What if society could be the way that
you envisioned it to be? All of us have
some vision of what an ideal world would
be like. Is our individual psyche so
structured that we would be in a
position to actually decide what society
actually should ideally look like? In
some ways those are the fundamental
questions that are addressed in Plato's
Republic. This is a selective overview,
and if I were to record this twice the
content would be very different.
I've been reading Plato's Republic since
1980, and still every time I go through
even select passages within it, I find
that I am bamboozled by some of the
things that Plato says within it, and I'm
also curious to learn more. So this is
not by any stretch of the imagination
intended to be a comprehensive overview
of the Republic, but just a few short
observations on a few aspects of what is
within it. It is ideally designed for
students who have grappled with the text
a little bit already, and now want to try
to make sense of what in the world is
going on within it. The first thing
probably worth noting is that the actual
title of the Republic is "Politea," and
'politea' does not refer to a republic
in the sense in which the United States,
for example, is a republic, but rather, "of
society," or, "of the constitution of a
society," or in ancient Greece, "of a
city-state" - about which I won't say
anything here. It was written about 380
BCE, or before the Common Era, so Plato
was about 47 years old when he wrote it.
And that's significant because
the Republic is probably the most
influential book in Western philosophy
despite its age. And one of the reasons
for that is that it asks questions - it
addresses questions; Plato addresses
questions - that we are still addressing
today. Plato himself lived from 427 to
347 BCE, so he was about 27 or 28 years
old when Socrates was put to death, and
the alleged events - and it's important to
remember that these are just alleged
event events; we don't know that the
answer actually transpired - it may be a
grand attempt on Plato's part to
literarily express what is largely just
his own philosophical outlook on a
number of topics - they transpired much
earlier in Socrates's life. Then of course
the date at which it was written in fact
it was written 19 years approximately
after Socrates was put to death, and for
students of mine, you will have already
been introduced to the Apology which is
the final episode in Socrates's life, and
also to the Euthyphro which occurred
just prior to the events that are
depicted in the Apology. A word about
Stephanus numbers. I want to say at
first that this is a completely
fictitious way of even trying to
represent the Stephanus numbers. I've
mentioned it at all because you will see
such numbers in this presentation. Iif you
look at the drastically oversimplified
drawing that I've constructed here,
you'll see that this is page 327 [depicted] and
this is page 328 [depicted] and this is Plato's
Republic, and here are the
five columns:A, B, C, D, and E, with
numbering down in the side. You can think
of this as being kind of like a
newspaper that you might open and find
various columns in it. Now if you do a
search on the web for Stephanus numbers, you'll see that actual Stephanus
numbers look nothing like this.
However, if you imagine that this is a
very large book that contains all the
writings of Plato, then you would find
that Plato's Republic does indeed start
on page 327, and then you'll find the
numbering as illustrated in this
oversimplified drawing. The reason for
this is so that there is a standard way
of referring to the works of Plato,
no matter what translation, in whatever
language that you might be utilizing.
So it is not terribly dissimilar to the
way in which the Bible is translated
into verses. Okay; so that may be 
of slight help to some of you. The
next thing to notice is that Socrates
actually lived in Athens, as did Plato,
and so you can think of the story aspect
of the Republic as a quick trip to the
beach, right? So here we have Athens, and
here we have the Piraeus, and you can see
that it's only 11.6 kilometers distance,
even today, and so it's about a little
over a 10 K, right? So this is roughly
seven miles, and the purpose of the trip
that the characters in the Republic took
was to go observe a religious festival.
So I'm in Southern California and my
students are in Southern California, so
it's easy to imagine that if you're at
one of the colleges here, going down to
Sunset Beach, or going down to Huntington
Beach, or Redondo,
or Long Beach,  etc. to watch a very
interesting religious celebration.
There's a lot more to be said about that,
and the tolerance and intolerance of the
various Greek city-states for each
other's religions, but that would not be
appropriate here.
So the main speakers in the Republic,
who are the characters that make up the
Republic, well obviously there's Socrates,
and Socrates's actual modes of thought are present in book 1. However, in books 2 to
10 of the Republic - there are a total of
10 books in the Republic - you find the
actual philosophical outlook of Plato
himself, and that's an important point
for which we have great historical
evidence and also textual evidence.
I'll not try to make it all clear here. Cephalus is an older gentleman to whose
house the characters eventually arrive.
Polemarchus is Cephalus's son, and Glaucon
and Adeimantus are also among the
characters who figure prominently, and
they're in actuality Plato's brothers,
and they are great assistants to
Socrates in the actual doing of
philosophy. This is very important. In
philosophy, if it appears as though
we've arrived at a solution to any
difficulty very quickly, then it's
usually suspect; that is to say that
philosophy is not an easy task - it is
detailed, precise. We try to be accurate.
