The Republic

“…it has to be the art of giving benefit and harm to friends and enemies respectively.” 

Polemarchus attempts to define morality in response to Socrates’ question. He repeats the conventional view that it is about helping those close to you. However, this definition rests on the shaky premise that we always necessarily choose good friends.

“Suppose there were two such rings, then—one worn by our moral person, the other by the immoral person.” 

Glaucon uses a myth to outline the cynical position that morality is a form of self-justification on the part of people too weak or cowardly to be immoral. The myth is about a magic ring that gives its wearer the power to turn invisible. Glaucon wonders whether an ostensibly moral person would act differently to the immoral one if he were given the ring. 

“Suppose we were rather short-sighted and had been told to read small writing from a long way off, and then one of us noticed the same letters written elsewhere in a larger size and on a larger surface.”

Socrates uses an analogy to explain his procedure for addressing the question of morality. Namely, he will examine the make-up of the ideal community as a metaphor for the ideal mind. This will then allow him to understand the mind more clearly and assess whether mortality is conducive to it flourishing.

“…isn’t this exactly the fodder you’d lay on if you were devising a community for pigs?” 

Socrates describes the emergence of human society from economic need and a basic division of labour. Glaucon criticises the limited nature of this first form of human organisation by likening it to a community for animals. This leads Socrates to imagine what would be needed if this society became more complex and had greater material and cultural wants.

“All things considered, then, that is why a very great deal of importance should be placed on ensuring the first stories they hear are best adapted for their moral improvement.”

Socrates is describing the education system for guardians. These are the caste of professional soldiers whose job is to defend the community. He stresses that literature in their education should promote the virtues necessary for their role and discourage immorality. Inevitably this leads to much literature being censored, including Homer and Hesiod.

“…there is no aspect of their work as guardians which they shall be so good at or dedicated to as watching over the admixture of elements in the minds of the community.”

The more advanced community is now divided up into three castes, corresponding to three grades of metal. The higher guardians, or rulers, are gold, the auxiliary guardians, silver, and the workers and farmers, copper. Even though only couples of the same caste can have children, some children are sometimes born who are of a different metal than their parents. One of the jobs of the guardians is to ensure that when this happens the child is relocated to the appropriate part of the community.

“In the second place, none of them is to have living-quarters and storerooms which are not able to be entered by anyone who wants to.” 

More of the specific details of the guardians’ lives is described. They will not be allowed private property or wealth. In addition, they will have no exclusively private space. This is to foster a true form of communal living.

“…we’re not constructing our community with the intention of making one group within it especially happy, but to maximise the happiness of the community as a whole.”

Glaucon raises the objection that, obliged to live austere lives, the guardians will not be happy. Socrates’ responds by saying that the overall happiness of the community, not that of individual groups or persons, is what matters. Further, they will find happiness in participating in a harmonious social whole.

“…once he has bound all the factors together and made himself a perfect unity instead of a plurality, self-disciplined and internally attuned.” 

Socrates draws some conclusions about the mind from the make-up of the ideal state. The ideal mind should be coherent and unified. The different elements of the self should work harmoniously together.

“That there’s to be no such thing as private marriage between these women and these men: all the women are to be shared among all the men.”

Socrates moves on to discuss sexual relations in the ideal community. To prevent jealousy and possessiveness there will be no private relationships or families. Children will grow up not knowing who their biological parents are. This is, again, to promote a sense of community.

“Unless communities have philosophers as kings’ I said, ‘or the people who are currently called kings and rulers practice philosophy.” 

The condition necessary for the concrete and historical realisation of Plato’s ideal community. Much attention has focused on the alleged implausibility, or immorality, of philosophers founding a state. However, Socrates’ second suggestion, that kings start practicing philosophy, is often overlooked and is perhaps more realistic.

“…you’d better expect hordes of people… to fling off their clothes (so to speak), pick up the nearest weapon, and rush naked at you with enough energy to achieve heroic feats.” 

