Republic Books VIII & IX

I want to point out two themes, for lack of a better term, in Books VIII and IX of the Republic that I would like to discuss in class. First, I found Socrates's discussion of how people within a democracy think about and use the notion of Freedom extremely germane for contemporary Americans. How many times, for example, did President George W. Bush claim that the US had the responsibility to spread democracy across the world, because God created human beings to be "Free"? When our soldiers and intelligence agencies did not find WMDs, Bush et. al. emphatically emphasized the need for the Iraqi people to live in Freedom and to establish a democracy. It seemed to me that this line of reasoning encouraged people to see (1) Freedom as a (or perhaps the) value of ultimate importance, (2) Democracy as the form of government that could foster freedom, and (3) that securing freedom for others is one of the most significant responsibilities that nations and their citizens have. One of the things that troubles me about this is that Bush et. al. never explained what they mean by "freedom." Nor, for that matter, did they ever really explain why it is worth the loss of human life to secure, even if it is the freedom of another. As Socrates argues, this is no small matter. Socrates points out that within democracies, citizens often think that freedom means no one and nothing can have authority over them. He mentions that those in leadership positions within a democracy often "tip-toe" around making imperatives. They fear the back lash that would ensue if their fellow citizens thought that they were infringing upon their freedom. I have encountered these patterns of behavior and ways of thinking everywhere I have lived. Yet, as I think Socrates's ironically points out, this view of freedom is inimical to human beings. On the one hand, it is inimical because it is a false view of freedom (likewise, its family conception in Sartre is false). Human beings simply do not have capital "F" freedom. We are contingent creatures with personal histories, familial relations, desires, etc. that shape us. I am not here endorsing determinism. Rather, I am saying that we have to recognize the limitations and influences that shape and direct human lives. On the other hand, it seems like Socrates believes that it is inimical because he thinks that human beings do not thrive apart from hierarchical relationships. Humans need guidance and leaders. This applies throughout their lives. Families, business, militaries,clubs, community groups, and so forth all require some sort of hierarchical structure to flourish. So whereas Socrates agrees that freedom is important, he both rejects the view of freedom that many within a democracy embrace for the reasons we have mentioned, and he proposes instead that human beings seek a freedom that is not equivalent to autonomy and extreme egalitarianism. I think all of these points are germane for us Americans who live in a "democracy" (that we do not actually live in a democracy but still have many who share the view of freedom that Socrates condemns are issues for another discussion). The second theme I would like to talk about in class is the development of the tyrant. In particular, I am interested in seeing how Socrates's discussion relates to the malformation of people like Thrasymachus and Callicles. While I do not think that either of these people are straightforwardly tyrants, I do believe that it is important for us to see the similarities between their views about justice, for example, and those that Socrates claims tyrants come to have. Do these men come from democratically run cities? Did they have the sorts of fathers that Socrates says the tyrant has? If their upbringing is different than that of a tyrant, why do they come to hold "tyrannical-like" views? I believe that this question is particularly pertinent given Socrates's claim that human beings, including those who become tyrants, do not start off with malformed natures. Thus its would seem that nurture is where the problem lies. Yet how does this account for what, at least I take to be, the prevalent love of money that Socrates rebukes? Or the tendency of "young people" to get carried away by their passions? Is this something that they learn, or is it something that they naturally have/develop apart from human inculcation? In short, how do non-tyrants become so tyrannical?