We try to use explanations and examples,
and it is quite detailed. And you will
find - or you have found if you've read in
book 2 and the subsequent books - that
Glaucon and Adeimantus are actually
doing Socrates a favor in making it
difficult for him to arrive at the
conclusions that he alleges to arrive at.
And this is something that
in our discussions I hope you pursue as
well: that you put pressure on one
another, not out of any kind of malice,
but because we are trying to get very
clear about any claims that we make.
Finally we have Thrasymachus, and
Thrasymachus is of extreme importance in
the Republic. He is the naysayer.
He is a sophist, and students of mine
will have encountered earlier in this
course. He has a very different set
of motivations, which at least in the
characterization of Plato are not
philosophical in nature but have to be
regarded as possessing some other
character, and perhaps we'll talk about
that in a few minutes. So in Books 2
through 10, we have Plato's actual
thoughts and philosophy, so there is a
sense in which Plato is very much
present within the Republic although you
will not find his name in any aspect of the
dialogue that transpires. So here's where
things get a little bit tough because
the actual overarching purpose of the
Republic is twofold, and it's quite a
challenge, and this is why it takes
Socrates - or Plato, using Socrates as his
mouthpiece - so incredibly long to
actually conclude the sustained argument
that constitutes the entirety of the
Republic. So here are the big questions
that it's easy to lose sight of as
you're actually reading through the text.
The big question is: what is justice? And
in this sense, and the sense articulated
within the Republic, the concept - although
the word is "dikaiosune," and is
translated almost always as justice - this
is not distributive justice, but rather
it's something akin to what is it to be
a good person, what is it really to be a
good person, what is it to
wind up one's affairs as we all do
sooner or later, and to be able to look back
and go, "Wow, I lived a good life." What does that really consist of ? And the second
question is, "Is the just person - the
righteous person - the good person (the
person who can look back on their life
and say, well done,
that was a good existence, I did a good
job living a human life), is that person
really the happy person? And a way of
putting that is to say, Is there a
coincidence, a coincidence between being a good person, and Happiness?Well, we can
then do what the characters in the
Republic do, and they can go they can say,
"Well you know, we came up here from this
celebration to Cephalus's house, and
Cephalus is an old guy, and he's an acquaintance of Socrates, and we can
look to him. After all, Cephalus has a good reputation, seems
to be a nice guy, nobody is bothering him,
seems like his affairs are all, you know,
all in all in order, and so perhaps
Cephalus can tell us. Hey, so what's the
secret, man? What's the way to go about
things so that you know you've turned
out to be a good guy like you are? And
Cephalus, after some jousting with
Socrates, alleging, you know, that, for
example, Socrates should come up and
visit him more often because he's an
older guy, and it's not so easy for him
to get around, finally they get down to
brass tacks and Cephalus says, well, this
quality that you're asking me about, it
really boils down to two things - it's
this: It's to speak the truth, and pay
whatever debts you've incurred. So, you
know, money plays a role - it's important
to have enough money - and just be honest,
and those two things are sufficient to
constitute happiness - no, I'm sorry -
justice. But also as we'll see there is
supposedly a coincidence between justice
and happiness. And then Socrates says,
"Well everyone would surely agree that if
a man borrows weapons from a sane friend, and if he goes mad and asked for them
back, the friend should not return them,
and would not be just if he did so." This
seems to be a counter example, and it
seems to be a counter example that Cephalus
himself immediately recognizes, but
there's more to be said about this. Think
about this for a moment.
Cephalus puts forward a proposed
definition of the quality that is
characteristic of him, and that others
admire in him, and Socrates immediately
comes back with a counterexample, and - if
I may interject - what appears to be
happening here is that Cephalus is
suddenly reminded of what Socrates, and
encounters with Socrates, are really like.
That is to say that, "Socrates - oh yeah -
he's going to get me going with
philosophy, and that is kind of an
irritating thing." Remember that Socrates
has a reputation for being irritating, so
while Cephalus was initially very
polite when he first saw Socrates, what
happens after Socrates begins to behave
in a philosophical manner and to
scrutinize the proposed definition of
this quality that Cephalus supposedly
possesses, what what happens with Cephalus,
Cephalus leaves. He says, "Well
then I'll hand over the discussion to
you," meaning his son Polemarchus, since
it's time for me to go look after the
sacrifices. In other words,
Plato is using a literary device to
illustrate the parting of the ways
between those who pursue philosophy and
those who find comfort in other pursuits.
