The Figure of the Divided Line, from Allan Bloom as
modified Charles Don Keyes,
http://www.duq.edu/~keyes/bpq/begin.html,
Copyright by Charles Don Keyes, 1998
Assignment:Read “Republic” — in the assigned version or a version of your choice. There are many translations and editions to choose from; the assigned edition (trans. Waterfield, OUP paperback) is modestly priced and benefits from a couple centuries of interesting in doing an accurate rendering of Plato's “biggie” into something that makes sense in English. The old standby is Jowett's edition; this is cheap, and Jowett really was a brilliant scholar; there are concerns about nuance (and after all, Jowett was at the beginning of the modern push for Plato translation; people build on him, but claim, at least, to go beyond him...). I will probably have reference to Shorey's translation in the Loeb Classical Library; this is also the translation in Hamilton & Cairns, Plato: The Collected Dialogues. The Big Noise translation — from the late-'70s or early-'80s? — was that of Allan Bloom; it was controversial, because Bloom was controversial. If you get deeply into “Republic”, you will need to pay attention to this translation — both strengths and weaknesses. Keep in mind, all translation involves interpretation; this is particularly difficult with Plato, because he was a stylist, and in Greek, that can mean a single sentence can — often does — carry nuances. In the Attic Greek of Plato's Athens, this is particularly true; the grammar is a subtle thing and Plato uses it with deftness. You may want to find some commentaries on this book; there are many both online and in print. Also, this is a good time to suggest you look for Eduard Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, if you are finding some of this rough going. Zeller was Hot Stuff. |
I am going to take a different approach to this presentation. I am not going to do as much of the text-critical stuff as I did (or, such as I did, since I really didn't push it...) in the discussion of “Euthyphro” and (much less) in “Crito”. Part of this is, we don't have time
What I will do, then, is highlight some things I want you to be thinking about as you read “Republic” — some main lines that other people have thought important, or things that I think are interesting.
You may want to pursue this further, by looking at Plato's later dialogue, “Statesman”. You need not read “Statesman” (I think it is a fascinating dialogue, at least in parts), but should you choose to, I recommend using the Skemp translation as amended, in Hamilton & Cairns (op. cit.); again, any reasonable edition will do (the Loeb Classical Library edition of “Statesman” is available online, in both English and Greek).
If you want a good reason for doing this: Well, there is the whole question of what is right and just in Euthyphro/Apology/Crito; this is also part of what is going on in Republic; Statesman is sort of the acme of Plato's view of the matter (we will leave out Laws — mainly because I have no coherent view on the matter). Many of the themes — specialization, most importantly, and the nature of the ruler's specialization, in particular — are developed in detail in “Statesman”. This is a very
The opening question is, what is justice? What is right and how is that determined? The protagonist at the beginning is Thrasymachus; he teaches wisdom for money. [That means, he is one of the guys that Socrates inherently distrusts; one of the great puzzles is, the people who most condemned Socrates also distrust the New Philosophy of the Sophists, and include Socrates as one of their number — a view Socrates and his friends reject.]
The Sophistry market — as we might call it today — was young men seeking a career in politics, people who needed sharp (and perhaps, merely clever) thinking to make a case. One of the reasons for including Socrates among the Sophists had been that one of his early followers was Alcibiades, who later went on to a particularly nasty political career. We would tend to call the popular lines in Sophistry such things as moral relativism or purely practical politics — if it works, it's good. Tremendous variations are available within these parameters; only some of them are overly cynical and morally dubious. Some are very interesting and quite compelling ways of thinking about what is virtuous.
Keep in mind, the common word for “law” in Greek is nomoV. That word includes the idea of “custom” and “maxim” — that is, the kinds of rules that arise from ordinary practice and are then given the force of law by time, as much as any act of formal legislation. It is perfectly sensible, in such a case, to assert that what works, is right. Given the history of the Greeks, and the strongly patriarchal character of late-Archaic Greek society, the idea that what works is what is backed by force (another sense of “virtue” — look up the etymology of the word...), is not something that would seem strange to the Greek mind. It is a compelling perspective, and one we have before us today: Notice that the United States' principal argument for extending its very strange (and generally, not easily transplanted or implemented) form of republic to the benighted peoples of the rest of the world (!...) is, we are bigger and stronger, the world's last super-power.
