Philosopher-Kings

Reeve, C. D. C. 2006. Philosopher-Kings: The Argument of Plato's Republic. Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

A third interpretive myth is that the Republic preaches totalitarianism, that the ideal city or Kallipolis it describes is a police state, closed to all innovation or freedom of thought, in which an alienated and brainwashed majority are forced by a brainwashed military police to obey social rules into whose purposes they have no insight, these being handed down by an elite group of overtrained intellectuals who systematically lie so that [|] they can spend as much time as possible doing abstract philosophy. Few Plato scholars subscribe to this myth. But outside the ranks of specialists, it is as widespread and resilient as the other two. (Reeve 2006: xii-xiii)

Popper & Co.

Chapter 3 deals with psychology. It is the pivotal chapter. For, in my view, Plato's theory of the psyche, especially his account of the variety of desires, is the royal highroad to understanding his metaphysics and epistemology, and to seeing how the Republic as a whole is composed. (Reeve 2006: xiii)

This works for me. His psychology is mostly what I'm interested in.

1. A problem about justice

He argues that only wisdom or knowledge is a genuine virtue on the grounds that it alone is always beneficial and advantageous to its possessor (Meno 87c10-89a5; Protagoras 351b4-364a4). This is his paradoxical doctrine that virtue is knowledge. It ihas a consequence his doctrine of the unity of the virtues, according to which all the virtues are forms of wisdom. Socrates also argues that no one ever does what he knows or believes to be other than the best by arguing against the standard view that knowledge or belief can be overcome by desire (3.4). In this way he supports his equally paradoxical doctrine that akrasia, or weakness of will, is impossible. (Reeve 2006: 5)

Hence why this exact problem has accumulated such a vast body of literature and special terminology (cf. e.g. Bononich 1994).

Nor is this the only occasion on which Plato tips his hand. All of socrates' arguments against Polemarchus, with the exception of one (334c1-335a10), make use of the craft analogy (332d2-3). But that analogy is suspect. And Plato indicates this by making one of Socrates' arguments (333e1-334b6) point us to its most glaring flaw. A craft is a capacity for opposites. It enables its possessor to do both good and bad things. The doctor knows how to cure, but ipso facto he knows how to kill as well. A virtue, on the other hand, can result only in good things. A virtuous person cannot perform vicious acts. Precisely on this ground Aristotle will later reject the idea that virtues are crafts (Nicomachean Ethics 1129a11-17). (Reeve 2006: 8)

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

If Thrasymachus is right, then being just is primarily a property of laws or political institutions, and only derivatively a propoerty of the actions that are in accord with those laws. This, as we shall see, is the theoretically significant difference between Thrasymachus' account of justice and that of Polemarchus (1.12). (Reeve 2006: 11)

This is something I noticed myself. It's part of the appeal in his argument. Socrates himself seems to take it up as he argues for the justice of the whole polis.

On this showing, Thrasymachus' entire argument is based on a daring and insightful theory of the polis as a kind of exploitation machine in which both social behaviour and the standards by which it is evaluated are arranged by those who have the power to rule so as to benefit themselves. (Reeve 2006: 15)

Thrasymachus the proto-Marxist.

Each of these interlocutors is an unsuitable candidate for elenctic examination. Indeed, each reveals a different limitation of it. Cephalus shows that it is inappropriate for use on older people with settled characters. His son Polemarchus shows that it is unsuitable for use on the young. Thrasymachus shows that it is unsuitable for use on those who refuse to answer by stating their own beliefs, or who distinguish their own strengths and weaknesses in dialectical argument from the strengths and weaknesses of their theories. (Reeve 2006: 22)

In other words, (1) the young, (3) the old, and (2) the militant (cf. Cornford 1912: 254-255).

He begins by introducing a subtle and complex triadic classification of goods, which, like his discussion of Thrasymachus' theory, shows him to be familiar with philosophy (475a6-476a6, 504e7-505b4, 507a7-b10). Crucial to this triadic classification is a dyadic distinction between wanting something for its own sake and wanting it for the sake of its apobainonta, or, as I shall put it, for a reason that will become clear in 1.11, for the sake of its Glauconic consequences (or G-consequences). (Reeve 2006: 24)

This I like - good for itself vs good for something else - but once again mostly because it reappears in Iamblichus' Pythagorean Life.

Finally, Glaucon and Adeimantus identify being just with a property possessed primarily by psyches (1.9). The ydo not know what property it is, but they have no doubt about what sort of property it is. It will emerge that these identifications are characteristic of the sort made by people of the different psychological types to which the interlocutors belong, and that Cephalus and Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, and Glaucon and Adeimantus are, in some respects at least, our introduction to the money-lovers, honour-lovers, and wisdom-lovers - the producers, guardians, and philosopher-kings - who are the true, if submerged, dramatis personae of the Republic. (Reeve 2006: 35)

Would like to find out which one exemplifies which psychological type and why exactly.

A person's needs, desires, and interests are in part determined by the natural lottery, in part by his education and upbringing, and in part by his actual social conditions. They also depend on his beliefs about what he is, and about what the world and its contents are, beliefs which themselves depend to a large extent on his needs, desires, and interests. For finding out about the world is itself a project set by desire. (Reeve 2006: 36)

Naively: (1) needs - food, drink, sex; (2) desires - honor, glory, victory; (3) interests - pertaining knowledge.

These different natures are of three primary types: money-lovers, honour-lovers, and wisdom-lovers, or philosophers. Each is ruled, or has his ultimate goal determined by, the desires in one of the three parts of the psyche: appetite, aspiration, and reason. Each has his own distinctive pleasure, his own peculiar Weltanschauung. (Reeve 2006: 36)

"Aspiration" is new. (And once again the intermediate term is the most variable.)

If he is a philosopher, this psyche will be his own. But if he si a money-lover or honour-lover, it will not. And this is where the Kallipolis plays a crucial rôle. Money-lovers and honour-lovers can achieve what is for them real justice and real happiness only in a polis ruled by just philosophers. But then philosophers can themselves become reliably just and happy only in such a polis. So everyone is better off in the Kallipolis than out of it. (Reeve 2006: 37)

Each of the three classes can achieve their maximal justice and happiness in the ideal city.

2. Epistemology and metaphysics

I begin, however, not with epistemology and metaphysics, but with a strand of Plato's thought about the psyche, which leads, via his theory of education, to his views about knowledge and reality. By taking this less travelled road I hope to avoid some of the traffic of controversy that crowds the major highways, and throw new light on ancient problems. (Reeve 2006: 43)

Keep off the beaten path.

