Jowett, Benjamin 1875. Introduction. In: The Dialogues of Plato. Translated into English with analyses and introductions by B. Jowett. In four volumes. Vol. II. Second edition revised and corrected throughout, with additions and an index of subjects and proper names. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1-163. [Internet Archive]
The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception of the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer approaches to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist. The Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same perfection of style; no other contains more graphic descriptions of character, or is richer in humour and imagery. Nor in any other Dialogue is the attempt made to unite the speculative and practical, or to interweave the State with philosophy. (Jowett 1875: 1)
The Republic is Plato's most literary dialogue.
Lastly, Plato may be regarded as the 'captain or leader' of a goodly band of followers; in him is to be found the original of Cicero's De Republica, of St. Augustin's City of God, of the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, and of the numerous modern writings which are framed upon the same model. The Republic of Plato is also the first treatise upon education, of which Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another world; in the early Church he exercised a real influence on theology, and at the Revival of Literature on politics. (Jowett 1875: 1)
I have long trained my sights on Utopia. Cicero's De re publica has been mentioned in my recent readings (and it's a pretty manageable ~100 pages). The City of God may turn out to be my entry into Augustine's corpus, though 3 volumes ~500 pages a pop does not look very inviting.
But this leads to the conception of a higher state, in which 'no man calls anything his own,' and in which there is neither 'marrying nor giving in marriage,' and 'kings are philosophers' and 'philosophers are kings;' and there is another and higher education, intellectual as well as moral and religious, of science as well as art, and not of youth only but of the whole of life. Such a State soon begins to degenerate, and is hardly to be realized in this world. (Jowett 1875: 2)
On the face of it this sounds like a utopia where everyone lacks private property and spends their lives in scholarly pursuits, i.e. fully automated luxury gay space communism.
The third division consists of the fifth, sixth, and seventh books, in which philosophy rather than justice is the subject of enquiry, and the second State is constructed on principles of communism and ruled by [|] philosophers, and the contemplation of the idea of good takes the place of the social and political virtues. (Jowett 1875: 2-3)
One of the few things that the Soviet "philosophers" say about Plato's reception is that in the 19th century, largely due to German scholars like Herman Cohen and Paul Natorp, the Republic was - in Soviet opinion mistakenly - a proto-communist treatise (cf. Asmus 1971: 39-40).
The second title, 'Concerning Justice,' is not the one by which the Republic is generally quoted in antiquity, and may therefore be assumed to be of later date. Morgenstern and others have asked whether the definition of justice, which is the professed aim, or the construction of the State, is the principal argument of the work. The answer is that the two blend in one, and are two faces of the same truth; for justice is the order of the State, and the State is the visible embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society. (Jowett 1875: 4)
Remarkably well put. One could nary improve this formulation, lest with appending "harmonious" to the "order of the State".
Cephalus, the father of Polemarchus and his two brothers, is the patriarch of the house who has been appropriately engaged in offering a sacrifice. He is the pattern of an old man who has almost done with life, and is at peace with himself and with all mankind. He seems to linger around the memory of the past, and is not without consolation in the future. He is eager that Socrates should come to visit him, fond of the poetry of the last generation, happy in the consciousness of a well-spent life, glad at having escaped from the tyranny of youthful lusts. His love of conversation, his indifference to money, even his prolixity and repetition, are interesting traits of character. The respectful attention shown to him by Socrates, who must however be asking questions of him as of all men, is also remarkable. The moderation with which old age is pictured by him as a very tolerable portion of existence is characteristic, not only of him, but of Greek feeling generally, and contrasts with the exaggeration of Cicero in his work on old age. The evening of life is described by Plato in the most expressive manner, yet with the fewest possible touches. As cicero remarks, the aged Cephalus would have been out of place in the discussion which follows, and which he could neither have understood nor taken part in without a violation of dramatic propriety (cp. Melesias in the Laches). (Jowett 1875: 5)
Notable because unflinching respect for the elders is also a pythagorean ideal (according to Iamblichus) that I noticed in the Republic, too, here and there. (It would be part of the study of the possible pythagorean strains in the Republic based on Iamblichus' frequent nods towards it, e.g. 'Glauconic goods' appearing as pythagorean doctrine in De Vita Pythagorica.)
He [Polemarchus] is bewildered by Socrates to such a degree that he does not know what he is saying. From his brother Lysias (contra Eratos, p. 121) we learn that he fell a victim to the thirty tyrants, but no allusion is made to his fate, nor to the circumstance that Cephalus and his family were of Syracusan origin, and had migrated to Athens. (Jowett 1875: 6)
Syracusan connections.
Glaucon has more of the liveliness and quick sympathy of youth; Adeimantus has the maturer judgment of a grown-up man of the world. In the second book, when Glaucon insists that justice and injustice shall be considered without regard to [|] their consequences, Adeimantus remarks that they are regarded by mankind in general only for the sake of their consequences. (Jowett 1875: 7-8)
Huh. I wonder if a reading of that sequence with this difference in mind could yield an interpretation at variance with the ink already spilled on it.
Thus in a succession of characters Plato represents the successive stages of morality, beginning with the Athenian gentleman of the olden time, who is followed by the practical man of that day regulating his life by proverbs and saws; to him succeeds the wild generalization of the Sophists, and lastly come the young disciples of the great teacher, who know the sophistical arguments but will not be convinced by them, and desire to go deeper into the nature of things. (Jowett 1875: 8)
Cephalus the money-maker; Thrasymachus the spirited honour-lover; Glaucon and Adeimantus the lovers of wisdom.
And this use of examples or images, though truly Socratic in origin, is enlarged by the genius of Plato into the form of an allegory or parable, which embodies in the concrete what has been already described, or is about to be described, in the abstract. Thus the figure of the cave in book vii. is a recapitulation of the divisions of knowledge in book vi. The composite animal in book ix. is an allegory of the parts of the soul. The captain and the ship and the true pilot in book vi. are a figure of the relation of philosophers to the State which is about to be described. (Jowett 1875: 9)
The point here being that the real Socrates was not known for such extensive use of imagery; which may indeed have contributed to why the Republic stands out amongst the dialogues.
