“The majority of the people who take up philosophy and spend more than just their youth on it—who don’t get involved in it just for educational purposes and then drop it—turn out to be pretty weird (not to say rotten to the core).”

 (Plato, The Republic, trans. Robin Waterfield, 207-208)

Plato stood on the balcony, looking out over the sea. Overhead the gulls wheeled, calling in voices full of longing. Plato wished he could join them. He had come to Syracuse with high hopes, and now he was a prisoner. Not officially – to all appearances he was still the young king’s honoured guest and tutor. But in reality, he was not allowed to leave the walls of the fortress. His letters were read. His movements were watched. And his royal pupil grew more sullen and disputatious by the day.

He and his friend Dion, who was both chief advisor and uncle to Dionysius, had carefully planned the curriculum with which they would produce the world’s first philosopher king. Dionysius, it was true, was a little older than was ideal for a student – nearly thirty, in fact. He had been raised in luxury in the Syracusan court, famed for its lavish feasts. And his father, Dionysius the Elder, was a brutal tyrant who had risen to power on the shoulders of a mercenary force.

But Dionysius the Elder also had a vein of intellectual curiosity running through him – he had even written a play which had taken first prize at the Lenaia festival. Plato hoped the son would prove even more receptive to a life of the mind. It might not be possible to produce a perfect philosopher-king from this clay: not a beautifully decorated vase with graceful lines, say, but a serviceable vessel for knowledge.

Unfortunately, Plato had overestimated the young man’s capacity for virtue – and underestimated his courtiers’ capacity for viciousness. First, Dion had been slandered – he, as the brother of Dionysius the Elder, obviously sought to control his nephew via this innovative, foreign education. At first the rumours swirled that Dion’s true goal was to have his own sons named Dionysius’s heirs. Then the whispers became louder, more urgent: what Dion really wanted was to take the throne for himself, and this Athenian friend of Dion’s – this Plato – was party to the plot.

Dionysius had magnanimously declined to believe that Plato meant him harm. But he was also not inclined to believe anything Plato said in Dion’s defense, and although their lessons continued, Plato could also say Dionysius was not inclined to true philosophy. He wanted to be held in esteem as a philosopher without having to do the work; he wanted to be seen as virtuous and disciplined without having to leave off with his drinking parties and lavish feasts. And he wanted to be seen to be taught by Plato without having to actually learn from him. So Plato worried, and he watched the free birds wheeling over the Ionian Sea, wondering how he would escape the cage of his own making.

I’m Rose Judson. Welcome to Books of All Time.

[intro music – introduction]

Books of All Time is a podcast that’s tackling classic literature in chronological order. This is episode 40: Plato, The Republic, Part 2 – Out of the Cave. As always, if you want to read the transcript of this episode or see the references I used to write it, you can visit our website, www.booksofalltime.co.uk. There’s a link in the show notes if you need it. Let’s begin.

This week, we’re continuing with our super-sized, three-episode exploration of Plato’s Republic. Let’s quickly recap the essentials: Plato was an Athenian philosopher who was born in 428 BCE —about the time that our pal Aristophanes was making his debut as a playwright—and he died around 348 or 347 BCE. Plato’s lifespan straddled the end of the Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta, and he endured the worst ravages of the defeat—famine, invasion and the establishment of a foreign government.

Although Plato started out trying to write poetry and plays, he eventually followed his older brothers into the orbit of the philosopher Socrates, and he began to write philosophical literature, which explored ideas through fictionalized dialogues. Many of Plato’s writings feature Socrates as a major character and as the main speaker in these dialogues.

As a result of his writing, Plato is our most influential primary source for the life, character, and ideas of Socrates. The Republic, produced sometime around 380 BCE, is written in Socrates’s voice. On its face, it’s a story about Socrates getting invited to a dinner where he is challenged to explain what a just or moral life is, and whether leading a moral life confers benefits on the person who behaves morally. Socrates explores these concepts through conversations with acquaintances, friends, and antagonists.

Socrates posits that morality can be defined as knowing your role and performing it to the best of your ability. He begins to test this through a series of thought experiments. He decides that his initial strategy for exploring the moral life will be to think about what a moral society looks like. The first half of Republic covers Socrates’ ideas about politics – well, they’re really Plato’s ideas about politics; how much actual overlap there was between Plato and Socrates is difficult to say, as Socrates himself never wrote anything down.

