Part II: The Classical Period

E. Plato's View of Man

It may seem superfluous to introduce this new heading into our attempt to sketch the doctrine of Plato, since so much of what we have already said has indicated Plato's attitude towards man's place in nature, his ethical goals, the status of the human soul, the nature of the state. Nevertheless, these matters have hitherto been subsidiary to our feeble efforts to depict the central doctrine of the dialogues, the theory of Forms or Ideas. We want now to concentrate explicitly on what Plato has to say of the nature of the human soul, what ethical doctrine he enunciates, his view of the state. Needless to say it would have been possible to introduce the Forms in function of these discussions, but it is our hope that the sequel will indicate the reasons why we have chosen to proceed as we do.

The Soul. Plato's view of man is usually expressed in passages whose goal is the enunciation of what man must do, and moral obligation, in turn, is usually, or at least most significantly described in terms of the political order, of man's place in society. Nevertheless, we can glean from such passages a doctrine as to what man is, particularly what the nature of the soul is and, in the Phaedo, we have a discussion of the perfection of man which concentrates on the individual and makes no reference to the political context in which self-perfecting takes place. For this reason, the Phaedo is thought to have been written prior to the Republic in which the analogy between the parts of the soul and those of society becomes a major theme.

In asking what the nature of the soul is, for Plato, we shall begin our discussion with the Phaedo where, as we have already seen, Socrates is presented in his death cell surrounded by friends. The point of the dialogue, at least on the surface, would seem to be the formulation of a proof for the immortality of the soul. We shall see that there are reasons for qualifying this description of its purpose, but that proofs are offered is beyond doubt and by examining them briefly we can get a preliminary idea of what Plato thought the nature of the soul to be.

We have already discussed the confidence of Socrates in the face of imminent death that he is going to a better world. It is just the basis for this confidence which is sought in the arguments of the Phaedo, and it is sought against the background of Socrates' assertion that philosophy is a preparation for death, since philosophizing consists in the turning of the soul from the body and the realm of sense, a turning which already suggests the distinction between soul and body. Cebes objects to the implication that the soul continues to exist after death and Socrates, though noting that in his present plight he will find it difficult to be indifferent to the outcome of the discussion, offers to seek the basis for his belief.

The first argument relies heavily on the notion that opposites are generated from one another. The just is generated from the unjust, the good from the bad, hot from cold and so forth, though the transitions are gradual and not necessarily abrupt: a hot thing cools and then is cold. If this is so and life has as its opposite death, must we not say that life comes from death as waking from sleeping? Thus, if the dead come to be from the living, it seems that the living must come to be from the dead.

To this argument is immediately linked another drawn from recollection (anamnesis). An allusion is made to a situation like that described in the Meno, where, by means of questions and a diagram, one can be shown already to know what he has not learned, at least not learned in this world. In other words, the soul once existed in another place before its being in a human form, it must have dwelt with the Forms or Ideas. "There is the same proof that these ideas must have existed before we were born, as that our souls existed before we were born; and if not the ideas, then not the souls." (76)

The reader will see that, having set out to show that the soul will survive the death of man, Socrates has twice shown that the soul existed prior to its union with the body; but has he shown that it will survive? Socrates says this is implicit in the foregoing, if we take the two proofs together. "For if the soul exists before birth, and in coming to life and being born can be born only from death and dying, must she not after death continue to exist, since she has to be born again?" (77) Socrates offers to make this explicit, and he begins by asking what it is that we think can corrupt. The compounded can corrupt, be dissolved, but the uncompounded or simple cannot. For instance, the Forms must always remain the same, unchanging, since they are identical with themselves. There are not many justices. Bodily things, on the other hand, are many and compound and always in a state of change. In an important remark Socrates asserts the affinity of our body with corruptible things and the affinity of our soul with the incorruptible Forms.

. . . the soul when using the body as an instrument of perception, that is to say, when using the sense of sight or hearing or some other sense (for the meaning of perceiving through the body is perceiving through the senses) -- were we not saying that the soul too is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused . . . But when returning into herself she reflects, then she passes into the other world, the region of purity, and eternity, and immortality, and unchangeableness, which are her kindred, and with them she ever lives, when she is by herself and is not let or hindered; then she ceases from her erring ways, and being in communion with the unchanging is unchanging. And this state of the soul is called wisdom (79)

We have here the wisdom the love of which constitutes philosophy and the suggestion that there is a sense in which immortality is won by the acquisition of moral virtue, i.e. the triumph over the body. The immortality which is spoken of as deserved in this life is, so to speak, good immortality; in any case the soul will survive, but those souls which have not purged themselves of the effects of the body, will be imprisoned once more but this time in the bodies of brutes. Pleasure and pain are as nails which fasten the soul ever more surely to body; these snares can be avoided only by the study of philosophy which enables us to surmount the ignorance whose sign is vice and fasten the eye of the soul on true existence, the realm of the Forms. The passage in which Socrates describes the function of philosophy (80-84), too lengthy to be quoted and too polished to be paraphrased, has to be read in order to appreciate how, in this dialogue, the conjunction of moral excellence and the contemplation of the Forms produces an almost mystical view of philosophy.

The difference of soul from body is clearly expressed in the discussion we have reviewed and, if interaction between soul and body is admitted, the emphasis is on the deleterious aspect of the interrelationship. This distinction is underlined by Socrates' response to a doubt expressed by Simmias. Simmias cannot repress the thought that the soul may be simply the harmony or attunement of the body. Socrates responds by pointing out that one who accepts the previous arguments for the preexistence of the soul cannot make the soul a harmony, since it would be absurd to suppose a harmony could exist prior to its elements. Moreover, if soul is a harmony, the discord of vice is difficult to explain; indeed, this view would seem to make all souls good. Moreover, the fact that the soul is the ruler of the body suggests the point that the body is not in agreement with the soul nor vice versa; thus, the soul leads the elements of which she is said to be composed, opposes them and suppresses them. The soul's otherness from body is thus maintained and the theory that soul is a harmony of body rejected.

