politics and action in plato´s republic

University of UtahWestern Political Science Association

Politics and Action in Plato's RepublicAuthor(s): Gerald M. MaraReviewed work(s):Source: The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Dec., 1983), pp. 596-618Published by: University of Utah on behalf of the Western Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/448588 .Accessed: 10/04/2012 09:58

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POLITICS AND ACTION IN PLATO'S REPUBLIC GERALD M. MARA

Georgetown University

T IS EASY to understand why Plato's Republic remains almost endlessly fascinating to historians of philosophy. Its beautiful surface and brilliant core offer riches that are difficult to exhaust in a lifetime

of interpretation. But if the Republic's virtues are to be of more than historical interest, the work must also be useful for the professional activities of contemporary political theorists. The dialogue must offer insights that can assist them in their two most important projects: the justification of society in general and the evaluation of different kinds of political communities.

I

A number of scholars, including Bernstein (1977), Maclntyre (1981), Miller (1972), and Salkever (1974, 1977, 1981), have suggested that the kind of political evaluation developed in the Republic is superior in many ways to the two dominant perspectives that have emerged since the classical era: liberalism as supported by a methodologically individualist empiricism, and communitarianism based upon an interpretive historicism.1 I will not consider here whether the above writers have convincingly argued for the superiority of the classical position. But I think they have been successful in explaining the differences between classical political philosophy and more recent alternatives. The political theory offered in the Republic, as well as in other relevant works of Plato and Aristotle, contends that the best society is that which encourages its citizens to become virtuous. Different communities can be evaluated according to how much they foster or stifle human virtue. Most of the authors mentioned above suggest that this position is articulated more clearly and usefully by Aristotle. But the theoretical, as well as historical, connections between Plato and Aristotle are extensive and deep. Defending the adoption of the classical perspective on politics must, therefore, include a serious consideration of the merits and shortcomings of the Republic taken on its own terms.

What if a close reading of the Republic shows that it is irrelevant or even hostile to the normal concerns of political philosophers? That such a conclusion is possible is forcefully illustrated in an exchange between Dale Hall (1977) and Allen Bloom (1977). Hall says that Plato solves moral or political problems by consulting the Theory of Forms. Applied metaphysics leads the philosopher to reproduce intelligible order amidst

NOTE: 1 would like to acknowledge the very helpful comments and criticisms offered by Stephen Salkever and four anonymous referees.

'See Salkever (1977) for a clear discussion of the relationship between the political and the epistemological dimensions of both the liberal and the communitarian positions.

Politics and Action in Plato's REPUBLIC 597

perceptible disorder. "The Forms are the paradigm for the philosopher's ordering of the social world." Philosophic political activity involves har- monizing disparate political or social elements into an "impersonal or transpersonal order, in which ideally men are combined" (1977: 310).

Contemporary political philosophers are likely to chafe at this teach- ing, not only because they reject the metaphysics being applied, but also because they believe that abstracting from individual political actors is the most fundamental and fatal of errors. Sheldon Wolin's assessment of a Plato interpreted in this light is both understandable and representative. For him, Plato's political philosophy aims "not at describing political phenomena, but at transfiguring them in light of a vision of the Good." . . . "Thus the Platonic conception of political philosophy and ruling was founded on a paradox: the science as well as the art of creating order was sworn to an eternal hostility toward politics, toward those phenomena, in other words, that made such an art and science meaningful and necessary" (1960: 35, 42).

Following Leo Strauss, Bloom denies that Plato derives his political evaluations from a formal application of metaphysics. Metaphysics itself arises and is discussed in the context of a particular dialogue among human beings. We should not move from one to the other too quickly. The world of Plato that must be first for us is the anthropocentric world of the dialogues. However, the Strauss-Bloom interpretation also raises a number of serious questions about the Republic's capacity to supply a useful political standard. For Bloom, the way of life whose fostering would justify politics, the life of philosophy, turns out to be incapable of flourishing as part of a political community. Socrates' portrayal of the philosophic life makes the onlooker realize that political life is an unwor- thy or, at best, only a relatively desirable option. From this perspective, the praise of philosophic kingship and, implicitly, many of Plato's other political recommendations are designed to show that there is no best city by nature because no city can possibly satisfy every - and, in particular, the highest - human need. The best city constitutes an ironic sketch of the limits of politics.

But the exhibition of a thing's limits may well include, indeed require, a comparative evaluation of its diverse manifestations. If the Strauss- Bloom interpretation is accurate, the usefulness of the Republic's perspective on politics hinges upon whether or not the dialogue provides criteria for evaluating different political phenomena. Bloom's position is ambigu- ous, but his interpreptation at least tends to diminish the seriousness of Socrates' political evaluations in the Republic. "Socrates' political science as presented here is not quite serious because it is absurdly severe, using as a standard a regime which can never exist. .... Thus, on the basis of a regime which can never be, he is able to cast doubt on the legitimacy of all possible regimes" (1968: 415).

In this paper I suggest that even if the Republic sets the limits of politics, as Strauss and Bloom contend, it does so in such a way that allows comparative political evaluation; even if the best city is impossible, the dialogue does provide a certain standard that can be used to evaluate

598 Western Political Quarterly

existing cities. This standard is the best life for a human being, a life which Socrates says is possible. In making this case I also want to suggest that Strauss' and Bloom's emphasizing the divergence between philosophic and political activities in the Republic may be, if not wrong, at least over- stated. The philosopher turns out to be political in an important, if restricted, sense. The politicality implicit in the life of the philosopher, exemplified or at least approximated by the activities of Socrates, provides a standard for political evaluation that differs from both a literally possible best city and an applied metaphysic of Forms. As a coda, I speculate that Aristotle's correction of this standard may explain some of the important differences between Platonic and Aristotelian political philosophy.

II

How the "problem" of the philospher's relationship with the political community arises in the Republic has been well documented, not only by Strauss and Bloom, but also by Aronson (1972) and Rosen (1965, 1973). Philosophy is introduced into the dialogue to restrain the strong and spirited guardians (phylakai) who protect the city that Socrates and his interlocutors construct in the discussion, "the city in speech." Without such protection, it is feared that these guardians will despoil the rest of the citizens. In book one, Socrates and Thrasymachus had come to a brief and ultimately insufficient agreement that guardians, if they are guardians in the most precise sense (b akribestato) cannot harm their charges and yet remain guardians. But this rested on the highly questionable assumption thatjustice is similar to an art (techne) whose excellent performance hinges on a concern for its objects or clients. Moreover, this agreement largely represents Socrates' turning Thrasymachus' own cleverness against him: Thrasymachus had constantly reproached Socrates for not discussing things precisely (341 a6-cl).

In book two, however, Glaucon questions the suggestion that strong and spirited warriors could ever be guardians in the precise sense. Al- though dominance over the weak by their alleged protectors may violate precise speech, it is consistent with a realistic assessment of human needs and desires. For Glaucon, a knowledge of human needs includes the insight that both the weak and the strong, the apparently just and the truly unjust, desire the same scarce2 material or psychic goods that satisfy private wants and desires.3 Since injustice is likely to provide more of these 2 In this context, a condition of scarcity holds when one party's attaining a good necessarily

involves a corresponding penalty on another party. For example, both material riches and honor only exist or make sense because they are foreclosed to most human beings.