The world is incapable of philosophy, and is therefore at enmity with the philosopher; but this arises from an unavoidable necessity (vi. 494 foll.): for they have never seen him as he truly is in his own proper image; they are only acquainted with artificial systems in which there is no native forcie of truth - words which admit of another application. (Jowett 1875: 10)
Sophistry is pseudo-philosophy with a pseudo-language, and is bristling with pseudo-problems.
At first Thrasymachus is reluctant to argue; but at length, with a promise of payment on the part of the company and of praise from Socrates, he is induced to open the game. 'Listen,' he says; 'my answer is that might is right, justice the interest of the stronger: now praise me.' (Jowett 1875: 13)
Ngram shows that this phrase jumped off right around 1860, very likely due to the first edition of Jowett's translation of the Republic
In there not honour among thieves? Is not the strength of injustice only a remnant of justice? Is not absolute injustice absolute weakness also? A house that is divided against itself cannot stand; two men who quarrel detract from one another's strength, and he who is at war with himself is the enemy of himself and the gods. (Jowett 1875: 15)
Another one of those lofty expressions that are still used in political discourse today. Usually in relation with the U.S. Congress. It is only proper that the context is the 'den of thieves'.
Thrasymachus is pacified, but the intrepid Glaucon insists on continuing the argument. He begins by dividing goods into three classes: - first, goods desirable in themselves; secondly, goods desirable in themselves and for their results; thirdly, goods desirable for their results only. He then asks Socrates in which of the three classes he would place justice. In the second class, replies Socrates, among goods desirable for themselves and also for their results. (Jowett 1875: 17)
Glauconic goods once again. This time with "results" instead of "consequences" or "effects".
'Take another kind of argument which is found both in poetry and prose: - "Virtue," as Hesiod says, "is honourable but difficult" - "steep is the way and narrow is the gate;" but vice is easy and profitable - "broad is the way and many walk therein." (Jowett 1875: 18)
On "The broad and narrow way" cf. 364c-d.
The art of war cannot be learned in a day, and there must be natural aptitudes for military duties. There will be some warlike natures who have this aptitude - dogs keen of scent and swift of foot to pursue, and strong of limb to fight. And as passion is the foundation of courage, such natures, whether of men or animals, will be full of passion. (Jowett 1875: 24)
Davies is in error when he adds "passion" as a synonym of the appetitive part of the soul (cf. 1854: xx).
And our first principle is that God is good, and the author of good, and good only; not that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has two casks full of destinies, as Homer says; [#...#] (Jowett 1875: 25)
Isn't this contradicted by the myth of Er? There are still good and bad destinies - just thrown on the ground.
There is another motive in purifying religion, which is to banish fear; for no man can be courageous who is afraid of death, or who believes the tales which are repeated by the poets concerning the world below. A gentle request should be made to them by the authorities not to abuse hell, accompanied by an intimation that their tales are untrue, and the reverse of inspiring to heroes. (Jowett 1875: 28)
Thus making it all too obvious that the overall point of religion is mind-control, especially for the warriors, who must be unafraid of death in order to throw themselves at the enemy.
There is a music of the soul which answers to the harmony of the world; and the fairest object of a musical soul is the fair mind in the fair body. Some defect in the latter may be excused, but not in the former. True love is the daughter of temperance, and temperance is utterly opposed to the madness of bodily pleasure. Enough has been said of music, which makes a fair ending with love. (Jowett 1875: 32)
Something, something, harmony of the spheres. The connection between love and temperance requires further elucidation. Could these pythagorean themes be so close together here due to a specific source, e.g. Aesara?
Glaucon then asks Socrates whether the best physicians and judges will not be those who have had the greatest experience of disease and of crimes. Socrates is disinclined to place them in the same category. The physician should have experience of disease in his own body, for he cures with his mind and not with his bdoy. But with the lawyer this is otherwise: he controls mind by mind; and therefore he should have no experience of evil in his own mind. (Jowett 1875: 34)
An astounding ignorance of psychosomatic diseases.
These are the two principles in man, and the gods have given two arts corresponding to them, and not to the soul and body, as some vainly talk - music and gymnastic; the unity of which makes a harmony higher far than the concord of musical notes. And the true musician is he who attempers them - he shall be the presiding genius of our State. (Jowett 1875: 35)
Define:attemper - "soften, mitigate. : soothe, appease. 3. archaic : to reduce, modify, or moderate by mixture"; "to modify or moderate by mixing or blending with something different or opposite".
In the third book of the Republic a nearer approach is made to a theory of art than anywhere else in Plato. His views may be summed up as follows: - True art is not fanciful and imitative, but simple and ideal, - the expression of the highest moral energy, whether in action or repose. (Jowett 1875: 37)
Sad. What little he gives on art is practically useless.
Here again, as in the Phaedrus, Plato shows a true sense of the nature of mythology, as capable of creation and adaptation to the wants of a State. Every Greek state had a myth respecting its own origin; the Platonic republic may also have a tale of earthborn men. The gravity and verisimilitude with which the tale is told, and the analogy of Greek tradition, are a sufficient verification of the 'monstrous falsehood.' (Jowett 1875: 38)
Mother Earth.
'But if the wealth of many states coalesce in one, shall we not be in danger?' I am amused to hear you use the word 'state' of any but our own State. They are 'states,' but not 'a state,' many in one; - a game of states at which men play. For every state, however small, has two nations struggling within her, which you may set one against the other. But our State, while at unity with herself and fixed in her principles, will be the mightiest of Hellenic states, and will always have numerous allies and few enemies. (Jowett 1875: 40)
In early Soviet propaganda (cf. Liiw 1919: 9) the "two states" was depicted as the default of class warfare, whereas Plato's point here is that his system would do away with class warfare.
