It’s been a long while since I did one of these. I finished book 1 and never started book 2. Just as a recap I’ll remind my millions and millions of readers that all I’m doing is reading Plato’s Republic and using this blog to take notes. Every section has a number, IDK why the numbers start off so high but hey, who am I to judge? Every section is divided into subsections with letters so Book 2 starts with 357A. I’ll respond to things in the Book with my own thoughts starting with an annotation of where I am in the book. If there is a line in particular that I like I might just copy and paste it as a quote to keep. I’m also taking notes in a journal but these are more to help me keep track of things. Philosophy is obviously tough to understand so I sometimes try to create a sort of cheat sheet to keep all the threads together.
357C: Three different kinds of “good”s. One is a good that is only desirable or “good” in its process like laughter or “harmless” pleasures. Two is is a good where both the process and the product are both intrinsically desirable such as thinking. Three is a good that people don’t really enjoy the process of but they want the product. These would be things like Surgery, or exercise. People who partake of this third kind are typically paid for it, like doctors. Socrates claims that Justice is a type 2 good but Greek society says that justice is a type 3 good that is boring and only done for the benefit of reputation.
360D: The argument is that people will praise a Just man that refrains from using his power but they secretly find him foolish. They only praise him to try and trick everyone else into thinking injustice is bad and hopefully that trick will stop people from committing injustice against them.
362: Glaucon has set up a hypothetical where there are two extreme men. One extreme Unjust man and one extreme Just man. Both given absolute power. This hypothetical Unjust Man commits Injustice but gets away with it and is praised and adored. He gives and takes from whoever he wants. The Just man does not use his power and is also hated, tortured, and killed. Glaucon asks Socrates which of the two has been happier and what Injustice and Justice did for each man.
368C: I love this little idea. Socrates says that if you want to study something hard to see it would be great if there was a version of the same thing that was much bigger and easier to see. With this in mind he suggests first looking at whole cities as Just and Unjust before looking at individuals with the same distinction. “So then, perhaps there would be more justice in the bigger and it would be easier to observe closely.”
369B: “A city comes into being because each of us isn’t self-sufficient but is in need of much.” Socrates describes a whole city full of interconnected people producing and and relying on each other; Merchants, Wage Earners, Ship Builders, Farmers, Shoe Makers, etc. The city Socrates describes is too perfect in its simplicity for Glaucon and instead of being happy with the necessities Glaucon insists that some would want tables, couches, ornamentations, and art. Socrates calls the former a “healthy” city and the latter a “Feverish city.” The city will need to be much bigger. The city gets too large and war with other cities for resources is inevitable if “they let themselves go to the unlimited acquisition of money overstepping the boundary of necessary.” The city now requires an army and grows even bigger.
375D: The guardian must be both gentle to its own and the opposite of gentle to the stranger. If they are cruel to their own they destroy their own. They establish this as possible with dogs who can be gentle and deadly in turn. The Noble dog is angry at the unknown and warm to the known regardless of either one’s goodness to them. “It distinguishes friendly from hostile by nothing other than by having learned the one and being ignorant of the other.” The dog is therefore a “Lover of learning” since knowledge defines what is its own. I like this image of the dog as a philosopher since love of learning and love of wisdom are the same.
377B: Socrates is starting to talk about education. This section is going to be important to me. He talks about how the first thing we do with children is tell them lies in the form of “tales”. There are truths in them but they are false.
– “Don’t you know that the beginning is the most important part of every work and that this is especially true with anything young and tender? For at that stage it’s most plastic, and each thing assimilates itself the model whose stamp anyone wishes to give it.”
Socrates says that “tales” need to be supervised and that most tales told nowadays should be thrown out, E.G. tales of how the gods plot against each other so that none think that anger is holy. Socrates claims that he as a founder should not be the one creating the right tales but instead would be a judge. “The poet mustn’t be allowed to say that those who pay the penalty are wretched and that the one who did the punishing was a god.”
381A: “And a soul that is most courageous and most prudent, wouldn’t an external affection least trouble and alter it?”
382B: “To lie to the soul about the things that are, and to have to hold the lie there is what everyone would least accept; and that everyone hates a lie in that place most of all.”
Finished Book 2. Socrates obviously has antiquated ideas about what a “God” can be but at the same time I don’t think Socrates is a very religious man. It seems like he understands that if he were to describe an ideal city he would come up with a new religion in the same way he probably feels all the other religions were born.
The idea of an openly atheistic society didn’t really exist back then and honestly, I don’t think it exists now. Nationalism is very much like religion. The way people from both political parties act often reminds me of religious zealots. Even Atheism and Nihilism serve the same sort of purpose as religion. It is a faith in an improvable idea that comes to umbrella over everything you know and leads your decision making.
People think that if you change the word for something it changes what it does in your mind. Examples of my broadly defined”Religion”s exist everywhere in any culture. The only thing that makes something a religion is if people let it define the world around them. I would not say that having a religion is a bad thing. I think what makes a religion “bad” is if it leads you to do harmful things. I.E. Nationalism is typically a “bad” religion.
In this way I can rationalize what Socrates is saying despite living more than 2400 years after him in a new kind of world outlook, especially on religion. He thinks of religion more as an educational tool for the masses to know what is and what isn’t “good”. I think most religions would actually be totally fine with that definition. I don’t know how you would get mad at someone saying your teaching are designed to teach people goodness. Any god that cares more about being constantly worshiped than they do about their people being good is not a god to follow anyway, at least to me.
When Socrates started talking about education I was hoping for more than just a discussion of religion but maybe there will be more in later books.
The Mind of Joshypoo 