Besides distributing desires among the three parts of the psyche, Plato also divides them into two fundamental kinds, necessary desires and unnecessary desires. Necessary desires are "[a] those we are unable to deny ... or [b] those whose satisfaction benefits us, for we are compelled by nature to satisfy them both" (558d11-43). Unnecessary desires are those "one could avoid if one trained oneself from youth to do so, which lead to no good, or indeed to the opposite" (559a3-6). Hence there are potentially as many as six different classes of desires: necessary and unnecessary appetites; necessary and unnecessary spirited desires; and necessary and unnecessary rational desires. We shall see that these underlie the classification of psychological types. (Reeve 2006: 44)

In any other case I would consider this doubling unnecessary, but with Plato it may very well be valid.

They also draw the boundaries between the two subspecies of necessary desires in different places: "In fact he [the philosophic man] calls these pleasures [those of making money or being honoured] really necessary [tōi onti anagkaias] because he would not want them if they were not necessary for life" (581e2-4). The clear implications is that the philosophic man treats some pleasures, and hence the desires whose satisfaction results in them (3.7), as necessary solely because they are essential to sustain life, while the money-lover and honour-lover (by implied contrast) treat these pleasures and desires as necessary because they think them beneficial apart from their rôle in sustaining life. They would want these desires and pleasures even if they were not necessary to sustain life; the philosopher would not. (Reeve 2006: 46)

Good point. For the money-lover and honour-lover these pleasures are ends in themselves, while the philosopher views them (money and war) as means to an end.

The account of the varieties of psychological types in Books 8 and 9 seems arbitrary and structureless. But once it is seen in the light of the division of desires, its underlying rationale emerges clearly. (Reeve 2006: 47)

Pretty much. I tried figuring out the connection between types of constitution and the three psychological types but didn't get very far.

The tyrannical person (571a1-576e2), who is the most pathological (3.8), is ruled by lawless unnecessary appetites: "Lust lives like a tyrant within him in complete anarchy and lawlessness [anomiai] as sole ruler" (571a1-2). He does not recognize even that external limit on his pursuit of more and more food, drink, and sex constituted by the taboos against homicide, cannibalism, and incest. In him, pleonexia, or the desire to have more and more without limit, rages unchecked. He is Thrasymachus' tyrant exposed gor what he really is (343e7-344c8, 348b8-350c11, 545a2-b1, 571a1-592b6). (Reeve 2006: 47)

"Pleonexia, sometimes called pleonexy, originating from the Greek πλεονεξία, is a philosophical concept which roughly corresponds to greed, covetousness, or avarice, and is strictly defined as "the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others."" (Wikipedia) - I might have to undertake a search for what else comes from Republic according to Wikipedia.

Each of these types, including the philosophic man who is not a philosopher-king (496d9-497c3), is pathological (we shall see why in 3.7). But in the Kallipolis a normal type corresponds to each of them. Corresponding to tyrannical, democratic, and oligarchic people are the producers (4.4); corresponding to timocratic people are the guardians (4.6, 4.8); corresponding to philosophic people are the philosopher-kings (4.7, 4.9). (Reeve 2006: 48)

Analogous to the many-headed monster, as opposed to the timocratic guardian lion and the philosopher-king human.

Because intelligence may be the same in people o fdifferent psychological types, but is focused on achieving different goals by the different sorts of desires which rule in their psyches. Platonic education is aimed primarily not at the transmission of information or at the inculcation of intellectual skills, but rather at the removal or moderation of as many of a person's unnecessary desires as his nature permits. (Reeve 2006: 50)

The problem is not that people are dumb, but that they are greedy and vain.

The forms of moderation (and the rest) referred to, being many, being in motion, and being visible, cannot be the unique, unchanging, nonvisible, Platonic form of it. Yet, since they are in particular things, and are called eidē, a word Plato also uses to refer to Platonic forms (596a5-b4), they seem to be properties of some sort. I shall call them modes. In addition to modes, the passage also recognizes images of them, which are also visible in particular moving and changing things. Since an image cannot [|] be of itself, and a form cannot be visible or moving, these images must be distinct from both modes and forms. I shall call these images qualities. (Reeve 2006: 52-63)

Forms = types; modes = tokens; qualities = qualia. Possibly (probably not).

The contents of the subsections of the Line are then as follows. In the first subsection of the visible (AD), we have qualities; in the second (DC), modes. In the first subsection of the intelligible (CE), we have figures; in the second (EB), forms. (Reeve 2006: 56)

(A) - Qualities - (D) - Modes - (C) - Figures - (E) - Forms - (B).

Now, as we have seen, each of these four types of properties has a different psychological power set over it, which makes use of it to do its own distinctive kind of work:

There are four canditions [pathēmata] in the psyche corresponding to the four subsections of the Line: dialectical-thougth [noēsin] for the highest; scientific-thought [dianoia] for the second; folk-wisdom [pistin] for the third; and perceptual-thought [eikasian] for the fourth. Put these in the due terms of a proportion, and consider that each has as much clarity as the contents of its particular section have a share in truth. (511d6-e4)

We shall soon have some idea what these powers actually are, and why I give them unfamiliar names. (Reeve 2006: 56)

Or, "understanding [noēsin] dealing with the highest, thought [dianoian] dealing with the second; assign belief [pistin] to the third, and imagination [eikasian] to the last" (511d-e).

First, the things they are set over are all systematically connected to a single thing, the good itself. Second, each of them is a complex power which consists of a cognitive component, intelligence (2.4), and a conative component, which is either an appetitive, a spirited, or a rational desire (2.20. The latter component focuses the former on the distinctive type of property the complex power itself is set over (2.12). Finally, each power is the complete psychological power, both cognitive and conative, of one of the psychological types we met in 2.2. The powers are not the component faculties of a single psyche, but the complete "mind frames" of psyches of different types. (Reeve 2006: 56)

I would not have expected to meet the term "conative" in this context but this is perfect.

The psychological powers of the inhabitants of the Cave appear on the visible section of the Line (AC). The bound cave-dwellers, who have received no appropriate Platonic education or training at all, have their intelligence focused by their ruling unnecessary appetites exclusively on images cast onto a screen. They are lovers of food, drink, and sex (2.12, 3.3-7), who exercise perceptual-thought. The entities they see are qualities.
The unbound cave-dwellers, whose unnecessary appetites have been curbed by training in a craft, have their intelligence focused by their ruling necessary appetites on models of men, animals, plants, and artifacts, [|] which are the originals of the images seen by their tethered colleagues. They are money-lovers, who exercise folk-wisdom. The entities they see are modes. (Reeve 2006: 56-57)

A fascinating distinction that struck me on the frontispiece-table: the money-lovers are placed a step above the lovers of food, drink and sex. They, as if, understand by way of folk-wisdom that money is in a sense a higher good than food, drink and sex. This would have profound implications for the class system: not every "commoner" is a money-lover. It also implies that the money-lover is somewhat more enlightened than the almost animalistic commoner who seeks only ends and not means to those ends.

