BOOK #81
The Republic
by Plato

Review by Edward Tanguay
January 29, 1998

You have to take Plato's world into account when you analyze The Republic. He was reacting against types of governments which had failed before him, namely: timarchy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. The Spartan society was an example of timarchy which "in short, had the merits of discipline, respect for law, and courage, but are stupid, greedy, and brutal to their less priviledge classes."  This type of society leads to an oligarchy, or government by a few rich families who pass down control along family lines. In this society, the lower classes eventually make enough money to challenge the established families control, which leads to democracy, which becomes so widespread that it becomes uncontrollable. The general opinion eventually favors some kind of control over chaos which gives rise to tyranny.

Plato's democracy was not our democracy. One has to remember that Plato's experience and idea of democracy was different than our modern understanding of it. The democracy that he knew in his day (and which failed) was a direct democracy (as opposed to our modern day representative democracies). Democracy of Plato's day was also such that there was not voting but a drawing of lots. Everybody had a chance for every office. (Imagine a direct lot-drawing democracy in the United States where Andrew Dice Clay draws the straw for President and Dan Quayle draws the straw for Head of the Education Department.) You can image what Plato meant by "democracy encourages bad leadership" and that tyranny is the "chaos and dissension into which democracy degenerates."  In short, the problems with each type of government was that in timarchy you have a split community (very rich and very poor) and lack of intelligence. In oligarchy the fault is a desire for wealth. In democracy there is a radical lack of cohesion. And in tyranny you have a free run of "violent and criminal instincts."  From all this, Plato decided that "the world's ills would not be cured till philosophers ruled."

Yet, sadly, the solution which Plato provides us is really out of whack with reality.

To me, Plato's plan in The Republic turns out to be as opposed to human nature as Lenin's communism (it is no coincidence that Bertrand Russell suggested that Soviet Russia was the state most nearly run on Platonic principles) and if brought into practice would be as totalitarian anything Hitler was trying to accomplish:  fully controlled lives void of individuality, no more rights, only duties, the state is everything, the individual nothing. Compounded with this are Plato's timelessly appalling ideas such as the abolishment of the family (!), the production of laboratory babies (!), regulating the stories that mothers are allowed to tell their children (!), the censorship of poetry, and the strict regulation of sexual intercourse. Plato saw in the four kinds of governments of his day a lack of reason, so in The Republic we get "reason with a cattle prod", planned uniformity exaggerated to the highest degree. He goes overboard in describing politics as an exact science.

Then why do we read this?  Because a great deal of it is not about politics, but about education, and philosophic concepts, for instance, the methaphor of the cave.  Throughout the ages this text has been "a continued source of stimulus to educational thinking," a passionate desire for truth. Desmond Lee sums it up in his introduction to my text: "The Philosopher Ruler is a mirage, a product of the kind of idealism which asks too much of human nature and is then disappointed by what it finds; but he does stand for a set of problems which are real, and to which every society must find its answer."

Everytime I am half way through an ancient Greek text, I vow to myself that I will never read another one.  I am turned off by their belief in language and logic and categorical syllogisms. It is true that if A equals B, and B equals C, than A equals C. But that so rarely applies to our juicy world.  There is a cleanliness that isolates these conversations from the world that you have come to know on a daily basis, yet as Plato makes the interlocutors agree with the logic of Socrates step by step, your mind just trudges along as you read:

    "It follows therefore that a good mind will perform the functions of control and attention well, a bad mind badly."
    "It follows."
    "And we agreed, did we not, that justice was the peculiar excellence of the mind and injustice its defect?"
    "We did."
    "So the just mind and the just man will have a good life, and the unjust a bad life?"
    "So it appears from your argument."
    "But the man who has a good life is prosperous and happy, and his opposite the reverse?"
    "Of course."
    "So the just man is happy, and the unjust man miserable?"
    "So be it."
    "But it never pays to be miserable, but to be happy."
    "Of course."

and this one . . .

"Then can anything that is not harmful do harm?"
"No."
"And can what does no harm do evil?"
"No again."
"And can what does no evil be the cause of any evil?"
"How could it?"
"Well then; is the good beneficial?"
"Yes."
"So it must be the cause of well-being."
"Yes."