Plato’s ideas about politics are, from our perspective, honestly sort of insane. For Plato, a perfectly moral society is one in which there is a strict hierarchical class structure, oppressive censorship of the arts, a rigorous, state-dictated education, and – I feel like I did not stress this enough last time – no desserts. It is quite literally a very Spartan type of state, which is, as I said last episode, what you might expect from someone who had watched his democratic state overreach and then lose a war to the Spartans.

Republic is the work of someone who is, perhaps justifiably, extremely fed up with democracy, and if you, like me, would prefer to see democracy restored and strengthened, you should probably give anyone who witters on about the need for philosopher kings, as Socrates was doing when we left off our last episode, a wide berth.

So the first half of the Republic was about politics. The second half is about philosophy. It sort of made me want to tear my hair out in places – if you have ever sat in a dorm room very late at night, listening to bright young men arguing about, say, music or movies, you have pretty much experienced the type of discourse you can expect from this part of The Republic.

I do not mean to slight the book’s importance by saying this. It is the earliest work we have which deals systematically with topics like politics, education, and, as we’ll discuss in this episode, the problem of universals. So much of the western tradition of philosophy flows from Plato and The Republic. “Beginnings,” said the English philosopher Bertrand Russell in A History of Western Philosophy, “are apt to be crude, but their originality should not be overlooked on this account. Something remains of what Plato had to say, even after all necessary corrections have been made.” (Russell 127)

In other words, when you boil off all the unnecessary chin-stroking, point-scoring, and the influence of various illicit chemicals, the stoned film student sometimes has a real, genuine point —a point that changes your outlook. A point that shifts your approach to life, even if it’s a very small or very subtle shift. It doesn’t mean you can’t roll your eyes while you listen to him, though.

So let’s pick up where we left off, late in book five of ten. Socrates has just scandalized his followers Glaucon and Adeimantus (Plato’s real-life brothers, you may recall), by declaring that the truly just, moral state is only possible under the reign of a philosopher-king.

[music – Republic, Books 5, 6]

First, let me remind you what Socrates had just said: his ideal state – that’s the one with no desserts and the communal living and the rigged sex-lotteries, remember – is not possible unless, quote:

“Unless communities have philosophers as kings,’ I said, ‘or the people who are currently called kings and rulers practise philosophy with enough integrity—in other words, unless political power and philosophy coincide, and all the people with their diversity of talents who currently head in different directions towards either government or philosophy have those doors shut firmly in their faces—there can be no end to political troubles, my dear Glaucon, or even to human troubles in general.” (Waterfield 193)

Having proposed this, the first order of business is for Plato – uh, sorry, for Socrates – to define what he means by “philosophy” and “philosophers.” The word philosopher means “lover of wisdom,” and after some banter about the things Glaucon loves – mostly teenage boys – Socrates begins to drill down into what a philosopher is. It’s not someone who is merely interested in acquiring learning – Glaucon compares such people to sightseers or theatre-goers. (Waterfield 193)

Socrates agrees. He builds on this comparison: sightseers and theatre-goers want to experience art and architecture and stories which they believe to be beautiful. Philosophers want to experience beauty itself – a timeless, unchangeable essence, a universal concept beyond particular thing which might “partake in beauty,” as Socrates puts it. People who can conceive of beauty itself, not just of beautiful things, are awakened, have knowledge, and are philosophers. People who seek beautiful things are dreamers who have opinions, and are merely connoisseurs. Then Socrates asks:

“Given that philosophers are those who are capable of apprehending that which is permanent and unvarying, while those who can’t, those who wander erratically in the midst of plurality and variety, are not lovers of knowledge, which set of people ought to be rulers of a community?” (Waterfield 203)

Well, golly gee, Socrates. I couldn’t possibly say. Knowledge is a search for these permanent, unvarying forms of various domains – a search for truth. In addition to seeking these things, a philosopher must also be gentle, have a good memory, and be capable of self-discipline. These are the people who should be trained to become guardians in Plato’s ideal state.