A final argument moves from the fact that whatever is three is also odd and cannot remain three and not admit of oddness to the assertion that since the soul brings life and life cannot admit death, the soul withdraws before the approach of death. The procedure is, of course, a good deal more complicated than this and has often been criticized. For our purposes, it is one more indication that soul is taken to be other than body by Plato whether or not he is able to prove this satisfactorily. In the Tenth Book of the Republic the point is made that, since the soul is not destroyed by what is its own greatest evil, vice, it can hardly be destroyed by evils of the body. In the Phaedrus, the immortality of the soul is based on the notion of soul as self-mover.

The soul through all her being is immortal, for that which is ever in motion is immortal; but that which moves another and is moved by another, in ceasing to move ceases also to live. Only the self-moving, never leaving self, never ceases to move, and is the fountain and beginning of motion to all that moves besides. Now, the beginning is unbegotten, for that which is begotten has a beginning; but the beginning is begotten of nothing, for if it were begotten of something, then the begotten would not come from a beginning. But if unbegotten, it must also be indestructible; for if beginning were destroyed, there could be no beginning out of anything, nor anything out of a beginning; and all things must have a beginning. And therefore the self-moving is the beginning of motion; and this can neither he destroyed nor begotten, else the whole heavens and all creation would collapse and stand still, and never again have motion or birth. But if the self-moving is proved to be immortal, he who affirms that self-motion is the very idea and essence of the soul will not be put to confusion. For the body which is moved from without is soulless; but that which is moved from within has a soul, for such is the nature of the soul. But if this is true, must not the soul be the self-moving and therefore of necessity unbegotten and immortal (245-6)

This same definition of soul is found in the Laws as last of the ten kinds of motion there distinguished. (893 ff.) It should be said in conclusion that the proofs of immortality set forth in the Phaedo seem to function as much as emotive appeals as appeals to reason alone. This is true not only because of the setting but because philosophy itself consists in a movement away from immersion in the world of sense, a movement which will be begun only on the assumption that the soul is immortal. But of course, until one has made the movement, the eye of his soul is not clear enough to grasp the truth. Thus, while the purpose of the dialogue may seem to be the proof of the soul's immortality, its more subtle role is as an exhortation to philosophy. It is for this reason that, as was pointed out earlier, the true proof of the dialogue is the represented composure of Socrates in the face of death.

In the Republic Plato wishes to proceed from an analysis of the state to that of the individual, a procedure we will be discussing in a moment. The ideal commonwealth sketched is, of course, an ordered whole; thus, when Plato turns to the individual, it is perhaps not surprising that he begins to speak of parts of the soul. What has been said in the Phaedo concerning the affinity of soul with the Forms does not prepare us for this, since there the Forms are argued to be simple and uncomposed and, presumably, the soul is too. The state has been shown to consist of three groups: those who deliberate and govern, those who execute policy, and the craftsmen. Now if the state is the soul on a larger scale, we should expect this threefold division to obtain in some way in the soul.

But the question is not quite so easy when we proceed to ask whether these principles are three or one; whether, that is to say, we learn with one part of our nature, are angry with another, and with a third part desire the satisfaction of our natural appetites; or whether the whole soul comes into play in each sort of action -- to determine that is the difficulty. (436)

In order to decide the question, we must first accept the following principle, namely, that the same thing cannot act or be acted on in the same part or in relation to the same thing at the same time in contrary ways. Thus a man cannot be in motion and rest at the same time in the same respect; he can however move his hands while resting in the same place. Now much the same kind of distinction must be drawn when we consider that a man may at one and the same time desire and not desire a drink; if both desires are attributed to soul, it seems we must distinguish that part of the soul with which a man hungers and thirsts, the appetitive or irrational, from that with which he reasons, the rational part. There is as well a part with which we feel indignation and anger, a spirited or courageous part. That this is distinct from the appetitive part is clear from the fact that they are often in conflict as when we are angry because we desire something; that it is distinct from reason is shown by its presence in children and brutes who have not the use of reason. This spirited part of the soul tends to be the ally of reason in disputes with the appetitive part. Of the three parts of the soul, only the rational part is immortal (Timaeus, 69) and it is composed of the same mixture as the world soul. (ibid. 41).

It is sometimes suggested that when Plato attempts to establish the immortality of the soul all he is able to do is to indicate that spiritual substance cannot be corrupted, but that he cannot establish personal immortality, that is, that my soul as mine will survive. This objection would have force if my soul could be said to be mine thanks to dwelling in this body, and yet Plato often speaks -- although admittedly this is usually in mythical flights of fancy -- of a plurality of souls being in existence prior to their assuming a body and then returning once more, certain conditions having been fulfilled, to an existence apart from body. Thus, the earthly career of a soul could not be said to constitute it as a personal one and its persistence would be personal. Plato speaks of the soul using a body, taking over a body, ruling a body; that is, the soul is individual and substantial in its own right and could not lose these features at death. There is, however, another side to the matter. Contrary to the view expressed mythically in the Timaeus according to which all souls are presented as having an equal chance at least in their first birth into bodies, Plato, speaking more matter-of-factly in the Laws (VI, 775), indicates that the sins of parents can be visited upon their children, that intemperate parents, for instance, generate children who will inevitably stray from the right way. Hence during the whole year and all his life long, and especially when he is begetting children, he ought to take care and not intentionally do what is injurious to health, or what involves insolence and wrong; for he cannot help leaving the impression of himself on the souls and bodies of his offspring, and be begets children in every way inferior.

Such a view presupposes a closer relationship between soul and body than other remarks, but the union seems to be that of two things rather than of two principles of one thing. What seems never to recede is the view that our soul is our better being, our true being, with the body somehow alien and unnatural. Death, consequently, is not something the fear of which is justified; rather, philosophy will enable us to see that death releases the soul -- and us -- to a better life.

In the Phaedrus Plato describes the three parts of the soul in the following way: the rational part is a charioteer, the spirited and appetitive parts are two horses. Man's task is to bring the two steeds under the control of reason. It is because Plato asks what man is when he is seeking the answer to what man ought to do that any discussion of Plato's view of the soul must be juxtaposed to his doctrine on morality. The latter doctrine, as we have already mentioned, seems inseparable from Plato's political theories and we must determine why this is so.