3 This perspective clearly underlies both of the stories that Glaucon tells in the first part of book two: the story of whatjustice is and where it came from (358 el ff.) and the story of the ring of Gyges' ancestor (359 c7 ff.). However, there are substantial differences between the particular needs emphasized by Glaucon and Thrasymachus. Glaucon's perspective gives relatively more importance to the honor or reputation stemming from conventionally unjust actions. For example, he contends that the unjust possessor of Gyges' ancestor's ring would be able not only "to take what he wanted from the market without fear, and to go into houses and have intercourse with whomever he wanted," but


goods than justice, strongly motivated persons would perfer to be unjust. What stops or at least inhibits their injustice is a fear of the superior force of the many codified into conventional laws. However, if Glaucon is to be convinced of the happiness of the just life, he needs to be shown that the guardians' restraint can be natural that it is somehow more in their interest to guard than to rape.

Socrates says that the only natural way to restrain the guardians is to create a higher group of guardian-rulers (archontes) capable of controlling the other members of the guardian class, now called auxiliaries (epikouri). These higher guardians are the philosophers who are also kings. The meaning of Socrates' initial statement that the guardian-rulers must be philosophic is unclear and it is undoubtedly true that Socrates changes the meaning of the term, philospher, as the dialogue progresses.4 But by book five it becomes explicit that the philosopher is not the person who loves competition or honor but the one who loves the timeless objects of knowledge, the Forms and the Idea of the Good.

The original problem is solved by the discovery of an entirely new class of human needs and an entirely new class of goods that satisfies them. These goods lie far beyond the city as it is commonly understood. For Socrates, this distance makes the philosopher the safest possible ruler.

That's the way it is my comrade ... If you discover a life better than ruling for those who are going to rule, it is possible that your well governed city will come into being. For here alone will the really rich rule, rich not in gold but in those riches required by the happy man, rich in a good and prudent life. But if beggars, men hungering for want of private goods go to public affairs supposing that in them one must seize the good it isn't possible. When ruling becomes a thing fought over, such a war, one within the family destroys the men themselves and the rest of the city as well" (520 e 4-521 bl).5 also "to slay and release from bonds whomever he wanted, and to do other things equal to a god among humans" (360 b4-c4). Releasing others from bonds will later (532 b4-8) become an important political role for the dialectician. Likewise, Glaucon defines the worst state of man as "suffering injustice without being able to avenge oneself" (359 a7-8). While Thrasymachus would appear to place a similar value on honor and the joys of ruling well, his primary concerns are the private benefits that the unjust ruler can secure. For example, in his assertions "that justice and the just are really someone else's good, "Thrasymachus holds that "in matters pertaining to the city," the unjust man's advantages lie in his being able to escape taxation and to secure a greater share of publicly distributed goods. In ruling, the just man's penalties include his seeing "his domestic affairs deteriorate from neglect," his getting "no advantage from the public store," and his incurring the ill will of family and friends "when he is unwilling to serve them against what isjust." By contrast, the "unjust man's situation is the opposite in all of these respects" (343 cl-e9). The privateness of the unjust man's rule according to Thrasymachus is underscored when that man is shown to be a practitioner not of the political but of the money-making art (346 clO-d ). 4 For example, Socrates' initial suggestion that the guardians should be philosophers similar to the sense that dogs are philosophic (love of the know, hatred of the foreign) would, all else aside, seem to make philosophy similar to a certain kind of patriotism or love of one's own. Socrates must absorb patriotism into philosophy because, according to Glaucon's position, patriotism is inconsistent with a realistic account of human nature.

5All quoted passages form the Republic are Bloom's translations. Quotations from other dialogues are generally from the Loeb series with occasional minor changes.

600 Western Political Quarterly But although the discovery of a life better than ruling solves the

problem in book two, it also serves to redefine the problem into one not nearly as soluble. If the best life for man is the life of philosophy, of what value or worth is the life of the city? The benefits of philosophy may be the most private of goods since their attainment requires only the human mind and the knowables. The subordination of scarce physical or psychological rewards to philosophic rapture may transcend an inferior with a sublime privateness. Where then is room for politics or for goods that can be enjoyed by human beings only insofar as they are members of a community or an association? According to Bloom, there is none. "Soc- rates' political science is, paradoxically, meant to show the superiority of the private life" (1968: 415). This superiority may seriously diminish the extent to which the Republic can provide a useful political standard. Let me step back a bit to indicate more precisely how such a diminution might occur.

III

In assessing the "political science" that Socrates develops in the Repub- lic, it is very important to separate two similar but by no means identical questions: Is the best city practically possible? and: Are philosophical and political activities compatible?

The range of conditions necessary for the actual institution of the best city is vast; some of the conditions are literally fantastic. Socrates says (at 473 cl-e2) that the quickest way would be through the coincidence of a philosophic disposition and political power in an existing city. This can come about through the divine enlightenment of an existing ruler or through a philosopher's coming to power by some accident. On two occasions (449 bl-d8; 540 dl-e3) Socrates says that such a coincidence taken solely by itself is not impossible. However, this coincidence must occur in a suitable regime, one that has moderately decent citizens and one that is in a reasonably secure position in relation to surrounding cities. Moreover, the ultimate reason why philosophy must coincide with political power is that only the powerful philosopher can implement the unbeliev- able changes in marriage and child-rearing laws that would be necessary for the best city to exist. The difficulties of implementing these changes crystallize in the revelation that they have virtually no chance of success if applied to persons over ten years old! Therefore, the philosophers who are also kings must somehow contrive to separate those under ten from the rest of the residents, exile all of those over ten (however decent), and rear those that remain "far away from those dispositions they have now from their parents - in their own manners and laws that are such as we described before" (540 e4-541 a5).

One does not have to be unusually philanthropic or excessively practical to question both the desirability and plausibility of trying to act upon Socrates' recommendations. More likely, as Strauss and Bloom suggest, Socrates is trying to emphasize the lengths to which one would have to go if one were serious about founding the best city. Nonetheless, the way of


life specifically encouraged in this city could still provide a standard for judging the relative merits of existing polities. For Plato's Socrates the city is, after all, defined not by its marriage or child-rearing practices but by the kinds of citizens developed therein.

But according to Strauss and Bloom the philosopher is not a citizen. The philosophic and political lives seem to be incompatible not in the sense that their practitioners or exemplars are necessarily inimical to one another but, rather, that the two activities lead, as Strauss puts it, "away from one another, in opposite directions" (1963: 125). Strictly speaking, they cannot be practiced as parts of a single or consistent way of life.

What consequences does such an incompatibility have for efforts to justify politics or to evaluate political communities? To consider this, let me begin where Socrates and Thrasymachus do in book one and assume that politics means something like decency: integrity in personal dealings and relative good citizenship in matters that concern the city (342 d2-344 c9). On the one hand, this way of life can be contrasted with the life of unjust self-satisfaction praised by Thrasymachus. Most conventions say that politics as service to the city or respect for others' goods is more likely to make human beings happy than graft or tyranny. However. Glaucon notes that these opinions are often hypocritical or self-serving. There do not seem to be any coherent arguments providing the superiority of honest politics to tyranny. To respond to Glaucon's demands, Socrates must both say something more explicit about the content (or definition) of politics and justify (or prove) that the descent life is preferable to the way of life recommended by Thrasymachus.

