Abstract
We continue discussing Book IV of the Republic in Chapter Six, ‘The Republic’s First Question Answered at Last: Personal Justice’. We first attend to Plato’s foray into psychology (literally, his account (logos) of the soul (psuchê)) in which he tries to justify the analogy between city and soul that has shaped the Republic. By appealing to the idea that the same thing cannot simultaneously undergo or perform opposite states or activities (dubbed the Opposition Principle), Socrates argues that the soul has a three-part structure, just as the city does: a rational part, which corresponds to the guardian-rulers in the polis; a spirited part (the seat of anger and pride), which corresponds to the soldierly auxiliaries of the polis; and an appetitive part, which corresponds to the craftspeople. Socrates then derives the personal virtues by applying the political virtues to the soul. The most important personal virtue, of course, is justice, which he conceives of as each part of the soul doing its own work: reason, not appetite or spirit, governs the just soul. We will pay attention to important features of this account, for example how it differs from Cephalus’ and Polemarchus’, for whom justice is a matter of interpersonal, external doing (of how one treats one’s fellows), while for Socrates and Plato is it a matter of intrapersonal, internal being, of what one’s soul is like.
Highlights
Even Bubbles, the goodhearted, bespectacled doofus of the long-running Canadian comedy Trailer Park Boys knows enough of the Republic to appeal to the famous Noble Lie in a conversation with another resident of Sunnyvale Trailer Park
I try to do this by pointing out important landmarks and interesting bits of topography, helping readers not to miss the forest for the trees, as the saying goes, and to appreciate the importance of particular trees, hills, and streams
Among other things, stating arguments clearly and carefully, articulating assumptions that lurk in the background, and making judgments—hopefully, good judgments—about whether the reasons offered in support of a claim are good reasons
Summary
Plato’s Republic is one of those books that most people have probably heard of, even if they have not read it. In Chapter Seven, ‘Questions about the Ideal Polis: The Three Waves’, we see Polemarchus and Adeimantus begin Book V by putting the brakes on Socrates’ attempt to immediately begin answering the Republic’s second question, whether living a morally good life is good for the person living it. Quite reluctantly, that very little poetry will be allowed in the ideal city, mainly because of its power to corrupt us: we give ourselves over to emotion and dethrone reason from its rightful place After exploring his arguments for this view, we turn to his argument for the immortality of the soul, which Socrates offers in the context of showing the external advantages of living a just life (namely, having a reputation for justice), which were set aside to answer Glaucon’s and Adeimantus’ challenge of showing that justice was intrinsically good—that all by itself it made its possessor better off. Photograph by Mr Nostalgic (2019), Wikimedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Odysseus_en_ Telemachus_in_de_hut_van_Eumaeus_De_werken_van_Odysseus_
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