So he hands the argument over to his son.
Cephalus iss out of there now -
we don't know that any of this really
happened - but the portrayal that Plato is
giving us is that there is this sharp
parting of the ways between those who
are genuinely interested in
philosophically pursuing questions and
those who don't want to take the time
for it.
So you might think of the The Matrix,
right, and in the matrix there's a choice
between taking the red pill and the blue
pill. If you've seen the movie, you'll
know what I'm talking about, but the idea
is that if you take that red pill, you may have to confront things that are
difficult to swallow - no pun intended, but
recognized - and if you want to go on
living in accordance with the blue pill,
you might not end up knowing how things
really are, even though things may appear
to be more comfortable. And so there's
that great scene in the Matrix where the
one guy is eating a steak. He knows that
he's not confronting reality because
he's in the Matrix, and yet he says, "You
know what? It still tastes great," and so
in a similar fashion,
Cephalus says, You know what? Things
seem pretty good to me, and I'm not gonna
worry too much about this kind of
arduous undertaking that you're now
inviting me to engage in. Notice that
Cephalus could have done something
like this - after all, let's think about
the example that Socrates gave. The
counterexample that Socrates gave, the
counterexample was, well, if a
friend or a person deposits some weapons
with you and then later goes mad and he
comes back and he wants them back, it
would be inappropriate for you to give
them to him, and Cephalus says, "Yeah, you're right," but what Cephalus could have
said was, "Look, the madman
who comes back and wants his weapons is
not really the same person to whom the knife is owed because he's
undergone this, you know, he's crazy, right?
Now I'm not going to give this person
the weapons back because he's not in his
right mind," and then you can at least
imagine that at that juncture Socrates
might have said well what do you think
then Cephalus, it is that constitutes
personhood? How radical a change could
you undergo and still remain the same
person, and what constitutes a shift from
one person to the other? So in some
classes, I give the example of a person
who at a quite early age is drafted into
an army, does some horrible things,
recognizes that they are horrible, goes
away, becomes a real philanthropist for
80 years, and is later discovered to be
the same person as the younger person
who had done these horrible things, but so
much time has transpired that the older
person no longer even recalls having
done the horrible things in his youth,
and yet is being tried for heinous war
crimes at that later point in his life.
Well as you can see from this without
going on with that illustration, that
kind of undertaking like what
constitutes personal identity would be
philosophical in nature, Cephalus
however chooses not to engage in the
kind of exacting discourse
characteristic of those who seek truth
in matters of importance, but rather he
goes off and he does things that are
socially acceptable that will win him
favor in the eyes of his fellows because
he's following the traditions that are
normal within his society which within
ancient Greek society would have
included the offering of sacrifices.
The conversation is then handed over to
Polemarchus as his son and
Polemarchus says that justice is giving
to one's friends good things that are
owed them and giving to one's enemies
bad things, and by way of counter
examples Socrates introduces the crafts
analogy, and students of mine will recall
from the Euthyphro and the Apology the
craft analogy. What the craft analogy
suppose is that if you are a member of a
craft - whether it be shipbuilding, shoe
making, medicine, carpentry, or any other
craft, then it's required that you be in
possession of a body of knowledge and
that you also possess the requisite
skills that are wedded to that body of
knowledge in such a way that the
products that you produce within your
craft are excellent in nature. And so
throughout Book 1, we find many
examples of Socrates engaging in the
"elenchus," or the Socratic method, in
which somebody puts forward an example
of what they think justice is. The
example is found to have various
shortcomings, and they move on to other
potential definitions. The goal of course
is always to arrive at a definition of
justice which is immune to any kind of
counterexample, and in our study of the
Republic we are not going to go through
those in any kind of detailed fashion
because we did enough work on the
elenchus in earlier dialogues of Plato
that we have studied. However I do want
to take a minute to talk about
the craft of medicine, or of doctoring,
compared to that of governance, because
remember that what our overarching
arching purposes
is, is to figure out what the definition of
justice is, and then that means
righteousness, and we're going to try to
find that, as we'll see shortly, in
society. The title of the work is, "Of
Society," or, "The Republic," so think about
the fact that if you were to go to a
doctor or you needed to go to the doctor,
you wouldn't want just anybody to be
your doctor. Ideally, you want not only a
good doctor, but you would want the best
of doctors. If you had your choice of all
doctors, you'd want to do some research
and make sure that the doctor who's
going to treat you is the best possible
of all possible doctors that are
available to you. Now if that's true in
the case of choosing a doctor, think
about the fact that society - our bigger
topic - is composed of many members and if it's important to us as individuals that
we be treated by the best trained and
practiced to treat us, the best trained
and those with the most practice to
treat us, how much more so is it true of
those who govern over our society? After
all, they are responsible not only for
the well-being of our individual body,
but they are responsible for the
well-being of society as a whole, and
it's in this sense that Plato advocates
an aristocracy. And so it's not a landed
aristocracy, as students of of history
may be familiar in the Western tradition,
but rather it is to be understood in its
literal meaning which is, "governance by
the best." So "aristos," in Greek, means,
"the best," and Plato says a reasonable
person will understand that you want
society to be ruled by the best. And I
won't be talking in this
video about the degenerative forms of
society, but I'll just mention them and
you can read about them in Plato's
Republic in great detail in Books 8
through 10 - and the degenerative
societies are: Timocracy, Oligarchy,
Democracy and finally,  tyranny. Tyranny,
Plato says, leads to a populist uprising.