Thus, a coherent theoretical treatment of politics requires the location of political activity within the matrix of human needs or human nature. But if the best example of human conduct according to nature is philosophy, further attempts to clarify and evaluate non-philosophical human activities may be, if not ridiculous, at least uninformed. Of course one could surely argue as Vlastos (1971: 89-91), Kahn (1972: 567-79) and others have, that decent behavior (or "vulgar"justice) is an assured consequence of the philosophic way of life. But it is not easy to see how the philosopher's desiderata could serve as a reliable standard for either distinguishing among or praising different kinds of more or less decent (as opposed to totally indecent) behavior. The philosopher's conventional justice is a consequence of his general unconcern with worldly things in light of his love of truth or being (485 d3-e ).

Thus, politics is ultimately defined by what it opposes or rejects.6 It occupies, in a sense, a middle ground between two extremes of private

6 In responding to a provocative essay by David Sachs (1963), Kahn (1972), Vlastos (1971), Demos (1971), and others focus primarily on the negative aspects of the philosopher's politicality. All of these respondents try to show contra Sachs that insofar as the philosopher acts politically, he or she must refrain from pleonexia (extreme selfishness). But none attempts to prove that the philosopher must be political in the positive sense that ruling well entails. In a sense, this conception of the philosopher'sjustice requires it to be useful only in its uselessness or inactivity as it is in Socrates' argument with Polemarchus (333 d7-9).

602 Western Political Quarterly action, the philosophic and the tyrannical (Bloom, 1968: 425). This very halfway, non-philosophic character of politics may finally diminish the praise given to conventionally decent activity or to relatively just governments. As Salkever puts it, it may be useless or unimportant to separate the best statesman from the worst tyrant from such a lofty vantage (1974: 83).

The practical impossibility of Socrates' best city is not, then, the principal obstacle to the Republic's providing guidance for political evaluations. Much more serious is the presumed divergence of the best life for man from the city or the political community as such. Unless they can be somehow reconciled, Socrates' political science must either be silent about the differences among regimes or assess those differences in a way that does not rely on the discovery of a naturally best life for man.

IV

Socrates, of course, is hardly silent about the differing merits of existing governments. In books eight and nine he evaluates four inferior cities, the timarchy, the oligarchy, the democracy, and the tyranny.7 Strauss and Bloom argue convincingly that Socrates does not use the city productive of philosophers as the sole standard for these evaluations. Democracy, the third-ranking inferior regime, is capable at least of to- lerating and thus, in a sense, of encouraging philosophy. The timarchy, on the other hand, the first of the inferior cities, may be openly hostile to philosophic activity (cf. Bloom 1968: 421). The standard for practical political evaluations is, thus, not the city that can produce philosophers but the city that a philosopher could produce. The best civic way of life is not that of the philosopher, but that of the non-philosophic person who lives as the philosopher would encourage or tell him to live.

Within this view, philosophy is compatible with politics in the sense that the best possible regime can only be achieved through philosophic direction. As non-philosophers, the citizens flourishing here are not motivated or inspired by a love of truth or being. But they may be devoted to or edified by the noble or the beautiful (to kalon). However, for Socrates, the beautiful or the love of the beautiful will have unambiguously beneficial consequences only if employed or channeled by the philosopher.

In themselves, the noble or the love of the noble can distort true opinions about what is just. The danger of the beautiful is its capacity to appeal to the irrational parts of the soul, those emotions or affections that produce unreasoned or immoderate outbursts of pity or buffoonery, agony or desire (606 a3-el; 607 a6-10). This uncontrolled love of the beautiful or the apparently beautiful is so strong that it can overwhelm even the virtuous habits instilled by an orderly regime. Socrates suggests

7 Socrates' evaluation of regimes in the Republic is substantially different from those offered by the Eleatic Stranger in the Statesman and the Athenian Stranger in the Laws. I contend (1981) that differences between the classificatory schemes of the Republic and the Statesman indicate major differences between the substantive political teachings of Socrates and the Stranger.


this in the story of the souls' choices of lives in the myth of Er. A vicious and miserable, but initially striking, tyranny is chosen by the soul of a man who had "lived in an orderly regime in his former life, participating in virtue by habit without philosophy" (619 dl).

But while the uninhibited display of the noble, even in the most beautiful tragic verses, cannot be allowed in the city, the philosopher's uses of poetry, his response to the love of beauty, can provide at least an approximate foundation for virtue. What distinguishes the philosopher's use of beauty from the poet's imitation of beauty is the former's reliance on a prior knowledge of the soul and what is good for the soul (402 b8-c7). Rightly used, this philosophically directed poetry can counter the effects of an indiscriminate love of beauty by stimulating the calculative and rational, rather than the emotional, part of the soul (607 a5-9). Accord- ingly, the education of children in the best city begins with the instillment (in large part through the use of a controlled poetry) of the right kinds of likes and dislikes which are capable of being transformed into rationally justifiable ways of life upon maturation (401 el-420 a4).

Thus,justice, or the best example of the common dimension of human nature, would appear to be most securely attainable with the support of philosophy, seemingly the most private human dimension. But politics' desperate need for philosophy does not in any way render philosophic and political activities compatible in the primary sense noted above. There is no indication that philosophy's satisfaction of the civic need is at the same time a satisfaction of the philosophic need. To the contrary, we may conclude with Socrates that the best natures must by compelled to serve the city (519 c7-d7). From this perspective, politics may come to appear as truly tragic (cf. Laws 817 b5-6). Either philosophers must be done an injustice and made to "live a worse life when a better is possible for them" (519 d3-4) or those who can only be citizens must be condemned to a life where virtue is vulnerable and tenuous, practiced "by habit, without philosophy," exchanging evils and goods eternally (cf. 619 d6-9). In either case, what is best for the city or for persons who live in the city would appear, as Strauss and Bloom suggest, to diverge from the best life for man.

But the divergence between politics and the best way of life may be reduced if we consider what the philosopher must know in order to guide or rule well. While a knowledge of the Forms and the Idea of the Good provides the philosopher with "a life better than ruling," knowledge of the soul is essential for the best ruled life. For purposes of ruling, the philosopher's knowledge of the soul must be complex. He or she must both look "off toward the nature of the soul (ten tes psyches physin; 618 d8-9)" "as it is in truth, not maimed by community with body and other evils" (611 b9-c3) and understand "the effects, bad and good, of beauty mixed with poverty or wealth and accompanied by this or that habit of soul, and the effects of any particular mixture with one another of good and bad birth, private station and ruling office, strength and weakness, facility and difficulty in learning, and all such things that are connected with a soul by nature or are acquired" (618 cl0-d7).


Thus, when compelled to design education for or to give commands to persons with no philosophic potential, the philosophic ruler must employ the best way of life as a kind of standard. This implies that philosophic rule would be cognitively impossible (and not only against the philosopher's own tendencies or interests) if the lives of less than philosophic citizens could not be evaluated and praised in accordance with the best existence possible for man. Accordingly, the best life must have some aspect or dimension relevant or politics, a certain kind of common dimension. To inquire into that dimension we should examine Socrates' portrait of philosophy in more detail.

