Republic lecture outline

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					The Lectures on Plato’s The Republic
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Outline of the Book.

"Politeia" -- the organization of the city.
Polis=city; polites=citizen: one who belongs to the city; politicos=statesman: one who
knows the things of the city; politika=politics: what has to do with the city.

The dialogue depicted in The Republic is believed to have taken place in about 411 BC.
Socrates died in 399 BC. Plato wrote the Socratic dialogues in some years later.

Book 1: Dialogue with Cephalus/Polemarchus (the heir), and Thrasymachus (the wolf):
the question of justice.

Book 2: Glaucon picks up Thrasymachus' argument and expands on them.          The question
of good life and justice.

Book 3: Building of the cities, the education of the Guardians (the censorship of

Book 4: Constitution of the soul and city: Calculating part (logistikon)-Ruler, Spirited
part (thumos)-Auxiliaries, Desiring part (epithumia)-Artisans.

Book 5: Family, woman, children (the comedy, the noble lie); The philosopher as lover,
the philosopher and the Idea (Eide), the knowledge and opinion (being and
appearance/what is and what is seeming).

Book 6: The Philosopher and the City, The Good (and its relationship to truth and being),
The Divided Line.

Book 7: The allegory of the cave, geometry, the divided line.

Book 8: The deterioration of the city and the soul; 4 forms of government--timocracy,
oligarchy, democracy, tyranny.

Book 9: the tyrant.

Book 10: the criticism of poets, the myth of Er.

Upward and downward movement, the diagram in Sallis' Being and Logos, 455.

Book 1
(Dialogue with Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, and Cleitophon: What is Justice?
Critique of common wisdom on justice. Socrates vs. Thrasymachus)

The opening of the dialogue (see Passages).
Socrates’ descension to Piraeus, the port of Athens some 6 miles away. Piraeus was the
center of Athenian commerce and the entry point of “all the diversity and disorder that
come from foreign lands” (Bloom, 440). Politically, it was the center of the democratic
party. In 404 BC, about 7 years after the dialogue, “the Piraegu was the stronghold of
the resistance against the despotic group of men known as the Thirty Tyrants, who ruled
Athens after its defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. In that resistance, the
family of Cephalus, especially Lysias played a leading role. Polemarchus was executed
by the tyrants. Socrates was suspected of sympathy with and influence over the leaders
of the tyranny because several had been among his companions…. The conversation in
the Republic takes place in the shadow of the “Thirty.” They had much to do with the
execution, not only of Polemarchus, but also, indirectly, of Socrates; and the dialogue
treats, at least in part, of the tyrannical ambitions of Socrates’ companions. The men
who gather here in happy days for a theoretical conversation are soon to fall on evil ones
in the practice of politics. The problems of that practice, which are later to be revealed
in deed, are here discussed. This is the drama of the Republic, without which its
teaching cannot be understood. This friendly association of ten men with whom Socrates
talks in the Piraetus will be replaced by a committee of ten men who brutally rule there in
the name of the “Thirty” and put the host of this meeting to death. The participants
discuss the best regime but are to experience the worst” (Bloom, 440-41).

The night, the torch race, the festival in celebration of the goddess of Hades (???).
Socrates is detained by Polemachus, the powerful, who proposes that Socrates come to
his house and entertain him with conversation and only then Socrates would be free to
leave. By the art of logos Socrates will escape the powerful, the realm of politics, the
inside of the cave, the Hades (symbolically).

The dialogue begins with Socrates’ asking Cephalus, the host and an old man, how his
life has been. Has it been a good life? This frames the subsequent question
concerning justice. The ultimate question of the book is: Is just life good life? (The
tyrant, the unjust, is the most unhappy man; cf., Book 9?).

