Socrates Polis: Some Important Characteristics

The polis some important characteristics
A polis is a Greek city-state. Instead of having a united country, the Greeks were divided into large, independent cities with their own governments and people. Some of the more famous poleis are Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, and Argos.
Poleis were originally ruled by heredity kings. As these kings became unpopular, they were often overthrown by tyrants. Although usurpers to the throne that were considered illegitimate, they were often very popular because they ended the corrupt monarchies. After tyrannies, other forms of government, like democracies and oligarchies formed.
The average polis was usually built around a hill. At the top of the hill was the acropolis, a heavily-protected fort
that doubled as a temple to the local patron god. A polis also often featured an agora, or public market. The agora served both economic and political needs, where both goods and ideas were exchanged. Outside of the city walls was an area called the chora. The chora included poor housing and farmlands, areas that could be abandoned in case of an invasion.

Athenian system: Direct democracy:
Spartan system (model for Plato’s republic); interpretation of state
The problems to address
Relativism
Relativism is not a single doctrine but a family of views whose common theme is that some central aspect of experience, thought, evaluation, or even reality is somehow relative to something else. For example standards of justification, moral principles or truth are sometimes said to be relative to language, culture, or biological makeup. Although relativistic lines of thought often lead to very implausible conclusions, there is something seductive about them, and they have captivated a wide range of thinkers from a wide range of traditions. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/
Socrates
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/#3
The philosopher Socrates remains, as he was in his lifetime (469–399 B.C.E.),[1] an enigma, an inscrutable individual who, despite having written nothing, is considered one of the handful of philosophers who forever changed how philosophy itself was to be conceived. All our information about him is second-hand and most of it vigorously disputed, but his trial and death at the hands of the Athenian democracy is nevertheless the founding myth of the academic discipline of philosophy, and his influence has been felt far beyond philosophy itself, and in every age. Because his life is widely considered paradigmatic for the philosophic life and, more generally, for how anyone ought to live, Socrates has been encumbered with the admiration and emulation normally reserved for founders of religious sects—Jesus or Buddha—strange for someone who tried so hard to make others do their own thinking, and for someone convicted and executed on the charge of irreverence toward the gods. Certainly he was impressive, so impressive that many others were moved to write about him, all of whom found him strange by the conventions of fifth-century Athens: in his appearance, personality, and behavior, as well as in his views and methods.
Socrates’s Strangeness
Standards of beauty are different in different eras, and in Socrates' time beauty could easily be measured by the standard of the gods, stately, proportionate sculptures of whom had been adorning the Athenian acropolis since about the time Socrates reached the age of thirty.
Good looks and proper bearing were important to a man's political prospects, for beauty and goodness were linked in the popular imagination. The extant sources agree that Socrates was profoundly ugly. Socrates let his hair grow long, Spartan-style (even while Athens and Sparta were at war), and went about barefoot and unwashed, carrying a stick and looking arrogant.
What seemed strange about Socrates is that he neither labored to earn a living, nor participated voluntarily in affairs of state. Rather, he embraced poverty and, although youths of the city kept company with him and imitated him, Socrates adamantly insisted he was not a teacher and refused all his life to take money for what he did. The strangeness of this behavior is mitigated by the image then current of teachers and students: teachers were viewed as pitchers pouring their contents into the empty cups that were the students. Because Socrates was no transmitter of information that others were passively to receive, he resists the comparison to teachers. Rather, he helped others recognize on their own what is real, true, and good (Plato, Meno, Theaetetus)
It did not help matters that Socrates seemed to have a higher opinion of women than most
of his companions had.
Socrates Problem
So thorny is the difficulty of distinguishing the historical Socrates from the Socrateses of the authors of the texts in which he appears and, moreover, from the Socrateses of scores of later interpreters, that the whole contested issue is generally referred to as the Socratic problem. Each age, each intellectual turn, produces a Socrates of its own. It is no less true now that, “The ‘real’ Socrates we have not: what we have is a set of interpretations each of which represents a ‘theoretically possible’ Socrates
Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato
Aristophanes
Our earliest extant source—and the only one who can claim to have known Socrates in his early years—is the playwright Aristophanes. His comedy, Clouds, was produced in 423 when the other two extant sources, Xenophon and Plato, were infants. In the play, the character Socrates heads a Think-o-Rama in which young men study the natural world, from insects to stars, and study slick argumentative techniques as well, lacking all respect for the Athenian sense of propriety. The actor wearing the mask of Socrates makes fun of the traditional gods of Athens (lines 247–48, 367, 423–24), mimicked later by the young protagonist, and gives naturalistic explanations of phenomena Athenians viewed as divinely directed (lines 227–33; cf. Theaetetus 152e, 153c–d, 173e–174a; Phaedo 96a-100a). Worst of all, he teaches dishonest techniques for avoiding repayment of debt (lines 1214–1302) and encourages young men to beat their parents into submission (lines 1408–46).
In favor of Aristophanes as a source is that Xenophon and Plato were some forty-five years younger than Socrates, so their acquaintance could only have been in Socrates' later years. One may reasonably doubt that the life and personality of Socrates was so consistent that Plato's characterization of a man in his fifties and sixties should utterly undo the lampooning account of the younger Socrates found in Clouds and other comic poets. More to the point, the years between Clouds and Socrates' trial were years of war and upheaval, so the Athenian intellectual freedom of which Pericles boasted at the beginning of the war (Thucydides 2.37–39) had been eroded completely by the end (see §3). Thus, what had seemed comical a quarter century earlier, Socrates hanging in a basket on-stage talking nonsense, was ominous in memory by then.
Comedy by its very nature is a tricky source for information about anyone. A good reason to believe that the representation of Socrates is not merely comic exaggeration but systematically misleading is that Clouds amalgamates in one character, Socrates, features now well known to be unique to other particular fifth-century intellectuals (Dover 1968, xxxii-lvii); perhaps Aristophanes chose Socrates to represent garden-variety intellectuals because Socrates' physiognomy was strange enough to be comic by itself. Aristophanes genuinely objected to what he saw as social instability brought on by the freedom Athenian youths enjoyed to study with professional rhetoricians, sophists (see §1), and natural philosophers, e.g., those who, like the presocratics, studied the cosmos or nature. That Socrates eschewed any earning potential in philosophy does not seem to have been significant to the comic playwright. Aristophanes' depiction is important because Plato's Socrates says at his trial (Apology 18a-b, 19c) that most of his jurors have grown up believing the falsehoods spread about him in the play. Socrates calls Aristophanes more dangerous than the three men who brought charges against him in 399 because Aristophanes had poisoned men's minds while they were young. Aristophanes did not stop accusing Socrates in 423 when Clouds placed third behind another play in which Socrates was mentioned as barefoot; rather, he soon began writing a revision, which he published but never produced. Aristophanes appears to have given up on reviving Clouds in about 416, but his attacks on Socrates continued. Again in 414 with Birds, and in 405 with Frogs, Aristophanes complained of Socrates' deleterious effect on the youths of the city, including Socrates' neglect of the poets.
Xenophon
Another source for the historical Socrates is the soldier-historian, Xenophon. Xenophon says explicitly of Socrates, “I was never acquainted with anyone who took greater care to find out what each of his companions knew” (Memorabilia 4.7.1); and Plato corroborates Xenophon's statement by illustrating throughout his dialogues Socrates' adjustment of the level and type of his questions to the particular individuals with whom he talked. If it is true that Socrates succeeded in pitching his conversation at the right level for each of his companions, the striking differences between Xenophon's Socrates and Plato's is largely explained by the differences between their two personalities. Xenophon was a practical man whose ability to recognize philosophical issues is almost imperceptible, so it is plausible that his Socrates appears as such a practical and helpful advisor because that is the side of Socrates Xenophon witnessed. Xenophon's Socrates differs additionally from Plato's in offering advice about subjects in which Xenophon was himself experienced, but Socrates was not: moneymaking (Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.7) and estate management (Xenophon, Oeconomicus), suggesting that Xenophon may have entered into the writing of Socratic discourses (as Aristotle labeled the genre, Poetics 1447b11) making the character Socrates a mouthpiece for his own views. His other works mentioning or featuring Socrates are Anabasis, Apology, Hellenica, and Symposium.
