though the one regime comes from another and that the evolution determines the character of the regime as its result, he also argues as axiomatic5413 that the political forms borrow their essence from the preponderance of one among a spectrum of personality types or ethical make-ups embodied in its citizens on the grounds that political forms could not indeed come from anywhere else (544D6-E2). We might begin to wonder how the order of evolution could operate according to one set of dynamics whereas the stopping places could be predetermined by another set of rules, as if they were electrons jumping from one orbit to the next, but as soon as we tarry with this question the conversation has moved on without us and we have to assume our worry is moot.
2D. The Personality Types
When it comes to the individuals that are meant to correspond to the types of regimes we meet similar questions. Are these truly the only "stable states" of personality? Are they actually stable after all? The conundrum of a discontinuous continuity comes to be solved by the poetic and fictional invention of treating the evolution or "generation" of one type of man out of the other as an event that takes place between the generations of father and son. Very credibly and moreover very touchingly we see how the son's personality is formed by the collision of the father's personality with the society and political world around him and by the son's reaction to this collision. And yet in case we think to ask, we will notice that the political world within which these several sets of fathers and sons operate is never described: most notably it is not identified as one or another of the regimes that are evolving out of each other.5414 If anything it is contemporary Athens, taken for granted for better or worse, with its lawsuits and its assembly, its private citizens making civic donations,5415 and its relative freedom for civic involvement and private enterprise -- but to think of this Athens as a democracy the way democracy comes to be described within the evolution, too greatly slants the case since it either requires that Athens be a democracy as defined by the theory, or that the definition of democracy be appropriate to the historical instance of Athens.
2E. Alteration Stems from the Ruling Part
There is moreover the claim, stated as an axiom at the beginning, that a state alters only when there is an alteration within its ruling element (545C), and that as long as the ruling element is solid and unanimous the state cannot be budged.5416 In the event, it turns out this rule is only analytically true, and therefore circular, since it can only be true only as long as the regime truly has rulers, whereas (1) the rulers of oligarchy fail to rule because wealth has come to rule them, and the regime is subsequently changed not by internal dissension but by a coup; (2) the rulers of democracy, i.e., the demos (565A3), unanimously assign their rule to a προστάτης rather than exercising it, and the transition to tyranny takes place because they grant him a bodyguard; and (3) all that rules in the tyrannical state, as well as in the tyrannical man, is the passions of the tyrant which by their nature can never achieve unanimity, though a master passion might arise in their midst.5417 As things turn out we can only say that the axiom was enough to get things going (leading to the invocation of the Muses), but that once the process achieved its own momentum it was conveniently forgotten.5418
2F. Order of Treatment: Evolution and Outcome
The logic in the order of treatment -- first the evolution and then the new "state of affairs" that is its result (whether regime or personality type) -- would seem necessary to the very conception of the investigation but it is violated almost as soon as it has been established, when Adeimantus interrupts at the beginning of the search for the individual type corresponding to timocracy by making a wisecrack about his brother (548D), and Socrates acquiesces in describing the timocratic man (548E4-9C1) before he has told us how he got that way (549C2ff).
There is finally the problem that the very premise of the method fails to survive the regimes it sets out to describe: the distinction between evolution and stable state becomes a distinction without a difference in the final case of tyranny. The evolution consists of the tyrant's rise to power out of the rabble of drones, but no stable state can ensue since having reached the top he must consume the state's assets and destroy it in order to stay in power. The narrative concludes because nothing is left to talk about.
As a method the program is a shambles,5419 but it does help us keep track what the next step is, at least until we reach the utter chaos of the end. The program enables us to proceed, but we will only know the meaning and purpose behind the writing when we have absorbed it.
3. STYLE IN BOOK EIGHT
The large narrative project, a four-part treatment of each of four regimes with the last and final section spilling over into Book Nine, calls into play a massive deviation from the style we have become used to.5420 Socrates's speech is now characterized by a preference for nouns and adjectives over verbs and for participles and infinitives over indicatives, for parataxis instead of hypotaxis, and for the use of "auxiliary" or "place-holder" verbs5421 in periphrasis with supplementary or circumstantial participles. Apart from a few interruptions for the sake of methodology or for presenting a definition or an axiom, the content of the Book is, after all, imaginative description, whether of an evolution (γένεσις, μετάβασις, μεταβολή) from one "stable state" to another in regime or in man, or of the stable states that constitute the resultant regimes and correlated personality types or lifestyles (ποῖος, οἰκήσεις, ζῆν). The style has made brief appearances before, as for instance in the bucolic description of home-life in the “trace of a city” (πολίχνιον, 372A6-C10), where I called the style ecphrastic;5422 but in Book Eight the deployment of this style becomes the rule rather than the exception.5423
Descriptions of the stable states are naturally amenable to such a style since they are in essence nothing but a bundle or congeries of simultaneous attributes adding up to patterns of behavior. The descriptions of the evolutions, as we might expect, pick out fateful transitional events (marked with τότε δή, vel sim. and expressed with the indicative), but even here the background of events and developments that lead to these fateful moments tends to be expressed in this descriptive or "ecphrastic" style, with a juxtaposition of ideas massed together by coordinate participles or infinitives, rather than being expressed in a temporal or causally consecutive series done with finite verbs and the usual alternation of ordinate and subordinate clauses.
We will now go through the text closely in order to accumulate a sense of this style, and of its manner and its powers.
3A.1: Timocracy, the Regime (547B2-548C7)
Once the Muses have started things off (546A1-7A5), the evolution into timocracy is presented with the normal vigorous style that levers subordinate verbs off of ordinate verbs (547B2-C4). But the description of the resultant state of affairs (timocracy) is then presented in three sections to retail the ways it resembles the old regime, the ways it is unique, and the ways it resembles the next regime (547D4-548B2). The first two sections are made parallel by the use of articular infinitives describing the characteristic behaviors in the dative of respect (τῷ μέν, D4, introducing four infinitives; τῷ δέ γε, E1, introducing four infinitives this time modified by intervening circumstantial participial phrases). But the third section breaks that pattern by directly describing the persons with an adjective (ἐπιθυμῆται, in the nominative after those subject accusatives and followed by the indicative future ἔσονται, 548A4-5). Their desirousness is then elaborated by a circumstantial description supported by participles (τιμῶντες, κεκτημένοι, ἀναλίσκοντες) until the final verb (δαπανῷντο, B2) arrives to close the sequence. Glaucon interrupts to agree (ἀληθέστατα, B3) but then Socrates continues the description with another nominative adjective (φειδωλοί) and their desirous stinginess is then elaborated by a description (relying on ἔσονται implicitly carried forward) consisting of five circumstantial participles in five lines (τιμῶντες, κτώμενοι, καρπούμενοι, ἀποδιδράσκοντες, πεπαιδευμένοι) and then closed with a pair of extended noun phrases in a prepositional phrase in διά whose objects are parallel articular infinitives in the perfect (ἠμεληκέναι / τετιμηκέναι, B8-C2).
The first of these elaborations broached the ecphrastic style and the second presents it in all its glory; and with its arrival the description of the timocratic type is brought to its completion. The simultaneity of the amassed attributes, headed by cupidity and stinginess, elicit from Glaucon the remark that the regime is deeply divided against itself (548C3-4).
3A.2: The Timocratic Man (548D6-550B7)
The timocratic man is next, and Adeimantus's wisecrack interruption (548D8-9) adventitiously leads Socrates into describing the personality (548E4-9A7) before telling the story of its evolution (549C2-550B7). It is natural that the settled personality should be described with a set of predicate adjectives or nouns. There are ten, set in a self-correcting array, plus three circumstantial participial phrases also in the nominative (οὐ καταφρονῶν / ἀξιῶν / ὤν) that support them by giving reasons, the last participle adding two more nominative predicate adjectives. The combination of an ordinate construction with εἶναι supported by explanatory participial phrases repeats exactly the structure used at the end of the description of the timocratic regime (548A5-C2). Socrates then completes the description of the timocratic personality by telling how it develops with age, something strictly off-topic, with a sentence that employs the usual balance of ordinate and subordinate constructions (549A9-B4).
Next comes the evolution of the timocratic man (549C2-550B7), which opens with a "once upon a time" temporal particle (ἐνίοτε), suggesting we will get a finite verb. Instead we get a participle (ὤν, C3) in the nominative, which indicates we are being given a description of the person who will come to be the subject of such a verb. But this participle (merely the copula) does nothing but give a berth to a predicative genitive (πατρός) which itself will be described with concordant genitive participles (οἰκοῦντος, φευγόντος, ἐθελόντος). Adeimantus interrupts, impatient to ask Socrates about the original subject and his evolution (C7), and Socrates responds with another temporal particle (ὅταν, made more promisingly vivid than ἐνίοτε by the addition of ἄν) followed by a subordinate subjunctive (ἀκούῃ) that quickly yields to a description not of the son but of the person he hears, his mother, described again with participles of perception that tell what the son hears from her (ἀχθομένης, which is spelled out with her statement in indirect discourse that her husband, his father, is not among the rulers [mere ἐστί], but then elaborated with a second participle, ἐλαττουμένης). A third such participle (ὁρώσης) introduces in turn a series of participles in perceptual indirect discourse describing what she sees her husband, the young man's father, doing (μαχόμενον, λοιδορούμενον, φέροντα). To these participles is added a fourth accusative participle (προσέχοντα) that receives a new construction from an unexpected subjunctive (αἰσθάνηται, D5) parallel in sense with ὁρώσης but now by an anacoluthon elevating the mother into the role of subject in a protasis of which the son had originally been the subject ever since ἀκούῃ (C8). This fourth accusative participle is then balanced (through μέν / δέ) with a fifth and sixth that form a complementary pair (τιμῶντα, ἀτιμάζοντα). The construction is by now lost but ἐξ ἁπάντων τούτων (introduced without a connective) simply dismisses the problem: the original participle ἀχθομένης, in its original case and gender, brings us back to where we began (D6: cf. C8). This participle now receives exegesis with another participle λεγούσης (linked by τε καί because what he heard was her remarks [λεγούσης] but her remarks bespoke her frustration [ἀχθομένης]) and we are brought back to the boy listening to his mother complain. ὡς then introduces more of her remarks but the quotation has no finite verb, just an adjective (ἄνανδρος) and still another participle (ἀνειμένος) which require us to supply the copula. This rambling wreck of a sentence then closes with a generalization that happens to allow us to breathe the clean air of an indicative (φιλοῦσιν) even though it governs what is only a throwaway subordinate clause (D7-E1).
Adeimantus has himself forgotten his interest in the development of the boy, which had led him to interrupt before, and remarks instead on Socrates's very last remark, saying that women do talk that way (549E2). His looking back allows Socrates to move forward to his own next step, to describe how the household slaves talk to the young man, and the sentence reverts to the usual balance of ordinate and subordinate constructions (549E3-550A1). But next, the young man goes out of the house and hears and sees other things, acts which can and do bring back the perceptual participles (five in three lines: πράττοντας, καλουμένους, ὄντας, τιμουμένους, ἐπαινουμένους: A2-4). Thereupon we are given a climactic temporal particle (τότε δή, A4-5) that as before suggests an indicative is coming to announce the definitive and crucial step in the boy's evolution, but immediately we lapse back into participles that summarize what we have already heard him hearing and seeing (ἀκούων τε καὶ ὁρῶν, twice: A5 and A6), continued even further by another participle (ἑλκόμενος). He is drawn by forces whose movement is in turn presented with participles (not one but two: ἄρδοντός τε καὶ αὔξοντος, B2); and next we have the intervention of a new construction, a διά phrase with double articular infinitive (the same construction we saw at 548B8-C2), completely proleptic and only postponing the indicative further. When the indicative finally comes it is a semantically flaccid anticlimax (ἦλθε, B5) buried at the end of a clause with its complement (εἰς τὸ μέσον) placed so early that the sentence limps to it, but is then redeemed by an exegesis that employs another indicative (παρέδωκε, B6). The whole huge sentence (A4-B7) is then closed by the programmatic statement announcing that the genesis of the timocratic man has now been described (B6-7).
What was anticlimactic about the arrival of the main verb is offset by the rising awareness that the passage is drawing up an analogy between the development of the timocratic man who is tugged in opposite directions by reason and by cupidity, and the guardian class of the timocratic state similarly torn (547B2-C4). In particular, ἑλκόμενος ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων (550A7), heavy-handedly set up by the repetition of ἀκούων τε καὶ ὁρῶν (A5-6), recalls βιαζόμενον δὲ καὶ ἀντιτεινομένων from 547B7-8; so that the εἰς μέσον of 547B8 anticipates εἰς τὸ μέσον of 550B4, and renders the late-placed ἦλθε (B5) something of a forgone conclusion.
3B.1: Oligarchy, the Regime (550C8-552E10)
The treatment of oligarchy opens with a preliminary question from Adeimantus: What after all is the distinguishing mark, for purposes of definition? It is the institution of a property requirement as prerequisite to political standing. This “keynote” idea leads to the notion that oligarchy arises from a certain trouble attaching to the private treasure that the timocratic state allowed the guards to own. The description of the trouble is done with normal variation of subordinate and ordinate constructions (550D9-551B7).
To describe the character of the regime once it has evolved, Adeimantus suggests they retail its shortcomings (ἁμαρτήματα, 551B8-C1). This suggestion provides the structure for the treatment, and the list soon settles down into a set of articular infinitives. After the ὅρος itself (C2) we have, second, τό … ἀνάγκῃ εἶναι (D5); then τὸ ἀδυνάτους εἶναι (D9); τὸ πολυπραγμονεῖν (E6); τὸ ἐξεῖναι (552A7); and sixth and finally the appearance of the drone (κηφῆνα ἐγγίγνεσθαι [C4]) which is then elaborated by question and answer (552D3-E7). The list complete, so is the description of the oligarchic regime (E9-10).
