Republic 6 (484a-502e)

The Philosopher-Kings II

 

Contents:

The Philosopher's Fitness to Rule  (484a-487a)

  • The question is "why should philosophers become the Guardian Rulers of the City?

    • Philosophers (only) apprehend the permanent and one, whereas non-philosophers are acquainted (only) with the changing and many.

    • Only those who can conserve the laws and practices of the City should be its guardians.

    • Philosophers seek what is true of being---the real---and what is real is the permanent, the unchanging---that which is not susceptible to generation and decay. 

    • Philosophers love truth and hate falsehood.  Since only the philosopher understands what is fine and good in the laws and practices of the City, only the philosophers should rule.

  • As a lover of one thing, all other desire for other  things are weakened; so too the philosopher's love for truth (wisdom) is such that other desires such as the desires for fame and glory or the desire for pleasure or wealth are weakened in him or her.

    • A guardian should be moderate (like philosophers) so that the ruler will protect the wealth of the citizens and not covet it.

    • The philosophic quest to apprehend the whole of the universe places individual life in cosmic perspective and death becomes insignificant to such a one.  (This allows us to "take hardships philosophically.") Cowards who have an inordinate fear of death are not attracted to philosophy

  • Philosophers, loving wisdom, courage and moderation are likely to be just.

    •  They learn quickly and have good memories.  They are musical and harmonious. 

    •  They are led to the idea of each thing.  Thus philosophers should rule.

 Objections to the Nature of the Philosopher  (487b-497a)

  • Adeimantus objects:

    • Those who are inexperienced in the art of dialogue feel that philosophers take advantage of them.  When the opposite of what they initially believed is proven true by the argument, they feel like the victims of a hustler.  Those who make philosophy a career turn out most eccentric and vicious, and others who are more benign end up useless to the city.

  • Socrates defends the philosopher with an analogy between the philosopher and a ship pilot:

    • A certain myopic and slightly deaf ship owner is seeking a pilot for his ship.  Sailors who have no understanding of the use of transept and stargazing to navigate the ship vie with the true pilot for the position.  Since they do not see the importance of knowledge of astronomy and mathematics to the rule of the ship, they quarrel with one another and contrive to take over the ship.  They either force, persuade or entice the owner to give them the rudder.  Giving the name of "captain" and "ruler" to the one skilled in taking command, they careen off in all directions, making the one skilled in piloting useless.

    • The philosopher is useless in the City, not because he or she is incompetent to rule, but because those in power are so ignorant and blind as to fail to call upon the skills of the philosopher.

  • After accounting for the charge that philosophers are useless to the City, Socrates defends them against the charge of eccentricity and viciousness (498e-493e).

    • The true philosopher is a lover of wisdom.  Plato identifies a specific desire (eros) or love proper to the psyche's faculty of reason:  analogous to sexual attraction or ambition for fame or glory, those characterized by the love of wisdom relentlessly pursue the truth, reject all craven rivals, adore it, commingle with it, wed it and give birth to more truth and intelligence.  Once, committed, the philosopher will hate the rivals and opposers of truth, namely falsifiers.  Again such a character is courageous, moderate, magnificent, intelligent and endowed with a good memory.

    • So why do the many view philosophers to be so odd and so vicious?

      • Here we find the Platonic notion that virtue is nourished in a Just and Virtuous State; but in a vicious state, every temptation contrives to corrupt and undermine the human propensity for moral excellence.

      • In Dante's Inferno, the most vicious sin is the treacherous deception or betrayal of the finest natures.  In Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Othello, the hero is incited to murder his faithful Desdemona through the vile and lying slander of Iago.  

      • Here Socrates claims that only those natures capable of magnanimous deeds for the city are capable, once corrupted, of the greatest treason.  Here perhaps he is thinking of the notorious Alcibiades who was once a student of Socrates but betrayed Athens to the Spartans during the Peloponnesian Wars.

    • Any city other than the ideal city they are inventing is hostile to the philosophic nature, because only the Ideal City is devoted to the ultimate Good, that is, to the flourishing human character in harmonious accord with the truth and a transcendent or spiritual Good (see ahead 505a).  Living as he is in the restored democracy, Plato finds the values promoted by the mass of citizens to be lacking, namely the value of material pleasures and wealth and the value of military fame and glory (See Funeral Oration of Pericles in Sophia commentary The Fabulous Fifth Century).

