Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Plato, Republic - Revisited
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Republic Redux, Book 5
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"It takes a village to raise a child" -- what do you consider that phrase to mean, David?
For me, it is a John Donne "No man is an island, entire of himself" type of statement.
https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetr...

Equal education and opportunities aside, being a trophy of male achievement does not appear to resemble feminist sentiment:
[460b]“And on the young men, surely, who excel in war and other pursuits we must bestow honors and prizes, and, in particular, the opportunity of more frequent intercourse with the women, which will at the same time be a plausible pretext for having them beget as many of the children as possible.”
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/t...

LOL! Why make this into a male versus female battle at a point in history where the role of humankind on this precious planet Earth in the galaxy those humans have named the Milky Way seems so somehow as relevant when looking at issues as big as justice and morality and government and ....

It takes a village to raise a child is a proverb which means that it takes an entire community to raise a child: A child has the best ability to become a healthy adult if the entire community takes an active role in contributing to the rearing of the child.It seems to partially echo Socrates call to raise the children in common.
In Lunyoro (Bunyoro) there is a proverb that says 'Omwana takulila nju emoi,' whose literal translation is 'A child does not grow up only in a single home.'
In Kihaya (Bahaya) there is a saying, 'Omwana taba womoi,' which translates as 'A child belongs not to one parent or home.'
In Kijita (Wajita) there is a proverb which says 'Omwana ni wa bhone,' meaning regardless of a child's biological parent(s) its upbringing belongs to the community.
In Swahili, the proverb 'Asiyefunzwa na mamae hufunzwa na ulimwengu' approximates to the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_take...

At various times, Socrates refers to the city as a fancy, a paradigm, and a paradox. More than once, Glaucon insists on knowing whether the city is "possible," and Socrates changes the subject, until he finally admits that the city can only exist in theory. A paradoxical theory, no less. The city is impossible even on paper, if only because Socrates completely ignores human nature.
So I wonder... what is the point of all this? If it is an exercise in idealism, it seems to have backfired.

This is a hard thought because contained within it is the sobering reminder that justice may forever ebb and flow with human nature occasionally moving us backward and limiting any strides forward to only half steps.
Is injustice the cost of human happiness like war is the cost of "relishes"?
Can we at all say that harsher times suggest harsher methods?

Or it could be that Plato uses the wrong approach. What if justice is not an idea, an object of knowledge, but a practical art instead? Perhaps there is a middle ground between justice in itself (whatever that is) and the law of the jungle, an imperfect but acceptable compromise. Maybe Thrasymachus can become a friend.
Plato is not ready for a compromise, of course. But I have to wonder if his focus on justice itself, as a pure idea, makes justice in reality impossible.

Is it possible that harsher times may also need kinder, gentler methods?
Stream of consciousness, I think of The Book Thief. The toughness, the tenderness, the risk taking involved in shielding the refugee, not unmixed with courage or fool-hardiness, depending on perspective and attitude towards providing sanctuary.

in 1.339c Socrates and Thrasymachus agree that the rulers in the various states are not infallible and are sometimes capable of error - then specifically they are capable of judging what is to their advantage with infallibility.
Wouldn't this general admission that rulers are not infallible carry over to the philosopher kings? If so, then all rulers are fallible and justice is not what any ruler declares or enacts when they are mistaken. It seems the trick to being a just ruler is to not be a tyrant or make any mistakes, otherwise, all other things being equal, one ruler seems as good as another.