Morality and Politics. The seventh letter, although written late in Plato's life, describes his outlook as a very young man. The young man he remembers is one who was vitally interested in the activity of Socrates, a Socrates who was questioning the assumptions on which his fellow Athenians based their lives, who seemed always interested in the problems of the state but who nevertheless kept himself curiously aloof from practical involvement. The letter recounts that Socrates refused to be enlisted by the Thirty Tyrants (among whom were numbered relatives of Plato, relatives who asked the young Plato himself to join their movement) in an effort to execute a friend of the exiled democrats, and that, ironically, these same democrats executed Socrates when they had returned to power. Plato indicates how the failure of the Thirty to eradicate the evils of the city depressed him and how his depression increased when the government had changed and Socrates was condemned. The next step, we should think, would be withdrawal from politics, both as practical vocation and theoretical interest, but here as always Plato is surprising. On the practical level, he seems to have kept clear of Athenian politics, but we have seen his extended involvement in Syracusan government; moreover, the Academy became a training ground for men who wrote laws and constitutions for a number of states. On the theoretical side, as the seventh letter indicates, a question arose which intrigued Plato throughout his life; if society is corrupt because lawgivers are corrupt, does not the only hope lie in putting power in the hands of those who are not corrupt, that is, those who have studied philosophy? To break the vicious circle of social evil, there must first be some good men who would so devise a state that its citizens would be trained in virtue; vicious men in power will only perpetuate vice in themselves and in their subjects. Two of Plato's works, and they are the two longest, are devoted to this problem which is touched on in many of the other dialogues as well. The Republic and the Laws are the great sources; the first dating from what is called Plato's middle period, approximately from the time of the founding of the Academy, the second thought to be the last thing Plato wrote.

Republic. This dialogue has come down to us in the form of ten books, a division which does not divide the subject matter. The discussion breaks rather easily into the following parts: (1) introductory: consideration of certain opinions as to the nature of justice (Book I and the first third of Book II -- to 367); (2) the structure of the ideal society (to the end of Book IV); (3) how the ideal society can be achieved: the philosopher king (Books V-VII); (4) the declension of society: stages of corruption of the ideal state, (Books VIII-IX); (5) otherworldly sanctions of justice, preceded by comparison of philosophy and poetry.

The entertainment of views of justice comes about at the outset of the Republic in a familiar way with Socrates asking for light on the matter. He turns his attention first to Cephalus, an old man, retired from business, and asks him how life looks to him now that he stands on the threshold of the beyond. There are a few remarks on the advantages of being freed from youthful passion the echo of which we find in Cicero's De senectute; this quieting of the flesh provokes retrospective thought about one's life and an uneasiness at the thought that one will be held to account for it. The advantages of ending up with a tidy fortune are summed up in terms of half of Cephalus' description of justice; one must pay his debts. The other half consists in telling the truth. While continuing to pay deference to the old man, Socrates suggests that, if justice be what Cephalus says it is, there are times when it would be manifestly wrong to be just. For example, if one has borrowed a weapon from a man who goes mad, it would surely not be right to return it to him nor to tell him the simple truth. Cephalus graciously withdraws, leaving the defense of his definition to his son, Polemarchus.

Polemarchus argues that his father's position is simply that of the poet Simonides who had defined justice as giving to each his due. That the poet is a safe guide in disputes of this sort is something which will be denied later in the Republic, but at this point Socrates proceeds as so often elsewhere by interpreting the poetic dictum to show that it cannot not be true. That is, the poetic utterance is treated as inspired but requiring subtle exegesis. When Socrates repeats the difficulty of the lunatic's loan, Polemarchus interprets the poet to mean that we should help our friends and harm our enemies. Of the many difficulties Socrates raises, we can select the following. If justice is doing good to friends and harm to enemies, and we can be mistaken about our friends, deeming an unjust man just, justice may require doing good to an unjust man. If however this is amended to say that we ought to do good to the just and harm to the unjust, Socrates will not allow that the function of justice is to do harm to anyone. This assertion that we ought to do good to our enemies is one of the points that lifts Plato far above the assumptions on which most men operate. It is as well what triggers off Thrasymachus, whose attitude towards justice, although it shifts in his interchange with Socrates, is an articulation of man's worst motives.

Thrasymachus (a Sophist mentioned in an earlier chapter) literally crashes his way into the dialogue; he has been represented as grumbling impatiently through the discussion between Polemarchus and Socrates. When he finally bursts out it is to take exception to Socrates' whole method; Socrates should come out with his own statement as to what justice is. The implication is that Thrasymachus himself could do this; he allows that he could, and Socrates applies for instruction. The definition Thrasymachus offers is this: justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger. It turns out that this means that in any form of government, the ruling party makes laws for its own interest, thereby making the obeying of these laws on the part of the subjects the protecting of the interest of the ruler. Socrates objects that since rulers are not infallible, they can sometimes make a law which they think to be in their own interest though in reality it is not; then justice will turn out to be doing that which is not in the interest of the stronger. The retort of Thrasymachus is of great importance since it will lead to the downfall of his position! He does not mean to say that the ruler deserves the name when he is doing something contrary to the art from which he is named but only when he is acting in accordance with that art. For example, the physician as physician does not make mistakes, since he is called a physician precisely insofar as he posseses the art which enables him to cure. If the man who is a physician causes harm to a patient, he does this not insofar as he possesses the art of medicine, but because of some deficiency. So too the ruler as ruler always legislates in his own best interest.

What Thrasymachus has done in this precision is to introduce the notion of an art and the connected question as to the interest of an art. Arts are devised to make up for certain defects, as the art of medicine arises from the fact that the human body is susceptible of disease. Now the interest or end of any art is precisely to supply those defects which have prompted its emergence; the interest of medicine is to eradicate illness. Thus the interest of the physician precisely as physician is to cure illness; if he is interested besides in

collecting a fee, this is not something which belongs as such to the art of medicine, since the carpenter and plumber and portrait painter can also be interested in collecting a fee, but this cannot be their interest qua carpenter, qua plumber or qua portrait painter. We can see what Socrates can now say of the art of governing: the ruler governs for the sake of the governed, this is his function precisely as ruler; if he is interested in self-aggrandizement, this is not insofar as he is a ruler. Thrasymachus' reply to this is not so much an argument but a stating of the facts of life for the naive Socrates. The thrust of his statement is that the unjust prosper on every level of life if only they are skillful in their injustice. In business partnerships and pickpocketing, in paying income taxes and in governing, it is the unjust man who profits. A sign of this is the success of tyrants.