Outside the Cave are those whose psychological powers appear on the intelligible section of the Lane. The bound daylight-dwellers, whose unnecessary appetites have been curbed by training in music and gymnastics, and whose unnecessary spirited desires have been curbed by systematic training in the mathematical sciences (4.8), have their intelligence focused by their ruling spirited desires on themen, animals, plants, and artifacts of which the unbound cave-dwellers see only models. They are honour-lovers, who exercise scientific-thought. The entities to which they have intellectual access are figures. (Reeve 2006: 57)

Here the parallels with the cage analogy become somewhat strained: how can these people (guardians) by simultaneously bound (the chains are down in the cave) and outside in the daylight?

It should now be clear why I have followed the common practice of translating noēsis as 'understanding', dianoia as 'reasoning', pistis as 'belief', and eikasia as 'imagination'. For these translations inevitably suggest that the powers in question are the component faculties of a single psyche. And this, as we have just seen, is not so. The coined terms I have employed instead - 'dialectical-thought', 'scientific-thought', 'folk-wisdom', and 'perceptual-thought' - are intended to avoid this suggestion and to dispel the illusion of understanding that familiar terms carry with them. (Reeve 2006: 58)

Avoiding the pitfall of viewing the parts of the soul as agents endowed with their own distinct abilities.

In the Meno, the crucial difference between true beliefs and knowledge is said to be that the former "run away from a person's mind" while the latter, being tethered by a "calculation [|] of the reason," is stable and immovable (97e2-98b5). In the Theatetus, knowledge is said to be "neither perception, nor true belief, nor true belief together with an acconut" (201c8-210b3). In the Timaeus, we are told that in addition to the fact that knowledge (nous) "can always give a true account," while true belief cannot, "the former is immovable by persuasion, but the other can be persuaded away" (51e2-6). And, of course, the doctrine is in the Republic, too. Those who possess only true belief are compared to "blind people who chance to follow the right road" (506c6-9), and those "who cannot distinguish in an account the good itself" and cannot "survive all refutation" are said not to know wha tit, or any other good, is (534b8-c5). (Reeve 2006: 71-72)

Somehow I managed to note down this exact passage (cf. 506c) but not notice this illustration.

It is possession of this dialectically defensible, unified theory that grants the dialectician access to the first principle of everything (511b3-c2). This first principle is the "greatest object of study [megiston mathēma]" - the good itself (505a2). (Reeve 2006: 76)

How much study does it require if it is unchanging, eternal, etc.?

But to those in the Cave qualities are difficult to distinguish from forms, poets are difficult to distinguish from philosophers. That is why poets pose such a threat to our well-being; choosing the wrong master in these matters can ruin one's entire life. (Reeve 2006: 90)

The visual metaphor works: it is dark in the cave, hence difficult to distinguish things.

The intellectual resources of a money-lover amount to no more than opinion, a power which, even when it is performing optimally, sometimes yields true beliefs about the visible world, sometimes false ones (2.8). We must now try to explain why this is so.
The primary ways of making money, and the only ones available in the Kallipolis, where ruling and guarding bring no cash benefits (416d3-417b8), are the crafts and professions that provide the goods and services others want or need. Hence a money-lover will want to develop at least the intellectual resources necessary to practice one of them successfully - that is why money-lovers are also craft-lovers (476a10). But to succeed in making money as a shoemaker (say), it is enough that one be able to make shoes that satisfy the visible standards of desirability in shoes employed by the majority of people (493e2-494a2), whether these reliably yield true beliefs about the visible or not. For one's financial success as a shoemaker is determined by what others think desirable and worth buying, not by what is in fact desirable. (Reeve 2006: 98)

Calls to mind the example of advertisers, whose whole business is to manipulate opinions about products and services, rather than contributing to the goodness of said products and services.

The philosopher's pleasure has knrowing the truth as an essential component, so that to get what he most wants the philosopher has to try to see the world as it really is, undistorted by fantasies or illusions. The honour-lover and the money-lover by contrast have pleasures which sustain, and are sustained by, false beliefs (3.10). In the case of the honour-lover who is performing optimally, these are false beliefs about the intelligible world; in the case of the money-lover who is performing optimally, they are false beliefs about the visible world. Therefore, even when their complete powers are performing optimally, these people cannot build the world in which their ruling desires are best satisfied. (Reeve 2006: 100)

The perceptual-thought person is mistaken about both the visible and intelligible, while the philosopher is not mistaken about both.

In the Categories (1b25-2a10), Aristotle divides the beings into ten very general classes (katēgorēmata). There are substances, such as a particular man or horse, each of which is a "this such [tode ti]" (Metaphysics 1029a28); quantities, such as four feet or five feet; qualities, such as white or knowing grammar; relations, such as double, half, larger; wheres or places, such as in the Lyceum or in the marketplace; whens or times, such as yesterday or last year; positions, such as lying or sitting; havings, such as having shoes or on having armour on; doings, such as burning or cutting; and undergoings, such as being cut or being burned. Very roughly speaking, the division is between the particular things (substances) which have properties, on the one hand, and the various kinds of properties they can have, on the other. (Reeve 2006: 105)

Still interesting for me - haven't yet spoiled the categories by seriously looking into them. Curious that "relation" looks like ratio.

But there is no mention of recollection in the Republic. The psyche lives through a cycle of deaths and rebirths, and each rebirth is preceded by an amnesia-inducing drink of the waters of Oblivion. But it does not acquire knowledge of forms while disembodied, nor recollect it when on earth. The virtuous are rewarded in heaven, not educated. And what they forget are their experiences, not the answers to Socrates' questions (614b1-621b6; 5.5). (Reeve 2006: 108)

Or, "the river of forgetfulness" (621a).

Plato, then, once held the traditional theory of forms. But in the Republic he abandoned it, and replaced it with a new and far superior theory. And it is this theory, in my view, that he continued to hold nutil the end of his career. He modified it in the Sophist, Philebus and Timaeus and considered dialectical objections to it in the Parmenides and Theatetus, but he never abandoned it. If I am right about this, and that is something that only extends investigation of the later dialogues can determine, then the Republic is the key to understanding Plato's thought as a whole. For, on the one hand, it explains why he gave up both the Socratic ethical theory of his early dialogues and the recollection-based theory of his middle dialogues, and, on the other hand, it contains his most detailed exposition [|] of the theory he continued to hold, with modifications, in his late dialogues. It thus illuminates and unites all of his dialogues, early, middle, and late. (Reeve 2006: 109-110)

Noting this down for context. The theory of forms itself in general does not excite me much.