[This is a very different way of thinking about what is right, than is a view that stems from the Roman, Latin-speaking tradition. The Latin word for “law” is lex. This is very definitely tied to the concept of something made deliberately by men to order their society, and superseding the merely customary usage. Something to think about in that; also consider the peculiar shift in U. S. thinking: We were a nation of laws, in this very Roman sense. The nation emerged from the legislation of a deliberative body (the Declaration of Independence); it was constituted twice by legislation (the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution). It is useful to recall, the model of “republic” that predominated in the 18th century (I am less certain about the 19th century) was Roman, not Greek; if you are interested in this, take a look at Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws. It's somewhat involved, but fairly accessible.]
Socrates takes up the challenge; he aims to show that what is just is right and proper on its own, and not just by convention. That is to say, it is not just something that arises from common practice, nor from agreement among men in the Assembly, but is something that stands on its own, that we perceive and implement as a practice because of some inherent quality.
Plato's answer lies in a concept of special abilities. First, he asserts, some people have special abilities. A farmer is one whose speciality is husbandry. A cobbler is a specialist in making shoes. A soldier is a specialist in warfare. And so on. Rulers are specialists in the skills of organizing and running the polity. Justice, in the usual sense, is something appropriate to the polity, and so is the province of rulers. [ArcontaV but more especially, kubernhthV — the first means “leader” or “first”, but the second is more “steersman”; I have not checked the Greek text to see which of these Plato may be using; I can be reasonably sure, however, he would have been aware of these and other related terms, would have been sensitive to the nuances, and would have assumed as much for his audience.]
Plato makes an analogy, between the specialists in the city, and the specialization of the parts of the individual. This is significant, because this division within the individual becomes an important element in a lot of later thinking. This includes the very important problem of the relation of mind and body, a discussion that is particularly acute at the moment, but which pervades all Western thought from very early times. [At least one modern neuroscientist, V. S. Ramachandran, seems to suggest that this (and prior elements required for such a view) may originate as survival traits. I need to research this more carefully; anyone who wants to begin looking at this for a paper topic — not a bad idea....] Not only are we bodies, but we have souls; the soul itself is not indivisible; one element of soul is appetitive, one is emotional (it seeks honor and so on), and one is rational, seeking truth and knowledge. This is not all that unique; other cultures (to which Greek thinking may have some indebtedness, such as the Egyptian culture) have spoken thus of different immaterial elements in the individual.
Plato now needs to show that a form or idea (this is not what we mean by “idea”; it is an intellectual appearance, more in the sense of the real nature of the thing; we will need to think about this again, in connection with morjh — more the physical appearance or shape of a thing) is more accessible to the specialist, and that some specialists see more profoundly than others. He is faced with a very real problem here: By their very nature, forms (ideas, in this special use of the word) are not tangible, so he can't just point to them. Moreover, he wants to make a case that perceiving them is not something everyone can do. He resorts to allegories.
In the allegory of the cave, Plato says most of us are like those who see only the shadows of things — the presentation of reality as shadows cast on the wall of the cave. But imagine what might happen if one of those chained in the cave gets free and can turn and see the actual things and the source by which the shadows are cast: Would not such a person see and understand more? As this freed person progresses further, emerging from the cave, he sees more and more the real nature of things — the forms which are seen merely as shadows (representations) cast on the wall of the cave and more commonly visible to the ordinary run of folks.
Plato refines this most homely example, with a more involved one, the Figure of the Divided Line.
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Below the heavy line, the emoting soul grasps images through the senses, and gives them meaning in imagination. That is, our ordinary reality (and this really may be just that) is an imaginative construction from representations in consciousness. Even if we free ourselves from the everyday emotional construction — like the prisoner just freed, turning in the cave, we have only moved to a belief that what we imagine is really real.
Only emerging from the cave (as it were), moving above the line, do we begin to see that these particulars (first sensed vaguely, then more clearly upon reflection) are particular expressions of something more universal — the “idean” (that is, the ideas taken as a type, of which the physical shapes with which we deal normally in the ordinary course of things are expressions — shapes or forms in the more physical, experienced sense (morjh). We can reason about the idean, we can represent them more precisely in ways that are no longer particular, but can be shown to be universally the case.