V

Adeimantus expresses serious concern about the relationship between the private and common dimensions of the best human life at the beginning of book six by alleging the harmfulness of the philosophers in the name of the city (485 c5-d7).8 Socrates challenges his claim by saying that most existing cities are so vicious as to be unable to make use of the philosopher's contribution and that most of those who are apparently philosophers are bogus (489 al-d7; d9). The opposition between private and common human goods is said to occur only in corrupt cities. The situation, Socrates implies, is very different when the philosopher en- counters a regime suitable (prosekouse) to his talents. This insight emerges in a long exchange with Adeimantus which is worth quoting at length.

'Now the men who have become members of this small band have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession it [philosophy] is. At the same time they have seen sufficiently the madness of the many, and that no one who minds the business of the cities does anything healthy, to say it in a word, and that there is no ally with whom one could go to the aid of justice and be preserved. Rather, just like a human being who has fallen in with wild beasts and is neither willing tojoin them in doing injustice nor sufficient as one man to resist all the savage animals - one would perish before he has been of any use to city or friends and be of no profit to himself or others. Taking all this into the calculation, he keeps quiet and minds his own business - as a man in a storm, when dust and rain are blown about by the wind, stands aside under a little wall. Seeing others filled full of lawless- ness, he is content somehow if he himself can live his life here pure of injustice and unholy deeds, and take his leave from it gracefully and cheerfully with fair hope.' 'Well,' he said, 'he would leave having accomplished not the least of things.' 'But not the greatest either,' I said, 'if he didn't chance upon a suitable regime. For in a more suitable one he himself will grow more and save the common things along with private' (496 dl-497 a4).

8 The public perspective of this criticism differs sharply from the intent of Callicles' remarks in the Gorgias (485 d1-486 d3) which emphasize the threats facing the philosopher owing to his distance from the city.


At the end of this passage (which Hall also quotes and which is perhaps the most damaging evidence of all to the Bloom thesis)9 Socrates implies that in the best regime, there would be no inherent incompatibility (in the primary sense noted above) between philosophy and a kind of politics. The philosopher would not only "save the common things along with the private" but also "grow more." How so?

In one sense the philosopher grows more in the best city because there alone is philosophy the conscious product of the regime. In other cities philosophy develops only by accident; the best city provides a context which a potential philosopher needs to be able to reach the Idea of the Good. This context can be interpreted as a certain kind of politics or a set of common institutions. Such institutions are needed because philosophers are not simply wise; philosophy is an incomplete existence. In this regard, the philosophic and the conventionally political lives seem similar or parallel.

Understood as ways of life, both philosophy and politics can be defined as requiring movement from less to more perfect conditions. The citizen's incomplete existence means that he or she needs political assistance to secure what is useful (ophelimon) and to avoid what is harmful (blaberon) (379 b3-c7). But the need for assistance and, thus, for a certain kind of politics also characterizes the philosopher. He or she is always moving away from the unknowable and the hateful "unwilling lie" and toward the knowables and the truth (382 a3-c4). The philosopher's incomplete existence is caused by deficiencies or shortcomings in wisdom. Finding remedies to those deficiencies is the philosopher's most pressing need, one which can be most fully satisfied in the best city.

In the best regime, the philosopher is assisted by the deliberate train- ing in dialectics which is possible only in a common environment that shapes young philosophers from the very beginnings of their lives. In this city alone does philosophy appear to be a certain kind of common thing, begotten by (and not only for the sake of) the city. As compared with this sort of development, the chance growth of philosophers in inferior regimes may be less perfect philosophically. It appears, for example, that they must substitute for or merely approximate the paths to and from the Idea of the Good that are available to philosophers educated in the best regime.

Socrates' mantic intuitions are perhaps examples of such an approxi- mation. These intuitions differ both from the assumed hypotheses that form the bases of the arts (technai) (511 c3-d7) and from that which "is free from hypothesis (tou anhypothetou) at the beginning of the whole" (511 b6-8). While the hypotheses that guide the arts (e.g., an assumed definition of health in the case of medicine) are taken for granted from the

"Bloom says (1977: 330) that this passage may "mean nothing more than that the philosopher would find more encouragement in such a city than elsewhere." But this does not really appear to do justice to Socrates' emphasis on the coalescence of the two functions of growing more and saving the common things, especially since the philosopher's abstaining from political affairs in inferior cities has already beenjustified and accepted. Socrates' statement that a philosopher may (must?) "save the common things as well as the private" in a "suitable regime" may qualify or limit that acceptance.


perspective of the art's practitioner, the very fact that they are hypothesized inevitably raises questions about their grounding (511 a3-9). They can be adequately understood only if they can be linked to that which is without hypothesis (533 b3-c7). In contrast, Socrates' intuitions, being mantic or daemonic, cannot call forth questions about their theoretical supports. They are, so to speak, "just there." The inquiries they stimulate concern not their bases but their consequences or implications. But as such they cannot be clarified or explained by reason; their conclusions remain in their own way tentative or provisional.'0 The implications of a Socratic intuition can be proven not by establishing the intuition itself, but by deriving those same implications from a more certain source that can only be discovered with far greater difficulty, taking a much longer way (cf. 435 c8-d5).

Yet in the best regime, the development of potential philosophers would appear to depend upon the guidance of those who have already completed the philosophic course. This assurmes, first of all, that such a completion is possible and, secondly, that those who have achieved it will be willing to assist those who have not. However, a number of considerations cast doubt upon the truth of both assumptions.

With regard to the first of these, Bloom remarks that "philosophy, as Socrates usually teaches, has the character of the unfinished and unfinish- able quest. If this is true it means that the philosopher cannot rule because he does not know what he would need to know in order to rule" (1968: 409).

In attempting to evaluate Bloom's criticism, an assessment of the nature of the Idea of the Good, a knowledge of which (according to Socrates) makes one truly wise, is unavoidable. To be sure, the monu- mental significance that Socrates give to the Idea of the Good is only exceeded by the incredible difficulty involved in grasping its nature (532 e4-533 a6; 509 bl-10). Yet even though Socrates cannot say what the Idea of the Good is "in itself," he is able to supply at least a preliminary indication of the kind of thing that it is - that which makes all knowledge and knowability possible (508 el-5). Without the Idea of the Good there would be only opinion and opinables. Thus, in spite of its extreme distance and inaccessibility, Socrates believes that it is possible to say something meaningful about the Idea of the Good if one accepts that there must be a difference between knowledge and opinion. The truth of this latter insight may, in turn, provide compelling evidence that the Idea of the Good (or something like it) must be the case. Thus, the existence of something like the Idea of the Good may be the conclusion of thinking the

0 See also Socrates' descriptions of the enemies of pleasure (Philebus 44 b9-e6) who should be seen as wizards (hospr mantesi) because of their natural and not ignoble repugnance to pleasure's power. Socrates suggests that their hatred and mistrust of pleasure do not stem from a theoretical understanding. But they may replace, approximate, or precede theory.


difference between knowledge and opinion through to first principles (cf. 533 al-6).11

Understood in this way, the Idea of the Good, however incompletely and provisionally grasped, may serve many of the same motivating and justifying functions as Socrates' intuition of the difference between knowledge and right opinion (cf. Meno 98 bl-6). As such, the Idea of the Good represents not a cessation of inquiry but a call to and justification of the most strenuous of intellectual labors. Significantly, Socrates indicates that once the Idea of the Good has been reached the philosopher must still pursue, through speech, innumerable opportunities for additional knowledge (511 b2-c3).

