The Republic

by G.M.A. Grube

when a democratic city, athirst for freedom, happens to get bad cupbearers for its leaders, so that it gets drunk by drinking more than it should of the unmixed wine of freedom,22 then, unless the rulers [d] are very pliable and provide plenty of that freedom, they are punished by the city and accused of being accursed oligarchs. Yes, that is what it does. It insults those who obey the rulers as willing slaves and good-for-nothings and praises and honors, both in public and in private, rulers who behave like subjects and subjects who behave like rulers.

if anyone even puts upon himself the least degree of slavery, they become angry and cannot endure it.

Extreme freedom can't be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city.

During the first days of his reign and for some time after, won't he smile in welcome at anyone he meets, saying that he's no tyrant, making all sorts of promises both in public and in private, freeing the people from debt, redistributing the land to them and to his followers, and pretending [e] to be gracious and gentle to all? He'd have to. {238} But I suppose that, when he has dealt with his exiled enemies by making peace with some and destroying others, so that all is quiet on that front, the first thing he does is to stir up a war, so that the people will continue to feel the need of a leader. Probably so. But also so that they'll become poor through having to pay war taxes, for that way they'll have to concern themselves with their daily needs and [567] be less likely to plot against him. Clearly. Besides, if he suspects some people of having thoughts of freedom and of not favoring his rule, can't he find a pretext for putting them at the mercy of the enemy in order to destroy them? And for all these reasons, isn't it necessary for a tyrant to be always stirring up war? It is. And because of this, isn't he all the more readily hated by the citizens? [b] Of course. Moreover, don't the bravest of those who helped to establish his tyranny and who hold positions of power within it speak freely to each other and to him, criticizing what's happening? They probably do. Then the tyrant will have to do away with all of them if he intends to rule, until he's left with neither ...

R12304021612 This is all too familiar. Almost like a playbook.

Clearly, if there are sacred treasuries in the city, he'll use them for as {240} long as they last, as well as the property of the people he has destroyed, thus requiring smaller taxes from the people.

by trying to avoid the frying pan of enslavement to free men, the people have fallen into the fire of having slaves as their masters, and that in the place of the great but inappropriate freedom they enjoyed [c] under democracy, they have put upon themselves the harshest and most bitter slavery to slaves.

Some of our unnecessary pleasures and desires seem to me to {242} be lawless. They are probably present in everyone, but they are held in check by the laws and by the better desires in alliance with reason. In a few people, they have been eliminated entirely or only a few weak ones remain, while in others they are stronger and more numerous.

someone who is healthy and moderate with himself goes to sleep only after having done the following: First, he rouses his rational part and feasts it on fine arguments and speculations; second, he neither starves nor feasts his appetites, so that they will slumber [e] and not disturb his best part with either their pleasure or their pain, but they'll leave it alone, pure and by itself, to get on with its investigations, to [572] yearn after and perceive something, it knows not what,1 whether it is past, present, or future; third, he soothes his spirited part in the same way, for example, by not falling asleep with his spirit still aroused after an outburst of anger. And when he has quieted these two parts and aroused the third, in which reason resides, and so takes his rest, you know that it is then that he best grasps the truth and that the visions that appear in his dreams are least lawless.

small things are small by comparison to big ones. And when it comes to producing wickedness and misery in a city, all these evils together {246} don't, as the saying goes, come within a mile of the rule of a tyrant. But when such people become numerous and conscious of their numbers, it is they—aided by the foolishness of the people—who create a tyrant.

won't the relations between the cities with respect to virtue and happiness be the same as those between the men?

Then how does the city ruled by a tyrant compare to the city ruled by kings that we described first? They are total opposites: one is the best, and the other the worst.

R12304021848 Proto-IR?

he lives like a woman, mostly confined to his own house, and envying any other citizen who happens to travel abroad and see something worthwhile.

