Dahl's aim is to help Plato against two charges:
1) his defense of justice commits a 'fallacy of irrelevance': the defense of 'Justice' that Plato offers does not defend anything that is recognizable as conventional justice.
2) he gives people the wrong reason to be just. He argues that
people should be just for egotistical self-centred reasons, not
for its own sake.
Please do not object to #2 immediately: all that is required is
that you accept that most people usually think that things done
for selfish reasons are probably not among the things they would
consider good.
Dahl will conclude that Plato is committed to a form of 'intuitionism' (the belief that (at least some) moral judgements are known to be true by intuition.)
Interestingly, and despite what I said in class,Plato is not agent-centred, but act-centred, Dahl will also conclude.
Dahl has a good way of formulating the three classes of goods from 357-8:
1) Goods which are good "in virtue of what is due to those goods themselves, and not for what arises from them together with circumstances that normally accompany them."
2) goods which are good "both in virtue of what is due to those goods themselves and for what arises from them together with circumstances that normally accompany them."
3) goods which are burdensome in themselves but are good for what arises from them together with circumstances that normally accompany them.
That formulation has the advantage that Plato can claim that justice is good for its own sake and for the sake of happiness as long as happiness is internal to the agent. That is because " circumstances that normally accompany them" can be taken to refer to circumstances external to the agent (I assume: note that that leaves a gray area insofar as the distinction between agent and circumstances may be unclear).
Plato wants to show that justice belongs to class 2, but to do that, he has to show that justice is worth choosing even if one gets the usual rewards and reputation of INjustice, and even if the unjust person gets the rewards and reputation for justice.
For Plato, virtue (arete) belongs to a thing that has a characteristic function (ergon): virtue is the quality that makes that thing perform its function well or perhaps the actual performance of that function well. So human virtue makes humans perform characteristically human activity (or activities) well. A 'characteristic activity' is one that a given thing alone does, or that the given thing does better than other things do it.
What that means is that virtue enables a human to live a good life, a life of eudaemonia, as a human.
(Those are all meant to be analytic statements: in other words, they explain the contents of the concepts happiness and virtue rather than offer arguments that should make us accept those concepts)
Virtue is supposed to MAKE one act well and BE well off (as Thrasymachus' claim that injustice is a virtue because it makes one well off shows (348-9)).
Plato believes that a full understanding of virtue provides one with a MOTIVE to be virtuous. I.e. if you know what virtue is, you cannot help but want to be virtuous: it has its own motivating force.
So Plato wants to give people a MOTIVE to be just and to claim that just people are BETTER OFF.
In order to do so, Plato 1) shows what justice is, and 2) argues that the just person is better off than the unjust person.
What is justice? First, Plato says there are three parts to a state, each having its function, and justice is when they all perform their functions well. Then he argues that states are like individuals. The soul has three parts: the appetite provides for bodily needs; reason rules; and spirit enforces reason's rules when they conflict with appetite. Justice is harmony of these functions. After exploring the various possibilities for lack of harmony and harmony, Plato argues that the just person, whose parts are in harmony, is happier than the unjust person. The least just person is a slave to his or her appetites (576-7) and is NEVER able to satisfy them (579). The just person prefers the pleasures which the just life brings, and is the most happy (580-83). Pleasure is defined and the just person has the most.
So, you can question:
1) that the individual and the soul and the state are relevantly similar.
2) that pleasure is what Plato says it is.
3) whether philosophers are the best judges of pleasures.
David Sachs, 'A Fallacy in Plato's Republic' (Phil. Rev.
1963, 141-58) claims that Plato set out to talk about conventional
justice, which is act-centred, and includes what you would expect
(don't lie, tell the truth, take care of your parents), but winds
up talking about Platonic justice, which is agent-centred (justice
is whatever the person with the harmonious soul does: acts are
just derivatively from the justice of an agent). Then Sachs says
that unless Plato shows that conventional justice and Platonic
justice are appropriately related, Plato has not done what he set
out to do.
Sachs' claim is that interesting as it is, all the argument is
IRRELEVANT to Glaucon's challenge, which was to show that people
are better off being conventionally just.
Plato must show 1) that a conventionally just person will be Platonically just and also the reverse: 2) that a Platonically just person will be conventionally just. Plato claims 2 wrongly, says Sachs, and fails to show 1 at all: if someone is conventionally just for all the wrong reasons, Plato denies that they are just.
Sachs further claims that the MOTIVE for a Platonically just person to be just is self-centred, and so it is not a praiseworthy reason, and is therefore the WRONG REASON. It is egotistical.
Dahl next goes through the versions of justice in Book 1: justice is telling the truth and paying one's debts (Cephalus at 331): justice is giving everyone their due, helping one's friends and harming one's enemies (Polemarchus at 331-2); justice is doing what is in the interest of the ruling class (Thrasymachus); justice is following a social contract, a compromise between the best state of affairs (doing what you want?) and the worst (not doing anything you want) (Glaucon).
Dahl claims that the initial understandings of what justice is are INITIAL: Plato never intended to explain conventional justice nor did he ever claim to. Thus Sachs' objection is misplaced.