But when a man besides taking away the money of the citizens has made slaves of them, then, instead of these names of reproach, he is termed happy and blessed, not only by the citizens but by all who hear of his having achieved the consummation of injustice. For mankind censure injustice, fearing that they may be the victims of it and not because they shrink from committing it. And thus, as I have shown, Socrates, injustice, when on a sufficient scale, has more strength and freedom and mastery than justice; and, as I said at first, justice is the interest of the stronger, whereas injustice is a man's own profit and interest. (344)

Socrates returns to the notion of the interest of an art as such and will not allow that the profit one gets from performing an activity is the interest of that activity since making a profit is common to many activities.

The larger question raised by Thrasymachus to the effect that success in life amounts to acting unjustly is one that elicits the characteristically Platonic attitude. What we get, however, is not simply the counter assertion that justice is everywhere to be preferred to injustice, but an examination of the original assertion. One way this is done is by pointing out that one cannot be consistently unjust; a band of thieves is possible only if its members do not rob one another. Any united action demands justice among the members of a group and would be undermined by injustice. Thrasymachus then is prescribing a mode of conduct which is subversive of any joint action among individuals. What is more, where injustice is prescribed in this way, it cannot be productive of well-being or happiness. There is no need for us to consider the caliber of the arguments whereby Thrasymachus is made reluctantly to admit that justice is the good of the soul and injustice its defect; from this it follows that, when the soul is deficient in its proper excellence, it cannot perform its task well nor can the well-being or happiness of the agent result.

That justice is desirable in itself is not thought to have been proved, and Plato's brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, now urge Socrates to continue. This implies the division that Glaucon spells out: goods are either sought for themselves alone; for themselves but also for their results; and simply for the sake of something else. Socrates would put justice in the first class, but most men would disagree, placing it rather in the third. One is just because it pays, with money, honor or reputation. What Glaucon proposes to do is to adopt a position like that of Thrasymachus and see if Socrates can convince him that justice is truly a good in itself. Is not the order of justice simply a compact men have made? They will not wrong others if they themselves will not be wronged; this is the origin of law and justice which are not sought for their own sake; they are a compromise reached by those who despair of ever fully triumphing over their neighbors. Moreover, without the constraint of law, there would be no distinction between the just and unjust. If one could act with impunity, would he avoid doing what is called unjust; if I could act just as I please, would it please me to do what is now called the right thing? Finally, if we take the just and unjust as perfect types, could the just man who is truly just but is not honored as such, but rather punished and pilloried by his fellows possibly be called happier than the perfectly unjust man who prospers and is praised? Adeimantus supplements his brother's case by arguing that justice is always commended, not for itself, but for the advantages it brings, respectability, advancement, etc. One thinks of Yeats' line to Lady Gregory: "Only God could love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair."

Plato's brothers have presented this description as something commonly accepted and as something they want Socrates to dissuade them from accepting. They pose the central problem of the Republic which is to show that justice is an intrinsic good which does not require certain concomitants and effects to be seen as good and that injustice is such an evil that any concomitant or resultant advantages cannot lessen its evil.

The problem having been set, it remains to sketch the program of the subsequent discussion. On the assumption that justice is something to be found not only in the individual but in the state as well, Socrates argues that it will be easier to discern in the state and that, once discerned there, they can argue by analogy to justice in the individual. He proposes therefore that they examine the evolution of political society, and Socrates' first point is that the state comes into being out of natural needs -- as against the previous assumption that it is a kind of unnatural imposition which thwarts the individual. This can be seen by observing the dependence of men on one another for such elementary things as food, shelter and clothing. A division of labor is preferable among the arts, with an exchange of products, and Socrates is enabled to move rather swiftly from an imagined group of four or five men to a complex society comprising artisans and farmers, merchants and sailors and so forth. The sketch ends with the suggestion that, in such a situation, justice will be looked for in the economic dealings of the members of this society with one another.

It has been observed that Plato is not so much constructing an imaginary state as he is describing such a city as Athens on its fundamental level. This being so, the diet and dwellings and diversions of the citizens are of the simplest order and Glaucon would allow them a few luxuries. This entails enlarging the community, to include not only hunters and fishers, but also poets and other artists, nurses and servants, barbers, etc. etc. This seems to require expansion of territory, hence war whose origin is thus located in desire for things beyond the necessities of life. The need for war implies warriors, guardians of the state and these must be chosen because of natural gifts. Guardians must possess courage, they must have a gentle nature and great spirit and be, like a watch dog, kind to friends and fierce with enemies. The ability to discern friend from foe comes with knowledge, so the guardian will possess a love of wisdom, of philosophy. The problem then becomes, how are we to train persons of this nature that they might become good guardians?

In describing the early training of the guardians, Plato continues to work with the existent Athens as his model, correcting where he feels correction is due. If we think of this primary education as consisting of grammar, music and gymnastic, we find that, with respect to the first two, Plato is concerned with what is read, the way it is read and the musical accompaniment. As to content, he does not want the future guardians filled with stories of the immoral exploits of heroes nor with absurd and contradictory statements about the gods. He suggests, in effect, a censoring of the poets traditionally read in the schools, and Homer is by no means exempted. The fact that the student had to give a dramatic recitation of poems, throwing himself into the story and identifying himself with the characters, increases the importance of there being acceptable heroes with which to identify himself. Finally, the musical accompaniment of the poetry has to be scrutinized to make sure that the modes employed inculcate the proper disposition in the young, harmony and the harmony of the soul. This transition indicates the role poetry was intended to play in the moral education of the young, giving them a first glimpse of that beauty the love of which enables one to transcend the order of images.