Elaboration of an articular infinitive construction will naturally consist of modifiers to the subject accusative (as in the second, τὴν μέν / τὴν δέ, D6-7). The first extensive elaboration, which comes in the third ἁμάρτημα, is done with a hyperextended hypersubordinate construction of a sort we have already seen twice (548B8-C2, 550B3-4), namely an extended prepositional phrase in διά with an articular infinitive (τὸ ἀναγκάζεσθαι, D10) that in this case itself governs three subordinate articular infinitives (δεδιέναι, φανῆναι, ἐθέλειν), each of them modified by participles subordinate to their subject accusatives (χρωμένους, μὴ χρωμένους, and ὄντας understood with φιλοχρημάτους: D10-E4).
The fourth ἁμάρτημα is elaborated with a set of participles subordinate to the accusative subject of the primary articular infinitive (πολυπραγμονεύειν, E6), configured in a list: γεωργοῦντας καὶ χρηματιζομένους καὶ πολεμοῦντας (551E5-552A1). The list is an excellent example of how the massing of syntactically coordinate items can ignore and even mask the subordinate and superordinate semantic relations that obtain between and among the very items being presented. We are required to rediscover the relation of the three terms by recalling the context in which the criticism of πολυπραγμοσύνη was first made (the passage referred to by ὃ πάλαι ἐλοιδοροῦμεν at E6, namely, 374A3-E2). In light of that passage (esp. C3-5) the list of participles is seen to consist of a single example of χρηματιστική (namely, γεωργοῦντας) followed by a generalizing term (χρηματιζομένους), followed by the target term (πολεμοῦντας) that had been distinguished from all peacetime occupations: though the syntax is A-B-C, the logic of the semantics is a-A-B. The ecphrastic style, to the extent that it avoids finite verbs and subordination and instead uses nouns (including articular infinitives) and adjectives (including participles), can deploy only parataxis and prepositional phrases; and the result is that the audience, as here, is left on its own to supply implicit relations among the ideas that might have been articulated more explicitly with hypotaxis.
The fifth ἁμάρτημα is introduced by the remark that it might be the worst of all (552A4-5). It is the possibility within this regime that a citizen can become a disenfranchised nobody. The possibility is again done with an articular infinitive (τὸ ἐξεῖναι) elaborated by a triad of dependent articular infinitives (ἀποδόσθαι, κτήσασθαι, οἰκεῖν) the last of which is elaborated with the participial copula (ὄντα) dependent on their implicit subject accusative, which in turn gives a berth for a predicate (μηδέν … τῶν … μερῶν), itself then specified by the various μέρη that he is none of, presented in a list: μήτε χρηματιστὴν μήτε δημιουργὸν μήτε ἱππέα μήτε ὁπλίτην, ἀλλὰ πένητα καὶ ἄπορον κεκλημένον (A9-B1). The list relies again on the passage from Book Two, articulating the two roles of worker and warrior each with a pair. δημιουργόν is an alternative designation for χρηματιστήν since it has an identical extension (cf.374D4); and ἱππέα / ὁπλίτην breaks down the genus πολεμοῦντες into two representative types of soldier (374D2-3).5424 Since they are nothing or do nothing in the city (μηδὲν ὄντα) they can only be labelled: and so the description ends with a second participial phrase parallel with the phrase in ὄντα, namely, ἀλλὰ πένητα καὶ ἄπορον κεκλημένον (A10). The perfect participle suggests their destitution is permanent.
Socrates now inserts (B2-9) the reflection that the citizen, here imagined to have been wealthy but to have wasted all he had, never really was a ruler (though he had met the property qualification). He was not a leader but a loser (note alliterative echo between ἄρχων / ὑπηρέτης and ἑτοίμων ἀναλωτής, B8-9). The notion of such an idle person recalls Hesiod's metaphor of the drone, ἀεργός … κηφήνεσσι … εἴκελος (WD 303-4; cf. Th.594-9), the appearance of which in the oligarchic polis now becomes its sixth and final shortcoming (νόσημα πόλεως [C4] being a sort of climactic variation of ἁμάρτημα). He goes on to draw a distinction between drones that have no stingers who constitute the destitute, and those that do who constitute the city's villains. Wherever there are poor there are villains, and oligarchy always has poor, namely everyone who is not rich. The presence of these types of drone, this last shortcoming of oligarchy, is said summarily to be caused by ἀπαιδευσίαν καὶ κακὴν τροφὴν καὶ κατάστασιν τῆς πολιτείας (E5-6). Apart from this open-textured list5425 the entire description of the final ἁμάρτημα or νόσημα (552B2-E7) has employed a balanced variation of subordinate and ordinate constructions.
3B.2: The Oligarchical Man (553A6-555B1)
The oligarchic man is next, how he develops and how he turns out (553A3-4). The description of his development begins with a temporal particle and begins, as did that of the timocratic man, with the young man's perception of his father. At first he emulates him but then he sees something happen (A9-10). The verb of perception (ἴδῃ, 553A10) as before (ἀκούῃ, 549C8; ἀκούει καὶ ὁρᾷ, 550A2) can and does introduce a description in participles, and hereby coordination replaces subordination. We get ten5426 participles in five lines describing what he sees happening to his father (B1-5); and then we get his reaction to having seen it (ἰδὼν δέ γε, B7ff, itself prepared by three other participles (B7-8) before his action is told, which is to oust (ὠθεῖ, indicative, B8) the willful sense of honor from the throne of his soul. καί (C2) then suggests that another indicative is coming but a second flurry of circumstantial participles intervenes (four in three lines, C2-4) whose vividness, in comparison with the vagueness of the indicative (χρήματα συλλέγεται, C4), render it anticlimactic. Thereupon however a temporal climax is announced by τότε (C4): the empty throne is now filled with the epithumetic sense of moneymaking, enthroned as if a Persian king within his soul, decked out (with circumstantial participle) in diadems, necklaces, and scimitars (C6-7). Adeimantus agrees and Socrates continues with a picture of the new regime of his soul done with two participles, a single indicative, and a series of five dependent infinitives (D1-7), completing the description of the oligarchic man's evolution.
The ecphrastic elements in this description (553A9-D9) include both the large preponderance of participles over indicatives (twenty to three once the thing gets going at A11) and also a principle of organization we have not yet noted, the use of paratactic pairs. Besides the two larger structures in μέν / δέ (C4-D2 and D2-7) there are ten smaller ones done with coordinate connectives (B1, B2-3, C1, C3, C5, C6, D2, D3, D4-5, D5). Indeed each of the three paragraphs of the description is closed exactly by relaxing such dyadic pairing with open-textured triads (three participles linked by ἤ at B4-5, the list of three items at C6-7, and the three-step generalization at D6-7).
Paratactic pairing turns the heap of ten participles at B1-5 into two pairs (πταίσαντα / ἐκχέαντα; στρατηγήσαντα / ἄρξαντα) that give way to a larger pairing that consists of a single participle (ἐμπεσόντα) linked with a triad of participial outcomes (ἀποθανόντα, ἐκπεσόντα, ἀτιμωθέντα), the last re-expressed with an epexegetical fourth (ἀποβαλόντα). Pairing is also used to indicate the connection (with characteristic τε καί) between the description of the institutional behaviors of the regimes and the psychic correlates within the respective persons (φιλοτιμία τε καὶ τὸ θυμοειδές [C1] and τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν τε καὶ φιλοχρήματον [C5], where note the chiasm of before and after). The pair ἐγκαθίζειν / ποιεῖν (C6) allows for elaboration of the obverse of ὠθεῖ (B8) by the metaphor of oriental luxury. The pair περικαθίσας / καταδουλωσάμενος (D2) makes the transition from the metaphorical picture of the throne to a statement of the new order that it embodies, itself described by the paratactical pairing of μέν and δέ (D2-7). Within this large μέν / δέ construction the pair λογίζεσθαι / σκοπεῖν (D3) describes the higher use of the rational element (musical σκοπεῖν) along with the lower use for which it is now to be employed (mercantile λογίζεσθαι); and θαυμάζειν / τιμᾶν (D4-5) likewise present the abject (θαῦμα) as opposed to the edifying (τιμή) aspects of θυμός.
The point to gather about the ecphrastic style is not only that pairing constitutes a substructure by which a heap can be discovered to be a series, but also that exactly by the paratactic juxtaposition of two items the mind is invited or instructed to find their unstated relation, an unstated relation that is at least as important to the meaning as the two items that invoke it.
The evolution of the oligarchical man has been described, so now Socrates turns to describing what he is like. The description will take the form of a comparison of his life to the life of the parallel state (553E2-554A1), resembling the description of the timocratic state because again done with articular infinitives in the dative of respect (574D4ff). Moreover, since the description of the parallel state, oligarchy, itself took the form of retailing six ἁμαρτήματα, we might anticipate hearing six shortcomings of the oligarchic man that correspond to them, an anticipation immediately corroborated by the fact that the first point of comparison is introduced by the ordinal expression, πρῶτον μέν (554A2), and that it repeats (if loosely) the first oligarchical error, giving wealth too great a role (the ὅρος at 551C2). We are provided a structure of anticipation and so we will have some sense where we are even if the ensuing presentation is a mere parataxis of similarities.
Let us consider the style and syntax of the comparison point by point.
Comparison One ( ~#1)
As in the case of the timocratic articular infinitives, these nominal infinitives allow for adjectival elaboration in the form of modifiers of their grammatical subjects (which happen now to be in the nominative because the subject of the infinitives is the same as the subject of the leading construction [e.g., τῷ … ποιεῖσθαι ὅμοιος ἂν εἴη, 554A2-3]).
Comparison Two (~#5)
The modifiers can be adjectives (φειδωλὸς καὶ ἐργάτης, A5) but immediately these are elaborated by circumstantial participles (three in three lines [A6-8]: ἀποπίμπλας, παρεχόμενος, δουλούμενος). The pattern consisting of adjectives explained by participles then continues to describe (ὤν, ποιούμενος, θησαυροποιός -- A10-11), interrupted by question and answer (B1-6) which introduces the drones.
Comparison Three (~#6)
The drones, the sixth of the ἁμαρτήματα of oligarchy (552C2-D1), are now the third topic of comparison with the oligarchical man (B7-C2). The description of his drone-like desires reverts to adjectives explained with a participle (πτωχικάς, κακούργους, κατεχομένους -- B8-C2).
Comparison Four (~#4)
Question and answer returns to make a transition to his need to multitask internally (cf. πολυπραγμονεῖν, the fourth ἁμάρτημα [552E6]), which is described with a relative clause and a main verb but then elaborated with a circumstantial participle (accusative ἐνούσας, D1) itself explained by a series of three nominative participles (two denials [πείθων. ἡμερῶν] and one affirmation [τρέμων] -- D2-3).
Comparison Five (~#2)
A single statement (D5-7) then brings on the schizophrenia of the oligarchical man (corresponding to the second ἁμάρτημα, the breaking up of oligarchy into two cities [551D5-7]), which is presented with a schizophrenic pair of potential optatives, the first done with three adjectives (two denials [ἀστασίαστος, εἷς] and one affirmation [διπλοῦς τις] --D9-10) and the countervailing second describing a balance, done with an adjective (βελτίους) supported by a participle (κρατούσας). The contradiction in his soul is then restated (E3-5) by saying that he might cut a good figure but "of a soul reconciled to itself and harmonized, the true virtue has left him far behind" -- the proleptic dependent genitive phrase consisting of a noun (ψυχῆς) described with an adjective (ὁμονοητικῆς) explained (again) by a participle (ἡρμοσμένης).
Comparison Six (~#3)
The final point of comparison corresponds to the oligarchic rulers having difficulty raising an army (551D9-E4). As a contender in matters of excellence the oligarchical person can be characterized as φαῦλος (ἀνταγωνιστής … ὁ φειδωλὸς φαῦλος [sc.ἐστι], 554E7-555A1). This adjective is then explained by a triad of participial phrases, stunning for their asyndeton and their elaboration by balanced paratactic pairs (εὐδοξͅίας ἕνεκα καὶ τῶν τοιούτων ἀγώνων / ἐγείρειν καὶ συμπαρακαλεῖν / συμμαχίαν τε καὶ φιλονικίαν) and capped by retrieving the pun on oligarchy from the parallel passage about the regime, with a figura etymologica (ὀλίγοις τισίν … ὀλιγαρχικῶς, A4-5: cf. 551E2). The sentence, and the description of the oligarchic man, then closes with a final and climactic pair of paratactic indicatives that capture his schizophrenia with a bathetic joke (ἡττᾶται καὶ πλουτεῖ).
After all this no reason remains for doubting that the oligarchical regime corresponds with the stingy materialistic personality (555A8-B1).
3C.1: Democracy, the Regime (555B3-558C7)
The other sections have begun with a “keynote” event or remark. The mistimed births started the evolution toward timocracy; description of the timocratic state was pre-programmed as a combination of previous, current, and future attributes; the timocratic man's life was initiated by Adeimantus's interruption; the evolution of the oligarchic state was made to derive from the property law; the life of oligarchic regime followed the program of retailing its defects; the life of the oligarchic man was programmed as a search for defects parallel to those of the regime. The “keynote” this time is a paradox: the previous regime is destroyed by too much of what it had held up as being the good, the ἀπληστία of wealth (555B8-10). The paradox is then explained by question and answer employing the normal alternation of subordinate and coordinate constructions, and it leads to pictures of the drones and of the rich who in their boundless desire for wealth have made them more and more destitute.
Drawing a picture naturally brings on the ecphrastic style. First we see the drones. There they sit in the city, supplied with stingers, armed as it were, some owing debts others having become utterly destitute, and still others both, feeling hatred against the rich and plotting against the people who have acquired all that was once theirs, and desiring revolution (D7-E1). The entire description is done in four lines with eight participles syntactically subordinate to the verb κάθηνται, a colorless place-holder that merely gives the participles their syntactical berth. The participles are distributed into substructures that we have seen: paratactic pairing of the metaphor with its interpretation (κεκεντωμένοι τε καὶ ἐξωπλισμένοι: D7-8); the pairing of μέν and δέ (with a third that combines both where we must supply a ninth participle, ὄντες: D8-9); paratactic pairing of motive with action (μισοῦντές τε καί ἐπιβουλεύοντες: D9); "everyone" done with a polar doublet (τοῖς … ἄλλοις: D10). The entire pastiche is then summarized with the pregnant expression, νεωτερισμοῦ ἐρῶντες (D10-E1).