The philosopher king must be infallible, but he is also completely transcendental and outside everyday experience. The image Socrates uses when he is demonstrating the theory of "forms" is helpful:
Now, if a painter drew a standard or paradigm of what the most beautiful human being (anthropos) would be, and rendered everything in the picture satisfactorily, do you think he would be any less skilled as a painter if he could not also prove it possible for such a person (andra) to exist?
Emphatically not, Glaucon said.
Well then, are we not constructing in discourse a standard or paradigm of a good city?
Of course. 472d
That's R.E. Allen's translation, but he misses something important. The word Plato uses for the paradigm of the most beautiful human is anthropos, which includes both men and women. The word he uses for the beautiful human who actually exists is andra, which refers to a man only. An instantiation of the beautiful anthropos, the paradigm, must be a male or female individual.
(This reminds me a little of the story about love that Aristophanes tells in the Symposium, where originally human beings were "whole" and included both sexes. At some point they were separated, and now each half of a person searches for his or her other half, and we call this love. The "whole" human being is a paradigm, and a myth, but a telling one.)
I think the philosopher king is this kind of paradigm or standard. It is the ideal against which something is compared, but it doesn't actually "exist" in the same way that the things we compare against it exist. It is a useful myth.

Using Socrates' analogy of sight, it is as if the citizens are all near sighted to one degree or another. How are they to know that the Philosopher can see better than they can? Can they know, or must they be convinced? How? Won't the philosopher king say "Nobody can see better than me. Believe me. I have the best sight. I'm telling you, folks." That's not a convincing argument, but how does someone with faulty vision disprove it?




Yes, and this is what bothers me -- the suggestion that most people have no access to the truth. The truth is for philosophers only. Perhaps there is something to that, if truth is something that is learned, an art like medicine or car mechanics. We go to experts like doctors or mechanics because we need opinions about things we don't understand, and no one can be an expert in everything. But is justice like that? Is truth like that? Aren't these things open to everyone, and isn't it necessary that they be open to everyone?

I search with dying hope for some sign that Socrates's ideal city is somehow meant metaphorically. But when he works out the details of how the guardians-in-training will go out with the army to see the less dangerous battles, and be given swift horses so that the can escape any unexpected catastrophe, it's hard to see any metaphorical meaning.
In the same vein, how on earth could the mating rituals be read metaphorically as models for the way our souls operate? This is a genuine question, not rhetorical.
I'll add, in response to N.P., that lies most certainly are put forward in this section (around 459; my edition isn't clearly numbered): "...it seems [the Rulers] will have to give their subjects a considerable dose of imposition and deception for their good."

I also felt like the metaphors went pretty far afield when S/P was outlining not just the mating rituals but also the selection of good children over bad, and then went on to talk about the whole communal atmosphere. Best I can make of it is what Waterfield noted, that the bad children are the bad ideas that need to be winnowed out.. plus, the whole communal structure could be referring to the unity of the parts of the psyche and body etc. Maybe.

Hi, all. I'm still here, just fallen woefully behind. For a visual (and Broadway musical) depiction of this myth, please see:
Hedwig and the Angry Inch

At times, one can wonder if one is reading Plato/Socrates or Machiavelli.

I found the social engineering aspects quite chilling. It is amazing to me how up and down the millennia men come up with these sorts of schemes again and again and never learn that you can't fool or change human nature.

We can give Plato a break, since he was (I guess) the first one to come up with the idea. We have a lot more experience now of coercive social engineering, and we know that it never works as intended, however good the motives and beautiful the plan.

Good point!



The more frightening aspect of this topic is that it continued for a long time thereafter.
I am having difficulty in believing that anyone is able to conceive a just society, or even just a city.
No matter how brilliant, we all have our limitations-including Socrates.


This is a problem that exists in the world today.

Pennyroyal?

As I am sure you are aware, the practice of sperm donors and egg donors is increasing the risk of an analogous problem today. Some of the articles I have seen surprised me on the probabilities they have described.
So we start a three book diversion on the general issues of education and philosophy. But it starts with the question of the manner of the community, particularly as it pertains to women and families. Which section has ignited a lengthy academic discourse, still as far as I can tell unresolved, on whether Plato was a feminist.
The second section of Book 5 deals with what is wisdom, and who is a philosopher. It takes us the first steps down the road toward Plato's theory of ideas, or forms, a wonderfully controversial topic that is worth years, even generations, of discussion and debate, which we have one week to delve into. [g]
So let's get started.