If we understand the Idea of the Good as a stimulant to and a grounding for inquiry, the differences between the wise man and the philosopher may become less absolute than they appear in Bloom's criticism. The lack of a strict, final distinction between philosophy and wisdom may also explain why those who are relatively more wise may be willing to assist those who are wise only partially or potentially. Even those closest to the Idea of the Good may learn or grow more while instructing others. Those who hope to "know anything of what we say they must know" must be able both to receive and to give an account of the things worthy of knowledge (531 e3-5). Socrates calls the activity in which these accounts are given and received "dialectic," the activity that can only occur in the discussions of two or more people. Socrates makes a compelling case that this life of dialectical activity is the best life possible for a human being. It is not simply the means by which one can achieve wisdom. The practice of dialectics is, rather, the active encounter between human beings and the things most worthy of their attention (532 al-e3). Dialectic is the longer and more difficult, but also more certain and rewarding, way to truths that otherwise are understood only tentatively and approximately. "[T]he power of dialectic alone" is capable of supplying not merely "an image of what we are saying but, rather, the truth itself, at least as it looks to me" (533 al-9).

From this perspective, a suitable regime can help even the philosopher who has approached the Idea of the Good "grow more" because it in- stitutionalizes and enhances the dialectical relationship that is intellectually beneficial to all participants. Socrates' experience provides a kind of illustration or image of the benefits of this relationship to the one who is superior in wisdom. In a sense, Socrates cannot do philosophy without his discussions. In the Phaidrus Socrates defends the infrequency of his journies outside the city by claiming that he cannot learn from the earth and the trees but only from men (230 d4-7).

1 Jacob Klein suggests that a similar progression is possible from Socrates' certain knowledge that he does not (completely) know. "[T]here must be the insight that the knowledge we do possess lacks ultimate and secure foundations. It may not be possible for men to attain them, but the very anticipation of a never completely eraseable residue of ignorance points to knowledge as something all-embracing and therefore whole" (1965: 26).

608 Western Political Quarterly However, one very powerful objection to this line of interpretation is

that Socrates frequently says that philosophers must, in fact, be compelled to mind the affairs of the city (e.g., 519 c7-d3 ; 540 b2-5). As Bloom comments, "if philosophers are to rule, it must be the city that forces them to do so" (1968: 407).

But for Socrates, compulsion alone does not make a given condition or situation unnatural. Necessity and compulsion in themselves are morally neutral. A thing's nature, on the other hand, is its good because it is its end (cf. Phaedo 97 c6-98 b7). To compel a creature to attain its own end is not against nature thus understood. For example, in the image of the cave in which this kind of compulsion is prominent, "the release and healing from bonds and folly" is said to occur "by nature" even though those who are released are compelled (515 c3-d6). Compulsion would be against nature only if the desires or inclinations would be completely trusted to lead to one's own best end. But the trustworthiness of desire or pleasure may be illusory even in the best of circumstances. The guidance offered by pleasure must be evaluated by "experience, prudence, and argument" (582 a4-5).

This rational evaluation of the best life for an individual provides a much differentjustification for compulsion than Hall's suggested "impersonal and transpersonal rational ordering in which, ideally, men are combined" (1977: 310). Hall is, I think, generally correct when he suggests that Plato does not define happiness (eudaimonia) in terms of "felt satisfaction." But Plato's alternative is not a transpersonal condition. In- stead, the Platonic standard for happiness is an objective condition of individuals, one that can be discovered if we use our thought "to creep into a man's disposition and see through it" (577 a3). The felt satisfaction of the philosopher (some 729 times greater than the tyrant's) which Bloom rightly says is central to Socrates' persuasion of Glaucon in book nine appears as a consequence of the philosopher's condition of happiness, rather than a definitive standard for that condition (585 d8-e5).

The compulsion that enables a creature to attain its own best condition may be both possible and necessary in the case of potential or beginning philosophers, those who are compelled to leave the cave. But Socrates indicates specifically that compulsion must be applied both before and after potential philosophers reach the Idea of the Good (519 c7-d7). Socrates justifies this compulsion by the need to secure the happiness of the whole city. Can it possibly bejustified by the philosopher's good? Here one might be tempted to say that the philosophers are only said to be compelled to rule in the best city (which is impossible) and that this kind of rule is different from the political activity involved in educating potential philosophers. However, Socrates explicitly includes "educating other like men and leaving them behind in their place as guardians of the city" as part of the political activity that is compelled (540 b2-8).

An alternative suggestion is that remaining with the Idea of the Good may itself deprive philosophers of the benefits of moving downward "using forms themselves, going through forms to forms" (511 c2). A certain kind of compulsion may be necessary to overcome fascination with


the Idea of the Good in order to allow the dialectical inquiry about forms of natural things to continue. However, such compulsion would be needed only if philosophers were ignorant of their own philosophic interests. Moreover, it is very questionable that a knowledge which grounds and stimulates intellectual labors would retard inquiry. I want to suggest, therefore, that Socrates' emphasis on the need to compel philosophers even to educate "other like men" may result primarily from the nature of the interlocutors in the Republic.

There are, indeed, a number of significant dramatic reasons why Soc- rates may wish to make philosophic and political activities appear further apart than they perhaps really are.'2 Adeimantus and, particularly, Glaucon are potential tyrants. Glaucon is influenced by the theoretical praise of tyranny to a degree that even he does not realize. Speaking ad hominem, Socrates must defend a kind of life which is very different from tyranny but which nonetheless expresses or satisfies the tyrannic urge to be completely self-satisfying or self-sufficient. Of more immediate significance is the need to keep Glaucon away from the affairs of the city. For purposes of restraining Glaucon's political acts, it is not sufficient to show him the practical difficulties involved in establishing the complete tyranny. These difficulties would not stop the real or the true tyrant from wanting to do the best he could to establish the perfect tyranny insofar as possible. A real tyrant or one who is a tyrant for theoretical'3 as well as erotic reasons must be shown or convinced that tyranny is radically inconsistent with a true theory of the soul or that it is against nature properly understood. For these reasons Socrates implies that the absolutely best life can be lived with the Forms or in the search for the Forms and away from the cities. Significantly, it is Glaucon (who is certainly over ten) and not Socrates who says that the best city can exist nowhere on earth.

If the relationship between actual and potential philosophers is natural or philosophically profitable to both, we can, I think, identify a political dimension that is essential to the philosopher's activity. Socrates specifically includes the education of young philosophers within the politics practiced by those who "come down" from the Idea of the Good (540 b2-8). The political nature of this relationship is apparent in the kinds of human qualities that it both encourages and requires. Being educated requires the courage to keep questioning, a kind of courage notably present in Glaucon and absent in, say, Meno (432 dl; cf. Meno 80 d6-81 d2). Education also includes a certain kind of justice and moderation, refraining either from providing more than can be understood by a given pupil or from demanding more than is appropriate given one's abilities (5-1 cl-9). Justice and moderation, thus understood, are necessary com-

12 Similar reasons may explain why Socrates overemphasizes the completion of the philosophic task in terms of reaching and remaining with the Idea of the Good. Making philosophy appear easier to complete than it really is would form part of Socrates' strategy to channel Glaucon's eros away from politics.