The education Plato has described is to continue to the age of twenty; at that age, a few will be selected to receive a higher training and ultimately to become rulers. That is, the state will consist of rulers, guardians who execute the wishes of the rulers, and the class of artisans. Members of each level are determined by natural aptitude, not by birth or wealth and so on. The guardians themselves will lead an ascetic life, having no private property. Given these elements of the state, Socrates can go on to inquire after the virtues of the state.

Plato assumes that there are four virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. The questipn now is, how are these -- particularly justice -- the virtues of the state, meaning by this, as Cornford points out (p. 119), not the virtues of some abstraction but the virtues of individuals precisely as they are citizens of the state described. Wisdom will be a kind of knowledge and can only be that which resides in the rulers, a group much smaller than any other that can be said to possess knowledge of the function it fulfills.

And so by reason of the smallest part or class, and of the knowledge which resides in this presiding and ruling part of itself, the whole state, being thus constituted according to nature, will be wise; and this, which has the only knowledge worthy to be called wisdom, has been ordained by nature to he of all classes the least. (429)

The state will be said to possess courage too because those guardians who are not as well rulers possess it. This courage is defined in terms of right opinion as to what is to be feared and what not feared, an opinion that the guardians have thanks to their early education. The temperate man is sometimes said to be the master of himself, which seems to imply that he is also in some sense the subject of himself; let us understand this to mean that there is a better and worse part of a man and that temperance consists of the mastery of the better over the worse. In the state, temperance will be a virtue, not simply of a part, but of all the citizens insofar as they willingly accept the hierarchical structure of the state. This leaves us with the need of describing what it is in which the justice of the state will consist. Socrates recalls that in describing the state on its most primitive level, it was suggested that justice had something to do with each man performing his own task or job. Can justice be something like minding one's own business? If we had to decide whether the wisdom, courage or temperance of the state, as these have been described, are more important than each citizen doing his own job, we would be faced with a difficult choice. One reason for the difficulty appears when we consider that the rulers, in judging lawsuits, will want to take care that each man is given his due, what properly belongs to him. Now if carpenters could become soldiers and soldiers rulers and one man generally usurp the function of another, we would have what might be called a community of injustice. "Seeing then, I said, that there are three distinct classes, any meddling of one with another, or the change of one into another, is the greatest harm to the state, and may be most justly termed evil-doing." (434) Justice will be the quality whereby each citizen wants to preserve the order of the state.

It is at this point that, on an analogy with the state, the soul is said to have three parts corresponding to the ruling, executive and productive classes. The genesis of virtue in the individual is linked here with the program of primary education.

And ought not the rational principle, which is wise, and has the care of the whole soul, to rule, and the passionate or spirited principle to be the subject and ally? And, as we were saying, the united influence of music and gymnastic will bring them into accord, nerving and sustaining the reason with noble words and lessons, and moderating and soothing and civilizing the wildness of passion by harmony and rhythm? (421-2)

Wisdom and courage will then rule over the appetitive and lead to temperance. Once more now the question becomes, what is justice? We must see this question against the background of the statement of it by Glaucon and Adeimantus. Remember that they wanted a description of justice which would show that possession of it was an intrinsic good, apart from advantageous consequents.

But in reality justice was such as we were describing, being concerned however not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the true self and concernment of man: for the just man does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others, -- he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself, and when he has bound together the three principles within him, which may be compared to the higher, lower and middle notes of the scale, and the intermediate intervals -- when he has bound all these together, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affair of politics or private business; always thinking and calling that which preserves and cooperates with this harmonious condition, just and good action, and the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom, and that which at any time impairs this condition, he will call unjust action, and the opinion which presides over it ignorance. (443-4)

We have here a suggestion that justice is in some way the totality of virtue, a view that will be pursued by Aristotle. Moreover, we see the retention by Plato of the Socratic maxim that knowledge is virtue, and vice ignorance. The description of justice as a harmony in the soul, permits Plato to liken it to the health of the body; this metaphor can apply as well to the state as a whole, and a gradation of types of government be drawn in terms of a greater or lesser approximation to true health. The basic analogy of state and soul will permit Socrates to equate the best form of government, that which he has been describing and which can be called monarchy or aristocracy depending on the number of rulers, and the best form of soul, and then move through the types of government which fall short of the ideal and have as their analogues imperfect conditions of soul. This is not taken up until what we have given above as part 4 of the Republic; Plato discusses the status of women first and then the central doctrine of the philosopher king.

The Republic's attitude towards women follows on the view that nature prepares individuals for one or another role in society and, while Socrates admits that nature has devised for male and female different roles in procreation, he does not see that this in any way stands in the way of their performing the same role in other tasks. Thus women of talent can be trained as guardians and even be selected from the guardians as rulers. Socrates is willing to accept the fact that, generally speaking, women are inferior to men with respect to the best pursuits, but does not feel that this precludes the possibility that some women are better than most men even with respect to what is best. A second point is that the guardians are to have wives and children in common, so that a man will not know which children are his. Nor is the breeding of human beings to be left to chance; rather the rulers will contrive to bring together males and females who stand the best chance of producing perfect offspring. The children will be put in the care of nurses; defective children will be destroyed. In this way, it is is argued, the interests of the guardians will not be distracted from their civil function by private attention to wife and family. Needless to say, having wives in common cannot be construed on the model of a harem, the limitless possibility of orgy and promiscuity. The nature and training of the guardians will ensure their virtue and temperance in matters of sex. Plato is swept so far as to see no difficulties in mixed gym classes with all participants nude. But then, returned from his flight into theoretical eugenics, Socrates admits that he is contemplating only a possible state to which existing ones can only approximate. This approximation will take place in actual states only when philosophers are kings or kings philosophers: we have reached the famous and central Platonic contention.