Don't get into a passion: to see our statesmen trying their nostrums, and fancying that they can cut off at a blow the Hydra-like rogueries of mankind, is as good as a play. (Jowett 1875: 41)
Relevant for the figure of the Hydra (cf. Skedzielewski 2020: 332).
Our second virtue is courage, which we have no difficulty in finding in another class - that of soldiers. Courage may be defined as a sort of salvation - salvation of the opinions which law and education have prescribed concerning dangers. (Jowett 1875: 43)
"I mean that courage is a sort of preservation. [...] of the belief, inculcated by the law through education, about what things, and what sorts of things, inspire terror." (429c-d)
There are in cities whole classes - of women, slaves and the like - who correspond to the worse, and a few only to the better; and in our State the former class are held under control by the latter. Now to which of these classes does temperance belong? 'To both of them.' And in any state temperance dwells, that must be ours; and we were right in describing temporance as a harmony which is diffused through the whole, making the dwellers in the city to be of our mind, and uniting the upper and middle and lower classes like the strings of an instrument, whether you suppose them to differ in wisdom, strength or money. This unity, in whatever way acquired, is called temperance. (Jowett 1875: 44)
Temperance is, somehow, the better and worse both agreeing that the better should rule the worse: "this unanimity is temperance - this concord between the naturally worse and the naturally better, about which of the two should rule both in the city and in each individual" (432a) - I'd really like to see some secondary literature picking this apart because it's simultaneously one of the most interesting points in the whole treatise due to its pythagorean connotations and one of the weakest and suspect justifications for the philosophers' rule.
The definition here given of justice is verbally the same as one of the definitions given of temperance in the Charmides (162 A), which however is only provisional, and is afterwards rejected. The temperance and justice of the Republic may be disinguished as follows: - temperance is the virtue of a part only, justice of the whole soul. Temperance is one of three virtues, justice is universal virtue: temperance is the harmony of discordant elements; justice is the perfect order by which all natures and classes do their own business, the right man in the right place, the division and co-operation of all the citizens. (Jowett 1875: 45)
Noted. Otherwise Jowett is attempting to formulate desegregation and integration (cf. Demos 1964: 395-396).
...Socrates is now going to identify the individual and the State. But first he must prove that there are three parts of the individual soul. His argument is as follows: - Quantity makes no difference in quality. The word 'just,' whether applied to the individuar or the State, has the same meaning. And the term 'justice' implied that the same three principles in the State and in the individual were doing their own business. (Jowett 1875: 46)
Objectively dubious, but also quite possibly one of the first known instances of the "isomorphism" between an individual and the State (the soul and the city).
Having cleared our ideas thus far, let us return to the original instance of thirst, which has a definite object - drink. Now the thirsty soul may feel two distinct impluses; the animal one saying, Drink; the rational one, which says, Do not drink, and is in direct contradiction to the former. Here are two contradictory acts of the soul; the one derived from reason, the other from desire; these two then are proved to be distinct principles in the soul. Is passion a third principle or, as our first impression may lead us to suppose, akin to desire? (Jowett 1875: 47)
After reading Book X and the river of Oblivion, this illustration about thirst does not appear as innocuous as it did upon first reading.
Lovers of wine and lovers of ambition also desire their objects in every form. Now here comes the point: - The philosopher too is a lover of knowledge in every form; he has an insatiable curiosity. 'But will curiosity make a philosopher? Are they to be called philosophers who let our their eyes and ears at every Dionysiac festival in country as well as town?' Those are not true philosophers, I said, but only an imitation. 'Then how are we to describe the true?' (Jowett 1875: 57)
Mere curiosity in itself is not enough. (The true philosopher is interested in forms.)
And these few, when they have tasted the pleasures of philosophy, and taken a look at that den of thieves and place of wild beasts, which is human life, will go out of the world and stand aside from the storm under the shelter of a wall, and try to preserve their own innocence and to depart in peace. 'A great work, too, will have been accomplished by them.' Great, yes, but not the greatest; for man is a social being, and can only attain the highest development in the society which is best suited to him. (Jowett 1875: 63)
We live in a society that is not best suited for the highest development of the philosopher.
Consider, again, that the many hate not the true but the false philosophers - the hirelings who are not the shepherds and who enter in by force, and are always speaking of persons and not of principles, which is the reverse of the philosophical spirit. Whereas the true philosopher has no time to think of the squabbles of men; his eye is fixed on the eternal order in accordance with which he moulds himself into the Divine image (and not himself only, but the characters of other men), and is the creator of the virtues private as well as public. (Jowett 1875: 64)
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
There is, I said; and bearing in mind ou rtwo suns or principles, imagine further their corresponding worlds - one of the visible, the other of the intelligible - you may assist your fancy by figuring the distinction under the image of a line divided into two unequal parts, and may again subdivide each part into two lesser segments representative of the stages of knowledge in either sphere. The lower half of the lower or visible sphere will consist of shadows and reflections, and the upper half of the same sphere will contain real objects in the world of nature or of art. The sphere of the intelligible will also have two divisions, - one of mathematics, in which there is no ascent but all is descent; no inquiry into premises, but only drawing of inferences. In this division the mind works with figures and numbers, the images of which are taken not from the shadows, but from the objects, although the truth of them is seen only with the mind's eye; and they are used without being analysed as hypotheses. Whereas in the other division reason uses the hypotheses as stages or steps in the ascent to the idea of good, to which she fastens them, and then again descends, walking firmly in the region of ideas, and of ideas only, in her ascent as well as descent, and finally resting in them. (Jowett 1875: 67)
So the two primary unequal parts of the divided line comprehend two spheres: one illuminated by the sun and thus visible; the other illuminated by The Good™. That they should be envisaged as spheres completely escaped me when I read it.