You might think of these phases like this: I can think of no one who does not accept that it is possible to sit in a chair, and that the chair is solid, and will support weight and so. Wee children do this, and they quickly move to seeing that some images are like other images, at least enough so, that they can recognise a chair when they see one. Even some animals do this; chimpanzees, for example, are tool-users, and can generalize the toolness of, e. g., a twig, from one instance to another. Children and chimpanzees (and all the rest of us) imagine the use first, and they trust the generalization from one similar object to the next.
Physicists and chemists and other natural scientists and others get behind this, and can tell you how this is possible; they can explain mathematically the form of chairness, if you like, and the nature of a stator machine (which, in a certain sense, is what a chair is...). If most of the time, most of us are like those chained in the cave, seeing only shadows, or those who have shed chains and turning, see the objects outside the cave, and the glow behind them which causes the shadows, thinkers (what we would call scientists) are those who have actually left the cave and can get at these objects (that is, the forms of specific things — could we call them types?...) which cast the shadows, and can form general explanations for the things the folks still in the cave perceive only as ever-changing, particular shadows.
Plato says, this is not really the most profound knowledge. Mathematical explanation, though more universal than belief, is inferior to that pure intellectual perception of the forms, the purely idean, themselves. This is, we are told, as if, having emerged from the cave, now able to see not just the things which are casting shadows within, we turn to perceive the sun, which stands behind the things casting shadows proper, and is the ultimate condition of those shadows. This is the ultimate form, the Form of the Good. It is the philosopher who is able to best perceive this, and is thus the best fitted to make the kinds of judgments suited to the good of the polity.
[There is a lot of mischief that results from this allegory. The Form of the Good becomes The One, from which proceeds/derives/emanates (depending on which spiritual track you follow) the Many, which in turn incarnate in things. Eventually, might they not return to The One? Isn't it unfortunate that The One become Many? Isn't that a sort of — decline?... — from goodness toward, at least, something less than Good? Just about every religion originating in any part of the world influenced by the Greeks and the Romans (both Christian orthodoxy and all the heterodoxies and most of the heresies start right here; also all the Jewish heresies and some of the various Islamic errors). If you are interested in pursuing this line of thought, you would want to read “Theætetus”, then move into the various NeoPlatonic writers and the Gnostics. The NeoPlatonists worked harder at sticking to Plato; the Gnostics generally just plastered a veneer of Greek respectability over a Middle Eastern mysticism.]
It would seem, on the basis of this, that Plato has moved away from the initial question — what is justice and how is it possible?
Instead, we are provided with a grand picture of what is really real (the Form of the Good, emanating into forms of things, which are incarnated in particular things). We are given some insight into how these things are known. That is, we have at least a sketch (not more than that, really) of what is later called “metaphysics” or “First Philosophy — that is, an attempt to answer the question, “what is it, to be?” (which is more accurate than “what is being?” — ti to on; is the Greek). It is also an attempt to show how we come to understand the answer to this question — at least a philosophical psychology, and perhaps even an epistemology.
However, the answers are set out as a story. It is done in the context of a description of a polity's organization. We are told this is part and parcel with a bunch of “noble lies”. Whoops! Are lies good? What do they have to do with with Truth?
You should review the development of these ideas, and ask yourself, how satisfactory is this? You should also ask, how much of the problem lies in the audience to which Plato is directing this text? This is a more or less popular work. It is not a treatise; it is not aimed at professionals in the Academy. It is aimed at the average educated layperson. Moreover, it may have even been deliberately couched in fairly obscure language; certainly, later Platonists were not averse to making a distinction between esoteric and exoteric teachings.
Generally, Books 1 & 2 are refutations of common views of what constitutes justice: The might-makes-right view of Thrasymachus, the traditionalist view of Cephalus, and the social contract views espoused by Glaucon (possibly, Plato's older brother?) and Adeimantus.
Books 3-7 are a description of the just polity and contain the concepts discussed at length above.
Books 8-10 pick up after the digression on the allegories and so on, and return to the description of just and unjust polities.