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PHIL 1003: Ethics and society
Plato II: Community-Individual
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‘School of Humanities’
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Logos (Greek)
One faculty of speech and reason.
Review
Socrates and Plato
Socrates
• Controversial figure
• Publicly questioned received ideas in
– Morality
– Politics
• Athens condemned him to death;
• Influenced important thinkers:
– Plato
– Xenophon
First arguments in Republic
• Socrates’ arguments re morality—why are they
unsatisfactory?
– expertise vs money-making (343aff.)
– superiority practiced by the immoral (349c)
– skill-morality analogy: being immoral is like being
stupid (348aff., 350d)
• can a person of lower IQ be moral?
• If so, then Socrates is wrong about the analogy.
– Good people only take power in order to avoid being
oppressed by bad people ( 347b-d)
• Competition to avoid power in good society.
These arguments fail:
So what can we do to stop the
pursuit of power, and exploitation?
Answer: Platonic concept of
soul, or ‘anima’
Related words:
animate, animated, animation.
Initial proposal: two-part soul
Reason
• Should supervise
whole person
• Restrains desires
• Makes morality
possible
But in disordered souls
reason may not rule.
Desires
• Strive to be satisfied
• Food, Sex, power
• If reason does not
maintain control,
• Desires take over
• Result: anarchy (no
ruler).
Plato adds key third part:
passion (thymos, Gr.)
• Passion = guardian of the soul
• Analogous to guardians of city
• Passion acts w/ reason to safeguard selfdiscipline and morality;
• Exception: in anarchic soul, passion may
aid desire instead;
• What happens to anarchic souls?
Key concept:
Hierarchy: relation of superior to
inferior; there has to be a ranking of
unequal persons or parts, not equality.
Structure of soul
Reason
Passion
Desire
Structure of Platonic soul
• 3 parts:
– each should do its appointed task;
• Reason (like Philosopher-king) in charge;
• Passion (like auxiliaries) keeps desires
under control;
• Desire (like ‘rabble’, children, women,
slaves 431c), subordinate to reason and
passion;
• This is order of nature (444d).
Community-Individual Analogies
• Principle of Specialization (406c)
• Analogy to city:
– each inhabitant should do his/her appointed
task;
• Analogy to craft:
– shoemaker should make shoes
– House builder should build houses.
The harmonious soul
“…we call him self-disciplined when there’s
concord and attunement between these
same parts—that is, when the ruler and its
two subjects unanimously agree on the
necessity of the rational part being the
ruler and when they don’t rebel against it?”
(442d)
Questions?
Comments?
Achieving unity
Plato’s vision of the city and
morality
Individual-community analogy
• “…human morality is the same in kind as a
community’s morality” (441d)
• Each part does its task =
– unity of soul and city;
•
•
•
•
Unity = health, morality, order;
Not a plurality; no division or conflict;
Plurality = illness, disorder;
Aristotle, Pol. Bk 2; prefers plurality.
A “noble lie”:
Myth of the metals, 415a
•
•
•
•
Some born gold, others silver;
Most are base metals (iron and copper);
Gold are trained to be rulers: rational
Silver = guardians:
– passionate to protect and preserve city
• Base metals are commoners, workers,
– Have to be kept in check b/c ruled by desire.
Question:
Is it moral to lie?
It’s ok for rulers to lie for a
good end
• “…the gods really have no use for
falsehood, although it can serve as a type
of medicine for us humans, then clearly
lying should be entrusted to doctors…”
• “If it’s anyone’s job, then it’s the job of the
rulers of our community: they can lie for
the good of the community, when either an
external or an internal threat makes it
necessary” (389b).
Do you see any problems with
this argument?
How can the rulers distinguish a
good end from a bad one?
Question
What is done with children born
into the wrong class?
What about golds or silvers born as
base metals?
• No problem!
• Educate them according to the status to
which they should have been born (415c).
• But ‘rabble’ just need to know their jobs—
no special education.
Role of eugenics
(selective breeding)
• Plato’s city resembles Sparta Breeding upper
classes for best traits—
– intelligence,
– physical prowess
– passion
• Arranged matings: no families, no marriages
• No private property
• One big, unified family
– Aristotle dislikes the whole idea of Platonic ‘unity’.
Role of Education for
Auxiliaries and Guardians
• Topics:
– Mathematics
– Gymnastic
– Music
Who is educated?
– Guardians
– Philosopher-kings
– Rabble (majority) are excluded.
• W/out proper education, a gold child will turn out
bad and cannot develop into a philosopher.
Assessments of Republic
• J.J. Rousseau considered Republic a
treatise on education
• Others have argued it is fundamentally
anti-political
• Still others take it seriously as a political
treatise.
Question
• If immorality is caused by the three factors
(rationality, desirous, passion) being in
conflict with each other due to mental
sickness, can you blame someone for
being immoral?
One answer
• …if an act, which in by itself is immoral, is
conducted while the person is suffering
from mental sickness, then the person
cannot be called an immoral person in so
far as he does not have the intention to
conduct the immoral act in the first place.
However, if he or she possess even the
slightest immoral intent and in turn
committed an immoral act, then we can
reasonably call the person immoral.