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Plato's Republic, Book Two | Justice vs Injustice and the Ideal City · Mahon McCann

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SPEAKER_00: Hello, my name is Mahan.
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I'm an Irish philosophy PhD researcher and part-time lecturer
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in philosophy and ethics.
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SPEAKER_00: This video is part three of a series of lectures on Plato's Republic.
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SPEAKER_00: So if you want to go back,
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SPEAKER_00: you can watch the introduction for the framing of this course,
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SPEAKER_00: and then also book one before this lecture,
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SPEAKER_00: which is going to be on book two.
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SPEAKER_00: Book two of Plato's Republic sets up the entire rest of the book.
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SPEAKER_00: On the very first page,
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SPEAKER_00: Glaucon asks Socrates,
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Do you want to seem to have persuaded us that it is better in
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every way to be just
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SPEAKER_00: than unjust?
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SPEAKER_00: Or do you truly want to convince us?
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SPEAKER_00: This is bringing up the main theme of the Republic,
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SPEAKER_00: which is the distinction between appearance and reality.
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates' argument in the first book with the Sophists,
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SPEAKER_00: where he overcame Cephalus' definition and Polymarchus' definition,
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and Thrasymachus' definition really cleared the way for a
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positive account of justice.
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SPEAKER_00: But it didn't persuade Glaucon and Adamantius,
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SPEAKER_00: Plato's real brothers in life and the main characters of this dialogue,
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that justice is truly better than injustice and that the just
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life is truly better.
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So that is the premise that Socrates is going to have to defend
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in book two and
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SPEAKER_00: really for the rest of the book of the Republic.
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SPEAKER_00: At the beginning of book two,
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SPEAKER_00: Glaucon makes a distinction between two types of goods,
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SPEAKER_00: intrinsic and instrumental goods.
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Intrinsic goods are goods that we desire for their own sake,
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like joy or happiness.
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SPEAKER_00: We don't desire joy or happiness to get something else.
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SPEAKER_00: The intrinsic goods are the end of our desire.
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SPEAKER_00: The instrumental goods are goods that we desire for their consequences,
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SPEAKER_00: for what comes from them.
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SPEAKER_00: The examples he provides are medicine,
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SPEAKER_00: difficult physical training, but also things like material wealth.
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SPEAKER_00: Interestingly,
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SPEAKER_00: Plato adds a third category to this,
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SPEAKER_00: of goods that are intrinsically good and instrumentally good.
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It can be good in and of itself,
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but also has good consequences that come from it.
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SPEAKER_00: And Socrates argues that justice is in this camp.
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Justice is something we should want intrinsically for the sake
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of being just,
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SPEAKER_00: no matter the consequences of it.
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SPEAKER_00: But also that if you are just, you will attain the best consequences.
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Glaucon pushes back on Socrates' argument by arguing that
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justice is only consequentially good.
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SPEAKER_00: It's only good for its outcomes.
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Glaucon is taking on the persona here of a sophist who argues
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that it's better to
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SPEAKER_00: seem just but to actually do injustice.
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SPEAKER_00: So justice is a kind of conventional morality.
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SPEAKER_00: You want to look conventionally moral so people don't single you out,
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SPEAKER_00: so you can fit in and you appear like a just person.
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But really,
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in order to get ahead and to win,
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you have to do injustice undercover.
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SPEAKER_00: Glaucon's position is an example of ethical or moral relativism,
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SPEAKER_00: that there are no absolute truths in ethics,
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and that what's morally right or wrong varies from person to
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person or from society
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SPEAKER_00: to society.
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SPEAKER_00: So essentially,
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SPEAKER_00: in society,
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SPEAKER_00: people expect you to behave a certain way,
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SPEAKER_00: and you should pretend to behave that way.
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But in reality,
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there's actually no real significance to your ethical actions.
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SPEAKER_00: So really, you can just look that way so everybody stays happy.
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SPEAKER_00: But when nobody's looking, you'll behave as badly as you want to behave.
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SPEAKER_00: Glaucon defends his argument with a story, a myth of the ring of Gyges.
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SPEAKER_00: Gyges was a shepherd.