A popularizer, as somebody who appeals to
popular sentiments, and who then becomes
a tyrant. So after various proposals of
the definition of justice are put
forward and all rejected, finally Thrasymachus enters the picture and Thrasymachus,
rather than trying to fix
the definition of justice, taking that
word that is such a familiar word to all
of us - or the concept of right living, as we
might say -  being a good person, and he
says what it really is, is whatever is to
the advantage of the stronger. And this
is rather complex. First of all, clearly
Thrasymachus does not mean the
physically stronger, but rather those who
are cunning, and those who are in
positions of power. The word 'justice'
itself is then relative to the desires
of those who are strong; that is, it has
no fixed meaning. So this is at best a
sociological investigatory endeavor
potentially without normative
constraints. That's kind of a mouthful, so
let me try to explain what I mean.
What Thrasymachus is
suggesting is that rather than trying to
understand something that we might refer
to as the actual word 'justice' and the
concept to which that word is to be
attached,
Thrasymachus is suggesting that
it's whatever it is that those in power
happen to say it is at any given time.
And notice that if that is so, there is
the possibility of the meaning of the
word itself to shift with whatever it is
that those in power decide to call
justice, and then those of us who are not
in such positions are subject to the
dictates of those who are in power. So
one thing that you might want to ask
yourself is, is the concept of righteousness
of being good, of being just, of being a
decent person, who is upstanding, is that
competitive in nature, or is it
cooperative? Another way of thinking
about this is to ask yourself: Is
morality about cooperation/ Is it
something that all can achieve, or is it
something that, if one person has it,
another person must not be able to have
it? Is it a competition? And notice that
on Thrasymachus's conception, it is
very much a competition as opposed to
something cooperative, and you can ask
yourself if this even makes sense.
Conceptually, should morality - whatever it
is - be understood as a competitive
endeavor, or is it by its very nature,
whatever it is, something that we are all
capable of? Socrates says to Thrasymachus,
"Do you think that a just person
wants to do better than another just
person?" and  Thrasymachus says, "Not at
all. Otherwise he would not be the
civilized and naive person he actually
is. " So this is not really terribly
difficult to grasp, given the nature of
our own system.
Think of the kind of sentiment that runs
through a person who is caught up on
their bills, or a person who has paid
their taxes successfully, or who follows
the letter of the law. Such individuals
are likely to have a kind of feeling
that, you know, "I'm a good person. I obey
the law. I do what I'm told to do. I'm not
behind in my taxes." Right? And Thrasymachus is saying not at all otherwise, he
would not be the civilized and naive
person he actually is, is suggesting
again that the powerful are the
legislators. They are the people who
determine what the laws are, and then you
and I are deemed to be righteous or just
insofar as we exhibit obedience to the
laws that are passed and dictated by
those in positions of power. Now I hope
that you don't miss the end of book 1.
We're still in Book 1 and I've only
taken from the end of Book 1 a snippet
here, and I'll just read it Socrates says"
"Therefore a just person is happy and an
unjust one wretched." And Thrasymachus says, rather snidely, "Let's say so."
And Socrates says, "So then, blessed Thrasymachus, injustice is never more
profitable than justice," and Thrasymachus you says, "Let that be your banquet,
Socrates, at the feast of Bendis," and the
feast of Bendis was a kind of orgiastic
celebration, and Socrates says. "Given by
you. The result of the discussion so far
as I am concerned is that I know nothing.