3. Psychology

We do not know why the psyche has parts at all, or why it has reason, aspiration, or appetite as its parts. We do not know what precisely a psychic part is, or what it is for a part to "rule" a psyche. We do not know whether psyches are mortal or immortal, complex or simple. We know neither the ontology nor the laws of Platonic psychology. In this chapter, I shall try to fill these gaps in our knowledge by exploring Platonic psychology from the ground up. (Reeve 2006: 118)

Sounds good.

At the outset of the argument for the tripartition of the psyche, the following principle is introduced: "It is obvious that the same thing won't be willing to do or suffer opposites [tanantia] in the same part of itself in relation to the same thing at the same time" (436b8-9; cf. 436e8-437a2). Let us call this the principle of opposites (PO) and pursue its meaning.
The examples given of opposites - good and evil, just and unjust, fine and shameful, pleasure and pain (361c3-4, 475e9, 583c3) - make it clear that opposites are incompatible properties. PO does not seem to be about all such properties, however, but only about relational ones, or those that a thing can do, suffer, or be (436e9), in some respect or part of itself, in relation to something. And it cannot be about all relational properties, but only about relational forms. For of the four kinds of properties that Plato recognizes - qualities, modes, figures, and forms - only incompatible forms cannot be coinstantiated (2.8-9). That is why the argument [|] for the tripartition of the psyche fairly bristles with the special linguistic devices Plato uses when forms are in view. On this showing, PO is simply the principle of noncontradiction, formulated in terms of properties rather than propositions, and restricted to properties that are relational forms. (Reeve 2006: 118-119)

Could do with an illustration, this.

In a psychological theory of thes ort advocated by Hobbes, for example, a desire for x is an "endeavour" or small motion of the psyche toward x; and an aversion to x is a motion of the psyche "fromward" x (as Hobbes puts it). And in such a theory it is impossible for a single psyche (or psychic part) to desire x and be averse to x simultaneously. For nothing can be moving toward x and moving away from it simultaneously. Similarity, if desires are dispositions to move or act - as many philosophers [|] believe - it is equally difficult to see how a single psyche (or psychic part) could both desire x and be averse to x. For it seems that nothing could be simultaneously determinately disposed to try to get x and determinately disposed to avoid getting x. Hence the objection is at best inconclusive - plausible theories of desire provide a safe refuge from it.
But did Plato actually hold such a theory? I think he did. First, he is quite prepared to countenance psychic motions. At 583e9-10, "pleasure and pain coming to be in the psyche" are described as "a sort of motion [kinēsis tis]." Throughout the argument for psychic division, desires are described as "drawing back," "driving," and "dragging" the psyche (439b3-6, 439c9-d2), language which strongly suggests a dynamical psychology. Second, all of the candidate nonpsychological counterexamples to PO involve motion. This suggests that the psychological ones also involve motion (439b3-11). Finally, in other dialogues Plato's commitment to psychic motions and a dynamical model of the Psyche is clear. In the Phaedrus, which in my view is earlier than the Republic (2.13), the psyche is described as xeitf "ever in motion [aekinēton]" (245c5). (Reeve 2006: 123-124)

P. E. Chase's (1863) "motivity" is somewhat justified, it turns out.

The first of these objections is as follows. If conflicting desires must, for the reasons just canvassed, be lodged in distinct parts of the psyche, it seems that, instead of having just three parts, the psyche will actually be indefinitely divisible. (Reeve 2006: 124)

Chase labelled 120 faculties. If one goes just a level deeper and adds a further subdivision of 3, i.e. 243, the result would be 363 faculties - one for every day, almost!

Two of these examples are concerned with conflict between appetite and reason. The first (439a1-e3, quoted above) is a conflict between desires; the second (602c1-603a2) is a conflict between beliefs. The third example (439e3-441c3) is a two-way conflict between appetite and aspiration, on the one hand, and aspiration and reason, on the other. (Reeve 2006: 126)

Noting down the page numbers.

Reason, the part of the psyche in which this aversion is located, is described as "eercising forethought on behalf of the whole psyche [hapasēs tēs psychēs]" (441e4-5), or of "the whole psyche and the body" (442b6-7). It is also said to possess "within itself the knowledge [epistēmēn] of what is benificial for each part, and for the whole composed of the community of these three parts" (442c5-8). (Reeve 2006: 126)

One could say that Reason is oriented towards the future, as many instances of Thirdness are (e.g. Jakobson says this of Symbols; Legisigns imply future lawfulness, etc.).

These desirale features of Plato's account of akrasia give us a strong philosophical motive to look sympathetically on his division of desires. But once we accept that division, his doctrine of the tripartite psyche is difficult to resist. For, as we are about to discover, that doctrine is to a large extent jus tthe doctrine that there are different sources of motivation in the psyche, each with its distinctive goal, which can come into conflict with one another without being able to settle their differences. (Reeve 2006: 134)

"Attractive" is putting it mildly, I think.

At the heart of the argument for the division of the psyche, we find an extremely abstract core conception of the psychic parts. Appetite is the locus of good-independent desires, the natural objects of which do not have the good of the psyche or any of its parts as components. Aspiration is the locus of part-good dependent desires, the natural objects of which have the good of only part of the psyche as a component. Reason is the locus of whole-good-dependent desires, the natural objects of which have the good of the whole psyche and its parts as a component. (Reeve 2006: 135)

A gradation of dependence upon the good.

Appetite is introduced as the seat in the psyche of "lust, hunger, and, thirst" (439d6-9), desires elsewhere characterized as the "clearest [enargestatas]" examples of its contents (437d3) and (collectively) "the biggest and strongest thing" in it (580e1-2). (Reeve 2006: 135)

The "appetitive" part of the soul corresponds to Maslow's lowest, "Physiological needs" (air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction), from whence shelter expands to "Safety needs" (personal security, employment, resources, health, property) and reproduction expands to "Love and belonging" (friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection), that is, includes some of what were anciently called "externals". The "aspirational" part of the soul corresponds to Maslow's "Esteem" (respect, self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, freedom), and the "reasoning" part of the soul to "Self-actualization" (desire to become the most that one can be [- a god]).

I turn now to aspiration, the dark horse of the psychic parts. It is introduced as "the part with which we feel anger" (439e2-4). Under anger is included the rage of infants (441a7-9) and of beasts (441b1-2), Odysseus' outrage at Penelope's maids for their sexual misconduct with her suitors (441b3-c2), and Leontius' disgust with himself for his incontinent corpse-gazing (439e6-440a3). (Reeve 2006: 136)

Is that because this part of the soul was most likely pulled out of thin air?