We need only sketch here the procedure of this famous discussion; its most important doctrines have already entered into our presentation of Plato's doctrine of Forms. The first step consists in establishing the distinction between knowledge and belief with the corresponding demand that the rulers differ from the guardians by passing from belief to knowledge. It may seem that the philosopher's preoccupation with Forms makes him unfit for the practical task of ruling, but Plato argues that this is a preoccupation which precisely rids him of impediments to right ruling. Invoking the image of the ship of state whose captain is the people with a mutinous crew, the politicians, the role of pilot is assigned to the philosopher. This story enables Socrates to argue that the apparent uselessness of the philosopher amounts to little more than mankind's failure to make use of his wisdom. This is not to say that philosophical natures are not often corrupted in the present state of society. Rare spirits, their virtues militate against achievement of their ultimate possibilities. For example, abounding in courage, the potential philosopher will be called upon to perform tasks which prevent him from devoting himself to study. Even should he study, the actual state of education will turn him into a veritable monster: corruptio optimi pessima. What is more, it is now possible for people of little or no talent to devote themselves to philosophy, a fact which is not calculated to bring philosophy to a place of honor.

Turning from the actual to the possible, Socrates begins to discuss how the situation can be rectified. This calls for a return to the discussion of the four virtues, a discussion which can now be shown to have been inadequate. There is a knowledge higher than that involved in justice and the other virtues discussed:

You have often been told that the idea of good is the highest knowledge, and that all other things become useful and advantageous only by their use of this . . . Do you think that the possession of all other things is of any value if we do not possess the good, or the knowledge of all other things if we have no knowledge of beauty and goodness? (505)

It is here that the Form, Goodness is likened to the sun in the visible order; this is followed by the discussion of the divided line and then Socrates tells the parable of the cave. These connected passages lead to a description of the higher education of the rulers, rulers who have now been described as philosophers, which in turn is taken to involve contemplation of the Forms. Now we have already seen that the program of primary education was to have been pursued until the age of twenty; the years from twenty to thirty are now designated as those to be spent in the study of mathematics, of arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, astronomy and harmonics. From the age of thirty to that of thirty-five, future rulers are to be instructed in dialectic. By acquainting the young man with the realm of the Forms, it is hoped that his soul will be brought into harmony with them, that he will become attuned to genuine reality.

Just as earlier the division into members of the productive class and the guardians was treated as a simple division, to be made more complex later by a division in the latter class between those who would be selected as rulers and those who would not, so now Plato is in a position to speak of the cut-off points on the route to the term of philosophical studies. Some of those who study mathematics for ten years will be selected to study dialectic. From the age of thirty-five to that of fifty, these men will fill posts of public service. Fifty will be an age at which some will have arrived at the vision of Goodness and their remaining days will be divided between study and service in the highest deliberative council of the state. This part is concluded by saying that the ideal described can be approximated if only there are well trained philosophers who are given the right to refashion society.

Books VIII and IX of the Republic present, as Nettleship observes (p. 294), the counterpart to the preceding description in which Plato has described the ascent of the human soul to its highest possible condition; now Plato will show how low the soul can fall and through what stages it may be seen to pass to its nadir. Since evil is a kind of negation, its gradation can be measured in terms of its degradation from the ideal already described. The relation between the ideal society Plato has endeavored to describe and the soul of man is given by Nettleship. "The best man would be one whose self was as nearly as possible identified with the life of the society of which he was a member, and ultimately with the laws of order of the world of which he, and the society also, were parts." (p. 299) The just man, like the just society, is such because of the organization of his parts according to their natural priority and posteriority. Where this order is lacking in a sufficient number of individuals, their disorder can come to be reflected in the state of which they are citizens. Thus, in what Plato calls the timocracy, where the spirited element takes the ascendency and those who would be simple guardians occupy the highest rank, praise (time) becomes the object of action. A lower type of society, oligarchy, is the reflection on the level of government of the predominence of the acquisitive sense in the individual: oligarchy thus is plutocracy, government by those whose sole concern is wealth. The descent to democracy is to a condition where the state reflects the individual driven by all the baser appetites. The lowest type of government is the despotic or tyrannical where the tyrant balances on one end of the scale the philosopher king on the other.

The tyrant is the exact counterpart of the philosopher. The philosophic king is at one with everybody and everything about him. The tyrant -- his personality concentrated in a single dominant passion -- is absolutely alone; he is the enemy of his own better self, of the human kind, and of God. Theoretically the owner of the state, in reality he is absolutely poor. (Nettleship, p. 300)

The tyrant so described meets the specifications of the unjust man described by Thrasymachus and Plato will now deny, in answer as well to the problem posed by Glaucon and Adeimantus, that such a man can be happy. He is slave of his passions and the licence he can allow himself cannot be confused with freedom since he is unable to perform those just actions which alone answer to the nature of man and produce his well-being. It is because his being has been made to harmonize with the pattern laid up in the heavens that the just man is happy; his happiness does not depend upon pleasure or wealth or honor. In this life, then, justice is its own reward, but at the end of the Republic, Plato introduces the belief in the immortality of the soul, indicating that one's condition in the afterlife is determined by the mode of existence chosen in this. It matters little then if the just man be mocked and scorned in this life -- Plato is doubtless thinking of Socrates -- his true reward awaits him beyond the grave. Despite this, Plato will not allow that it is injustice men prize and justice they contemn. Even in this life, justice has external rewards, though these are not of course constitutive of it nor the true source of the happiness it brings. In order to stress that it is not this world which confers his true reward on the just man, Plato concludes the Republic with the myth of Er, a story of the soul's journey after death. Similar stories are to be found in the Gorgias, Phaedo and Phaedrus. It is as if Plato, dissatisfied with arguments to prove immortality or recognizing the need of supplementary images, desires to give a fabulous portrayal of what lies beyond. We shall say something about this appeal to myths in our concluding section; at the same time we can take into account Plato's remarks on the relation between poetry and philosophy, another feature of the last book of the Republic.

Laws. While any complete account of Plato's political theory would have to take account of the Statesman, our brief sketch must content itself with indicating the relation between the Republic and the work of Plato's extreme old age, the Laws. The Laws, while it carries on the pretence of being a dialogue, is actually a long disquisition by an Athenian Stranger strongly reminiscent of Plato himself to two other old men, one from Crete, the other from Sparta. Estimates of the work vary, some holding it to be patchwork without connecting theme, others arguing that the absence of the literary flights of the earlier dialogues blinds us to the tight logical organization of the piece. The immense detail of the work make it impossible to give of it anything like the summary we attempted to give of the Republic; nevertheless, we must ask ourselves what relation this late work bears to the Republic.