Ugh. Stop. Unless you enjoy or believe in this linguistic logic, the conversation only gets interesting when stories and hypothetical situations are introduced to make a point, for instance, the story of the golden ring which makes you invisible.   The moral question is, if you had such a ring, how would you use it?  Your answer will tell you if you are a bad person or a good person.

The
Golden
Ring

You have to admire the courage of these characters in this dialogue, who tackle such huge issues as "to prove not only that justice is superior to injustice, but that, irrespective of whether gods or men know it or not, one is good and the other evil because of its inherent effects on its possessor."  (!) That would be quite an essay question.

At times I felt as if Socrates and Glaucon and the rest of the characters in the conversation were like Pipi Longstocking and her friends in her tree fort planning a society without experience of the adult world. Half way through planning, for instance, they suddenly realize that "With our new luxuries we shall need doctors too, far more than we did before. / We certainly shall." In fact, this is what made me decide that Plato did not write this book to be taken seriously, but as a book to stimulate conversation on the issues that he presents. The characters are far too naive to be taken seriously, yet the issues they discuss are timeless and important. It is a nice format.

Status of women:
fully equal.
The ironic shocker is that in Plato's fully repressed society, women are fully equal to men:

    "What I mean is this. Ought female watchdogs to perform the same guard-duties as male, and watch and hunt and so on with them? Or ought they to stay at home on the grounds that the bearing and rearing of their puppies incapacitates them from other duties, so that the whole burden of the care of the flocks falls on the males?"
    "They should share all duties, though we should treat the females as the weaker, the males as the stronger."
    "And can you use any animal for the same purpose as another," I asked, "unless you bring it up and train it in the same way?"
    "No."
    "So if we are going to use men and women for the same purposes, we must teach them the same things."
    "Yes."
    "We educated the men both physically and mentally."
    "Yes."
    "We shall have to train the women also, then, in both kinds of skill, and train them for war as well, and treat them in the smae way as the men."

QUOTABLE  

"A good many women, it is true, are better than a good many men at a good many things."

exclaim.gif (1045 Byte)Then in a bewildering run of his logic, Plato concludes that if men and women are to lead the same lives, the family must be abolished (!) and that there will be "mating festivals" (!) at which the Rulers will contrive that the couples from whom they wish to breed shall mate; and the children will be looked after in state nurseries (!). He continues, "and if we're to have a real pedigree heard (!), mate the best of our men with the best of our women as often as possible, and the inferior men with the inferior women as seldom as possible, and bring up only the offspring of the best."

And he doesn't stop there . . .

He also deduces that infanticide (!!) would also be a good idea:

These officers will take the children of the better Guardians to a nursery and put them in charge of nurses living in a separate part of the city: the children of the inferior Guardians, and any defective offspring of the others, will be quietly and secretly disposed of. (!!)

We are of course appalled by this.  I wonder what his contemporary Greeks thought of it?


In light of the Clinton scandal and his subsequent recovery (knock on wood), I found the following quote to be enlightening regarding Clinton's relationship to our New Hyper Media:

"Suppose a man was in charge of a large and powerful animal, and made a study of its moods and wants; he would learn when to approach and handle it, when and why it was especially savage or gentle, what the different noises it made meant, and what tone of voice to use to soothe or annoy it. All this he might learn by long experience an familiarity, and then call it a science, and reduce it to a system and set up to teach it. But he would not really know which of the creature's tastes and desires was admirable or shameful, good or bad, right or wrong; he would simply use the terms on the basis of its reactions, calling what pleased it good what annoyed it bad."

Is Plato's
"Large
and
Powerful
Animal"
today's media?

Plato's Repbulic is often used to throw lights of prophecy upon our modern day society.  Here is un uncanny quote regarding democracy:

"Then in democracy," I went on, "there's no compulsion either to exercise authority if you are capable of it, or to submit to authority if you don't want to; you needn't fight if there's a war, or you can wage a private war in peacetime if you don't like peace; and if there's any law that debars you from political or judicial office, you will none the less take either if they come your way. It's a wonderfully pleasant way of carrying on in the short run, isn't it?"

When we combine this with the arguments in Mill's On Liberty, don't we get the feeling that this is indeed where we are headed?

Final Analysis:
Plato's Republic is an insightful description of an overplanned monstrosity.


notes and design by

Edward Tanguay


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