More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
He and he alone must be held responsible for the good things, but responsibility for bad things must be looked for elsewhere and not attributed to God.’
‘We’d be right, then, not to have famous men mourning. We can allow women to do that (as long as they aren’t admirable women) and any bad men there might be, so that the people we claim to be training for guardianship of our land find all that sort of behaviour distasteful.’
‘We should, therefore, refuse admittance to any poetry which portrays eminent humans as being overcome by laughter, and do so even more vigorously if it shows gods in that state.’
‘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.
Otherwise, during their upbringing our guardians will be surrounded by the pernicious pasturage of images of badness, which will be so common that they’ll often be nibbling and feeding on them, day in and day out, a little at a time, until without realizing it they’ll amass badness in their minds.
Some kind of Greek Victorianism! Early non-religious origins of conservatism embedded within current day republicanism like in the US
cultural education.’
Seems euphemistic for then conservative moral education
‘What about promiscuity and dissoluteness?’ ‘Yes, they’re its chief partners.’
Potential reconciliation between current day liberal principles with conservatism and morality
‘So you’ll apparently be making a regulation in the community we’re founding to the effect that although a lover can (if he can persuade his boyfriend to let him) kiss and spend time with and touch his boyfriend, as he would his son—which is to say, for honourable reasons—still his relationship with anyone he cares for will basically be such that he never gives the impression that there is more to it than that. Otherwise, he’ll be liable to condemnation for lacking culture and moral sensibility.’
Platonic relationships
Neglect of moderation in diet is the cause of a great deal of ill health, as the neglect of discipline in emotion is the cause of crime (and the legal profession).
‘Could you produce more telling evidence of when a community’s educational system is bad and contemptible than when top-notch doctors and lawyers are needed not only by low-ranking people and labourers, but also by those who pride themselves on their privileged upbringing?
as soon as one’s livelihood is secure, one should practise goodness.’
primary education whose principles have been outlined in this chapter will produce people in whom the poles of aggressiveness and gentleness have been adequately trained, when neither side is emphasized to the neglect of the other, and they offset each other.
‘I’ve noticed that people who engage exclusively in physical exercise end up being excessively brutal, while people who engage exclusively in cultural studies end up shamefully soft.’
Stereotypy
it isn’t the person who attunes the strings of a lyre to one another, it’s the person who makes the best blend of physical exercise and culture, and who applies them to the mind in the right proportions, whom we should really describe as a virtuoso and as having the most harmony in his life.’
we’ll always need someone of this type to oversee our community, if its political system is to remain intact, won’t we?’
At the heart of republicanism seems t be some kind of a benevolent elite hold on societal morality
We now have three classes—guardians, auxiliaries, and workers—whom we may call the castes of gold, silver, and copper or iron.
Caste. Wonder if that translates directly from class.
‘Now, we’ll have to invent a selection procedure for our third category, magic, as well,’ I said, ‘and observe how they perform.
Very much similar to the “tests” that Indian ancient lore described for checking out true devotees before gods gave darshan types, cf Vishwamitra and the Menaka distraction
‘can we devise one of those lies—the kind which crop up as the occasion demands, which we were talking about not long ago*—so that with a single noble lie we can indoctrinate the rulers themselves, preferably, but at least the rest of the community?’
Like most religious origins m stories for e.g. especially stories such as Ramayana
‘We’ll reply that although it wouldn’t surprise us in the slightest if in fact there were no people happier than these men, all the same we’re not constructing our community with the intention of making one group within it especially happy, but to maximize the happiness of the community as a whole.
Some kind of am early Marxist republicanism!
than the one we’re constructing deserves the name,’ I said.
423a
‘To allow growth as long as growth doesn’t jeopardize its unity,’ I said, ‘but no further.
‘Because unlike courage and wisdom, both of which imbued the community with their respective qualities while being properties of only a part of the community, self-discipline literally spans the whole octaval spread of the community, and makes the weakest, the strongest, and the ones in between all sing in unison, whatever criterion you choose in order to assess their relative strengths—intelligence, physical strength, numerical quantity, wealth, and so on. And the upshot is that we couldn’t go wrong if we claimed that self-discipline was this unanimity, a harmony between the naturally worse
...more
Sounds very much like definitions of yoga
‘So, Glaucon,’ I said, ‘it seems likely that this is in a sense what morality is—doing one’s own job. Do you know what makes me think so?’
Recalls basavanna
Doesn’t it take heat in addition to thirst to give it the extra feature of being desire for something cold, and cold to make it desire for something hot? Doesn’t it take a thirst which has been aggravated into becoming strong to produce the desire for a lot of drink, and doesn’t it take a weak thirst to produce the desire for a little drink? The actual state of being thirsty, however, cannot possibly be desire for anything other than its natural object, which is just drink; and the same goes for hunger and food.’
question.’ ‘And he might well copy what you said a few moments
stamp. It also follows that the offspring of the first group should be brought up, while the offspring of the second group shouldn’t. This is how to maximize the potential of our flock. And the fact that all this is happening should be concealed from everyone except the rulers themselves, if the herd of guardians is to be as free as possible from conflict.’* e
How framing and implementing communal morality and greater good easily becomes a slippery slope to eugenics, authoritarianism and deceit
every creature fights better, anyway, when its offspring are around.’
It’s just that if we do discover what morality is, will we expect a moral man to be indistinguishable from it, and to be a perfect image of morality? Or will we be satisfied if he resembles it as closely as possible and participates in it more thoroughly than anyone else?’
‘Do you doubt an artist’s competence if he paints a paradigmatically good-looking human being, and portrays everything perfectly well in the painting, but can’t prove that a person like that could actually exist?’
‘Is it possible for anything actual to match a theory? Isn’t any actual thing bound to have less contact with truth than a theory,* however much people deny it?
if ambitious people can’t get the command of a whole army, they take a company; and if they can’t win the respect of important and high-powered people, they’re happy to be respected by lesser people. It’s status in general which they desire.’ b
the same principle applies to moral and immoral, good and bad, and everything of any type: in itself, each of them is single, but each of them has a plurality of manifestations because they appear all over the place, as they become associated with actions and bodies and one another.’
The Kantian or deontological objection that Plato takes too much account of the consequences of morality, and the utilitarian objection that he takes too little account, are both red herrings: they want morality to be located respectively in the first and the third categories. Plato wants it in the second.
the preference for the competitive values of natural law rather than the co-operative values of conventional law.