Republic Books V, VI, & VII

I had forgotten just how crammed full of rich, dense, complex, and important philosophical concepts are in Books V-VII of the Republic. In Book V Plato addresses the "three waves": (1)his claim about the basic equality between men and women; (2) his claim that "women are to belong in common to all the men, that none are to live privately with any man, and that the children, too, are to be possessed in common, so that no parent will know his own offspring or any child his parent"(457cff); and (3) his claim that the city will remain deeply flawed (to put it mildly) until it has a King who is a philosopher. In Book VI Plato details the qualities and strengths of a philosopher that make him well suited to be a king. In so doing he puts several misconceptions of philosophers to rest. Yet he also highlights the extremely fragile nature of philosophers. Plato then moves into a discussion of the Good, and ends Book VI with the famous "divided line" illustration and begins Book VII with the famous analogy of the cave. Book VII continues with a detailed discussion of the training and education of the philosopher so that he can rule over the city. Having provided a brief sketch of these three books, I want to spend the remainder of this post discussing a few features and a question that I have. First an observation. I never realized just how difficult it is on Plato's account for someone to become a mature philosopher. In particular, I some how failed to notice how easy Plato seems to think it is for the members of a city to utterly corrupt a perspective philosopher. Not only are very few equipped with a nature that is suitable for philosophy, but the those who are face the daunting task of avoiding the myriad impediments that life in the polis provides (intentionally and unintentionally) to stop good moral/philosophical development. The last sentence points to my second observation: it seems that moral development and philosophical development are extremely similar, at least in Plato's discussion of the philosopher. This makes me wonder about just how rare Plato thinks virtuous people are. That is to say, Plato explicitly states that it is extremely rare to find a philosopher. If the philosopher is also the truly virtuous man, and thus the morally well developed person, than those who do not have his level of moral development are, at least in some sense, immoral. I think that this point becomes even more poignant when you get to the end of Book VI and the beginning of Book VII. There it seems that it is the philosopher who gets a true understanding of the Good, and thus reaches a necessary step for complete moral development. Yet one perhaps may also so that once the philosopher has seen the Good, the philosopher recognizes just how far he has to go to become a good person in light of his encounter, as it were, of the Good. Thus, even though the philosopher already had to possess a certain level of proper moral formation to see the Good, and very few people ever attain that, he still comes to realize that this level of development is but rudimentary. So much the worse, I suppose, for the average Greek (we dare not speak about the Barbarian) who continues to play the "name that shadow" game. My third observation is that the cave analogy seems to imply that moral development is extremely difficult and violent. The word "drag" comes up multiple times in Plato's discussion of the hike out of the cave. Is it appropriate to say that this imagery reflects how rigorous and coercive moral formation is? If so, how do we square this with how Socrates interacts with his questioners throughout this and many other dialogues. I must say that Socrates, if he is supposed to serve as an example of someone who tries to lead others out of the cave, does not seem to interact in a particularly aggressive or violent way. This leads me to wonder if I am pushing the cave analogy too far. Finally, my question. Could we please take time to unpack the section on the divided line? I find it quite a challenge to follow Socrates's line of reasoning through that passage. I honestly think that most of my understanding of that passage comes from how Socrates relates it to the cave analogy.

Reflection on Books III & IV of the Republic

Three features in books III and IV of the Republic strongly caught my attention. In what follows, I will discuss them in order that they appear in the text. The first feature of these two books of the Republic that caught my attention was the amount of time that Socrates spends discussing the importance of musical training for moral development. I believe it is important to note that even though Socrates does emphasize the importance of the lyrics of songs, he also pays a considerable amount of time stressing the importance of learning the "instrumental" side of music (for lack of a better phrase). I think he is right to do so. On the one hand, the lyrics of songs clearly do strongly shape those who sing them. Consider, for example, the role that songs play in the military. Every new recruit at boot camp or an academy spends hours learning songs filled with rich lyrics about the tradition and values of the particular branch of the military that they join. Indeed, I have read several memoirs by soldiers in which the soldiers stress how much they cherished and those songs, particularly because they provided them with a picture of their identity. Similarly, nations, religious groups, and organizations (such as college's and sporting teams) all have songs that contain lyrics which enforce/re-enforce their values and vision. Yet the tone, again for lack of a better word, to which these songs are set also have immense significance for moral formation. Consider, for example, the way in which the structure of a song can bespeak the structure of the moral universe (I take it that this is something Socrates has in mind throughout the Republic). Just as each note has its place and must be what it is for the creation of a beautiful piece of music, so to, the analogy goes, does the world consists of a certain moral order that has structure which, when followed, is beautiful. If this is true, and I think that there certainly is at least something right about it, then how does the shallow, ugly, and thoughtless music of American culture contribute to the moral formation of Americans? It would seem that we may have to say that it has a significantly negative affect. If we reject this conclusion, there where exactly is it that we part from Socrates's view of the world and the importance of music for moral formation? (As a side note, I wonder how this relates to Paul's discussion of the relationship between being filled with the Spirit to singing songs, hymns, and spiritual songs in Ephesians 5). As for the second feature of these books, I am deeply troubled by Socrates's portrayal of love (cf.403-404). Socrates's seems to suggest that sexual pleasure has no place in a loving relationship. This seems wrong. That is to say, while I do acknowledge that not all forms of love have a sexual component (love between friends, love of a community, etc.), I think that human beings are supposed to express some forms of love by having sex. I cannot imagine, for example, that a husband and wife could love one another well/appropriately without having sex (assuming that it is physically safe for them to do so). Would Socrates truly respond to this by saying that such sexual intercourse was always "mad" and "licentious"? If so, I think that he would have to stretch the meaning of those words in a way that distorts them. What do my fellow classmates think? Third and finally, Socrates seems to think that human beings are a natural part of the world. Indeed, he seems to argue implicitly that so long as human beings act in accordance with virtue, they and the rest of the natural world will hum along quite nicely. He even goes so far as to suggest that the world naturally supplies all of the needs for the city. Here I am thinking of cobblers, blacksmiths, and carpenters in addition to items like food, drink, and materials for shelter. Do many people living today hold these views? I honestly am not sure. On the one hand, many environmentalists are extremely interested in virtue theory, because they do think that the virtuous person will live in accord with the natural rhythms of nature. There are, of course, those who think that human beings simply do not belong on Earth, but I take it that they are in the extreme minority. On the other hand, I do not know of many who implicitly champion that the world naturally provides cities with every form of "worker" that cities need to function. Rather, I know of some who argue that unless one does see slavery as natural, then one must see cities as unnatural because they always seem to require a "slave-like-class" to function (here I am not thinking exclusively about chattel slavery). In saying this, however, I do want to keep in mind that Socrates's discussion of this subject comes in his imaginary discourse about a sick city. Thus, I am not sure exactly how to read his comments in general, and this idea in particular. What do my fellow classmates think?

