At the end of Book 3 Socrates had just finished describing the overall, macro level, organizational systems of his Hypothetical “Perfect” City. The reason I’m preemptively separating this section into 2 parts is because I think Book 4 has alot to say. I think that’s fine since I basically broke down Book 3 into multiple parts as well since I felt like I needed to clarify and explain some things.
To recap, and probably over simplify, he has the citizenry separated into three groups; the Rulers, the Guardians, and the regular citizenry. The Rulers haven’t been discussed much but their essentially the “best” of men in that they are honest, wise, and care about the well being of the city over everything else. The Guardians seem to be a mix of the Military, Police, and generally people in charge of watching over and maintaining the health of society. I’m not sure if Socrates is including teachers into the Guardian group but he clearly places great importance on education. Lastly, the Citizenry are the only people allowed to hold private property at all and should be encouraged to pursuing a single craft that they are best suited to.
So, Book 4 begins with Adeimantus, the man Socrates is talking to, asking how these Guardians could possibly be happy in this city if they aren’t allowed to own anything at all, even the homes the sleep in. As a side note, I want to point out how smart this format for writing is. Instead of your typical philosophical text of just positing concepts for 1,000 pages Plato has given himself so many tools to work with. Multiple characters allow for Plato to let the conversation go the way he wants it but also have it feel organic. Plato wants to talk about how the Guardians can be happy since he thinks that the argument his society would use to poke a whole in the concept. To do this he just has Adeimantus bring it up. By having a character represent the society Plato is critiquing he can give that critique a voice to get behind while still having total control of both sides of the argument. On top of that, as Adeimantus is convinced of things it gives us, or at least me, more of a feeling of being convinced myself.
Anyway, the question is, how can the Guardians be happy without material gains. Socrates, as he often does, first reinforces Adeimantus’ argument to make himself seem more objective and honest before leading the argument towards his own counter point. Socrates quickly clarifies that if the Guardians, or any group at all, is unhappy then this city is clearly not a just city and is therefore a failure. With this statement he accomplishes three things.
First, he makes sure that the goal of the conversation is focused on finding “justice”. Second, he implants into Adeimantus’ head the idea that a the best way to find a flaw in this hypothetical is to find a place where justice is missing. This actually works to convince Adeimantus towards Socrates side of the argument since the original point Socrates was trying to argue against was the idea that Justice is not worth striving for. By setting up a lack of justice as the potential target for his debate opponent to attack he is subtly getting Adeimantus into the state of mind that Justice is the true sign of quality.
Lastly, Socrates is subtly criticizing any real city that ignores the happiness of any citizen or group of citizens. A city where any part is being exploited or ignored is an unjust city where the ruling class is failing. These are the kinds of criticisms that led the the real life ruling class to sentence Socrates to death.
Socrates argues that if you were to give a farmer or craftsman material wealth it would clearly lead to a drop in productivity and work quality from that farmer. It takes away incentive he might have to do work, especially quality work, and distracts him with other pursuits that are detrimental to his craft. Adeimantus agrees with that idea. Socrates then says that while having shoddy farmers is not that big a deal for the city having shoddy Guardians would be terrible and because of this the kind of material happiness Adeimantus describes is clearly not a healthy thing for anyone in the city. His exact quote is, “But surely you see that men who are not guardians of the laws and the city, but seem to be, utterly destroy an entire city.”
After discussing how wealth has a negative effect on people he makes the same claim about poverty. If a craftsmen is too poor to afford tools then not only will his work drop in quality but he will also make worse craftsmen of anyone he teaches. For these reasons one of the primary tasks of the Guardians will be to make sure that both wealth and poverty never exist in the city. Oddly, when Socrates is listing the negative effects of wealth and poverty, such as idleness and illiberality, he lists as both being sources of “innovation”. Innovation is the only product the two have in common and it feels unintuitive to list it as a negative. I get the feeling innovation will be discussed in more detail later.
Adeimantus’ next question is about how this City, which I will refer to from now on as The Republic, can possibly defend itself or win wars if it has no money. Socrates once again uses his ideas on the negative effects of money to counter Adeimantus’ criticism. Because wealth leads to complacency then the Guardians would be able to defeat a wealthy army twice its size. There would also be no incentive for a nation to declare war on The Republic . If wealth is universally frowned upon, then The Republic wouldn’t antagonize any neighbors and wouldn’t have enough wealth to be worth going to war with, especially since the Guardians would be so formidable in battle. In fact, The Republic would actually be flush with potential allies. Any ally would get the lion’s share of the loot while fighting alongside the Guardians who are the most powerful warriors.
Another reason The Republic needn’t worry about other cities is that other cities are not actually cities at all. This is an interesting point he makes. He basically claims that any real city is actually a multitude of much smaller cities that are regularly at war with each other. He says that two of these cities that exist, and are constantly at war, are the rich and the poor and even within those groups there are many cities fighting between each other. Socrates argues that The Republic, no matter how small it is, will always be the largest of all cities because no other city is actually a fully unified and therefore aren’t even cities at all.
