Plato: Republic. Plato’s Attack on the Traditional View of Justice as Ownership and his Defense of the Need for Philosophy
Walter Brogan
Villanova University
Eva Brann refers to Diogenes Laertius and other ancient sources to verify that Plato "combed and curled" his dialogues with utmost care. One story had it that at his death bed was discovered several rewritings of the beginning of the Republic that Plato had been working on. There is an interdependence of structure and interpretation, such that an interpretation of any section of the dialogue required that we look backward and forward in order to understand it. Furthermore, there was an internal interpretative aspect to Platonic writing, despite the notable absence of authorial privilege in Plato's texts. The content of the dialogue is about the form of the dialogue, and the form of the dialogue demonstrated the content. This backtracking onto itself, this reflection on its own progress as a way of writing is the method of Platonic philosophy. It is a method particularly suitable to destabilize the tendency of philosophy to solidify its findings into sophistic doctrines.
The Republic is a model of carefully planned construction. Thus the central message at the heart of the Republic, the journey of the individual beyond the multiplicity of illusion to the oneness of the Good and back again, cannot be understood aside from its place in the dialogue as a whole. The way the dialogue is framed at its beginning and end by the story of descent and the need to ascend from the underworld. Piraeus is beneath Athens. The ascent back to Athens is steep and Socrates has to struggle to win his ascent by conquering the rulers of discourse in the Piraeus. The Republic is the story of this ascent. The final Books of the Republic, however, tell the story of the philosopher's need to descend again. They tell about the descending order of the polis, and these Books are structurally parallel to the ascending order of the polis described in Books II-IV. The Republic ends with the Myth of ER, a story of the soul's journey to the underworld and its struggle to reemerge.
In Book VII, after concluding that the philosopher is the true ruler of the polis, Socrates asks a question that captures the theme of the Republic.: "Do you want us now to consider how such people (philosophers) will come into being and how one will lead them to the light, just as some are said to have gone from Hades up to the gods? (521c) It is only in this movement out of the descent and towards that which more properly rules the human condition that the philosopher emerges. The Republic, therefore, is again about the recovery from fallenness. The human condition can only be understood by plunging into the depths of its bondage to what is below and learning from it as well as climbing to the heights and being guided by this ascent. This is perhaps the significance of beginning this dialogue about the polis with the trip to Piraeus and to a Dionysian festival in honor of Bendis, the Thracian goddess who attends souls on their way to the underworld. But it is also thematically notable that the ascent of the philosopher takes him beyond the city, beyond Athens, to a vision of the good that is beyond Being and beyond the heavens. Thus, on both sides, the philosopher has a questionable relationship to the city and circumscribes its boundaries.
Philosophy begins in Piraeus. Thus the view of justice emerges out of the discussion of injustice, the view of the one out of the manifold of opinions in which the one is ruling, although hidden from sight. Philosophical awareness begins when the soul is no longer absorbed by its view of the shadows and turns in the right direction. The soul first begins its ascent only when it becomes aware of opinion as opinion, that is, only when it frees opinion and sees opinion as pointing beyond itself to another path of thinking (to its source in truth?)
The Republic --politeia-- is about the formation of the polis (the city). The Greek polis cannot be adequately equated with our notion of society, or automatically aligned with any familiar notion of political life. An excellent work that traces the historical transformations that have occurred on the way from the Greek polis to the modern nation-state is Hannah Arendt's book: the Human Condition. Along the way, a blurring of the issue with regard to the relationship of the private and the public has taken place. This is a central theme of the Republic. The Republic is equally about the make-up of the city and its organization as it is about the organization of the individual soul, the city within oneself.
I want to work through Book One in a certain way. I would like to look at the arguments about justice and injustice within the context of a portrayal of the primary discussants. In other words, it seems to me that we can learn as much about the issues involved by looking at who is speaking as we can by examining what is said. The three main characters are: Cephalus, Polemarchus and Thrasymachus.
Cephalus
The word Cephalus (Κέφαλoς), as you may know, means head in Greek. He is in fact the head of the household, the father of Lysias and Polemarchus. We meet him returning with his crown from sacrificing to the gods; he departs the scene early announcing that he must return to his sacrificing. So Cephalus symbolically embodies the prominent positions of religion and family in the formation of the State.
So much is put on the table for us in the conversation between Cephalus and Socrates, that it is difficult to signal out what might be particularly important for us to notice. For example, Cephalus chides Socrates for not coming more often. He considers himself a worthy interlocutor, since, due to old age, he no longer is distracted from philosophy by physical desires (πιθυμία) and pleasure (κατ σμα δovαί). We need to ask whether this is truly something Socrates would find interesting. Then again, there is in general the issue of old age that is raised. You might recall in the Phaedrus that it was thought that writing might be a kind of good, philosophical writing if it is viewed as geriatric therapy. Like Sophocles, Cephalus indicates that there is no eros or madness in his life. And he counts this as a blessing. For him, eros is associated with bodily pleasure, whereas reason and discourse requires the suppression of the body. [the city of contented cows]. So the schema here introduced dichotomizes pleasure and reason. Pleasure is a mad master that is unable to be controlled, that unleashes a ferocious, destructive force of disorganization and that causes us to be led by outside forces beyond our control. In contrast, reason is non-erotic and controlled. Cephalus' understanding of logos aligns logos with stoic detachment and calculativeness. It is clear that for him, being an excellent human being, being the one who should rule because of his or her excellence involves a kind of calculativeness that always makes sure the books are balanced so that one is never caught off guard. The somewhat pathetic portrait takes on added poignancy when one realizes that Cephalus is defined by his being on the threshold of life, in other words by his relationship to death. Can one's death, one might ask, ever be an issue that is detached from one's desire for life. Does philosophy deal with the human condition by attempting to sever the connection between love (eros) and death (thanatos) in the way Cephalus is suggesting.