Something that has strengthened Xenophon's prima facie claim as a source for Socrates' life is his work as a historian; his Hellenica (History of Greece) is one of the chief sources for the period 411–362, after Thucydides' history abruptly ends in the midst of the Peloponnesian wars. Although Xenophon tends to moralize and does not follow the superior conventions introduced by Thucydides, still it is sometimes argued that, having had no philosophical axes to grind, Xenophon may have presented a more accurate portrait of Socrates than Plato does. But two considerations have always weakened that claim: (1) The Socrates of Xenophon's works is so pedestrian that it is difficult to imagine his inspiring fifteen or more people to write Socratic discourses in the period following his death. (2) Xenophon could not have chalked up many hours with Socrates or with reliable informants. He lived in Erchia, about 15 kilometers and across the Hymettus mountains from Socrates' haunts in the urban area of Athens, and his love of horses and horsemanship (on which he wrote a still valuable treatise) seem to have taken up considerable time. He left Athens in 401 on an expedition to Persia and, for a variety of reasons (mercenary service for the Thracians and Spartans, exile), never resided in Athens again. And now a third is in order. (3) It turns out to have been ill-advised to assume that Xenophon would apply the same criteria for accuracy to his Socratic discourses as to his histories.[4] The biographical and historical background Xenophon deploys in his memoirs of Socrates fails to correspond to such additional sources as we have from archaeology, history, the courts, and literature. The widespread use of computers in classical studies, enabling the comparison of ancient persons, and the compiling of information about each of them from disparate sources, has made incontrovertible this observation about Xenophon's Socratic works. Xenophon's memoirs are pastiches, several of which simply could not have occurred as presented.
Plato
More vivid realistic depiction
Philosophers have usually privileged the account of Socrates given by their fellow philosopher, Plato. Plato was about twenty-five when Socrates was tried and executed, and had probably known the old man most of his life. It would have been hard for a boy of Plato's social class, residing in the political district (deme) of Collytus within the city walls, to avoid Socrates. The extant sources agree that Socrates was often to be found where youths of the city spent their time. Further, Plato's representation of individual Athenians has proved over time to correspond remarkably well to both archaeological and literary evidence: in his use of names and places, familial relations and friendship bonds, and even in his rough dating of events in almost all the authentic dialogues where Socrates is the dominant figure. The dialogues have dramatic dates that fall into place as one learns more about their characters and, despite incidental anachronisms, there turns out to be more realism in the dialogues than most have suspected.[5] The Ion, Lysis, Euthydemus, Meno, Menexenus, Theaetetus, Euthyphro, the frame of Symposium, Apology, Crito, Phaedo (although Plato says he was not himself present at Socrates' execution), and frame of Parmenides are the dialogues in which Plato had greatest access to the Athenians he depicts.
It does not follow, however, that Plato represented the views and methods of Socrates (or anyone, for that matter) as he recalled them, much less as they were originally uttered. There are a number of cautions and caveats that should be in place from the start. (i) Plato may have shaped the character Socrates (or other characters) to serve his own purposes, whether philosophical or literary or both. (ii) The dialogues representing Socrates as a youth and young man took place, if they took place at all, before Plato was born and when he was a small child. (iii) One should be cautious even about the dramatic dates of Plato's dialogues (§3) because they are calculated with reference to characters whom we know primarily, though not only, from the dialogues. (iv) Exact dates should be treated with a measure of skepticism for numerical precision can be misleading. Even when a specific festival or other reference fixes the season or month of a dialogue, or birth of a character, one should imagine a margin of error. Although it becomes obnoxious to use circa or plus-minus everywhere, the ancients did not require or desire contemporary precision in these matters. All the children born during a full year, for example, had the same nominal birthday, accounting for the conversation at Lysis 207b, odd by contemporary standards, in which two boys disagree about who is the elder. Philosophers have often decided to bypass the historical problems altogether and to assume for the sake of argument that Plato's Socrates is the Socrates who is relevant to potential progress in philosophy. That strategy, as we shall soon see, gives rise to a new Socratic problem (§2.2).
What, after all, is our motive for reading a dead philosopher's words about another dead philosopher who never wrote anything himself? This is a way of asking a popular question, Why do history of philosophy? —which has no settled answer. One might reply that our study of some of our philosophical predecessors is intrinsically valuable, philosophically enlightening and satisfying. When we contemplate the words of a dead philosopher, a philosopher with whom we cannot engage directly—Plato's words, say—we seek to understand not merely what he said and assumed, but what his propositions imply, and whether they are true. Sometimes, making such judgments requires us to learn the language in which the philosopher wrote, more about his predecessors' ideas and those of his contemporaries. The truly great philosophers, and Plato was one of them, are still capable of becoming our companions in philosophical conversation, our dialectical partners. Because he addressed timeless, universal, fundamental questions with insight and intelligence, our own understanding of such questions is heightened. That explains Plato, one might say, but where is Socrates in this picture? Is he interesting merely as a predecessor to Plato? Some would say yes, but others would say it is not Plato's but Socrates' ideas and methods that mark the real beginning of philosophy in the West, that Socrates is the better dialectical guide, and that what is Socratic in the dialogues should be distinguished from what is Platonic (§2.2). But how? That again is the Socratic problem.
Aristotle as-the-breaker
Apology
Summary (http://www.philosophybro.com/2012/05/platos-apology-summary.html)
Plato's The Apology is an account of the speech Socrates makes at the trial in which he is charged with not recognizing the gods recognized by the state, inventing new deities, and corrupting the youth of Athens. Socrates' speech, however, is by no means an "apology" in our modern understanding of the word. The name of the dialogue derives from the Greek "apologia," which translates as a defense, or a speech made in defense. Thus, in The Apology, Socrates attempts to defend himself and his conduct--certainly not to apologize for it.
For the most part, Socrates speaks in a very plain, conversational manner.
He explains that he has no experience with the law courts and that he will instead speak in the manner to which he is accustomed: with honesty and directness. He explains that his behavior stems from a prophecy by the oracle at Delphi which claimed that he was the wisest of all men. Recognizing his ignorance in most worldly affairs, Socrates concluded that he must be wiser than other men only in that he knows that he knows nothing. In order to spread this peculiar wisdom, Socrates explains that he considered it his duty to question supposed "wise" men and to expose their false wisdom as ignorance. These activities earned him much admiration amongst the youth of Athens, but much hatred and anger from the people he embarrassed. He cites their contempt as the reason for his being put on
trial.
Socrates then proceeds to interrogate Meletus, the man primarily responsible for bringing Socrates before the jury. This is the only instance in The Apology of the elenchus, or cross-examination, which is so central to most Platonic dialogues. His conversation with Meletus, however, is a poor example of this method, as it seems more directed toward embarrassing Meletus than toward arriving at the truth.
In a famous passage, Socrates likens himself to a gadfly stinging the lazy horse which is the Athenian state. Without him, Socrates claims, the state is liable to drift into a deep sleep, but through his influence--irritating as it may be to some--it can be wakened into productive and virtuous action.
Socrates is found guilty by a narrow margin and is asked to propose a penalty. Socrates jokingly suggests that if he were to get what he deserves, he should be honored with a great meal for being of such service to the state. On a more serious note, he rejects prison and exile, offering perhaps instead to pay a fine. When the jury rejects his suggestion and sentences him to death, Socrates stoically accepts the verdict with the observation that no one but the gods know what happens after death and so it would be foolish to fear what one does not know. He also warns the jurymen who voted against him that in silencing their critic rather than listening to him, they have harmed themselves much more than they have harmed him.