Come, then, and like the judge who makes the final decision,6 tell me who among the five—the king, the timocrat, the oligarch, the democrat, and the tyrant—is first in happiness, who second, and so on in order. [b] That's easy. I rank them in virtue and vice, in happiness and its opposite, in the order of their appearance, as I might judge choruses. Shall we, then, hire a herald, or shall I myself announce that the son of Ariston has given as his verdict that the best, the most just, and the most happy is the most kingly, who rules like a king over himself, and that the [c] worst, the most unjust, and the most wretched is the most tyrannical, who most tyrannizes himself and the city he rules?

there are three pleasures corresponding to the three parts of the soul, one peculiar to each part, and similarly with desires and kinds of rule. What do you mean? The first, we say, is the part with which a person learns, and the second the part with which he gets angry. As for the third, we had no one special name for it, since it's multiform, so we named it after the biggest and strongest thing in it. Hence we called it the appetitive part, because of the [e] intensity of its appetites for food, drink, sex, and all the things associated with them, but we also called it the money-loving part, because such appetites are most easily satisfied by means of money.

the pleasure of studying the things that are cannot be tasted by anyone except a philosopher.

praise and blame

And is there such a thing as feeling neither pleasure nor pain? There is. Isn't it intermediate between these two, a sort of calm of the soul by comparison to them?

And didn't what is neither painful nor pleasant come to light just now as a calm state, intermediate between them? [584] Yes, it did. Then, how can it be right to think that the absence of pain is pleasure or that the absence of pleasure is pain? There's no way it can be.

those who have no experience of reason or virtue, but are always occupied with feasts and the like, are brought down and then back [586] up to the middle, as it seems, and wander in this way throughout their lives, never reaching beyond this to what is truly higher up, never looking up at it or being brought up to it, and so they aren't filled with that which really is and never taste any stable or pure pleasure. Instead, they always look down at the ground like cattle, and, with their heads bent over the dinner table, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. To outdo8 others in these things, they kick and butt them with iron horns and hooves, killing each [b] other, because their desires are insatiable. For the part that they're trying to fill is like a vessel full of holes, and neither it nor the things they are trying to fill it with are among the things that are.

isn't it necessary for these people to live with pleasures that are mixed with pains, mere images and shadow-paintings of true pleasures? And doesn't the juxtaposition of these pleasures and pains make them appear intense, so that they give rise to mad erotic passions in the foolish,

R12304022217 Film? Video games? Online streaming apps?

But it's also our aim in ruling our children, we don't allow them to be free until we establish a constitution in them, just as in a city, and—by fostering their best part with our own—equip them with a guardian and ruler similar to our own to take our place. Then, and only then, we set them free.

the irrational pleasure of the beast within

Now, the god, either because he didn't want to or because it was necessary for him not to do so, didn't make more than one bed in nature, [c] but only one, the very one that is the being of a bed.

imitation is far removed from the truth, for it touches only a small part of each thing and a part that is itself only an image.

better governed because of you, as Sparta is because of Lycurgus,

all poetic imitators, beginning with Homer, imitate images of virtue and all the other things they write about and have no grasp of the truth?

a poetic imitator uses words and phrases to paint colored pictures of each of the crafts. He himself knows nothing about them, but he imitates them in such a way that others, as ignorant as he, who judge by words, will think he speaks extremely well about cobblery or generalship or anything else whatever, provided—so great is the natural charm of these things—that he speaks with meter, rhythm, and harmony,

It's wholly necessary, therefore, that a user of each thing has most experience of it and that he tell a maker which of his products performs well or badly in actual use. A flute-player, for example, tells a flute-maker about the flutes that respond well in actual playing and prescribes what kind of flutes he is to make, while the maker follows his instructions. [e] Of course. Then doesn't the one who knows give instructions about good and bad flutes, and doesn't the other rely on him in making them? Yes. Therefore, a maker—through associating with and having to listen to the one who knows—has right opinion about whether something he makes is fine or bad, but the one who knows is the user. [602] That's right. Does an imitator have knowledge of whether the things he makes are fine or right through having made use of them, or does he have right opinion about them through having to consort with the one who knows and being told how he is to paint them? Neither. Therefore an imitator has neither knowledge nor right opinion about whether the things he makes are fine or bad.

an imitator has no worthwhile knowledge of the things he imitates, that imitation is a kind of game and not something to be taken seriously,

calculating, measuring, and weighing are the work of the rational part of the soul.

womanish.

let's also tell poetry that there is an ancient quarrel between it and philosophy,

The bad is entirely coterminous with what destroys and corrupts, and the good is what preserves and benefits.

we'll believe that the soul is immortal and able to endure every evil and every good, and we'll always hold to the upward path, practicing justice with reason in every way. That way we'll be friends both to ourselves and to the gods while we remain here on earth