For when I do not know
what justice is, I will hardly know whether it is a kind of
virtue or not, whether a person who has it is happy or
unhappy." So at this juncture, what has
transpired in Book 1 is that using the
elenctic method, Socrates has
seemingly backed Thrasymachus into
a corner. However, as we read in Book 1,
it's clear that Thrasymachus is
not trying to fix a definition of
justice, but rather he's trying to
describe in what he would characterize
as real society, what really goes on in
society. He's trying - he's tried - to
characterize justice as a depiction
wherein those in power determine what
it is at any given point, and those who
lack power are then manifested by the
very fact that they agree to follow the
rules laid down by the powerful. And in
Book 2 and onward, all the way through
the rest of the Republic, the real work
gets done - the philosophical work - in
which Plato tries to make clear that
there is a philosophical project
distinct from the kind of project
characteristic of the description given
by Thrasymachus, and the second book
begins by Glaucon and Socrates
discussing the three kinds of goods that
are possible. One is an intrinsic good.
For example, a harmless pleasure.
The second is an instrumental good. For
example, [taking] a bitter pill. And the third kindof good is a combination of types 1 and 2:
something that's good both intrinsically.
and good for the results that it brings.
And they conclude - that is, Glaucon and Socrates conclude - that since justice or
righteousness is proposed as the finest
of qualities, it must be good intrinsically
and also for its consequences. So it's a
type 3.  Well, if it's good both
intrinsically and for its consequences,
then that must mean that the
consequences of being just are that you
are going to be a blessed individual or
a righteous individual. I like to think
of basketball, in my case. You can think
of an example of your own, but basketball
is an example for me. Like justice is for
them, basketball is intrinsically enjoyable
for me, so it has that quality: it's an
intrinsic good, however basketball in and
of itself is also good for its
consequences - namely, it's conducive to
the the increase of health, right? So if you play basketball, it's
also making you physically fit, so it's
not only intrinsically enjoyable but
it's also good for its consequences,
namely its health inducing inducing
quality. Now the next thing that's worth
taking a look at is the so-called ring
of Gyges that comes up in Book 2. And
this is where Glaucon is trying to
impress upon Socrates that it's not
going to be easy for him to show that
whatever righteousness or justice is, it
is good both intrinsically and for its
consequences. After all, Glaucon points
out that there's this ancient story
about a magical ring which can render
you invisible. And by the way, for those
of you who are fans of JRR Tolkien, the
Lord of the Rings, you'll now notice that
JRR Tolkien borrowed that
idea from an ancient source that even
precedes Socrates who lived about 2,500
years ago, so that is an ancient myth. So
if we imagine that someone finds a ring
that allows one
to be made invisible, so that no one
would ever know if they do something
unjust,
Glaucon says to Socrates: Do you really
want me to believe that you would still
go on doing the same things that you
would have done, had you not been able to
render yourself invisible?  And the idea
is pretty clear, right? Namely that, you
know, if I was invisible, that a lot of
the things that I do that I think are
the right things to do, I would fail to
do. After all, let's say that I could make
myself invisible. That means that I could
go anywhere. So I could go up to Bel Air,
and I could find Jack Nicholson's house,
and, you know, I could sit right there in
his bedroom, and he wouldn't even know it,
and I could just watch him and see how
he lives his life. Well we call that
breaking and entering, and we think that
that's a bad thing, but it's only because
we know that the consequences of being
caught would be deleterious - they would
be detrimental to our well-being, and
Glaucon is saying to Socrates:You want
to tell me that you would never do
things like that? That it would always be
better to be righteous? Now, remember that
they haven't yet fixed what the
definition of righteousness or justice
is, but that is the task that Socrates
actually has taken on. He is going to
argue that, Yes, a truly righteous person
would have no reason to engage in those
things, and wouldn't understand that it
would be wrong and deleterious to do so,
not because of what would be discovered
about them, but that there is something
intrinsically bad about engaging in such
things. Now at this juncture, we have a
little shift that's an important thing
to take note of, and that is that Plato
is here really beginning to put forth
his own philosophy. We know this because
at the end of his life, Socrates still
claimed not to know anything of importance, and yet within the Republic we
actually do find that definitions of
justice and many other things are
positively put forward - something that
Socrates, even as he faced his execution,
claimed not to know. So Socrates - or we
might now say really Plato - says. "We
should adopt a method we would use if
lacking keen eyesight, we were told to
identify small letters from a distance
and then notice that the same letters
existed somewhere else in a larger size
and on a larger surface. We would
consider it a godsend, I think, to be
allowed to identify the larger ones
first and then to examine the smaller
ones to see whether they are really the
same."So imagine that you're at the DMV.
You've got to read the eye chart,
but somebody comes up to you and says, "Hey look here, you. Check out this piece
of paper. You can see all the letters.
Here - they're the same here as they are
on that small chart at a distance that
you probably are having a hard time
reading." This is what Plato suggests.