Themes
The Apology is one of those rare works that gracefully bridges the divide between philosophy and literature. The work is less concerned with asserting any particular philosophical doctrines than it is with creating a portrait of the ideal philosopher. On trial, with his life at stake, Socrates maintains his cool and unwaveringly defends his way of life as unassailably just. This speech has served as inspiration and justification for philosophical thinkers ever since. It is also valuable in that it links three major themes in Socratic thought: Socratic irony, the elenchus (the Socratic mode of inquiry), and the higher ethical concerns that dominate Socrates' life.
The Delphic oracle, which proclaimed that Socrates was the wisest of men because he knows that he knows nothing, can be posited as the source of Socratic irony. This oracle has led Socrates to assume his highly ironic stance of confessing his own ignorance, and yet showing his interlocutors to be even more ignorant than he; great wisdom turns out, contrary to expectation, to reside in a humble acknowledgment of ignorance. With wisdom of this kind, Socrates does not take himself too seriously. Indeed, his wisdom is deeply humbling, as it casts all pretensions to human knowledge into question. With a smile, Socrates accepts that he is better off the less he thinks he knows, and passes this wisdom along with appropriate wit.
This irony, then, deeply informs the elenchus, Socrates' preferred mode of inquiry. It is important to note that almost all written accounts of Socrates are dialogues (The Apology is an exception)--Socrates never lectures on his beliefs in a one-sided manner. This supports the idea that Socrates has no knowledge of his own to put forward. His method of inquiry consists of identifying what his interlocutor thinks he knows, and then slowly dissecting those claims of knowledge. The Apology, however, is presented almost exclusively in the form of a monologue, because Socrates is not discussing and dismantling any one particular claim so much as he is laying out the method behind these dismantlings. As such, it is an invaluable commentary on the other dialogues.
The elenchus acts to disabuse Socrates' interlocutors of their pretensions and thereby deepens their wisdom. For Socrates, wisdom and virtue are closely connected, so his efforts serve to improve society as a whole. In Socrates' view, if we are all wise, none of us will ever do wrong, and our self-knowledge will lead to healthier, more fulfilling lives. Thus, the philosopher, according to Socrates, does not merely follow abstract intellectual pursuits for the sake of amusement, but is engaged in activities of the highest moral value.
Class Notes
Socrates Accused of disrespect toward the gods and corruption of the youth
He is not afraid of death
His wisdom lies in the fact that he is aware that he does not know
Claims to never have been truly a teacher
No one could intentionally corrupt someone
Accusers
Anytus (vexed on behalf of the craftsmen and politicians)
Meletus (vexed on behalf of the poets)
Lycon (vexed on behalf of the rhetoricians)
Self-justification
“real” charges self description of mission
Pursuit of knowledge, self-knowledge
Chaerephon and the oracle(in the apology)----- says Socrates is the wisest
An ignorant man could also be the wisest of all men
Moral autonym
Care of the Soul
Caring for justice
History of the Soul
Socrates’ innovation
Crito
Summary(http://www.philosophybro.com/2011/02/platos-crito-summary.html)
The dialogue takes place in Socrates' prison cell, where he awaits execution. He is visited before dawn by his old friend Crito, who has made arrangements to smuggle Socrates out of prison to the safety of exile. Socrates seems quite willing to await his imminent execution, and so Crito presents as many arguments as he can to persuade Socrates to escape. On a practical level, Socrates' death will reflect badly on his friends--people will think they did nothing to try to save him. Also, Socrates should not worry about the risk or the financial cost to his friends; these they are willing to pay, and they have also arranged to find Socrates a pleasant life in exile. On a more ethical level, Crito presents two more pressing arguments: first, if he stayed, he would be aiding his enemies in wronging him unjustly, and would thus be acting unjustly himself; and second, that he would be abandoning his sons and leaving them without a father.
Socrates answers first that one should not worry about public opinion, but only listen to wise and expert advice. Crito should not worry about how his, Socrates', or others' reputations may fare in the general esteem: they should only concern themselves with behaving well. The only question at hand is whether or not it would be just for Socrates to attempt an escape. If it is just, he will go with Crito, if it is unjust, he must remain in prison and face death.
At this point, Socrates introduces the voice of the Laws of Athens, which speaks to him and explain why it would be unjust for him to leave his cell. Since the Laws exist as one entity, to break one would be to break them all, and in doing so, Socrates would cause them great harm. The citizen is bound to the Laws like a child is bound to a parent, and so to go against the Laws would be like striking a parent. Rather than simply break the Laws and escape, Socrates should try to persuade the Laws to let him go. These Laws present the citizen's duty to them in the form of a kind of social contract. By choosing to live in Athens, a citizen is implicitly endorsing the Laws, and is willing to abide by them. Socrates, more than most, should be in accord with this contract, as he has lived a happy seventy years fully content with the Athenian way of life.
If Socrates were to break from prison now, having so consistently validated the social contract, he would be making himself an outlaw who would not be welcome in any other civilized state for the rest of his life. And when he dies, he will be harshly judged in the underworld for behaving unjustly toward his city's laws. Thus, Socrates convinces Crito that it would be better not to attempt an escape.
Themes
Though brief, the Crito is a confusing and somewhat muddled dialogue. The difficulty Plato faced in composing the dialogue was to somehow justify Socrates' decision to stay in prison rather than try to escape after his wrongful condemnation. To do this, Plato had to draw out a distinction between the just Laws, which Socrates must obey by staying in prison, and the unjust behavior of Socrates' accusers, who sentenced him to death.
The problem, of course, is that Socrates' accusers have unjustly sentenced him by using the Laws. By giving the Laws their own voice, Plato hopes to distinguish them as a separate entity, making them something human toward which Socrates might be able to act unjustly. However, it is highly debatable how far one can truly separate the laws of a state from the people who apply them. In this instance, we have the people of the state condemning Socrates and the Laws of the state following suit and persuading Socrates that he must face death in order to avoid breaking them. But if both the people and the Laws have ruled that Socrates must be executed, either the people are siding with the Laws or the Laws are siding with the people. And regardless of which of these is the case, it seems odd to assert that the Laws are just and must be respected and that the people are unjust and should not be respected.
It seems Crito, who is trying to persuade Socrates to escape, and Socrates are in a sense talking past one another. One of Crito's strongest arguments in favor of escape comes at 45c, where Crito suggests that Socrates would be abetting the wrong-doing of his enemies in following through with their wishes. Socrates' reply to this argument is that he would in fact be harming the Laws, which are just. If the Laws are just and the people are unjust, but both are willing the same thing, then it seems Socrates is in a quandary. If Socrates stays in prison, he will be siding with his unjust accusers, and if he escapes he will be acting against the just Laws. Ultimately, it seems that it is better to accord oneself with the Laws than to side against the people.
The Crito's distinguished reputation rests largely on the idea of the social contract that Socrates introduces. It is the first suggestion in Western civilization that a legal system exists as a result of a kind of contract between the individual and the state, and this idea has had a tremendous impact on the modern world. Also, the very confusion a reader finds in wading through these arguments is a great motivation to sort through issues of justice and law oneself. After all, Plato's goal is not ultimately to present the final word on any particular issue. He chooses the dialogue form precisely because he wants to encourage us to think for ourselves.
Class Notes
Crito Arguments
Harm to the State
Generalization argument
Argument from Tacit Consent
Locke and Contemporary View of Tacit consent
The Authoritarian Conclusion
“persuade or obey”
Conflict between Apology and Crito
Obligation to obey the god is more important than obligation to obey the state (Apology)
He’s disrespectful to the laws of Athens
Obligation to obey the laws of the state is above all else (Crito)
He’s dedicated to the fulfillment of the laws of Athens

The Republic is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 380 BC concerning the definition of justice and the order and character of the just city-state and the just man. Why do men behave justly? Is it because they fear societal punishment? Are they trembling before notions of divine retribution? Do the stronger elements of society scare the weak into submission in the name of law? Or do men behave justly because it is good for them to do so? Is justice, regardless of its rewards and punishments, a good thing in and of itself? How do we define justice? Plato sets out to answer these questions in The Republic. He wants to define justice, and to define it in such a way as to show that justice is worthwhile in and of itself. He meets these two challenges with a single solution: a definition of justice that appeals to human psychology, rather than to perceived behavior.