Here Adeimantus cuts in. He says that there is a popular opinion – one Adeimantus seems to sort of share – that philosophers are slippery fellows whose ideas are strange and anti-social, with a tricky way of questioning people and framing an argument that often puts others on the back foot. Quote:

“Someone might object that his inability to find the words to challenge you doesn’t alter the evident fact that the majority of the people who take up philosophy and spend more than just their youth on it—who don’t get involved in it just for educational purposes and then drop it—turn out to be pretty weird (not to say rotten to the core), and that the effect of this pursuit you’re praising even on those of its practitioners who are supposed to be particularly good is that they become incapable of performing any service to their communities.” (Waterfield 207-208)

Socrates agrees with this, which baffles Adeimantus. But you just said philosophers ought to rule over us; he points out; how can you now say they’re also antisocial freaks who think they know better than everyone else?

Socrates once again indulges in an analogy, which he prefaces by saying: “What society does to the best practitioners of philosophy is so complex that there’s no other single phenomenon like it.” (Waterfield 208) Sure, Socrates, nobody has it tougher than philosophers. Anyway, this analogy is the ship of state analogy.

On the ship of state, you have the boat’s owner. He is large and strong, but a bit blind and doesn’t see so well. All around him are the sailors he has hired, clamoring for their turn at the rudder – even fighting among each other to the death. Surely, these sailors think, they have the ability to steer the ship better than this big lummox. They are smarter, have better eyesight – and honestly, if he can do it, anyone can. What’s the point of trying to learn anything?

Meanwhile, the navigator – a gentle, learned fellow, who has studied the sky, the stars, and the tides and so on – tries to explain how to actually sail, but the sailors all shout him down and call him useless. As to the navigator, thus to philosophers. He is the one who is truly fit to rule the ship – none of this democratic nonsense, thank you very much – and yet his powers go unused by his fellow men, and he must bravely endure their taunts to boot.

Socrates then goes on to declare – eliciting a bitter, 21^st-century gale of laughter from me – that philosophers do not try to convince others to accept their wise rule because, quote, “it’s unnatural for wise men to dance attendance on rich men.” (Waterfield 209) Philosophers’ quiet wisdom and diffidence is why they are not called on to run things – that, and the veniality and stupidity of those around them.

Socrates concedes, however, that philosophic temperaments can be corrupted by bad upbringings. Like plants, he explains, people with the natural inclination to become philosopher kings can be warped by any number of influences: bad parenting, becoming vain about their good looks, being spoiled by affluence, and so on. Such people often become far worse than useless – they break bad.

After a long rant about bad teachers, particularly the sophists, Plato’s rivals – Socrates finally lands the plane: in addition to being capable of perceiving the true essence of things, quick learners, gentle natured, and possessed of good memories, those who would become philosopher-kings must also lead modest lives away from flatterers or sycophants.

 “You’re absolutely right, Socrates,” say Glaucon and Adeimantus.

Socrates then goes on to explain that philosopher-kings in training must be taught to recognize and understand the universal form of the good – the essential world beyond the material one, divine in nature. This sounds mystical to me, but Plato/Socrates insists it is rational. Quote:

“Someone whose mind really is fixed on reality has no time to cast his gaze downwards on to the affairs of men and to enter into their disputes. His eyes are occupied with the sight of things which are organized, permanent, and unchanging, where wronging and being wronged don’t exist, where all is orderly and rational; and he makes this realm the model for his behaviour, and assimilates himself to it as much as is feasible.” (Waterfield 223)

This knowledge of goodness, the form of the good, is the key to individual and societal morality, and education is the path towards this knowledge. (This, again, sounds like Confucius, except that he insisted on the study of history and poetry rather than philosophy.)  Socrates, through long digressive questioning of Glaucon, explains that this “good” is not mere happiness or pleasure. It is, instead, something more profound than that. So profound that it can only be described with – le sigh – another allegory. Three of them, actually.

[music – Republic, Books 6-7]

This section of The Republic, which covers books six and seven, is one of the most famous. In fact, if you decide to have a go at reading or re-reading The Republic, I would say to start here, with the Allegory of the Sun, the Allegory of the Divided Line, and the Allegory of the Cave. These allegories can be picked apart and interpreted in various ways, so bear in mind that you are getting my distillation of them.

We begin with the allegory – or simile, I guess, of the Sun. Socrates begins with a preamble – explaining to his audience what he’s about to try to explain. Quote:

“’As we talk,’ I said, “We mention and differentiate between a lot of beautiful things and a lot of good things and so on . . . and we also talk about beauty itself, goodness itself, and so on. All the things we refer to as a plurality on these occasions we also conversely count as belonging to a single class by virtue of the fact that they have a single particular character, and we say that the X itself is what really is . . . we say that the first lot is visible rather than intelligible, whereas characters are intelligible rather than visible.’” (Waterfield 233)

So basically he is once again defining universals – sometimes called forms – versus particulars here. There are many individual cats in the world, all with various individual and visible characteristics which express universal qualities of catness to varying imperfect degrees. Except my cat, of course, who is the epitome of catness.