He suggests that we first try to find
out what righteousness or justice is in
a city, and then we by analogy determine
what justice must be in the individual.
And so I'm gonna jump way ahead for the
sake of time and just show you in the
wash what this looks like by means of a
simple chart. So here we have the parts
and excellences of the KALLIPOLIS, and
that just means "of the good city" or "the
ideal city," the "ideal society," we might
say, and of the psyche. So you can see
that after a very prolonged conversation
largely in Books 3 and part of
Book 4 of the Republic, the
determination is made on the part of
Glaucon,
Adeimantus, Polemarchus, and Socrates, that a city - an ideal city - an ideal society -
would have three parts. One part would be
the Guardians; the another part would be
the auxiliaries - we might think of this
as the army, the police, various
protecting functions of society; and then
finally the artisans or, we might say,
everyone else. So the city or Society has
three parts.
Now I've spared you the task of reading
through that part of the Republic. It is,
however, quite fascinating. One discovers
that it's also illiberal in its
nature: there is a lot of censorship;
there's a very interesting discussion of
why art is deleterious, or not beneficial
in a good society, to which no doubt you
like I, would take umbrage and question
the wisdom of disregarding the
importance of art.  But notice that they
were able to construct the parts of a
city by the use of their imagination. So
here's what I'd like to recommend. I'd
like to recommend that you envision
yourself having taken a trip to the
beach to watch a religious festival, and
then you have an evening where you're
hanging out with your friends, and you
begin to just consider, as friends
sometimes do, all the woes of society, and
then somebody proposes that you all just
imagine what the world could be like, and
what you would like the world to be like,
if it could be any way that you could
possibly imagine.
Now that discussion might go on for
hours, and similarly you can see the
details of that conversation in Plato's
Republic itself. Now to jump ahead. What
happens by the invocation of the big
chart/small chart and
that Socrates proposes we follow, is that
there are also three parts of the psyche
or, as we might say, of the individual.
Most translations render the word 'psyche'
as "soul," but of course that can be
misunderstood and interpreted in various
ways. Aristotle had a very succinct way of
describing what is meant by the psyche.
I'll let you think about it. He said that
the psyche is anything about me over-and-
above which I am NOT a corpse.
So my psyche, if it's anything about me
over-and-above which I am NOT a corpse,
my psyche would be manifested right now
in my speaking. It's manifested in you in
your currently listening, and so forth.
Whatever the psyche is, that's its
triumphal characteristic, in which it
distinguishes the mind - if you will - from
the body. And Socrates says it has three
parts, just like the city. And the three
parts are: Reason, Spirit, and Appetites.
Now within this, since we are trying to
construct an ideal society, and likewise
an ideal psychological arrangement, the
idea is that the principle excellences
of character, or the prime virtues, will
arise somewhere within such a picture. If
they don't, we probably made a mistake in
the construction of our society or of or
within our individual psychological
organization. So wisdom is one such
virtue or excellence, and it will
primarily be manifested in the Guardians.
Courage will be manifested within the
auxiliaries, and they decide
that self-control or moderation will
necessarily manifest itself in all parts,
and then once they've found three of the
four cardinal virtues of the ancient
Greeks, the question arises: Well, w wait a
second. Wasn't the whole point of our
comparing society to the individual was
to try to determine where justice would
appear within such a society? Where is
the righteousness of the society, and at
one point Socrates says, Well, do we want
to go back and jiggle what we said about
society, or were we completely happy with
it, the way we structured it? And they all
agree: Yeah, we were pretty happy - we were completely happy - with the way we
structured it. And then Socrates says, Well then if we were looking for four
things and we found three, then if there
are only four things to be found,
let's consider that justice might
consist - or righteousness might consist -
in simply that characteristic: namely, 
that the parts are all well ordered. And
they agree that justice or righteousness,
then, is the well ordering of the parts.