In The Republic, Plato, speaking through his teacher Socrates, sets out to answer two questions. What is justice? Why should we be just? Book I sets up these challenges. The interlocutors engage in a Socratic dialogue similar to that found in Plato’s earlier works. While among a group of both friends and enemies, Socrates poses the question, “What is justice?” He proceeds to refute every suggestion offered, showing how each harbors hidden contradictions. Yet he offers no definition of his own, and the discussion ends in aporia—a deadlock, where no further progress is possible and the interlocutors feel less sure of their beliefs than they had at the start of the conversation. In Plato’s early dialogues, aporia usually spells the end. The Republic moves beyond this deadlock. Nine more books follow, and Socrates develops a rich and complex theory of justice.

The Republic Summary Book I-V
I
Summary
Cephalus, a rich, well-respected elder of the city, and host to the group, is the first to offer a definition of justice. Cephalus acts as spokesman for the Greek tradition. His definition of justice is an attempt to articulate the basic Hesiodic conception: that justice means living up to your legal obligations and being honest.
Socrates’s Counterexample: returning a weapon to a madman
You owe the madman his weapon in some sense if it belongs to him legally, and yet this would be an unjust act, since it would jeopardize the lives of others. So it cannot be the case that justice is nothing more than honoring legal obligations and being honest.
Polemarchus’s (Cephalus’s son ): justice means that you owe friends help, and you owe enemies harm. Though this definition may seem different from that suggested by Cephalus, they are closely related. They share the underlying imperative of rendering to each what is due and of giving to each what is appropriate. Polemarchus’s take on justice represents a popular strand of thought—the attitude of the ambitious young politician—whereas Cephalus’s definition represented the attitude of the established, old businessman.
Socrates’s Counterexample: He points out that, because our judgment concerning friends and enemies is fallible, this credo will lead us to harm the good and help the bad. We are not always friends with the most virtuous individuals, nor are our enemies always the scum of society. Socrates points out that there is some incoherence in the idea of harming people through justice.
Thrasymachus, the Sophist (general educators hired as tutors to the sons of the wealthy., Plato hates sophist): Justice, he says, is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.
Thrasymachus breaks angrily into the discussion. declares that he has a better definition of justice to offer. Though Thrasymachus claims that this is his definition, it is not really meant as a definition of justice as much as it is a delegitimization of justice. He is saying that it does not pay to be just. Just behavior works to the advantage of other people, not to the person who behaves justly. Thrasymachus assumes here that justice is the unnatural restraint on our natural desire to have more. Justice is a convention imposed on us, and it does not benefit us to adhere to it. The rational thing to do is ignore justice entirely. (The burden of the discussion has now shifted. At first, the only challenge was to define justice; now justice must be defined and proven to be worthwhile.)
Socrates’s Counterexample:
Admit that this view is advancing promotes injustice as a virtue. Injustice cannot be a virtue because it is contrary to wisdom, which is a virtue. Injustice is contrary to wisdom because the wise man, the man who is skilled in some art, never seeks to beat out those who possess the same art. The mathematician, for instance, is not in competition with other mathematicians.
Socrates points out that in order to reach any of the goals Thrasymachus earlier praised as desirable one needs to be at least moderately just in the sense of adhering to this set of rules.
Finally, he argues that since it was agreed that justice is a virtue of the soul, and virtue of the soul means health of the soul, justice is desirable because it means health of the soul.
Popular, traditional thinking on justice is in shambles and we need to start fresh in order to defeat the creeping moral skepticism of the Sophists.
Analysis
Plato is trying to defend the act for which his teacher was executed.
On the first reading, Thrasymachus’s claim boils down to the basic Sophistic moral notion that the norms and mores we consider just are conventions that hamper those who adhere to them and benefit those who flout them. Those who behave unjustly naturally gain power and become rulers and strong people in society. When stupid, weak people behave in accordance with justice, they are disadvantaged, and the strong are at an advantage.
II
Summary
Glaucon (Plato’s brother)
Goods can be divided into three classes things that we desire only for their consequences (dentist) things that we desire only for their own sake (joy) the highest class, things we desire both for their own sake and for what we get from them, such as knowledge, sight, and health.
Glaucon points out that most people class justice among the first group. hey view justice as a necessary evil, which we allow ourselves to suffer in order to avoid the greater evil that would befall us if we did away with it. Justice stems from human weakness and vulnerability. Since we can all suffer from each other’s injustices, we make a social contract agreeing to be just to one another. We only suffer under the burden of justice because we know we would suffer worse without it. We want a just reputation, one not wants to be just but to appear so. Justice is not something practiced for its own sake but something one engages in out of fear and weakness. He are justice in fear of being punished not for own sake.
To emphasize his point, Glaucon appeals to a thought experiment. Invoking the legend of the ring of Gyges, he asks us to imagine that a just man is given a ring which makes him invisible. Once in possession of this ring, the man can act unjustly with no fear of reprisal. No one can deny, Glaucon claims, that even the most just man would behave unjustly if he had this ring. He would indulge all of his materialistic, power-hungry, and erotically lustful urges. This tale proves that people are only just because they are afraid of punishment for injustice. No one is just because justice is desirable in itself.
He would like Socrates to prove is that justice is not only desirable, but that it belongs to the highest class of desirable things: those desired both for their own sake and their consequences. Socrates must show justice to be desirable in the absence of any external rewards: that justice is desirable for its own sake, like joy, health, and knowledge. Socrates argument is as follows
Two kinds of justice!!!
Individual
The justice of a particular man
Political
The justice belonging to the city
Since a city is bigger than a man, he will proceed upon the assumption that it is easier to first look for justice at the political level and later inquire as to whether there is any analogous virtue to be found in the individual. To locate political justice, he will build up a perfectly just city from scratch, and see where and when justice enters it. This project will occupy The Republic until Book IV.
Building of a City
The foundational principle of human society: the principle of specialization. (one class, one job) The principle of specialization states that each person must perform the role for which he is naturally best suited and that he must not meddle in any other business. Behind this principle is the notion that human beings have natural inclinations that should be fulfilled. Specialization demands not only the division of labor, but the most appropriate such division. Only in this way, Socrates is convinced, can everything be done at the highest level possible.
The first roles to fill are those that will provide for the necessities of life, such as food, clothing, health, and shelter. (craftsmen, farmers, and doctors)---producing class
Socrates calls this city the “healthy city” because it is governed only by necessary desires. In the healthy city, there are only producers, and these producers only produce what is absolutely necessary for life. Glaucon looks less kindly on this city, calling it a “city of pigs.” He points out that such a city is impossible: people have unnecessary desires as well as these necessary ones. They yearn for rich food, luxurious surroundings, and art.
The next stage is to transform this city into the luxurious city, or the “city with a fever.”
Once luxuries are in demand, positions like merchant, actor, poet, tutor, and beautician are created.
All of this wealth will necessarily lead to wars, and so a class of warriors is needed to keep the peace within the city and to protect it from outside forces. The producers cannot act as our warriors because that would violate our principle of specialization.
Socrates spends the rest of this book, and most of the next, talking about the nature and education of these warriors, whom he calls “guardians.” It is crucial that guardians develop the right balance between gentleness and toughness. They must not be thugs, nor can they be wimpy and ineffective. Members of this class must be carefully selected—people with the correct nature or innate psychology. In particular, guardians should be spirited, or honor-loving, philosophical, or knowledge-loving, and physically strong and fast
Nature is not sufficient to produce guardians. Nature must be protected and augmented with education.
Education of guardians is the most important aspect of the city. It is the process of purification through which the unhealthy, luxurious city can be purged and purified. Because the education of the guardians is so important, Socrates walks us through it in painstaking detail.
He begins by describing what sort of stories will be permitted in the city. Socrates comes up with two laws to govern the telling of such stories.