Now Socrates wants to take this one step further: universals are more than heuristics, they’re more than a relic of humans’ ability to recognise patterns. They are real entities, created by God or Goodness. We can come to know these universals, and in fact must come to know if we are actually to know anything at all. To explain the source of goodness, Socrates asks his audience to consider the various sense organs. Most of them, he explains, work without intermediaries. The ear detects sound, the nose smells; the tongue tastes (leave aside the fact that sound must travel through air or another medium for the moment). But eyes, if they are to see objects, require light.

In the darkness – or in artificial lighting – the eye perceives things dimly. You’ll have to guess, to one degree or another, what you’re looking at, and it is perfectly possible that you’ll guess wrong. You could, for instance, mistake a pile of laundry on a chair for an intruder sitting in the corner of your bedroom. But the bright, clear light of the sun reveals the true form of the world around you. Socrates says, quote:

“The Sun [sic] is not to be identified with sight, but is responsible for sight. [The Sun] is a counterpart to its father, goodness. As goodness stands in the intelligible realm to intelligence and the things we know, so in the visible realm the sun stands to sight and the things we see.” (Waterfield 235)

But, he goes on, the sun does even more than this: it gives warmth, activates growth. So the good is the source of knowledge and truth, but not those things themselves; just as the sun is the source of light, warmth, and growth, but not those things themselves.

Socrates moves on to the allegory of the divided line. This is meant to illustrate the different kinds of understanding humans can have. Divide the line in half. One half represents the visible, mundane world. The other half represents the true, divine world – the world of universal forms as created by the Good. Divide each of those sections in half again, and you get four kinds of knowing. In the visible world, you have conjecture – guessing based on the senses – and belief – confidence in your imperfect guesses. In the true “intelligible” world, you have understanding – the kind of theoretical intelligence used in geometry or mathematics – and reason.

Reason is, of course, the most complete form of knowledge, and it is, of course, arrived at by doing what Socrates does: dialectic, which is philosophical discussion of the kind we have all been enduring together here for the last six books. A question is asked, an answer is given, the answer is pulled apart to identify various assumptions within it, and each of those assumptions is then tested through further questioning.

While this process, as presented by Plato, can seem tedious (at least for this reader) that is not a knock on dialectic itself. That is more a function of the fact that Socrates’s interlocutors are written either as cartoon bullies who wither in the blinding glare of the great philosopher’s with, or as complete suck-ups who hang on his every word. But the actual approach – walking around an idea and thoroughly kicking the tires to see if it’s roadworthy, so to speak – is of great value, even if we have to wade through Socrates’s faux humility and endless chirpings of “Certainly that’s true, Socrates” from his audience.

Anyway. Socrates has explained the Good – the source of truth and knowledge – by comparing it to the sun – the source of light and warmth. He has used the divided line to further explain the different categories of knowledge humans can have. Now he puts it all together with the famous Allegory of the Cave.

Imagine a group of humans, says Socrates, who are prisoners in a cave, restrained in such a way that all they can do is stare at a blank wall in front of them. Behind them, the cave slopes up toward the surface. Halfway up the slope there is a low wall, and behind this wall is a road, or I guess another passageway, which cuts across the main part of the cave. Along this road you have a constant stream of people passing, carrying various artefacts – jars, statues of animals, tree-branches, what have you. Behind this road there is a fire, which projects the shadows of what’s happening on the road down onto the wall in front of the prisoners.

These shadows are what the prisoners perceive reality to be. Socrates then asks his audience to consider what happens if one of these prisoners escapes, or is liberated by someone from the road. Quote:

“Imagine him being dragged forcibly away from there, up the rough, steep slope . . . without being released until he’s been pulled out into the sunlight. Wouldn’t this treatment cause him pain and distress?” (Waterfield 242)

Pity the poor philosopher – for that is who our escapee is – such pain and distress from all the thinking? Naturally, the escapee adjusts to life on the outside and comes to perceive the true nature of reality – the true forms of the world, rather than the shadows on the wall. And, being a generous person, our philosopher returns to the cave to tell his fellow prisoners the news. But he is disorientated by the sudden transition from light into darkness, and cannot explain it properly once he gets down there. Consequently, they all think him insane. This demonstrates why philosophers can’t catch a break in society: their perception of the truth is just too abstract, too shocking for the normies.