Anger is an emotion which, like many other emotions, involves both a belief and a desire. If A is angry with B, then (typically) he must believe that B has purposely done something bad to him and desire to retaliate as a result. Now the embedded belief here appears to be both reflexive and good-relative. If A believes that B has done something bad to him, some conception of his own good, and what conduces to it or detracts from it, must bear on his belief. This conception, however, and the level of self-conscious reflection it involves, need not be very sophisticated or explicit. An infant cries to be fed. If it is not fed soon enough, its cries turn to cries [|] of rage. It is crying, not only because it is hungry, but out of awareness that its desire for food is being frustrated. When it is finally offered its mother's breast, it strikes at it in retaliation, trying, as it were, to restore the fit between the way things are, the real, and the way it thinks they should be, the ideal. What explains this pattern of behaviour, and is exemplified in it, is prototypical anger. Plato is on good psychological ground, then, in allowing that children "are full of anger [thumou] right from birth" (441a7-9), and that beasts too exhibit it. (Reeve 2006: 136-137)

A philosophy of anger.

Anger is Plato's canonical spirited desire. But many other emotions - fear, jealousy, shame, pride - also seem to fit the core conception of spirited desires. For each of them involves a conception - an enrichable and expansible conception - of the good, and a desire to keep us in line with that conception when our own behaviour, or that of others, disturbs the match between reality and our ideals. Now there is no a priori reason to believe that a single conceptio nof the good will always be involved in all of these emotions. But neither is there any a priori reason to believe that it is impossible that this should be so. Conceptions of the good are acquired through training, education, and socialization. As things stand these shaping forces are not designed to promote maximum integration in our emotions. But if they were so designed, as they are in the Kallipolis, then anger, fear, jealousy, shame, and pride could all involve the same conception of the good. And in this condition, at least, these spirited desires too would form a single source of motivation, urging the psyche in a single direction. (Reeve 2006: 138)

Noting down these emotions. The "conception of the good" argument still eludes me - his is being fed, hydrated and having sex not a conception of the good?

Here the theory explored in Chapter 2 comes to our aid. All beliefs involve properties (2.8). And these properties will be either qualities, modes, figures, or forms (2.6-7). If the psyche that has the beliefs in question is ruled by unnecessary appetites, its beliefs will involve a quality; if it is ruled by necessary appetites, its beliefs will involve a mode; if it is ruled by aspiration, its beliefs will involve a figure; if it is ruled by rational desires, its beliefs will involve a form. I suggest, therefore, that a belief belongs to a psychic part just in case the property it involves is of the most cognitively reliable kind to which a psyche ruled by that part has cognitive access. Thus beliefs involving qualities are assigned to appetite (603a7), and beliefs involving forms to reason (603a4-5). (Reeve 2006: 139)

Neat, but indeed, as the author puts it, "does not as yet explain anything" (ibid, 139).

The work of a psychic part, its psychological rôle or function, is etiher to rule the psyche or to be ruled in it: "Every part ... does its own work be it ruling or being ruled" (443b1-2). Hence to develop the core conception of the psychic parts further we must investigate the notion of psychic rule.
Psychic rule is introduced in Book 4 by analogy with political rule (441d5-442b3; quoted below). But the most illuminating discussion of it in strictly psychological terms occurs in Book 9. "As there are three parts, there are also, it seems to me, three pleasures, one peculiar to each part, and so with desires and rules [archai]" (580d7-8). Appetite's "pleasure and love are concentrated on profit" (581a3-4); aspiration's are concentrated on being honoured and gaining victories (581a9-b20; reason's are concentrated on gaining wisdom and learning the truth (581b5-9). Because of this (581c3), and because different psyches are ruled by different psychic parts (581b12-c1), "we say that there are three primary types of people: philosophic, victory-loving, and money-loving" (581c3-4). (Reeve 2006: 140)

Analogous to Roman Jakobson's conception of functions: one dominant and two subordinate.

It seems clear, then, that a part rules a psyche just in case the whole psyche (or the person whose psyche it is) aims at the peculiar pleasure of that part, believing it to be more pleasant than any other. Hence rule has both a conative aspect and a cognitive aspect, corresponding to the two aspects of the psychic parts themselves. (Reeve 2006: 141)

Each psychological type believes / thinks that its particular type of desire or pleasure is the best one.

The second difference between proper and improper rule is more a matter of means than of ends. Reason does not force appetite and aspiration into pursuing its peculiar good (which is also their own). It is not an enlightened despot governing through force majeure. Instead, reason "persuades" them to consent to its rule through a process of training and education begun in childhood and designed by the philosopher-kings, who are themselves ruled by reason, to have this very effects. As Socrates puts it, "The rulers and the ruled share a common belief [homodoxōsi] that reason should rule" (442c11-d1). Appetite and aspiration, on the other hand, "enslave" the psyches in which they rule (442b1, 553d2, 554a7, 569c3-4, 575a1-2). Each uses its superior strength (442a8) to force the other parts into pursuing its peculiar good, instead of persuading them through education and training (548b7-c2, 554d1-2). A properly ruled psyche exhibits the harmony consent brings (441c8-442a2, 442c10-d1, 443d3-e2), while an improperly ruled psyche exhibits the discord which is the result of coercion (554d9-e5). (Reeve 2006: 142)

Two important points: force vs persuasion; "minding one's own business" or forcing others to pursue one's own goals.

And just as the parts are unified by having a single good to aim at, the psyche itself will be unified in the same way. Thus the man whose psyche is properly ruled

orders the things that are really his own business [tōi onti ta oikeia] and rules himself, he puts himself in order, becomes his own friend, harmonizes the three parts, exactly like the three notes in a harmonic scale, lowest, highest, middle, and any other parts there may be in between as well, binds them all together, and so becomes entirely one from many [pantapasin hena genomenon ek pollōn], moderate and harmonious. (443d3-e2; cf. 4629-d5)

So harmony, or consonance among the desires in the different psychic parts about what to pursue, seems to make good psychological sense. (Reeve 2006: 143)

One of my favorite passages. This iteration makes me wonder if "moderate and harmonious" are intended as (1) and (2). I.e. being harmonious means not being unnecessarily angry or otherwise swayed by passion.

It is not clearly relevant because the pleasures in question are not private or subjective experiences on the order of tingles, tickles, and thrills, to which the individual might, with some vestige of philosophical plausibility, be argued to have "privileged access." No such feelings could produce money (581c10-d3) or honour (581d5-8), or be necessary to sustain life (581e3-4). The pleasures in question are activities, such as eating, having sex, making money, gaining honour, or learning the truth. And to determine their relative pleasantness is not to rank the relative intensities of the private pleasurable sensations they may produce, but to rank the activities themselves considered as pleasures, or as essential components of pleasures (1.11). It is to ask, for example, whether they are absorbing, whether they are completely satisfying, whether they become boring in the long run, whether they can be engaged in throughout life, whether they can be engaged in continuously or only from time to time, whether they necessarily involve pains or frustrations of any sort, and so on. (Reeve 2006: 145)

Some light on what are the "pleasures" of each life.

