Class
Supplement Introducing Plato's Republic
Copyright (c)
2025 Bruce W. Hauptli
Plato’s
Republic was written in approximately 380
B.C.E. about five years after he founded his Academy in 385. It is intended
to advance
his view as to “how we ought to live” both as individuals and in society. For him,
the most important thing will be for us to be just, and, thus, he must
tell us what justice is! As I
have noted in lectures already, for Plato values arete “separate from the world.” As Christine Korsgaard notes, in her Excellence
and Obligation: A Very Concise
History of Western Metaphysics 387 BC to 1887 AD:”
Plato and Aristotle came to believe that
value was more real than experienced fact, indeed that the real
world is, in a way, value itself. They
came to see the world we experience as being, in its very essence, a world of
things that are trying to be much better than they are, and that really are
much better than they seem....Plato believed that the essence of a thing is the
form in which it participates. A thing’s
true nature and its perfect nature are one and the same. Form, which is value, is more real than the
things which appear to us to participate in but fall short of it. Aristotle believed that the actuality of a thing is its form, which
makes it possible for the thing to do what it does and therefore to be what it
is....For Plato and Aristotle, being guided by value is a matter of being
guided by the way things ultimately are.
In ethics, this way of viewing the
world leads to what we might call the idea of excellence. Being guided by the
way things really are is, in this case, being guided
by the way you really are. The form of a thing is its perfection, but it
is also what enables the thing to be what it is. So the endeavor to realize perfection is just
the endeavor to be what you arete to be good at being what you are. And so the ancients thought of human virtue
as a kind of excelling, of excellence.[1]
We are no longer at all puzzled about why the world, being
good, is yet not good. Because for us,
the world is no longer first and foremost form. It is matter. This is what I mean when I say that there has
been a revolution, and that the world has been turned
inside out. The real is no longer the
good. For us, reality is something hard, something which resists reason and
value, something which is recalcitrant to form.[2]
So
Plato wants to show us how to actualize the true value which is “to be guided
by the way we really are.” His pursuit
of knowledge here is not to provide us with “power over the world,” but,
rather, over ourselves as Michael Williams notes in his Problems of Knowledge: A Critical
Introduction to Epistemology:
for both ancients and moderns,
knowledge is power. But whereas for the
moderns this means power over the world, for the ancients it means power over
oneself.[3]
Of course, Plato does not believe that
society as it was constituted promotes such excellence
(or arete). In her Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform In Liberal
Education, Martha Nussbaum points out that:
...the reader knows what the
characters [in the Republic] do not know :that some years after the
peaceful scene of philosophical discussion depicted here, they will be
embroiled on opposing sides in a violent political conflict that will result in
death for three of them and risk of life for them all. A group of oligarchs known as the Thirty
Tyrants will seize power in Athens, led by members of Plato’s own family. Using slogans appealing to the notion of
justice (“we must cleanse the city of the unjust”), they will set about
enriching themselves in any way they can, arranging political charges against
wealthy citizens in order to seize their
property. Plato intends
his reader to recall a famous speech by the orator Lysias (a silent
character in the Republic, brother of
the prominent character Polemarchus) in which he describes the brutal murder of
his brother and his own narrow escape.
So great was the greed of the new antidemocratic rulers, he exclaims,
that they dragged Polemarchus’ wife out into the courtyard and ripped the gold
earrings out of her ears. And all the
while they said that their motive was justice.[4]
But
while Plato believes that individuals and states were almost
wholly inappropriately organized for the production of
arete, he believed we have no choice but to endeavor to change both together so as to instantiate the “ideal.” His strategy was to provide an argument for,
and characterization of, this ideal for us.
This is no small task.
Effectively Plato is going to try and tell you that his view of the
ideal state and individual identify what is, in fact, intrinsically
valuable.[5] Since it is unlikely many did, have,
or will value what he values, he clearly has an uphill battle! This is what makes his effort so
intellectually interesting!
Before we can talk about his argument, we
need to have a clearer initial understanding of the outlines of his
orientation. Toward this end, I will
offer “a racing car metaphor” harmony
and parts in the right order. Parts of the soul [psyche clarify “soul”]
and parts of the state.
-Parts?
-Harmony?
-Health and disease a
"psychoanalytic" metaphor.
In
the background his view involves at least the following as central linchpins:
-an acceptance of a “Tyranny of
Reason:”
-self-mastery vs. slavery.
-types of men--think of John Steinbeck’s
Of Mice and Men (Lenny and George).[6]
-a moral,
yet paternalistic, conception of the state.
Sailing ship metaphor and the choice of captain--once we have found such
a captain, would we ever choose to over-ride his/her orders?