The Laws has come down to us in twelve books and it can be divided in two, the first three books forming an introduction to the planning of a city which will approximate the ideal. That the task of the dialogue is indeed to frame a state is not made known until the end of the third book; the remainder of the Laws is devoted to that task.

The introductory books leave little doubt that Plato is not writing the Laws to record basic differences with the views he expressed in the Republic. The judgment that Sparta had overemphasized the spirited element suggests the notion of oligarchy described in the earlier dialogue. The primacy of pleasure and pain and their consequent importance for moral education reveal the characteristic Platonic concern with education. "Pleasure and pain I maintain to be the first perceptions of children, and I say that they are the forms under which virtue and vice are originally present to them." (653) Education is the training of these impressions, making the young take pleasure in the good. The whole of book seven of the Laws concerns itself with education and what one notices is the vast detail, psychological and historical; there is no doubt that the Republic is a more exciting work to read, but from the point of view of content, it seems a sketch which is filled out at great length in the Laws. The same may be said of the descriptions of the genesis of the state in the two works. In the earlier work, Plato was content to take the fundamental commercial aspect of Athens and treat it in abstraction from the other aspects of the city; now he attempts a truly genetic description of the state, based on a cyclic view of history: civilizations advance and then are destroyed. Let us begin then with the remnants of society left after a flood: we find a few shepherds left in the hills. They have no arts or metals or means of transportation; they lead an utterly simple life, with no letters and no law, the form of authority being patriarchal. Gradually there is a movement to the foot of the mountains and the beginning of agriculture, the grouping of families, the need for a legislator. In discussing the task of the legislator, Plato insists that he must be concerned with all four cardinal virtues and not just one. That this is so, that states have in the past collapsed because of the lack of harmony described in the Republic, is illustrated by appeal to the Persian monarchy and the Athenian democracy. It is at this point that Cleinias the Cretan indicates that he and nine others from Cnossus have been commissioned to found a colony on the site of a destroyed town and he suggests that the Athenian indicate how one should go about framing such a state. The remaining nine books have this as their purpose.

The topography of the proposed city is first discussed and it turns out that it will fit the Athenian's specifications; he wants it sufficiently far from the sea so that it will not become engaged in exports and, we may surmise, go the way of Athens once it had become a sea power. The fact that the land is not extraordinarily good will prevent a surplus of crops and the temptation to trade. What the Athenian wants is a self-sufficient community, fairly isolated from neighbors and the dangers of dispute, not productive enough to go into trade. There is then the matter of the selection of the colonists, followed by a discussion of the kind of ruler who will be most likely to bring about the best possible state. Plato argues that a gifted despot will be best: it is far easier to convert one man to the cause of good government than to try to persuade the multitude; moreover, the example of the ruler will be most powerful in bringing about the proper attitude in the citizens. One can hear echoes here of Plato's efforts in Syracuse. The laws themselves must be presented as leading the citizens to virtue; for this reason they must at once command and persuade, nnd the Athenian suggests a great preamble to the laws. The basic principles to be stressed are: respect for the gods; respect for parents; respect for self and for others. There is an order in self-respect, for one must first honor his soul and then his body. The greatest threat to lawful society is selfishness.

The size of the population is next discussed; Plato proposes 5040, meaning, it seems, that number of homes and not of people. The population is to be divided into twelve tribes; there will be thirty-seven men between the ages of fifty and seventy who will be the guardians of the constitution. The representative chamber will have three hundred and sixty members. The most important post of all is that of minister of education. (766) Before turning to the subject of education in Book Seven, Plato discusses courtship, marriage and procreation; what he is concerned with is that children be conceived with a view to the good of society, which will in turn provide apt subjects for the education he will next describe.

The discussion of education begins with the need for exercise on the part of the expectant mother and goes on to suggest frequent rocking by the nurse during the first years of the child's life. The life of the child should be happy and content, free on the one hand from softness and coddling and on the other from exposure to objects of fear. From three to six years children are to play in the village temple; at the age of six, boys and girls are to be separated for the study of music and for gymnastics. They are to be trained in the use of arms and to become ambidextrous, something useful in battle. Reading and writing are to be taught from ten to thirteen years of age after which three years are to be devoted to the study of music which includes arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. We have already suggested the relation of this book to the discussion of primary education in the Republic; the Laws can be said to contain at once both more and less than the earlier work, less because the Republic seems clearly presupposed, more because the Laws is almost tedious with detail. The discussions of the proper melodies to inculcate virtue, of the education of women, of the value of tradition in poetry add to those of the earlier work; besides there are discussions of memorization, hunting, and the value of astronomy.

Books Eight and Nine are devoted to discussions of contests and the connected question of sexual morality; boundary disputes; commerce; conservation of resources; craftsmen; homicide and crimes against the state. So too Books Eleven and Twelve concern themselves in great detail with the various aspects of the state, the discussion ranging from the question of the marriage of fatherless daughters to funeral arrangements. Book Ten is of special interest since it contains the theology of Plato.

The Tenth is doubtless the most eloquent book of the Laws; it finds it place there since respect for the Gods is one of the basic presuppositions of the great preamble to the laws and yet there are those who would either reject the existence of the gods or entertain attitudes towards them which would defeat the function of belief in the schema of the laws of the state. However, although the Tenth Book has this justification for inclusion in the Laws, it is admittedly a great digression, though ultimately a necessary one. Its length is justified by making appeal to the leisurely procedure throughout the work; haste is not required, no one is pressing on the heels of the three old men.

There are three positions that Plato wishes to confront in Book Ten: the denial of the existence of the gods; the characterization of the gods as having no concern for the affairs of men; the claim that the gods can be bought and won over to the cause of injustice. With respect to the atheists, it will not do to allude to the order of the universe, as Gleinias suggests. The Athenian observes that there are those who would mock the attempt to prove the gods exist by appeal to the heavenly bodies, since these bodies are nothing but earth and stone in orbit. The reference seems to be to those natural philosophers who suggest that if only one can get down to the basic stuff of things, to the elements, he will see that everything else is built up from them and cannot transcend in nature the nature of the elements: that is, nothing can be more divine than fire, air, earth and water. The Athenian thus makes clear that he is not concerned with the barroom atheist, but rather with those who profess to have philosophical reasons for rejecting the gods. With these, as he observes, it is difficult to be calm.

