The Republic

1. The Republic By Plato, circa 380 B.C.

2. Topics for presentations • Discuss the evolution of the first western universities, from Plato’s Academy to the modern German university system. How did Platonic thought define this system? • Is the philosopher king the best way to rule a city? • Discuss Socrates’ argument that only the fittest people should be allowed to have children; or his belief that women should share equally in the jobs of the city. • Discuss Socrates’ analogy of the cave. • Do you see similarities between Socratic ideas and Christianity, or other faith systems? • Discuss Socrates’ argument that democracy is a poor system which allows everyone to do what they want without control or order. • Do Glaucon and the others actually serve a function beyond being ‘yes-men’? • Other themes you would like to discuss.

3. Chain of philosophers • Socrates (469 BC – 399 BC) • taught • Plato (427 BC – 347 BC) • taught • Aristotle (382 BC – 322 BC)

4. Plato founds the academy, 387 BC. (It lasts until 86 BC) A. N. Whitehead (1979): “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them.”

5. The Socratic method Dialectic: an activity of determining truth by reasoned argument, made of propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses). Normally, emotions shouldn’t be a part of this (that’s rhetoric)—it should be logic only! Elencthus: the specific sequential process used by Socrates to test a proposition • Assertion is made: A ruler only makes laws for his own benefit • Socrates asks that the statement’s logic be extended to further agreements: Do rulers sometimes make mistakes and pass laws that won’t benefit them? The opponent agrees. • Thesis is shown to be false: Socrates concludes, therefore it isn’t true that rulers only make laws for their own benefit.

6. The syllogism: the root of Greek logic Major Premise Minor Premise Conclusion Criticisms: Bad logic? Over-binary?

7. The Republic • A series of dialogues imagined or remembered by Plato, the student of Socrates, written around 380 BC, about 20 years after the death of Socrates. • In the text Socrates is pictured as holding a long conversation with friends (some are Plato’s family) and opponents (Thrasymachus) on the question: is it better to be just or unjust?

8. Book I: The question posed: Is it better to be just or unjust? • Socrates is returning from a religious festival with a friend, Glaucon, when he meets another friend, Polemarchus, who insists that the group visit his elderly father, Cephalus. Socrates has a friendly conversation with Cephalus.

9. I. 332e-334c • Socrates: Isn’t the person most able to land a punch, whether in boxing or any other kind of fight, also most able to guard against it? • Cephalus: Certainly. • Socrates: And the one who is most able to guard against disease is also most able to produce it unnoticed? • Cephalus: So it seems to me, anyway. • Socrates: And the one who is the best guardian of an army is also the very one who can steal the enemy’s plans and intentions? • Cephalus: Probably so. • Socates: Whenever someone is a clever guardian, then, he is also a clever thief. • Cephalus: According to our argument, at any rate. • Socrates: A just person has turned out then, it seems, to be a kind of thief. Isn’t that what you meant?

10. I. 332e-334c • Cephalus: No, by God, it isn’t. I don’t know any more what I did mean, but I still believe that to benefit one’s friends and harm one’s enemies is justice. • Socrates: Do horses become better or worse when they are harmed? • Cephalus: Worse. • Socrates: And when dogs are harmed, they become worse in the virtue that makes dogs good, not horses? • Cephalus: Necessarily. • Socrates: Then won’t we say the same about human beings too, that when they are harmed they become worse in human virtue? • Cephalus: Indeed. • Socrates: You and I shall fight as partners, then, against anyone who tells us that it is justice to benefit friends and harm enemies.

11. I. 337d-339d: Thrasymachus’s challenge: Justice is just the rule of the strong • Thrasymachus: “Justice” is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger. Each city makes laws to its own advantage, and they declare what they have made—what is to their own advantage—to be just for their subjects, and they punish anyone who goes against this as lawless and unjust. This, then, is what I say justice is, the same in all cities, the advantage of the established rule. • Socrates’s objection: Sometimes rulers make errors, and make a law which is not to their own advantage; therefore it is just to force people to do things which are not to the advantage of the stronger, correct? • Thrasymachus: But at the moment a ruler makes an error, he is not a ruler, so it doesn’t count—just as a good doctor or craftsman does not err.

