A Plato Primer

J.D.G. Evans

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317492139
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua

"A Plato Primer" introduces beginning students and the general reader to the main theses, concepts and arguments in Plato's philosophy. Subtle, versatile and multi-faceted though Plato's thought undoubtedly is, it has a core that needs to be explored and savoured. Evans presents this core, as it appears over a large range of his works, spread out over many decades of composition and many philosophical topics. Through all this diversity Plato's original philosophical personality shines through. Evans approaches the material thematically, in terms of modern philosophical categories, in seven main chapters. Within each of these individual treatments Evans follows the lines of argument in the main works of Plato that explore them. Indications about how to pursue given topics in the secondary literature are given in the helpful guide to further reading.

1

THE REPUBLIC

The Republic is an extended attempt to discover the nature of the good life and to defend the claim that such a life is the best one to live. Plato speaks of “justice” where I speak of the good life, but he builds no assumptions about its nature into the target of his enquiry. Everything is open to question and the only constraint is that the enquiry should be guided by reason.

THE DISPUTE WITH THRASYMACHUS

The work starts with an exchange between Socrates and others who offer various accounts of the nature of justice; and as is normal in such exchanges in other works of Plato, Socrates is able to show that they are confused – without himself producing any more satisfactory account. The Republic is traditionally divided into ten books. These divisions are not Plato’s, but to keep it simple I retain the convention, and so we begin with Book 1. Some have regarded this first part, Book 1, as a distinct detachable composition from the remainder of the work; I think this is wrong. The correct view is that it stands in dialectical counterpoise to everything that follows. The work on the whole examines two views on the relations between power, knowledge and the good life. In Book 1 the case is made for the thesis that value and the knowledge of it are based on power. The outcome of this examination is negative; the thesis does not survive scrutiny. The remainder of the work concentrates on the contrary thesis that power is based on knowledge of value, and this time the thesis survives examination and is vindicated. By speaking of “dialectical counterpoise” I mean that each part of this exercise, the positive as much as the negative, gains illumination from consideration of the other part.

The first definition of justice is that it consists in giving each person what is due him or her. Socrates’ objection to this proposal essentially exploits the fact that it makes no reference to expertise on the part of the dispenser of justice. First, the area of application for justice is unclear. Many decisions about what is due to a person are best taken by an expert in that particular field; for example, a doctor in matters of health, or a farmer in matters of agriculture. Secondly, any decision to confer benefit or harm on someone must be taken by one who is sufficiently knowledgeable to recognize what is beneficial and what harmful and which persons deserve either of these treatments. At this point Thrasymachus enters the discussion. Although he is apparently ready to endorse the claims just made about the importance of knowledge, Thrasymachus’ main idea concerns the role of power in determining what this knowledge consists of. His view is expressed by his slogan “justice is what is in the interest of the stronger party” (338c). What he means is that the possession and exercise of power is necessary and sufficient for a set of values to gain currency. This lesson applies whether the stronger party is a single individual or some larger group, so it holds good in all political systems ranging from tyranny to democracy.

Power, then, on this account defines value. That is universally true, but the actual nature of what is valued is liable to vary depending on who is exercising the power. So Thrasymachus’ position may be labelled “relativist”: values are relative to the social context in which they are found. This view stands in the sharpest contrast to the objectivist realism that Plato will ultimately develop in the rest of the Republic. But for now the task is to show, in terms that Thrasymachus will acknowledge, that his account fails. Once again Plato invokes the notion of the expert and uses it to make the point that experts agree with other experts whereas those lacking expertise, the inexperts, disagree with everyone else, expert and inexpert alike (350b). This is a fairly uncompelling argument, since we are inclined to maintain that there can be disagreement between experts and also that there can be unanimity among inexperts, as when everyone supposed the earth was flat. But Plato’s point may be put most persuasively by noting that there can be many different wrong answers to a question or beliefs on an issue but only one right answer. This comment again suggests an objectivist realist epistemology.

The arguments against the relativists in Book 1 are not strong. But they prepare the ground for the positive account that follows. First a challenge is laid down to Plato. He is to show that the good life (whatever that turns out to be) is intrinsically preferable to any other. By “intrinsically” it is meant that such a life must be valued for itself, and not for the rewards – including reputation – that it brings. There are possible situations in which a coward gets the rewards given for bravery and has the reputation of being brave; and conversely the brave person may seem to be a coward and be treated accordingly. That, we are told, is not to count in the assessment of the intrinsic merits of cowardice and bravery. It is worth noting here that this challenge (often referred to as “Glaucon’s Challenge”) is somewhat harsh and tendentious (358b). Many moral philosophers have thought that the consequences of action, especially if they are close and easily foreseeable, contribute to the value of the action. Moreover we are social beings, and how others regard our lives is part of what those lives are. But the challenge, in all its austerity, is accepted. The Republic proceeds as a response to it.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

