Plato and Socrates Part 5: The Republic (V)
Yes! We’re halfway through this. But, we’ve barely begun with the real questions. We’ve barely drawn the most intriguing of inferences. We’ve barely philosophised. What are we going to do discuss today? Well, the 5th volume of The Republic. But, I thought we were done with the ideal city, so what’s next, Socrates and Plato? What do you have in store for us? Well, did you forget about Philosopher kings, The Theory of Forms and Feminism?
You know, you’re probably going to shut down this episode in a couple of minutes to do something else but I would stop you. What I plan on talking about is probably the reason why we’re all still part of a society, why we interact and maybe even the very reason of our existence. In no shape or form was Plato bang on right about everything but in his context, he was a literal god. Every form of philosophy has started because of this book. We have calculus because Leibniz was a rationalist, Law exists because of the talk about justice and ethics in this book. The very concept of a society is based on ideals taken from this book. I think we can all agree now that this book is an important read.
Where does the 5th volume begin? Well, it picks up right where the 4th one left off and I don’t think Socrates is done talking about the luxurious city he started blabbering about in the previous volumes. Polemarchus and Adeimantus realise that they need to keep Socrates for a longer time at the supper table as they all still haven’t discussed anything about the family life of the citizens of this hypothetical city. It’s an important part, isn’t it? After all, don’t we all say ‘everything first starts at home’? Socrates begins talking about the fact that women and men are equal in their regards to conducting a particular job. This is where feminism becomes a possibility in society. He says that a man and a woman should be treated equally and if a man or a woman is not suited for the same job, they should not be assigned that job. However, there should be no distribution of jobs just on the basis of their sex. Still, every time they talk about how a man and a woman can have the same traits for a job, they mention that, biologically, women are weaker. However, many studies conducted today have shown women to be more resilient, stronger, robust and tough. So, they were working on a false premise back then.
Socrates further tells the people at the supper table that for them, an idea is viable only when it is practicable, or doable, and is the most beneficial or the best for the society. After further deliberations, they arrive to the decision: Women will be taught the art of war, guardianship, music and gymnastics just like the men but they didn’t stop there. They only wanted the best of the best to be the guardians. So
One thing to note is Socrates’ idea to remove all attachments. He says:
“All these women are to belong to all these men in common, and no woman is to live privately with any man. And the children, in their turn, will be in common, and neither will a parent know his own offspring, nor a child his parent.”
This is to make the guardians less vulnerable and to remove attachments. But, regardless of that, it is a reiteration of the fact that they’re trying to dehumanise the guardians for effective functioning. We do that too, don’t we? We separate our personal lives from our professional ones. And we know of a lot of people that suppress their personal lives to expand their professional lives, don’t we? This is exactly what Plato is trying to achieve: a segregation. The fact is that their social life and personal life is a part of their professional life.
Furthermore, they said that they will only allow the best kids to survive. The others would be, in a way, discarded. How cruel is that?
Socrates says:
“The proper officers will take the offspring of the good parents to the pen or fold, and there they will deposit them with certain nurses who dwell in a separate quarter; but the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be.
Yes, he said, that must be done if the breed of the guardians is to be kept pure.”
This clearly shows something: they were ready to sacrifice individual happiness to improve the state of their society. This is exactly what we discussed earlier, isn’t it? The happiness of the state might not refer to individual happiness of every citizen and Socrates and Plato were okay with that. They also prescribed the appropriate ages for men and women to breed (20-40 for women and 25-55 for men). Any child produced out of this time frame would be “illegitimate, unholy and unauthorised,” and either be killed or not receive proper nourishment. Albeit an effective way to control the population and ensure that the population lacks nothing as only the best of the best parents would be able to give birth given the restrictions, he is removing the very things that make a human a human, is he not?
After so many unethical proposals, Socrates says something very familiar. He says “Our rulers will find a considerable dose of falsehood and deceit necessary for the good of their subjects: we were saying that the use of all these things regarded as medicines might be of advantage.”
This is deception after he has already proposed the noble lie as we saw in the previous episode.