Maybe. All I know is that I’ve dated two former philosophy majors in my lifetime, and my main problem with them was not the intimidating clarity of their reasoning. Rather, it was with the fact that neither of them showed much consideration for me or my needs: neither were in the habit of asking me how my day was when we met up, nor did they ever wash so much as a teaspoon after I’d cooked for them. It’s difficult to take someone’s beautiful ideas seriously when they take you for granted, and Socrates strikes me as having come from a similar mould.

Anyway. Now that we have had these three allegories, what are they meant to have taught us?

First, that there is an ultimate Good which is the source of truth and knowledge, and which has created ideal universal forms of all things. Next, that humans can progress from lower forms of thinking that focus on the visible world to higher forms of thinking, which allow them to perceive the divine true forms and qualities of the universe. The highest kind of thought is dialectic; philosophical discussion with others. And finally, we have the cautionary tale: pursuing philosophy can be painful to the philosopher, and can cause them to be estranged from society, but it is necessary.

Now. What does all this have to do with our philosopher-kings?

[music – Republic, Book 7-8]

Socrates now begins the process of tying all these allegories back to the education of the guardian class. Education is, quote, “the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around.” (Waterfield 245) By this he means turning minds away from the shadows on the cave wall toward the real sunlit world. But this—helping students to discover the true forms of reality—is not enough. Educators must also inspire their pupils to realise that returning to the cave to educate others is their highest purpose in life, regardless of how painful, awkward, or futile an effort that may be. Quote:

“The point of legislation is not to make one section of a community better off than the rest, but to engineer this for the community as a whole.” (Waterfield 247)

Endquote. And I say without irony: I quite agree, Socrates. He then goes on to recap his primary education program for young guardians up to the age of about 17: no plays, only the most heavily censored versions of poems and other literature, lots of exercise. From 17–20 they should perform military service, and those who still demonstrate philosophical potential – hardworking, well-mannered, eager to learn, and with a good memory – should then move on to 10 years of higher education in order to achieve, quote: “the reorientation of a mind from a kind of twilight to true daylight.” (Waterfield 250)

There is a lot of math involved in this higher curriculum. Arithmetic and geometry were sort of emerging fields in Plato’s time – Euclid, a scholar who would systematically establish the foundational principles of geometry on which we rely up to the present, had not even been born yet. Like a lot of emerging fields today that seem to promise keys to previously locked doors – computer science, evolutionary biology, genetics – people got a bit mystical about geometry.

Our next episode will cover the Pythagoreans, literal mathemagicians who pre-dated Socrates, in a bit more detail, but for now it’s enough to know that Plato is very, very keen on geometry. Quote:

“As we know, people who’ve studied geometry are much more receptive than those who haven’t to intellectual work in general; it makes absolutely all the difference in the world.” (Waterfield 258)

The intellectual groundwork established by geometry, in which scholars imagine and describe lines and circles and triangles and what have you, is an ideal stepping-stone towards contemplating the true forms. Also, its applications to military matters are not to be sneezed at, either.

After geometry comes astronomy – again, mainly for the maths involved with the motions of the stars and planets, not the stars and planets themselves. They are, after all, objects in the degraded visible world, not ideal forms. The same goes for the study of music – the point is not to educate performers, but to sharpen discernment and steep the learners in the harmonic ratios between tones – this Socrates explicitly connects to the teachings of Pythagoras, who held that numbers explained the true nature of the universe.

Once this decade of STEM education has been completed, the guardians – now thirty years old – take a further five years of study in dialectic, the summit, per Socrates, of all education. Quote:

“Dialectic is the only field of enquiry which sets out methodically to grasp the reality of any and every thing. All the other areas of expertise . . . are either concerned with fulfilling people’s beliefs and desires, or are directed towards generation and manufacture . . . Even any that are left – geometry and so on . . . are dreaming about reality.” (Waterfield 265)

Endquote. Socrates then declares that dialectic is essential because you’ve got to be willing to question everything you take for granted in order to be truly educated. And, yes, I agree broadly with this idea, but the underlying project of saying that there is a real part of the world and a less-real part doesn’t sit well with me, and that is something Plato takes for granted and never seems to interrogate. There is also a question raised here with the forms about their creation, which Plato also seems to constantly skate past. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something that would pull me up short whenever Plato would mention the eternal forms as created by God, or the good. Then I turned back to Bertrand Russell to check my understanding against his explanations, and he laid it out very clearly, as you would expect a Nobel Prize-winning writer to do.

