Plato's Happy Philosopher and Politics

Abstract

Why should Plato's philosopher rule? A deceptively simple question, and one that many would contend Plato answered in a straightforward way in the Republic: because justice requires it and the philosopher is just (520a, 520e). Yet, if justice is defined as psychic harmony (443c-444a) and psychic harmony is eudaimonia, and if pure philosophizing makes the philosopher most eudaimon (as several texts indicate) it would seem that descent from the philosophic heights to rule is unjust. Glaucon makes this objection (519d) and Aristotle, dissatisfied with Plato's reply, repeats it. The charge implicit here and in many recent commentators is that Plato provides no satisfying philosophical account of the relation between justice (dikaiosune) and happiness (eudaimonia) and thus no philosophic justification for ruling. For Glaucon and Adeimantus ask that Socrates show that justice-—by which they mean “fair-dealing to others,” the restraint from pleonexia in sociopolitical affairs—makes the just man happy of itself apart from reputation or external reward. Socrates' reply identifies justice and psychic harmony, calling the latter “real” or inner justice. But this is only a relevant reply if some necessary connection can be shown between psychic harmony and justice in the ordinary, sociopolitical sense. Is it necessarily the case that the psychically harmonious or happy man deals fairly with others? For if justice is defined as psychic harmony (well-being or happiness) then the philosopher is most happy philosophizing, and his refusal to rule is not only justified, but justified by Socrates' own argument. The potential embarrassmentthen is that the philosopher in the Republic—the only individual skilled in justification by argument or dialectic—may be incapable of fulfilling the request of Glaucon and Adeimantus. His own unwillingness to rule seems to indicate he doesn't believe in the connection between justice and happiness. Moreover, if the philosopher's dialectical inquiries into the relation between (ordinary) justice and happiness end in failure, then Socrates in fact undermines belief in justice while trying to defend it. If then, as some have claimed,4 the Republic is the true apology of Socrates and of philosophy to the polis, it is surely a disastrous one.