So let's see what Socrates does with Cephalus' self-caricature. Strangely, he raises an apparently unrelated question. He suggests that Cephalus' goodness, his ability to be the just person, may not be due to his way of being or character, but due to his ousia, his “substance,” that is, his wealth and possessions. The issue of wealth and property, and the related issue of inheritance attached to kinship, are put out on the table. Questions concerning the notion of justice as distribution of wealth and as a basis for ownership are raised. But what Socrates appears to be especially interested in here is the question of indebtedness. Cephalus has portrayed himself as without debt and without guilt. For Socrates, justice is always about owing and responsibility.
Cephalus responds that while inheritance may be necessary, it is not a sufficient condition for justice. It is a matter of how we use our property. Justice involves having a proper balance with regard to money --neither too much nor too little. In other words, justice is defined by Cephalus as moderation.
Very quickly, let's look at what is at stake here. Clearly Cephalus has committed himself to an account of justice that is very familiar to us. The just person is the property owner who leads a life of moderation and exercises his or her right to garner and grant inheritances. Moreover the just person avoids lying or becoming in other ways indebted to anyone for fear that the gods who keep the accounts might demand reparation in the next world.
But the task of defining justice quickly passes to Polemarchus.
What is it about Cephalus' definition that proves inadequate? What are the inner contradictions that collapse his argument?
1. Cephalus has a pre-political sense of justice; yet the notion of debt indicates that relation to the other is at the center of justice. Cephalus remains fundamentally rooted in self-interest, in saving himself, and is unable to account for the political dimension.
2. Cephalus is rooted in the private realm --in the care for family, etc.-- but has no relationship to appetite and desire and sexuality.
3. Cephalus says that justice is a matter of character but he defines acting justly in terms of possessions without relation to character or disposition of the people involved. Socrates makes this clear when he asks if Cephalus would give back the gun to a madman.
Cephalus proves incapable of transcending the private realm to give an account of justice that would show how one brings about just relationships between members of the community. Cephalus' understanding of justice as minding one's own business fails to question how to do this in the face of the conflicts and tensions of human life.
Polemarchus, his son, inherits the debate.
Polemarchus:
His name literally means warlord. In fact, his it becomes almost immediately apparent that his position on justice represents conflict and competition. The virtue he espouses is courage. For him, justice is a purely public virtue. His definition of justice is: to render to each what is fitting, what is owed. To do good to the friend and harm to the enemy.
Polemarchus' definition is typical of the military definition of justice. It is a purely political, Spartan-like concept of the guardian class which is unable to give any account of the private sphere. Polemarchus is like the noble watchdog who will attack all outsiders, even those who are good, while protecting insiders regardless of their character.
The discussion of justice with Polemarchus makes a major advance over that of Cephalus. With Cephalus the issue of indebtedness and ownership came to the fore. With Polemarchus, this issue is thematized. What does it mean to owe a debt to others, what is their due? Polemarchus answers that it is whatever is suitable to them. Thus we shift from justice as rooted in self interest to justice as belonging to the other.
1. Who is the friend? Polemarchus defines the friend as anyone belonging to the city and the enemy as the alien. Justice requires us to do good to those who belong to us and defend our fellow citizens from those outside who would attack us. At the core, he espouses a notion of justice that is tooted in nationalism. Socrates argues that it is possible to be wrong about who the friend is, that one could appear to be a friend but not be deserving of the good that is owed to the friend.
argument: the guardian who defends the friends must also best know how to steal from them in order to beware of the enemy who wants to harm. Thus they are most capable of injuring. The just person is a thief who steals for the benefit of friend or to harm enemy. Thus there is no essential difference between the just and the unjust person except for the fact that the just person knows who the true friend and the true enemy is. Justice requires knowledge. The capacity to distinguish the apparent friend from the true friend. The friend turns out not to be the person who happens to be next door, but the just person. Every human being is capable of justice and injustice regardless of his or her position in the city or outside it. [ this is the universal space of philosophy in contrasts to the territorial position of Polemarchus].
defeat: the purely external definition of justice that Polemarchus first offered is discarded. The guardian cannot blindly pursue justice. Justice is not a matter of conventional contracts. The association that binds a just community together is not arbitrary but rooted in the worthiness of the members. [knowledge is dangerous to the bind of the city]. A criterion beyond the authority of law is announced. Justice responds to a different limit than the boundaries of the city.
2. Justice and art (techne)
Socrates asks when specifically justice has an application, what its use is, what it does, in what way it benefits (like doctor and pilot). Polemarchus says it is useful in war and contracts. But Socrates argues even here the expert is preferred except when things are already going right.
What are we to make of the uselessness of justice? Justice is not good for anything in particular but it is the architectonic virtue and skill, the one that accompanies all other skills and directs them towards the good. Thus justice can never be associated with the opposite of good, that is, it can never direct itself towards harming the other. It always aims towards and knows the good (unlike the doctor who knows illness).