12. I. 341d-343d: Thrasymachus’s challenge: Justice is just good for the ruler, not for the ruled • Thrasymachus: You think that shepherds and cowherds seek the good of their sheep and cattle, looking to something other than their master’s good and their own. Moreover, you believe that rulers in cities think about their subjects differently than one does about sheep. You don’t realize that justice is really the good of another, the advantage of the stronger and the ruler, and harmful to the one who obeys and serves. Injustice is to one’s own profit and advantage. • A just man always gets less than an unjust one. He pays more taxes, and gets less of a refund. A just official is hated by his relatives because he’s unwilling to do them an unjust favor. The opposite is true of an unjust man.

13. I. 349e-351b: Socrates’s defense; is a city like a person? • Socrates: Is it unjust for a city to try to enslave other cities unjustly and to hold them? • Thrasymachus: Of course, that’s what the best city will do, the one that is most completely unjust. • Socrates: Do you think that a city, an army, or a band of thieves with a common unjust purpose would be able to achieve this if they were unjust to each other? • Thrasymachus: No, indeed. • Socrates: If the effect of injustice is to produce hatred wherever it occurs, won’t it cause men to engage in civil war and prevent them from achieving any common purpose? • Thrasymachus: Certainly. • Socrates: And won’t it have by its nature the same effect in a single individual, making him incapable of achieving anything, because he is in a state of civil war in himself?

14. Book II: Do we only do justice for our reputation, and not for itself? • Glaucon: Do you think there is a kind of good we welcome, not because we desire what comes from it, but because we welcome it for its own sake—joy, for example? • Socrates: Certainly, I think there are such things. • Glaucon: And is there a kind of good we like for its own sake and also for the sake of what comes from it—knowing, and seeing, and being healthy? • Socrates: Yes. • Glaucon: And do you also see a third kind of indirect good, such as physical training, medical treatment, and others ways of making money? We’d say that these are troublesome or even painful, but beneficial to us? Isn’t justice like this? • Socrates: I myself put it among the finest goods, as something to be valued both because of itself and because of what comes from it. • Glaucon: That isn’t most people’s opinion. They’d say that it is practiced for the sake of reputation, but is itself something burdensome.

15. II. 360b-362b: Glaucon’s hypothetical just & unjust men • Glaucon: Let’s imagine two scenarios: • 1. An unjust and powerful man who has perfect ability to keep his crimes hidden, and who is thought to be just and has the praise of the public and gods. • 2. A just and powerless man who is good in every way, but is thought to be bad and unjust by the public and the gods. • I agree with Socrates—but wouldn’t these two scenarios allow us to test whether it’s better to be just or unjust?

16. II. 360b-362b: Glaucon’s hypothetical just & unjust men • Glaucon: • “What about the gods? Surely we can’t hide from them. Well, if the gods don’t exist or don’t concern themselves with human affairs, why should we worry about hiding from them?” • Besides: a man who becomes rich through injustice can just please the gods with gifts and offerings. • “If we are just, our only gain is to not be punished by the gods. But if we are unjust, we get the profits of our crimes and afterwards persuade the gods through prayer and escape.”

17. II. 366d-369a: Socrates’s analogy of a city • Socrates does not, at least here, suggest a literal city, but rather an analogy to an individual man. • Socrates: Let’s first find out what sort of thing justice is in a city and afterwards look for it in the individual. • Glaucon: That seems fine to me. • Socrates imagines a city where everyone is happy and has the minimum they need to eat, be warm, drink wine, and have sex.