Who can avoid hating and abhorring the men who are and have been the cause of this argument; I speak of those who will not believe the tales which they have heard as babes and sucklings from their mothers and nurses, repeated by them both in jest and eamest, like charms, who have also heard them in the sacrificial prayers . . . (887)

They have seen their parents exhibit the conviction that gods exist; they are aware that such belief is common to Greeks and barbarians -- and still they disbelieve. Is Plato here indiscriminately endorsing every popular religion? He, like the nurse he describes, would repeat these tales in jest and earnest: we have seen his impatience with tales of the gods which demean the divine; nevertheless, every religion embodies the essential truth that there is intelligence in the universe, that man is subject to a higher principle, that there are sanctions for conduct, that death is not the end. Plato seems to feel that whatever the form these convictions may take from place to place and from people to people, one would do well to respect it for what it involves. Shorey suggests that Plato has no ambition to make everyman a theologian. Disbelief is equated with youth by Plato and the Athenian, stressing the need to suppress the anger one must feel when faced with disbelief, is made to address the atheist thus:

O my son, we will say to him, you are young, and the advance of time will make you reverse many of the opinions which you now hold. Wait awhile, and do not attempt to judge at present of the highest things; and that is the highest of which you now think nothing -- to know the gods rightly and to live accordingly. (888)

But Plato does not intend to content himself with pious exhortation; he goes on now to the philosophical root of atheism.

The key tenet of the position he wants to reject is that things come about by nature, by chance or by art, and that of these nature and chance are primary, art secondary. They say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art, which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial. (889)

Politics is thereby relegated to the realm of art, having some connection with nature, but legislation is entirely a work of art being based on assumptions which are not true. In order to reject this Plato proposes to assert the superiority of art over nature and chance, a superiority which is in effect that of intelligence and soul over the inanimate. The elements listed by the natural philosopher are not the first explanation of things. We shall make no attempt to trace Plato's proof in detail (891-899); it involves the same view of soul that we have seen in the Phaedrus, the motion which can move itself. In other words, soul is the source of those motions to which the natural philosopher appeals and his explanation is accordingly one that begins in the middle. Plato suggests that a good and an evil soul are involved in the universe.

If, my friend, we say that the whole path and movement of heaven, and of all that is therein, is by nature akin to the movement and revolution and calculation of mind and proceeds by kindred laws, then, as is plain, we must say that the best soul takes care of the world and guides it along the good path. (897)

When we consider the ordered movement of such a body as the sun, we must appeal to soul to account for this motion, a soul which may be thought to be related to the solar body in one of three ways.

Either the soul which moves the sun this way and that, resides within the circular and visible body, like the soul which carries us about every way; or the soul provides herself with an external body of fire or air, as some affirm, and violently propels body by body; or thirdly, she is without such a body, but guides the sun by some extraordinary and wonderful power. (898-9)

These souls which guide the heavenly bodies are gods and we can therefore assert that in some sense all things are full of gods.

To the second position that, though the gods exist, they have no concern for human affairs, Plato observes that it seems prompted by undeniable difficulties. "Perhaps you have seen impious men growing old and leaving their children's children in high offices, and their prosperity shakes your faith." (900) Once it is admitted that the gods see and know all and that they have all power, it seems impious to declare that they are not concerned with every singular thing and event. What the doubter must realize is that the order of the universe was not created for him, but that he is for the sake of the order of the universe. (903) What one can be sure of is that all things work for the good of the whole. This second view is said by many, for example Shorey and Taylor, to anticipate the Epicurean view. The third view, that the gods can be bribed to serve the ends of injustice, is more or less summarily dismissed as an affront to reason.

It is fitting that we have brought our discussion of Plato's views to a close with a few remarks on the theology of Book Ten of the Laws. The close connection between man's scientific and moral advance, present from the earliest dialogues, indicates that man's chief concern must be to inscribe in his own soul the pattern of the divine. It may be mentioned here that in the Epinomis, whose very title indicates its connection with the Laws, Plato goes on to discuss the education of those who will be members of the highest council of the state. We are not surprised to learn that the study stressed is that of number -- without knowledge of number man must remain ignorant and immoral. What Plato means is that knowledge of astronomy, of the heavenly bodies, will lead us surely to knowledge of the divine, a view which Aristotle will share. For both men, the heavenly bodies are not merely analogues of immaterial substances but, as the passage from the Laws suggests, the means of knowing them. It is in knowing the changeless and eternal beings, in contemplation of the gods, that the term of philosophy, the wisdom for love of which one subjects himself to the years of apprenticeship in mathematics, is reached. Plato describes this movement in passages of unsurpassed literary quality; he is, so to say, the poet of science. The dialogues do not establish the existence of the the Forms in a satisfactory way, their dialectic seldom achieves even more limited objectives; rather they present the movement of thought, exhortations to virtue, but very little of what could be called an established doctrine. We have observed that Plato has a penchant for drifting into mythical tales when very important doctrines are at issue and we get, in lieu of an argument, a likely story. It seems best to interpret the frequency of such mythical explanations against the background of Plato's own remarks on the function of his written works. He does not claim to strive for rigor there or to establish his most basic positions. This is left to the personal contact of master and pupil within the Academy. As a result, we find an unwritten doctrine attributed to Plato by students of his. In turning now to Aristotle, we will find that the bulk of his writings consists of lecture notes, precisely the doctrinal effort that, in Plato's case, has not been preserved. This is not to say that Aristotle serves simply to bolster up the written positions of Plato, but if there are fundamental differences between the two men, it will have to be remembered that we are comparing quite different types of source. Moreover, it will be seen that Aristotle emerges quite naturally from the Plato we know.

{32} Ross, Plato's Theory of Ideas, op. cit., pp. 58-65.