Lecture Twenty-Five Plato, Republic

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Lecture Twenty-Five Plato, Republic

• Lecturer Wu Shiyu

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Outline

• I. This lecture continues the theme of government
  and justice, especially the moral values that are
  essential to a good government. The model of
  Socrates, who insisted that terms be defined, can
  guide us through the great books. What do we
  really mean about the nobility of dying for ones
  country? How can nobility be defined?

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• A. Socrates, through Plato, would say that
  nobility is related to justice and to defining
  the concept of justice. Justice is one of a
  number of essential qualities, or virtues, that
  every individual should have. Socrates explored
  these qualities in his discussion of the immortal
  soul in the Phaedo.
• B. These qualities are found in a variety of
  cultures and are reflected in such diverse
  literature as the Bhagavad Gita and in Confucius.

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• C. These qualities include wisdom, justice,
  courage, and moderation.
• 1. Courage is, of course, essential for
  those who go to war.
• 2. An individual must have the wisdom to
  understand the difference between courage
  exercised in a just war and courage exercised in
  an unjust war. Without the wisdom to understand
  that a nation is fighting for justice, courage is
  nothing more than brutality.

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• 3. Moderation links the virtues. When any
  qualityeven courageis carried too far, it
  becomes unjust.
• 4. Courage, moderation, and wisdomworking
  togetherproduce true justice. That is the theme
  of Platos Republic.

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• II. Platos Republic, which is a magisterial
  discussion of what makes a good state, was
  probably composed during the 380s B.C.
• A. Plato was a pupil of Socrates and paid his
  teacher the greatest of compliments by putting
  all his own ideas into the mouth of Socrates,
  thereby indicating that none of his thinking
  would have existed without Socrates.

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• B. Although Plato is called a philosopher, he was
  an intellectual. Philosophers, such as Confucius
  and Socrates, live their wisdom intellectuals
  talk about ideas and try, from time to time, to
  put them into action.

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1. Plato, for example, went to Sicily and tried to
   help educate the young tyrant Dionysius. This
   attempt was a failure.
2. Platos contribution, in addition to his
   writings, was to create in Athens a university
   where lectures were held and young people were
   trained. Through this university, the ideas of
   Socrates were institutionalized.

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• C. Alfred North Whitehead said, All philosophy
  is but a series of footnotes to Plato.

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• III. The greatest of Platos works is the
  Republic.
• A. Like The Divine Comedy, Platos Republic is a
  difficult book to read.
• B. Like The Divine Comedy, it summarizes the
  values of a civilization at its apex. That
  civilization is the world of the polis, the
  city-state of classical Greece.

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• IV. Platos Republic is concerned with how to
  create a constitution that ensures justice for
  all citizens. Plato puts this discussion into the
  form of dialogues.

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• A. When the Republic begins, Socrates is
  returning from a religious festival in honor of
  the goddess Artemis. He stops to visit his friend
  Cephalus, who wonders about the afterlife,
  whether he has an immortal soul, what will happen
  to his soul, and whether good and bad behavior
  will have consequences. The two then begin to
  discuss justice.

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• B. The discussion starts with the conventional
  definition of justice, that is, rewarding friends
  and punishing enemies. Socrates, in the dialogues
  of Plato, often begins with a statement that
  everyone can accept.

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• C. Socrates then asks how a just man can do
  unjust things, even to his enemies. Socrates
  shows that the original definition is wrong. No
  good man would do harm to another.

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• D. One of the participants in the dialogue is
  Thrasymachus, a Sophist.
• 1. The true Sophist in Athens educated
  their students to argue either side of an issue.
• 2. To argue either side of a case
  successfully, an individual must be believe that
  the position is true. Therefore, the Sophist does
  not believe in absolute values.
• 3. For the Sophist, unlike for Socrates,
  truth is whatever is expedient at the moment.

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• E. Thrasymachus argues that justice is power.
  Justice is what the powerful can get away with,
  and laws are what the powerful put in place to
  serve their own interests thus, no such quality
  as justice can exist.
• 1. This idea was accepted in Athens.
  Athenian foreign policy during the war with
  Sparta rested on the belief that might makes
  right.

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• 2. For example, in 416 B.C., Athens had demanded
  that the neutral nation of Melos join the
  Athenian coalition. When Melos refused, Athens
  launched a preemptive attack, captured it, put
  its men to death, and sold its women and children
  into slavery. Athenians justified the destruction
  of Melos by claiming that Athens had power and
  that Melos could choose to join Athens and live
  or resist and die. When Melos appealed to the
  Athenian idea of justice, the Athenians said that
  justice did not exist.

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• F. Socrates attempts to help Thrasymachus
  understand that if justice is whatever the strong
  can do, unjust acts will make weaker people hate
  them. Eventually, the weaker groups will band
  together and overthrow those in power. Therefore,
  it is expedient for those in positions of power
  to act justly.

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• G. Socrates says that to define justice, the idea
  should be examined in a larger unit, such as the
  state, or polis.
• 1. Machiavelli was the first to use the
  term state (il stato) in its modern sense as a
  political unit separate from the people.
• 2. As a true democracy, the Athenian
  government cannot be separated from the idea of
  the people.

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• H. Socrates said that the city is a collection of
  individuals, each of whom has certain qualities
  that reflect absolute values. In the transcendent
  world, absolute wisdom, courage, and moderation
  exist. These qualities, working together, will
  create true justice.

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• I. Socrates next asks how to bring these
  qualities together in the proper blend to make
  the polis just.
• 1. Each person has a characteristic
  virtue, such as courage, moderation, or wisdom.
• 2. A community in which every individual
  is able to exercise his or her characteristic
  virtue intelligently in the service of the polis
  will be a just polis that exists for the good of
  all.
• 3. The state exists to serve the people,
  but the people must understand how the right kind
  of service is rendered.

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• J. Education is the means to bring about morality
  and to achieve the ideal government. Children
  must be examined at the earliest possible age to
  determine the qualities that they possess. They
  can then be educated. True education brings forth
  and cultivates the appropriate virtue of each
  citizen, educating each to suitable work in life.

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1. The strongest quality that most people possess is
   moderation. Those who possess moderation will
   form the basis of a community. They should be
   taught reading and writing, and they must
   understand that they should do whatever they do
   best and not aspire to other roles.
2. The people who are warriors at heart should be
   soldiers. They must be taught poetry to awaken
   the soul and gymnastics to train their bodies.

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• 3. A few people have the ability to lead. These
  guardians should have a long and elaborate
  education. Mathematics is an essential subject
  for these leaders, because they must keep their
  eyes fixed on absolute truth and justice. Numbers
  and geometry are ways to perfection.

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• K. Thus, the ideal republic rests on absolute
  values absolute truth and absolute right and
  wrong. Absolute wisdom and absolute ignorance
  exist, as do absolute justice and injustice,
  absolute courage and cowardice, absolute
  moderation and intemperance.

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• L. Plato concludes his magnificent work on
  justice with the myth of Er, who could be
  Everyman.
• 1. Er was killed in battle but was found
  alive 10 days later.
• 2. He explained that his soul had left
  his body and gone to heaven, where he saw the
  afterlife and the souls of those who had done
  evil cast into the deepest pit, from which they
  would never be free. He saw others who could be
  redeemed. After paying their penalties, these
  souls came before the Fates, received a new life,
  drank from the River of Forgetfulness, and
  returned to this world.

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• 3. These souls made a choice through their free
  will about how to live their lives.
• 4. Socrates ends his treatment of a just city
  with the belief in the immortality of the soul as
  the foundation of everything.

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