The discussion now turns from moral to political philosophy (368c); it does this through a deliberate device on Plato’s part to assimilate the two. Terms of value – good, bad, brave, cowardly – are applied both to single individuals and to whole societies. It is natural to assume that they do so on the same conceptual basis; it certainly seems that there is no chance of ambiguity when we apply the same set of value terms to a person and a group. It is quite unlike the case, for example, of calling both financial businesses and the edges of rivers “banks”. The analogy between individual and whole society will play an important role in the development of Plato’s discussion, but its legitimacy should be questioned. Consider a team, with its individual players. The team may be harmonious or well disciplined when it hardly makes sense to apply these terms to any member. The individual may be brave or quick-witted when such terms can be applied to the team, if at all, only by extension from their use for individuals. Finally, while both a team and an individual can be fast – say, in the 400-metre relay – this may be, but need not be in any precise way, a function of the speed of the individual members.

Plato accepts and exploits the analogy without qualms. He finds unity in the diversity of a whole society and diversity in the identity of an individual person. At the centre of Plato’s political philosophy lies the principle of the division of specialized labour. Many needs must be satisfied if even a rudimentary human life is to be lived: food, clothing, shelter, medicine, to name just a few. If there are four people each of whom needs to have these things provided, this can be done in either of two ways: each person can supply all of them for himself, or the four can divide the labour, so that while one is a farmer and supplies the food needs for himself and the other three, another is a builder and supplies the housing requirements for them all, and so on. Of these two possible arrangements, Plato takes it to be obvious that the second is preferable. A person will do a better job if he can devote all his time to it; and his level of skill will be higher if he is not distracted by the need to spread his time and attention over many distinct projects. So an arrangement whereby the four come together and pool their individual skills and their fruits will suit all four of them better than one in which each lives in isolation and fends for himself.

Plato notes that once we acknowledge the importance of social rather than individualistic life, there opens up the prospect of many more specialist functions. For one thing, there is the matter of security, both internal and external. The policeman and the soldier are each specialists with their particular skill, just as are the doctor and the farmer; and so the analysis indicates that the enforcement of the will of society, as well as protecting it and keeping it secure, must be reserved to those with such particular skills. That leads to the most important and contentious proposal of all. We have just spoken of the “will of society”. Who determines what this is? Plato answers by invoking another specialist skill, that of the ruler (428d4). Thereafter he will talk of a ruling class (which need not consist of many people) in a society; and since discussion of the formation and work of this ruling class occupies much attention in the Republic we should consider the rationale by which Plato identifies it.

There is no doubt that Plato’s preferred system of government is an aristocratic one, in which a small elite acquires and retains power by virtue of its superior knowledge. Many of the detailed provisions in his political theory, regarding such matters as education and censorship, are strongly authoritarian. Yet it is better to reserve these terms – “aristocratic”, “authoritarian” – until we have seen how Plato situates his system of government in relation to the alternatives. To anticipate, we will see that he emphasizes the differences by appeal to the importance, in his own system but not in the alternatives, of knowledge. But at this stage in the argument all that Plato really needs is a recognition of the fact that in any system of government some people exercise a monopoly of power and do so on the basis of a knowledgeable grasp of what political power can deliver. Whether and how such specialist exercise of power can be justified is a further issue.

The purpose of dissecting the essence of a society was to enable us to discover those features through which it works well. He has distinguished three main elements in society: the rulers, the security forces, and the remaining skilled professionals and craftsmen. Corresponding to the differences in performance between these groups are different forms of virtue. This is most obvious in the case of the security officers, who will do their work well if they are brave. In the case of the rulers, who occupy their position because they possess intellectual skill, the virtue required for good work is wisdom. The attitude demanded of the third class is subordination; the virtue that goes with such an attitude is moderation.

That still leaves justice to be defined; this definition has been the proclaimed object of the whole enquiry. Throughout the discussion of the structure of society Plato has stressed the importance of the sense of cohesion that is generated by the division of labour. This is where he finds the virtue of justice; it is the situation in which each element in society keeps to its proper role, and in particular those who are superior or subordinate respect and embody that fact (433a3–4b).

This, it might be objected, does not sound much like justice, which surely involves the distribution of benefits and harms, as was recognized in the definition that Plato considered at the beginning of the Republic: give each person his due. But remember that one way of characterizing what is being sought is an account of the good life. The account of justice as a general recognition of one’s role in the overall system of society encompasses all the particular elements in the set of values that Plato has been proposing in this part of his argument.

LIVING WELL: THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

We now turn from the person as a member of a larger social entity to the person as an individual. The original terms of the analogy between society and individual indicate that the details that have just been discovered to clarify value in the former, should be applicable to the latter as well. Plato first argues that each person is a complex of distinct elements, just as the three main distinct elements combine to form a single society. He presents a rigorous argument for this surprising analysis of the individual person, based on a version of what was later to be developed as the principle of non-contradiction (435b4–c). In Plato’s formulation it is that no subject can possess opposed attributes. The formulation is rigorous because Plato explicitly rejects counterexamples that might seek to exploit variations in time, part, aspect or other such factors.