18. II. 370-372e: Glaucon’s objection • Glaucon calls this “a city for pigs” and wants more luxuries: proper couches, tables, and desserts. • Socrates: All right, we aren’t just considering a city, but a luxurious city. The true city in my opinion is a healthy city, but let’s study one with a fever! We’ll also need furniture, oils, prostitutes, painting, gold, ivory, and the like. Then we must enlarge it in size, for the healthy one is no longer adequate. • Glaucon: Of course. • Socrates: Then we’ll have to seize some of our neighbors’ land, and our next step will be war, Glaucon, won’t it? • Glaucon: It will.

19. II. 374e-376c: Guards are needed • Socrates argues that in this larger city, guardians are needed to protect it from other cities. The problem is that the best guardians are courageous and spirited, but such people may be savage to each other and to the citizens. Thus the best guardians will be both strong to enemies and gentle to its own—just like the dog. • Dogs are “philosophical” in that they are friendly to what they know and hate what they do not know—just as the philosopher loves knowledge and hates ignorance. • Because the guardians must be trained from childhood on, in the ideal city they must be trained by hearing good stories, and not Greek tales of lying gods and immorality. A true god would never change forms if he is already perfect.

20. Book III: The Noble Lie • The rulers should not be afraid to use lies if it is in everyone’s best purposes. • Socrates: Everyone in the city should be persuaded that they came from the earth, and so they should defend the earth and each other as brothers. • Also: the guardians should be told that they have a sacred mixture of metals inside them, and that they will defile themselves by possessing gold or silver. This will prevent them from trying to seize the citizens’ wealth.

21. Book IV: The optimal happiness • Glaucon objects: Why would anyone want to be a guardian if they just live in a common area like soldiers and have no riches? • Socrates: The goal of the polis is not to make one group totally happy, but to make everyone as happy as his nature allows. If everyone follows his own talents—producing, guarding, or ruling—he will feel fulfilled.

22. Book V: Equality of sexes but not of sex • Adeimantus: We’ve been waiting for you to tell us about the production of children—and about the whole subject of having wives and children in common which you mentioned. • Socrates: Do we think that the wives of our guardians should guard what the males guard, hunt with them, and do everything in common with them? Or should we keep the women at home while the males work and have the entire care of the flock? • Adiemantus: Everything should be in common, except that the females are weaker and the males stronger.

23. V.452a-453e: Naked exercises together • Socrates: What is the most ridiculous thing that you see in training grounds? Isn’t it the women exercising naked? • Adiemantus: Yes, that would look really ridiculous. • Socrates: But now that we’re speaking about it, we mustn’t fear the various jokes that wits will make. They should remember that it wasn’t long ago that the Greeks themselves thought it was shameful for men to be seen naked. And what was ridiculous to the eyes faded away in the face of what argument showed to be the best.

24. V.453e-456a: Sexual equality • Socrates: If it’s apparent that women differ only in this respect, that they bear children while the males father them, we’ll say that there is no proof that women are different from men. • Glaucon: And rightly so. • Socrates: Do you know of anything practiced by human beings in which the male sex isn’t superior to the female in all these ways? • Glaucon: It’s true that one sex is superior to the other in pretty well everything, although many women are better than many men in many things. • Socrates: Then there is no way of life that belongs to a woman because she’s a woman, but the various natures are distributed in the same way in both creatures. Women share by nature in every way of life as men do, but weaker.

25. V.456a-457c: Women guardians • Socrates: In the city we’re establishing, who do you think will prove to be better men, the guardians, who receive the best education, or the shoemakers, who are educated in shoemaking? • Glaucon: The question is ridiculous. • Socrates: Indeed, aren’t the guardians the best of the citizens? • Glaucon: By far. • Socrates: And what about the female guardians? Aren’t they the best of the women? • Glaucon: They’re by far the best. • Socrates: Then the law we’ve established is optimal for a city? • Glaucon: Yes.