Plato's Republic Books I&II

I have never read the Republic in its entirety. In fact, in every class I have taken that covered Plato I only had to read books V-VII. So as someone who (a) finds Plato extremely interesting and thought provoking and (b) is interested in thinking about justice, I was particularly excited about working through the Republic from start to finish. Having finished reading the first two books, I find that I have far more questions about the structure and content of the beginning of this dialogue than I have for any other work by Plato. In what follows, I will list several of the most vexing questions that I continue to ponder. I will conclude with a few brief remarks about what I think that this dialogue teaches about the necessity of being a certain type of person in order to appreciate and benefit from philosophy. First, my questions. For the ease of reading, I will simply list these in bullet form. - Is it significant that the dialogue takes place outside of the main city of Athens? - What is the significance of Socrates going down to pray to the recently installed cult for Bendis in Piraeus? - Should we see this dialogue as a defense of Socrates in that it seems to emphasies that it is not Socrates who has corrupted the youth of Athens (here I am especially thinking about Thrasymachus) but others who have spread falsehoods about the value of injustice over justice? - Why is Thrasymachus so overwhelmingly rude to Socrates? - Does Thrasymachus give up debating Socrates, and merely nod his head to Socrates final set of questions? It seemed like it to me. In fact, this section reminded me of the debate between Callicles in Plato's Gorgias. - Why, after such a detailed and nuanced presentation of why injustice seems to be better/make people more happy/what people want more than justice, does Socrates launch into a rather convoluted discussion of how to construct a city? I realize that Socrates does this because he and his interloculors what to determine how jsutic and injustice come into a city and work within a city, but I must say that he seems to be a long way off from addressing Adeimantus and Glaucon. What is more, his response seems overwhelmingly tedious (perhaps as tedious as Thrasumachus was rude) and seems to distance the reader and the rest of those invovled in the dialogue from the tough questions set forth by Adeimantus and Glaucon to the point were all invovled could/perhaps do forget what questions Socrates is suppose to answer. - Why does Socrates resort to analogies far more often than examples? Those are all of the questions that I want to raise in this post. Now I will say a few things about what I think the dialogue teaches about the necessity of being a certain type of person in order to appreicate and benefit from philosophy. The difference between Socrates's conversation with Cephalus and every other conversationt that Socrates has is stark. Whereas Cephalus comes across as a wise, generous, elderly man who has learned much from his life experiences, the young ment that Socrates interacts with seem unwise, foolish, and inexperienced. It seems to me that Cephalus want to talk with Socrates and is in fact able to interact with Socrates well because he has become a certain type of person, one who can appreciate and learn what Socrates has to teach. Many of the youth, on the otherhand, seem plauged and malformed by innimical theories that they have accepted and strive to live by. They lack the journey-like experience that Cephalus discusses, and instead have bought into the quick and easy to understand moral instructions that the sophists have peddled. In short, it seems that this dichotomy draws attention to the necessity of being a certain type of person before you can rightly engage in philosophy. In this regard, the dialogue's beginning seems to support Aristotle's claims regarding why it is inappropriate for young people to engage in politics and why they will not be able to benefit from rich moral teaching if they have not reached a certain point in moral development.