'3That is, being a tyrant, "to go where the tracks of the argument lead" (365 d 1-3), not (or not simply) inorder to gratify lust.


ponents of philosophic education because not all potential philosophers are of equal intelligence and temperament (496 al0-c4; Theaetetus 155 dl-8; Laws 853 al0-c4-8). The education of potential philosophers, like politics in its more familiar manifestations, involves a considerable degree of inequality.

This common or educational dimension of philosophic activity can provide a defensible standard for comparatively evaluating different kinds of political communities. But even assuming that philosophers must be, in a way, political in order to "grow more," that politicality serves the love of and search for the truth of being. What does this type of "politics" tell us about conventional cities characterized, at best, by the love of honor, wealth and freedom?

VI

When Socrates evaluates these conventional cities in books eight and nine, Bloom suggests that the ironical standard he uses is the best city. But a number of considerations indicate that the operative criterion may be, instead, the best life for man, the kind of philosophic political life that I have tried to sketch.

At the beginning of book eight, Socrates appears to "set aside" the city modelled on or imaged by the ascent from the cave. Instead, he rein- troduces many of the key features of the city of the "armed camp," including the community of wives and children and the fact that the "kings must be those... who have proved best in philosophy and with respect to war" (543 a5-7). This emphasis on the need for a combination of philosophical and war-making skills contrasts with the gradual aban- donment in book seven of the requirement that the education of philosophers be in subjects useful for warriors (527 d5-7). At the beginning of book eight, Socrates also emphasizes the need to "go back to the same way" taken at the end of book four, referring to the entire discussion of philosophy in books five through seven as a "detour" (543 c6-544 al).

Finally, the setting aside of the city that produces philosophers is illustrated in Socrates' account of the relationship of the timocratic city to the "proceding regime." The timarchy imitates the previous city "in honoring the rulers, and in the abstention of the war-making part from farming and the manual arts and the rest of money-making," as well as "in its provision for common meals and caring for gymnastic and the exercise of war" (547 d4-9). It is noteworthy that there is no remnant of a city specifically dedicated to producing philosophers. There are no references to the maintenance of any cognitive or intellectual capacities that approximate those that are found in the best city, for example, the "preservation, through everything, of the right and lawful opinion about what is terrible and what not," the particular virtue of the (non-philosophic) lover of honor (430 b2-5).

But there are a number of impediments to Socrates' using the city of the armed camp as a standard for political evaluation. It is questionable whether a combination of philosophic and war-making qualities is cohe-


rent or stable taken on its own terms. The need to restrain the guardians was the impetus for Socrates' introduction of philosophy. But if Socrates simply uses philosophy as a means of tempering spirited natures, he is vulnerable to Adeimantus' charge that he is "hardly making these men happy," not only because "they enjoy nothing good from the city as do others," but also because their characteristic activity seems unfulfilling or pointless. "But ... they look exactly like mercenary auxiliaries who sit in the city and do nothing but keep watch" (419 a12-420 a2). Socrates, finally, makes these men happy by defining philosophy as the characteristic activity that fulfills them. But this very fulfillment means the praise of and eventual concentration upon militarily "useless studies." The imper- fections of the guardian way of life inevitably lead either to ignoring the guardian's happiness or to advancing to the "still finer city and man" that emerges in the image of the cave (cf. 543 d2-544 al).

The inadequacy of book eight's "first city" as a political standard is confirmed by the differences between that city's defining characteristics and the virtues of book eight's "first man," the aristocratic father of the timocratic son. Presumably, that man's virtues can only approximate those of the first city since he "lives in a city that is not under a good regime" (549 c2-3). Nonetheless, his praiseworthy qualities do not reflect either philosophy or courage as much as they do a certain kind of moderation (sophrosyne) (549 c3-d8).14 Why is this sort of moderation connected with the first city described in book eight? Whatjustifies its status as the best of and the standard for the four lives that succeed it? I believe we can begin to answer these questions by comparing the moderate life to the best existence possible for man.

A certain kind of moderation appears to be integral to the life of the philosopher or potential philosopher able to "found a city within himself' (592 bl-3). This way of life is moderate with regard to the kinds of things praised by Thrasymachus, owing to a burning immoderation with regard to the knowables. But a similar or related moderation can perhaps be achieved on a more limited scale by non-philosophers. This moderate life is not one dedicated to knowing the forms but one committed to the maintenance of a gentle and harmonious disposition. The moderate person limits his or her desire for such things as wealth, honor, and even health according to their contribution to moderation in the soul (591 a3 ff.). Although this kind of disposition resembles philosophy in its limitation or control of the passions, it differs in the degree to which it desires

14 Bloom says (1968: 420) that this first man is exactly like Socrates, but there are differences as well as similarities. For one thing, the aristocratic man apparently owns enough property to have servants and debtors (549 e3-8). This first man also seems to be both less political and less philosophical than Socrates. There is no suggestion that he shares Socrates' propensity to ask every citizen he meets about virtue (cf. Apology, 29 c 10-30 a7). Moreover, Socrates says that this man turns his thoughts "to himself" but does not say that his thinking is motivated by a passionate urge to know the causes of things (cf. Phaedo 96 a5-b1). In short, there good reasons for believing that the characteristic virtue of the aristocrat is neither that of the philosopher nor that of the ruler of the city of the armed camp, but a certain kind of moderation.

612 Western Political Quarterly material or physical goods. The moderate person's limitation of the passions stems from a need for psychic equilibrium and not from a disinterest in physical things. Thus, the moderate life is distinct from the timocratic, oligarchic, and tyrannical lives in that it does not intensely prize one single type of scarce good or reward over others. But it is unlike the democratic personality which is capable of pursuing a variety of different and perhaps contradictory goals with equal intensity at different times. In- stead, the moderate person can enjoy a variety of human goods but only insofar as they are consistent with an underlying balanced disposition (544 e2-6). Socrates tells Glaucon of the benefits of and need for this kind of life in book ten.

'Now here my dear Glaucon is the whole risk for a human being. And on this account each of us must, to the neglect of other studies, above all see to it that he is a seeker and student of that study by which he might be able to learn and find out who will give him the capacity and the knowledge to distinguish the good and the bad life, and so everywhere choose the better from among those that are possible. He will take into account all the things we havejust mentioned and how in combination and separately they affect the virtue of a life ... From all this he will be able to draw a conclusion and choose - in looking off toward the nature of the soul - between the worse and the better life, calling worse the one that leads it toward becoming more unjust, and better the one that leads it toward becoming juster. He will let everything else go. For we have seen that this is the most important choice for him in life and death. He must go to the Hades adamantly holding to this opinion so he won't be daunted by wealth and such evils there, and rush into tyrannies and other such deeds by which he would work many irreparable evils, and himself undergo still greater suffering; but rather he will know how always to choose the life between such extremes and flee the excesses in either direction in this life, so far as is possible, and in all of the next life. For in this way a human being becomes happiest' (618 b7-619 bl). It is clear that Socrates evaluates this life as being lower in stature than

philosophy. Living between the extremes of doing and suffering injustices is not the best existence (496 d1-497 a4). No matter how relatively praiseworthy it might be, it is ultimately insecure without the grounding or support of philosophy (619 b7-d 1). Nonetheless, there are also certain similarities between the moderate life and philosophy which should not be overlooked. First, both include voluntary restrictions of intense physical passions. Such restrictions occur for the sake of active or positive psychic goals; neither is reducible to Sachs' "vulgar justice," "the non- performance of acts of certain kinds" (1971: 37). Second, extensive en- ergy and considerable personal qualities are needed for the pursuit of either the philosophic or the moderate life. In its own way, it is as difficult for the capable private person to become moderate as it is for the extraor- dinarily gifted one to become wise. Finally, both ways of life would seem to require some sort of assistance provided by some good city or failing that, by some gifted and beneficent individual.