Second come the rich, for whom they lie in wait, rendered by a second ecphrastic sketch done again with participles (five in four lines) leading to a single verb (ἐμποιοῦσι, 556A1) that merely describes the result of the actions depicted in the participles. The participles break down into pairs, the first explained by the second (ἐγκύψαντες by οὐδὲ δοκοῦντες and ἐνιέντες by τιτρώσκοντες), the results of these actions leading to κομιζόμενοι which describes how their actions affect themselves (they become richer and richer) while the closing finite verb describes how their behavior affects the city (the drone class becomes larger and poorer). Closure is achieved by the pairing of quantitative and qualitative adjectives (πολύν / πτωχόν) straddling their noun (τὸν κηφῆνα).
Given these two sketches of the personnel, Socrates analyzes how the ἀπληστία of the desire for wealth, by forgoing usual norms of behavior, can only make things worse (556A4-B5). He goes on to compare the rulers' attitude toward the ruled with their attitude toward "themselves and theirs," but interrupts himself to describe the rulers' sons (B8-C2), a description done with participles and adjectives only, configured in a μέν / δέ pair that sets off their dainty lack of industry against their concomitant weakness to resist the lures of pleasure. The two limbs each consist of a pair of modifiers ordered chiastically, the first pair consisting of a one-word modifier (τρυφῶντας) followed by a modifier elaborated by a universalizing doublet (ἀπόνους καὶ πρὸς τὰ τοῦ σώματος καὶ πρὸς τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς) and the second consisting of a modifier elaborated by a universalizing doublet (μαλακοὺς καρτερεῖν πρὸς ἡδονάς τε καὶ λύπας) followed by a single-word modifier (καὶ ἀργούς). The symmetry is gratuitous but it provides a good example of the purely esthetic possibilities of the static style of ecphrasis. His self-interruption now complete, he picks up where he left off, resuming σφᾶς δὲ αὐτοὺς καὶ τοὺς αὑτῶν (556B8) with αὑτοὺς δὴ (C4): toward themselves they are disposed to allow themselves utterly to neglect everything for the sake of making money and to be no more committed to practicing virtue than the poor. The two attributes are made static and fixed with perfect participles.
What follows is a third picture that imagines a moment when (ὅταν, C8) the two groups as separately described (οὕτω δὴ παρασκευασμένοι, C8) might find themselves in each other's company in such a way as to be compared (παραβάλλωσιν), at one of many possible venues listed and linked by ἤ, generalized by ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῖς κινδύνοις and then closed off by ἀλλήλους θεώμενοι (C11-D1):5427 "If (without καί) the poor might not attract the benign neglect of the rich but perhaps one of them (ἰσχνός, πένης, ἡλιωμένος [without καί]) finding himself beside a rich man (ἐσκιατροφηκότι πολλὰς ἔχοντι σάρκας ἀλλοτρίας [without καί]) might notice how poor is his physical condition (ἄσθματός τε καὶ ἀπορίας μεστόν, an oxymoron), don't you imagine, Adeimantus, that he will recognize that such weaklings as these are well off only out of his own cowardice, and will pass the word along to his fellows as soon as they are alone that they could easily take them down?"
It turns out that the comparative picture set out in bold strokes with the modifiers in asyndeton, was drawn for Adeimantus's sake, so that he could answer this question. The other ecphrastic element besides the depiction of the men side by side, is the long list of six venues generalized by the element crucial to each, that there is some danger or that "the chips are down." The list of six breaks down into three pairs each done with a different construction (double prepositional phrase in ἐν, double prepositional phrase in κατά, and double predication of the place-holding participle γιγνόμενοι).
Adeimantus is quite sure this is what will happen and Socrates adduces a maxim, that sometimes a sickly person falls ill by a very slight influence from the outside, sometimes even with none. Now he is ready to define the moment democracy actually comes into existence: when the poor take over by violence (557A2-5).
We are ready therefore to ask what the daily life is like. The description begins with the keynote of freedom (557B4-6). Everyone who has the chance will design his life as ever he wishes, and the city will fill up with a variety of types. The variety itself might be cause to call this city the most beautiful, like the beauty of the Panathenaic πέπλος. Yet this gets us nowhere on our search for the nature of the regime: it is not a regime but a showplace of regimes on display. The theoretician might just visit it to choose his favorite. All this narrative (557B4-E1) is done with the normal balance of subordinate and insubordinate constructions, but hereupon Socrates introduces an articular infinitive (τὸ δέ …, 557E2). By now we are wary that nominalization of the verb is a sign that we are moving into the ecphrastic mode, and that he will use it tell us what this bazaar of regimes is like.
Dependent upon the articular infinitive (τὸ ἀνάγκη εἶναι) is a list of no less than six infinitives (557E2-8A2) which syntactically are apodoses modified as it were by protases in the subjunctive with ἄν: 'The fact there is no necessity to rule even if you are able, nor for that matter to acquiesce in being ruled in case you'd rather not; nor to go to war while others do nor remain at peace while the others do if you do not desire peace; nor, in case some law prevents you from serving in office or on a jury, to refrain from serving in office or jury if it should occur to you: how could such a life be anything but divinely sweet?' The paratactic series is articulated into pairs, first an active paired with its passive (ἄρχειν / ἄρχεσθαι), then opposites (πολεμεῖν, εἰρήνην ἄγειν), and finally a pair of terms whose relation is not patently logical as the others' was (ἄρχειν καὶ δικάζειν).5428 The modifying protases are placed after the apodotic infinitives, one for each verb in the first and second pairs. The second set of protases is done with genitive absolute participles rather than ἐάν plus subjunctive, with the subject of the genitive absolutes (the same in both cases, namely, τῶν ἄλλων) placed in hyperbaton with the second only. As for the third pair of infinitives, for the sake of closure by chiasm the protasis comes before them, a single protasis covering both apodotic infinitives, and then its converse is repeated after.5429 The sentence is ecphrastic in that it is static (it envisions a stabilized way of life, or διαγωγή), its logic depends upon the pairing of terms, and subordination is used not to move forward in a straight line but to facilitate recursion. Since the manner of presentation relies on a matrix, every opportunity needs to be taken to vary it so as to keep it as interesting as the democratic man thinks it is. The entire complex turns out to be a nominativus pendens, and Socrates closes with a nominative predicate implying ἐστι: Isn't such a διαγωγή pleasant?
Next, with τί δέ;, Socrates announces another of democracy's attractive aspects, the fascinating clemency of its legal verdicts (ἡ πρᾳότης τῶν δικασθέντων … οὐ κομψή; (558A4). What is fascinating about it is then described with a pair of genitive absolute phrases again employing paratactic pairs (θανάτου ἢ φυγῆς, μενόντων τε καὶ ἀναστρεφομένων, οὔτε φροντίζοντος οὔτε ὁρῶντος: note the variation in the connectives) one describing the condemned and the other the population that condemned them, followed by another simple indicative (περινοστεῖ ὥσπερ ἥρως, A8). The first genitive absolute (καταψηφισθέντων) suggests that the true object of observation (εἶδες) will be the jurors who condemned them; but since the jurors do not act after all, only the condemned are observable, and the genitives are continued, now as perceptual participles (μενόντων, ἀναστρεφομένων); and conversely in the next phase of the description (καί is to be read at A7, exactly the hypological connective we need to show how one thing gives way to another) the inert jurors are consigned to the genitive absolute and the condemned man achieves the autonomy of the leading construction (nominative with indicative) and becomes a hero (ὥσπερ ἥρως).
Next Socrates moves on to the city's συγγνώμη (B1), but appends an exegesis: καὶ οὐδ’ ὁπωστιοῦν σμικρολογία αὐτῆς ἀλλὰ καταφρόνησις (expanded in indirect discourse [B2-5] as a disdain for the sorts of worries we had expressed in Books Two and Three): to this subject (συγγνώμη) so described is then appended a "lilies of the field" construction: ὡς … οὐδὲν φροντίζει … ἀλλὰ τιμᾷ ... (B5-C1), made of two indicatives each modified by protases (ἐξ ὁποίων ἄν ... , and ἐὰν φῇ ...). The paragraph consists of nothing but an elaborated noun without any simple closing indicative at the end for it to be the subject of. We are left to construe it as parallel to the πρᾳότης from the last paragraph. It is Adeimantus that supplies the requisite predicate (γενναία), in his answer (C2).
Socrates then continues with ταῦτά τε δή, which already suggests he is about to summarize before we even reach καὶ τούτων ἄλλα ἀδελφά (C4). The summary consists of three adjectives ordered retrospectively: ἡδεῖα (covering the συγγνώμη and the πρᾳότης: 558A4-C2), ἄναρχος (covering the list of infinitives: 557E2-8A3) and ποικίλη (covering the bazaar of pretty civic wares: C1-E1).
Adjectives, nouns, participles and infinitives produce a static picture that might stimulate a reaction. Note how easily the second singular fits in at 557E2-8A2: Socrates is drawing a picture for Adeimantus to contemplate. We must recall how the first ecphrastic passage in the Republic, at 372AB, likewise placed a vivid picture before Glaucon's mind, and how strong a reaction it elicited.
3C.2: The Democratic Man (558C8-562A2)
In the two previous cases (549C2ff and 553A9ff) the development of the corresponding man began with his childhood, and in particular his early relation with this father -- and so does this one. He would be raised according to the stingy and oligarchical habits of his father, which implies that he, too, will allow himself only the "necessary" pleasures. This new term requires clarification, however, and the storytelling yields to a preliminary diaeresis that will play the role of "keynote" for the section, namely the distinction between necessary and non-necessary pleasures, which occupies a whole page (558D4-559D4).
This passage should be dialogical rather than ecphrastic, and it is -- until the logical distinction is articulated and agreed to (558D4-559A7). Thereupon the two types of pleasure will be exemplified (559A8-10) and for this the ecphrastic method returns, particularly in the description of the appetite that is non-necessary in the sense of being excessive (B8-C1). A desire for meals (ἐδέσματων, verbal noun emphasizing the activity over its purpose) of other kinds beyond what is healthy (ἀλλοίων an understatement inviting imaginary fillings in), amenable to being chastised from youth and educated into quietude in most persons (a double phrase consisting of predicate-participle and participle-predicate: E9-10), harmful not only to the body but also the soul with respect to its mindfulness and moderation (a double phrase in μέν / δέ, the former concessively repeating what has been said about bodily effects in order to provide a berth for stating the psychic effects, which need to be described, and are described with a double phrase [πρός τε φρόνησιν καὶ τὸ σωφρονεῖν, B11] elegant and rhythmical for its pairing of an anarthrous abstract noun with an articular infinitive).
The distinction made, it is applied to the drone (C8-D2): τὸν τοιοῦτον ἡδονῶν καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν γέμοντα καὶ ἀρχόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν μὴ ἀναγκαίων. The new point is that the drone's appetites are non-necessary and it is presented by a logic of association, with a double construction including chiasm of grounds and inference. The drone's desire is distinguished from the oligarchy's type (τὸν δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν ἀναγκαίων φειδωλόν τε καὶ ὀλιγαρχικόν), which returns us to the moment the distinction needed to be drawn (whence, πάλιν τοίνυν, D4).
The story of the young man now begins: his father has raised him ignorantly and stingily and one day (ὅταν envisions a single occasion [cf. ἐνταῦθά που, infra]) he tastes the honey of the drones and begins to associate with certain αἴθωσι θηρσὶ καὶ δεινοῖς, παντοδαπὰς ἡδονὰς καὶ ποικίλας καὶ παντοίως ἐχούσας δυναμένοις σκευάζειν (D9-10). This surprising and compact phrase will need unpacking later but meanwhile has ominous tragic elevation, due to the hyperbaton of the second adjective with καί after its noun, and the similar trajection of the extra modifiers ποικίλας καὶ παντοίως ἐχούσας – again with καί -- after their noun. The unstable contention within the young man that then ensues, between the stinginess that denies pleasures and the sting of the drones that makes him itch for them, is then described dynamically as a see-saw battle alive with indicatives (559E4-560D1), the ecphrastic element intervening with bundled modifiers only to describe the parties to the battle (560B7-10, C2-3).
The victorious forces drive off what had been virtues as if they were vices (D2-6) and replace them with what had been vices, which they now style as virtues (D8-561A4). For the expulsion of the oligarchical moral regime ecphrastic elements do not so much intervene as join up in alliance with the more vigorous narrative style. It is done with a tricolon crescendo (D2-6), each colon having its own vigorous and vivid indicative, the first colon made of nine words (ὠθοῦσιν), the second eight (ἐκβάλλουσι), but the third seventeen (ὑπερορίζουσι), achieving its length by paratactical doubling of nouns and adjectives, each presenting a virtue and the misnomer they castigate it with, the second containing two in chiasm.
With the installation of the new moral regime the dust settles and the ecphrastic style takes over (D8,ff), passing through a series of four participles and a series of four nouns before reaching its first indicative (κατάγουσιν, E3), which is then followed by a series of three nominative participles and the same four nouns paired off with four others (560D8-561A1). The four participles come in two pairs κενώσαντες καὶ καθήραντες and κατεχομένου τε … καὶ τελουμένου, D8-E1) the first of each pair giving the concrete metaphorical meaning and the second the moral and figurative meaning. The four nouns are roughly the opposites of the four virtues that had been expelled in the tricolon crescendo (i.e., they are the four vices with which they are to be replaced), arriving in crowns and laurels. Those who are “installing” them (κατάγουσιν, the only indicative in a sentence with eight participles) are then described by a pair of participles in which the second again evaluates the first (ἐγκωμιάζοντες καὶ ὑποκοριζόμενοι), and now, in contrast to the tricolon crescendo used to expel the virtues above, the four vices and the misnomers by which they are being praised are presented with minimal vigor: a single colorless participle (καλοῦντες, E5) linking the first of the four pairs and left to be understood with the subsequent three.