26. V. 457c-459d: Another honorable lie • Socrates argues that the wives and children of the guardians must be held in common so that the children will not know who their parents are. The others ask why. • Socrates: Tell me, Glaucon, have you noticed anything about how fighting birds breed? • Glaucon: Like what? • Socrates: Aren’t there some that are the best and prove themselves to be? • Glaucon: There are. • Socrates: Do you breed them all alike, of do you try to breed from the best? • Glaucon: I try to breed from the best. • Socrates: Dear me! If this also holds true of human beings, it looks like our rulers will have to make considerable use of falsehoods for the benefit of those they rule. The best men must thus have sex with the best women as frequently as possible, while the opposite is true of the most inferior. There will have to be some sophisticated lotteries introduced, so that at each marriage the inferior people will blame luck rather than the rulers when they aren’t chosen.

27. V. 463b-465a: Wives in common • Socrates argues that the wives and children of the guardians must be held in common so that the children will not know who their parents are. The others ask why. • Socrates: What is in the city that makes it like a single person? For example, when someone hurts his finger, the entire organism is aware of this and the whole feels the pain together with the finger. • Glaucon: Certainly. And so the city with the best government is most like such a person. • Socrates: If all were in common, could any guardian consider a co-guardian as an outsider or address him as such? • Glaucon: There’s no way he could, for when he meets any of them, he’ll believe that he’s meeting a brother or sister, a father or mother, a son or daughter, or some ancestor or descendent of theirs. • Socrates: Does this not make even better guardians, by preventing them from tearing the city apart from calling the same thing or person “mine”?

28. V. 467b-468e: Conduct in war • Socrates argues that the children of guardians should be taken along with them during battles, because the children will learn to fight by watching, the guardians will fight harder to protect the children, and because the guardians will be less likely to fight useless wars. • Socrates: Do you think it is just for Greeks to enslave other Greeks? • Glaucon: It’s in every way best to spare the Greek race. In that way they’d be more likely to turn against the barbarians and keep their hands off each other. • Socrates: What about despoiling the dead? Don’t you think it’s money-loving and slavish to strip a corpse? Isn’t it small-minded to regard the body as your enemy, when the enemy himself has flown away, leaving behind only the instrument with which he fought? • Glaucon: Indeed, yes.

29. V. 469a-470e: Mercy in war • Socrates: What about ravaging the land of the Greeks and burning their homes? • Glaucon: I’d like to hear your opinion about that. • Socrates: I think they should do neither, but destroy the year’s harvest only. It seems to me that when Greeks do battle with barbarians, they’re natural enemies and such hostilities should be called ‘war.’ But when Greeks fight with Greeks, we’ll say that they are natural friends and that such hostilities are to be called ‘civil war.’ • Glaucon: I agree to think of it that way. • Socrates: Their attitude of mind should be that of people who’ll one day be reconciled and who won’t always be at war. They won’t ravage the country, and they’ll continue the fight only until those who caused it are forced to pay for it, for they’re moderators, not enemies. • Glaucon: That’s right.

30. Book VI: The Good Philosopher King • Socrates is questioned: don’t most people dislike philosophers, because they just play useless logic games or have bad motives? • Socrates agrees: yes, most philosophers are bad. Because they are gifted people, they are capable of great good or great evil. It is rare for a man to love philosophy without corruption. • Just as bad sailors all compete and fight to be captain, believing there’s no special skill in being a captain, everyone wants to rule! But only the good philosopher king is qualified to do so. • Note again that dialectic is not by nature angry. Socrates claims to have made a friend out of Thrasymachus, convincing him of his position.

31. Book VII: The Allegoryof the Cave

32. VII. 514a-515d: The Cave • Socrates: If they could talk, don’t you think they’d suppose that the names they used applied to the things they see passing before them? • Glaucon: They’d have to. • Socrates: Then the prisoners would in every way believe that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of those objects. • Glaucon: They must surely believe that. • Socrates: Consider, then, what being freed would be like. When one of them was suddenly made to stand up, walk, and look toward the light, he’d be pained and dazzled and unable to see the shadows he’d seen before. What do you think he’d say if we told him all he’d seen previously was an illusion? Wouldn’t his eyes hurt, and wouldn’t he try to run towards the things he’s able to see, believing that they’re clearer and more real?

