Socrates Unnecessary Appetites Summary

introducing the unnecessary appetites. These appetites were originally responsible for the degeneration of the ideal constitution. The unnecessary desires smuggle in the lawless desires. The Kallipolis, timocracy and oligarchy each had three required parts. The move to democracy introduced two new parts, the unnecessary and the lawless appetites.

V
To explain imitation in Bk. X Socrates returns to furniture (596b). He distinguishes the form of the bed from the physical bed from the imitative artistic representation of a bed. The imitative arts are at third remove from the truth. In Bk. X Socrates invokes PO explicitly, when he discusses the banishment of the imitative arts. The imitative arts employ appearance, which confuses a spectator. For example, painting that appears concave
Contingency allows that different constitutions may have different numbers of parts. Although Socrates does not mention rulers or the military class in the ideal constitution, he does mention activities that require two classes. The ideal city functions to regulate deliberation and education, without distinguishing a military class. In the ideal constitution the two tasks of ruling and defending are combined into one. The ideal soul must contain a rational part and the necessary appetites. We saw that the oligarchic constitution renders the worse appetites impotent. So, the Kallipolis, the timocracy, and the oligarchy have three parts. The democratic constitution takes all desires as equally worthy of indulgence. So the lawless part of the unnecessary desires is equally worthy of indulgence as any other part. The democratic and tyrannical constitutions require five parts. Socrates distinguished these five, but he thinks that among the vicious constitutions there are an “unlimited number of forms” (445c). The additional forms, Socrates says, are not worth mentioning. We can now chart all six