Summary of Book Five
- The Republic
Plato. (360 BCE). The republic: Book five. Online (HTML): http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Republic/Book_V
Like all
utopias, Plato's Republic is a response to the events and ideas in
which it was written. Athens had been defeated in the Peloponesian Wars
and a powerful oligarchy ruled the city-state. [Note: to learn more
about the Wars, read Thucydides'
history of the conflict.] Plato's teacher, Socrates, had been forced to
commit suicide after being condemned of using philosophy to attack the
political interests of his day. Plato feared the cult of a few
individuals who could drag his city to ruin. He dreamed of a state that
would be ruled by leaders who sought more than material gain.
Plato envisioned a republic guided by eternal ideals, designed
according to immutable forms, and led by philosopher-kings. Plato's
work, a dramatic set of dialogues between Socrates and several
interlocutors about the nature of justice, is both disarmingly humorous
and dangerously direct. From a contemporary standpoint, some of its
most radical notions may seem viable, even appropriate. After all,
Plato's Socrates seeks: "a kind of good that we would choose to have
not because we desire its consequences, but because we delight in it
for its own sake" (357b). However, the Republic
was more than a discourse of justice; it is a philosophical broadside
against the petty tyranny that ruled Athens and an important blueprint
of public life.
The Republic matters today because of Plato's use of the city as
the site where public life may be perfected. He may have known that his
goal could never be realized, but his Republic
was the first significant work to propose such a broad range of social
improvements - sexual equality, genetic enhancement, philosophical
leadership. While Plato repudiated many of his more radical claims in
later works, we study his Republic
because this 'city of speech' lays the foundation or provides a
counterpoint to every other ideal of public life we will encounter.
Plato's Republic introduces a
city state defined by communism (the elimination of property and
'selfish' constraints such as the family) and common education -
instilling of proper values through careful censorship: "we must
supervise the makers of tales; and if they make a fine tale, it must be
approved, but if it's not, it must be rejected" (377c). The state is
located in the city and not at the level of nation to better ensure
that all citizens will declare and maintain allegiance to each other in
a sort of fraternity. The Republic
divides the citizenry into three classes: teachers, guardians, and
laborers. These classes are directly parallel to three components of
human nature according to Plato's philosophy: wisdom (manifested by
teachers), bravery (practiced by guardians), and self-restraint
(required of laborers).
In the human body - as with the body politic - the proper balance of
these three qualities is necessary to achieve justice: "Isn't it quite
necessary for us to agree that the very same forms and dispositions as
are in the city are in each of us" (435e)? There are relatively few
teachers who rule the state; there are somewhat more guardians. The
vast number of inhabitants are laborers and cannot truly be said to be
citizens. These artisans, farmers, craftsmen, and manual laborers
represent the bodily appetites - and the means through which those
appetites of citizens may be fulfilled. We enter the Republic
with Book V (of the Bloom translation) where Socrates is "arrested" by
his colleagues for failing to address a central inconsistency of his
ideal notion of public life: what shall be the roles of women and
children in this fanciful state?
The dialogue may be organized in the following manner. Polemarchus,
Adeimantus, Glaucon, and Thrasymachus demand that Socrates defend his
claim that women and children shall be held in common in the Republic.
Socrates responds: "You don't know how great a swarm of arguments
you're stirring up with what you are now summoning to the bar" (450b).
After being assured that his colleagues are willing to stir this
argument to its conclusion, Socrates begins to argue that, in nature,
females and males must share in the dangers of rearing young. His
interlocutors tentatively agree that while females may be physically
weaker than males, the natural order of things calls for equivalent
duties, and that these similar duties call for similar modes of
education.
At this point, Socrates sets up a problem to be solved through
dialectic - a process of questions and answers that shall reveal truth.
He notes that Athenian men commonly exercise and wrestle together in
the palaestras - in the nude. This example helps him set up the
metaphor that citizens of the republic must be willing to strip away
their material ornaments and consider more than their bodies when
deciding what is good and just. Socrates continues that, if stripped of
bodily differences, a woman (clothed in 'virtue') possesses the same
quality of soul as a man. Thus she should possess the same role in the Republic:
"there is no practice of a city's governors which belongs to woman
because she's woman, or to man because he's man; but the natures are
scattered alike along both animals" (455d).
Resolving this problem, Socrates anticipates a second one: the
elimination of private, erotic relationships between women and men.
Here, he imposes a communistic regime with its cessation of private
property upon heretofore private lives. Marriage will be sanctified,
but its ultimate purpose will be toward the procreation of genetically
superior citizens. Thus, the right of procreation will be apparently
given by lot - but actually planned by the state: "It's likely that our
rulers will have to use a throng of lies and deceptions for the benefit
of the ruled" (459d). Children wrought from these planned couplings
will be raised in common, separated from their biological parents.
Families in the traditional sense will be replaced by a common family
of the state. Unauthorized children will not be allowed to live in
Plato's republic.
"Won't
lawsuits and complaints against one another virtually vanish from among
them thanks to their possessing nothing private but the body, while the
rest is in common? On this basis they will be free from faction, to the
extent at any rate that human beings divide into factions over the
possession of money, children, and relatives" (464d).
No too surprisingly, Socrates' discussion partners readily agree: if
all people treat each other as brothers and sisters, their elders as
mothers and fathers, they shall not struggle against one another. For a
time, the men discuss further the training of children before agreeing
that the young should witness and follow their elders even into battle
so that they may learn the arts of citizenry. This discussion briefly
leads to an examination of how citizens might fight wars against other
Greeks (as kin) or barbarians (as foe). Glaucon follows this line of
reasoning for a time before realizing that Socrates has failed to
answer the central question of the scene, the third wave: "Is it
possible for this regime to come into being, and how is it ever
possible" (470c)?
Socrates takes up the challenge, but not before asking for assurance
that his colleagues will tolerate an answer that is incomplete -
perfect in word, but not necessarily in deed (473a). At this point,
Socrates states one of his most famous goals - that philosophers shall
rule as kings, and that kings shall rule as philosophers. At last,
Socrates has stripped off his intellectual covering and revealed his
true intent - to challenge the nature of Athenian rule and propose a
radically new form of leadership. However, this challenge must almost
inevitably fail. After all, the philosopher-king should be a lover of
wisdom in its full bloom; but he must also understand opinions - those
partial truths that guide so many people. Within the same person, one
must find an appreciation of eternal forms and temporary manifestations
of popular will. We therefore leave book five in a paradox that
animates much of this class. The pure and perfect ideas of public life
must intersect with artifacts, notions, appetites, and political
realities of the real world. Perhaps philosopher-kings might enter
public life, but their unique combinations of skills are coincidental
at best.