33. VII. 515d-517d: Return to the Cave • Socrates: And if someone dragged him up by force into the sunlight, wouldn’t he be unable to see a single thing described to him as true? • Glaucon: He would be unable, at least at first. • Socrates: He’d need time to get adjusted. At first he’d see shadows, then images in water, then the things themselves. He’d be able to study easier at night, but finally he’d be able to look by day and then to see the sun itself. • Glaucon: Necessarily so. • Socrates: What about when he remembers his former home, his fellow prisoners, and what passed for knowledge there? And if there had been any honors or prizes for who could best identify or predict shadows, do you think he would desire these rewards or envy those people, or would he feel pity for them?

34. VII. 515d-517d: Return to the Cave • Socrates: Consider this too. If this man went down into the cave again and sat down, wouldn’t his eyes be filled with darkness? • Glaucon: They certainly would. • Socrates: And before his eyes had recovered, wouldn’t he invite ridicule? Wouldn’t it be said that he’d returned from his journey with his eyes ruined and the effort was worthless? And, if he tried to free them and lead them upward, if they could somehow get their hands on him, wouldn’t they kill him? • Glaucon: They certainly would. • Socrates: Then it isn’t surprising that the ones who get to this point are unwilling to worry themselves about human affairs and that their souls are always pressing upward.

35. VII. 517d-519e: Philosophers must sacrifice to help others • However: If those who escape the “cave” don’t want to go back, how can they help the others to be free or to guide them? • Socrates: It is our task to force the best people to see the good. But when they’ve made it, they cannot be allowed to refuse to return to the prisoners and help them. • Glaucon: Then are we to act unjustly by making them live a worse life when they could have a better one? • Socrates: You’re forgetting that the law’s concern is not to make any one group outstandingly happy but to spread happiness to all, so that all share their peculiar benefits in order to bind the city together. • Glaucon: That’s true, I had forgotten.

36. VII. 519e-521d: Philosophers be compelled to rule • Socrates: Do you think those we have freed will disobey us and refuse to share the work of the city? It isn’t possible, for we’ll be giving just orders to just people. Each of them will go to rule as an obligation, however, which is the opposite of what’s done by those who rule now in each city. • If beggars hungry for wealth go into politics then the well-governed city is impossible, for then rule is something fought over, and civil war destroys the city. Surely it is those who are not lovers of ruling who must rule. • The best education for the future rulers: • - Based on mathematics, the purest form of abstract knowledge uncorrupted by senses • - Voluntary, for no free person should be forced to learn like a slave • - Open to ruling women too (a few women attended Plato’s Academy)

37. VIII. Good and bad cities • Socrates describes four types of cities which are alternatives (all bad ones) to the republic he imagines: • 1. Honor-loving (“timocracy”): This city is ruled by people who value winning power, money, and reputation over everything else. Its diseases are greed and war. • 2. Oligarchy (rule by a few): In this city power has become concentrated in a few rulers who are extremely rich while most people are extremely poor. Its diseases are instability and violence. • 3. Democracy: In this city the people have overthrown the oligarchs, but have no limits over their lust for wealth and pleasure. Its diseases are vulgarity and chaos. • 4. Tyranny: In this city one man rules. There is no freedom or rights for anyone.

38. VIII. 545d-547c The first bad city: Timocracy • Socrates: Mustn’t we go through the inferior cities, so that having discovered the most unjust of all we can oppose it the most? That way we can complete our investigation into how pure justice and pure injustice stand. • Glaucon: That’s absolutely what we have to do. • How the first bad city, the timocracy forms: the guardians deteriorate in motivation and breeding and try to have the city’s wealth for themselves. • Socrates: And thus as the guardians struggle with one another for money or glory in civil war, they compromise on a middle way: they distribute the land and houses as private property, and enslave and hold as servants the people who they previously guarded as friends. • Glaucon: I think that is the way this transformation begins.