First, the gods must always be represented as wholly good and as responsible only for what is good in the world.
If the gods are presented otherwise (as the warring, conniving, murderous characters that the traditional poetry depicts them to be), children will inevitably grow up believing that such behavior is permissible, even admirable.
Second, the gods cannot be represented as sorcerers who change themselves into different forms or as liars. Otherwise, children will grow up without a proper reverence for truth and honesty.
Analysis
People prefer to be unjust rather than just, but that it is rational for them to do so. The perfectly unjust life, he argues, is more pleasant than the perfectly just life. No one praises justice for its own sake, but only for the rewards it allows you to reap in both this life and the afterlife.
With several ideas of justice already discredited, why does Plato further complicate the problem before Socrates has the chance to outline his own ideas about justice???
The first reason is methodological: it is always best to make sure that the position you are attacking is the strongest one available to your opponent. He wants to make sure that in defending justice, he dismantles all the best arguments of the immoralists.
Glaucon and Adeimantus repeat the challenge because they are taking over the mantle as conversational partners. Discussion with the Sophist Thrasymachus can only lead to aporia. But conversation with Glaucon and Adeimantus has the potential to lead to positive conclusions.
The basic principle of education, in Plato’s conception, is that the soul, like the body, can have both a healthy and unhealthy state. As with the body, this state is determined by what the soul consumes and by what it does
III
Summary
Socrates continues to discuss the content of stories that can be told to the guardians, moving on to stories about heroes. The most important function of this class of stories is to immunize the young guardians against a fear of death. Heroes must never be presented as fearing death or as preferring slavery to death. Hades—the place of dead souls—must never be presented as a frightening place.
From here, he moves on to the other arts, such as painting and architecture. In all of these—as in poetry—he forbids the artists to represent characters that are vicious, unrestrained, slavish, and graceless. Any characteristics besides those the guardians should emulate are excluded.
Socrates moves on to what might seem like a surprising topic in a discussion on education: the correct love between a boy and a man. Socrates considered such relationships a vital part of a boy’s education. His main point here is to warn against allowing any actual sexual intercourse to contaminate these relationships. They should not involve an erotic element, he explains, only a pure sort of love.
Physical training of the guardians is the next topic. This training, he warns, should resemble the sort involved in training for war, rather than the sort that athletes engage in. He emphasizes how important it is to properly balance the music and poetry with physical training. Too much physical training will make the guardians savage, while too much music and poetry will make them soft.
Socrates prescribes the medical training that should be provided in the just city. Doctors should be trained to treat the healthy, who suffer from a single, curable ailment. They should not be trained to deal with the chronically ill. Those suffering from an incurable physical disease should be left to die naturally. Those suffering from an incurable mental disease should actively be put to death.
The third and final class of the just society: Rulers.
The group until now has been called guardians is split. The best from this group will be chosen out as rulers, and only they will now be termed “guardians,” while the rest will remain as warriors and will be termed “auxiliaries,” because their role is to aid rulers by carrying out and enforcing their decisions.
To ensure that there is never controversy over who should rule, Socrates suggests telling all citizens a useful fiction, usually termed “the myth of the metals.” The myth contends that all citizens of the city were born out of the earth. This fiction persuades people to be patriotic. They have reason to swear loyalty to their particular plot of ground and their fellow citizens. That plot of ground is their mother, and their fellow citizens are their brothers and sisters. The myth holds that each citizen has a certain sort of metal mixed in with his soul. In the souls of those most fit to rule there is gold, in those suited to be auxiliaries there is silver, and in those suited to be producers there is either bronze or iron. The city must never be ruled by someone whose soul is mixed with the wrong metal; according to an oracle, the city will be ruined if that ever happens.
The people must be told that though for the most part iron and bronze people will produce iron and bronze children, silver people silver children, and gold people gold children, that is not always the case. It is critical to observe the next generation to discover their class of soul. Those who are born to producers but seem to have the nature of a guardian or an auxiliary will be whisked away and raised with other such children. Similarly, those born to guardians or auxiliaries who seem more fit as producers will be removed to that class of society. Although the just society is rigid in terms of adult mobility between classes, it is not as rigid in terms of heredity
Plato ends the chapter with a brief discussion about housing provided for the guardians. The guardians, we are told, all live together in housing provided for them by the city. Guardians receive no wages and can hold no private wealth or property. They are supported entirely by the city through the taxation of the producing class. One last useful fiction that will be told to the guardians is that it is unlawful for them to even handle gold or silver—that it is impious for them to mix earthly gold and silver with the divine silver and gold in their souls. Socrates’s reasoning is clear: if the rulers are permitted to acquire private property, they will inevitably abuse their power and begin to rule for their own gain, rather than the good of the entire city.
Analysis
Most first-time readers of The Republic are shocked by how authoritarian Plato’s ideal city is. In this section, many of the authoritarian aspects come to the fore. Personal freedom is not valued. The good of the state overrides all other considerations. Social classes are rigid, and people are sorted into these classes with no thought to their preferences. Of course, Plato would object to this latter claim by saying that each person will find their class most pleasing to them since it is best suited to their nature. Nonetheless, they are given no input when the state determines what life they will lead. A citizen’s fate—producer, warrior, or ruler—is decided at an early age, and no provisions are made for individuals to shift classes as they mature.
Those labeling the ideal city authoritarian can also point to state-controlled propaganda in the form of the myth of the metals. The irony is that for someone who claimed to value truth so highly, Plato has little trouble justifying wide-scale deception. The good of the state overrides all else, including the importance of truth.
IV
Summary
The Just City
Adeimantus interrupts Socrates to point out that being a ruler sounds unpleasant. Since the ruler has no private wealth, he can never take a trip, keep a mistress, or do the things that people think make them happy. Socrates responds by reminding his friends that their goal in building this city is not to make any one group happy at the expense of any other group, but to make the city as a whole as happy as it can be.
Socrates proceeds to address several topics regarding the lifestyle of the guardians. He tells the money-loving Adeimantus that there will be no wealth or poverty at all in the city since there will be no money.
Socrates limits the size of the city, warning against it becoming so large that it can no longer be governed well under the current system
He declares that the just city has no use for laws. If the education of guardians proceeds as planned, then guardians will be in a position to decide any points of policy that arise. Everything we think of as a matter of law can be left to the judgment of the properly educated rulers.
Socrates declares the just city complete. Since this city has been created to be the best city possible, we can be sure that it has all the virtues. In order to define these virtues, all we need to do is look into our city and identify them. So we will now look for each of the four virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.
Wisdom
Wisdom lies with the guardians because of their knowledge of how the city should be run. If the guardians were not ruling, if it were a democracy, say, their virtue would not translate into the virtue of the city. But since they are in charge, their wisdom becomes the city’s virtue.
Courage
Courage lies with the auxiliaries. It is only their courage that counts as a virtue of the city because they are the ones who must fight for the city. A courageous farmer, or even ruler, would do the city no good.
Moderation
Moderation and justice, in contrast to wisdom and courage, are spread out over the whole city. Moderation is identified with the agreement over who should rule the city.
Justice
The principle of specialization, the law that all do the job to which they are best suited.
We have identified justice on a city-wide level. Our next task is to see if there is an analogous virtue in the case of the individual.
Justice in the individual, as in the city, involves the correct power relationship among parts, with each part occupying its appropriate role. In the individual, the “parts” are not classes of society; instead, they are aspects of the soul—or sources of desire.
In order to make the case that individual justice parallels political justice, Socrates must claim that there are precisely three parts of the soul. By cataloging the various human desires, he identifies:
A rational part of the soul that lusts after truth. (the knowledge-loving part, is dominant in the guardians.)
In a just person the rational part of the soul rules the other parts What it means for one part of the soul to “rule” the others is for the entire soul to pursue the desires of that part. In a soul ruled by spirit, for instance, the entire soul aims at achieving honor. In a soul ruled by appetite, the entire soul aims at fulfilling these appetites, whether these be for food, drink, sex, fine material goods, or hordes of wealth. In a just soul, the soul is geared entirely toward fulfilling whatever knowledge-loving desires reason produces.
