Socrates
Page 19
Socrates’ Defense of the Just Ruler
Socrates makes a variety of points in favor of his view of the just ruler and against Thrasymachus’ conception. First of all, he reiterates the point that the practitioner in every art seeks the benefit of the object of the art, not his own advantage. The wage-earner's art is separate and distinct from the other arts.10 The doctor acts as a doctor whether he gets paid or not. Second, he notes that rulers demand some form of compensation for their rule, which is proof that ruling is not to their advantage. Third, he presents a complex argument aimed to show that it is the just person who is good and clever, whereas the unjust person is ignorant and bad. Thrasymachus, in his praise of injustice, had said that the just person “always gets less than an unjust one” (343d). The just person never gets more than an unjust person in contracts, always pays more taxes, never gets refunds; his private finances always suffer when he holds office. The unjust person, if his injustice is on a grand enough scale, a tyrant – one who “kidnaps and enslaves the citizens … is called happy and blessed, not only by the citizens themselves, but by all who learn that he has done the whole of injustice” (344b–c; one thinks here of Polus’ celebration of Archelaus in the Gorgias). When Socrates asks Thrasymachus whether he regards justice as a virtue, he replies that injustice is a virtue (because it is profitable), whereas justice is, if not a vice, then “very high-minded simplicity” (348c). It is the unjust person, not the just one, Thrasymachus claims, who is clever and good. Socrates responds as follows: the just person tries to outdo the unjust person, but not another just person, whereas the unjust person tries to outdo everyone. (The notion of “outdo” is in need of some clarification. I think what Socrates means in the context of the argument is “exceed in virtue.” What Thrasymachus means, in contrast, is “exceed in wealth or power,” or perhaps simply in success.) The just person wants to exceed the unjust person in virtue, but not another just person. The unjust person wants to exceed everyone. In the other arts, however, it is the artist, the one who is clever and good, who does not try to outdo other artists, but only the ignorant. The musician does not try to exceed other musicians, but only the unmusical; the doctor does not try to exceed other doctors, but only the “nondoctor.” (Socrates here seems to be thinking of Thrasymachus’ own conception of an artist as one who does not make mistakes. The doctor is the person who makes the right diagnosis and prescribes the right treatment. The musician is the person who plays the right notes.) “In any branch of knowledge or ignorance,” Socrates asks, “do you think that a knowledgeable person would intentionally try to outdo other knowledgeable people or say something better or different than they do, rather than doing or saying the very same thing as those like him?” (350a) Thrasymachus responds that “perhaps” this is so. But, Socrates continues, the knowledgeable person, the person who possesses the art, is the one who is clever and good; it is the bad and ignorant person who tries to outdo everyone. It turns out that the just person, who does not try to outdo everyone, is the clever and good person. (He is the one who understands that justice is an art; in the case of the ruler, the ruling art.) The unjust person is bad and ignorant. (He lacks the ruler's art, which he confuses with the wage-earner's art, or the art of self-enrichment.)
Thrasymachus objects to all of this. “I could make a speech about it,” he says, “but if I did, I know that you'd accuse me of engaging in oratory” (350d–e). So at this point he “checks out” of the argument. He'll answer so as to please Socrates, rather than state his own view. What Thrasymachus does here is very similar to what Callicles does in the Gorgias, and it has the same effect on the elenchus. For the elenchus to work, as I have said previously, the interlocutor must say what he believes. If the interlocutor does not express his own beliefs, he is not really refuted. Thrasymachus plays along, but he is not engaged; “enjoy your banquet of words,” he says at one point; “Have no fear, I won't oppose you” (352b). At the conclusion of Socrates’ argument he repeats the remark: “let that be your banquet, Socrates, at the feast of Bendis,” he says sarcastically (354a). Socrates proceeds with his questions after 350e, but the dialogue has effectively ceased.