The same conclusion can be reached by considering the nature of pain and pleasure: "Surely, both pleasure and pain coming to be in the psyche are a sort of motion aren't they? ... And didn't we see just now that to feel neither pain nor pleasures is a kind of calm of the psyche and an intermediate state between the two?" (583e9-584a2). So, once again, "it cannot be right to think that the absence of pain is pleasure, or the absence of enjoyment pain" (584a4-5). (Reeve 2006: 147)

Motivity, once again.

Nor are all impure pleasures body-based. Some are wholly psychological in origin - for example, "the pleasures of anticipation which arise from the expectation of future pleasure or pain" (584c9-11). Included in the latter class are the characteristic pleasures of the honour-lover. The pleasure of being honoured is mixed with the pains of envy, that of victory is mixed with the pains associated with violence, that of spiritedness with the pains of bad temper (586c7-d2). Therefore, the characteristic activities of both of the philosopher's rivals are impure pleasures mixed with painful conditions. (Reeve 2006: 148)

The most curious one for me personally is the mixture of honour and envy. In Malinowski's concept of phatic communion, which is a kind of inverted secondness, the relevant keywords are vanity, renown, boasting, and exaggeration (of one's own accomplishments). Envy is naturally very closely related.

A desire on this account is a kind of emptiness or inanition: "Are not hunger and thirst and such things kinds of states of emptiness of the body? ... And ignorance and lack of good sense, in turn, kinds of states of emptiness of the psyche?" (585a8-b4). And pleasure, not surprisingly, is having that emptiness appropriately filled: "Being filled with things appropriate to our nature is pleasure" (585d11). When one is hungry, eating or filling oneself with food, which is the natural object of hunger, is pleasant, and so is actually being full or being satisfied. The journey is pleasant, and so is being at the destination. (Reeve 2006: 148)

An empty/full dialectic of desire. Made me realize that I don't really have a conception of what desire is.

Unfortunately, even if we treat removes à la grecque, it is exactly 5.832 times too dramatic. In order to reach the number 729, which seems to have had arcane Pythagorean significance (there were, allegedly, 729 days and nights in the years and 729 months in the "great year" recognized by the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus), and so make a rather "in" joke, Socrates has made two fast moves. (Reeve 2006: 150)

In my reckoning one of the many Pythagorean inside jokes.

And the same is true of many of our other desires and emotions. Their contents, too, are deposited in them simply by the accidents of our affective lives. Only younger women attract us because they alone resemble the girl who took us for our first childhood walks. (Reeve 2006: 155)

Somewhat suspect reasoning.

A disembodied psyche would not need food, drink, sex, money, or the approval of others. (Reeve 2006: 161)

What the honour-lover actually loves is the approval of others.

Once the division of desires is in place the definition of the five psychological types that comprise Plato's psychopathology is straightforward (2.3, 3.7). The tyrant is ruled by lawless unnecessary appetites. The democrat is ruled by nonlawless unnecessary appetites (among other things). The oligarch is ruled by necessary appetites. The timocrat is ruled by (unnecessary) spirited desires. The philosopher is ruled by rational desires. (Reeve 2006: 163)

So anticlimactic that it makes me wish Reeve had erred in his interpretation and this is just one way of looking at it.

From the ontology of Plato's theory of the psyche we turn to its laws. Many of these are explicitly mentioned in the Republic, but sthe most basic ones, like the basic psychological entities they govern, for the most part lie concealed beneath its surface. Moreover, just as in ontology, parsimony, not extravagance, is the rule. All the laws of Platonic psychology can be derived from a few basic ones. (Reeve 2006: 165)

Psychic laws?

1. "every psyche pursues the good (505d11-e2)" or "everyone wants to live in a polis whose structure guarantees him as much as possible of the purest and truest pleasure of which he is capable throughout life, coupled with the minimal amount of pain or frustration" (ibid, 165)
2. "the stronger desire is the one that will be satisfied in action" (ibid)
3. "desire determines a person's ends and causes intelligence to calculate the means to them" and "desire determines the cognitive resources available to intelligence in performing that task" (ibid, 166)
4. "by imitating someone, by acting like him, one comes to have a character like his [392c1-398b8; 444c10-d1]" (ibid)
5. "if a person admires something, he imitates it (500c5-6)" (ibid)
6. "one loves something most when one believes that its doing well is biconditionally tied to one's own (412d4-7)" (ibid)
7. "a person does best at a craft just in case it is the one craft for which he has the highest natural aptitude and he practices it exclusively throughout life" (ibid, 167)

It is clear from the preceding outline that Plato's psychological theory is closely similar in structure to the familiar belief/desire psychology that we associate with David Hume, and that, rightly or wrongly, we think [|] of as being folk psychology. Because of this, Hume's theory is a useful foil to Plato's. For there are differences as well as similarities between them. (Reeve 2006: 167-168)

I didn't get past Locke. Berkley, Leibniz and Hume are all waiting their turn.

4. Politics

Nothing in the Republic has aroused more hostility in its readers than its political theory. That is one reason my account of Plato's response to Glaucon and Thrasymachus did not begin with it. My strategy has been to discuss metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology first, in the hope that my unorthodox views on these somewhat less emotionally charged topics, meeting with less resistance, would pave the way for my equally unorthodox views on Plato's politics. For the latter, it will emerge, is firmly based in his metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology. (Reeve 2006: 170)

I've met, but not yet experienced, this adverse reaction.

The account of the Kallipolis, of the good or maximally happy human community, which is the centerpiece of Plato's political theory, occurs in three stages, each of which describes a distinct model of paradigm polis (472d9-c1) - the First Polis (369a5-372d3), the Second Polis (372e3-471c3), and the Third Polis (473b4-544b3), as I shall call them. (Reeve 2006: 170)

Noted.

These suggestions will be substantiated and developed in subsequent sections. What we shall discover is this. The First Polis is the Kallipolis for money-lovers. But it is not a real possibility because it includes nothing to counteract the destabilizing effects of unnecessary appetites and the pleonexia to which they give rise. For this guardians are required. When these are added, the result is the Second Polis, which contains the political institutions necessary to produce such guardians. The Second Polis is the Kallipolis for honour-lovers and money-lovers. But it is not a real possibility [|] either because it includes nothing to counteract the destabilizing effects of false beilef. For this philosopher-kings are required. When these are added, the result is the Third Polis, which contains the political institutions necessary to produce philosopher-kings. The Third Polis, which is a real possibility, is the Kallipolis for money-lovers, honour-lovers, and philosophers. The First Polis is, to use a convenient Hegelianism, "overcome but preserved" in the Second, and the Second is overcome but preserved in the Third. (Reeve 2006: 171-172)

A neatly ordered sequence indeed.