39. VIII. 545d-547c The first bad city: Timocracy • Socrates: The new rulers will be strict with their own money, but they’ll love to spend other people’s because of their appetites. They’ll have houses to enclose private treasuries where they can secretly spend lavishly on women or anything else they wish. They’ll run away from the law like boys from their father, since they’ve neglected the true Muse of discussion and philosophy—and will value force and physical training more than music and poetry. • Glaucon: The city you’re discussing is certainly a mixture of good and bad. • Socrates: Yes, because of the dominance of the spirited element, which retains in them the love of victory and the love of honor.

40. VIII. 549e-551d The second bad city: Oligarchy • Socrates: The new rulers progressively move further into money-making, and the more they value it, the less they value virtue. • Glaucon: That’s right. • Socrates: And in the end, victory-loving men become lovers of making money. And they praise and admire wealthy people and appoint them as rulers. • Glaucon: Certainly. • Socrates: Then, don’t they pass a law that establishes a wealth qualification—and proclaim that those whose property is insufficient aren’t qualified to rule, and put this through by force of arms? Isn’t that so? • Glaucon: Of course it is.

41. VIII. 551d-553c The diseases of oligarchy • Socrates: What would happen if someone were to choose the captain of a ship by his wealth, refusing to entrust the position to a poor person even if he were a better captain? • Glaucon: They would make a poor voyage of it. • Socrates: And isn’t the same true of the rule in anything else, including a city? • Glaucon: I suppose so. • Socrates: And also, it is a city in which almost everyone is a beggar, with thieves, pickpockets, and all such evildoers. It is not one city but two—the poor and the rich, always plotting against each other. And the oligarchs aren’t able to fight a war, for they’d need to arm the majority, the people they’d fear more than the enemy—or arm themselves, except they’re few in number—or hire mercenaries, something they’re unwilling to pay for.

42. VIII. 555c-557c The third worst city: Democracy • Socrates: So isn’t it clear that it’s impossible for a city to honor wealth but at the same time for its citizens to acquire moderation and discipline? • Glaucon: That’s pretty clear. • Socrates: And because of this neglect, oligarchies frequently reduce their people to poverty and debt. But as for themselves, don’t they make their children fond of luxury, incapable of effort, too soft to stand up to pleasures or pains? • Glaucon: Of course. • Socrates: So when rulers and subjects meet on a journey, or a festival, or a campaign, and see one another, do the rich despise the poor—or isn’t it the other way, that the poor see the fat, panting rich and say— “these people are at our mercy—they’re good for nothing.” And as a sick body needs only a slight shock to become ill, this city needs only a slight pretext to fall into war.

43. VIII. 555c-557c The third worst city: Democracy • Socrates: So I suppose that democracy comes about when the poor kill their opponents and give the rest an equal share in rule under the constitution. • Glaucon: Yes, that’s how democracy is established. • Socrates: Then how do these people live? Aren’t they free? Isn’t the city full of freedom? Doesn’t everyone have the license to do what he wants? • Glaucon: That’s what they say, at any rate. • Socrates: In this city, there are no requirements to rule, or to be ruled, or to be at war. Isn’t it magnificent the way it tramples all these finer things, giving no thought to anyone’s training or background so long as he flatters the majority? So it seems a pleasant city which lacks rulers, but not variety, and distributes equality to both better and worse people.

44. VIII. 555c-557c What happens to democracy? • Socrates: Doesn’t the insatiable desire for freedom change this city and put it in danger of dictatorship? • Glaucon: In what way? • Socrates: Unless its rulers are very lenient and provide that freedom, the citizens insult anyone who obeys the rules and praises rulers who behave like subjects. And so a father accustoms himself to behave like a child, and a teacher in such a community is afraid of his students, and bought slaves are no less free than their owners. And so the young compete with the old and the old are full of play and pleasantry. • Glaucon: Absolutely. • Socrates: [And as the people are seduced by leaders who flatter them and drive them against each other,] there are impeachments, judgments, and trials. In this permissiveness and lawlessness, excessive action in one direction sets up a reaction in the opposite direction.