The question is basically this: if God, or the source of the Good, or whatever, created the platonic forms of all that we see – people, plants, furniture; concepts like courage; my one true perfect cat – would the creator not have had to imagine the forms, first? In which case the forms themselves would be copies of a thought, not real, tangible things, which Plato repeatedly insists they are.

If you try to rationalise this by stating that maybe the creator’s original thought springs forth as a perfect artefact, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, you still have the problem that the forms of all things are also supposed to be eternal. But, if they emerge as a thought in the mind of the creator, they can be dated, and so have a starting point. If you think about it long enough, you realise that the idea of a creator is the weakest link in the theory and ought to be cut. Because if you don’t eliminate a creator, then you have a further problem, of which Russell says, quote:

“What is timeless must be uncreated . . . only the contingent world, the world in space and time, can have been created; but this is the every-day world which has been condemned as illusory and also bad. Therefore the Creator, it would seem, created only illusion and evil.” (Russell 130)

Yeah. I mean, who tied those people up in that cave, Plato? It ain’t elves.

Anyway, after completing their dialectic studies, the guardians, now thirty-five, move on to a 15-year apprenticeship in lower government offices before graduating, at last, at the age of 50. That tracks for me: the sheltered, regimented existence these guardians have been living is basically a recipe for arrested development. Not being grown up until well into middle age sounds about right.

We end this section by contemplating a practical problem: instituting this radical program of education – and the radically moral form of government which would flow from it – would require a major overhaul of society. How would this best be achieved? By forced relocation and a mass campaign of child abduction, obviously: banish all the people over the age of 10 from your pilot city and begin teaching all that neutered poetry to those kids. What could possibly go wrong?

[music – Books 8-10: Types of Governments, Anti-Climactic Comments, Wrap-Up]

The final sections of The Republic are genuinely interesting, at least on a first and second read: Plato brings Socrates back to the question he has been trying to answer all this time. One, what is morality? Two, are there any benefits of living a moral life, or will you constantly be taken advantage of by powerful people, the way Thrasymachus insisted way back in book one?

We have Plato’s answer of what morality is: essentially, it’s finding your lane and staying in it. The just society is one in which everyone knows their place and carries out their role to the best of their abilities, overseen by disinterested philosopher-kings. The moral psyche is one in which the ambitions and appetites stay in their places below reason. Now, to answer the second part of the question – what are the benefits, here? – Socrates decides to walk through various bad forms of government and talk about the kinds of people those societies would produce, and determine whether they can be as happy as those in the most moral society – the aristocracy, literally meaning rule by the best people – must be.

Socrates first describes timocracy – rule of the ambitious. It is the first degradation of aristocracy: having messed up their eugenic breeding program and/or having abandoned the principle of communal wealth, the aristocrats raise a new generation of leaders who are only begrudgingly interested in contemplating the form of the good. These timocrats prefer sports and martial achievements, and they have extended participation in government to include anyone with property. Socrates states that this is basically the system they have in Sparta. Residents of a timocracy, having imperfect morals, are imperfectly happy: they have abandoned the true pleasure of philosophy for tarnished, but not totally debased pleasures like winning games or battles, or owning the bed they sleep on.

Next comes oligarchy, or rather plutocracy – rule by the richest. This occurs when the people within a timocracy find their ambitions thwarted by institutions like the courts. They accumulate as much wealth as possible to prevent this happening again, and so become oligarchs. Oligarchs have one virtue – they have enough self-discipline to continue to save money. But that is their downfall in two respects: politically and personally.

On the political level – well, obviously, when the poor are totally excluded from government regardless of their leadership capabilities, tensions grow. The haves and have-nots wind up constantly plotting against one another. In the event of a war from without, an oligarchic society may hesitate to defend itself – giving weapons to the disgruntled have-nots may just encourage them to turn on the oligarchs rather than on the foreign enemy.

On the personal level, the pursuit of wealth leads people to violate Plato’s “know your place” rule. It’s not possible to become fabulously wealthy merely from farming, say. A farmer must also engage in land speculation and investment and deal-making – he must also be a businessman, not just a farmer. This causes tension and unhappiness, because he is not farming as well when he is focused on his bank balance. And he must remain focused on his bank balance, because if it drops, he can no longer be an oligarch.

