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68 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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3 Kinds of Good
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Good for its own sake (intrinsically good)
Good only for the sake of its consequences and bad for its own sake Good both for its own sake and for the sake of its consequences. |
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_________________ proceeds to defend injustice as better for its own sake than justice.
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Glaucon
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Glaucon: people act justly because
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they benefit from seeming to be just.
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The Ring of Gyges
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would a just man still act just if he was given a ring which made him invisible?
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If Glaucon is right (About the Ring) , then this shows that the motivation behind justice is
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soley external
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Adeimantus:
Parents advice their children to be just not for its own sake but because of the consequences (e.g. reputation) |
Adeimantus
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Glaucon’s challenge to morality
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justice is solely external
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Socrates’ reply to Glaucon
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We need to first discover what the nature of justice and injustice. We need a true definition if we are to answer the question which sort of life is better.
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Why bother living together?
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We need each other. Its difficult to do everything on our own.
So people congregate in groups and cooperate Different people having different jobs |
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Socrates insists that each person should have one job or task, each of us should specialize
Why? |
1) by focusing on one task, it’s a lot easier to master it through education and practice.
(2) People are have different abilities. The best city will have people take on jobs that they are by nature best suited. |
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A simple city has no need of an army, but a rich city does.
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a rich city needs to expand and to defend itself against envious neighbors
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an army too fierce is dangerous
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Our guardians need orderly, controlled and devoted to helping the city. Our guardians need to be gentle to its friends
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Pedigree dogs concept
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Like a dog who is protective of its master, but ferocious towards strangers
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The military needs to be trained in both music and gymnastic the right quantities..
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Physical training not only trains the body it also toughens the soul
Music (which includes art and literature) softens the soul. |
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Censorship
“If Zeus can murder and commit adultery, why shouldn’t I” |
So we need to restrict access to literature that is dangerous. Only allow those stories that will help the guardians be better citizens.
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the city has 3 classes:
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Guardians
Auxiliaries Workers |
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the ruling class
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These will be best able to rule
They will be least likely to be corrupted and will show the greatest loyalty to the city |
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The myth of the metals
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Citizens will be told a noble lie—that each has the earth as its mother, with a distinct kind of soul, gold, silver or bronze/iron.
the city will be destroyed if a non-gold soul became a guardian |
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How will the guardians and auxilliaries live?
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Communal housing
No luxuries or gold or silver Personal possessions kept to a minimum |
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Adeimantus’ objection
to how the guardians and auxiliaries will live |
Socrates reply:
(1) it may turn out that these are the happiest in the city, despite their simple life (2) we are concerned with making the city as a whole happy, not just one part or group of it. |
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The four virtues
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Wisdom
Courage Temperance Justice The city is ideal, so it should have each of these virtues |
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What is justice?
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Justice is the principle of specialization!
Each person perform the function that s/he is naturally suited to perform. By following this principle the city is able to exemplify the three other virtues. |
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The city is just because
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each part of it performs its natural function.
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Socrates wants to say that a person is just in an analogous way
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Each part of the soul performs its natural function
But do souls have parts? |
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We can see the different classes of the city as being composed of people dominated by different parts of the soul– the guardians by reason, the auxiliaries by spirit, the masses by appetite
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But are these really different parts of the soul or is there just a unitary soul acting in different ways?
Socrates has an argument… |
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No one thing can have opposite or contrary qualities.
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Sometimes it looks as if they do
But this is because the thing has different parts |
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A man can move and not move, because the arms can move while the legs do not
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So if we can show the soul has opposite qualities, this would show the soul has parts.
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it is possible to want and not want to eat a piece of cake
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Socrates says this is a case of the soul exemplifying opposites.. So we know there are two parts of the soul—
The cake desiring part—appetite The not desiring cake part--reason |
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It’s possible to have a desire and at the same time feel repelled
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(Leontious and the dead bodies)
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You can want to get into a fight and want not to get into a fight.
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Spirit wants to fight, reason holds you back
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Opposite vs. Conflicting desires
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Opposite desires involve (1) wanting X and at the same time (2)wanting NOT X
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conflicting desires
example |
I want to go to a concert at 8 tonight and a movie at 8 tonight. I cannot do both
But the desire to go the concert is not the opposite of the desire to go to a movie |
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Socrates defines A just person as one who has each part of the soul performing
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its natural function.
The function of reason is to rule The function of spirit is to aid reason The function of the appetites is to obey reason and not control a person’s life. |
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Glaucon’s challenge to Socrates was to show that its better to be just understood in terms of behaving in a certain way
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paying your debts, not cheating, not murdering, not stealing.
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Socrates does not define justice in terms of what a person does
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It is defined in terms of how the soul is organized
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acts like stealing and lying and cheating are motivated by physical appetite
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A person who is motivated primarily by intellectual curiosity will just not be concerned with these sorts of things
So a just person will not be motivated to act justly |
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that knowledge of the Good gives us reason to do what is good
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So a rational person who also has this sort of knowledge will have an objective guide, a moral magnet, to insure she does not act unjustly
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men and women in the republic
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Women should be given jobs on the same basis as men- there is no special “woman’s role”
So in the city, there will be female guardians, female auxilliaries, etc |
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Glaucon does not let his hunting dogs mate with whoever they choose. Only the best will mate with the best
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So to with guardians.. They will not choose their sex partners, but will have them chosen for them in an elaborate, fixed, lottery.