Furthermore, Socrates never claims to be going to defend justice in terms of any particular definition: he can reasonably take his first task to be to figure out what justice is.
Plato thinks conventional justice is at most partially correct, because he uses an instance of it (don't return a knife to a crazy man) against Cephalus (331). He claims that harming anyone is unjust to refute Polemarchus (335): thus he rejects part of conventional justice (harming enemies).
Dahl's reformulation of what Plato needs in order for the argument of the R. to work:
Dahl, however, thinks that we can find a description of
Platonically just ACTS: they are those acts which have the
features that make them desireable to people with harmonious
souls. But if Plato can argue that such a class of actions exists,
he will have rendered the theory of justice which he propounds
unnecessary, and perhaps mistaken if we think that justice is a
matter of actions rather than the state of a soul, for his
agent-centred theory will have a rival counterpart that is
act-centred.
GOT TO HERE, ROUGHLY, IN CLASS ON FEB. 13th.
Sachs claims that soul harmony only leads to courage, intelligence, and self-control, and that is not sufficient to meet condition 1 above (Platonically just people must to a significant extent be conventionally just), because those virtues are compatible with widespread (conventional) injustice. To see that, consider the following:
Three parts of the soul (as seen in Book IV):
Given only that, Sachs says, reason could rule, and one could still be unjust: one's overall conception of the good might be mistaken.
But, Dahl replies, Plato thinks each part has its own objects of desire:
That implies another aspect to reason's rule: one's conception of the good must include truth and knowledge as pre-eminent goods if reason really rules.
So reason rules in that
1) one acts in accord with one's conception of the good, AND
2) one's conception of the good values knowledge and truth
preeminently.
SO what are some aspects and result of having reason rule?
The first aspect is the virtue of temperance: one adjusts one's
actions so that they are consistent with and lead to one's
conception of good overall. We saw this sort of thing in the Gorgias a lot.
The second part of reason's rule, which values knowledge and truth
preeminently, just is Platonic justice, says Dahl, relying on 442
and the fact that a) justice in the bigger picture of the state,
as discussed in Book VIII, relies on this sort of reason's rule;
and b) this kind of reason's rule is what makes a just person
happier and better off in Book IX).
If one values truth and knowledge above all, then one is not
likely to do conventional injustice for material gain (stealing,
fraud, insider trading, corruption, etc.), because one has little
or no interest in material goods. That person is also not likely
to commit murder or to attack someone else, because that person is
temperate and values truth and knowledge more than material things
(valuing material things is what leads to an awful lot of
conventional injustice). One is likely to be courageous and
temperate, because that is just a part of what soul harmony.
What would Plato would say about the desire for power, which is
responsible for some of the worst injustices? He might lump it
with other irrational desires, such as the desire for food or sex
or material goods. In that case the Platonically just person will
not have a great desire for power.
So it is, in some vague way at least, plausible that the Platonically just person, whose reason rules in the second way (valuing truth and knowledge above all), will do conventionally just things to a significant extent, and their motive will be to promote soul harmony. Plato can argue that without begging the question of whether the Platonically just person will do conventionally just things, because his argument never relies on conventionally just things (in other words, he fulfills condition 1 and 2 above by arguing to them without assuming they are true). Those two conditions are: 1) Platonically just people must to a significant extent be conventionally just, and 2) Performing actions that are to a significant extent conventionally just must be a necessary part of the means needed to be Platonically just.
The Platonically just person might still commit conventional injustice (e.g. steal), but Plato argues that doing so habitually will strengthen an irrational desire, and thereby eventually disturb soul harmony by disturbing the person's conception of the good (558-61 and 588-9). Thus one NEEDS to act in a conventionally just way to preserve soul harmony (condition 2 above).
A big problem:
This is all put in terms of valuing truth and knowledge above all,
and being a philosopher. How could someone incapable of being a
philosopher be just? They are presumably capable of some kind of
soul harmony, and so of justice: not sure what it is.
Condition 3 is met too-if one needs to act conventionally justly in order to preserve soul harmony, then it will preserve soul harmony to do so.
Condition 4 is met as well: knowledge- and truth-related actions are not to be identified by sensible characteristics (such actions are specified via the Forms), and so Platonic justice does not commit him to a rival theory of act-centred justice which threatens his agent-centred theory.
What if a philosopher is broke? She needs money to have the leisure to pursue the greatest good, knowledge and truth. Won't she steal to do so? Then conventionally just actions will not significantly overlap with Platonically just ones, and Platonic justice will not give her a motive to be conventionally just.
What of the philosopher who refuses to rule because she wants to contemplate the Forms? Plato says she would be unjust to do so! (520-1)
The desires of the rational part are not structured in such a way that they lead one to value only the intellectual life and nothing else.
The contemplation of Forms leads one to want to make sensible
things as much like the Forms as possible, and so it leads the
philosopher to DESIRE to instantiate the Forms, including Justice.
Such a desire leads the philosopher to conventionally just actions
when faced with the situations in section VI, and gives her a
motive to do them.