In such a case, observes Adeimantus, the ex-oligarch “wasn’t an authentic ruler: he was nothing but a consumer.” (Waterfield 289) Nobody existing in such a divided and insecure state, Socrates asserts, can be truly happy.

Oligarchies fall apart when the common people revolt, and then you have democracy. As we’ve discussed, Plato and Socrates were pretty sour on democracy, and this comes shining through in how Plato has Socrates cdescribe its origins. Quote:

“Democracy starts, in my opinion, when the poor members of the community are victorious. They kill some of the rich, they expel others, and they give everyone who’s left equal social and political rights.” (Waterfield 295)

Yes, how dare they. But even worse, to Plato’s mind, is that there are no specialties in a democratic society – at least, not fixed ones. Education can also take place any old way, using any old poetry – even Homer, le gasp. Socrates then says, quote:

“It looks as though it’s an enjoyable, lax, and variegated kind of political system which treats everyone as equal, whether or not they are.” (Waterfield 297)

Just sit with that one for a moment, will you? “A system that treats everyone as equal, whether or not they are.” I think this is also why I, a small-d democrat, can’t quite settle to Plato: there is this vein of commentary in The Republic that sounds all too present-day to me. This commentary is constantly grumbling about how the wrong kind of people are in charge, and how we, as people with refined minds which make us clear and precise and logical thinkers, are the only people of true quality; the only ones who are suited to rule, and those brutes and rubes would be lucky to have us. That just puts my back up as a believer in democracy, and especially as a woman, whose right to participate in that democracy is not even as old as Heinz tomato ketchup.

At any rate, the psychology of the democrat, according to Socrates, is muddled. The democratic mind contains the residues of aristocratic discipline, but allows its desires to gain the upper hand too often. The democrat suffers from a surfeit of freedom – he never quite knows where he belongs or what he’s meant to be doing. And this, Plato argues, means he is never really happy.

After democracy, we arrive at the lowest rung on the ladder: dictatorship, or tyranny. Dictatorship, says Socrates, begins when, quote, “the minds of the citizens of a democracy become so sensitive that they get angry and annoyed at the slightest hint of enslavement.” (Waterfield 304) I wonder if “hints of enslavement” includes changes in the logos for restaurant chains.

This enslavement, real or imagined, usually creates a space into which a “champion of the people” can step – one who soon takes power with the consent of the people, and then quickly acts to consolidate that power by eliminating rivals, quashing dissent, and whipping up advantageous divisions among the masses to prevent his being taken down by the people. He must surround himself with loyal toadies for self-preservation. Socrates says of the dictator, quote:

“He’s caught in a dilemma . . . which requires him to choose between sharing his life with people who are, on the whole, second-rate, and who hate him, or not living at all.” (Waterfield 310)

Gee, that sounds rough. Anyhow, dictators rule through fear, force, and the distribution of corrupt spoils. They are themselves ruled by their appetites without any moderation from their shrivelled sense of virtue. Psychologically, the dictator lives in a constant state of dissatisfaction, for they never have enough; and in a sparking, electrically charged cloud of paranoia, for they know they are hated. There is no way such a person could ever be happy.

Socrates concludes that his aristocratic society is the only one in which true happiness can be achieved, and that, even though it is very unlikely to be realised on earth, it can be held as a divine form to be aspired toward.

Now. Plato apparently revised The Republic repeatedly throughout his life, and although I’ve not yet studied the ins and outs of how and when that revision may have transpired, I’d bet this assertion – that the Platonic society is in fact an aspirational ideal – was a late revision.

As I hinted at the top of the show – and as we’ll discuss in the next episode – Plato actually did try to play political consultant during his lifetime. He was invited to become a tutor to the young ruler of Syracuse, a fellow named Dionysius. Plato hoped he could turn Dionysius into a philosopher-king. Instead he wound up in the middle of a civil war.

