Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
37 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
|
I went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to say a prayer to the goddess, and also because I wanted to see how they would manage the festival, since they were holding it for the first time....
|
Speaker: Socrates These are the opening lines of the "Republic." Piraeus was a port of Athens, but was not Athens. itself, meaning that this conversation is taking place in a place where there would be people from all over the world. |
|
|
Well, then, either you must prove yourselves stronger than all these people or you will have to stay here.
|
Speaker: Polemarchus This is Polemarchus' thematic idea throughout the Republic, that might makes right. |
|
|
It is then that stories told about Hades, that a person who has been unjust here must pay the penalty there---stories he used to make fun of---twist his soul this way and that for fear they are true.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Cephalus |
|
|
And whether because of the weakness of old age, or because he is now closer to what happens in Hades and has a clearer view of it, or whatever it is, he is filled with foreboding and fear and begins to calculate and consider whether he has been unjust to anyone. If he finds many injustices in his life, he often even awakes from sleep in terror, as children do, and lives in anticipation of evils to come...
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Cephalus (the first person whom Socates speaks with in "The Republic") |
|
|
It is in this connection I would say the possession of wealth is most valuable, not for every man, but for a good and orderly one. Not cheating someone even unintentionally, not lying to him, not owing a sacrifice to some god or money to a person, and as a result departing from that other place in fear...
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Cephalus This is the first definition of justice: speaking the truth and paying your debts. The example Socrates puts forth to challenge Cephalus' idea: if a friend lends you weapons when he's sane, but then becomes insane, should you give the weapon back to him? (Socrates' point is that this common sense definition of justice is open to questioning) |
|
|
Listen, then. I say justice is nothing other than what is advantageous for the stronger.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Thrasymachus [he is a sophist...and he is described as entering like a beast] |
|
|
Now, listen to what I said I was going to discuss first---what justice is like and what its origins are. People say, you see, that to do injustice is naturally good and to suffer injustice bad. But the badness of suffering far exceeds the goodness of doing it. Hence, those who have done and suffered injustice and who have tasted both-the ones who lack the power to do it and avoid suffering it---decide that it is profitable to come to an agreement with each other neither to do injustice nor to suffer it.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Glaucon This is a cost vs. benefit argument. He says that Thrasymachus just wants justice to get something out of it, not a love of justice for its own sake. Glaucon says that this cost vs. benefit argument leads people to make agreements with each other, and this leads to the definition of justice as convention. Glaucon then tells the story about the ring of Gyges to make his point. |
|
|
The investigation we are undertaking is not an easy one, in my view, but requires keen eyesight. So, since we are not clever people, I think we should adopt the method of investigation that we would use if, lacking keen eyesight, we were told to identify small letters from a distance, and then noticed that the same letters existed elsewhere in a larger size and on a larger surface....so, if you are willinglet's find out what sort of thing justice is in cities, and afterward look for it in the individual, to see if the larger entity is similar in form to the smaller one.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates Here, Socrates draws a strict analogy between the city and the individual soul. (Socrates' whole argument assumes an analogy between the city and the soul) |
|
|
Then because we have many needs, and because one of us calls on another out of one need, and on a third out of a different need, we gather many into a single settlement as partners and helpers. And we call such a shared settlement a city.
|
Plato's "Republic" Speaker: Socrates (to Adeimantus) The first city is the city of necessity |
|
|
True enough, I was forgetting that they will also have relishes--salt, of course, and olives and cheese, and they will boil roots and vegetables the way they boil them in the country....And so they will live in peace and good health, it seems, and when they die at a ripe old age, they will pass on a similar sort of life to their children.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates (responding to Glaucon's comment that in the city of necessity there must be relishes) (and Glaucon responds to Socrates by calling this the city of pigs) |
|
|
It isn't merely the origins of a city that we are considering, it seems, but those of a city that is luxurious, too. And that may not be a bad idea. For by examining such a city, we might perhaps see how justice and injustice grow up in cities.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates Socrates mentions justice and injustice only when the city with luxuries, the feverish city ("inflamed" ) with meat, musicians, artists, etc. |
|
|
Now, let's not say yet whether the effects of war are good or bad, but only that we have now found the origin of war: it comes from those same factors, the occurrence of which is the source of the greatest evils for cities and the individuals in them... The city must be further enlarged...