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who discovers a magic ring inside a bronze horse that can make
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him invisible.
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Aegis finds this ring and the first thing that he does with it
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is use it to commit
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unjust acts like seducing the queen and murdering the king in
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order to take over
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SPEAKER_00: the kingdom.
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SPEAKER_00: And he faces no consequences or punishments because he's invisible.
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Gleokon's point in this thought experiment that if anyone had
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the power to act
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SPEAKER_00: unjustly without fear of reprisal,
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SPEAKER_00: They would.
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People only act justly because they fear the consequences of
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injustice from other people.
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SPEAKER_00: But there's no intrinsic effect of being unjust.
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We can see in the Ring of Gyges that Glaucon's point is that
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justice is only social convention.
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SPEAKER_00: Once we remove appearances, there is no reality to justice beyond that.
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SPEAKER_00: Injustice is actually preferable to justice if you want to get ahead.
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It's interesting to contrast the Ring of Gyges with Tolkien's
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dramatization in The
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SPEAKER_00: Lord of the Rings.
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very similar start to the Lord of the Rings where Baggins gets
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a ring that can make
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him invisible and he doesn't use the ring to immediately take
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the highest office
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SPEAKER_00: and seduce the queen of the land.
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He uses it to get to a point to destroy it because it can be
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used by evil people
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SPEAKER_00: for the exact purposes really that Glaucon's argument spells out.
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We can see in a sense from comparing Frodo and Gyges how two
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people who are given
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SPEAKER_00: the same opportunity might behave differently
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SPEAKER_00: because of their character.
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The real life example of the Ring of Gyges that we have at the
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moment that didn't
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SPEAKER_00: exist previously in Plato's time is the internet.
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A world where you can act anonymously in theory without people
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knowing who you are
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or your name and so you can say things that don't come
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connected to you and you
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have a kind of cloak of invisibility and to behave in any way
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that you want.
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SPEAKER_00: And as we see
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SPEAKER_00: You know,
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online communication is often a lot more fraught than
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communication offline because
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SPEAKER_00: of this ability to avoid the social consequences of your actions.
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SPEAKER_00: So maybe there is a good point to what Glaucon is saying,
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SPEAKER_00: in a sense,
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SPEAKER_00: that the social pressures do enforce a certain amount of justice.
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SPEAKER_00: But as Plato wants to argue throughout the Republic,
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SPEAKER_00: There's also an inner reality to justice and injustice,
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to morality and immorality that corrupts the internal world of
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the person who is unjust.
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Glaucon is in a position now to try and articulate the most
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just and the most unjust.
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SPEAKER_00: to try and separate them out like two statues, he described.
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So he can set them up and compare the life of the most unjust
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person to the most just person.
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The portrait of complete justice is that the most just person
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lives a completely
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SPEAKER_00: just life but receives no rewards for it.
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SPEAKER_00: They get no recognition.
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And in fact,
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the consequences of their justice is that they suffer terrible misfortunes.
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They're tortured,
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they're humiliated,
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and impaled or crucified,
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as it says in the text.
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SPEAKER_00: You can see the obvious relevance here to Socrates himself,
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SPEAKER_00: who is the most just person in Athens,
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but his reward for being the most just person is that he's put
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on trial and killed.
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SPEAKER_00: This is,
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SPEAKER_00: again,
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SPEAKER_00: the problem between power and wisdom,
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SPEAKER_00: power and knowledge in the Republic,
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which is that a truly just person can run afoul of an unjust
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state and be put to death.
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We see this played out in the Christian drama later in the Old
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Testament in the
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SPEAKER_00: book of Job,
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SPEAKER_00: who is a just man but suffers...
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incredible misfortunes because of it in order to test his faith
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in justice itself.
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SPEAKER_00: The same thing happens to Christ,
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SPEAKER_00: who is the most just person,
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SPEAKER_00: the Lamb of God,
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SPEAKER_00: but is tortured,
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SPEAKER_00: is treated horribly,
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SPEAKER_00: is betrayed,
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SPEAKER_00: is humiliated.
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SPEAKER_00: And in some sense, this is a moral limit case.