Children will be raised by the community as a whole not by separate families. |
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why raise the children together?
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We want to avoid faction and discord. The city should be a unity, and people (esp. G and A) should feel connected to the whole city, not just a part Raising children collectively will help instill this unitary feeling and sense of loyalty.
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what is philosophy
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Philosophy is the love of truth (knowledge)
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Socrates claims that the best rulers are those who have knowledge
which are...... |
philosophers
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opinion examples
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A particular thing that is beautiful is not beautiful all the time, to all people, from all perspectives
A person is tall relative to one, short relative to another Everything in the physical world changes. Nothing remains the same over time |
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object of knowledge
examples |
There are many triangular figures, but only one form—triangle, the object of geometrical study.
There are many horses, but the form of a horse—the true definition that captures what makes a horse a horse. This is one, eternal, and unchanging. (even if all horses die, the essence of a horse remains the same) |
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The objects of knowledge are the forms
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These are grasped by the mind, not the senses
They are unchanging, unqualified, absolute |
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The objects of opinion are appearances
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These are changing, incomplete, qualified.
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Socrates insists that if the guardians are going to be good rulers, they need to know one specific and important form
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the form of good
the good is important because it is motivational |
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Just knowing what justice is does not motivate us to be just—we need to know that justice is good
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true
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The simile of the sun
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The sun causes things to come to be (think of the energy required for life)
The sun allows us to see visible things (by providing light) The Good has a similar role in the intelligible world—the world of the forms |
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The good also provides intellectual illumination required for us to know the forms
just like... |
the sun is required for sight
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how is the "good" cause other forms?
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intelligible form is a cause because it is responsible for the way the sensible world is organized into kinds of things
Each horse is a horse because it “participates” in the form of horseness. |
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where does evil come from?
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evil is a privation
------------------------> ( essential for human well-being ) Just like being blind is the absence of sight, so evil might be the absence of good. An person is unjust insofar as they fail to resemble the form of justice |
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Philosophers are the one group of people who do not desire to rule. They know of much better things
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Plato thinks this is good—less likely to be corrupt or get into fights
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The painting analogy
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The philosopher/guardians can look at “what is most true” as a model—use it as a guide to make the city resemble it.
Contrast: Those without knowledge have no model of what is good, just etc. so have no guide to help them rule |
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Adeimantus thinks most philosophers are rotten (vicious)
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Socrates agrees!
But how can philosophers make the best rulers when most philosophers are bad people and the best of them are useless? Socrates answers with a simile. |
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The simile of the ship
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The shipmaster is strong, but nearsighted and hard of hearing and ignorant of navigation*
The sailors compete with each other to get the shipmaster to make them captain They do this using drugs or drink. They call “navigation*” the art of persuading the shipowner to give them power over the ship |
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Similie of the ship continued
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On this ship, the “true pilots” the ones who knows the art of navigation is useless because the knowledge is not made use of.
Knowing how to navigate is not part of the game of getting power over the ship |
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Liken this similie of the ship to Democratic cities
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The people are strongest—they have political power. But they don’t have knowledge of how to rule.
They know what they like, and if politicians give it to them, the politicians gain power. It’s like a doctor who tells obese cigarette smoking patients what they want to hear: Smoke and eat twinkies.. Its good for you |
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What about the philosophers who turn out “rotten”
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These people are corrupted by the city.
They are flattered, given authority too early, not challenged, wooed by pleasure and wealth |
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The person with the greatest natural ability can become a very good person but can also become a very bad person.
THIS ALL DEPENDS ON ______________ & ______________ |
All depends on nurture and education
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The allegory of the cave demonstrates the effects of
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education on the human soul, demonstrating how we move from one grade of cognitive activity to the next.
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When the prisoner is in the cave he is in the
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visible realm
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When he ascends into the daylight
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, he enters the intelligible realm
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The lowest rung on the cognitive line is
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imagination
A man who is stuck in the imagination stage of development takes his truths from epic poetry and theater |
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When the prisoner frees himself and looks at the statues he reaches the next stage in the line
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belief
The statues are meant to correspond to the real objects of our sensation—real people, trees, flowers The man in the cognitive stage of belief mistakenly takes these sensible particulars as the most real things. |
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When he ascends into the world above, though, he sees that there is something even more real: the forms
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He is now at the stage of thought in his cognition
He can reason about Forms, but not in a purely abstract way. He uses images and unproven assumptions as crutches. |
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Finally, he turns his sights to the sun, which represents the ultimate Form, the Form of the Good
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Once the prisoner has grasped the Form of the Good, he has reached the highest stage of cognition: understanding
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He can now use this understanding derived from comprehending the Form of the Good to transform all his previous thought into understanding—he can understand all of the Forms
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Only the philosopher can reach this stage, and that is why only he is fit to rule.
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