The moderate life thus appears praiseworthy because of its re- semblance to certain aspects or dimensions of the philosophic life. In-


deed, on several occasions it appears that the moderate life is the best attainable by non-philosophers. For example, in the best city of book four the highest condition of the war-making class appears to be a certain kind of moderation that is the root cause of that class's "political courage," "the preserving of opinion produced by law through education about what - and what sort of thing - is terrible" (429 c6-d2). The justice found in all classes in that city is also in a sense reducible to a kind of moderation, a doing of one's own "not with respect a man's minding his external business, but with respect to what truly concerns him and his own" (443 d 1-3). The central function of the noble lie is to moderate the ambitions and desires of the three civic classes (415 d3-5). Finally, the philosopher-king's most difficult and important task in book five is to make the class of non-philosophic guardians or auxiliaries moderate with regard to wives and children (451 c5-9), their own honors (460 el-5) and, even, in the end, their individual bodies (461 b3-6).

Of course, this philosophic fostering of moderation in non- philosophers is not directly applicable in practice since it occurs in the impossible best city. But more realistic examples recur continually throughout the dialogues as the various characters encounter Socrates. Many of Socrates' interlocutors or confidants have no philosophic potential whatever. Even the best of them seems incapable of scaling heights that true philosophers must ultimately ascend. In spite of these limita- tions, Socrates is motivated to engage in some conversations with them because of their salutary consequences for his own philosophizing. Al- though he may not, strictly speaking, learnfrom most of these other discussants, he can in a way learn by cross-questioning them (Phaedrus 230 d4-7) and through any "dialogues with himself' (Theaetetus 189 e4-8) that result. Moreover, while none of these discussants is Socrates' equal, there are substantial differences in their intellectual gifts. Even though Glaucon is, finally, incapable of receiving an account of the Idea of the Good, his theoretical abilities are nonetheless impressive. Finally, there is sometimes legitimate uncertainty about the philosophic capacity of a given inter- locutor - an uncertainty that can only be removed by tests conducted in conversations (cf. Theaetetus 150 b7 ff.). Both the variation in interlocutors' capacities and the uncertainty about their levels of ability resemble educational conditions that would exist in the best city. Not all of the potential guardian-philosophers there are of equal intelligence. Accordingly, they must be rigorously tested in a way that allows only those who have been "preserved throughout and are in every way best at everything, both in deed and in knowledge" to "at last be led to the end" (540 a3-5). Like the distinction between philosophy and wisdom, the difference between philosophers and non-philosophers would appear to be more continuous than dichotomous. The philospher's concern with identifying and educating lovers of wisdom is precisely why he cannot deal only with potential philosophers.

Socrates' need for conversing with non-philosophers is particularly acute because he "lives in a city that is not under a good regime." Socrates cannot be motivated to educate even "other like men" by the considera-

614 Western Political Quarterly tions ofjustice that would support the "coming down" of the philosophers who have ascended to the Idea of the Good (520 bl-c7). Unlike those philosophers deliberately produced in the best city, he has grown up spontaneously or accidentally (496 c3-5) and benefits the city against its wishes (cf. Apology 37 c6-e2). Accordingly, his motivation at least includes a kind of patriotism or an affection for those nearest to him (cf. Apology 30 a2-5 ; Theaetetus 143 dl-5). But affection is, by its nature, more inclusive and less discriminating than the strict justice of the philosopher in the best city (cf. Laws 757 d6-758 a2). While Socrates' principal concerns lie with "other like men" or potential philosophers, he also inquires after the virtues of the citizens (tois astois) "who are more closely related to me" (Apology 30 a2-5). For this reason, Socrates considers himself not simply a teacher, but a kind of statesman (politikos-cf. Gorgias 521 d6-8).

Moreover, the fact that Socrates lives in a city that is not under a good regime - especially a democracy - also means that his philosophic politicality must include protecting the intellectually talented from the influence of those (such as the sophists) who would channel their gifts in undesirable directions.15 These political surroundings mean that Soc- rates' encouraging moderation in his interlocutors is particularly important. Even those Socratic discourses most fervently concerned with knowing often aim at instilling moderation in Socrates' partners. As part of Glaucon's education, the Republic leads not so much to philosophy as to the flight from the excesses of doing or suffering injustice (614 a6-10). In the Gorgias, Callicles' failure to perceive that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it is said to issue from his neglect of geometry, a true apprecia- tion of which would show him "that heaven and earth and gods and men are held together by communion and friendship and orderliness and moderation and justice" (507 e7-508 a3). The most explicit connection between inquiry and moderation is, however, made in the Theaetetus. If, after his conversations with Socrates, Theaetetus is still unable to say what knowledge is, he will nonetheless be made more gentle toward his in- feriors because he will be stripped of the illusion that he knows when he does not know (210 bl2-c9).

The impossibility of the best city, then, does not necessarily result in Socrates' applying an impossible standard in the evaluation of existing cities. Understanding the nature of the best way of life allows one to praise the moderate community or the community productive of moderate citizens on principled grounds. The moderate life approximates one dimension or aspect of the philosopher's life. Moreover, the philosopher who both "grows more" and "saves the common things" can produce the condition of moderation in potential philosophers as well as in those non-philosophers with whom he educationally or politically interacts.

5 All of these considerations suggest that Bloom's claim that "Socrates, too, cares for other men, but only to the extent that they, too, are capable of philosophy" (1977: 329) is in need, at least, of qualification and elaboration. Insofar as Socrates' practices represent approximations to those of the philosopher who lives in a suitable regime and, thus, both grows more and saves the common things, his "care" is necessarily complex.


These considerations suggest why the most important or most praiseworthy virtue encouraged in the city of the armed camp is not calculating reason or courage, but moderation.16 Likewise, the use of this standard helps to explain the diminution of the democracy in favor of the timarchy and the oligarchy in book eight. Even though the democracy allows philosophy, the timarchy and the oligarchy are evaluated higher because both channel or direct their citizens to a certain kind of restraint.17 The democracy, on the other hand, engenders a kind of immoderation because of its devotion to freedom,18 a kind of immoderation ultimately issuing in tyranny (564 a5-8).19 The best possible life suggests that moderation, not philosophy or courage, is central to the best possible city.