I like this argument in particular. It eloquently states one of the major weaknesses of an unified city and points the blame mostly on the society’s obsession with wealth and power. A sociological emphasis on competition, or even just a lack of equality in the city, creates a system where the people compete for a goal, that goal being wealth and power, that in actuality is unhealthy for them in every way.
Socrates adds to the Guardian’s growing list of tasks by assigning them the duty of ensuring that the Republic never grows past a particular boundary. He defines that boundary as “Up to that point in its growth at which it’s willing to be one, let it grow, and not beyond.” If the Republic grows too large then it will start to divide itself into more, smaller cities and once that start’s than the Republic is basically already dead. Adeimantus then points out that the Guardians are being given quite alot of tasks. Socrates argues that all of these tasks that seem separate from each other are, in reality, easy to do as long as the Guardians keep vigilant guard of the truly “sufficient” task, which is education and rearing. Sufficient is a word Socrates seems to choose very carefully here. The actual quote is this, “if they guard the one great- or, rather than great, sufficient- thing.”
This is just one of many moments that very clearly show how important Socrates believes education is. He consistently makes it clear that all the good aspects of this Republic can only exist with quality education and rearing. If we could provide an entire population with a truly good, Capital-E, Education, in every aspect of life, in “gymnastics” and “music”, in ethics and intuition, then the people will know the obvious truths that so many people fail to see. Those truths being that kindness, compassion, respect, etc, or in other words, leading a life of “Justice” is the most rewarding choice. As Socrates puts it, “The regime, once well started, will roll on like a circle in its growth. For sound rearing and education, when they are preserved, produce good natures; and sound natures, in their turn receiving such an education, grow up still better than those before them.” Or, another quote just on the next page “The starting point of a man’s education sets the course of what follows.”
Socrates reinforces that belief in the next section when he talks about other matters of society. Socrates states that putting social norms into laws is the wrong, and counter-productive, choice. By laws of social norms I mean in the sense that certain types of behaviors, or styles or things like clothing, cloud be outlawed. Socrates claims that a good education leads to the people naturally finding what is good. Even rules in matters of business such as contracts, legal complaints, appointment of judges, assessment of taxes, or anything else like that, should not be put into law because if the people are raised to be truly just, in a society that puts no value on wealth, they will naturally find the correct courses themselves.
Now, obviously achieving that sort of universal quality Education isn’t something that’s really possible, in the opinion of most people, but I think Socrates understands that simply stating the power potential in education has value in itself. A discussion about the possibility of that type of education is for another time and its mentions in this work are, to me, more there to communicate education’s importance, influence, and value. Socrates isn’t actually making any attempts to clearly describe that perfect education. He doesn’t deign to have that knowledge. He just says things like, a fine a lawful beginning leads to more law-abiding adults, or that competition over money is for children be normalized to.
This post is already pretty long and is only covering half the Book so this’ll be the last section I go over. Do you remember in one of the previous books where Socrates made some less respectable claims about how people should respond to disease? He talked about someone suffering from a disease of the kind that if they wanted to fight it it would consume the rest of their lives while never actually improving their lives. He argued that instead of giving up your life to instead fight that disease you should try to live your true life as best you can while you can. This may sound odd but I think part of why this might make sense to Socrates is that he believes that people shouldn’t live their lives in fear of death.
Here in Book 4 Socrates brings up that same example to describe the type of people who rule societies in the real world who constantly try to find the perfect set of laws. Adeimantus says, “They’ll spend their entire lives continually setting down many such rules and correcting them, thinking they’ll get hold of what’s best.”
Socrates responds, “Such men will live like those who are sick but, due to licentiousness, aren’t willing to quit their worthless way of life. For all their treatment, they get nowhere, except, of course, to make their illnesses more complicated and bigger, always hoping that if someone would just recommend a drug, they will be- thanks to it- healthy. Isn’t it charming in them that they believe the greatest enemy of all is the man who tells the truth- namely, that until one gives up drinking, stuffing oneself, sex, and idleness, there will be no help for one in drugs, cutting, charms or pendants.”
To me, and this is just one interpretation, it feels like Socrates brought up that idea of the sick man earlier on with the same goal in mind that he had when he supported Adeimantus’ argument earlier on in the Book. The type of people who believe in Adeimantus’ darker idea of society and the type of people who should be respected will agree with Socrates statement and grasp on to that metaphor. Socrates then expertly uses that exact example they liked to then lead them to a state of mind to agree with a more radical claim that they might have more violently disagreed with.
Regardless of your opinion on Socrates’ philosophical ideas reading this book is still valuable in that it is absolutely expert use of rhetoric that we can learn from.
The Mind of Joshypoo 