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates for Socrates, the desire for having more (the adding of luxuries to the city, making it into a feverish city) is the origin of going to war |
|
|
But isn't it of the greatest importance that warfare be carried out well? Or is fighting a war so easy...
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates he rejects the idea of a citizen soldiery because each person only has one thing that they are suited for (and these soldiers are to be the guardians of the city) |
|
|
Even if these stories were true, they should be passed over in silence, I would think, and not told so casually to the foolish and the young. And if, for some reason, they must be told...
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates Critique of Stories that make the gods out to be vicious---if the gods behave in this vicious way (and are the gods), kids will imitate them |
|
|
It looks as though they established both chiefly for the sake of the soul.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates Says that physical education are both for the sake of the soul (both for the formation of the soul) (but: keep in mind that Socrates is talking about the education of the guardians, not the public education) (and both physical and musical education aim at the spirited part of the soul) |
|
|
Therefore, the first and greatest command from the god to the rulers is that there is nothing they must guard better or watch more carefully than the mixture of metals in the souls of their offspring. If an offspring of theirs is born with a mixture of iron or bronze, they must not pity him...
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates The noble lie Socrates says that not all people are fit to rule, and he doesn't have an argument for this, he just says you will have to tell a story (a noble lie) to get people to believe this. |
|
|
However, in establishing our city, we are not looking to make any one group in it outstandingly happy, but to make the whole city so far as possible.... At the moment, then, we take ourselves to be forming a happy city---not separating off a few happy people and putting them in it, but making the city as a whole happy.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates the individual happiness of the guardians is not important |
|
|
Their education and their upbringing. For if a good education makes them moderate men, they will easily discover all this for themselves---and everything else that we are now omitting, such as the possession of women, marriages, and the procreation of children, and how all these must be governed as far as possible by the old proverb that friends share everything in common.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates The most important thing for the city is education (everything else will emerge naturally if they have been properly trained, properly educated) |
|
|
This, then, my friend, provided it is taken in a certain way, would seem to be justice---this doing one's own work.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates This is Socrates' definition of justice (and it almost seems like a caste system, until you remember that he is talking about the soul) (pg. 381) |
|
|
So, meddling and exchange among these three classes is the greatest harm that can happen to the city and would rightly be called the worst evil one could do to it.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates This is injustice (the opposite of "doing one's own work") |
|
|
It would not be unreasonable for us to claim, the, that there are two elements, different from one another; and to call the element in the sol with which it calculates, the rationally calculating element; and the one with which it feels passion, hungers, thirsts, and is stirred by other appetites, the irrational and appetitive element, friend to certain ways of being filled...
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates |
|
|
And in truth, justice is, it seems, something of this sort. Yet it is not concerned with someone's doing his own job on the outside. On the contrary, it is concerned with what is inside...
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates Justice is really a matter of the three parts of the soul being rightly ordered (and the image of the city is meant to illustrate this, not vice-versa) (the city is useful because it illuminates the soul, not vice-versa) |
|
|
Then, my friend, there is no pursuit relevant to the management of the city that belongs to a woman because she is a woman, or to a man because he is a man.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates (for Socrates, the only difference between men and women is the biological difference) |
|
|
And isn't it the city whose condition is most like that of a single person? I mean, when one of us somehow hurts his finger, you know, the entire partnership....is aware of this... (pg. 412)
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates Socrates describes the political society as a body (we are familiar with this from 1 Corinthians 12) |
|
|
But Socrates, I think that if you are allowed to go on talking about this sort of thing, you will never remember the topic you set aside in order to say all this---namely, whether it is possible for this constitution to come into existence.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Glaucon (he wants to know if it is actually possible to have a city like this, and in response, Socrates reminds him of the original reason for bringing up the city: i.e. as a model for the soul; he says it is a city in speech, a city in words; he says the city they have been describing cannot actually be, but they will try to approximate, it is in this context that Socrates then says philosopher-kings should rule) |
|
|
Until philosophers rule as kings in their cities, or those who are nowadays called kings and leading men become genuine and adequate so that political power and philosophy become thoroughly blended together,,,cities will have no rest from evils.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates (pg. 425) |
|
|
When we say that someone has an appetite for something, are we to say that he has an appetite for everything of that kind, or for one part of it but not another?
