This week, we finally reached the end of Plato's 'Republic', and finished the last of this years readings. I'm going to be honest, this text was the most challenging one for me this year. I feel like a learned a lot from it though, and it was worthwhile but I did struggle to concentrate on some of Socrates' arguments. I liked how we got to see some more mythological characters this week, in book ten. I loved learning about their choices for their next lives. I still feel bad for the Iliad's Ajax but hopefully his next life ended up being better than his Trojan War one and he got time to heal, mentally.

As this was our final reading week for 2023, there is no readings for next week. However, we will be continuing with the Greek classics in 2024. If you are interested in joining us again in 2024, please click here to see our schedule.

As usual, the questions will be in the comments. Hope you all have a nice holiday season.

Summary:

Book Nine:

Following on from the discussion in book eight (about how different types of cities evolve from one another) Socrates talks about how the different kinds of people the cities represent develop. He begins with where he left off, with the ‘tyrant’. The tyrant is the son of the democratic man and, because he has too much freedom he falls into a pit of his own vices. Desire, especially erotic desire, corrupt him into becoming the tyrant. In private life, the tyrant goes mad from pursuing his desires. Once he runs out of his father’s money, he resorts to lawlessness and criminality to get the things he wants. Thus, he becomes an unjust man and is unhappy, because he can never get everything he wants without a price. If the tyrant becomes an actual political tyrant, the situation gets even worse for him, because the more power he acquires the more enemies he makes and the more he must lose. Socrates uses the example of a slave owner who is transported to an isolated island: without the law on his side to keep the slaves in check, the owner will live in perpetual fear that his slaves will revolt against him.

Socrates compares the unhappiness of the tyrant to the aristocratic/timocratic man, who (due to being on the opposite end of the political spectrum in Socrates opinion) must be the most just and the happiest. This ties in with the argument given all the way back in book two, correcting the argument made there by Glaucon

Socrates continues to talk about the benefits of being just. He explains that there are only three true types of people in the world – those who seek honour, those who seek profit and those who seek the truth. Philosophers are the ultimate form of the latter and, because they only care about wisdom and truth, they are the only sub-group of people who can judge the other ones. (Which seems suspiciously convenient, to me ).

Finally, Socrates presents two refashioned portraits of the just and unjust man to replace the false portraits outlined in Book 2. He asks us to envision that every human being with three animals inside of him: a multi-headed beast, a lion, and a human. If a man behaves unjustly, he tells us, then he is feeding the beast and the lion, making them strong, and starving and weakening the human being so that he gets dragged along wherever the others lead. He also fails to accustom the three parts to one another and leaves them as enemies. In the just person, the human has the most control. He takes care of the beast like a farm animal, feeding and domesticating the tame heads and preventing the savage ones from growing. He makes the lion his ally. The three parts are friends with each other. Socrates runs through various vices, such as licentiousness and cowardice, and shows how the three parts run amok to cause these vices.

Socrates declares that it is best for everyone to be ruled by divine reason, and while ideally such reason would be within oneself, the second-best scenario is to have reason imposed from outside. This is the aim of having laws. The purpose of laws is not to harm people, as Thrasymachus claims, but to help them. Laws impose reason on those whose rational part is not strong enough to rule the soul.

Book Ten:

Having finished up most of his core argument in book nine, Socrates returns to the subject of poetry within his ideal city. Socrates has a lot of opinions about artists; he sees them as imitators of life and their art as the gateway drug to corrupting the soul. Through stories, poets encourage men to indulge in their darkest fantasies and live out extreme emotions vicariously. This cannot be allowed within the city, where logic and rationally must come first. Despite spending pages talking about how poets and artists are bad, Socrates regrets that they will be banished from his ideal city (alongside fun, if you ask me). He claims to be a fan of Homer and hopes that poets can find a rational argument that will allow them access to the city.

Then, in his final argument, Socrates decides to discuss the soul of the just and unjust man. He believes that the soul is immortal because there is nothing that can destroy it. Basically, the proof is this: X can only be destroyed by what is bad for X. What is bad for the soul is injustice and other vices. But injustice and other vices obviously do not destroy the soul or tyrants and other such people would not be able to survive for long. Therefore, nothing can destroy the soul and the soul is immortal.

Socrates then uses the myth of Er – a man who died in battle and visited the afterlife, only to be sent back after twelve days after witnessing how things work there. He observes a system which rewards virtue, particularly wisdom and justice. For a thousand years, people are either rewarded in heaven or punished in hell for the sins or good deeds of their latest life. They are then brought together in a common area in front of the three Fates and are made to choose their next life, either animal or human. The life that they choose will determine whether they are rewarded or punished in the next cycle. Only those who were philosophical while alive, including Orpheus who chooses to be reborn as a swan, catch on to the trick of how to choose just lives. Everyone else hurtles between happiness and misery with every cycle.

Er witnesses some big mythological characters embarking on their next life: Ajax the Greater chooses to avoid humanity and become a lion. Agamemnon, due to the injustices he committed in his Trojan war life, decides to become an eagle. Odysseus, having suffered enough in the life he lived, chooses to become an ordinary man. Some others choose lives of greatness or even tyranny, but they are not always as happy as they initially seem.

I have to say that the myth of Er was probably my favourite of all the myths Socrates mentions during his debate. It felt like a little bit of closure for some characters.

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