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SPEAKER_00: It's very important when we talk about morality to understand this,
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that the limit of a just person or the limit of morality is can
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you do the just
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SPEAKER_00: thing when you receive no rewards for it?
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SPEAKER_00: So this is what they call complete justice.
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SPEAKER_00: If a person can act most morally,
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SPEAKER_00: when their rewards for doing so are going to be suffering and death.
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SPEAKER_00: There is no higher level than that, if you think about it.
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SPEAKER_00: It's like that old proverb,
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SPEAKER_00: morality consists in planting trees for whose shade you'll never sit.
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The most just action comes from doing the right thing when you
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personally will not
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SPEAKER_00: benefit from it.
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SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we can ask the question, what is the complete injustice?
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SPEAKER_00: The complete injustice is the inverse of the most just person.
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SPEAKER_00: They take advantage of everyone.
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SPEAKER_00: There's no consequences for their actions.
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In fact,
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they get rewarded for their cruelty and violence and
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manipulation of people.
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SPEAKER_00: They rise in status and they become a tyrant.
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SPEAKER_00: These two figures play out through the whole of the Republic.
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SPEAKER_00: We can look at the Republic as a comparison between the most just person
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called the philosopher king and the most unjust person called
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the tyrant as two
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poles of morality that plato is weighing up he's trying to
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argue that the life of
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the tyrant is actually the most miserable life that you can
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live and that the life
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of the philosopher king even if you're tortured and put to
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death is he gives an
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exact figure at one point seven hundred and twenty eight times
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happier than the
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SPEAKER_00: life of the unjust person and
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And so the whole of the Republic is trying to show how that
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logic holds up.
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SPEAKER_00: This is the first time we see it, putting these two statues side by side.
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SPEAKER_00: The just person,
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the completely just person who lives the most just life but
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gets no recognition and
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SPEAKER_00: suffers and is killed because of it.
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And then the most unjust person who sees only good consequences
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from it and is
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SPEAKER_00: rewarded and given more and more power.
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SPEAKER_00: What then makes justice better than injustice?
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When Glaucon has finished setting up these two statues and
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giving us the question
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SPEAKER_00: of proving why the just life is more profitable than the unjust life,
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SPEAKER_00: his brother Adamantius trips in and adds to this argument.
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SPEAKER_00: He says, don't the gods reward virtue and punish vice?
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SPEAKER_00: And he gives this dilemma where he says,
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SPEAKER_00: well,
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SPEAKER_00: if the gods don't exist,
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SPEAKER_00: then there's nothing to worry about.
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SPEAKER_00: But if they do exist,
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you can just bribe them with sacrifices because of all the
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money and wealth that
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SPEAKER_00: you'll steal while being unjust.
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SPEAKER_00: So a bit like Cephalus' argument in the sense that you do injustice,
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SPEAKER_00: but then you make sacrifices to the gods to make up for it.
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And he also says that different poets and artists throughout
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time have praised
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SPEAKER_00: injustice and complained about justice.
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And he gives the quote,
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with justice or with crooked deceit,
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shall I scale the higher wall?
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SPEAKER_00: In other words, which is going to take me further up the food chain?
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SPEAKER_00: And the answer here is injustice.
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SPEAKER_00: So Adamantius is steelmanning his brother's position to say, look,
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SPEAKER_00: Even if you appeal to the gods or to the poets and the artists,
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they both can be taken care of as well to prove that injustice
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is more profitable
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SPEAKER_00: than justice.
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates is very impressed by the arguments of Glaucon and Adamantius,
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and he says that he himself is afraid to take on the task of
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trying to prove that
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SPEAKER_00: justice is more profitable than injustice.
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SPEAKER_00: He says that this is no small matter,
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SPEAKER_00: and so that they should begin like people who don't see very well.
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates says there is,
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SPEAKER_00: we say,
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SPEAKER_00: justice of one man,
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SPEAKER_00: and there is surely justice of a whole city too.
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SPEAKER_00: Certainly, he said.
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SPEAKER_00: Is a city bigger than one man?
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is bigger, he said.
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So then perhaps there will be more justice in the bigger and
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will be easier to observe closely.
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SPEAKER_00: If you want, first we'll investigate what justice is like in the cities.