A spirited part of the soul that lusts after honor. (honor-loving part is most prominent among the auxiliaries) the spirited part acting as helper to keep the appetitive in line.
An appetitive part of the soul that lusts after everything else, including food, drink, sex, and especially money.( money-loving part is aspect of the soul most prominent among the producing class)
Analysis
his definition bears strong resemblance to the two definitions of justice put forward in Book I. Cephalus ventured that justice was the honoring of legal obligations, while his son Polemarchus suggested that justice amounts to helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies. These two definitions are linked by the imperative of rendering what is due, or giving to each what is appropriate. (they were thinking about justice as a set of actions, rather than as a structure to society, a phenomenon that spreads out over a city as a whole) This same imperative finds variant expression in Plato’s definition of justice—justice as a political arrangement in which each person plays the appropriate role.
We tend to think of justice as a set of actions, yet Socrates claims that justice is really a result of the structure of the soul. After identifying individual justice, he demonstrates that a person who’s soul is in the right arrangement will behave according to the intuitive norms of justice.
Socrates concludes Book IV by asserting that justice amounts to the health of the soul: a just soul is a soul with its parts arranged appropriately, and is thus a healthy soul.
Given this fact, we are now in a position to at least suspect that it pays to be just. After all, we already admitted that health is something desirable in itself, so if justice is the health of the soul then it too should be desirable.
V
Having identified the just city and the just soul, Socrates now wants to identify four other constitutions of city and soul, all of which are vicious to varying degrees. But before he can get anywhere in this project, Polemarchus and Adeimantus interrupt him. They would like him to return to the statement he made in passing about sharing spouses and children in common. Socrates launches into a lengthy discussion about the lifestyle of the guardians.
Socrates declares that females will be reared and trained alongside males, receiving the same education and taking on the same political roles. Women fall along the same natural lines as men. Some are naturally appetitive, some naturally spirited, and some naturally rational. The ideal city will treat and make use of them as such.
For guardians, sexual intercourse will only take place during certain fixed times of year, designated as festivals. Males and females will be made husband and wife at these festivals for roughly the duration of sexual intercourse. The pairings will be determined by lot. Some of these people, those who are most admirable and thus whom we most wish to reproduce, might have up to four or five spouses in a single one of these festivals. All the children produced by these mating festivals will be taken from their parents and reared together, so that no one knows which children descend from which adults. At no other time in the year is sex permitted. If guardians have sex at an undesignated time and a child results, the understanding is that this child must be killed.
To avoid rampant unintentional incest, guardians must consider every child born between seven and ten months after their copulation as their own. These children, in turn, must consider that same group of adults as their parents, and each other as brothers and sisters. Sexual relations between these groups is forbidden.
Socrates explains that these rules of procreation are the only way to ensure a unified city. In most cities the citizens’ loyalty is divided. They care about the good of the whole, but they care even more about their own family. In the just city, everyone is considered as family and treated as such. There are no divided loyalties.
Our system is only possible, he says, if the rulers are philosophers. Thus he introduces the concept of the philosopher-king, which dominates the rest of The Republic.
The argument for this claim proceeds, roughly, as follows. Only “what is completely” is completely knowable. Only the Forms count as “what is completely.” Only philosophers have access to the Forms. Only the philosophers have knowledge. A philosopher loves truth more than anything else (“philosopher” means “lover of truth or wisdom”); his entire soul strives after truth. This means that the rational part of his soul must rule, which means that his soul is just.
VI
Continuing with the defense of the philosopher, Plato asserts in this section that the philosopher is not only the sole possessor of knowledge, he is also the most virtuous of men. ven if the philosopher might sometimes have desires that could lead to vicious acts, because reason dominates the other parts of his soul, he rarely if ever acts on these desires.
Socrates, surprisingly, agrees with Adeimantus’s condemnation of the contemporary philosopher, but he argues that the current crop of philosophers have not been raised in the right way.
So they are inevitably led away from the philosophical life. In place of the natural philosophers who are diverted away from philosophy and corrupted, other people who lack the right philosophical nature, rush in to fill the gap and become philosophers when they have no right to be. These people are vicious.
The few who are good philosophers (those whose natures were somehow not corrupted, either because they were in exile, lived in a small city, were in bad health, or by some other circumstance) are considered useless because society has become antithetical to correct ideals.
Now Socrates turns to the final stage in the construction of the just city: the question of how to produce philosopher-kings.
One point of the test, he told us then, was to see who was most loyal to the city.
Another major point of these tests is to determine who among them can tolerate the most important subject. The most important subject for a philosopher-king, it turns out, is the study of Form of the Good.
Some think that the highest good is pleasure, while the more sophisticated think that it is knowledge. In fact, it is neither of these, but Socrates cannot really say directly what it is. The best he can do is give an analogy—to say “what is the offspring of the good and most like it.” This analogy is the first in a string of three famous and densely interrelated—the sun, the line, and the cave
Sun
Plato uses the sun as a metaphor for the source of "illumination", arguably intellectual illumination, which he held to be The Form of the Good, which is sometimes interpreted as Plato's notion of God. The metaphor is about the nature of ultimate reality and how knowledge is acquired concerning it. Socrates is the speaker of The Republic, but it is generally believed that the thoughts expressed are Plato's.
Line
The four grades of knowledge and opinion available to us (The bottom two segments represent our access to the visible realm, while the top two represent our access to the intelligible):
The lowest grade of cognitive activity is imagination. A person in the state of imagination considers images and reflections the most real things in the world. The next stage on the line is belief. Belief also looks toward the realm of the visible, but it makes contact with real things.
Further up the line, there are two grades of knowledge: thought, and understanding. Cave
VII
In This book, Socrates presents the most beautiful and famous metaphor in Western philosophy: Allegory of the Cave.
This metaphor is meant to illustrate the effects of education on the human soul. Education moves the philosopher through the stages on the divided line, and ultimately brings him to the Form of the Good. "Philosophy, same thing. The soul ascends and apprehends the forms, the nature of everything, and eventually the very Idea of Good that gives light to everything else. And then the philosopher has to go back to the cave and try to explain it to people who don't even know what Green is, to say nothing of the Good. But the philosopher didn't make up the Good, it was always there, and the only way to really make sense of it is to uncover it for yourself. You can't force knowledge into a dumbass any more than you can force sight into a blind man.”
The overarching goal of the city is to educate those with the right natures, so that they can turn their minds sharply toward the Form of the Good. Once they have done this, they cannot remain contemplating the Form of the Good forever. They must return periodically into the cave and rule there. They need periodically to turn away from the Forms to return to the shadows to help other prisoners. Since the stages in the cave are stages of life, it seems fair to say that Plato thought that we must all proceed through the lower stages in order to reach the higher stages. Everyone begins at the cognitive level of imagination. We each begin our lives deep within the cave, with our head and legs bound, and education is the struggle to move as far out of the cave as possible. Not everyone can make it all the way out, which is why some people are producers, some warriors, and some philosopher-kings(the man that escaped the cave).
Cave man can be compared to the fate of Socrates
Now we know what distinguishes the philosopher-king from everyone else: he knows the Form of the Good, and so he has an understanding of everything. But it is left for Socrates to tell us how to produce this sort of man. A philosopher king finds enjoyment in learning.
He must explain what sort of supplementary education is added to the general education we read about in Books II and III, in order to make the guardians turn their souls toward ultimate truth and seek out the Form of the Good. The answer, it turns out, is simple: they must study mathematics and philosophical dialectic. These are the two subjects that draw the soul from the realm of becoming—the visible realm—to the realm of what is—the intelligible realm.