And now to those four divisions of knowledge you may assign four corresponding faculties - pure intelligence to the highest sphere; active intelligence to the second; to the third, faith; to the fourth, the perception of likenesses - and the clearness of the several faculties will be in the same ratio as the truth of the objects to which they are related. (Jowett 1875: 68)
Is pure intelligence the equivalent of Kant's Pure Reason?
The ideal of modern times hardly retains the simplicity of the antique; there is not the same originality either in truth or error which characterized the Greeks. The philosopher is no longer living in the unseen, nor is he sent by an oracle to convict mankind of ignorance; nor does he regard knowledge as a system of ideas leading upwards by regular stages to the idea of good. (Jowett 1875: 68)
Yeah, because knowledge being preordained in unchanging perfection somewhere out of our grasp is a pretty crazy notion. The ancients had no way of knowing what computer technology could become and do, just as we have yet very little idea of turbo-encabulators can do when it automatically synchronizes gardinal grammeters.
In a long argument words are apt to change their meaning slightly, or premises may be assumed or conclusions inferred with rather too much certainty or universality; the variation at each step may be unobserved, and yet at last the divergence becomes considerable. Hence the failure of attempts to apply arithmetical or algebraic formulae to logic. The imperfection, or rather the higher and more elastic nature of language, does not allow words to have the precision of numbers or of symbols. And this quality in language impairs the force of an argument which has many steps. (Jowett 1875: 69)
The elasticity of language doesn't sound half bad.
There is no difficulty in seeing that Plato's divisions of knowledge are based, first, on sthe fundamental antithesis of sensible and intellectual which pervades the whole pre-Socratic philosophy; in which is implied also the opposition of the permanent and transient, of the universal and particular. But the age of philosophy in which he lived seemed to require a further distinction; - numbers and figures were beginning to separate from ideas. The world could no longer regard justice as a cube, and was learning to see, though imperfectly, that the abstractions of sense were distinct from the abstractions of mind. Between the Eleatic being or essence and the shadows of phenomena, the Pythagorean philosophy of number found a place, and was, as Aristotle remarks, a conducting medium from one to the other (Metaph. 1, 6, 4). Yet the passage from one to the other is really imaginary. Moral philosophy has no connexion with mathematics; number and figure are the abstractions of time and space, not the expressions of purely intellectual conceptions. When divested of metaphor, a straight line or a square has no more to do with right and justice than a crooked line with vice. The figurative association was mistaken for a real one; and thus the three latter divisions of the Platonic scheme were constructed. (Jowett 1875: 72)
A very specific take on the Pythagorean influence in Plato's philosophy. This comes across as an attempt to explain why numbers and figures take on an intermediary position on Plato's divided line.
There is more difficult in comprehending how he arrived at the first term of the series, which is nowhere else mentioned, and has no reference to anything else in his system. Nor indeed does relation of shadows to objects correspond to the relation of numbers to ideas. Probably Plato has been led by the love of analogy (cp. Timaeus, p. 32 B) to make four terms instead of three, although the objects perceived in both divisions of the lower sphere are equally objects of sense. He is also preparing the way, sa his manner is, for the shadows of images at the beginning of the seventh book, and the imitation of an imitation in the tenth. The line may be regarded as reaching from unity to infinity, and is divided into two unequal parts, and subdivided into two more; each lower sphere is the multiplication of the preceding. Of the four faculties, faith in the lower division has an intermediate position, contrasting equally with the vagueness of the perception of shadows (εἰκασία) and the higher certainty of understanding (διάνοια) and reason (νοῦς). (Jowett 1875: 73)
Very interesting: the shadows on the line are unique to the Republic. This may explain why some treatments I've come across try to reduce the four to three - but at the expense of the dianoetic numbers and figures.
There is a further lesson taught by this parable of ours. Some persons fancy that instruction is like giving eyes to the blind, but we say that the faculty of sight was always there, and that the soul only requires to be turned round towards the light. And this is conversion; other virtues are almost like bodily habits, and may be acquired in the same manner, but intelligence has a diviner life, and is indestructible, turning either to good or evil according to the direction given. Did you never observe how the soul of a clever rogue peers out of his eyes, and the more clearly he sees, the more evil he does? Now if you take such an one and circumcise his passions, and cut away from him the leaden weights which drag him down and keep the eye of his soul fixed upon the ground, the same faculty in him will be turned round, and he will behold the truth as clearly as he now discerns his meaner ends. And have we not decided that our rulers must neither be so uneducated as to have no fixed rule of life, nor so over-educated as to be unwilling to leave their paradise for the business of the world? (Jowett 1875: 75)
This part I also enjoyed because it formulates the parts of the soul as a dynamic of rotating towards or away from the divine light. It implies that the money-lover and the honour-lover are not unintelligent but merely oriented towards the wrong thing, looking down instead of up.
But I am not speaking of these practical applications of arithmetic, for number, in my view, is rather to be regarded as a conductor to thought and being. I will explain what I mean by the last expression: - Things sensible are of two kinds; the one class irritate the mind, while in the other the mind acquiesces. Now the irritating class are the things which suggest contrast and relation. For example, suppose that I hold up to the eyes three fingers - a fore finger, a middle finger, a little finger - the sight equally recognizes all three fingers, but cannot distinguish which is first, second, or third. Or again, suppose two objects to be relatively great and small, these ideas of greatness and smallness are supplied not by the sense, but by the mind. And the perception of their contrast or relation quickens and sets in motion the mind, which is puzzled by the confused intimations of sense, and has recourse to number in order to find out whether the things indicated are one or more than one. Number replies that they are two and not one, and are to be distinguished from one another. Again, the sight beholds great and small, but only in a confused chaos, and not until they are distinguished does the question arise of their respective natures, leading on to the distinction between the visible and intellectual. And that wsa what I meant when I spoke of irritants to the intellect; I was thinking of the contradictions which arise in perception. (Jowett 1875: 77)
I'm still not getting the point of this. Only a vague inkling that this has something to do with why the pythagoreans considered uneven better than even: three fingers are just three fingers, whereas two fingers calls for their comparison. Or something like that.