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SPEAKER_00: Then we'll also be able to go on to consider in individuals,
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SPEAKER_00: considering the likeness of the bigger in the idea of the litter.
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SPEAKER_00: What you say seems fine to me, said.
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SPEAKER_00: If we should watch a city coming into being in speech,
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SPEAKER_00: would we also see its justice coming into being and its injustice?
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SPEAKER_00: This is the start of a thought experiment,
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SPEAKER_00: the ideal city,
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SPEAKER_00: Kallipolos,
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which is that Plato is making an analogy between the psyche and
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the state or the polis,
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SPEAKER_00: that the psyche is the same as an organization of people like a city.
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SPEAKER_00: Therefore,
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if you can describe a city coming into being and see justice
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and injustice emerging there,
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be able to use that to interpret injustice in the individual
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and justice in the individual,
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to prove that justice is more profitable for the individual
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than injustice.
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This can be a difficult argument to grasp and it goes into a
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lot of strange areas
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SPEAKER_00: across book 2,
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SPEAKER_00: book 3,
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SPEAKER_00: book 4 and book 5.
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SPEAKER_00: It is a thought experiment.
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SPEAKER_00: Plato isn't recommending that you actually go out and build this city.
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SPEAKER_00: Rather, he's using it in order to try and identify justice and injustice.
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SPEAKER_00: Some people question the presumption here that the psyche is like a city.
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SPEAKER_00: A monological or a monadic theory of the self,
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SPEAKER_00: which is that a self is a kind of solitary buffered self,
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SPEAKER_00: as Charles Taylor calls it,
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wouldn't really make sense of this idea of the self as a
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distributed system like a city.
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SPEAKER_00: I like John Vervakey's theory of a dialogical self in that the self is an
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SPEAKER_00: assemblage of parts that are connected into a whole,
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SPEAKER_00: but that are more like a city or a family group.
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SPEAKER_00: What's called in psychology,
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SPEAKER_00: internal family systems therapy,
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that the psyche is an assemblage of parts that can cooperate
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together and not.
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SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
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this would be important for Plato's theory of internal conflict
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and self-deceptive
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SPEAKER_00: and self-destructive behaviors.
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SPEAKER_00: How can we talk about self-destructive behavior if the self is one thing?
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SPEAKER_00: What's destroying it?
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SPEAKER_00: Plato also makes this point about self-control,
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SPEAKER_00: that to understand self-control,
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SPEAKER_00: what is controlling what?
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SPEAKER_00: The self is controlling the self.
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SPEAKER_00: The self is controlling the self.
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SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really make sense.
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Unless you can yoke one thing to another thing,
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you can't have this control.
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SPEAKER_00: So therefore,
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SPEAKER_00: there must be many different centers in the psyche,
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which has been an argument made ever since Plato in terms of
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even Freudian
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SPEAKER_00: psychology and
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SPEAKER_00: and modern internal family systems therapy,
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SPEAKER_00: that the psyche isn't just one coherent thing,
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but many different parts that actually can come out of
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alignment and cause people and,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: broader society's problems.
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So in order to defend Plato's account here of comparing the
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psyche in a city,
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SPEAKER_00: we need a dialogical model of the self,
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SPEAKER_00: which he'll justify in his tripartite psyche as we go on book four.
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates,
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Glaucon and Adamantius begin this thought experiment of trying
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to see a city come
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SPEAKER_00: into being in words.
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SPEAKER_00: They ask the question, why do we live in groups?
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SPEAKER_00: And the answer is that we're not self-sufficient.
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Cooperation allows us to meet each other's needs,
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needs that we can't meet on our own.
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SPEAKER_00: I need shoes.
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SPEAKER_00: But I'm no good at getting shoes.
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SPEAKER_00: But I'm pretty good at fishing.
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SPEAKER_00: So I can fish and trade with a cobbler who's really good at making shoes.
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SPEAKER_00: And he needs food and I need shoes so we can meet each other's needs.
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SPEAKER_00: The city provides for people's needs through specialization.
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Socrates says we aren't all born alike,
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but each of us differs somewhat in nature from others.
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SPEAKER_00: One suited for another task, another to another.