And one thing that this illustration
doesn't make clear, so I'll try to use my
cursor here to fill it in and hopefully
it'll come out in this video, is that the
guardians are those who manifest wisdom
and consequently, in a good city, the
auxiliaries will always be subject to
the Guardians. So the the actions taken
by the auxiliaries will reflect those
things that the Guardians have
determined to be. So if one is wise, one
has knowledge. Whatever wisdom is, it
requires that one first possess
knowledge, and the knowledge then is
possessed by the Guardians. It's
communicated to the auxiliaries, and the
artisans - or everyone else - will
falls in line in accordance with this
particular ordering of society.  And then,
by analogy, it is within the rational
part of our minds that we possess wisdom,
if we are ever to possess it at all, and
that of course again requires knowledge,
and our spirit allies itself with the
dictates of our reason, and the appetites
that we have which are analogous to this
section of society down here, fall into
place. So a quick illustration on the
psychological organization of such an
individual would be something like this:
Your alarm goes off, and we all know what
that's like. There are some days when our
reason tells us ding ding ding it's time
to get up I have a lot to do I have to
make it to class or work on time, and
then our spirit can either align
itself with our appetites, or it can
align itself with our reason. So if we - if
our spirit gives in to our appetite for
additional sleep, then our
bodily movement - that passion - will
move us to hit the snooze button and so
appetites, the spirited part has allied
itself with our appetites, and notice
that we are not living in accord with
the dictates of reason. But if reason
predominates, then that means that our
spirit is courageous and we do what we
have already determined by the use of
our wise judgment is the best thing to
do, and we get up,  OK and notice that the
just individual, or the righteous
individual, is the person in which the
spirit allies itself with rationality,
and the appetites are subordinate to
both of these parts of the psychological
organization. The idea is supposed to be:
What better outcome
could there be for you as an individual,
than for you to be able to rationally
determine what the best use of your life
is, and then for your spirited or animus,
the part of your person to ally itself
with those rational dictates, and your
desires to be subject to them?So we know
that there are many occasions on which
we fall short, and yet this seems to be a
plausible model. One more thing I'd like
to mention about this, and that is that
one can ask whether the model seems
plausible because of the influence of
Plato.  In other words, maybe if this
rings a bell for you, maybe it rings a
bell
because Plato's model has been so
incredibly influential on Western
society, or maybe he got it right [about our nature]. That's
a question I'm going to leave for you to
think about. There are various sets of principles that I'd like to run
through fairly quickly. They pertain to
some of the structure of the parts of
the reasoning that are engaged in within
the Republic, and here I list them:
Analogical Reasoning; the Principle of
Univocality; the fallacies of division and
composition; the Myth of the, or the Lie
of the Medals; and the Top Illustration
and the Principle of Noncontradiction.
I'm going to go through these fairly
quickly, but I hope that you will pause
the video when necessary or go back or
when you're reading through the
the Republic again you'll be able to see
these and how they apply. So first thing
is that Plato often reasons by analogy.
We see that in the analogy between the
city and the psyche. We also see it in
the growth, the way in which he depicts
the growth of our understanding and
pairs it to the cosmos. And here I have
in mind the analogy of the Sun, which
those of you who have read the text
will recall, and then finally he uses
analogical reasoning when he compares
the growth in our understanding to the
movement upon a line. Analogical
reasoning in and of its very nature
is inductive, and inductive
reasoning is always characterized by the
fact that even if the premises are all
true,
the conclusion does not necessarily
follow. So reasoning by analogy always
makes it possible that - well, actually
I'll talk about that in more detail
later, so I'm gonna skip what I was about
to say now and come back to it. Okay.
Secondly, the principle of univocality. Socrates says, well then if you call a larger
thing and a smaller thing by the same
name, are they unlike in the respect in
which they are called the same, or alike?
and Glaucon says, "Alike," and Socrates says,
"So a just person won't differ at all
from a just city with respect to the
form of justice, but will be like it." Now
this can strike some as problematic
because you may think that there is a
disanalogy between what justice is in
the individual and what justice is in
society as a whole. However, there is a
constant motivation on the part of
Socrates to try to figure out what we
mean conceptually by the word justice
itself, and so he is trying to fix
conceptually the concept of justice
itself so that when we speak we all are
being genuinely communicative. So if I
use one word, and I like to use the
example of . . . like when one of my sons was younger,
he told me that he was in love. And, you know, he was so young that I wondered was
that even possible. So I asked him, I said,
what what do you mean by love, and he
said, well, you know, where you can't think
of, you can't but think about the person
all the time, and I understood that this
was infatuation, but subsequently I
allowed myself to interpret his
utterances about what I call infatuation,
love, and that was me deferring to his
use of the word even though the word
love in an adult conception of love
intrinsically involves the concept of
care - of actually caring for the object
of love. And so when we can, we should be
sensitive to the fact that univocality is a principle deeply respected
in philosophy, and much of philosophical
activity is aimed at trying to ensure
that conceptually
we're on the same wavelength, if you will,
when we use a single word. The next thing
I want to mention is the fallacy of
composition and the fallacy of division.