We notice that the number of vices installed is equal to the number of virtues expelled, and expect nothing else since the hypothesis of the whole passage, according to which the guards in the citadel of the soul are being exchanged one set for another, but there is no time to ask whether the four virtues correspond one to one with the four vices. As in the passage from Thucydides that this one consciously or unconsciously recalls,5430 we are too busy performing the series of mental acrobatics, one after the other, by which αἰδώς could be seen as ἠλιθιότης, σωφροσύνη as ἀνανδρία, and μετριότης καὶ κοσμία δαπάνη as ἀγροικία καὶ ἀνελευθερία; and by which conversely ὕβρις could be seen as εὐπαιδευσία, ἀναρχία as ἐλευθερία, ἀσωτία as μεγαλοπρέπεια, and ἀναίδεια as ἀνδρεία. By the end our heads are spinning and everything seems the same as its opposite -- an effect playfully echoed in the last pair (ἀναιδεία / ἀνδρεία, 561A1) as well as by the echo between ὑπερορίζουσι in the first part (D6) and ὑποκοριζόμενοι in the second (E4). In other words, the paratactic pairing can on the one hand corroborate a connection in the back of the reader's mind (κενώσαντες καὶ καθήραντες, κατεχομένου τε … καὶ τελουμένου, ἐγκωμιάζοντες καὶ ὑποκοριζόμενοι, ἐλευθέρωσίν τε καὶ ἄνεσιν), but on the other it can force upon the reader's mind a connection he would never make. In either case a lot of teaching is going on without reliance on an apparatus of otherwise positive (and falsifiable) statements assembled into chains of inference (valid or invalid). The "epistemology" of the ecphrastic method is quite another thing, a category unto itself.
Given this evolution of the democratic man, what is his life like (ζῇ, 561A6)? The verb is a place-holder that is now filled in with a characterizing circumstantial participle ἀναλίσκων that is given three nouns (καὶ χρήματα καὶ πόνους καὶ διατριβάς), an open-textured list with three καί's. The corresponsive καί before χρήματα suggests that the three items are meant to be considered separately and on their own merits.5431 If he does not lose control of himself in revelry he will achieve a sort of balance, indulging in one pleasure after another as occasion allows: the description is characterized by a balanced pair of verbs (καταδέξηται / μὴ ἐνδῷ, B1-2), and adjectival and participial constructions (B2-5) stemming from place-holder verbs (ζῇ, ᾖ, διάγει). As for true reasoning (καὶ λόγον γε, B7ff) he uses it not, but adopts a likewise non-prejudicial acceptance of everything. His non-use of reason is depicted with two participles, οὐ προσδεχόμενος οὐδὲ παριεὶς εἰς τὸ φρούριον. The reasoning he will not listen to argues with paratactic pairs (μέν / δέ [B8-C1], καλόν τε καὶ ἀγαθόν [C1], ἐπιτηδεύειν καὶ τιμᾶν [C2], κολάζειν τε καὶ δουλοῦσθαι [C2-3]); his response is an accelerating triad: ἀλλ’ ἐν πᾶσι τούτοις ἀνανεύει τε καὶ ὁμοίας φησὶν ἁπάσας εἶναι καὶ τιμητέας ἐξ ἴσου (561C3-4).
His attitude described (561C6-D7), we can now observe him wasting the money, labor, and practice that were listed at 561A7-8. The description is done with another place-holding verb that gives a berth for participles (διαζῇ [C6], a sort of combination of ζῆν and διάγειν). We get eight of them in five lines, giving us a quick succession of snapshots presented as moments in time (τότε μὲν, αὖθις, τότε δ’ αὖ); then a re-infusion of verbal support from the indicative ἔστιν δὲ ὅτε (D1), that brings on a set of clauses with real indicatives done in three parts (D2-5). The upgrade to indicatives turns snapshots into moving pictures, and replaces the simultaneous pastiche with a sequence of vivid events occupying time. For a moment the ecphrastic portrait comes to life. The picture and the moments of observation are then summarized and we revert to adjectives and the place-holding verb, χρῆται (D7). There is no hint of order or necessity (τάξις / ἀνάγκη) in his life. He does have something to say for himself, but καλῶν indicates it is something less than an argument: ἡδύν τε δὴ καὶ ἐλευθέριον καὶ μακάριον καλῶν τὸν βίον τοῦτον χρῆται αὐτῷ διὰ παντός (D5-7). The three adjectives describe his mood but not his life: slogans are replacing descriptions. Adeimantus sums it up by saying this is a man that gives "astronomic" a new meaning, and Socrates responds with more adjectives, now to describe not his life but the man himself, this time telling how he looks to others, how attractive for his many-sidedness just like the democratic regime, and how he would incite the envy of men and women alike (E3-7).
3D.1: Tyranny, the Regime (562C4-569C8)
If the democrat was καλός and his regime καλή, tyranny is immediately (with δή) introduced as καλλίστη (A4). By question and answer Socrates suggests they take as their keynote the same kind of keynote they used in describing democracy's evolution, for here, too, we encounter the paradoxical problem of an ἀπληστία τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ -- “too much of a good thing.” There it was wealth, and here it is freedom (562A4-C7).
Adeimantus wants to know how this takes place and Socrates begins a story (with ὅταν, C8). The situation is set up with participles and the place-holder verb τύχῃ: the city is democratized (the regime is done with a participle); one day it happens that those who are in charge of pouring the wine are evil and they slake the city's thirst for freedom with a portion too liberal: Next we have τοὺς ἄρχοντας δή (“Then it is, that”) where δή promises a climactic verb, but since the rulers have been introduced by ἄρχοντας we get another protasis that will first to describe them (ἂν μή, parallel with opening ὅταν): “Assume the rulers show any defect of mildness and any holding back of freedom: chastisement ensues” (κολάζει, D3) -- but the singular verb indicates it is deme that is doing the chastising, and not the rulers as we may have expected. The chastisement is voiced with the complaint that they are "bloody oligarchs" (ὡς μιαρούς τε καὶ ὀλιγαρχικούς). We have entered a realm of expression suited for the inversion of values (560D2-561A2) replete with the unexpected. The deme does not stop here but moves on to those who still obey their rulers, besmirching them as "slavish nobodies" (ἐθελοδούλους τε καὶ οὐδὲν ὄντας, another sloganeering pair linked by τε καί). Rather, as we learn only at the end of a front-loaded construction, it is only rulers who resemble the ruled and the ruled who resemble rulers that they praise and honor, in private and in public. This last remark with its paratactic pairs contrasts the two groups (with μέν / δέ, D7-8) only in order to identify them and to say that the deme that had reviled the ones that act different from each other will praise only those that act the same. The description brings out the loud and indiscriminate fatuity of their sloganeering by shading τιμᾷ with ἐπαινεῖ (D9) and adding the doublet ἰδίᾳ τε καὶ δημοσίᾳ (D8-9).
Socrates now infers what would necessarily ensue, with ἀνάγκη (sci. ἐστι, D9) which will take an infinitive (ἐπὶ πᾶν τὸ τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἰέναι), and we are set up for ecphrastic description consisting of a series of infinitives that will take us there (ἐπὶ πᾶν) brushstroke by brushstroke. It will sink into each household and in the end be engendered even in beasts (καταδεύεσθαι / τελευτᾶν ἐμφυομένην: again a placeholder verb receives specification from a participle).
Adeimantus is wary of the direction the argument is going5432 but Socrates moves on in his account of what he will call the beginning (ἀρχή) of the evolution of tyranny (562E7-563E4). He continues with ecphrastic infinitives, having the father assimilating himself to his son with two infinitives appropriate to son not father (ἐθίζεσθαι … καὶ φοβεῖσθαι, the former governing a third infinitive, ὅμοιον γίγνεσθαι) and son to father with two more infinitives (μὴ αἰσχύνεσθαι μήτε δεδιέναι) denying traditional elements of filial behavior, all this for the sake of "freedom" (δή [E9] adds the scare quotes). The leveling of rulers and ruled by the double formula used above (D7-8) is then extended to the relation between citizen and metic, and then telescopically extended to foreigners (562E9-563A1), which exhausts the supply of political relationships.
Adeimantus agrees this is what happens and Socrates continues (563A3-B2) with the leveling of another category of relationships that is essentially hierarchical, that of teacher and student, which he then extends to all relations between old and young, with paratactic doubling in every comparison (φοβεῖται καὶ θωπεύει / διδασκάλων … καὶ παιδαγωγῶν / ἀπεικάζονται καὶ διαμιλλῶνται / ἐν λόγοις καὶ ἐν ἔργοις / εὐτραπελίας τε καὶ χαριεντισμοῦ / μηδὲ ἀηδεῖς … μηδὲ δεσποτικοί). We may pause to review the kinds of relations that the method of paratactic pairing here used leaves us, and requires us, to recognize on our own. ἐθίζεσθαι / φοβεῖσθαι and αἰσχύνεσθαι / δεδιέναι pair the expected behavior with the motive against neglecting to perform it, where conversely φοβεῖται / θωπεύει and ἀπεικίζονται / διαμιλλῶνται pair the motive with the behavior it leads to; εὐτραπελείας / χαριεντισμοῦ pair the technique and the positive feeling it achieves, while ἀηδεῖς / δεσποτικαί pair the negative feeling with the condemnatory expression it elicits.
The obliteration of hierarchy in other human relationships (master to slave and woman to man) is next mentioned for the sake of thoroughness, only to be dismissed after they give Socrates an occasion to retrieve the pair of highly charged terms, ἰσονομία and ἐλευθερία (B8: for the former cf.561E1). But we are not finished: beasts had been mentioned above as the final case (τελευτᾶν μέχρι τῶν θηρίων, E4), and now we must include them in our account. You could not believe the scene unless you witnessed it with your own eyes: dogs resemble their masters, and horses and donkeys do, too, unfettered and proud in mien, and they just bump into you if you happen to be on the path the same time they are (C3-D1). Paratactic pairing is again the governing structural principle, with the old saw that dogs resemble their masters now being extended to include a resemblance of horses and asses to them also. In the absence of any resistance their unfettered demeanor (ἐλευθέρως, C7) expands itself (with a mere καί) into wordless self-importance (σεμνῶς, C8).
The expansion of freedom is complete: Adeimantus is appalled5433 and Socrates sums it up (κεφάλαιον, D4) by telling its final effect on the inner soul of the citizens. They become soft and enervated, easily irritated by any boundary written or unwritten: this is the beginning of the evolution toward tyranny. Adeimantus asks what comes next and Socrates brings up the νόσημα that afflicted oligarchy: this same disease afflicts democracy and will be the cause of its demise. Here he interjects a new keynote, the axiom that the pendulum swings both ways: a great swing toward freedom bodes a reverse swing toward slavery! But Adeimantus has asked about the νόσημα, and what it does once the souls have become soft (τὸ μετὰ τοῦτο, E5); how, that is, it will bring on the reversal toward slavery (564A10-B2). Socrates reminds Adeimantus that his term νόσημα was introduced (552C3) to characterize the drones created in the hive of oligarchic community, subdivided into the braver ones with stingers and the less manly ones without. The good and doctorly lawgiver, like a beekeeper, has to keep these under control (564B4-C4). But again another axiom is needed, the observation that the "democratized city" consists of three subgroups: the drones, the rich and talented (κοσμιώτατοι, 564E6), and the deme itself (C9-565A3).
Socrates's description of the deme as being too busy to worry about politics but sovereign nevertheless by dint of its numbers (565A1-3), elicits from Adeimantus the remark that to exercise their sovereignty they have to show up in the assembly, and this gives Socrates his opening to describe the political story by which the diseased part destroys democracy (565A6-B8) by taxing the rich few and using the proceeds to attract the deme to show up and vote.
At the crucial moment (καὶ τελευτῶντες, B9) the talented few suddenly see what is going on (ὁρῶσι) and resist. As before (549D1, 550A2, 553A10) ὁρᾶν enables us to see what they see, which can be presented in a series of perceptual participles (here, five plus an one attributive [τῶν διαβαλλόντων, C1], which is no less ecphrastic). What they see is not so much a series of events, however, but a series of interpretations: they watch the deme being unwilling, being ignorant, being deceived (οὐχ ἑκόντα ἀλλ’ ἀγνοήσαντά τε καὶ ἐξαπατηθέντα), trying (ἐπιχειροῦντα: the first visualizable and therefore properly perceptual participle after the triad that described the deme's state of mind in the abstract) to injure themselves. Their reaction to what they see, introduced with punctual and climactic τότ’ ἤδη (565C1), is a striking understatement (ὡς ἀληθῶς ὀλιγαρχικοὶ γίγνονται, C2): in the act of resisting they feel how few they truly are.
The talented having dug in their heels, a contest begins between them and the demagogical drones (C6-D3); but demes always show a tendency to choose a champion over themselves. Here Socrates inserts another axiom, particularly striking: the drone that emerges as champion will be like the man described in the story who tastes human flesh in the ritual of Lykian Zeus in Arcadia and is fated thereby to turn into a wolf. This axiom then introduces the second fateful moment in the development of tyranny, a description of the deed by which the boss-drone becomes tyrant by "tasting human flesh," as it were, done with three participles giving way to a series of five coordinate subjunctives in an extended protasis with participial modification interspersed (four participles in all: 565E3-566A4): “Whoever, in the position of boss (προεστώς), capturing the attention (λαβών) of the mob as it hangs wholeheartedly on his every word (σφόδρα πειθόμενον), fails to abstain (μὴ ἀπόσχηται) from tribal blood but by bringing unjust allegations (ἐπαιτούμενος), dragging into court (ἄγων) he performs murder (μιαιφονῇ) polluted by the snuffing out of a kinsman's life (ἀφανίζων), tasting tribal murder with his mouth and tongue (γευόμενος), and drives from home and kills and signals a division of property (καὶ ἀνδρηλατῇ καὶ ἀποκτεινύῃ καὶ ὑποσημαίνῃ) -- wouldn't it be necessary that such a one would either be killed by his enemies or else become tyrant and be changed from man into wolf?”