Any one who is the least of a mathematician is aware that the present mode of pursuing these studies is mean and ridiculous; they are made to look downwards to the arts, and not upwards to eternal existence. (Jowett 1875: 78)
The parmenidian switcheroo: that which actually exists is a mere reflection, real existence is eternal and untouchable.
These empirics are not the people of whom I am speaking; I refer rather to the Pythagorean harmonists, whom we were about to consult. Their error is, that they investigate only the [|] numbers of the consonances which are heard, and ascend no higher, - of the true numerical harmony which is unheard, and is only to be found in problems, they have not even a conception. 'That last,' he said, 'must be a marvellous thing.' A thing of value, I replied, if pursued with a view to the good - if pursued in any other spirit, useless. (Jowett 1875: 79-80)
From what I've gathered about the Pythagoreans, this seems highly suspect.
And thus we get four names - two for intellect and two for opinion, - reason or mind, understanding, faith, perception of likenesses, which make a proportion - being : generation :: intellect : opinion - and knowledge : faith :: opinion : perception of likenesses. (Jowett 1875: 81)
Aside from the order being reverse from what I'm accustomed with, this doesn't seem to stack up: why does faith switch around from the sensible to the intelligible realm?
But while acknowledging their value in education, he sees also that they have no connexion with our higher moral and intellectual ideas. In the attempt which Plato makes to connect them, we easily trace the influences of the old Pythagorean notions. There is no reason to suppose that he is speaking of the ideal numbers at p. 525 E; but he is describing numbers which are pure abstractions, to which he assigns a real and separate existence, which, 'Aas the teachers of the art' (meaning probably the Pythagoreans) would have affirmed, repel all attempts at subdivision, and in which unity and every other number are conceived of as absolute. The truth and certainty of numbers, when thus disengaged from phenomena, gave them a kind of sacredness in the eyes of an ancient philosopher. Nor is it easy to say how far ideas of order and fixedness may have had a moral and elevating influence on the minds of men, 'who,' in the words of the Timaeus, 'might learn to regulate their erring lives according to them.' It is worthy of remark that the old Pythagorean ethical symbols still exist as figures of speech among ourselves. And those who see in modern times the world pervaded by universal law, may also see a faith anticipation of this last word of modern philosophy in the Platonic idea of good, which is the source and measure of all things, and yet only an abstraction. (Jowett 1875: 86)
Pythagorean numbers are indivisible, have symbolic meanings, and are in some vague sense divine. Their ethical symbols - e.g. 'everything is common between friends', 'stay off the beaten path', etc. - have indeed become common figures of speech.
Such is the Muses' answer to our question. 'And a true answer; for how can the answer of the Muses be other than true? - What more have the Muses to say?' They say that the two races, the iron and brass, and the silver and gold, will draw the State different ways; - the one to trade and moneymaking, and the others having the true riches and needing no other, will resist them - there will be a contest, which will end in a compromise; they will have private property, and will enslave their fellow-citizens who were once their friends and nurturers. But they will retain their warlike character, and their chief occupation will be to make war, and to control their subjects. This is the origin of that middle state which is intermediate between aristocracy and oligarchy. (Jowett 1875: 90)
History has shown that the two classes - the haves and the have-nots - are distinguished rather by the supposedly 'silver and gold' people amassing as much wealth as possible while the 'iron and brass' barely make ends meet. In other words, reality has turned out as if the lower classes love money as a means to their ends, but the higher classes, which should be above money-loving, love money even more so as if it were an end in itself.
Plato describes with a sort of amusement the follies of democracy, of which the political condition is reflected in social life. He conceives democracy as a state of individualism or dissolution; in which every one is doing what is right in his own eyes. Of a people animated by a common spirit of liberty, rising as one man to repel the Persian host, which is the leading idea of democracy in Herodotus and Thucydides, he never seems to think. (Jowett 1875: 101)
This once again makes me think of Putin the tyrant, whose two-decade effort has been to undermine Western democracy and demonstrate that it is a farce, only to be left flacid when the whole free world unites against him.
Each of these governments and individuals has a corresponding ethical gradation: the ideal State is under the rule of reason, not extinguishing but harmonising the passions, and training them in virtue; in the timocracy and the timocratic man one virtue still remains, but has superseded all the rest: the constitution, whether of the State or of the individual, is based, first, upon courage, and secondly, upon the love of honour, which is hardly a virtue. In thes econd stage of decline the virtues have altogether disappeared, and the love of gain has succeeded to them; in the third stage, or democracy, the various passions are allowed to have free play, and the virtues and vices are impartially cultivated. But this freedom, which leads to many curious extravagances of character, is in reality only a state of weakness and dissipation. (Jowett 1875: 102)
For me, this really points out the uniqueness of Charles Fourier's project of harmonizing the passions by allowing them free play.
The eight book of the Republic abounds in pictures of life and fanciful allusions; the use of metaphorical language is carried to a greater extent than anywhere else in Plato. We may remark, first, the description of the two nations in one, which become more and more divided, as in the feudal ages, and perhaps in our own times, so also among the Greeks; the notion of democracy expressed in a sort of Pythagorean formula as equality among unequals; the free and easy ways of men and animals, which are characteristic of liberty, as foreign mercenaries and universal mistrust are of the tyrant. (Jowett 1875: 102)
Good to know. I wouldn't have thought that the use of metaphorical language and these fanciful stories are that rare in Plato's writings but if someone who translated all of them says this...
