Plato Republic

Further observations
Mostly taken from Malcolm Schofield's account of Plato's Republic in Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought.

Callicles in the Gorgias held that there is a natural hierarchy: people can be put in order by strength and weakness. When the strong rule the weak, that is the natural order. When the weak rule the strong, that is a perversion of the natural order.

Thrasymachus, however similar his position, is different in that he holds that all talk of justice and morality is just talk. In reality, people rule in their own interest. Democracies rule in the interest of the many. Oligarchies in the interest of the few. Monarchies in the interest of the monarch. The principle is self interest. What is called "just" in any given regime is whatever is in the interest of the rulers. Justice is about adherence to laws that are imposed by those in power. Power determines what justice is.

Socrates, of course, suggests that rulers are not always able to accurately identify what is truly in their interest, and thereby pokes a hole in Thrasymachus' position.

Glaucon and Adeimantus suggest that from the free-rider's perspective, the benefits of justice just are not worth it. Better to be unjust IF you can get away with it. Glaucon suggests that the weak get together and enter a social contract to protect themselves in their weakness (Thrasymachus would call this a perversion of the natural order). The assumption is that doing unto others is best, being done to is worst and utterly to be avoided. Neither getting to do unto others nor being done to is in the middle. The rational choice is the middle, because it is unlikely that one will get to constantly do unto others without being done to, AND if one is done to, that is absolutely to be avoided. Thus doing neither is a faute de mieux solution: the social contract as a compromise.

Socrates' response to all of this is a rather perplexing, long, and complicated one.

First, we need to realize that he is engaging in fantasy. He wants us to think of society in novel ways to try to "think outside the box."

The city-soul analogy: does it beg the question? Is justice the same in a city and a soul?

Socrates starts in on the city by asking why the city comes to be. The answer is that individuals are not self-sufficient (369). Then he suggests that certain specialized individuals are the bare minimum necessary for a city. The principle which underlies this discussion is the idea that specialized individuals are best off practicing their specialty and society is best off if they practice their specialty. One's specialty should be whatever one is best suited for. If you accept the principle that specialization is the way to go, certain consequences follow.

It is not clear what we are to make of Plato's initial sketches of the city. But eventually, the principle of specialization makes Plato discuss how to form the best protectors or "guardians." The analogy to dogs plays a large role in getting Plato going.  Initially, they are to be trained for war. But then the notion of guarding comes to be applied to maintaining the system itself thru maintaining the educational system. Then the educational system is described in tedious detail.

Along the way, most art is banished: Plato has clearly decided that in order to produce guardians that are both fiercely protective of the city and yet harmonious with themselves and the city, he has to reform education.

The 'noble lie' is part of the education. It serves to make people harmoniously fulfill their roles, and it makes it clear that it is not sufficient to impose a system. People also have to believe that it is the right system (in this case, the natural system). Detailed legislation will not be necessary is people are properly conditioned (423).

With book IV, we get a heavy dose of totalitarianism: the good city will be a city in which the city itself is strongly unified. Its parts need not be individually well off for it to be well off.

Orderliness is more important than individual satisfaction.

Socrates does not speak of violence, but the state is to use "persuasion and necessity" (519).

Propaganda figures largely. Deception is a tool which the guardians must use heavily.

Although much of the proposal seems evidently impracticable and undesirable, Plato often returns to the notion that it is practicable and desirable.

And above all, he seems attached to the idea that the more unified a city is, the better off it is. He reiterates the idea in the Laws, his latest work. Aristotle argues that such extreme unity would be the ruin of a city.

The notion of philosophers as rulers is clearly laughable to most Athenians, or at least that is what Plato suggests, but think of Protagoras and Gorgias, men with philosophical ideas who are politically active and influential. Also think of Xenophanes, who said that philosophers are worth more than sports stars to a city. The knowledge which the guardians are to have puts them head and shoulders above most. Most humans are benighted and ignorant with no clue that the do not know the important things (the sun, line, and cave).

Philosophers have access to the form of the good, which is what gives order to eternal truth, and thereby they can best order things in the sensible realm. But they have to be compelled to rule. No one can do it better. They were educated by the city. If they  don't, someone will rule them in an inferior way.

Book VIII introduces the corrupt individuals and corresponding corrupt cities.
The best system ruled by the best individuals corrupts into a timocratic city ruled by timocrats (desire for honor, victory, etc), which corrupts into an oligarchic city ruled by oligarchs (desire for necessary appetites), which corrupts into democracies ruled by democrats (desire for unnecessary things), which devolves into tyranny ruled by a tyrant (i.e. one supremely lawless individual).

Typical charges against Plato include that his "justice" in the Republic is not justice as generally understood, and also that justice for an individual is not the same as justice for a state. What is more, the citizens of his republic are not the same as ordinary humans.

An answer:
"the proposition that unjust behaviour, in its most rampant form, is the product of lawless appetites can be treated by Socrates as uncontroversial. All he now needs to sustain his own position on injuustice and to undermine Glaucon's thesis--directly the claim that injustice is intrinsically preferable to justice, but indirectly therefore the social contract account of justice--is to take three further steps. These are the suppoistions that, first, rampantly unjust conduct is rampant because lawless appetites are insatiable; second, insatiable appetites are necessarily anarchic; third, since psychic anarchy is the cause of rampant injustice, it is best interpreted as the core of injustice itself; which will be a supremely wretched condition because of the insatiability of the desires that constitute it. If we now ask what sort of person would be least likely to engage in the behavior characteristic of the perfectly unjust man, there seems much plausibility in Republic's proposal that it is someone whose soul is in a condition of psychic harmony as far removed as can be conceived from the psychic anarchy which is to be equated with injustice. " (Malcolm Schofield, P230 of The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought)

The philosophers' souls are habituated to measure and harmony by their early education. Their grasp of the good is a grasp of supreme harmony. They desire to know truth and to instantiate their knowledge more than anything (the stronger one desire, the more it diverts energy from other desires (485d)). Thus their knowledge involves a concomitant lack of desire to do unjust things...

In Book IX, Socrates suggests that in the ordinary world, if a true philosopher comes to be, that philosopher will be a quietist and will concentrate on that philosopher's own soul. That seems to suggest that the status of the republic described in the Republic is that of a fantastic ideal that most people will never have a chance to realize in any way except in their own souls. Nothing prevents them from realizing aspects of the republic except that there is no good opportunity.