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a city begins as a collection of people coming together to meet
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each other's needs
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and they meet each other's needs through specialization and
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they agree that each
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person should do one thing that they should be a master of one
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art rather than many
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arts which is going to be important for their definition of
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justice later as more
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SPEAKER_00: and more people come into the city
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SPEAKER_00: the city has to expand and they start taking in imports and exports,
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exporting what extra goods they have and importing the goods
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that they can't
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SPEAKER_00: produce themselves.
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This creates another class beyond the producer class that is
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the initial basis of
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SPEAKER_00: meeting the needs of the people.
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SPEAKER_00: As the city expands and you get imports and exports,
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SPEAKER_00: You need money in order to check the exchange of value.
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SPEAKER_00: And then this creates a merchant class.
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SPEAKER_00: Really,
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SPEAKER_00: at this point,
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Socrates makes a distinction between a healthy city and an
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unhealthy city.
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SPEAKER_00: A healthy city doesn't expand unnecessarily.
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It reaches this point of self-sufficiency and then just
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continues on generation
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SPEAKER_00: after generation,
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SPEAKER_00: passing down to everybody else.
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SPEAKER_00: They hit perfection.
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And so when you hit perfection,
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any change from perfection is necessarily imperfection.
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SPEAKER_00: So for Socrates,
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SPEAKER_00: whenever the city expands beyond this self-sufficiency,
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SPEAKER_00: it becomes what he calls a feverish city.
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SPEAKER_00: Adamantius pushes back on Socrates' self-sufficient city,
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SPEAKER_00: what he calls the healthy city,
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SPEAKER_00: as a city for pigs,
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SPEAKER_00: essentially for lowly people.
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SPEAKER_00: that they need some luxury and luxury needs.
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SPEAKER_00: They need desserts.
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SPEAKER_00: They need couches.
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SPEAKER_00: They need all that good stuff.
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SPEAKER_00: But Socrates employs then a bodily metaphor.
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SPEAKER_00: And he says that when you start to bring in these luxury needs,
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SPEAKER_00: you end up with a feverish city in a sense.
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SPEAKER_00: He understands the human desire is malleable.
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SPEAKER_00: And so the more we meet our desires, the more we actually desire.
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And the problem with these luxury goods is that they're
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essentially endless.
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SPEAKER_00: This leads to unhealthy growth in the city.
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SPEAKER_00: The more we want things, the more we will produce to meet it.
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SPEAKER_00: This leads to the need for more resources,
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SPEAKER_00: more expanded territories in order to meet the expanding desire,
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SPEAKER_00: which then brings war and conquest and colonialism.
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SPEAKER_00: Because in order to meet the expanding desires,
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SPEAKER_00: they need to go out and they need to take over other land,
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SPEAKER_00: territories and resources.
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SPEAKER_00: This is what happened to the Athenian democracy.
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Their desire for more territory and more land promoted what was
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called the Sicilian
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SPEAKER_00: expedition that ended up being a disaster and they lost their fleet.
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And it was part of the reason they lost the Peloponnesian War
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to Spartans and
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SPEAKER_00: became a subjugated state.
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So Socrates and Plato had seen in real time the effects of
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untrammeled desire on
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SPEAKER_00: their decision making and having a stable state and stable individuals.
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So the problem with this feverish city idea is that once one
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city starts to play
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SPEAKER_00: this game,
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SPEAKER_00: even if you have a bunch of city-states in ancient Athens,
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SPEAKER_00: most of them are just these self-sufficient,
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SPEAKER_00: meeting everybody's needs,
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SPEAKER_00: no unnecessary desire states.
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The argument is that when the city moves from being a
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self-sufficient city...
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where everybody's needs are met,
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to a feverish city,
16:43
this is where injustice emerges from.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: And then the war and conquest emerges from this excess of desire,
16:50
SPEAKER_00: which is the root of injustice for Socrates.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: Once one city goes beyond that and becomes a feverish city,
16:57
SPEAKER_00: and once more and goes to war and colonialism and conquest,
17:01
SPEAKER_00: necessarily all of the other cities get sucked into the same paradigm,
17:05
SPEAKER_00: or else they're going to be absorbed into that one city.