Plato begins by speaking of a perfect or cyclical number (cp. Tim. 39 D; i.e. a number in which the sum of the divisors equals the whole); this is the divine or perfect number in which all lesser cycles or revolutions are complete; he also speaks of a human or imperfect number, having four terms and three intervals of numbers which are related to one another as roots to powers, and which he describes as assimilating and dissimilating, waxing and waning; in the latter half of the passage he finds certain proportions, which give two harmonies, the one square the other oblong; but he does not say that the square number answers to the divine, or the oblong number to the human cycle. (Jowett 1875: 104)
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10; the square and oblong still mysterious.
The discovery of the riddle would be useless, and would throw no light on ancient mathematics. The point of interest is that Plato should have used such a symbol, and that so much of the Pythagorean spirit should have existed in his age. His general meaning is, that divine creation is perfect, and represented or presided over by a perfect or cyclical number; human generation is imperfect, and represented or presided over by an imperfect number or series of numbers. The nmuber 5040, which is the number of the State in the Laws, is expressly based by him on utilitarian grounds, namely, the convenience of the number for division; but in this passage he is thinking of Pythagorean symbols and not of utility. The contrast of the perfect and imperfect number may have been easily suggested by the corresponds and imperfect number may have been easily suggested by the corrections of the cycle, which were made first by Meton and secondly by Callippus; (the latter is said to have been a pupil of PLato). (Jowett 1875: 107)
I'm not surprised.
Well then, I fancy that he will live amid revelries and harlotries, and love will dwell in the house, lod and master of all that is therein. (Jowett 1875: 109)
Sounds like a psychedelic rock band from the 1970s.
Many desires require much money; he spends all that he has and borrows more, and when he has nothing the young ravens are still in the nest in which they were hatched, crying for food. Love, whose attendants they are, sets them on; and they must be gratified by force or fraud, or if not, they become painful and troublesome; [...] Love, attended by the enfranchised lusts, gets the better of the thoughts of his youth, and he becomes always in life and reality the monster that he was sometimes in sleep. Love is his only lord, under the rule of whom he is strong in all violence and lawlessness; ready for any deed of daring that will supply the wants of his rabble-rout, whether coming from without or generated within. (Jowett 1875: 109)
The weirdest take on "love" I've seen yet. Though at least it's still there in Firstness, where it should be according to Aesara, but hidden as a monster attended by desires and lusts.
And is not our tyrant such an imprisoned, captive soul, who is made up of fears and loves, who has a swarm of passions which he is incapable of indulging; living indoors always like a woman, and being jealous of those who have the freedom of going about and seeing the world? (Jowett 1875: 111)
Without the historical context that Athenian women used to be kept indoors like in the most restrictive Islamic societies, this comes off as supremely weird: them women do be having a roof over their heads every night.
This is our first proof. The second is derived from the three kinds of pleasure, which answer to the three divisions of the soul - reason, passion, desire; under which last may be comprehended avarice as well as sensual appetite, while passion may be said to include ambition, party-feeling, love of reputation. Reason, on the other hand, is solely directed to the attainment of truth, and may be truly described as a lover of knowledge and wisdom, careless of money and reputation. In accordance with the difference of men's natures, one of these three principles is in the ascendant - love of wisdom, love of honour, love of grain, having theri several pleasures corresponding to them. (Jowett 1875: 112)
(1) desire - love of gain; avarice, sensual appetite; (2) passion - love of honour; ambition, party-feeling, love of reputation; (3) reason - love of knowledge and wisdom; the attainment of truth.
Twice has just man overthrown the unjust - once more, as in an Olympian contest, first offering up a prayer to the saviour Zeus, let him try to fall. A wise man whispers to me that the pleasures of the wise are true and pure; all others are a shadow only. (Jowett 1875: 113)
The motif of shadows again.
For when we stumble, we should not like children set up a cry, holding the part affected in our hands, but we sholud be up and doing, not making a lament but finding a cure. The better part is ready to follow the suggestion of reason, while the irrational principle is full of grief and sorrow at the recollection. And in this irrational part are found the chief materials of the imitative arts. For reason is ever in repose and cannot easily be displayed, especially to a mixed multitude who have no experience of her. Thus the poet is like the painter in two ways: first he paints an inferior degree of truth, and secondly, he is concerned with an inferior part of the soul. He indulges the feelings, while he enfeebles the reason; and we refused to allow him to have authority over the mind of man; for he has no measure of greater and less, and is a maker of images and very far gone from truth. (Jowett 1875: 122)
Where before stood desires (and lust and love) now stand feelings (particularly negative feelings - grief and sorrow).
If the natural inherent evil of the soul be unable to destroy the soul, hardly will anything else destroy her. But the soul which cannot be destroyed either by internal or external evil must last for ever, and if lasting for ever, must be immortal. Now if this be true, souls will always exist in the same number. They cannot diminish, because they cannot be destroyed; nor yet increase, for then all would become immortal. Neither is the soul variable and diverse; for that which is eternal must be of the fairest composition. (Jowett 1875: 124)
Is it ten billion?
At the extremity there was the distaff of Necessity, on which all the heavenly bodies turnd; - the hook and spindle were of adamant, and the whorl of a mixed substance. (Jowett 1875: 126)
The spindle of Necessity. Should feed the description on these pages to GPT 4 and see what images it paints.
When all the souls had chosen they went to Lachesis, who sent with each of them their genius or attendant to fulfil their lot. He first of all brought them under the hand of Clotho, who drew them within the revolution of the spindle impelled by her hand; for her they were carried to Atropos, who made the threads irreversible; whence, without [|] turning round, they passed beneath the throne of Necessity; and when they had all passed, they moved on in scorching heat through the desert to the river Ameles (Neglicence), the water of which could not be retained in any vessel; of this they had all to drink a certain quantity - some of them drank more than was required, and he who drank forgot all things. Er himself was prevented from drinking. When they had gone to rest, about the middle of the night there were thunderstorms and earthquakes, and suddenly they were all driven diverse ways, shooting like stars to their birth. (Jowett 1875: 128-129)
Even the river Lethe has a different name here.