Book ten is very mystical, to a degree that almost makes it feel tacked-on to the rest of the book, even though it refers to topics discussed elsewhere in The Republic. I’ll cover it very briskly. The first half dwells on how the arts – not just poetry and drama, but painting, too – are an insult to the creator of the true forms, and detrimental to the development of philosophical reason because of all the icky emotions they provoke. Quote:

“You see, my dear Glaucon,’ I said, ‘what’s in the balance here is absolutely crucial—far more so than people think. It’s whether one becomes a good or a bad person, and consequently has the calibre not to be distracted by prestige, wealth, political power, or even poetry from applying oneself to morality and whatever else goodness involves.’” (Waterfield 362)

The arts should thus be banned from society.

The other half of book 10 presents rational arguments in favour of proving that human souls are immortal. These rational arguments rest on some very goofy assumptions, to be quite honest. Socrates initially presents the idea of immortality to Glaucon as one of the benefits of living a moral life: an immoral soul would live forever tortured by its psychological defects; a moral one persists in eternal glory thanks to its harmonious nature and ability to perceive The Good.

But immortality of the soul is also a way to solve the sticky problem of why immoral people seem to prosper in society: they may seem to have the upper hand, but after death, they struggle. Socrates describes the myth of Er, which is the story of a young warrior named – you guessed it – Er. He has a near-death experience in battle, and the myth is basically him telling his people what he saw on his brief visit to the underworld – a bit like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz.

I’ll spare you the specific details of what Er sees: the judgings and the meadows in which souls wander, and the lotteries overseen by the three Fates, and his encounter with something called the Spindle of Necessity. The bottom line is: not only is the soul immortal, it can be reincarnated, and people who live moral lives will have the favour of the gods, and be allowed to choose nicer reincarnations on the next go-round, eventually ascending to a final, permanent incarnation which presumably gets to go frolic in the realm of the true forms.

“My recommendation,” says Socrates, at the very last, “would be for us to regard the soul as immortal and as capable of surviving a great deal of suffering, just as it survives all the good times. We should always keep to the upward path, and we should use every means at our disposal to act morally and with intelligence.” (Waterfield 379)

You’re absolutely right, Socrates.  

[music – Outro, Preview of Next Episode]

That’s it for this episode. Thanks for bearing with me as I worked through this extra-long book. I hope you found it rewarding. I certainly did: In spite of my joking around in the last episode, I definitely took more away from The Republic on this read than I did as an undergraduate, half a lifetime ago.

As tedious as reading Socrates’s dialogue can be, and as repellent as I find the closed, narrow, oppressive Platonic society, re-reading this book made me realise just how often you encounter Platonic ideas about how society works in the wild, as it were – but maybe that’s just because I read a lot of political analysis in the news. At any rate, if you also want to see the true form of political theory for yourself, you can also tackle The Republic. Do be warned that Socrates is so, so much more pedantic than I’ve let on here.

Or at least, Plato presents him that way. Maybe he was completely different in life than in the teachings of Plato. Did Socrates really believe what we’re told he believed? What do we know about the actual facts of his life and his teachings? And who were his influences? These are all questions we’ll answer in our third and final episode on The Republic.

We’ll also take a look at the story I hinted at in the opening of this show – how Plato once tried to turn Dionysius of Syracuse into a real-world philosopher king – and how he failed spectacularly, almost to the point of losing his life.

Join me on Sunday, October 19th for Episode 41: Plato, The Republic, Part 3 – I Entirely Agree, Socrates.

Books of All Time is written and produced by me, Rose Judson. The Disclaimer Voice of Doom is Ed Brown. Lluvia Arras designed our cover art and logo. Special thanks to Yelena Shapiro, Cathy Merli, Matt Brough, John Cole and everyone who contributed ideas for the opening this week, including the Books of All Time Advisory Council: Ed Brown, Beck Collins, Neil Dowling, Caitlin McMullin, Hugh Parker, and Jonathan Skipp. You can support the show by subscribing and leaving a rating or review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow us on social media: we’re on Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook. Thanks for listening! I’ll be back in two weeks.

References and Works Cited:

Barney, Rachel. “Callicles and Thrasymachus.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 31 Aug. 2017, plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/callicles-thrasymachus/.

Brown, Eric. “Plato’s Ethics and Politics in the Republic.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 12 Sept. 2017, plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/plato-ethics-politics/. 

Fine, Gail. The Oxford Handbook of Plato: Second Edition. Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019. 

McAleer, Sean. Plato’s Republic: An Introduction. Openbook Publishers, 2020. 

Robin Waterfield, and Plato. Oxford World’s Classics: Plato: Republic. Oxford University Press, 2008. 

Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy. Simon and Schuster, 1972.