Mathematics is the preparation and
Mathematics, viewed in this way, was probably meant to play two roles in the education of the philosopher. First, it sets the students sights on truths above the sensible world. It indicates that there are such truths, and instills the desire to reach them. Second of all, by contemplating these truths the student cultivates his use of abstract reason and learns to stop relying on sensation to tell him about the world. Mathematics prepares the student to begin the final study of dialectic, in which he will eventually give up the images and unproven assumptions of mathematics and proceed entirely on the faculty of abstract thought which he has honed.
Dialectic the ultimate form of study.
After discussing mathematics and dialectic Socrates launches into a detailed description of how to choose and train the philosopher-kings.
The first step, of course, is to find the children with the right natures—those who are the most stable, courageous, and graceful, who are interested in the subjects and learn them easily, who have a good memory, love hard work, and generally display potential for virtue.
From early childhood, the chosen children must be taught calculation, geometry, and all other mathematical subjects which will prepare them for dialectic.
Then, for two or three years, they must focus exclusively on compulsory physical training; they cannot do anything else during this time because they are so exhausted.
All along, whoever is performing best in these activities is inscribed on a list, and when physical training is over those on the list are chosen to proceed. The rest become auxiliaries.
Now Socrates has finally completed describing the just city in every one of its aspects. He ends Book VII by explaining how we might actually go about instituting such a city. His shocking solution is go into an already existing city, banish everyone over ten years old and raise the children in the manner he has just outlined.
VIII
Now that Socrates has finished describing the just city, he returns to the interrupted task of describing the four unjust constitutions of city and man. They are presented as the inevitable stages of degeneration that the just city will pass through over time. The Dialectical Forms of Government:
Timocracy (the honor-driven man who resembles and rules that sort of government)
Plato’s Second best (modeled after Sparta). To satisfy the bad faction, the rulers will distribute all the land and houses in the city as private property among themselves, and enslave the producers as serfs. They will focus all their energy on making war and guarding against the enslaved producers. The rulers will still be respected and the warring-ruling class will not take part in farming, manual labor, or other money-making ventures. They will eat communally and devote themselves to physical training and training for war. But they will be afraid to appoint wise people as rulers, choosing instead to be ruled by spirited but simple people who will be more inclined toward war than peace. Although they will desire money, the love of victory and honor will be predominant.
The corresponding man is a man ruled by spirit. Such a man, Socrates explains, is produced in this way: he is the son of an aristocratic man who encourages the rational part of his son’s soul. But the son is influenced by a bad mother and servants, who pull him toward the love of money. He ends up in the middle, becoming a proud and honor-loving man.
Oligarchy (resembles and is ruled by a man driven by his necessary appetites)
Temptations create a confusion between economic status and honor which is responsible for the emergence of oligarchy. As the love of money and wealth grows, the constitution will change so that ruling is based entirely on wealth. Whoever has wealth and property above a certain amount will be allowed to take part in ruling, and whoever has less than this will have no say in government.
This city has five faults according to Socrates.
First, it is ruled by people who are not fit to rule.
Second, it is not one city but two: one city of rich people and one of poor. These two factions do not make up a single city because they are always plotting against one another, and do not have common aims.
Third, this city cannot fight a war because in order to fight, the rulers would have to arm the people, but they are even more afraid of the people—who hate them—than of outsiders.
Fourth, it has no principle of specialization. This city is the first to allow the greatest evil: people who live in the city without belonging to any class or having any role; people who are not producers, warriors, or rulers. This group includes beggars and criminals. Socrates calls these people “drones” and divides them into two sorts: harmless and dangerous, or “stinging.”
The corresponding man is a thrifty money-maker. He is a timocrat’s son, and at first emulates him. But then some disgraceful and unfair mishap befalls his father. The son, traumatized and impoverished, turns greedily toward making money and slowly amasses property again. His reason and spirit become slaves to appetite, as his only drive becomes the desire to make more money. Reason can only reason about how to make more money, while spirit only values wealth and has as its sole ambition more wealth. This man has evil inclinations but these are held in check because he is careful about his wealth; he does not want to engage in activity that would threaten him with the loss of what he has managed to build up from scratch.
Democracy (resembles and is ruled by a man driven by his unnecessary appetites)
Ruled by unnecessary appetites. As this socioeconomic divide grows, so do tensions between social classes. From the conflicts arising out of such tensions, democracy replaces the oligarchy preceding it. The poor overthrow the inexperienced oligarchs and soon grant liberties and freedoms to citizens. They set up a new constitution in which everyone remaining has an equal share in ruling the city. They give out positions of power pretty much by lot, with no notice of who is most fit for what role. In this city the guiding priority is freedom. Everyone is free to say what they like and to arrange their life as they please. There is complete license. We, therefore, find the greatest variety of character traits in this city. What we do not find is any order or harmony. No one occupies the appropriate roles.
In order to describe the corresponding man, Socrates must explain the difference between necessary and unnecessary desires. Necessary desires are those we cannot train ourselves to overcome, the ones that indicate true human needs (e.g. the desire for enough sustenance to survive). Unnecessary desires are those which we can train ourselves to overcome (e.g., desire for luxurious items and a decadent lifestyle).
The oligarchic man is ruled by his necessary desires, but his son, the democratic man, is soon overcome by unnecessary desires. Whereas the father was a miser who only wanted to hoard his money, the son comes to appreciate all the lavish pleasures that money can buy. Manipulated by bad associates, he abandons reverence and moderation and begins to regard anarchy as freedom, extravagance as magnificence, and shamelessness as courage. When he is older, though, some of his virtues return and he is sometimes pulled toward moderation. Yet he thinks all pleasures (those of moderation and of indulgence) are equal, and he yields to whichever one strikes his fancy at the moment. There is no order or necessity to his life.
Tyranny (resembles and is ruled by a man driven by his unlawful appetites.)
The excessive freedoms granted to the citizens of a democracy ultimately leads to a tyranny, the furthest regressed type of government. n the last stage of degeneration, democracy, the most free city, descends into tyranny, the most enslaved. These freedoms divide the people into three socioeconomic classes:
The dominating class
The elites
The commoners.
Tensions between the dominating class and the elites cause the commoners to seek out protection of their democratic liberties. They invest all their power in their democratic demagogue, who, in turn, becomes corrupted by the power and becomes a tyrant with a small entourage of his supporters for protection and absolute control of his people. Tyrants do not have friends.
They(tyrants) try to convince the poor that the rich are oligarchs, and they try to convince the rich that the poor are going to revolt. In their fear, the rich try to limit the freedoms of the poor and in so doing come to resemble oligarchs. In response, the poor revolt. The leader of this revolt—the drone who stirs up the people—becomes the tyrant when the poor people triumph. He kills all the good people for fear that they will supplant him, then enslaves everyone else so that he can steal from them to support his lavish and extravagant life-style. He also needs to constantly make war, to distract people from what he is doing. He must pander to the worst segments of society—the other drones—to make them his bodyguards.
Socrates ends Book VIII without giving us the portrait of the corresponding man. This long psychological portrait is saved for the next book.
IX
Book IX opens with a long and psychologically insightful description of the tyrannical man.
The tyrannical man is a man ruled by his lawless desires. Lawless desires draw men toward all sorts of ghastly, shameless, criminal things. Socrates’s examples of lawless desires are the desires to sleep with one’s mother and to commit a foul murder. All of us have lawless desires, Socrates claims. The proof is that these desires occasionally come out at night, in our dreams, when the rational part of us is not on guard. But only the tyrannical man allows these desires to emerge in his waking hours. The tyrannical man is the son of the democratic man. His father is not lawless, but he does indulge unnecessary desires. Just like the father, the son is exposed to drones, men with lawless desires. But whereas the father had his own oligarchic father’s thriftiness to pull him toward the middle road of democracy, this son, brought up on the democratic ethos, moves further toward lawlessness.
This man now lives for feasts, revelries, luxuries, and girlfriends. He spends so much money that he soon runs through all he has and needs to begin borrowing. Then, when no one will lend him any more, he resorts to deceit and force. We see him running the whole gamut of typically unjust acts in his insatiable need to quench his erotic lusts. First, he tries to get money out of his parents in all sorts of awful ways, then he starts breaking into houses, robbing temples, and finally committing murders. He has become while awake what he used to be only while asleep; he is living a nightmare.