We may begin with the doctrine and a principle based on it. The doctrine is the unique aptitude doctrine (UAD), according to which each person is born with a natural aptitude for a unique craft or type of work, whether it is carpentry, pottery, medicine, guardianship, or ruling. The principle is that each member of the Kallipolis must practice exclusively throughout life the unique craft for which he has a natural aptitude. I shall call this the prescriptive principle of specialization (PS). (Reeve 2006: 172)

One of the most off-putting aspects of the whole Republic. It is sad that it is such a fundamental assumption in the work.

But despite all this apparent evidence, I am convinced that Plato accepts neither UAD nor PS. He uses them, and gives the impression that he accepts them - we shall have to try to understand why. But in the end they are no more than shadows of his actual thought (443b7-c7). (Reeve 2006: 172)

Okay. Curious.

Nobody - whether producer, guardian, or philosopher-king - actually enjoys his craft. All crafts are mere extrinsic means to something else that is wanted. Hence there is really no room in Plato's theory for someone who is natuarlly suited for a craft because it alone intrinsically satisfies some desires of his. (Reeve 2006: 173)

What's your dream job? - My dream is not having to have a job.

Plato rejects unique aptitude, but he clearly accepts the unique upper-bound doctrine (UBD), according to which a person's ruling desires set a unique upper limit to his cognitive development. Indeed, this doctrine is the cornerstone of his psychological theory (3.1-10). Because he accepts UBD, Plato also accepts the principle of quasi specialization (PQS), which states that each person in the Kallipolis must practice exclusively throughout life the one craft, whether producing, guardianship, or ruling, that demands of him the highest level of cognitive development of which he is capable: money-lovers must be producers of some kind; honour-lovers must be guardians; philosophers must be kings (434a3-b7). (Reeve 2006: 174)

Such a minute difference.

PS is abandoned; PQS is put in its place. Indeed, it emerges a few pages later in Book 4 that PS was never anything more than a useful image or shadow of justice: "It was a sort of image of justice [eidōlon ti tēs dikaiosunēs], this principle that it is right for one who is by nature a cobbler to cobble exclusively, and for the carpenter to practice carpentry exclusively, and so with the otherS" (443c4-7). PQS, on the other hand, is its substance: "But in truth, as it seems, justice was something like this. It consists in someone doing his own work not externally, but internally, and in the true sense his own. It means that someone must not allow the parts of his psyche to do each other's work, or meddle with one another" (443c9-d3). A psyche is just if its three constituent parts obey PQS; a polis is just if its three parts obey that same principle (434c7-10). If this is correct, then, not only does PS have no place in Plato's psychological theory, it has no place in his theory of justice either. (Reeve 2006: 175)

Now every time Plato says that something is an "image" is suspect. I'm beginning to grasp why Plato's philosophy is treated as if it were very... fluid? It doesn't stand still.

It is important to recognize that the guardians are introduced to defend the polis, not simply against other hostile poleis, but also against the unnecessary appetites, which are the root cause of such conflict. Since these [|] desires exist inside the polis as well as outside it, the guardians have a policing function from the outset. That is why it is said that they will insure that "the enemies without shall not have the power, nor the friends within the desire, to harm the polis" (414b1-6; cf. 415d9-e3). It is because people are naturally prone to unnecessary appetites, which are destructive of social and political unity, that guardians are required. Hence the apparent detour through the luxurious polis in fact exposes the justification for introducing the guardians into the Kallipolis. (Reeve 2006: 178-179)

In the ideal state the police would not be human tools in the command of the wealthy to force the poor and homeless out of their view, but instead they'd be there to stop anyone from acting on their desire to accumulate inordinate wealth. The police would guard against greed.

The producers are maximally happy in the First Polis. But do they remain happy when that polis is absorbed into the Second Polis? The answer hinges in large part on the vexed question of whether they are intended to receive primary education.
Primary education is specifically introduced as part of a unified package of social arrangements designed to turn into guardians children who already possess the natural assets requisite in good soldier-police (4.5). Since producers are excluded from the eugenics programmes and living arrangements that are the other components of the package, and since they, like guardians, for the most part breed true to type (415a7-8), scarcely any of the children of producers will have the natural assets that are the prerequisites for primary education. Primary education is for future soldiers (398b3-4, 386b10-c1) or guardians (383c3-4, 387c3-5, 401b8-c1, 402c1-2), not for future producers. (Reeve 2006: 186)

One of the problems that even I noticed. An ideal state that does not provide education for all of its children? Sounds rather like a plan for Arkansas, where child labor laws were just repealed.

But it is not at all clear why a self-interested money-lover would want to receive any primary education, except, perhaps, as a means to insuring that the rulers and guardians remain as virtuous as possible. For in the Kallipolis primary education is a means to the pleasure of being honoured, not to the pleasure of making money. (Reeve 2006: 190)

Primary education does not provide any benefit towards making money?

Again, because the philosophic nature is not small-minded, but "lofty enough to theorize about all time and all substance," it does not "believe that the life of man is a big thing" (486a8-10). Hence it is brave, for it does not fear death (486b1-5). And being "neither money-loving nor small-minded, nor given to galse pretension or cowardice," it must also be just and fair (486b6-13). (Reeve 2006: 192)

Human life... ain't no biggie.

The second largest group is much smaller than the first. It consists of people possessed of a genuine philosophical nature who fall away from philosophy through being perverted early in life by the force of public opinion (490e2-495b7). Alcibiades - never mentioned by name but recognizable in the discussion (494a11-495b6) - is a case in point. "There remains but a very small group of those who deservedly consort with philosophy," and who persists in their study of it "because the corrupting influences are absent." Though they avoid corruption, however, [|] they do not receive the best nurture. Consequently, they do not develop their full powers, but are "perverted and altered" into people who avoid politics, and are satisfied if they can live a "life free from injustice and impiety, and depart from it with a beautiful hope, blameless and content" (496a11-497c3). Here the presiding genius is surely Socrates himself (496c3-4; 1.2, 1.7). (Reeve 2006: 193-194)

My takeaway here is that one must persist in philosophy, no doubt, but if one does not begin in youth with it, it'll basically be pointless - according to the purpuses set out in the Republic - because one will become a philosopher but not a philosopher-king.

Only guardians who successfully complete primary education and education or training in mathematical science, dialectic, and practical polis management actually become philosopher-kings. Since failure is possible in each of these studies, there are potentially three different subclasses of guardians: (1) those who make it through primary education, but not systematic science (acknowledged at 537a9-c3); (2) those who make it through systematic science, but not dialectic (acknowledged ta 537c9-d8); and (3) those who make it through dialectic, but not polis management (acknowledged at 540a4-6). (Reeve 2006: 195)

Another serviceable summary of what is otherwise somewhat loose in the work itself.

