Plato’s city-soul analogy: the slow train to ordinary virtue

2017

Plato's <em>Republic, </em>as the dialogue is known in English, is a classic, perhaps <em>the </em>classic investigation of the reasons why human beings form political communities —or "cities" in his terms. In the <em>Republic</em> Socrates inquires into the origins of the city in order to discover what justice "writ big" is. But in the process of constructing his "city"—or, actually, "cities"—" in speech," Socrates does not offer us a definition of justice so much as he shows us the reasons why no actual city is ever apt to be perfectly just. From Plato's <em>Republic </em>we thus understand why justice is difficult, if not impossible to achieve for communities, but may be a virtue of private individuals.

2013

Rhizomata, 2021

One puzzling feature of Plato’s Republic is the First City or ‘city of pigs’. Socrates praises the First City as a “true”, “healthy” city, yet Plato abandons it with little explanation. I argue that the problem is not a political failing, as most previous readings have proposed: the First City is a viable political arrangement, where one can live a deeply Socratic lifestyle. But the First City has a psychological corollary, that the soul is simple rather than tripartite. Plato sees this ‘First Soul’ as an inaccurate model of moral psychology, and so rejects it, along with its political analogue.

Biopolitics and Ancient Thought, 2022

Politics in our daily life: Issues about Democracy and Plato's Ideal Society In our world where power is everything, many people want to grasp what they don't know how to control and how to achieve. We are blinded by the power just like the light from the sun. Thus, making us live an unworthy life. Politics can make individuals Kings or Servants. It drives people to do things-that we must not. Politics controls the society, either bringing a society to flourish or destruction through abusing the power. We may not feel the effect of power in politics, maybe because of our privileged lives, and we might also have the power to live a comfortable life. But many of us can't, and live a miserable life. Not just because they are lazy, and not working hard enough, but because of injustices inside the country we lived in. The abuse of power is the main reason why some of us are living in poverty. And I think this is enough reason for everyone to be concerned and study politics. Throughout history, Politics is a display of power. From Kings and Queens, and Lords and Captains. They can command the entire republic or kingdom for themselves. Thus, they can also bring the kingdom to its destruction. Aside from kings and Queens, the rulers of a Monarchy, Athens reiterate a new kind of politics, they introduce the Democracy. And the

Apeiron, 2013

Three problems threaten any account of philosophical rule in the Republic. First, Socrates is supposed to show that acting justly is always beneficial, but instead he extols the benefits of having a just soul. He leaves little reason to believe practical justice and psychic justice are connected and thus to believe that philosophers will act justly. In response to this problem, I show that just acts produce just souls. Since philosophers want to have just souls, they will act justly. Second, Socrates’ alleged aim is to demonstrate that justice is beneficial, but philosophers, who have to give up a life of philosophy to rule, actually appear to be harmed by ruling. I explain that, since the founders of the city justly command them to rule, philosophers cannot, in fact, obtain a better life, and so ruling does not harm them. Third, it seems incongruous that philosophers, who should, as just people, jump at the opportunity to rule Kallipolis, must be compelled to rule. I show that Plato carefully constructs an educational system that produces rulers who do not want to rule, since such rulers alone will rule best.

Socrates says it is easier to examine the nature of justice in a city as it is larger than a soul to observe. Thus he draws an analogy between a city and a soul. Socrates begins to explain the making of a city with regard to different types of people and crafts they need to make an ideal city. Gradually they identify the necessity of education in the city in order to cultivate the required values, spirit and culture in the people of the city. The ideal city will also require a class of people to guard it, the guardians. The guardians must be raised from among the people of the city, by training children by carefully providing them with an education in music and poetry to enrich their souls and physical exercises to strengthen their body. As children’s minds are most malleable, representation of gods in poor images and deplorable acts as heroic acts will distort their souls. Thus, poetry that the children of the city get to hear must be good literature lest they will be made morally degenerate and evil. Hence there must be a censoring of the music and poetry in the ideal city so that no bad literature gets produced and circulated in it.

Eastern Christianity and Late Antique Philosophy, 2020

Becoming like God by reading Plato After Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, every school of philosophy took one of the central tasks of ethics to be the specification of the telos at which our actions aim and the nature of eudaimonia. Though Plato's works pre-date the Ethics, it is not too difficult to see the Aristotelian idea of a telos or goal of living implicit in the Republic. 1 After all, the point of this work is to show that the truly just man is happier than the unjust man-even an unjust man who enjoys a good reputation-by inquiring into the nature of justice. The case for the happiness of the just man is not prosecuted by explicitly identifying what happiness is and then showing that he enjoys more of it than the unjust man. Rather, Plato's Republic offers rich portraits of different possible psychic and civic constitutions. The argumentative force of the dialogue relies on the reader sharing a preconception of what a happy life should be like with the characters in the dialogue. The freedom from internal dissension that is characteristic of both the just person and the just city is never argued to be the font of a notion of happiness that is explicitly articulated. Rather, the lack of internal dissension is shown to be the source or basis of many features of an individual's life (or of our collective political lives) that the participants in the dialogue value. Moreover, lives (and cities) that diverge from the ideal of unity found in the just person are taken to be unhappier the greater N.B. All references to classical texts are from the Loeb Classical Library (LCL). Titles and authors are abbreviated according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary List, https://oxfordre.com/classics/page/abbreviation-list/ 1 Irwin 2007, 114-116. This observation about the continuity of Plato's ethical project with Aristotle and the dominance of Aristotle's framework for subsequent theorists is now part of received wisdom in magisterial overviews such as Irwin's book. the internal dissension and lack of harmony that is involved. This is presented as at least one of the major reasons why these lives or these are ineffective and unhappy. So even if the exact nature of psychic or communal flourishing is left undefined, there is little doubt that unity plays a central role in securing it. 2 In light of the starring role that psychic harmony plays in Plato's dialogue, it would not be unreasonable for a modern reader to respond to the question, "If the writer of the Republic had addressed himself to the topic in the style of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, what would he have identified as the telos?" with the answer "psychic harmony". The role of harmony among the different parts of the soul in showing why the life of the just person is happier than that of the unjust man lends a certain plausibility to the thought that eudaimonia is simply to be identified with psychic harmony even if that identification is not guaranteed by Plato's text. It might then come as something of a surprise to learn that ancient Platonists from the 2 nd century onwards used the Aristotelian framework and identified the goal of living with likeness to god rather than psychic harmony. 3 In reaching this conclusion, they gave pride of place to a text that Socrates himself identifies as a digression from the main argument in the Theaetetus. Socrates: But it is impossible that evils should be done away with, Theodorus, for there must always be something opposed to the good; and they cannot have their place among the gods but must inevitably hover about mortal nature and this earth. Therefore we ought to try to escape from earth to the 2 Of course, there are also other reasons why the just person is better off. So famously Book IX argues that the pleasures of the just philosopher in whom reason rules are superior to those in whom other parts of the soul dominate. This seems to be a result of the nature of the objects after which these souls strive. The things that philosophers seek to "fill their souls with" nourish the best part of us with the things that are truly real. 3 Since the turn of the century some scholars have assessed this idea as a genuine reading of