Socrates has two more arguments in favor of justice. The first is that even unjust people need justice if they are to pursue their plans. Even a band of thieves needs to cooperate or the thieves will fall out with each other: “injustice … causes civil war, hatred, and fighting among themselves, while justice brings friendship and a sense of common purpose” (351d). Even within a single individual, injustice causes dissension and discord: “it make him incapable of achieving anything, because he is in a state of civil war and not of one mind … it makes him his own enemy” (352a). This brief portrait of psychic discord recalls Socrates’ point in the Gorgias about the parts of the soul, a point that looks forward to Republic IV for its full explanation. The final argument that Socrates offers on behalf of justice recalls the earlier argument with Polemarchus. There (335b–e) Socrates had argued that justice was “human virtue” and that it could not be the function of justice to harm another person, which would make that other person worse in human virtue. Here Socrates makes use of the notion of function, ergon, which is what each thing can do uniquely or best. Eyes have a function, which is to see; ears have a function, which is to hear; pruning knives have a function, which is to prune vines; and so on. Corresponding to each function there is a virtue. The human soul has a function: “taking care of things, ruling, deliberating and the like” (353d) and, in a more general sense, living. The virtue associated with this function is justice. The person with a just soul will live well and be happy, and the person with an unjust soul will be unhappy.
Critique of Socrates’ Arguments
There is widespread dissatisfaction with these arguments. Socrates expresses his dissatisfaction at the end of Book I when he says that it was his fault for shifting from the question, what is justice, to the question whether justice or injustice is more profitable. Glaucon and Adeimantus, Plato's half-brothers, who take over the role of interlocutors at the start of Book II and retain it for the rest of the Republic, express dissatisfaction, saying that they want to be truly convinced that “it is better in every way to be just than unjust” (357a), but that Socrates hasn't accomplished this. They demand, and get, not just a new set of arguments, but a new kind of argument from Socrates. There are many points about the individual arguments that could be questioned. In the case of the final argument, Socrates’ slide from the claim that the function of the soul is “taking care of things, ruling, deliberating, and the like” to the claim that living is the function of the soul is questionable. We would expect, if taking care of things, ruling and deliberating were the function of the soul, that wisdom, not justice, would be the appropriate virtue. When Socrates says that justice is the virtue of the soul, that raises the question whether wisdom and justice are the same thing, which is the question of the unity of the virtues. The long argument about the virtuous person not wanting to outdo other virtuous persons seems to work at most if we are talking about virtues as ideals or perfections, or in cases such as mathematics where there is only one right answer. One mathematician won't try to outdo another in getting the right answer, though even there one mathematician may attempt to find the answer more quickly or elegantly. Certainly if we are talking about actual musicians, one may well attempt to outdo another in his or her performance of a particular piece; certainly one doctor may well attempt to outdo another in arriving at the correct diagnosis quickly and efficiently. And, we may ask, in what sense does the nonmusical person or the nondoctor attempt to outdo the musician or doctor? The analogy seems to be flawed.
Conclusion
Despite these and other weaknesses in the arguments in Republic I, we learn a good deal about Socrates’ views of justice and the ruling art from them. The chief things we learn are that:
Justice is not a matter of obedience to a few, easily statable rules (“tell the truth; pay your debts”).
&
nbsp; Justice does not harm others, but rather improves them, specifically makes them more just.
Just rule is an art, which aims at the well-being of the ruled.
The just ruler is like a doctor, a ship's captain, or a shepherd in this respect.
Justice is a beneficial quality of both the just state and the just soul.
The comparison between the doctor, ship's captain, and the just ruler indicates that justice involves expert knowledge. Herein lies Socrates’ critique of Athenian democracy in a nutshell. The Athenians assume that the business of ruling is something in which any citizen can participate; hence, they elect people to many positions by lot, and the position of general, which one might think involved expert knowledge, by popular vote. But the art of ruling is in Socrates’ view a matter of expert knowledge, and only one who has mastered this art should hold office.
The concept of the knowledgeable ruler, the possessor of the art of ruling, is of central importance to Socrates’ conception of justice. The ruling art is the art of producing happiness among the ruled; not the appearance of happiness, in the form of pleasure, but genuine happiness, of the sort produced by virtue. It is only the knowledgeable ruler who has the right to rule. Socrates may in fact find Athenian democracy an acceptable form of government, in the absence of a knowledgeable ruler, though he would prefer a republic of moral inquiry, in which everyone was aiming at the genuine good. Still, if a knowledgeable ruler could be found, Socrates would think it unjust for Athens to refuse to grant such a person political power. This idea of the knowledgeable ruler is of course developed in Books II–X of the Republic, but the germ of the doctrine of the philosopher-king is to be found in the ideal of the moral expert in the elenctic dialogues.