-a
commitment to censorship--should he be in favor of it?
--In his “The Reason Why Not,” Stuart Hampshire maintains that:
in The
Republic, Plato suggested that the need for justice arises from an
individual’s experience of inner conflict and that morality enters as a
negative force which prohibits unworthy desires. With their domain extended to social
conflicts, justice and morality retain their essential negative character; they
act, according to Plato, as a shield against the disruption and chaos of
uncontrolled conflicts in the city. For
the tyranny of Plato’ philosophic wisdom we should substitute the fairness in
public argument which always hears both sides in adversary reasoning, before
deciding between them. In all concerns
about what we owe to others it is just and reasonable
to be open to both sides in a conflict and to balance conflicting moral claims
against each other.[7]
--In his Wheels in the Head: Educational Philosophies of Authority, Freedom, and
Culture from Socrates to Human Rights, Joel Spring draws out what he takes
to be the core authoritarian character of Plato’s educational process, and he
critiques Plato’s rejection of democracy:
using
education to train individuals to sacrifice for the common good is premised on the belief that the common good can be defined by some element of the
state. In Plato’s Republic, philosopher-kings define the common good, while in
Makarenko’s Soviet state the role is given to the Communist party.[8] Of course, people must be taught to believe
that the ruling group has the ability and authority to know the common
good. This type of education is aided by the use of patriotic
exercises and the development of martial spirit, both of which are designed to link personal emotions to a belief in the
ability of the state to proclaim the common good. In other words, people learn to love to sacrifice their self-interest for the common good as
defined by the state.
Of course, the flaw in this argument is the belief that particular individuals or groups have the ability and
authority to know what is good for the rest of the population. In most cases, what is
defined as the common good is really what is good for the group making
the definition.[9]
Two
Interpretations of the Republic:
In
discussing the Republic, I will present two divergent readings of the text, and you should decide whether one or the other is the more plausible:
The “Aristocratic” reading: paternalism, the authoritarian
state, and the social correlate of “self-mastery.”
The “Democratic” reading: the Republic as an
owner’s manual for the psyche--everyone is capable of self-mastery.
A specific view of the role of education:
Go
to Midcoast Senior College Webpage
I greatly appreciate comments and corrections--typos and infelicities are all too common and the curse of "auto-correct" plagues me!
File revised on 01/20/26
[1] Christine Korsgaard,
“Excellence and Obligation: “A Very Concise History of Western Metaphysics
387 BC to 1887 AD,” in The Sources of
Normativity, ed. Onora O’Neill (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1996), pp. 1-5,
pp. 2-3. Emphasis added to the passage
(bold and highlight).
[2] Ibid., pp. 4-5.
[3] Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology,
Michael Williams (N.Y.: Oxford U.P., 2001), p. 9.
[4] Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating
Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform In Liberal Education (Cambridge:
Harvard U.P., 1997), pp 22-23.
[5] An intrinsically valuable
goal, or activity, is one that is pursued for its own sake. Such values are contrasted with extrinsic values--here the goal or
activity is valued for what it will allow one to achieve. Health, for example, might be intrinsically
valuable (good-in-itself), while wealth is usually conceived of as
extrinsically valuable (good-for-what-it-can-get-us).
[6] Cf., John Steinbeck, Of Mice
and Men (N.Y.: Covici-Friede, 1937).
[7] Stuart Hampshire, “The
Reason Why Not,” New York Review of Books
v. 46 (April 22, 1999), pp. 21-23, p. 22.
[8] Anton Makarenko was the leading Soviet theoretician of education under
Joseph Stalin's rule, and was, perhaps, the most famous of Soviet educators. He developed and advanced a pedagogy meant to
promote a self-governing child employing educational collectives for street
children and children who were orphans because of the Russian revolution. He argued there should be integration between
the activities of the many educational institutions (schools, families,
productive collectives, and both public and private organizations. In its article on him Wikipedia
maintains that: “among his key ideas were “as much exigence towards the person as possible and as
much respect for him as possible,” the use of positive peer pressure on the
individual by the collective; and institutionalized self-government and
self-management of that collective.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Makarenko
accessed 01/28/15). The article goes
on to note that: “like most things Soviet, Makarenko's ideas came under heavy
criticism after the fall of communism. His system has been accused of many of
the same supposed faults as Soviet Communism in general, such as giving the child
collective too much power over the individual child.”
[8] Joel Spring, Wheels in the Head: Educational Philosophies of Authority, Freedom, and Culture from Socrates to Human Rights (second edition) (N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, 1999), p. 12. Anton Makarenko was the leading Soviet theoretician of education under Joseph Stalin's rule.