The things that are seen are opposed in Scripture to the things that are unseen - they are equally opposed in Plato to universals and ideas; all particulars, according to Plato, have a taint of error and even of evil. There is no difficulty in seeing that this is an illusion; for there is no more error and evil in an individual man, horse, bed, &c., than in the class men, horse, bed, &c.; nor is the truth which is displayed in individual instances less certain than that which is conveyed through the medium of ideas. But Plato, who is deeply impressed with the real importance of universals as instruments of thought, attributes to them an essential truth which is imaginary and unreal, for universals may be often false and particulars true. Had Plato attained to any clear conception of the individual, which is the synthesis of the universal and the particular, or had he been able to distinguish between opinion and sensation, which the ambiguity of the words δόξα, φαίνεσθαι, εἰκὸς and the like, tended to confuse, he would not have denied truth to the particulars of sense. (Jowett 1875: 132)
I hate that this talk of universals is starting to make sense.
Yet Plato has admitted that the soul may be so overgrown by vice as to lose her own nature, and in the Republic, and still more in the Timaeus, he recognizes the influence which the body has over the mind; in the latter he denies even the voluntariness of human actions, on the ground that they proceed from physical states (Tim. 86). (Jowett 1875: 134)
Human actions are involuntary??
The vision of another world is ascribed to Er, the son of Armenius, who is said by Clement of Alexandria to have been Zoroaster. The tale has certainly an oriental character, and may be compared with the pilgrimages of the soul in the Zend Avesta. But no trace of acquaintance with Zoroaster is found elsewhere in Plato's writings, and there is no reason for giving him the name of Er, the Pamphylian. There is no real evidence that the philosophy of Heraclitus was derived from Zoroaster and the East, and still less the myths of Plato. (Jowett 1875: 134)
Reminiscent of how some ancient thought, for whatever reason, that Pythagoras and Zoroaster must have been contemporaries. The error became apparent much later, and some are still naively about it in the 20th century still.
The description is both a picture and an orrery. The column of light is probably not the milky way, which is neither straight, nor like a rainbow, but the imaginary axis of the earth. This is compared to the rainbow in respect not of form but of colour, and not to the undergirders of a trireme, but to the straight rope running from prow to stern in which the undergirders meet. (Jowett 1875: 135)
Like an elecromagnetic shaft piercing the Earth as if it were a spinning top (Kreisel).
There still remain to be considered some points which have been intentionally reserved to the end: first, the Janus-like character of the Republic, which presents two faces - one, an Hellenic state, the other, a kingdom of philosophers. Connected with the latter of the two aspects are (2) the paradoxes of the Republic, as they have been termed by [|] Morgenstern: (α) the community of property; (β) of families; (γ) the rule of philosophers; (δ) the analogy of the individual and the State, which, like some other analogies in the Republic, is carried too far. We may then proceed to consider (3) the subject of education as conceived by Plato, bringing together in a general view the education of youth and the education of after life; lastly, (4) some light may be thrown on the Republic of Plato by his imitators; and hence we may take occasion to consider the nature and value of political ideals. (Jowett 1875: 136-137)
I'm assuming that Jowett left the best for last.
Plato expressly says that he is intending to found an Hellenic State (Book Vi. 470). The germs of many things in the Republic are Spartan, such as the prohibition of money, the military caste of the rulers, the training of youth in military exercises. And in Sparta a nearer approach was made than in any other Greek State to equality of the sexes and community of property. To the Spartan type the ideal State reverts in the first decline; and the character of the individual timocrat is borrowed from the Spartan citizen. The love of Lacadaemon not only affected Plato and Xenophon, but was shared by many undistinguished Athenians; there they seemed to find a principle of order which was wanting in their own democracy. (Jowett 1875: 137)
Calls to mind that instance of Socrates saying that the Spartans only pretend to be slow or dumb to gain the advantage - showing an intellectual reverence towards them (not merely military or economic).
But he has not yet found out the truth which he afterwards enunciated in the Laws - that he was a better [|] legislator who made men to be of one mind, than he who trained them for war. (Jowett 1875: 137-138)
Contemporary events chiming in: he is a better president who can unite a nation and bring in all the world's aid, than he who militarizes his society and attacks his neighbour unprovoked.
The citizens, as in other Hellenic States, democratic as well as aristogratic, are really an upper class; for, although no mention is made of slaves, the lower classes are allowed to fade away into the distance, and are represented in the individual by the passions. Plato has no idea either of a social State in which all classes are harmonised, or of a federation of the world in which different nations have a place. His city is equipped for war rather than for peace, and this would seem to be justified by the ordinary condition of Hellenic States. (Jowett 1875: 138)
Regrettable. Especially because he does indeed touch upon the harmony between the classes with temperance, but formulates it as the agreement that 'the better' should rule. The poorest workers merely being satisfied with their lot and not grumbling is not exactly the societal ideal.
But there is another thread of gold or silk which is also interwoven with the work; the Republic is not only a Dorian State, buta Pythagorean order. The way of life which was connected with the name of Pythagoras, like the modern monastic orders, showed the power which the mind of an individual might exercise over his contemporaries, and might naturally suggest to Plato the possibility of reviving such 'mediaeval institutions.' Like the Pythagoreans, he would have enforced a rule of life, and a moral and intellectual training. The influence ascribed to music, which to us seems exaggerated, is also a Pythagorean feature, and is not to be regarded as representing the real influence of music in Hellas. The unity of the State and the division into castes also contain traces of Pythagoreanism. And similar traces are found in his mystical number, in his expression of the interval between the king and the tyrant, in the doctrine of transmigration, in the music of the spheres, as well as in the great though secondary importance ascribed to mathematics in education, and in the harmony pervading art and nature. (Jowett 1875: 138)
Yes! This is what I'm here for. The Republic argues for a social structure very much like that established by Pythagoras in his school at Croton (according to Iamblichus): "the political, economic and legislative Pythagoreans" (Iamblichus 1818: 48). Or: the economic producers, the political guardians and the legislative philosophers.