      • Socrates puts the lion's share of blame for the corruption of the philosophic nature on the conventions and prejudices of majority opinion which are reinforced in the hearts of young people in every forum or assembly, and in every popular media.

      • What is not achieved by rhetorical persuasion is enforced by censure, fines, punishment and the executioner.  (Michel Foucault recently restated the instantiation of political repression in our language, conventions, laws and modes of criminal justice.  He would not, however, have thought that Plato's Republic or The Laws represented an advance in human liberation, just a replacement of one form of repression for another).

      • Peer pressure and State coercion contrive to corrupt the philosophic nature far more than the teachings of the sophists.

      • Sophists only teach the conventional convictions of the masses.  (In effect, Plato claims that the sophists found a lucrative business in reinforcing popular opinion ascertained by public opinion polls.  No one ever lost money pandering to popular sentiment.).

  • The masses will have a hard time accepting that the feature itself of things, for example, goodness itself, has being (is real), whereas the many particular aspects of particular things, for example, the specific good of a painting, the specific good of a wine, the specific good of a play, do not really exist, or, at best, exist only ephemerally, briefly, fleetingly, hovering between existence and non-existence.

    • Thus, because of this popular skepticism about the exclusive reality of the Forms, "it's impossible for the multitude to be philosophic."

    • Someone with the philosophical nature who is good-looking as well is likely to gather adulators and flatterers.  Filled with pretensions and conceits, such a golden one is likely to think that education should come easy.

    • If such a one wants to adopt the philosophic life, those who enjoy her companionship will try to undermine the person's resolve.  [Much as Aquinas's ambitious family tried to dissuade him from joining the mendicant Dominican order by tempting him (unsuccessfully) with a prostitute.]

    • When those of true philosophical nature leave the field, pretenders and social climbers take over (replacing philosophy with rhetoric), and besmirching the good name of philosophers.

    • So those with a truly philosophic nature, who accept the arduous education and who remain uncorrupted by the envious, wicked or narrow-minded conformists are rare indeed.

      • [It is intriguing that Plato believes that the philosophic temperament is especially susceptible to corruption.  It is noteworthy that Plato is willing to trust them to absolute power as Rulers of the City.  The notion that the best of men are still susceptible to corruption is  basic to the theory of  popular or majority sovereignty and it also led Montesquieu and others to the view that the powers of government: executive, legislative and judiciary ought to be separated and a balance of powers be maintained between the various branches of government.]

 On the Possibility of Philosophic Rule  (497a-502c)

  • It is only the regime of the ideal state outlined previously that will (through the carefully regulated educational process) allow the philosophical nature to reach fruition.  (The hope of many contemporary parents is to shield their children from the full brunt of post-modern, post-Christian society.)

  • If the character of the true philosopher can be made manifest to the common people as distinct from those panderers and vicious pretenders ("whose arguments are ad hominem," that is, they abuse the person rather than address the issue. 500a), then it is not impossible for philosophers to be accepted as rulers.

    Suggestions for Further Reading

  • Annas, Julia.  "Understanding and the Good:  Sun, Line and Cave."  Plato's Republic:  Critical Essays.  Ed.  Richard Kraut.  Lanham, MD:  Rowman and Littlefield, 1997.  [143-168]
  • Benardette, Seth.  Socrates' Second Sailing:  On Plato's Republic.  Chicago: University of Chicago, 1989.  
  • Bloom, Allan.  The Republic of Plato.  New York: Harper Collins, 1968.   [139-157]
  • Irwin, Terence.  Plato's Ethics.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 1995.  [271-274]
  • Pappas, Nickolas.  Plato and the Republic.  New York: Routlege, 1995.  [114-117] 
  • Sallis, John. Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues.  3rd ed.  Bloomington, IN:  Indiana Univeristy Press, 1996. [396-412]
  • White,  Nicholas P.  A Companion to Plato's Republic.  Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979.  [163-182]

Department of Philosophy   |   Sophia Project   |   Plato Page

© 2000, S. Mayo         For more information contact:   smayo@molloy.edu