|
Socrates wants to make the point that knowing involves seeing how it all fits together (which enable you to see how society fits together as a whole), so the philosopher, who has an appetite for all of wisdom, will see how things fit together as a whole and thus should rule society |
|
|
Yet, when it comes to facts rather than words, he sees that of all those who take up philosophy...the majority become cranks, not to say completely bad, while the ones who seem best are rendered useless to the city because of the pursuit you recommend.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Adeimantus (says that philosophers are either bad or useless) and Socrates answers him with the 'ship of state' image |
|
|
They do not understand that a true captain must pay attention to the seasons of the year, the sky, the stars, the winds, and all that pertains to his craft if he is really going to be expert at ruling a ship.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates (ship of state analogy) |
|
|
All the same, we were compelled by the truth to say that no city, no constitution, and, indeed no individual man, will ever become perfect until some chance event compels those few philosophers who are not vicious to take care of a city, whether they want to or not, and compels the city to obey them...
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates the philosophers are thee ones who will have knowledge of things that do not change... pg. 449 |
|
|
That, then, is what every soul pursues, and for its sake does everything. The soul has a hunch that the good is something, but it is puzzled and cannot adequately grasp just what it is or acquire the sort of stable belief about it that it has about the other things, and so it misses the benefit, if any, that even those other things may give.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates (to Adeimantus) most people don't know what the good actually is; that the soul has a hunch toward what the good is means that it's an intuition, it's not well defined) |
|
|
What does Socrates compare the form of the good to, and why?
|
He compares the form of the good to the sun; the sun illuminates everything else, it is difficult to look at, and it gives power to our sight [just as the sun in the visible realm is the thing that illuminates objects and gives power to my eyes, the form of the good is analogous to the sun: education is the only way you are going to get to this vision of the form of the good] |
|
|
And if someone dragged him by force away from there, along the rough, steep, upward path, and did not let him go until he dragged him into the light of the sun, wouldn't he be pained and angry at being treated that way? And when he came into the light, wouldn't he have his eyes filled with sunlight and be unable to see a single one of the things now said to be truly real? |
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates pg. 465 the process of education has to be slow (this man ascending out of the cave will be pained by the brightness of the light) |
|
|
The realm revealed through sight should be likened to the prison dwelling, and the light of the fire inside it to the sun's power. And if you think of the upward journey and the seeing of things above as the upward journey of the soul to the intelligible realm, you won't mistake my intention---since it is what you wanted to hear about.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates pg. 466 This is the purpose of the analogy of the cave: this world is like the prison (the cave in comparison with the intelligible realm), and the light of the sun that we see he likens to the fire burning behind the cave-dwellers |
|
|
In the course of our discussion, then, did we respond to the other points, without having to invoke the wages and reputations of justice, as you all said Homer and Hesiod did? Instead, haven't we found that justice itself is the best thing for the soul itself, and that the soul should do what is just, whether it has Gyges' ring or not, or even the cap of Hades as well.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates pg. 564 Socrates does want to bring the idea of reward back into the picture---that justice is not only good in itself, but it is advantageous (he wants to say that it is good for what it is and good for what it brings) |
|
|
Your daimon will not be assigned to you by lot; you will choose him. The one who has the first lot will be the first to choose a life to which he will be bound by necessity. Virtue has no master; as he honors or dishonors it, so shall each of you have more or less of it. Responsibility lies with the chooser; the god is blameless.
|
Plato's "Republic"
Speaker: Socrates (words put into the mouth of Lachesis, the daughter of necessity) part of the myth of Er; the soul chooses the kind of life that it wants (not the gods) |
|
|
|
|