17:08
feverish city and this motivates the need for a warrior class
17:13
in order to protect
17:14
cities from feverish cities or in the case of a feverish city
17:18
to expand and conquer
17:19
and to colonialize other territories Socrates calls this
17:23
warrior class the
17:24
guardians and they start to search for the ideal nature of the
17:27
warrior class of the
17:28
guardians think about now we have this class of laborers of
17:31
producers we have a
17:32
SPEAKER_00: merchant class and now we have the guardian class
17:37
SPEAKER_00: And the guardians are going to be a professional army of warriors.
17:40
The problem with this guardian class in the ancient world is
17:42
that they're very powerful.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: So if the guardian class become unjust,
17:46
SPEAKER_00: you have a military coup,
17:48
SPEAKER_00: something like Julius Caesar in Rome,
17:50
SPEAKER_00: which is that the army becomes so powerful,
17:52
SPEAKER_00: they become so loved,
17:53
SPEAKER_00: they win so many battles.
17:54
they can then come back and take over from the democracy or the governance.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: And then you end up with a Timocracy, a military rule.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: So how do you keep the guardians just?
18:04
SPEAKER_00: How do you make them just?
18:05
SPEAKER_00: In order to breed the guardian class that are going to be
18:10
SPEAKER_00: successful warriors, but also just.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: Socrates makes a comparison to well-bred dogs,
18:15
SPEAKER_00: that they have keen senses,
18:16
SPEAKER_00: speed and strength,
18:18
SPEAKER_00: and that they must be spirited,
18:20
SPEAKER_00: which prefigures the role of spirit in his tripartite psyche.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: But they must also be gentle to people,
18:26
SPEAKER_00: like a friendly dog,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: and then harsh to the enemies,
18:29
SPEAKER_00: like a guard dog.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: So in this sense, they have to be philosophical.
18:32
Socrates says that dogs are the most philosophical of animals
18:36
because they can
18:36
SPEAKER_00: judge friend from foe.
18:38
And this relates to the Egyptian god of Anubis who would weigh
18:42
souls on the scales of justice.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: Dogs are seen as having this ability to judge people.
18:46
The end conclusion of this is that for the guardians to be good guardians,
18:50
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:50
SPEAKER_00: they're going to need speed,
18:52
SPEAKER_00: strength,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: training to be good warriors,
18:55
SPEAKER_00: but they also need philosophy.
18:56
They also need training of the spirit in order to be just to
19:01
the people that they
19:02
SPEAKER_00: need to be just to.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: This raises the question of an educational program for these guardians.
19:09
And it's kind of a weird thing to have this argument about
19:11
education in the middle
19:12
of the question of what are the origins of justice and
19:15
injustice in the city.
19:16
And the reason for that is you can't have education without an
19:18
account of what a
19:19
SPEAKER_00: human should be.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: So when you say a person should be just,
19:23
SPEAKER_00: it raises the question of how do you educate people to be just?
19:26
SPEAKER_00: What is the curriculum of justice?
19:28
SPEAKER_00: And so this does relate to the question of
19:30
seeing justice writ large in the city and then seeing it in the
19:33
individual soul by
19:35
SPEAKER_00: seeing it in this educational program.
19:37
The educational program that Socrates recommends is a mixture
19:40
of physical training,
19:42
SPEAKER_00: gymnastics,
19:43
SPEAKER_00: and then also the arts,
19:44
SPEAKER_00: which would include things like mathematics,
19:46
SPEAKER_00: geometry,
19:47
SPEAKER_00: but also music and poetry.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: He says if you just train them physically, they become too savage.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: And if you just train them at the arts, they become too soft.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: And so he recommends a mixture of warrior training,
19:58
SPEAKER_00: philosophical training,
19:59
and academic training to create a balanced curriculum and a
20:02
balanced character,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: really,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: for these ideal guardians of the state.