What, then, of the better life that the philosophers prefer to the life of ruling? Clearly, it is a life devoted entirely to philosophy, and the pleasures of learning and knowing the truth. If such a life were reliably available [|] to them, philosophers would prefer it. That is why they set no intrinsic value on ruling. For them it is a C-good, no more. But a life of pure philosophy is not reliably available outside of paradise. Those allowed to "spend their time continuously in education right to the end" would not willingly rule because they would believe "that they had emigrated while still alive to a colony on the Isles of the Blessed" (519b7-c6). But to satisfy in the real world the needs of his tripartite nature, the ruler has to live in a polis with others, satisfying their needs in return for having his own satisfied. He must, as it were, exchange some ruling for the food and protection he needs in order to spend much of his time doing philosophy (498b6-c4, 520d6-8, 540b2). A life of pure philosophy, like a life spent perpetually as if at a festival, is not a practically possible option for a human being. (Reeve 2006: 202-203)

Too realistic.

And, of course, they do not simply believe this; as we have seen (4.5-10), their belief is supposed to be true. Each of them is intended to be happier in the Kallipolis than he would be in any other polis. Indeed, it is only on the supposition that this is so that we can make any sense of the claim that the inhabitants of the Kallipolis are all friends (philoi) (590c8-d6). For, on Plato's view, one feels friendship or love (philia) for someone only on the condition that one believes that his happiness is tied biconditionally to one's own (412d2-7). (Reeve 2006: 205)

Somehow this escaped me when reading the book: "so that we may all be alike and as friendly as possible, because we are all captained by the same thing" (590d) - not exactly what is claimed here.

If poverty among the producers, that is to say the frustration o ftheir ruling desire for money, would bring down the Kallipolis, then the guardians cannot preserve the Kallipolis by forcing frustrated producers to practice their polis crafts. What they can do is prevent such poverty from entering the Kallipolis in the first place by insuring, through training and education, that the desires of the producers are moderated, and that moderated, they are satisfied. (Reeve 2006: 207)

It seems to me that the Soviet Union disproved this. You can survive by holding the whole population captive. The "producers" may not have the means to leave; it's the "philosophers" that manage it.

What all of these questions ignore is that the influence of the philosopher-kings pervades life in the Kallipolis as reason pervades the life of the philosopher's psyche. Crafts are no exception, as we saw in 2.11. No producer is autonomously a carpenter or a physician. All depend crucially on directives transmitted via the guardians from the philosophers. Producers are more like assembly line workers, interchangeable parts in a vast process controlled by others, than they are like a Hepplewhite or a Chippendale. Consequently, there is little reason to think that if they exchanged crafts with one another, massive frustration of their desire for profit would result. (Reeve 2006: 208)

Oh, wow. So just central planning. Good thing that can't go wrong. Surely all you really need in any handycraft or machine work is detailed instructions from a philosopher well versed in dialectics.

On the basis of the brief remarks in Book 3 (405a1-410b9) about the kind of medicine available in the Kallipolis, Plato has been taken to advocate the view that medical treatment should be distributed solely on the basis of social productivity. (Reeve 2006: 213)

So the exact system we have right now, where people get free healthcare only if they work or study?

Since Greeks usually enslaved their captives, whether Greek or barbarian, this seems to imply that the Kallipolis will enslave its barbarian captives. But apart from these psasages, the Republic is silent about slaves. (Reeve 2006: 216)

Having just read extensively from the encyclopedia about how only a few decades before Plato's lifetime the carthaginians had invaded Sicily, attacked Greek cities and put everyone to the sword, the brutality of the times does not seem as odd.

On the question of infants, Plato seems to have been largely a traditionalist. On the question of slaves, he seems to have taken a small enlightened step away from tradition. On the question of women, he was almost entirely a revolutionary. (Reeve 2006: 217)

I'm guessing the "almost entirely" is a nod to the pythagoreans.

Her erotic and emotional life was expected to centre on her husband and family. His, while it might certainly include his wife, could - and almost certainly would - include erotic or sentimental attachments to a younger man, and perhaps to a concubine or hetaira as well. His wife was legally bound to fidelity, he was not. He could divorce her simply by sending her away - although he had to return her dowry if he did. She could only with great difficulty divorce him without his consent. (Reeve 2006: 218)

Evidently the ideal of conservative gender relations: a lock that can be opened by a single key, which also opens other locks... and also other smaller keys, but in secret, after publicly shunning the practice.

5. The psychopolitics of justice

If the Kallipolis is just, then only the producers must produce, only the guardians must guard, and only the rulers must rule. This being so, each [|] will do its work as well as possible. The rulers will have knowledge of the good, the guardians will have lawful, education-induced true belief about what is to be feared, and the producers will agree that the rulers should rule and the guardians guard. Hence if the Kallipolis is just, it must also be wise, courageous, and moderate. (Reeve 2006: 242-243)

A sizeable portion of this book is merely reiterating the three "structural relations" just like this without adding anything or contesting anything. No attack, no defense - it just is what it is, resigned to Plato's whims.

Now if honour, rather than money, is one's ultimate goal, what matters is that the features that attract it should be identifiable, and the method of inculcating them known. The honour-lover wants to be able to discover how to acquire the traits that are always rewarded with social approval, so that he can go about having them cultivated in himself. This gives us some reason to think that honour-lovers will identify the virtues primarily with properties of the laws and political institutions that are the relatively stable repositories of social values. (Reeve 2006: 247)

Too much abstracted, this. One does not cultivate honourable character - honour is achieved through victory, it is won. You can't grow it yourself, you have to go and earn it.

They identify happiness with a figure of happiness, with getting as much of the pleasure of being honoured as possible throughout life (3.6-7). They identify the virtues with the properties they believe will guarantee them happiness so conceived. But because the pleasure of being honoured is not in fact the most pleasant kind, and because its pursuit leads to the frustration of rational desires, these identifications, too, suffer from a distinctive kind of cognitive unreliability. They can yield true beliefs about the visible or empirical world, but not about the intelligible one (2.12). (Reeve 2006: 248)

The honour-lover can have true beliefs about figures but not about forms because they're so dang frustrated from idealising the wrong sort of pleasure.

A psyche ruled by necessary appetites, an oligarchic psyche, represses its unnecessary appetites. It exercises folk-wisdom and has access to the more pleasant pleasure of making money. Hence it can satisfy its necessary appetites. But because it cannot experience the pleasures of being honoured and of knowing the truth, its spirited and rational desires are frustrated, and because it forcibly represses its unnecessary appetites instead of moderating them through training and education, they remain as sources of frustration and akrasia. (Reeve 2006: 258)

What does this even mean. I'm so close to the end but just cannot finish this book. DNF.