The apodosis is impersonal (ἀνάγκη … καὶ εἵμαρται) but, for all its vivid third singular verbs and nominative participles, there is also something stunningly impersonal about the protasis, too. The individual that is the direct object and victim of all these participles and verbs is omitted! The transformation from man to wolf is presented dramatically rather than ecphrastically, but it takes place without our even seeing or having to imagine a victim, as if it took place wholly within the man that committed all those deeds. The sequence of subjunctives starts with the language of religious violation (ἀπόσχηται, μιαιφονῇ) specified by participles (ἐπαιτούμενος and ἄγων tell us his method is judicial, setting up the role of the mouth; and ἀφανίζων and γευόμενος explain μιαιφονῇ with striking metaphors). Thereupon three coordinate subjunctives are added to portray his acts with concrete detail (ἀνδρηλατῇ, ἀποκτεινύῃ, ὑποσημαίνῃ).
The ecphrastic syntax places all this into a subjunctive protasis, already a subordinate form, but then forgoes the dynamism of shifting to the indicative apodosis by inferring only an abstract judgment (ἀνάγκη, etc.) in the apodosis. Within that protasis it forgoes temporal division but simply places the verbs side by side and relies purely on semantics to make the point, the language of the courtroom done with participles modifying the language of religious taboo and closing with the language of judicial verdicts. Buried in the middle of all this is the hinge of the analogy with Lykian Zeus: the mouth that there in Arcadia ate human innards, is here the mouth and tongue that tasted kin-murder by speaking words in a courtroom. The ecphrastic style relies maximally on the reader to "connect the dots," giving him just enough syntactical clues and no more, and just enough semantical content to glimpse the whole meaning in a pastiche of brushstrokes that might as well be simultaneous. By making the reader do the work, it achieves elevation. Presenting an array of ideas already assumed, it is dogmatic, organizing thoughts rather than arguing for them; and in relying on explanations previously made it is evaluative.
Socrates continues in the aftermath with participles and place-holder verbs (A6-10): Hence arises (γίγνεται) the Champion (στασιάζων) of the Deme who opposes the Holders of Wealth (ἔχοντας)! If banished (ἐκπεσών) but restored (κατελθών) he returns (κατέρχεται drawn out of that participle) as a fully formed tyrant (ἀπειργασμένος). His next problem is to find funding and the deme grants it to him, their state of mind described with two participles in μέν / δέ: fearing (δείσαντες) on his behalf (instead of their own) and sanguine (θαρροῦντες) about their own safety (rather than cautious). The coordinate participles leave it up to us to see that the deme has it backwards and should be fearing for themselves rather than him and should be cautious rather than sanguine (B10-11). Once the talented few emigrate, the evolution of the tyrant and tyranny is complete: he stands alone in the chariot of the state (C2-D4).
The description of life in the regime will naturally center on describing the life of the tyrant, which by a bold metonymy is immediately referred to as his εὐδαιμονία (566D5, one step better than calling the tyrannical regime καλλίστη before even beginning to describe it: 562A4). Because this new subject is static, relative to the dynamic process that brought it about, we should expect more ecphrastics rather than less.
We begin (566D8ff) with something like his first day in office, described with finite indicatives rather than participles or infinitives. We have seen finite verbs used in ecphrasis just above (565E3-566A4): what made them ecphrastic was their open-textured syntactical coordination rendered articulate by the semantics. What is striking in the present case is the alternation between καὶ and τε as connectives both within and between the clauses (I underline them for clarity): ταῖς μὲν πρώταις ἡμέραις τε καὶ χρόνῳ προσγελᾷ τε καὶ ἀσπάζεται … / καὶ οὔτε τύραννός φησιν … ὑποσχνεῖταί τε πολλὰ καὶ ἰδίᾳ καὶ δημοσίᾳ / χρεῶν τε ἠλευθέρωσε … καὶ διένειμε δήμῳ τε καὶ τοῖς περὶ ἑαυτῶν καὶ πᾶσιν / ἵλεώς τε καὶ πρᾴος εἶναι προσποιεῖται (D8-E4). The forward movement of proclitic καί alternating irregularly with the backward movement of enclitic τε adds a lilt of sweetness and light to the early moments of the tyrant's rule.
But that was only the μέν clause (D8). What comes with the δέ is the whole series of less attractive measures by which the tyrant finances his regime, as well as their increasingly disastrous sequelae, these described one by one in question and answer and culminating in the tyrant's attacking his own father -- which is of course the deme that spawned him -- and the spirited and indignant reply of this "father," all employing the usual balance of subordinate and ordinate constructions (567A1-569B5). The final picture of this happy regime calls him a parricide, and then closes with a look back onto the deme and how it got itself into this predicament (569B6-C4).
This last paragraph prefers participial periphrastics over simple finite forms (ὁμολογουμένη … εἴη, ἐμπεπτωκὼς εἴη [569B7-C2]) and otherwise consists of participles and adjectives only. The effect is to present a reflection on all that has happened, now resulting in a final state in which nothing more can happen: the son has killed his father and the deme is enslaved. The proverb cited about the frying pan and the fire is cast into participles (B8-C2), and then restated with an alternate metaphor about the garment of freedom (a quick and unexpected glance back to 557C5) exchanged for the wrapping of a slave that likewise relies on a single participle held to the very at the end (μεταμπισχόμενος, C4).
The treatment of the tyrannical regime finishes the first two parts of the four-part treatment of the fourth regime, and therefore the thirteenth and fourteenth parts of sixteen in all. It also ends Book Eight, so that the balance of the treatise, on the tyrannical personality, is left for Book Nine. The tyrannical regime occupied fully seven pages (562A-569C), about the same amount as the entire treatment of democracy, including both the regime and the democratic man (555B-562A), which itself was about as long as the treatment of both the previous two regimes and their men put together (547B-555B). Though something remains to be done, there is also a strong sense in which the Book ends with a stop. In terms of form this is the first time a transition is summarized with such strong terms; as to the content, with the attack on the father, which is the deme, there is no more political capital to spend.
3D.2: The Tyrannical Man (Book Nine, 571A1-575A7)
Book Nine begins with the programmatic announcement that the tyrannical man is next. The prominent αὐτός indicates what we already knew, that what is coming is both the culmination and purpose of the entire narrative of the decline.
Immediately Socrates introduces a keynote for the treatment, a further differentiation among the pleasures he had divided at the beginning of the treatment of democratic man, who was in fact the last man he treated (558D4-559A7). Among the non-necessary pleasures some are unruly but in most cases manageable by training and discipline (571A7-C1). As before (559A8-C7) examples from experience are to be given, and we have two marvelous paragraphs (571C3-D4, 571D6-572B1), the first describing the bad pleasures which we encounter only in dreams, and the second describing a sleep that is exempt from them. The two paragraphs are an adumbration of the comparison of the most unjust with the most just man which is the goal of the whole treatise.
The unruly pleasures are the sorts that "wake up" when we fall asleep-- at least that part of us that is rational and calm and rules over the whole man; while the beastly and wild part, full of food or drink, wanders abroad and having driven sleep away seeks to replace it with its own character. From your experience you know that in this condition nothing is beyond it, cut loose and released as it is from shame as well as mindfulness. From an attempt to seduce and sleep with Mother it shrinks not at all, nor with any other whether it be god or man or beast, nor to hold off from any kind of feasting. In fact, it has no shortage whether of mindlessness or shamelessness (571C3-D4).
In its syntax this paragraph resembles the description of the fateful act by which a demagogical boss became a tyrant (565E3-A4):5434 we have a mixture of participles and finite verbs, with subordination and ordination too. But still it is ecphrastic because the parts of the soul differentiated in Book Four, now broached with full explicitness, reintroduce and rely on a previously agreed framework in which the action of the soul is now described.5435 The list describing the rational part (λογιστικὸν καὶ ἥμερον καὶ ἄρχον [C4]) is balanced by a list that characterizes the part of the soul that takes charge in its absence: θηριῶδές τε καὶ ἄγριον ἢ σίτων ἢ μέθης πλησθέν (C5-6). The action of this part is then done with a pair of verbs, the second introduced with a circumstantial participle that tells its prerequisite (ἀπωσάμενον). The main assertion is now made, that in its dreams a soul ruled by this part will stop at nothing, deeming itself to have been cut loose (λελυμένον) and released (ἀπηλλαγμένον) from all shame and mindfulness. The pair of participles presents a physical metaphor and its moral interpretation, and the pair of dependent genitives (αἰσχύνης / φρονήσεως) again refer to the logistic and the thumoeidetic parts of the soul, leaving us to recognize that it is the appetitive part that is in charge. Proof that it will stop at nothing is then provided by a list of infinitives (C9-D2), dependent on οὐδὲν ὀκνεῖ which is placed in their midst (D1). Peculiar in this list is that the items are connected by postpositive τε rather than proclitic καί -- not only the several direct objects of the first verb (ἄλλῳ τε ὁτιοῦν, D1, which suggests that the opening τε might have gone with μητρί more than with ἐπιχειρεῖν and μείγνυσθαι) but also the second verb to the first verb (μιαιφονεῖν τε ὁτιοῦν, D2) and the third to the second (βρώματός τε ἀπέχεσθαι μηδενός, D2-3). The sense is that items could be added one after another ad libitum; but given the aposiopesis attaching to the final item5436 we hardly relish the prospect. Instead Socrates summarizes by remarking on the absence of the other two psychic elements, whose presence might have prevented all this.
The second paragraph (D6-572B1) describes an alternate night of sleep, the sleep of the man whose soul is healthy and temperate. Like the first paragraph its overall structure is an extended protasis in ὅταν with apodosis supplied by οἶσθ’ ὅτι and indicative, but this time the kind of vigorous alternation of finite participle and participle that we saw there (and in the passage it resembled in Book Eight), gives way to the stately and knowing rest of the ecphrastic style, with a single place-holder verb (εἰς ὕπνον ἴῃ, D7, brought forward with the words καθεύδῃ, A5, and ἀναπαύσηται, A7) providing a syntactical berth for eight juxtaposed participial phrases. When the man with a healthy balance in his soul is on his way to sleep (εἰς ὕπνον ἴῃ) he wakens (ἐγείρας) the rational part of his soul and feasts it (ἑστιάσας) on arguments beautiful and on researches, having come (ἀφικόμενος) to a conciliation within by having, first with respect to the appetitive part, given (δούς) it something but not too much, so that it would doze off and not bother the best part with either its joys or its sorrows but would allow that best part, pure and alone by itself, to think and strive to perceive what it does not know, whether something of the past the present or the future; and likewise5437 with respect to the willful part having soothed (πραΰνας) it, and does not try to go to sleep5438 right after coming (ἐλθών) from an argument while his will is all astir -- nay rather it turns in, having brought peace (ἡσυχάσας) to both those parts and having bestirred (κινήσας) instead the third part, in which thinking takes place, then it is, as you know, that it is most likely he will come in touch with truth and it is least likely that the unruly sights will appear in his dreams.
Surely it is one of the most beautiful sentences in all of Plato, and all its virtues are ecphrastic.
In the course of illustrating the unruly pleasures just as he had illustrated the necessary and non-necessary ones after drawing the distinction in the abstract, Socrates goes beyond the program (as he admits afterward, ἐξήχθημεν, B3) to fill out the picture by describing what, conversely, a life without the unruly pleasures might be like. The picture is inspiring, edifying and hopeful -- Adeimantus admiringly replies, παντελῶς οὕτως, B2 -- whereas, conversely, for the last twenty pages the spectacle of human existence we have not only been witnessing and undergoing but because of the ecphrastic style also conspiring with Socrates to articulate, is silly, sad and pitiable, and finally an ugly nightmare. But now a lighter touch, bathing us in simultaneous participles, enables us to feel the quiet joy of the just man's sleep. We already know, from the picture of tyranny we were served up in the last Book, that the revelation of the tyrannical personality that is coming will be a very great nightmare, indeed; and we might already feel that our refuge in this island of order, though a welcome relief from the decline we have been undergoing, will soon be even more sorely needed to gird us up against the devastating final vision with which we are about to be confronted.
The point of isolating the savage pleasures is to show that they lurk within every man, even those of us who are relatively moderate and civil. The evidence that they lurk within us is what happens in our dreams. This having been established as a sort of “keynote” (572B2-9), the treatment of the tyrannical man is ready to begin, first his evolution and then his nature (as set out at the opening of the Book, at 571A1-3). The first step, as in each of the other cases, is a fictional vignette of the son's development, beginning with his relation to his father.
Socrates first asks us to recall the "demotic" (i.e., democratic) father, and inserts something new, a thumbnail sketch of his own development as a sort of reminder (572B10-3A6). The first words, ἦν δέ που, by providing Socrates with a place-holder verb, enables him to compose the sketch entirely in participles (five in four lines), a nominative representing the young demotic (democratic) man-to-be (τεθραμμένος) that introduces a dative with ὑπό for the stingy (oligarchical) father under whose care he was raised. A pair of dative participles (τιμῶντι, ἀτιμάζοντι) can then be added to describe that father's values: he respects necessary desires only, and despises the non-necessary, the pleasures of frivolity and garish display. The indeterminacy inherent in the circumstantial participle γιγνομένας, by means of which these pursuits are introduced as predicates, leaves it to us to realize that this characterization belongs not to Socrates but to the stingy father (ὡς could have been added, but did not need to be added). The reader should notice how his own decision to supply this interpretation in itself forces him to believe that the characterization is true -- i.e., verisimilar and appropriate, the analogues of truth in the realm of fiction.
Adeimantus agrees with the characterization (572C5), and Socrates then continues with the evolution and quality of life that the demotic youth grows into, starting immediately with a nominative participle (συγγενόμενος, C6) that relies on the nominative from the previous sentence for its antecedent. He is continuing to add brushstrokes to the picture by means of participles. As to his evolution, the demotic youth meets up with certain more subtle pleasure-lovers who convert him away from his father, but his inner nature keeps him from going all the way to perdition so that he ends up in the middle (C6-D1). The quality of his ensuing life is a moderate and decent enjoyment of everything, neither slavish nor unruly: emerging from oligarchic roots he has turned into a demotic man (D1-3).