The mutation of the definition of justice:
“to speak the truth and to pay your debts” (Cephalus)
“the repayment of a debt” (Simonides)
 “the giving to each man what is proper to him” (Simonides 2)
“the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies” (Simonides 3)
“do harm to his enemy and good to his friend” (Simonides 4)
“in time of peace justice will be of no use?” (Socrates)
“In contracts, Socrates, justice is of use” (Polemarchus) “And by contracts you mean
partnerships?      Exactly.”
The analogy between justice and other arts leads to the conclusion that justice is useless.
(Passage: Justice as an art is useless)
Justice is not an art among other arts; justice is not an attribute of man like any other
(“The man is tall, strong, rich, etc.” vs. “This man is just.”). Justice is a character of a
person: the one whose intellect (calculating part, logos), spirit (thumos) and desire
(epithumia) are well balanced and harmoniously managed. Corresponds with the just
city: ruler, auxiliaries, and artisans carrying out their own tasks according to their proper

The entrance of Thrasymachus: (passage)
Drama of the entrance; then, how he becomes docile. Thrasymachus the wild wolf;
Socrates the “snake charmer.”

Thrasymachus’ philosophy of the state diametrically opposes Socrates’s.


Thrasymachus’s definition of justice: “the advantage of the stronger” (338e-339a):

He is not saying what justice is in itself but what it would produce: Justice benefits the
stronger, the ruling party, that legislates. For him justice is whatever the law says: a
factual observation in the city of Athens.

Athens was ruled by the tyranny of the thirty. It was an unjust place. In an unjust state,
what is lawful usually benefits the stronger. This is still the case nowadays in some
countries: the stronger creates laws that would benefit themselves, be it the bourgeois,
the elite communist party, or the corporate interest groups. E.g., “What is good for GM is
good for America.” The tax cuts that benefits the top 1% more than any other classes in
the lower strata.

Socrates’ critique of Thrasymachus’ definition: What if the ruling class is mistaken
when promulgating the laws that they think would benefit them but in fact end up hurting
them? So, if the ruling class is ignorant, justice (as proclaimed by the laws) does not
necessarily promote the advantage of the stronger.

Cleitophon’s aid to Thrasymachus’s definition: “the advantage of the stronger is what the
stronger believes to be his advantage” (340b). If justice hurts the stronger, it is because
the stronger was mistaken. If the stronger were not mistaken, justice they proclaim
would benefit them. So, Thrasymachus’ definition is correct in principle.

Thrasymachus’ sticks to his gun and rejects Cleitophon’s aid: The ruling class never
makes mistakes.
Have we heard this before: “The state never makes mistakes”?        What does this mean?
Whatever the state does is right. The might makes it right. The state has its reasons,
however unintelligible they are to the individual. “It works out in the end.” “The end
justifies the means.” “Sacrifice a few for the good of the whole.” The ideology of
fanatics (including the terrorists) and the politics of war.

Thrasymachus strengthens his position. In order to avoid mistakes, the ruler (the
legislator, the stronger) must have political skills, the art of ruling--just like a physician
must know the art of healing or a pilot the art of navigation. Insofar as one practices his
art, he does not make mistakes. If he does, he is not practicing the art. In the same way,
the ruler should practice the art of ruling. Insofar as he does so, he would not make
mistake. Knowing the art of ruling means that “(1) [one] might be able to distinguish
what is his advantage from what merely seems to be his advantage but really is not….
[and also in order] (2) to conceal from his subjects the disparity between that which is
their advantage and that which they are told is their advantage but which is really the
ruler’s advantage” (Sallis, Being and Logos, 338).

The art of ruling under Thrasymachus definition of justice turns out to be the art of
deception (to distinguish the real from the façade and to make things appear beneficial to
the masses when it is really beneficial only for the ruling class). If one practices the art
well, he would not be mistaken and promulgate laws that would hurt him by mistake.

Socrates’ counters: If the ruler must possess the art of ruling, he must rule for the sake of
the ruled, like the physician practicing the art for the sake of the patient or the pilot for
the sake of the crew. So, based on the analogy, the ruler cannot rule for the sake of his
own gain. Socrates turns Thrasymachus’ definition upside down: Justice does not bring
about the advantage of the stronger but the advantage of the ruled, as physician practices
his art for the sick and pilot for his crew.