You see what Socrates is proposing? He is ready to lie to his citizens just for the smooth functioning of the state. That too, he is assuming that the state would function smoothly. He is ready to dehumanise his guardians. But, isn’t this today’s state? The government lies to us about so many things, corruption is raging, they dehumanise the military and the police. Well, guess we are living in The Republic after all.
See, Socrates is bringing about a lot of things that would have been considered extremely bizarre back then and it shows that even though his ideologies might seem outdated to us, they were way ahead of his time. He was literally preaching for the same equality as we were about 100 years ago. In some places, we still haven’t achieved that equality. Imagine that.
With this, we end the discussion on the communal behaviour in the hypothetical city.
The conversation now shifts about how unity is the greatest good and disintegration of the society is the greatest evil. Socrates has already mentioned something similar before and so this shows us that even though he is progressing within the Republic and evolving as we go along the book, he is still holding on to certain ideologies that remain fundamental to him.
To achieve unity, he says, it is important to make sure that all pleasures and pains are similar for every citizen of the city. That makes sense, right? Socrates goes ahead and says that the best governed city is the one where all citizens are happy or sad in unison. Now, we have seen Socrates compare the city to a person multiple times and he does it again. He says:
“when but a finger of one of us is hurt, the whole frame, drawn towards the soul as a centre and forming one kingdom under the ruling power therein, feels the hurt and sympathizes all together with the part affected, and we say that the man has a pain in his finger; and the same expression is used about any other part of the body, which has a sensation of pain at suffering or of pleasure at the alleviation of suffering.”
So, basically, he is saying that just how we concentrate our whole body on one injury, we must concentrate on one expression throughout the whole city. Is he preaching for equality? I don’t think so because of how he has argued things before this. Is he somehow pointing towards communism, which didn’t even exist back then? Could be. I mean ideas have no timeline, do they?
Alright, let me ask you something. If I were to remove all attachments from your community, and control what you could feel by externally manipulating your connections and people who are a part of your life, would you feel sad when someone dies? Of course you would. But, you would not feel as sad as you would've felt if they were a part of your family. But, think about this. What if every citizen was a part of your family according to the government? We often see a lot of people refer to other citizens as their brothers and sisters, or just family members, in general. Where does this idea stem from? Well, Socrates says that one way to remove any segregation in society is to remove all the attachments. However, he feels that attaching everyone with everyone would also give us the same result. If everyone was your brother, sister, father, mother, relative, would you not feel bad whenever something bad happened to someone and happy when something good happened to someone? Well, yes, you would. This is how Socrates thought he could bring about unity in his hypothetical state.
So, when you call someone your brother, you must treat them like your actual brother. Only then would the city be in harmony, right? If you treat the people of the city as members of your family, then injustice, violence, disintegration, conflict, et cetera would not exist. They are ready to redefine what the father is, what a mother is, what a brother is, what a sister is and remove the possessive pronouns “mine” and “not mine.” So, instead of saying my so-and-so is doing badly on my so-and-so is doing well, people will say he is doing badly and she is doing well. How will that help? If you remove the individual’s stake in a particular thing and make it a part of society, then would the individual not become a more involved part of the society? Didn’t mention this before? Socrates is indirectly going for a communist state.
So, the premise on which the 5th book is built is that the auxiliaries, that is the guardians, must share their women and children. This came up in the last book but it was a small and minor suggestion, that too not required to be focussed upon. But, as we progressed. I think we can say that it was barely minor and that the functioning of his hypothetical city is based on this sharing of women and children among the guardians. Using his Socratic Method, Socrates has proved to Adeimantus and Glaucon that the auxiliaries must share their women and children in order for the society to have good community foundations. So, this is the best for the city, is it practicable? Well, let’s find out.
See, considering that all members of the city would be considered family members of each other, there would be no fights, everyone would eat together, no property would be owned by an individual, no lawsuits will be there because everyone will be living in peace and harmony, no loans for the education of their children, no extra money to be made for the household, no concept of rich and poor, et cetera. So, it will be a pretty peaceful city, would it not?