45. VIII. 565b-566e: Democracy falls to tyranny • Socrates: Isn’t the mob always in the habit of setting up one great man as their special champion to protect them, nurturing him and making him great? • Glaucon: They are. • Socrates: What happens to this leader who dominates a mob? He brings someone to trial on false charges and murders him. He banishes some and kills others, promising the cancelation of debts and redistribution of land. Isn’t a man like that fated to either be killed by his enemies or be transformed himself into a tyrant? • Glaucon: It’s completely inevitable. • Socrates: All who’ve reached this stage discover the famous request of the tyrant, that the people give him a bodyguard to keep him safe for them. And the first thing he’ll do is stir up a war, so that the people feel a need of a leader, and so that if they are paying war taxes they will be too poor and busy to plot against him.

46. Book IX: The tyrannical soul • Socrates argues that the mind of the tyrant is formed when his desire and lust for power, pleasure, and money are out of control. • Socrates: Consequently, he must acquire wealth from every source or live in great pain and suffering. And what about when he achieves sole rule as a tyrant? His waking life is like a nightmare. How frightened would he be that he and his wife and children would be killed by his slaves? He would be forced to make them promises and free some. He would be surrounded by vigilant enemies, so that he’s the only one in the city who can’t travel abroad. Instead, he lives like a woman, mostly confined to his own house. • Glaucon: That’s entirely so. • Socrates: Then a real tyrant is really a sort of slave, compelled to engage in crime and pandering to others, tyrannizing himself and his city; both the most unjust and most unhappy among the king, timocrat, oligarch, and democrat.

47. IX.579c-581e The three natures of men • Socrates classifies the soul into three parts: • Appetitive, caring for food, drink, sex, and money / profit • Spirited, caring for victory and honor • The part which searches for truth, caring least for money and reputation—the learning-loving, philosophical part Which one is better? Won’t the men of each types say that their way is the best? Socrates: Does a pleasure-seeker or profit-lover necessarily learn truth? But a philosopher has tasted the other pleasures since birth, and so is the finest judge of all three. Second, don’t we judge by experience, reason, and argument? These are the tools of the philosopher as well. Thus the learning-lover has the best pleasures in life and therefore the just person has defeated the unjust person.

48. Book X: The forms Socrates: There are many beds and tables. Glaucon: Of course. Socrates: But there are only two forms of each furniture, that of the bed and one of the table. Glaucon: Yes. Socrates: And don’t we also say that their makers look towards the appropriate form in making the beds or tables we use, and in other cases? The craftsman surely can’t make the form itself. Glaucon: That would be a clever and wonderful craftsman. Socrates: Wait and you’ll have more reason to say this, for this craftsman is also able to make all plants that grow, all animals, the earth, the heavens, and all the gods, and everything in the heavens and Hades.

49. Book X: The forms Glaucon: He’d be amazingly clever! Socrates: Now, is the painter in this class of makers? In a certain way, he makes a bed, doesn’t he? Glaucon: Yes, the appearance of one. Socrates: So then we have three types of beds. The first is in nature a bed, and I suppose we’d say a god makes it. The second is the work of a carpenter, and the third is the one the painter makes. Glaucon: Yes, three. Socrates: Now the god didn’t make more than one bed in nature. If he made two, then there would be an idea of a bed used to create those two beds, and that would be the being of a bed. Glaucon: That’s right.

50. X. 597d-599d Poets are third-rate imitators Socrates: Isn’t a carpenter then the maker of a bed? Glaucon: Yes. Socrates: And is a painter also a craftsman? Not at all. Do you think he tries to imitate the thing itself in nature or the works of craftsman? He imitates what the others make, so that it is an imitation of appearance and not of truth. Glaucon: Of course. Socrates: Then we must conclude that all poetic imitators, starting with Homer, imitate images of virtue and other things they write about and have no grasp of truth. A painter who knows nothing about wood-working can make what seems to be wood to those who know as little as he does about wood, and who judge things by their shapes. Socrates concedes that poetry is pleasurable and hard to give up, and suggests that it might be readmitted to the city “when it has successfully defended itself.”