Thrasymachus then shifts his position and proposes a new argument. In so doing, he
proposes a very modern notion of political justice. He states: The just man loses out in
the end, whereas the unjust gains. Reversing himself, he states, injustice “is what is
profitable and advantageous for oneself” (347.-354c); or “the life of the unjust man is
stronger than that of the just man” (347e). The unjust is mightier. Injustice is “the
unlimited striving to get all one can at other’s expense” (Sallis, 341; 343e-344a).
The unjust is like the streetwise; the just a simpleton. The unjust is “good and prudent.”
“The ‘virtue’ of the unjust man, as portrayed by Thrasymachus, amounts simply to his
excelling others in the furtherance of his own advantage, and his wisdom is merely the
cleverness which such as kind of ‘excellence’ requires” (Sallis, 342).

Socrates critiques: 1) the ‘virtue’ of the ruler is to rule for the sake of the subject,
analogous to the art of medicine or pilot. The unjust cannot be “good and prudent.”
Only the just is. 2) “Any group of men, if totally unjust, would be incapable of action”
(Sallis, 344). It will “cause [free men and slaves] to hate one another and to form
factions, and to be unable to accomplish anything in common with one another” (351d-e):

In a society where everyone is unjust, it would be like a jungle where one is at war with
all others in the contest of the survival of the fittest, or “pouwaqqatzi.” It would be like
a jungle where one species eats up the other in order to survive (Grossman, Life and Fate).
Thomas Hobbes’ “war of all against all.’
3) The just man lives a happier (not necessarily profitable) life because justice is a
virtue of the soul. As a virtue, it is that which enables the soul to live well (like the
virtue of the eye is to see well; the virtue of the soul is to live well). Virtue

By this time, Thrasymachus is tamed by Socrates like a gentle snake. Socrates devoures
Thrasymachus’ arguments and turns it around; this was his meal in exchange for the
actual meal that was promised but never delivered. (Sallis, 345).

The book I end with Socrates professing his ignorance. He does not know what justice
is and whether the just life would be a good and happy life.

Book 2
(Glaucon picks up on Thrasymachus’s argument and creates the image of the perfectly
unjust in order to provoke Socrates to create the image of the perfectly just man. The
myth of Gyges: the image of the perfectly unjust.)

Glaucon seeks to “restore Thrasymachus’ logos” by elaborating the opinion of the many
about justice. What he is about to say is not his opinion but he will “speak in vehement
praise of the unjust life” only in order to provoke Socrates to do the same for the jut life
(Sallis, 349).

Glaucon’s first argument: Doing injustice is good; but suffering injustice is worse. So,
people “set down a compact among themselves neither to do injustice nor to suffer it”
(359a). Cf., Hobbes’ social contract theory.

Glaucon’s second argument: (see Sallis).

The perfectly just and perfectly unjust in a unjust city: chiasm: the unjust must look just;
and the just must look unjust. This is “Glaucon’s schematic description of the law that
seems to rule the social reality: the perfectly unjust man--an accomplished tyrant, for
example--is generally hailed as quite all right, whereas the perfectly just man--who loves
justice for its own sake and not for its consequences--is ridiculed, despised, punished,
tortured, and put to death by those, the (much too) many, who hate his embarrassing
innocence” (Peperzak, Platonic Transformation, 153).

Cf., Machiavelli:
“Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated,
but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to
have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is
useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so…” (The
Prince, Ch 18).

“Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare
not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to
defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not
prudent to challenge, one judges by the result” (The Prince, Ch 18).

Arlen Spector: “Know what you say; don’t say what you know.”

Politics: the art of deception, belongs to the realm of seeming and opinions, the realm of
the many (hoi poloi, the masses).

The myth of Gyges (See Passages):
The origin of the invisible man, the unjust method of manipulation; he is present when he
appears to be absent and appears to be absent when he is present. Only he is unjust and
knows it to be so; no one else knows.
You can be perfectly unjust only under the following conditions: (1) if you are the only
one who is unjust; and (2) if you appear to be just to everyone else.

       Levinas on Gyges.


Book 3
Construction and destruction of the cities. The education of the Guardians, the
censorship of literature.

Book 4
Constitution of the soul and city: Calculating part (logistikon)-Ruler, Spirited part

appearance/what is and what is seeming).

The Divided Line.


oligarchy, democracy, tyrany.

Book 9: the tyrant.


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