My own summary of the evolution (C6-D1: "As to his evolution ... in the middle") employs two independent clauses and two subordinate clauses (relative and result clauses), but the Greek is done with four participles leading to a virtual place-holder indicative (κατέστη). My summary of the quality of the life that ensues for him ("The quality ... demotic man") consists of a place-holder ("is") providing place for a single predication ("enjoyment") modified by adjectives, an objective prepositional phrase, and a second pair of adjectives; the Greek is done with a place-holder verb followed by two more participles. The similarity between the constructions in the latter case (on the quality of life) evinces the fact that ecphrastic syntax is naturally suited to describing a state of affairs or a quality -- indeed that it is the "default" method for doing so. The very great difference between the former constructions (on the evolution), however, shows that the ecphrastic method can also be used even to describe a dynamic and evolving series of events, especially in Greek, even though the default syntax is more likely, like my paraphrase, to mix and combine ordinate and subordinate clauses. Socrates's use of the ecphrastic style to describe the evolution as well as the quality is therefore all the more emphatic.
Having rehearsed the development of the father from oligarchic roots to a demotic maturity, Socrates can now turn to the demotic man's son who will become a tyrannical soul. We must first posit (θές, D5) that as before the son will be raised in his father's ways and also will undergo similar experiences (D8-E4). This part is done with circumstantial participles only (two, D5-6, and then five, D8-E4, plus one attributive [ἀγόντων, E1]), all dependent on the parallel imperatives θές, (D5) and τίθει (D8). In the first case the two participles repeat the language used to describe the (analogous) initial relationship between father and son in the previous generation (compare γεγονότος, τεθραμμένον [D6] with γεγονώς, τεθραμμένος [C1]); in the second the five participial phrases are meant to redo what was done in the description of the young democrat's evolution (C6-D1). First there is γιγνόμενα (D8 [sc. εἶναι], dependent on τίθει and standing in for γενέσθαι); then these (analogous) γιγνόμενα are then re-done with an appositive consisting of a series of participial phrases concordant with γιγνόμενα. They are introduced with τε, which might link them to what comes before but also ends up being corresponsive with a second τε below: ἀγόμενόν τε εἰς πᾶσαν παρανομίαν (ὀνομαζομένην δέ … ἐλευθερίαν), βοηθοῦντά τε … πατέρα …, τοὺς δ’ αὖ παραβοηθοῦντας (D9-E4). The young man is led into hybris, though the leaders call it freedom; his father helps him, though the others counter-help him (παραβοηθοῦντας in this sense is a coinage). The choice of connectives is striking: a flaccid and naturally ambiguous τε (the first one appears to be connective but perhaps ends up being corresponsive), followed by a δέ which is likewise hypological by its nature but whose full adversative potential is being exploited. It is the content of the four clauses that guides us to see their logical relations, relations that their connectives allow them to have rather than guiding us to see. Ultimately the reason we are able to understand what is being said is that it has been said before.
So we encounter another feature of the ecphrastic method, how its light touch relies on us to recognize allusions. In the present case the allusion has been announced by τὰ αὐτὰ εκεῖνα (D8) but all through we have had ancillary adjectives or nouns or participial descriptors added by hypological connectives that allude to parallel passages or images or ideas within the previous stages of the “decline,” with less explicit announcements than τὰ αὐτὰ ἐκεῖνα, and the like. Again, there is a sense that the ecphrastic voice is telling us something we already know rather than trying to persuade us of something we do not know, as for instance by means of question and answer. Adeimantus's contributions have been corroborative insertions varying only in degree of emphasis;5439 and several times Socrates has continued with the syntax of his previous remarks as if Adeimantus had said nothing at all.5440 The oracular manner of the Muse with which we began has in fact never given way to something more open and dialogical: it is as if we are meant to receive all this as true for the same sort of reason we accepted what the Muses say as true (547A7).
The background situation of the young tyrannical type to be has been posited with this series of participial phrases (D8-E4). Its point of difference from the career of the young democrat-to-be will next be presented, with the ominous ὅταν δέ.5441 At the moment during the seesaw battle that these magical tyrant-makers realize they will never gain control of the young man any other way, they contrive (μηχανομένους, carrying forward the construction with τίθει with still another participle) to implant a certain desire in him (ἔρωτά τινα, E5). The sentence is then closed by a chiastically ordered double appositive that describes that desire: προστάτην (=A) τῶν ἀργῶν καὶ τὰ ἑτοῖμα διανεμομένων ἐπιθυμιῶν (=B), ὑπόπτερον καὶ μέγαν (=B) κηφῆνά τινα (=A) (572E5-573A2). With his ecphrastic manner Socrates is expanding on what he had said about the drones before, how the ease of democracy (ἀργῶν, κτλ) enables them to come to power (ὑπόπτερον καὶ μέγαν): this winged drone with a stinger is the "particularly forceful" (δριμύτατον) element within the drone-like class that we heard about at 564D4-E2.
Socrates gives Adeimantus an opportunity to agree with the new metaphor and then re-begins the tale of the fateful moment with another ὅταν (A4). The entourage that the drones had brought in when they took over the democratic man's soul (560D2-561A4, esp. λαμπρὰς μετὰ πολλοῦ χοροῦ κατάγουσιν ἐστεφανωμένας) now becomes a vanguard that ushers in the master desire, which all the easy desires of democracy now will serve. The arrival of the vanguard is presented with nominative participles depicting our sensation of them in the order of their arrival (A5-6): the sound, the smell, the sight and finally the taste and the touch; two more participles then describe the mounting effect of their arrival on the democratic youth (αὔξουσαί τε καὶ τρέφουσαι, A7), now called a drone (κηφῆνι, 573A8), who has been sensing them; and the protasis is then summed up by a virtual place-holder verb (ἐμποιήσωσι, A7) since we already expect it from above (cf. ἐμποιῆσαι [572E6]: the punctual aorist is here repeated). The apodosis is now revealed (by climactic τότε δή, A8), describing the arrival of the master passion with vigorous diction, metaphor, and syntactical subordination (A8-B4).
Adeimantus accepts this to be a perfect account of how the tyrannical personality comes to be, and Socrates now adduces confirmation from the data of empirical experience by means of question and answer. These data are summed up at C7-9 and now it is time to move on to the life of the tyrannical personality.
We first get a list of the wasteful daily activities with the place-holder γίγνονται (D2-4): these activities spawn still others (D7-E2: παραβλαστάνουσιν [D7] is simply a vivid synonym for γίγνονται), but then these bring about the result that the tyrannical profligate at some moment runs out of cash. At this moment (ominous ὅταν … δή, E3) two reactions are arrayed within him, described (573E3-4A1) by infinitives in μέν and δέ and filled out with a nest of participles and other modifiers in subject accusative, the whole thing depending on the place-holder indicative construction, ἀνάγκη (sc. ἐστί), announced at the beginning (E3). It is ecphrastic in the way that it contrives to describe the two contending sides in simultaneous array without having to indicate which way things will go. Note also how a participle (here, ἐλαυνομένους) can introduce a noun (ἔρωτος) that is in turn modified by its own participle (ἡγουμένου) that takes its own noun (ταῖς ἄλλαις), which shows how ecphrastic syntax can in principle go on forever without "touching down" in a finite verb.
The shortfall in funds will not be tolerated, and so the unthinkable becomes a reality: the young man goes after his parents (574A6-B11). Socrates shrinks from believing the picture, which he presents ecphrastically with a drawn-out proleptic description, relying on participles and adjectives, of the two parents placed in an accusative that awaits a main verb for which they will serve as the hapless objects (ἕνεκα … ἀρχαιότατον, B12-C3). He brings this to a culmination by asking Adeimantus whether he can conceive (δοκεῖ … σοι) that the youth would beat and enslave his own parents (πληγαῖς τε ..., C3-6). These descriptions of the parents embody the point of view of the tyrannical youth at the same time that they condemn that point of view -- irony being still another power of the ecphrastic method that derives from its prerogative for unexplained juxtaposition. In the comparison of νεωστὶ φίλης καὶ οὐκ ἀναγκαίας ἑταίρας (B12-13) and τὴν πάλαι φίλην καὶ ἀναγκαίαν μητέρα (B13-C1), οὐκ ἀναγκαίας is approbatory from the young man's view but derogatory from the point of view of Socrates and Adeimantus; likewise ἀναγκαίαν, which means to the youth that he must care for her but to Socrates and Adeimantus that she is truly related to him5442 and, like the necessary pleasures, is something that his life needs. A similar ambiguity affects these same terms as used of the father. Similarly νεωστί / πάλαι can each be derogatory as well as approbatory, as can ἀρχαιότατον, meaning the most basic or fundamental as well as the most hoary and out of date.
Having pillaged his parents' wealth he roves abroad, and the description is vigorous and vivid but replete with ancillary descriptors all along the way (574D1-575A7): First, οἰκίας … τοίχου (574D3) elaborated with strikingly specific ἤ τινος ὀψὲ νύκτωρ ἰόντος τοῦ ἱματίου (D3-4); and then the δόξαι about the fine and the shameful that he held from youth (D5-6), about which he adds, αἱ νεωστὶ ἐκ δουλείας λελυμέναι, δορυφοροῦσαι τὸν Ἔρωτα (D7-8). They will master him with Eros's help, αἱ πρότερον μὲν ὄναρ ἐλύοντο ἐν ὕπνῳ. The δέ clause then changes subjects from the pleasures to the man they have taken over (τυραννευθεὶς δέ, E2) and he is presented to us with an ecphrastic apodosis of simultaneous attributes supported by place-holder verbs (ἐγένετο, γενόμενος, οὔτε ἀφέξεται [a litotes done with negated, instead of positive, verb]), followed by an adversative apodosis (ἀλλά) that continues with place-holder participles providing berths for adjectives (ζῶν, ὤν) and then leaves us with him wreaking a noisy havoc (θόρυβον) described with extended balanced participles (A4-6).
With this, the evolution and life of the tyrannical type is complete and the entire treatise is finished.
3E. A Note on the Evaluation of Plato's Style in Antiquity
This detailed explication of the style of this section of the Republic might enable us to answer whether the chapters in which Longinus famously praises Plato are meant to refer to this passage or to some other one (cf. n., supra). In ch.12 he is at pains to distinguish τὸ ὕψος from αὔξησις. For him, τὸ ὕψος lies in the δίαρμα, while αὔξησις relies on πλῆθος. He associates the latter with Plato and the former with the directness of Demosthenes. Then comes a lacuna after which the text resumes in mid-sentence, as follows: πλουσιώτατα καθάπερ τι πέλαγος εἰς ἀναπεπταμένον κέχυται πολλαχῇ μέγεθος (the passage Adam quotes in connection with 559D). After then briefly comparing Demosthenes to Cicero, Longinus announces (ch.13, init.) that he will revert to ὁ Πλάτων … τοιούτῳ τινὶ χεύματι ἀψοφητὶ ῥέων, from which we can infer that the subject of the clause after the break was Plato. He goes on to make the point that even Plato's ample waves of discourse are capable of achieving ὕψος, and he quotes as proof a passage from Rep., namely, 586A, which comes after the treatment of the regimes.
That passage is characterized by expansive and indulgent elaboration and detail, and in this it embodies our ecphrastic style; but its alternation between subordinate and ordinate constructions along the way, to which it owes its undulating vigor, departs from the static and cumulative assembling of a picture by means of nouns, adjectives and participles with place-holder verbs that is the salient characteristic of ecphrasis. Thus, to associate Longinus's πλουσιώτατα καθάπερ τι πέλαγος εἰς ἀναπεπταμένον κέχυται πολλαχῇ with the ecphrastic method used in the treatment of the regimes might be wrong.
Conversely the style that Dionysius of Halicarnassus (whom Adam also quotes [Pomp.2, which is copied in Dem.5-6]) criticizes as being Plato's high style, does resemble the style we are calling ecphrastic. He illustrates his criticism (Dem.7-8) from several passages in the Phaedrus among which the syntax at 238BC is particularly ecphrastic. His criticism of that passage's prolixity (τοσαύτην ἐκμηκύνας περίφρασιν) echoes the general criticism with which he began (Dem.5):
... μελαίνει τε τὸ σαφὲς καὶ ζόφῳ ποιεῖ παραπλήσιον ἕλκει τε μακρὸν ἀποτείνασα τὸν νοῦν, συστρέψαι δέον ἐν ὀνόμασιν ὀλίγοις. […] μάλιστα δὲ χειμάζεται περὶ τὴν τροπικὴν φράσιν, πολλὴ μὲν ἐν τοῖς ἐπιθέτοις, ἄκαιρος δ’ ἐν ταῖς μετωνυμίαις, σκληρὰ δέ καὶ οὐ σῴζουσα τὴν ἀναλογίαν ἐν ταῖς (μεταφοραῖς).
In particular we recognize the obscurity (μελαίνει, ζόφῳ), the sustained incompleteness of expression (ἀποτείνασα τὸν νοῦν), the heaping of appositives (πολλὴ μὲν ἐν τοῖς ἐπιθέτοις), and the misleading metonymies (ἄκαιρος δ’ ἐν ταῖς μετωνυμίαις).
Style for Plato, however, who is less bound by the chains that bind others, may be assumed to embody the content; whereas the style critics, whether Longinus, Dionysius, or Demetrius, tend ultimately to evaluate style by the personal congeniality of the author and his respect for the reader. If Plato uses an obscure style it will be for a purpose, and it is this purpose we must grasp. And surely we take our own philology too seriously if (with Adam) we excuse what appears to us to be faults of grammar by the expedient of Longinus's four chapters (33-36) where he advocates that leniency in such matters must be accorded to “greatness” -- chapters whose content reveals little more than his awareness of the limitations intrinsic to his own science.
4. Wisdom in Hindsight
The program Glaucon and Socrates had adopted at the beginning for reviewing the regimes, despite the many points of incoherence in its formulation and glitches and detours in its execution, has for all that succeeded to keep us on track through the sixteen parts. As elsewhere -- paradigmatically in Book Five with its trumping of Polemarchus's paradoxes, and in Books Six and Seven with the failure of Adeimantus and then Glaucon to finish the ascent to dialectic -- we may now look back at what we have read, to learn what the program has enabled Socrates to say, despite its reversals and failures.
4A. Decline as Disorder among the Constituents.