He applies this formula to various cases in which what is apparently a single individual subject is both attracted to and repelled by that same thing. The clearest case concerns physical desire, which may impel us in the direction of another drink, say, and rational appraisal, which restrains us from such indulgence. Tensions of this kind are often portrayed, by Plato himselfas well as others, as conflicts between the body and the soul or mind, but here Plato resists that way of characterizing the matter by finding further plurality in our psychology. There is a third part of the person that can be shown to oppose, in various situations, the wishes of rational deliberation or of physical appetite. This third part is emotional and so cannot be identified with reason; but it also opposes itself on occasion to physical appetites. This can arise when a person finds himself hating one of his desires: not just coldly dismissing it, as reason would do, but emotionally engaged in the rejection of it. So this part of the person, which Plato calls “spirit”, must be distinguished from the other two. This tripartition counts against the inclination to see Plato’s complexity in terms of body and soul and favours his own characterization of it as revealing three distinct parts of the soul.

There remains the diagnosis, within this scheme, of the virtues of the individual human person. It follows the pattern of the definition of values in society. Wisdom is the proper functioning of the reason, bravery of the spirit, and moderation of the appetites. Justice then, analogously with the justice found in the whole society, is the state of proper relations between these three elements in the individual. In the just person each psychological element performs its particular task and does not seek to trespass on the domain of the other two. Thus reason reflects on and sets the goals of the person’s life, the appetites are controlled by and conform with what the reason determines, and the spirit engages the person emotionally to live in the way thus prescribed. To the extent that this psychological division and cooperation of roles does not occur in a person, it is precisely by this amount that the person fails to be just.

This is Plato’s general account of the good life. It applies to each and every person whatever his or her position in the social system; and this raises a problem when we consider how justice in the case of an individual will fit in with the justice of the society of which he is a member. Take a member of the ruling class. In terms of his membership of the social system this person is required to concentrate exclusively on his professional skill of ruling and in this way to contribute to the justice of the system. But as an individual person his reason is only one element in his psychology, albeit the one that should direct his life. The other elements are not non-existent, even though in societal terms they should play no role. More paradoxically still, a member of the lowest class should, as an individual, subordinate his appetites to the control of his reason, but as a member of the social system he should concentrate exclusively on his appetites, while these are in turn to be subordinated to the reason of someone else.

These and similar cases illustrate once again the conceptual weaknesses in a thoroughgoing analogy between individual and society. But they are not fatal. We can adjust the prescriptions so that space can be found to allow each individual as well as the whole society to be just. The lower-class person uses his own reason to direct his appetites, but his reason is in turn directed by that of the decisions handed down by the ruling class. In addition to reason the ruler has appetites; but not only are they subordinate to his reason, they also assume the minimal significance necessary for physical survival. This analysis of the human person strains under the pressure to be part of the best social group, but it does not necessarily break.

KNOWLEDGE, FORMS, GOOD

As Plato now focuses attention on the nature of the knowledge that the rulers need to possess, we move from psychology and ethics to epistemology and ontology. We are owed such an account if Plato is to make good the promise to defend the claim that knowledge rather than power is the basis for value. Knowledge of what? There has been much talk already of “experts” and the contrast between them and the inexpert; but wherein resides this expertise? Plato approaches the matter by formulating a paradox that can still startle us today.

Unless philosophers bear kingly rule in cities, or those who are now called kings and princes become genuine and adequate philosophers, and political power and philosophy are brought together, and unless the numerous natures who at present pursue either politics or philosophy, the one to the exclusion of the other, are forcibly debarred from this behaviour, there will be no respite from evil for cities nor for humanity.

(473d)

Thus we are introduced to the notion of the philosopher-ruler, whom, as we saw in the Introduction, Plato not only theorized about but, in his personal travels to Sicily, tried to bring about in actuality. The interest in what follows may appear highly abstract and theoretical, but it is also thoroughly practical.

He introduces the discussion by asking what steps are needed to move us from the current unsatisfactory political set-ups to one that matches the blueprint already sketched. The basic answer is given in the quotation above. We can read this simply as a dramatization of Plato’s recipe for good rule – let philosophers be in charge – but there is no reason not to take it at its face value as a practical proposal, however unlikely its actual implementation might be.

Plato considers the education of the philosophers in two phases. In the first he discusses what they are required to know, and in the second how they are to come to know it. The first phase is in turn divided into two parts. Plato starts by giving a general characterization o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• A note on text, translations and references
• Introduction
• 1. The Republic
• 2. Knowledge
• 3. Reality
• 4. Dialectic
• 5. Value
• 6. Causality and change
• 7. Politics, art and the fate of the soul
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index