The fallacy of composition suggests that
if the parts have a certain quality,
property, or feature, then the whole must
have it
............
and if the whole has a certain quality
property or feature then the parts must
- so let me start with division. So let's
suppose that a certain high school that
that let's say that
Downey High School
eats a lot of ice cream, then that's
characteristic of the high school as a
whole, and then if I say John is a
student at Downey high school, then he
must eat a lot of ice cream, too. So
Downey High School as a whole consumes a
lot of ice cream; therefore John, who
attends Downey High School, must consume
a lot of ice cream. Obviously if the
whole has a certain quality, it may or may
not be the case that the individuals
that make up the whole have that same
quality as well. And the same thing works
in reverse;
that is, the fallacy of composition: If
the parts have a certain quality,
property, or feature, then the whole must
- so here we can consider five great
basketball players and say each of these
basketball players has the property of
being great, therefore if you put them on
a team, it would be a great team. Notice
that that does not necessarily follow,
because if the individual great players
are all guards, then they're going to
form a team that is going to be too
short, most likely, or lack the requisite
skills, since that team will not consist
of forwards and a center as well as
guards, so whether or not a part of the
parts have a certain quality entails
that the whole will have the same
quality is also a matter for
investigation. And so David Sachs in a
famous article called, "A Fallacy in
Plato's Republic," suggests that this may
in fact be a shortcoming of the Republic.
That is to say. that it may wont - it may
be the case that nobody in an ideal city
will actually be ideally just. So at one
point in the Republic there is the
so-called
Myth of the Medals. The myth of the
Medals suggests that all members of
society should be told a useful lie. The lie
is that at our making, some were
fashioned out of gold, and those who are
fit, those are they who are fit to rule;
some of silver, and those are they who
are fit to be soldiers or protectorates;
and some of iron and bronze, and they are
necessarily to be artisans. This is a lie:
the word actually in Greek in the text
is 'pseudos', so it's not really a myth but
it's an outright lie, and that creates
problems for the overarching structure
of the Republic. That is to say that
nobody in an ideal city will actually be
ideally just. There's an interesting book
that I'll mentioned by Sam Harris on
lying that I recommend. It's under a
hundred and twenty pages and it counters
the notion that there is any such thing
as a useful lie, but here's the brief
result that you can see in the form of
an argument, and the brief result is
going to be that nobody in an ideal city
is actually ideally just. Sso let me just
make one change here quickly and we'll
read through this argument. P1: A completely
just (or righteous) person the person
would be absolutely wise. P2: A completely
wise person would believe no falsehoods. 
(After all, wisdom entails that we have
knowledge and so to be ideally wise one
would be ideally knowledgeable,
and if one is I ideally knowledgeable,
one would believe no falsehoods.) P3: The
Guardians should be told the
noble lie if possible. P4: Lies are falsehoods
P5: The guardians are the
exemplars of wisdom in an ideal city. Conclusion: Not even the
exemplars of wisdom will be absolutely
wise. So that's another thing that you
can think about when thinking about
whether or not Plato's ideal Society is
actually even in principle realizable,
even given Plato's own terms.
The final thing that I'd like to mention
is the illustration of the top. So I
don't have a picture of a top handy to
show you, but think of a toy that spins
real fast if you are successfully
operating it and if you do, you were to
do that, you might say that the top is
moving and the top is not moving.  If it
were at its apex and yet to say such a
thing would be to contradict yourself
the top is moving and the top is not
moving and so this requires a
distinction; that we distinguish between
the top not moving with respect to its
axis, and yet to be able to also say the
top is moving with respect to its
circumference, and if we were to say the
latter by way of analysis, we would not
be contradicting ourselves. So analysis
is useful in enabling us to distinguish
things that must be distinguished.
Earlier when we looked at the analogy
between the ideal city and the psyche, in
the case of the ideal city, it was
possible for us to sit around and
imaginatively construct what such a city
would be like - there were really no
constraints. But when we think about the
psyche, there are constraints. That is to
say, we each HAVE a psyche. This psyche
that each of us has is not malleable in
the way in which society is malleable (or,
changeable), and so consequently there is
a need
for argumentation if we are to reach the
conclusion that the psyche has the three
parts that Plato, using Socrates as his
mouthpiece, claims that we have. So Plato
uses the principle of non-contradiction
in accord with the top analogy to show
that we must necessarily conceive of the
psyche as having three parts. So the task
I set to you, is to examine the
arguments by means of which he does this,
and see if you agree with them, or can
come up with a counter example or
counter-argument to
one or more of the distinctions within
the psyche. That is my very brief
overview of just a few aspects of the
Republic. I hope you found this useful.
There are many other YouTube videos and
other sources that you can access to
enrich your appreciation for Plato's
Republic, and I hope that certain aspects
of this stick with you for the remainder
of your life. After all, the craft of
living is one to which we have all been
inducted, willy-nilly.
