The Republic Plato

Surprise #1:Democracy gets third place

“There is your much admired Cretan or Spartan type; ... second in common estimation, though it’s burdened with many evils, there is the type called oligarchy; thirdly, and by contrast, follows democracy; and finally comes tyranny, often thought the finest and most outstanding of all, but really the most diseased.” (544d)

Surprise #2:Rulers need to be unenthusiastic

“ ... the state whose prospective rulers come to their duties with the least enthusiasm is bound to have the best and most tranquil government, and the state whose rulers are eager to rule the worst.”

Surprise #3:Status quo vs. change

Unchanging episteme (knowledge) vs. fickle doxa (opinion)

“If philosophers have the capacity to grasp the eternal and immutable, while those who have no such capacity are not philosophers and are lost in multiplicity and change, which of the two should be in charge of a state?”...

“...we will appoint as Guardians whichever of them seem able to guard the laws and customs of society.” (484c)

Payment & selflessness

“At any rate, they expect to be paid for them, which shows that they don’t expect any benefit for themselves but only for their subjects.” (346a)

One of the most alarming claims ever made?

SOCRATES: “The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands ...”GLAUCON: “My dear Socrates, if you make pronouncements of that sort, you can’t be surprised if a large number of decent people take their coats off, pick up the nearest weapon, and come after you in their shirt sleeves to do something terrible to you. ...” (474a)

Education & duty

“‘But,’ we shall say, ‘we have bred you both for your own sake and that of the whole community to act as leaders and king-bees in a hive; you are better and more fully educated than the rest and better qualified to combine the practice of philosophy and politics. You must therefore each descend in turn and live with your fellows in the cave ...” (520c)

Democratic man

“He’ll establish a kind of equality of pleasures, and will give the pleasure of the moment its turn of complete control till it is satisfied, and then move on to another, so that none is underprivileged and all have their fair share of encouragement.” (561b)...“There’s no order or restraint in his life, and he reckons his way of living is pleasant, free and happy, and sticks to it through thick and thin.” (561d)

The masses: “a large and powerful animal”

“Suppose a man was in charge of a large and powerful animal, and made a study of its moods and wants; he would learn to approach and handle it, when and why it was especially savage or gentle, what the different noises it made meant, and what tone of voice to use to soothe or annoy it. All this he might learn by long experience or familiarity ... But he would not really know which of the creature’s tastes and desires was admirable or shameful, good or bad, right or wrong; he would simply use the terms on the basis of its reactions, calling what pleased it good, what annoyed it bad.” (493b-c)

Mind as government

“In the end they capture the seat of government, having discovered that the young man’s mind is devoid of sound knowledge and practices and true principles, the most effective safeguards the mind of man can be blessed with ... The vacant citadel in the young man’s mind is filled instead by an invasion of pretentious fallacies and opinions.” (560b-c)

Tyrannies of scale

Thrasymachus: “Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred or profane, private or public. If you are caught committing such crimes in detail you are punished and disgraced: sacrilege, kidnapping, burglary, fraud, theft are the names we give to such petty forms of wrongdoing. But when a man succeeds in robbing the whole body of citizens and reducing them to slavery, they forget these ugly names and call him happy and fortunate... So we see that injustice, given scope, has greater strength and freedom and power than justice...” (344b)

Dreaming & waking“Look; isn’t dreaming simply the confusion between a resemblance and the reality which it resembles, whether the dreamer be asleep or awake?” (476c)

“ ... And so our state and yours will be really awake, and not merely dreaming like most societies today, with their shadow battles and their struggles for political power, which they treat as some great prize.” (520d)

“...even in the outwardly most respectable of us there is a terribly bestial and immoral type of desire, which manifests itself particularly in dreams” (572b)

“...under the tyranny of the master passion he becomes in his waking life what he was once only in his dreams, and there’s nothing, no taboo, no murder, however terrible, from which he will shrink. His passion tyrannises over him...” (575a)

Misleading sense-based perception

Edward H. Adelson, 1995

Harmonious / oppressive?“The object of our legislation ... is not the special welfare of any particular class in our society, but of the society as a whole; and it uses persuasion or compulsion to unite all citizens and make them share together the benefits which each individually can confer on the community; and its purpose in fostering this attitude is not to leave everyone to please himself, but to make each man a link in the unity of the whole.” (519e-520a)

A clean slate“The first thing our artists must do ... and it’s not easy — is to wipe the slate of human society and human habits clean. For our philosophic artists differ at once from all others in being unwilling to start work on an individual or a city, or draw out laws, until they are given, or have made themselves, a clean canvas.” (501a)

“On a blank sheet of paper, free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be drawn.” (Mao Zedong)

Ruling as techneTechne: “It may thus be said to cover any skilled activity with its rules of operation, the knowledge of which is acquired by training. But it is a very elusive word to translate, varying between art, craft, professional skill, and science according to the emphasis of the context.” (p.14-15, Penguin 2007 ed.)

Socrates: “And training to the interest of the horse and not its owner. Nor does any form of skill seek its own interest (it needs nothing) but that of its subject matter.” (342c)

“And therefore, my dear Thrasymachus... no ruler of any kind, qua ruler, exercises his authority, whatever its sphere, with his own interest in view, but that of the subject of his skill. It is his subject and his subject’s proper interest to which he looks in all he says and does.” (342e)