Weirdly, Socrates now shifts to a talk about war. He says that the kids will accompany their parents to the battlefield when they’re of appropriate age (I am guessing around 14ish) and they will learn the best ways of war as they’re the future of their nation. He further says that those who does anything cowardly during the war (like throwing away weapons and leaving posts to run away from a death on the battlefield) will be demoted from a guardian to a farmer or a craftsman. Soldiers who die on the battlefield would be awarded the honour of being recognised as the golden race, that is the race of the rulers. If a soldier shows extreme bravery in war, he/she will be awarded with parties and accolades. They then move the discussion to prisoners of war, in a sense; enemies to be more vague. They are okay with enslavement until and unless the opposition is not Greek. However, they disregard any sort of disrespect on the dead body of their enemies and agree that the enemies must be allowed to take the dead bodies of their own. All of this is obviously nothing new. We all know that this is how things function now as well.
Socrates has been trying to build this city with lies, hasn’t he? Well, here is another one that he proposes: “And therefore when Hellenes fight with barbarians and barbarians with Hellenes, they will be described by us as being at war when they fight, and by nature enemies, and this kind of antagonism should be called war; but when Hellenes fight with one another we shall say that Hellas is then in a state of disorder and discord, they being by nature friends; and such enmity is to be called discord.”
You see what he is doing there? He is trying to promote the fact that we should try and form a city that maintains peace within Greece, whereas it is against states other than Greece. He is again trying to manipulate his citizens. I am not saying that it won’t reap benefits or it would not harm the citizens. I am merely analysing what is present in front of me.
But, what are we even talking about? Aren’t we supposed to be discussing the practicability of this proposition. Damn it, Socrates, stop making us go in circles. Glaucon points this out and asks Socrates to not divert from the topic. Socrates says that it might not be possible to show a society that functions exactly like they have prescribed but Socrates might be able to render a city that is closest to their prescribed fundamentals. So, what is that one thing? What is that condition? This condition is the most famous line in all of political philosophy. This condition is Philosophers must be Rulers and Rulers must be Philosophers in this city. Boom. Mic drop time. He has been setting this up all along? Who knows the most should rule and philosophers know the most, etc.
But, ask yourself, who is a philosopher? The word philosopher comes from the two words Philein (meaning to love) and Sophos (meaning wise). Let’s combine them. We get ‘Lover of Wisdom’. Well, Glaucon asked Socrates the same thing and got the same answer. Socrates says “the lovers of the vision of truth.” Which is pretty similar.
Glaucon and Socrates go on to have a pretty interesting conversation which would be a bit weird to quote here. So, instead, I will have the same conversation with you. Let me ask you something. Beautiful and ugly by the opposite of each other, right? You will say, yeah. Then they are two things and so beautiful is one thing and ugly another? You’ll repeat yourself: well, yes. “And, similarly, of just and unjust, good and evil, and of every other class, the same remark holds: taken singly, each of them is one; but from the various combinations of them with actions and things and with one another, they are seen in all sorts of lights and appear many?”
You say: Very True.
You’ll further say: So, sight lovers and those who admire beauty might also be philosophers, don’y you think? (No, you won’t actually say that but I have to imagine that for me to arrive at my conclusions, shush)
I’ll say: “The lovers of sounds and sights are, as I conceive, fond of fine tones and colours and forms and all the artificial products that are made out of them, but their mind is incapable of seeing or loving absolute beauty.”
You’ll ask me: tell me more.
See, when someone is able to distinguish between the real and the copy, that person is wide awake, right? So, their thoughts, as they represent the real truth, can be taken as knowledge. But, if a person is unable to distinguish between the dissimilar objects and is unable to separate true beauty from just perceived beauty, you might say that he’s a dreamer.
That person’s thoughts are mere beliefs and not knowledge.
So, that makes sense, right? I think it’s obviously an exaggerated argument, especially because he says “dreamer” and all, but it is a pretty plausible argument otherwise.
