Plato: Bringing Justice to Light

Plato 429-347 BCERepublic, ca 370-60 BCE

First impressions

And self-promoting megalomaniac?

What sort of text is this?

• it’s not a novel (though it has characters and dialogue)

• it’s a work of Platonic philosophy in his characteristic form of dialogue where several characters argue a topic by asking questions of each other

• influenced strongly by Socrates & his method: elenchus or “test/refutation”

• but Plato anxious to transcend Socratic philosophy through his own “dialectics” (e.g. shift in emphasis from early part of Republic to its remainder)

• note: dialogue is not the same as dialectic

The Socratic Problem

• who was the real Socrates?

• how did he influence Plato?

• the original soul man: psyche

Politics and the soul

• Socratic & Platonic conceptions of the soul have deep political implications

• e.g. the “best life” (how we should live) will need to take account of what we actually are

• but for Plato we are trying to see in the dark

• Republic is an attempt to light the way to the best possible city (kallipolis)

Plato goes Meta

• Pre-Socratic philosophy looks only at the physical

• e.g. seeing and knowing is a huge challenge in Oedipus the King, but at least there is only one world

• play raises important questions around what a good ruler and good state looks like

• but Plato takes story to a whole new dimension

Polis (poleis): the political backstory

• in Oedipus the King Oedipus is warned by the Priest: “how much better to rule a city of men than be king over empty earth. A city is nothing, a ship is nothing where no men live together, where no men work together” (lines 76-9, p. 25)

• what is the background assumption here? what would Plato make of this statement?

• something natural about the state; polis is more than a spatial category

Aristotle’s zoon politikon

• “Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god” (Politics)

ThebesCorinth

Sparta

AthensThrasymachus

Many constitutions, but one polis

What’s the best sort of polis?

• Aristotle (Plato’s student) sets out to address this via comparative analysis (Politics)

• for Plato all existing constitutions are bad (though some better than others) so the best possible city can only arise from outside existing politics

• one is worse than than all others

• wants to provide a conception of justice that does not depend on conventions or narrow self-interest

Seeing through the darkness

• Plato defines justice as proper arrangements of the parts of the soul

• both individual (psyche) and city (constitution) have a soul

soulcity

The Platonic virtues

wisdom

courage

mod

erat

ion

just

ice

demos

How is this not simply a justification for elite rule?

• Plato is a philosopher who says philosophers should rule! (474 d, p. 166)

• why should we accept this?

• because it’s TRUE

Perfection was in the air• Athens in golden age

preferred idealized creations of human intelligence to the imperfect examples of nature

• e.g. sculptor Polyclitus changed body’s natural proportions in favour of modular proportion

• Protagoras: mitmoat

The meta-physics

• for Plato reality is a matter of degrees

• the world we “see” is not fully real

• he can see another world

19

Plato’s extramission theory: visual perception is accomplished by rays of light emitted by the eyes

20

Plato’s optics obviously wrong but play a major role in illustrating his position on reality

more on this next week

What must Plato try to prove?

• that justice has it’s own rewards

• it must be more than window dressing for ill-gotten wealth and power

• clearest in a strange story he tells early in the dialogue

Ring of Gyges: (2.359a–2.360d, p. 38)

Here as in most places the democratic state and soul is his target

• Gyges is a beast

• Thrasymachus is a beast (338 b, p, 14)

• rejection of sophistry

• the demos is a “many-headed monster” & “multiform beast” (493 b, p. 186; 588 e, p. 293)

Gyges today

Plato and democracy

• seen by many as our enemy

• “I wish to treat him with as little reverence as if he were a contemporary… advocate of totalitarianism,” Bertrand Russell

• The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato, 1971, Karl Popper

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So: the choice I have made May seem strange to you

But who asked you, anyway ? It's my life to wreck

My own way !

Alma Matters, Maladjusted, 1997

But Plato doesn’t understand individuals & their values in our way

• liberty = licence

• no intrinsic value to human life (we all have a function in a bigger entity)

• happiness is a collective idea (420 c, p. 103)

• equality is a collective idea

• liberty must have value (free to do something)

Final thoughts— Is this really a practical plan for an ideal state?

• theory versus practice, 472 d, p. 165

• and 473 a-b, p. 166