Notes
1 On this controversy see the discussion of the views of Karl Popper and I. F. Stone in Chapter 9.
2 For instance, Verity Harte, “Conflicting Values in Plato's Crito,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 81 (1999), 117–147, and Roslyn Weiss, Socrates Dissatisfied: An Analysis of Plato's Crito (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
3 This is the third condition that Socrates has placed on a life's being worth living in the Crito. Earlier (at 47e) he has stated that life is not worth living if one's body is corrupted, and (at 47e–48a) that life is not worth living if the part of us that is concerned with just actions is corrupted. Here he adds that, even if one's body and soul are not corrupted, one's life will not be worth living if one lives in a badly governed state.
4 As Brickhouse and Smith have pointed out in Socrates on Trial (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 137–153, and Plato's Socrates, 141–155), the jury may not suggest a penalty other than the one proposed by the prosecution or an alternative proposed by Socrates. I do not think that this fact prevents Socrates from speculating what he might do if, contrary to fact, the jury suggested that he be banned from continuing to philosophize. In any case Socrates himself would be free to propose that he be ordered to cease philosophizing. The passage in the Apology may be taken to indicate the reason why he would never make such a proposal.
5 Thus Popper and Vlastos; see Chapter 9, “The Reception of Socrates in the Ancient World.”
6 This is the view of Richard Kraut, in Socrates and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 7–9, 208, 226–228, 232, 237, 243–244, 268, 307.
7 For more on the Socratic circle see Chapter 9.
8 On this question see, for instance, Vlastos, Socrates, 248–251.
9 This appears to be another case of the priority of definition principle in action.
10 The wage-earner's art seems to be an exception to the Socratic principle that no art benefits the artist.
8
From Socrates to Plato
Up to now we have been examining the philosophy of Socrates, as it has been found in the elenctic dialogues of Plato. These dialogues are more commonly referred to as the “Socratic” or “early” dialogues. Interpreters have contrasted the philosophy of these dialogues with the philosophy presented in another group of dialogues, somewhat misleadingly known as the “middle” dialogues. (The designation is misleading because some of the dialogues described as “middle” – the Cratylus, Phaedo, and Symposium – seem to have been written at about the same time as most of the elenctic dialogues. The term “middle” represents, not a temporal distinction, but a doctrinal one.)1 Interpreters differ on the grounds for distinguishing the two groups of dialogues. Most base the distinction on the ground that, in the “middle” dialogues Plato advances a theory of “separately existing Forms,” whereas in the “early” or elenctic dialogues Socrates has “no such theory.”2 It is not uncommon for interpreters who distinguish the elenctic dialogues from the “middle” dialogues on doctrinal grounds to claim that the elenctic dialogues represent the thought of the historical Socrates whereas the “middle” dialogues represent the thought of Plato. This distinction is often accompanied by a theory of Plato's development as a philosophical writer: Plato began his career as a disciple of Socrates, producing or reproducing arguments in defense of Socrates’ views; only in midlife did he begin to use the character Socrates he had developed to state his own views.3 It is sometimes stated that the distinction between the two groups of dialogues is a sharp one, that in them Plato presents “philosophies so different that they could not have been depicted as cohabiting the same brain throughout unless it had been the brain of a schizophrenic.”4 It has been stated that the distinction is sharp in another respect, that it occurs abruptly, at Meno 81a, where Socrates introduces the doctrine of recollection.5
In this chapter I argue for a different position. The doctrines of the “middle” dialogues do differ, I agree, from the doctrines of the elenctic dialogues, but the differences are not as sharp as some interpreters have claimed, and they are not introduced at the same time. Though there are some genuine contradictions between the doctrines advanced in some elenctic dialogues and the doctrines advanced in some “middle” dialogues, for the most part the doctrines of the “middle” dialogues grow out of the doctrines of the elenctic dialogues. The development from the elenctic to the “middle” dialogues is gradual, and there is quite a lot of continuity between the two groups. Though some of the philosophy of the elenctic dialogues may well originate with the historical Socrates, we cannot say for certain how many of the doctrines of those dialogues belong to Socrates and how many belong to Plato. Socrates does become a spokesman for the philosophy of Plato, but it is not possible to specify a precise point at which that happens.