You see where the conversation is going, don’t you? What is Knowledge? Imagine this. You’re sitting in a hut in Ancient Greece, wearing your robe and outside your window, you can watch sacrifices being made to a new goddess and inside this hut you’re laying down principles that will govern the world till its very demise. That’s how powerful Socrates was intellectually, or should I say Plato?
He says that either you have a belief about an object or you have knowledge about it. You cannot possibly possess both knowledge and belief for the same object. This is where the theory of forms comes in. A belief is about the multiple form an object takes while knowledge is about the single form of an object.
What's the opposite of knowledge? Is it not ignorance? One can also see that the opposite of knowledge is innocence. However, think about it. The child is innocent but is not opposing knowledge in any manner. Rather, a child is curious to gain knowledge. So, when your opposing knowledge or ignoring it purposely, then you are ignorant. Ignorance is a block in the path of knowledge. You can also say that ignorance is opaqueness whereas knowledge is clarity. But, then, where does belief lie? Let’s get mathematical. Let the clarity be ‘x’. Therefore, Knowledge, having complete clarity, is ‘x’ and Ignorance, having complete opacity, is -x, right? Is belief not a part of this section on the line from (-x, x)? That is, is belief more opaque than ignorance or clearer than knowledge? Well, not at all. Rather, it is opaquer than knowledge and clearer than ignorance. Therefore, in mathematical terms, belief belongs in the interval of (-x, x). Boom! This is for all those hating on Philosophy for being a shit field. We rock.
So, even though this conversation is about knowledge, we’re actually heading towards the theory of forms. So, belief is both knowledge and ignorance. Similarly, something can be beautiful and ugly at the same time: like a painting can be ugly and beautiful can be simultaneously. But, if a thing is carrying two forms, or both the forms present in an equal proportion? Can the painting be more beautiful than it is ugly? According to Socrates, yes. He says that the forms that objects take can be present on the spectrum and exist as free flow concepts. Very modern of him, isn’t it? A lot of people are trying to get sexuality to be regarded as a free flow concept and it is hard to push that notion into society. Imagine what Socrates faced back in the 400 BCE.
This clearly shows something: they were ready to sacrifice individual happiness to improve the state of their society. This is exactly what we discussed earlier, isn’t it? The happiness of the state might not refer to the individual happiness of every citizen and Socrates and Plato were okay with that. They also prescribed the appropriate ages for men and women to breed (20-40 for women and 25-55 for men). Any child produced out of this time frame would be “illegitimate, unholy and unauthorized,” and either be killed or not receive proper nourishment. Albeit an effective way to control the population and ensure that the population lacks nothing as only the best of the best parents would be able to give birth given the restrictions, he is removing the very things that make a human a human, is he not? ot? everyone was your brother, sister, father, mother, relative, would you not feel bad whenever something bad happened to someone and happy when something good happened to someone? Well, yes, you would. This is how Socrates thought he could bring about unity in his hypothetical state.this is how things function now as well.
Now, we all know that almost nothing exists in purely one form. Every coin has two sides to it. The sides don't have to be equal in nature but neither of them are absent. As the masses believe that every object has two forms to it, they are all trusting one believes are not knowledge. Just like a philosopher is someone with love for the truth, a philodox or philodoxer is someone who loves his own beliefs and opinions. With this analogy, we come to an end to book 5. Book 5 was probably the longest, most complex, and dense of the whole of The Republic. Therefore, we won’t be working on book 6 today. But, I will leave you with a whole fruit basket for thought.
Do you think it is okay to keep lying to your people for a peaceful state and to create a social hierarchy instead of one getting formed on its now? Think about it. I know that many of you might not be listening to get started into Philosophy on a very academic level but read John Rawls to get a better sense of Justice in a society. After reading him, try to connect to what Plato has to say. Do you agree with the rules of war that Plato presents us? Is there something missing in the fine print? Is he right about belief being between ignorance and knowledge? Where does innocence lie then?
Too many questions, woah. Well, you think about it and keep on philosophising, with or without me. I’ll catch you guys in the next episode.
Resources:
Comments