Let us attempt to summarize the devolution according to the principle enunciated in Book Four (though it was not systematically applied in Book Eight) that the inferiority of other regimes and souls are due to disorders in the three elements constituting both polis and soul, namely, Reason (perfected by paideia), Will (the natural ally of the good, though it Honors it as extrinsic5443), and Desire (appearing now as a desire for Pleasure and then as a desire for the Wealth, the means of acquiring it: 580E5-81A1). I capitalize the terms that refer, shiftingly, to the Constituents. Here is a summary along these lines:
The admixture of metals creates a conflict between the forces of Reason and Desire in the ruling group and the two resign themselves to a compromise governed by the element between them, the Will.5444 Ruling now consists only of denying the hegemony of either, since the Will both fears Reason5445 and feels Desire,5446 but having turned its back on the pattern of Reason5447 no longer knows how to manage desire except by Fortitude.5448 Next these Prideful rulers notice each other's Wealth and their Envy drives them to get more and more.5449 They neglect virtue, which only Reason knew,5450 and their neglect only allows the lower and irresponsible Desires to grow.5451 Finally they confer all Honor5452 on Wealth, allocating all hegemony to it. Desire5453 now rules, but it rules only to its own detriment since in quelling its own Desires merely for the sake of saving Money that is useless5454 except to procure them, it only allows them to fester repressed and to grow, hastening the moment when they will rebel. At the same moment that Wealth becomes the highest good, nothing good is left for it to buy except the objects of epithumetic desire.5455 The ruling element is captured and ruled by the dilemma of having its cake and eating it, too,5456 even though its rueful dedication5457 to amassing a fortune elicits the admiration of most men.5458 Insofar as the Will and the Reason are constituents of the state and the soul, they cannot be utterly abolished, but under the regime of Desire the self loses consciousness of its constituents and becomes a playground for "infra-personal" forces it no longer recognizes or understands,5459 so that the very operation of those constituents barely shows through in a description of the man's behavior. When he resigns himself to chance as if to cancel the operation of Choice and Will, and insists on enjoying things that come his way on an equal and democratic footing,5460 it is Reason that must invert the meaning of words5461 and Will, after all, that must force the unequal to be equal.5462 He does nothing but enjoy himself, and his loss of direction finally5463 takes its toll. A master Desire5464 and its Pleasure conquers his soul and irreversibly expels all measure and temperance.5465 Rather than say he pursues pleasure it becomes more accurate to say that pleasure pursues, and finally conquers, him.5466 In the end he is nothing but a conduit for the pouring out of his own substance.5467
4B. Political Decline as a Mere Vehicle for Exposing the Destiny of the Soul
Regardless of the methodology and its assumptions about the dynamics of change, about the relation between process and result, and about the relation between political forms and human personality types, there is nothing to contradict the idea that the account of the regimes and the men in tandem might at bottom be a vehicle for presenting a pathology of the soul, in particular the tripartite soul and its order as discovered and articulated in Book Four.
Even the most superficial looking-back will show that this is true. The transition from aristocracy to timocracy was essentially a devolution from the best part of the soul ruling, to a compromise between the higher (λογιστικόν) and lower (ἐπιθυμητικόν) parts that in effect put the middle part (θυμοειδές) in charge, presiding over a struggle between beauty and truth on the one hand and wealth and pleasure on the other, but covering over the struggle with an aegis of respectability (τιμοκρατία). This unstable arrangement gave way to a new hegemony under the rule of a ruefully prudent appetite, employing the motivating part (θυμοειδές) and the calculating part (λογιστικόν) now as mere counselors for the acquisition of wealth. Such a soul sacrifices all values for money, tolerating the unemployment and withering away of any of the forces and powers within it that give it no material profit, using them and abusing them only for their cash value (oligarchy); but its neglect of the proper work of reason (namely, culture) allows the lower pleasures to grow within him. These next invade the seat of authority and pervert it to their own ends, using Mind as a policy-maker to declare the equality of the unequal and to invert the meaning of all moral terms, leaving only freedom, which in the absence of Judgment and Pride tends toward the slaking of bodily desires, though it still includes indulging the moribund twitchings of Reason and Pride, but only when desire sees fit (democracy). In the end this growing regime of Desires becomes organized on its own terms, and all the easy desires are subordinated to one master desire that "plays for keeps," enslaving the rest of the soul to itself. But the slaking of desire creates no revenue and the soul must scrounge around for resources from the outside to pay its expenses. In the end nothing can be spared, and finally it consumes its own source or substance -- but the story stops. Here, just before this darkest and final state, Socrates reminds us of the healthy soul and its order (571D6-2B1), by reascending to the vantage point5468 from which the descent began.
It would be unwise to reduce the many facets of this extraordinary treatise to some one thing.5469 But of the several levels on which it operates, surely the most important is that of the inward order of the soul, the order discovered at the conclusion of Book Four. It is therefore not too much to say that the goal of the whole ramshackle method and all of its assumptions has primarily been to provide a vehicle for revealing the pathologies of the soul. The principle that regimes change only when the ruling class changes, makes it possible to characterize the distinct pathologies in terms of which wrong natural element is in charge. The principle that civic regimes come from predominant personality types enables Socrates again5470 to project onto mere political institutions personalistic understandings that they might embody so as to keep the allegory alive and keep the audience open to the illumination of reason by shielding it from feeling the sting of criticism. The idea that one regime comes from another enables him to show how the reorganization of the soul's parts truly does lead in a certain direction: that bad choices do have unforeseen and unintended consequences some of which remain unnoticed (as for instance when the oligarch subjugates reason to his own ends and reason then becomes so weak that it can be misused to subvert meanings; or that when he subjugates pride and honor to those alone who have wealth, he has surrendered the ability to emulate honorable behavior even if it is merely out of envy) while others become forces for disorder (as the ὅρος of oligarchy makes possible the radical disenfranchisement of citizens, which in turn spawns a class of drones that will lead to its own demise; or the deme's gospel of freedom brings about the insouciant assignation of its own sovereignty to a tyrant).
In fact it is only as metaphors for states of the individual soul that the sequence aristocracy – timocracy – oligarch --, democracy, and tyranny constitutes a natural declension. While the political sequence could have gone otherwise (as Aristotle was the first to assert), one needs only remove the sections about the regimes and set the four parts of the narrative about the soul's decline end to end: the logic of their development requires nothing from the intervening passages on the regimes. While the latter are little stories and need to be verisimilar, exactly because they must be verisimilar they consist of events that could have gone otherwise; but the former -- the stages of devolution in the personality – are much more inevitable and almost predetermined as if by gravitational forces and the coefficients of the resistance of materials.
4C. The Decline as a Study in the Relation of Fathers and Sons
The events in both arenas, the arena of the regimes and the arena of the persons, are depicted with painful accuracy; but while the devolution of regimes is pitiable, the devolution of the sons' relations to their fathers are likely to evoke a deeper emotional response in the hearts of the sons or fathers that read them.
In the first instance the son's courage is both undermined and (Oedipally) stimulated by his mother.5471 The household slaves, the other familiars of his tender youth,5472 and then the public at large, only add to his being distracted away from his father's advice. He knows inside that his father is right5473 and has to digest the fact that he lacks the courage to stand with him against the rest of the world; his own love of honor then represents the amount of honorability owed to his virtuous father that he can bear to inherit, and with compelling psychological economy this same love acknowledges the mortgage he owes to public opinion.
When he becomes a father, in turn, his son does honor him implicitly; but since the father has now surrendered his true worth to the opinions that others have of him he has lost the autarky of virtue. Sooner or later the son recognizes this, but in the absence of an awareness of virtue, due to a degradation of his education that lays too strong a stress on outward acts (gymnastic), he is mortified by his father's downfall and has no recourse. Betrayed by what he now has learned was a reliance on mere opinion, he resolves to escape vulnerability. By an overreaction he enthrones wealth in his soul, but knowing deeper down that wealth lacks and does not deserve honor, he debases himself by investing it, cynically, with the empty pomp of a Persian king. His rueful soul contracts to the regimen of a bank balance, recognizing only increase and decrease in the total,5474 with virtue's value being only that it might protect the sum (indeed when there is no financial loss at stake his conduct is despicable).5475 He comes to shun contests of honor not because honor is a fragile asset, as his father's experience showed him in the past, but because to allow the desire for it to waken in himself might cost him too much in the future.5476
By the time he, in turn, becomes a father honor and culture and virtue are long gone. His son sees in him only a stingy man forcing himself to deny his unnecessary pleasures while doing nothing to understand them, his only purpose in life being to maintain savings that he cannot spend, neglecting even his son all the while. Although the father's distinction between needful and unneeded pleasures fosters virtues of discipline and industriousness admired by hoi polloi, only culture and mindfulness can truly immunize5477 a man against the ingenious seductions that pleasure can wield, and the son, now unguided, now becomes their prey. As if they were a force outside him these many pleasures now unify and rise up against the jejune hegemony of stingy industriousness he had learned from his father which he resented more than anything else for the way it ousted him5478 from his father's care. What reason he may have seen his father use for calculation he now sets free, allowing the sophistries of pleasure, which are of course only his own idiosyncratic pleasures and his own idiosyncratic sophistries, to invert the language of moderation (the culture that could recover or give him an account of the meaning of such words is long since gone). Freedom, the son now believes, is the all. Unbeknownst to himself, and yet perfectly aware of it, his will and his reason are now playthings of the pleasures that entertain him: one day he diets and the next he debauches.
When he in turn becomes a father, his son is left to discover the rest of the ravaging that his own ignorant resignation to pleasure has in store for him by way of a legacy, namely, the operation of those pleasures decent men know only in their nightmares. That his son should return to reduce and overpower him in his older age with his youthful strength, is a fitting penalty for the father having resigned the authority of age.
In the second iteration (toward oligarchy) the father can truly run aground since what he came to rely on was the opinion of others, and when he does the son enthrones and idolizes wealth as a cure against having his admiration ever dashed again; but in the third iteration (toward democracy) the son feels no such deference for this father. In seeing his father embrace wealth he only learns he is not worth embracing himself, and now he expresses his frustrated envy of wealth by giving it away. In the fourth iteration (toward tyranny) the liberality that the fourth son inherits as idleness leaves him prey to whatever desire may occupy him, and he finds himself enslaved to it, and wakens into living a nightmare in which he finds himself willing to murder his father at its behest.
The story is credible, and because credible, powerful. We may know from the reaction it invokes in us that such a story would be the most eloquent and unforgettable way to bring home to the young sons of Ariston the dangers of toying with psychic disorder, and with the order of the tripartite soul that they reached at the end of Book Four.
5. THE WORK REMAINING
The unjust life that Thrasymachus somehow made so attractive now needs to be reviewed in the context of the soul's pathology that has been revealed. This is the work of the rest of Book Nine. In particular the result of the story splits Thrasymachus's vision: by him the tyrant is conceived in terms of the outward show, and the question of his own inner autonomy is obscured by the fealty shown him by the others that flock about him though he has not earned it. We may therefore ask, Is Thrasymachus's tyrant Socrates's tyrannical man (τυραννικός) or is he Socrates's tyrant (τύραννος)? He is not Socrates's tyrant since it is only that man's inner circle of toadies that admire him, and they only feign it, while his overall position is insecure. Is he then Socrates's tyrannical man, racked by a desire within himself that tyrannizes him? Despite all appearances, the answer is Yes. Anyone who is unlucky enough to have been a slave to passion knows the delusion by which he can forget that he is enslaved while he enslaves others. Deep down, if he is being consumed by his passions he senses that he can provide them still more of himself to consume, by himself consuming others. Only the man whose better parts are being abused by passion can fantasize that he restores these better parts, his autonomy and his dignity, by stealing the dignity and autonomy of others. But of course, in the real world, the people around him won't tolerate the deviant behavior by which he sustains this delusion in himself, and he is left alone to face a private uphill battle, trying to stay ahead of the forces that consume him though unable to, since they consume him from within.
Thrasymachus portrays the tyrant as a man who wants to ascend to this "office" and whose fellows welcome his abuse. But the portrayal only portrays the craven man's delusion about himself! In truth he is a man who has already given up on himself and for exactly this reason wants to ascend to tyrant, and the image of himself ascending and being accepted by his fellows is his ultimate delusion since once he reaches this pinnacle his neighbors in fact will no longer ignore him but will finally dispense with him. That is, he is the man that Socrates portrays as internally tyrannized (the τυραννικός), who then is unlucky enough to become a tyrant (τύραννος) in fact.
END OF APPENDIX SEVEN
Appendix 8: Adeimantus ἀποκρινόμενος.
Some readers of Plato who plan to write about him act as though their job were to watch for a thesis to be asserted and then review the reasons “Plato” gives for it so as to write about whether the reasons are adequate. The refutable content or “thesis” of Adeimantus's speech, near the beginning of Book Two, could only be said to be that the corpus of Greek poetry, despite its reputation for wisdom, fails to guide bright young men toward a life of virtue and even fails to discourage them from imitating the usual patterns of self-serving conduct they see around them. However, I have seen no writing that has noticed the affective content of the speech – that it is the “testament” of a son dissatisfied by the way his father has brought him up, and that as such it raises both perennial and recognizable questions about the transmission of values from father to son, and indeed the structure of the father-son relationship itself.
The perennial structure of the relation of father and son involves each of them in a difficult tension between his desire for the other's love on the one hand, and his aspirations about each other's virtue on the other. The son wants his father to be the god he originally thought he was, and to teach him justice; while the father hopes the son will become his legacy in the world and thereby justify5479 his life. The father, however, is not a god, just another mortal, and as the son moves out into the world he discovers as much. Maturity arrives when he comes to the resolution that winning his father's love is less important than becoming a man on his own, free of his father's faults. Still, the paternal roots keep reasserting themselves and the son constantly finds himself whip-sawed between going forward into the unknown and regressing back toward the known, often until his father is dead.