The Apology vs. the Republic
We can see the difference on which some interpreters have insisted if we contrast the Apology and the Republic. In the Apology Socrates presents himself as a person with only human wisdom, the awareness of the extent of his own ignorance. He puts forward very few philosophical claims at all. He does describe his elenctic method, and he does urge his fellow Athenians to pursue wisdom, truth, and the best state of their souls rather than wealth, reputation, and honors, but he does not say what wisdom looks like. He does present two accounts of the fate of the soul after death at the end of the dialogue, but he does not choose between them. In most respects, the Socrates of the Apology behaves like the barren Socrates of the Theaetetus. The Socrates of the Republic, in contrast, is fertile. He does not practice the elenchus much, if at all, after Book I. Instead, he puts forward hypotheses in several areas. One of these hypotheses is the theory of separate Forms, including the Form of the good. He distinguishes between knowledge and belief or opinion and connects that distinction with the theory of Forms. He has a theory of the nature of the soul that divides it into three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite. He presents an argument for the immortality of the soul, or at least its rational part, in Book X. He has a theory of the nature of virtue that connects the virtues with the parts of the soul. He has a political theory that divides the state into three classes, which parallel the three parts of the
soul. The ruler in this state is described as a philosopher-king; the philosopher-king knows the Forms, and in particular the Form of the good. None of these theories is to be found in the Apology. In the Republic Socrates is happy to share these theories with his interlocutors. In the Apology he appears to have no such theories to share.
The contrast between the barren Socrates of the Apology and the fertile Socrates of the Republic is as sharp as anyone could like. The question raised by the comparison between the two dialogues is, how do we get from the barren Socrates of the Apology to the fertile Socrates of the Republic? The answer lies in the fact that the Apology is not a typical elenctic dialogue. Socrates in the elenctic dialogues is not simply the barren practitioner of the elenchus. Consider, for example, the Euthyphro, discussed in Chapter 4. The Euthyphro is an elenctic dialogue, but it contains a version of the theory of Forms. The Forms of the Euthyphro are not the separate Forms of the “middle” dialogues, but they are the ancestors of those Forms. Or consider the Protagoras. It is true that the dialogue ends in perplexity, in the manner of a typical elenctic dialogue. (It does seem, however, that the perplexity is easily resolved. As Socrates states at the end of the dialogue, he has been arguing that virtue cannot be taught, but also that it is knowledge. Protagoras has been arguing that virtue can be taught, but he has been denying that it is knowledge. The solution to this problem would seem to be for Socrates to abandon his view that virtue cannot be taught, and for Protagoras to abandon his view that it can. Both would then have consistent positions.) In the body of the dialogue, however, Socrates defends the intellectualist view we discussed in Chapter 5. Or consider the Gorgias, discussed in Chapter 6. The Gorgias is an elenctic dialogue, without a doubt. Socrates tries his best to refute his interlocutors, who hold views diametrically opposed to his own. He defends the superiority of the just life, a life based on self-control, to the life of unrestrained pursuit of pleasure. He presents a myth of the judgment of souls in the after-life to support his position. He not only states a position, he defends it with fervor. Or consider the Meno. The Meno starts off like a typical elenctic dialogue, but when Meno questions the very possibility that the elenchus can lead to the truth Socrates presents the doctrine of recollection to show that it can. The Meno also ends not with perplexity, but on a positive note, with the claim that virtue is right opinion. Because the Gorgias and Meno do not end in perplexity in the manner of the typical elenctic dialogue and because they introduce features, such as the doctrine of recollection and the myth of the after-life that link them with the “middle” dialogues, they are often regarded as “transitional” dialogues. It has been argued that other dialogues also anticipate developments in the “middle” dialogues. Charles Kahn has urged that the dialogues concerned with the definition of ethical terms be regarded as “threshold” dialogues, part of a single literary project, to be read “ingressively,” with the culmination of the Republic in mind.6 In several dialogues that are clearly elenctic, then, Socrates introduces constructive philosophical theories. Most of these theories anticipate the theories of the Republic. In the remainder of this chapter we shall see how they do so.