Soon he cannot trust anyone, and has no friends. The most decent parts of his soul are enslaved to the most vicious part, and so his entire soul is full of disorder and regret and is least free to do what it really wants. He is continually poor and unsatisfied, and he lives in fear. After this frightening image of the tyrannical life, everyone is ready to agree that no life could be more wretched. Socrates, however, disagrees; there is one sort of life even worse than this one. That is the life of a man who is not only a private tyrant, but who becomes an actual political tyrant. The tyrant is in continual danger of being killed in revenge for all the crimes he committed against his subjects, whom he has made into slaves. He cannot leave his own house for fear of all his enemies. He becomes a captive and lives in terror. The real tyrant is also in a better position to indulge all his awful whims and to sink further into degeneracy.
The tyrant, who is also the most unjust man, is the least happy. The aristocrat, the most just man, is the most happy. So we were wrong in Book II to conclude the opposite. This is the first of our proofs that it pays to be just.
Socrates has just provided us with one compelling reason to believe that justice is worthwhile: he has shown how much happier the just man is than the unjust.
Now he provides us with a second argument for the conclusion that the just life is the most pleasant.
There are three sorts of people in the world, goes the argument: truth-loving, honor-loving, and profit-loving. Each one of these people takes the greatest pleasure in whatever it is they most value and thinks that the best life is the life that involves the most of this pleasure. Yet among these, only one of them can be proved to be right. Only the philosopher is in a position to make this judgment, because only he has actually experienced all three pleasures. So we ought to believe the philosopher when he says that the pleasure of truth-seeking is the greatest pleasure. If the philosopher is right, the pleasure one gets from having a just soul (i.e., a soul aiming at fulfilling reason’s desires) is the best kind of pleasure. So, once again, we see that it does pay to be just.
Socrates now calculates that a king lives 729 times more pleasantly than a tyrant. This calculation is not supposed to be taken seriously, but is intended to emphasize that the just man is much happier than the unjust.
Socrates declares that it is best for everyone to be ruled by divine reason, and while ideally such reason would be within oneself, the second best scenario is to have reason imposed from outside. This is the aim of having laws. The purpose of laws is not to harm people, as Thrasymachus claims, but to help them. Laws impose reason on those whose rational part is not strong enough to rule the soul.
X
Socrates has now completed the main argument of The Republic; he has defined justice and shown it to be worthwhile. He turns back to the postponed question concerning poetry about human beings. Plato has justified philosophy and the philosopher and now he displays them in relation to their rivals—the people who are currently thought most wise and knowledgeable—the poets. In a surprising move, he banishes poets from the city. He has three reasons for regarding the poets as unwholesome and dangerous.
First, they pretend to know all sorts of things, but they really know nothing at all. It is widely considered that they have knowledge of all that they write about, but, in fact, they do not. The things they deal with cannot be known: they are images, far removed from what is most real. By presenting scenes so far removed from the truth poets, pervert souls, turning them away from the most real toward the least.
Worse, the images the poets portray do not imitate the good part of the soul. The rational part of the soul is quiet, stable, and not easy to imitate or understand. Poetry naturally appeals to the worst parts of souls and arouses, nourishes, and strengthens this base elements while diverting energy from the rational part.
Poetry corrupts even the best souls. It deceives us into sympathizing with those who grieve excessively, who lust inappropriately, who laugh at base things. It even goads us into feeling these base emotions vicariously. We think there is no shame in indulging these emotions because we are indulging them with respect to a fictional character and not with respect to our own lives. But the enjoyment we feel in indulging these emotions in other lives is transferred to our own life. Once these parts of ourselves have been nourished and strengthened in this way, they flourish in us when we are dealing with our own lives. Suddenly we have become the grotesque sorts of people we saw on stage or heard about in epic poetry.
Despite the clear dangers of poetry, Socrates regrets having to banish the poets. He feels the aesthetic sacrifice acutely, and says that he would be happy to allow them back into the city if anyone could present an argument in their defense.
Socrates then outlines a brief proof for the immortality of the soul. Basically, the proof is this: X can only be destroyed by what is bad for X. What is bad for the soul is injustice and other vices. But injustice and other vices obviously do not destroy the soul or tyrants and other such people would not be able to survive for long. So nothing can destroy the soul, and the soul is immortal.

Is the republic more of a utopian or realistic society?
I think utopian, he society is a little to perfect
There is no philosopher king (perfect being ruled by reason)
Its not realistic to think people are going to be happy with what they get

The Republic

Book I
Aristotle defines the polis, or city, as a koinonia, or political association, and he asserts that all such associations, like all deliberate human acts, are formed with the aim of achieving some good. He adds that political association is the most sovereign form of association since it incorporates all other forms of association and aims at the highest good. The different kinds of associations that exist are founded on different kinds of relationships:
Household.
Three relationship make up the household master-slave; Aristotle views slaves as the means by which the master secures his livelihood. He defends slavery by noting that nature generally consists of ruling and ruled elements: some people are slaves by nature, while others are masters by nature. It is thus unjust to enslave, through war or other means, those who are not slaves by nature. Though being suited to mastery or slavery is generally inherited, slavery is just only when the rule of master over slave is beneficial for both parties. Aristotle likens the relationship between master and slave to that between soul and body: the master possesses rational, commanding powers, while the slave, lacking these, is fit only to carry out menial duties.
He also likens the relationship between master and slave to that between a monarch and his people and that between a statesman and free citizens. husband-wife; resembles that of the statesman to his people in that the husband and wife share the same free (i.e., not slave) nature; that the male, by his nature, is more fit than the female to command, justifies the fact that it is the husband, not the wife, who rules the household. parent-child; resembles that of the king to his subjects, as the father rules by virtue of his children's love for him and their respect of his age.
"art of acquisition.” fourth element of the household pertains to the satisfaction of basic needs
Different people go about satisfying these needs in different ways, depending on their mode of life: some are farmers, some hunter-gatherers, and some pirates or freebooters, etc. This securing of food, shelter, and other necessities is called natural acquisition because it is an indispensable part of the management of a household.
Unnatural acquisition, on the other hand, consists of accumulating money for its own sake. Aristotle observes that goods such as food and clothing have not only a use-value, but also an exchange-value. In societies where trade is common, a monetary currency naturally arises as a facilitator of exchange. The aim of exchange is the accumulation of such currency—i.e., the production of monetary wealth rather than the natural acquisition of goods. Aristotle further dislikes this accumulation of currency because there is no limit to the amount of currency one can accumulate, leading people to indulge in an excess of enjoyment.
Book I concludes with Aristotle's assertion that the proper object of household rule is the virtuous character of one's wife and children, not the management of slaves or the acquisition of property. Rule over the slaves is despotic, rule over children kingly, and rule over one's wife political (except there is no rotation in office).
Village
City - ultimate association toward which end humans, seeking to attain the highest quality of life, naturally move; "man is by nature a political animal." The highest form of community is the polis. Aristotle comes to this conclusion because he believes the public life is far more virtuous than the private.
Analysis
Much of Aristotle's political philosophy is based on the idea of teleology—that everything in nature exists for a specific purpose.. The Politics is largely an attempt to determine what kind of political association is best suited for securing happiness for its citizens.
Ancient Greece was divided into small city-states, and these poleis meant much more to their inhabitants than modern cities do to theirs. The interests of a polis and those of its citizens were seen as identical, since both city and man aimed for happiness. Thus, the concept of an opposition between individual rights or freedoms and the laws of city or state did not exist in ancient Greece.
By asserting that man fails to fulfill his ultimate purpose when he is disconnected from the state, Aristotle is not simply arguing that the laws of the state should restrict man's freedom; he is arguing also that life has no value outside the confines of the state.
Book II

Analysis

Book III

Book IV

Book V

Book VI