There is perhaps less need to describe the father's problem, since every father remembers being a son and, as someone has said, the child is father to the man. Within the corpus of the dialogues we have two dramatic glimpses of the father's dilemma, the case of Crito at the end of the Euthydemus, and the case of Lysimachus and Melesias at the beginning of the Laches. Crito respects Socrates but relies on his presence to recreate in him the state of mind he respects him for (306D6-E3), so that in his absence he can easily be dissuaded of it (304D3ff). He makes the father's error of hoping to compensate for his own wishywashiness by sending his son to a teacher that is more reliable than himself; but he has a further problem: all the teachers that advertise seem to him to be perfect weirdoes (306E3-4: πάνυ ἀλλόκοτος). The problem is, Crito is not confident as to what is and what is not philosophy.5480
The Laches begins with Lysimachus confessing that he and his friend Melesias have discovered that the only edifying stories they have to tell their sons are not about their own behavior and accomplishments in life but the military and political exploits of their fathers (and while on the one hand they blame their own lassitudinous unimportance on their fathers' neglect of them, they have both in fact named their sons after fathers!). Therefore, because they want to do the best they can for their sons, they ask Laches and Nicias to recommend teachers of fighting in armor they can send them to (Lach.179A1-180A5). But Laches and Nicias confess they too were too busy with public affairs to pay proper attention to their sons and should hardly be giving Lysimachus any advice, but marvel that Lysimachus should not be asking Socrates about this, who is right there with them, for Socrates is always busying himself with the topics they are worried about (180A6-D3). Lysimachus now remembers his sons had mentioned a Socrates about whom they had the most wonderful things to say, and now he puts two and two together and realizes the Socrates before him must be the son of his old, lifelong friend, Sophroniscus (180D4-181A2). Lysimachus praises Socrates for justifying5481 his father's reputation as an excellent man, but Laches reminds Lysimachus that Socrates has “justified” his “fatherland” as well, by his military exploits at Delium, and so Lysimachus is completely certain that he should ask Socrates for advice about his sons – and asks him whether he should have them learn fighting in armor! (181A4-181C9) Think how any son that had found the company of Socrates so worthwhile would be embarrassed by his father acting this way!5482
Third, we do have a stunning glimpse of Socrates's manner of fathering. At the very end of his defense speech he enjoins the jurors who unjustly condemned him merely out of anger for the pain he gave them in his interviews, to take out their anger on his children and inflict that same pain upon them, in case they find his children valuing money or anything else above virtue or having a high opinion of themselves – that in doing this the jurors would be giving him just reparations (for they will be carrying on his own mission), as well as treating his children with justice (as Socrates's treatment of them was itself just).5483 We know nothing of his sons but we can guess it was such fathering as this that Adeimantus, and any son, would crave.
To return to Adeimantus, who casts himself as a son, his speech does not in fact criticize the poetic tradition of Greece but his parents' negligent reliance on it. Accordingly, he makes his point not by presenting a theory of good and bad poetry nor by citing statistics about how many well-educated young men turn out to be scoundrels, but only by describing what is likely to be happening within a young man without the parents knowing. He knows what is happening within the young man because it happened, and is still happening, within himself. He is talking, that is, about his own experience. The thesis about poetry is less important to him, and in fact less important to his future well-being, than the crisis he still feels within himself; and in this respect the most important problem that his speech reveals about himself is that he still is bent on blaming his problems on his parents and his elders, on the whole tradition, and even on Socrates,5484 rather than taking responsibility for himself and “moving on.” The mendacity he discovers within poetry and its interpretation, which he reveals to us by his sequence of run-throughs,5485 is the very image or projection of the mendacity he feels he has been subjected to by his parents, who, he feels, neglected him in his upbringing by deferring to the poets, and did so hypocritically.
Adeimantus delivers the speech to Socrates – he could not deliver it directly to his father (even assuming Ariston is still alive) nor to his other guardians. By the same token in the very act of presenting it to Socrates, who is his elder, he has more or less consciously pushed Socrates into an avuncular role.5486 Socrates notices he has done this and immediately rises to the occasion in his response by mentioning Adeimantus's father (367E6-368A7). His subsequent proposal that they look for justice in the neutral – dare I say avuncular? -- medium of an imaginary city is just the sort of thing an uncle can do.5487
We may apply the old maxim, “As a man speaks,5488 so is he.” In an unconscious imitation of the way he feels he has been brought up, Adeimantus has developed the habit of quoting others rather than speaking with his own voice. Such behavior indicates that a person is more acutely pained and despondent about his own failings than sanguine about his ability to cope and deal with them. Because misery loves company he is quicker to condemn the shortcomings of others than to sympathize with and forgive them.5489 Most poignantly of all when he meets a man like Socrates, whom he believes has mastered the anxieties and the vices he fears he himself cannot, he treats him with a conflicted deference,5490 combining in a single gesture his desperation5491 with a self-protective show of indifference.
This psychological profile5492 accounts for all the details of behavior that Plato has given Adeimantus as interlocutor through the course of the dialogue, and, more poignantly, accounts for the role he is given in the overall plot. He bluffs having knowledge by criticizing others for lacking it;5493 his intrusions into the conversation tend to be at the expense of those whose feet he is stepping on;5494 he presents his own opinions as belonging to others in order to voice them but at the same time provide himself a way to be forgiven for believing them in the first place.5495 He is quick to criticize persons who might not have reached the understanding Socrates has just now brought him to, himself.5496 He disowns responsibility in a churlish way,5497 lurks in halfway positions,5498 and shows a penchant for clever byplay or bluffing indirection in a way that laces friendliness with derision.5499 He is puritanical rather than lighthearted.5500
The drama taking place within Adeimantus expresses itself in three interruptions (419A, 449B and 487B) and then reaches its climax in Book Six, when he tries to force Socrates to give him an answer that Socrates does not possess.5501 He presses his suit because Socrates has now come to the answer he most sorely needs:5502 this is the closest he comes in the entire dialogue to confessing his desperation. But the fact that Adeimantus needs an answer is not a condition incumbent upon the rest of mankind to fulfill for him. Indeed the rest of mankind needs an answer to this question, the question of the ultimate sanction and of the ultimate purpose of life, no less than he does, as Socrates now shows (505A2-506B1). Upon being pressed a second time5503 he refuses to give Adeimantus what would after all be only his best guess, and refuses in terms that Glaucon overhears to be a threat to stop participating, so that Glaucon interrupts to ensure that Socrates stay rather than leave, and continue on whatever terms he should choose.5504 Thanks to Glaucon a very great discussion, indeed, ensues -- including the “Sun, Line and Cave” and the long and arduous dialectical ascent through the curriculum – a discussion that succeeds to stay on track just as long as Glaucon has the stamina to hold up his end of the discussion.5505
During that entire conversation Adeimantus is silent and forgotten, but suddenly he butts in at what appears to be a random moment a few pages into Book Eight, when Socrates, with the Muses' aid and Glaucon's participation, has just gotten underway with the “Decline”. This section of the Republic, the narrative of the decline of the city and of the self, is a very different animal from anything else in the work.5506 It is nothing like the dialectical investigation of Books Six and Seven that we had just been through with Glaucon after Adeimantus dropped out of the conversation, nor like the dreamy but logically consecutive development of the ideal state in Book Five, again with Glaucon; nor like the logical investigation of soul and corresponding search for the virtues in Book Four, also carried out with Glaucon. Instead it is a disheartening and all-too credible story of the gradual disintegration of the human personality once it has been cut off from the source of its order. The narrative about the self5507 is guided through each stage by a preliminary consideration of decline on the large and impersonal canvas of the city, just as the ascent to the vision of human virtue had been achieved through the construction of an ideal city in Books Two through Four.
By the time Adeimantus butts in Socrates has led Glaucon through the first transition on the large scale of the city and how it might take place – the decline from the aristocratic state to the state based on honor – and what the new state looks like. Socrates can now ask Glaucon to shift his focus to the personality, and ask the corresponding question on the scale of the individual: How does the man who is a lover of honor evolve from the man who loved virtue, and once he as evolved, what is the lover of honor like? Adeimantus interrupts: “He will be a lot like Glaucon here.” The remark is impertinent not only because it is opaque but also because the transition to the new type of man is the present question, not the description of the type that results from the transition. Socrates however takes the reversal of order in stride (in the subsequent stages he will take care to revert to the proper order), and the net effect of the disruption is that Adeimantus has become the interlocutor.
He has not interrupted because he believes he can advance the argument but because he wants to ridicule his brother even if it will slow things down. It is wrongheaded therefore to adduce, with the scholars, the remark of Xenophon that Glaucon is a lover of honor as a “justification” for his intervention. The question is how the man of virtue devolves into a lover of honor, not whether Glaucon embodies the outcome more than Adeimantus. The distraction of his interruption only draws our attention to the fact that from everything we have seen it is Adeimantus that is the brother that cares about what people think about him.5508 That he should now be stepping in might just be a good thing, as Socrates said in response to Glaucon's interruption in Book Two.5509 It may be somehow right that Socrates's interlocutor should himself be subject to the forces being faced in the narration!
Socrates, as usual, “goes with the pitch.” He accepts the condition imposed on him by Adeimantus's interruption by starting with the description, by describing the lover of honor in terms of his difference from Glaucon, and then turning to what should have been the prior question, how the evolution takes place.5510 Without setting out a methodology or program he simply begins with a description of a father and son, the father a good man living in a not-so-good city who does not care about public office or reputation but would just as soon remain anonymous as get involved in politics … -- but Adeimantus interrupts: “Just how then does he evolve?” He is pushing Socrates to get on with telling about the son.5511 The first words of Socrates's response, “Right when …,”5512 do give the impression he is about to describe how the evolution begins, about which Adeimantus asked him, but no – he first goes on to tell about the young man's mother! She faults her husband for being worsted by everyone and wants him to be more ambitious rather than so “unmanly.” Adeimantus recognizes the wife's banter and takes the opportunity to make a characteristically disparaging remark – “That's the sort of thing you always hear from them.” But at the same time, the dialogue he imagined within the bright young man in Book Two has now become a quarrel between husband and wife; and the son (i.e., the one who will be deciding which path to take – i.e., Adeimantus!) has now has been served up a choice that is complicated by Oedipal forces. The young man wavers for a while but chooses the mother's prompting, just as Adeimantus's young man chose the life of power and fame regardless of justice. What remains for Adeimantus, and that young man, to learn is what lies in the future for a person who has made that choice – for it has consequences unforeseen, and this is what the entire tale of the decline will teach him. The love of honor is not a stable outlook, neither for the constitution of a city nor as a personal moral ideal for the next generation, the son that Adeimantus in turn would have. There is nothing so painful as the narration that follows, since it is so true,5513 especially in its description of the gradual but complete debasement of the relation between father and son.
At the end of the account, just before Adeimantus departs from the dialogue for the rest of the evening, Plato contrives a telling and unmistakable detail that speaks volumes about him. He is a little more ready to weather the decline than Socrates. At the lowest moment in the devolution of both the tyrannical state and the tyrannical personality, the tyrant turns against his own parents. In the case of the tyrannical state it is a metaphor: the deme has “fathered” him into being tyrant and when he runs out of money and goes back to his “fatherland” to strip them of whatever wealth they have. Socrates now imagines the deme responding with a paternal claim: “We did not raise you to rip us off but to take care of us in our old age!” Then he asks Adeimantus what would happen if the tyrant “son” came to fisticuffs with the parent “deme,” and Adeimantus replies with admonitory litotes, “Soon enough the deme will learn what sort of beast it spawned,”5514 and Socrates is appalled, the same way Adeimantus had been appalled about the beasts obstructing his path (568A1-B5). At the analogous point in the narration of the tyrannical personality, where the tyrannical son turns against his parents not in nightmarish metaphor but In waking fact, we have exactly the same play of affect (574B7-C6): Socrates imagines the son coming to blows with the old man and the old lady, and he asks Adeimantus whether the son might go lightly on them, but Adeimantus replies, “I for my part would not be particularly sanguine about their prospects.”5515 Socrates again is appalled and describes incredulously (“for the love of Zeus”) what he imagines this means, how the son would sell out the mother that bore him for a babe he met at a bar and his gray old father that gave him all he is for a ripe young boy; Adeimantus flatly agrees, repeating his asseverative oath that Zeus is his witness!5516 It is clear that the nightmare is closer to Adeimantus's waking mind than it is to Socrates's.
The role of Adeimantus as dialogical partner devolves into being the person in whose mind this lesson is received and absorbed, and once the lesson is complete he falls back out of the conversation and leaves the final and crowning question – the judgment between the two lives -- to be worked out through an agreement between Socrates and Glaucon, who effortlessly glides back into the role of interlocutor a moment later (576B10). Even the return to the topic of poetry, which had been Adeimantus's special subject5517 and as such had provided him the justification for interrupting in Book Two (376D4-5), is subsequently carried out with Glaucon, with nary a peep from Adeimantus nor even any reference to his speech.
It is Socrates's manner to go the whole distance with his interlocutors. Although in truth Adeimantus was complaining in Book Two about his upbringing and not about poetry, the case of poetry, now that it had been brought up, deserves and receives an adequate treatment. Likewise, Glaucon's requirement in Book Two that Socrates in his analysis must ignore the rewards of being just, a requirement of the devil's advocate, will not be forgotten but will be redressed and repaired, now that they have come to see that justice is indeed good in herself (612BD). These subjects are the content of Book Ten.
CODA
A very influential commentator on the English text of the Republic tossed off the comment that in the Republic Thrasymachus is the only character Plato draws with any vividness, and that the interlocutors of the ensuing Books so lack dramatic characterization that the balance of the dialogue is virtually a monologue by Socrates. This reader has failed altogether to empathize with the candid confessions Glaucon and Adeimantus make at the beginning of Book Two, which constitute a voicing of moral neurosis asking to be healed more sincere and honest than anywhere in the Platonic corpus -- so much so that it would be scandalous for the author to put the confessions into anybody's mouths other than those of his own brothers. In comparison with them, Thrasymachus, for all his showy behavior, is the least interesting character in the story, not only because he is a one dimensional bombast unwilling to participate in the action except on his own terms, but more importantly because he is useless to the drama since he is unable to develop as a character.
END OF APPENDIX EIGHT
END OF A Commentary on Plato's Republic by Kenneth Quandt
© copyright Kenneth Quandt 2011