Another way to put it might be that if you have a really good
idea of how things should be done for the greatest good, that idea
itself is a powerful motive for you to try to bring it about.
Platonic justice is found in souls, not acts.
Those Platonically just souls will want to instantiate platonic
justice in other people: that is part of what contemplating the
forms leads one to (they are attractive things that one wants to
imitate when one sees them: an analogy might be to love, because
you cannot simply love, you feel a strong urge to share it and you
want it in other people too).
Conventionally just actions do not necessarily promote others' soul harmony (Platonic justice). What is more, conventionally unjust actions might lead to Platonic justice! Stealing money might in fact lead someone to the intellectual life of the Platonically just soul in some conceivable situation, and so conventional INjustice by one person could lead to Platonic justice in someone else.
BUT in promoting Platonic justice in another, the person's motive would be an IMPARTIAL desire to instantiate Platonic justice, the Form Justice. There is no benefit to the platonically just person that motivates that person to make others Platonically just, or at least no extrinsic benefit (the real benefit is all instrinsic to making others just, not an external result of making others just). That looks like a desire to be Just for its own sake, which is not egotistical: thus we can meet one of Sachs' objections to Plato's theory (that it gives people the wrong reason to want to be just: it gives them a self-centred motive to want to be just (see section III)). If people SHOULD want to be just for its own sake, then Dahl has all he needs to answer Sachs' objection.
The Form of Goodness, he argues, leads people to instantiate goodness, and that promotes harmony in the soul. Platonically good actions are Platonically just actions, and neither involves Plato in giving an account of actions that includes sensibles.
Platonically Just people want to instantiate the Good, which is a desire to do something good in itself. Doing things because they are good in themselves is a praiseworthy motive, and so Plato is once again arguing that people should be just FOR THE RIGHT REASONS, not, as Sachs maintains, for the wrong reasons, such as egotistical reasons.
Plato's theories are similar to the 'intuitionist' views of early 20th century philosophers. 'Intuitionism' can be briefly defined as the theory that (at least some) ethical judgements are known to be true by intuition (Antony Flew's definition in "A Dictionary of Philosophy": others are similar).
The similarity is in that Platonic Justice involves things being just because they exhibit an inarticulable goodness that is like harmony and order. To see that this is so, one needs to understand the Form of Goodness. One can do that after training and education. Once one is trained, one can use one's intution to see if an action is Good: one contemplates Goodness and then looks at any action and one gets a good idea of whether it fits the Good. When Good and an action belong together, fit one another, then that action is Good. Such actions overlap with conventionally just actions.
Dahl is saying that Platonic Justice is only found in souls, but Platonic Goodness is also found in actions, and so if Platonically just people's actions are Platonically Just only because the Platonically Just person did them, but they are the same as Platonically Good actions, we can say that Plato in fact has an act-centred theory of justice, because Goodness can apply to actions.
So Plato has within his theory of Justice a commitment to Just
actions being Good actions. And Good actions are things external
to the agent. The chief advantage of agent-centred theories of
justice is that they account for complexities better than a list
or description of actions could, AND they explain why one should
be just by appeal to a person's nature. If Plato is committed to a
theory that does not necessarily appeal to a person's nature, he
is committed to a theory that is less attractive, because people
are less likely to see that they should want to be just.
Of course, if you disagree with Plato's assessment of what human
nature is, then you may disagree with Plato's theory of Justice
and Goodness etc., but then again, you may not. You'll have to do
the work of figuring out what your disagreements are and what they
mean for what you think of the rest of what Plato says.
The danger is that people might see the Good actions that are
good independent of them, and so external to them, and yet not
want to do them. Plato will reply that Forms are the fullest
expression of being, and so the person who knows them will want to
come as close to them as possible: they will want to instantiate
the form of the Good and the form of Justice.That is entirely
plausible, in my book.
Without Forms, however, Plato would be on shaky ground, because
he would be left arguing that people should be just for
egotistical reasons, and he would be left arguing for actions that
do not, to a significant extent, exemplify conventional justice.(I
am not sure why egotism is bad if it leads to conventional
justice: I suppose it pulls the rug out from under the idea of
right and wrong?: I am also unsure why without Forms he would be
arguing for actions that do not exemplicy conventional justice:
perhaps I'm tired or just can't see it: can you?)
Another danger is that it is hard to explain how we can resolve instances where people disagree about their evaluation of something as just or unjust. What if people disagree. How can one decide. If the Good is inarticulable, then one cannot compare arguments. If knowing whether an action is good or not is a matter of intuition, is that inarticulable?
Plato's response again involves the Forms: they are fixed, and there will be no evaluative disagreements among those who understand the Forms.
But that smacks of argument by fiat: Plato has created Forms to do this task, and so they must do it. It does not really tell us how they do it or guarantee to us that they will always produce the same result in different persons.
A further danger is that the Good is impersonal, and so fails to
give individual people their appropriate value and fails to
adequately include people's 'rights.' Plato does seem to be
inhuman in his politics at times. 'Rights' involve recognition of
the unique value of individuals, and Plato has little room for
that. He can seem to care little for human autonomy or for
individuals qua individuals.