Nothing actually existing in the world at all resembles [|] Plato's ideal State; nor does he himself imagine that such a State is possible. This he repeats again and again; first in the Laws (Book V. 739), where, casting a glance back on the Republic, he admits that the perfect state of communism and philosophy is unattainable in the present state of the world, though still to be retained as a pattern. The same doubt is implied in the earnestness with which he argues in the Republic (Book V. 472 D) that ideals are none the worse because they cannot be realized in fact, and in the chorus of laughter, like 'the letting out of water,' which, as he anticipates, will greet the mention of his proposals, though like other writers of fiction, he uses all his art to give reality to his inventions. (Jowett 1875: 138-139)
Yuh. Even if you have no idea of what fully automated luxury gay space communism could mean, you may imagine humanity at some point reaching its "Star Trek" potential.
Niebuhr has asked a trifling question, which may be briefly noticed in this place - Was Plato a good citizen? [...] The truth is, that the question has hardly any meaning when applied to a great philosopher whose writings are not meant for a particular age and country, but for all time and all mankind. The decline of Athenian politics was probably the motive which led Plato to frame an ideal State, and the Republic may be regarded as reflecting the departing glory of Hellas. (Jowett 1875: 139)
In this regard Plato has indeed approached the One - the immovable, the unchangeable, etc. - because I'm reading the Republic ~2352 years after the fact and it will most likely be read for hundreds and thousands of years to come, every one comparing their own ideals with that one Greek. In that narrow sense it was a great success. One for the ages.
As well might we complain of St. Augustin, whose great work 'The City of God' originated in a similar motive, for not being loyal to the Roman Empire; or even a nearer parallel might be afforded by the first Christians, who cannot fairly be charged with being bad citizens because, though subject to the higher powers, they were looking forward to a city which is in heaven. (Jowett 1875: 139)
I gather that The City of God is ~3-4 times longer than the Republic in its English translation. And I assume that Plato's references to gods and the divine are not nearly as annoying as Augustine's Manichean good vs evil.
The first paradox is the community of goods, which is mentioned slightly at the end of the Third Book, and seemingly, as Aristotle observes, is confined to the guardians; at least no mention is made of the other classes. But the omission is not of any real significance, and probably arises out of the plan of the work, which prevents the writer from entering into details. (Jowett 1875: 140)
Indeed it is. Or, rather, to the guardians (auxiliaries) and the philosophers. Those geniuses won't have time to learn to cobble shoes. As to the commone merchant people it is somewhat debatable. According to Plato they should fend for themselves - otherwise would they have the initiative to quit the drink and get to work - but then again in an ideal harmonious society, even the lowest producer would have his or hers guaranteed minimum covered, because having enough to be sustained and having enough to hold parties does not the same make. There's very much a "welfare queen" type false argument in Plato's opposition to the crafts-workers having any leisure. Whereas, I'm sure present and future generations will readily recognize that, even the lowliest worker might need some downtime, especially because of the lowly work they have to do. Like, damn, be human, about this. Your 8 hours of conference calls will never be more physically exhausting than 8 hours of hard labour, no matter how you try to spin it.
Aristotle censures the community of property much in the spirit of modern political economy, as tending to repress industry, and as doing away with the spirit of benevolence. Modern writers almost refuse to consider the subject, which is supposed to have been long ago settled by the common opinion of mankind. (Jowett 1875: 140)
It is amazing how stable this argument has remained: without private property no-one would do any work because humans are only motivated by selfish desires.
But these poetical ideals had no counterpart in actual life. The Athenian woman was in no respect the equal of her husband; she was not the entertainer of his guests or the mistress of his house, but only his housekeeper and the mother of his children. (Jowett 1875: 143)
What one modern philosopher called his "bang-maid".
We find with some surprise (not unlike the feeling which Aristotle in a well-known passage describes the hearers of Plato's lectures as experiencing, when they went to a discourse on the idea of good, expecting to be instructed in moral truths, and received instead of them arithmetical and mathematical formulae) that Plato does not propose for his future legislators any study of finance or law or military tactics, but only of abstract mathematics, as a preparation for the still more abstract conception of good. We ask, with Aristotle, what is the use of a man knowing the idea of good, if he does not know and has never understood what is good for this man, this state, this condition of society? We do not understand how Plato's legislators or guardians are to be fitted for their work of statesmen by the bares tudy of the five mathematical sciences. Nothing can appear to modern ideas more inappropriate or absurd. (Jowett 1875: 147)
Why study ideas and figures when images and reflections exist?
To the Christian, or to the modern thinker in general, it is difficult if not impossible to attach reality to what he terms mere abstraction; whereas to Plato this very abstraction is the truest and most real of all things. Hence, from a difference in forms of thought, Plato appears to be resting on a creation of his own mind only. But if we may be allowed to paraphrase the idea of good by the words 'intelligent principle of law and order in the universe, embracing equally man and nature,' we find a meeting point between him and ourselves. (Jowett 1875: 149)
That two and two make four is the unchanging, unmoving, etc.
He lives more and more within the circle of his own party, as th eworld without him becomes stronger. This seems to be the reason why the old order of things makes so poor a figure when confronted with the new, why churches can never rform, why most political changes are made blindly and convulsively. The great crises in the history of nations have often been met by a sort of feminine positiveness, and a more obstinate reassertion of principles which have lost their hold upon a nation. The fixed ideas of a reactionary statesman may be compared to madness; he grows more and more convinced of the truth of his notions as he becomes more isolated, and would rather await the inevitable than in any degree yield to circumstances. (Jowett 1875: 150)
Damn. What is conservativism?