20:06
They're very concerned about the stories that these young
20:08
people are going to hear.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: This is the beginning of Plato's famous gripe with poets,
20:13
SPEAKER_00: who he actually excludes from the ideal city,
20:15
SPEAKER_00: because the poets create images and stories that are affecting.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: They motivate people in order to behave certain ways, and they
20:23
SPEAKER_00: People imitate the characters of stories.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: In other words,
20:26
when you write a story like the Iliad that becomes very famous
20:29
and very popular,
20:30
it creates standards of behavior that people in Greek
20:33
city-states are then going to emulate.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: And Plato has a lot of critiques of these stories.
20:39
Often the gods aren't moral exemplars in them,
20:41
but the characters aren't moral exemplars.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: They're very flawed people.
20:45
And so when you put them on a pedestal and as a standard for
20:47
people to live by,
20:50
SPEAKER_00: you then encourage immorality.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: And for Plato, if we hear stories of good people, we'll behave well.
20:56
And if we hear stories of bad people,
20:58
we'll copy them and we'll behave badly.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: Therefore,
21:00
SPEAKER_00: in the ideal city,
21:01
they have to regulate the types of stories that people hear to
21:05
only the good ones.
21:05
For Plato,
21:06
our ethical education and ethical formation comes through our stories.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Socrates says,
21:11
we mustn't accept Homer's or any other poets foolishly making
21:15
this mistake about
21:15
the gods and saying that two jars stand on Zeus's threshold
21:18
full of dooms,
21:19
SPEAKER_00: the one of good,
21:20
SPEAKER_00: the other of wretched.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: And the man to whom Zeus gives a mixture of both,
21:23
SPEAKER_00: and one time he happens on evil,
21:25
SPEAKER_00: add another good.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: But the man to whom he doesn't give a mixture,
21:28
SPEAKER_00: but the second pure evil misery drives him over the divine earth,
21:31
SPEAKER_00: nor that Zeus is the dispenser to us of good and evil alike.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: Socrates wants the gods to be moral exemplars.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: He's very concerned with people's agency and their character.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: And so if you make the gods the ones that dish out who's a good person,
21:44
SPEAKER_00: who's a bad person,
21:45
you reduce a person's moral agency and hence their
21:47
responsibility for their own actions.
21:49
Socrates wants people to really care about their character,
21:52
to become good people.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: And so if the gods are in charge of our fate and it's predestined,
21:57
SPEAKER_00: then there's no reason for people to be concerned about that.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: And this is a big problem for Socrates and for Plato, the ideal city.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: Understand that while Plato is critiquing Homer,
22:08
SPEAKER_00: he really loves Homer and these ancient stories.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: He's a big fan of them.
22:12
Plato in his youth actually wanted to be a playwright before he
22:15
met Socrates and
22:16
SPEAKER_00: Berndal's plays and decided to be a philosopher instead.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: So in some real sense,
22:21
he wants to put the images created by the poets in the service
22:25
of the good.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: He's discovering a normativity beyond individual taste and affectation,
22:31
pleasure and pain that can measure the normativity of stories
22:36
as good or bad,
22:37
SPEAKER_00: whether they map on to what's really real.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: In this case, the good.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: We can make a distinction between idols and icons.
22:44
that idols are artworks that refer to themselves and icons are
22:48
artworks that point
22:49
SPEAKER_00: the way to something more real beyond them.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of the difference between allusions and allusions.
22:55
A literary allusion points to something beyond the text in a
22:59
way that normal
23:00
SPEAKER_00: sentences or propositions can't.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: It's like making a big metaphor,
23:04
but not confusing the metaphor for the thing that's actually
23:07
spoken about.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: A symbol might be more accurate than a metaphor in that case.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: It points to something beyond itself that's not actually in the text.
23:16
But if you take the text or the painting or the image as the
23:20
thing in and of itself,
23:22
SPEAKER_00: Plato's arguing you're making a big mistake.
23:24
And this is a mistake that Greece has made in making Homer
23:28
their prime educator.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: So Plato's trying to undo that mistake in the Republic.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: In the next book of the Republic in book three,
23:35
SPEAKER_00: we'll see the city and speech continue on and develop.
23:38
And then we'll get to the tripartite psyche and some very
23:41
interesting stuff.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: So join us for the next one.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: And if you're interested in more philosophical content,
23:47
SPEAKER_00: you can join the Wisdom Dojo Substack at the link below.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: See you next time.