VII The Republic's best way of life provides a standard for political evalua-

tion that is very different from both a possible best city and an applied metaphysics of Forms. The central basis of Socrates' political philosophy is not a literal or an ironical political utopianism.20 Neither does it depend upon a transpersonal ordering that collapses the differences between individuals. Instead, that political philosophy relies fundamentally on a human psychology. Even if we are dissatisfied with the substance of that psychology and its political implications, we may still profitably use the form of analysis initiated by Plato's Socrates in political evaluations. This

6 Bloom is surely accurate when he notes (against Hall) that the discussion of calculative reason-logismos -in book four is only provisional and preliminary (1977: 322). This is not the kind of reason characteristic of philosophers, but it may be that exercised by the moderate man who "has forethought about all of the soul" and who uses spirit as "its ally" in order to control desire (441 e3-6).

17 Cf. Socrates' distinction between the necessary and the unnecessary desires, introduced in the discussion of the differences between the oligarch and the democrat (558 d5-559 d2).

'8Thus, Socrates denies that societies devoted to the preservation of freedom can be exempted from responsibility for the goals their citizens freely pursue. This is similar to his rejecting Gorgias' contention that teachers of the rhetorical art should not be liable for how their students use it (cf. Gorgias 457 b5-c4). I see (1982: 129-50) the differences between the Socratic and the liberal positions on this issue as reflecting different perpectives on the relationship between ethics and politics and ultimately different philosophies of human action.

19 Of course, for Socrates only a certain kind of freedom is linked to immoderation and, thus, to tyranny - "the extreme of freedom" that gives license to the private desires to "the neglect of the rest" (562 c3-7; 564 a5-8). In a sense, a very different kind of freedom accompanies or is a consequence of the philosopher's knowing the causes of things (cf. Sophist 253 c7-254 b2).

20 Bloom and Hall differ about whether Socrates is being ironic or literally serious when he describes the best city. But both agree that that description ought to serve as a standard for evaluating politics within the Platonic perspective. I share Bloom's view that Socrates is being ironic but do not agree that the ironical view of the best city is the only or the principal political standard articulated in the Republic. For extensive discussions of Socrates' irony, consult Strauss (1963: 51ff.), as well as Klein's discussion and bibliog- raphy (1965: 3-10).

616 Western Political Quarterly can be illustrated with a necessarily brief and provisional consideration of Aristotole's corrections of the Platonic standard.

The identification of the moderate polity as the best polity depends upon a certain understanding of the soul which Socrates articulates in book seven:

Therefore, the other virtues of the soul as they are called are probably somewhat close to those of the body. For they are not really there be- forehand and are later produced by habits and exercises, while the virtue of exercising prudence is more than anything somehow more divine it seems; it never loses its power but according to the way it is turned it becomes useful and helpful or, again, useless and harmful (518 d7-519 al). This fundamental distinction between the virtues of the soul and those

of the body is also implicit in Socrates' assessment of the difficulty involved in defining the soul "in truth" because "as we now see it" it is "maimed by community with body and other evils." The psychology of virtue ultimately developed in the Republic focuses primarily upon the human cognitive capacity. Accordingly, the political dimension of the truly best life occurs in the educational interactions between philosophers and potential philosophers.

Artistotle challenges or corrects this view of the soul by alleging a much closer connection between the human soul and the human body (De Anima 412 b4-9). For him, the soul's parts are affected and limited by necessary and natural contacts with the body (De Anima 403 a7; Metaphysics 1035 b14-18). Differences between human souls and those of other animals stem in part from the differences between their natural bodies (De Anima 421 a21-28). Far from being an evil in Aristotle's eyes, the soul's community with body appears as a natural and therefore beneficial ex- pansion of the psychic structure.

I suggest that Aristotle's differences with Plato regarding the nature of the soul result in significant differences in their political perspectives. Aristotle's definition of politics as the care of the soul is consistent with Plato's (cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1103 b3-7; Gorgias 517 b2-c2). But Aristotle expands the range of human phenomena that are relevant for the development of a political standard. In book two of the Politics, for example, Aristotle criticizes the Republic's best city because he says it tends to become a unity which does not recognize differences among its members (Politics 1261 a15-21). In the Republic Socrates attempts to collapse the bodily differences between citizens by instituting a community of pleasure and pain through communal property and communal families. For Aristotle, these kinds of material or physical differences may be essential to the very identity of the polis (Politics 1263 b9-11). But Socrates or Plato might respond by claiming that the differences which Aristotle wishes to preserve are not relevant to the best politics or soul-care. They are, rather, bodily differences or differences in the objects of bodily desire, irrelevant or, at best, tangential to differences among the abilities of potential lovers of wisdom.


VIII

Thus, although they differ over the precise nature of the soul and its virtues, Plato and Aristotle endorse a common structure for political theory. Both define politics as the care of the soul and the standard for the best regime is, accordingly, the nature of the soul. The centrality of the soul supports interpretations such as Bloom's that focus on the role of a human or psychological theory within Plato's political philosophy and raises serious questions about approaches such as Hall's that counsel reliance on Platonic metaphysics. But understanding the best way of life described in the Republic may also modify some of Bloom's conclusions about the distances between philosophical and political activities in the dialogue. The philosophic way of life would appear to include a certain political dimension that is essential for that life's perfection or completion. Using this political dimension in evaluations of existing governments makes the Republic (or the perspective developed in the Republic) emi- nently relevant to projects confronting contemporary political theorists.

This relevance is enhanced by the fact that the general framework initiated by the Platonic Socrates does not appear to be historically limited. It does not require the endorsement of a particular series of programs or policies. This is shown by the many substantive differences between Plato and Aristotle over psychological and political questions. Moreover, there is no reason to assume that their respective positions represent the only ones possible within the Socratic framework. Adopting the perspective on politics implicit in the Republic would not require us to sacrifice our concerns with political men or to diminish our estimation of the worth of political life. It would entail, however, the adoption of a preferred method, one using the concept of human psychic virtue as its touchstone, for continually confronting endlessly engrossing human phenomena that are not easily, if ever, transcendable: our political things.

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Issue Table of ContentsThe Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Dec., 1983), pp. 507-674Volume InformationFront Matter [pp. 507-509]Abstracts [pp. 511-512]Benevolent Illusions in a Developing Society: The Assertion of Supreme Court Authority in Democratic India [pp. 513-532]Whither Political Jurisprudence: A SymposiumForeword [pp. 533-534]The Recent Past [pp. 534-541]Recent Developments in Political Jurisprudence [pp. 541-548]Law from a Political Perspective [pp. 548-551]The Maturation of Political Jurisprudence [pp. 551-558]Reconsidering Whence and Whither Political Jurisprudence [pp. 558-569]

Federal Trial and Appellate Judges: How Do They Differ? [pp. 570-578]The Insufficiency of Reason in Plato's Gorgias [pp. 579-595]Politics and Action in Plato's Republic [pp. 596-618]Voting on School Finances: A Test of Competing Theories [pp. 619-631]The Mobilization of the New Right: A Test of Various Explanations [pp. 632-649]Evaluating Presidential Nominees: Opinion Polls, Issues, and Personalities [pp. 650-659]Changes in Hispanic Local Public Employment in the Southwest [pp. 660-673]Back Matter [pp. 674-674]

politics and action in plato´s republic

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