Glaucon describes the likely reaction of most people to the idea of the philosopher king. He suggests anger, disbelief, and a desire to attack the person who suggested this system. This is both because most people do not understand philosophy, and because they have had bad experience with the people who call themselves philosophers. 

“…here’s a situation which you can use as an analogy for the human condition- for our education or lack of it.” 

Socrates introduces his famous allegory of the cave. In it, people are tied up with their heads facing away from the entrance, only able to observe the shadows cast by a fire on the cave wall. It is a metaphor for the passivity and slavery that follow from an unwillingness to pursue truth.

“And imagine him being dragged forcibly away from there up the rough, steep slope.” 

In Plato’s allegory, a man is untied from his bondage and forced up toward the cave entrance. The fact that they are coerced suggests that the movement towards truth and understanding cannot be done alone and requires another’s help. The rough steep slope also suggests that, at least at first, this process will seem difficult and painful.

“…in order to facilitate the mind’s turning away from becoming and towards truth and reality.” 

Socrates describes the purpose of the educational curriculum for philosopher kings. They should study mathematics, geometry, and dialectics. However, the emphasis should be on abstract principles and ideas, which Socrates considers closer to the truth of things than perceivable phenomenon.

“That a community of this kind can’t be single: it’s inevitably divided into the haves and the have not-nots.” 

In Socrates’ taxonomy of human societies, what he calls oligarchy comes after aristocracy and timarchy. This is a materialistic community which values money highly. One of the problems with oligarchy, which is really a plutocracy, is that it creates large disparities of wealth and power. Under such conditions it is impossible for there to be true social harmony.

“That anyone who tastes even a single morsel of human entrails mixed in among those of other sacrificial offerings is bound to become a wolf.” 

Following oligarchy comes democracy then dictatorship. Here, Socrates explains how one transitions into the other. A demagogue is elected by championing the people. However, the desire to hold onto power, and to defend himself against enemies, causes him to make use of violence, for instance by executing political opponents. This will precipitate a downward spiral of murder, oppression and immorality that evolves inevitably into dictatorship.

“Oppression and servitude must pervade his mind, with the truly good parts of it being oppressed, and an evil, crazed minority doing the oppressing.”

Socrates draw an analogy between the dictatorial state and the dictatorial mind. In the former, an oppressive minority dominates the good, moral, aspects of the community, reducing them to servitude. Likewise, in the latter, the good rational aspect of the mind is at the mercy of, and subordinated to, lust and unhinged physical desire.

“All the same… in some way or other they involve escape from pain.” 

Part of Socrates’ criticism of physical pleasures, like alcohol or sex. Such pleasures, especially the more intense ones, involve the escape from physical pain or the pain of unsatiated desire. Thus, dependent on a prior state of pain, they are inferior to the purer pleasures of the mind.

“…subjection to the principle of divine intelligence is to everyone’s advantage. It’s best if this principle is part of a person’s own nature, but if it isn’t, it can be imposed from outside.”

Socrates is suggesting that people can, if necessary, be forced to accept the dominance of reason and morality in their lives. This will be achieved by a twofold process. Their animal side will be punished, then their tame side liberated. Socrates does not specify what this punishment will look like.

“But it looks as though the whole genre of poetry deforms its audience’s minds.” 

The start of Socrates’ final attack on art and poetry, and his justification for banning poets from the ideal state. Poetry on the one hand undermines reason, because it encourages us to identify with representations and illusions. At the same time, it nurtures the emotional and irrational aspects of the self.

“Don’t you realize that our mind is immortal and never dies?” 

Socrates reveals to Glaucon his belief in the immortality of the mind. This is, in part, motivated by the desire to claim that morality is rewarded in the afterlife. However, Socrates’ argument, relying on the premise that things can only be destroyed by a specific defect, seems somewhat fallacious. 

“…the souls from heaven had only wonderful experiences and incredibly beautiful sights to recount.” 

Socrates gives a description of the afterlife, via a warrior who died, went to the underworld, and was resurrected to tell the tale. The immoral people are punished in hades in tenfold proportion to their crimes. Conversely, moral people ascend to heaven and are rewarded tenfold in proportion to their goodness.