Philosophers in the "Republic"

Plato's Two Paradigms

Roslyn Weiss

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780801449741
• eBook ISBN: 9780801465611
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

In Plato's Republic, Socrates contends that philosophers make the best rulers because only they behold with their mind's eye the eternal and purely intelligible Forms of the Just, the Noble, and the Good. When, in addition, these men and women are endowed with a vast array of moral, intellectual, and personal virtues and are appropriately educated, surely no one could doubt the wisdom of entrusting to them the governance of cities. Although it is widely—and reasonably—assumed that all the Republic's philosophers are the same, Roslyn Weiss argues in this boldly original book that the Republic actually contains two distinct and irreconcilable portrayals of the philosopher.

According to Weiss, Plato's two paradigms of the philosopher are the "philosopher by nature" and the "philosopher by design." Philosophers by design, as the allegory of the Cave vividly shows, must be forcibly dragged from the material world of pleasure to the sublime realm of the intellect, and from there back down again to the "Cave" to rule the beautiful city envisioned by Socrates and his interlocutors. Yet philosophers by nature, described earlier in the Republic, are distinguished by their natural yearning to encounter the transcendent realm of pure Forms, as well as by a willingness to serve others—at least under appropriate circumstances. In contrast to both sets of philosophers stands Socrates, who represents a third paradigm, one, however, that is no more than hinted at in the Republic. As a man who not only loves "what is" but is also utterly devoted to the justice of others—even at great personal cost—Socrates surpasses both the philosophers by design and the philosophers by nature. By shedding light on an aspect of the Republic that has escaped notice, Weiss's new interpretation will challenge Plato scholars to revisit their assumptions about Plato's moral and political philosophy.

1

PHILOSOPHERS BY NATURE

A joy to the righteous is the doing of justice, an agony to evil doers.

—Proverbs 21:25

Readers of the Republic reasonably expect all its philosophers to be the same. But, just as the dialogue identifies more than one best ruler—first a brave and moderate military man, next a practically wise man, and finally a philosopher—so, too, does it present more than one kind of philosopher: the philosopher by nature and the philosopher by design. These two are the first and last of four philosophic types limned in Rep. 6: (1) the philosophic nature that remains true to philosophy to the end; (2) the philosophic nature that becomes corrupted and turns to villainy; (3) the imitation philosopher—the man who wishes to be a philosopher but whose inferior nature prevents him from realizing his goal; and (4) a new breed of philosopher fashioned so as to combine within himself both philosopher and warrior. Although accounts of all four types are found in Rep. 6, the first type—the philosopher by nature—makes his initial appearance near the end of Book 5 in Socrates’ “third wave” (at 473c), and the fourth type—the philosopher by design—is the subject of Book 7. (There is perhaps a fifth philosophic type found in the Republic, the “philosophic” dogs of Book 2 and the guardians who resemble them; they are discussed in the addendum to the current chapter.) Of these four (or five), only the first, the one who is inclined by his nature to strive to grasp the highest realities, the one who is driven to “what is” by an innate desire for truth and love of wisdom and who remains faithful to his calling throughout his life, is fully authentic. In this chapter the genuine philosopher will be distinguished from his three (or four) defective approximations.

I. The Natural Philosopher

Not until Book 5 is there any suggestion in the Republic that the rulers of Socrates’ city are to be philosophers. In Book 4 the rulers of the new city are the “more moderate few” (434c-d). They are those who are born with the “best natures”:1 their “simple and measured desires, pleasures, and pains [are] led by reasoning accompanied by intelligence (nou) and right opinion” (431c). The wisdom they have is practical: it is “knowledge (epistēmē) concerning how the city as a whole would best deal with itself and with other cities” (428d).2

Socrates recommends the rule of the wise with full assurance, not fearing any resistance to it from his companions. And indeed so long as Socrates positions men of sound judgment—but not philosophers—at the city’s helm, his proposal strikes neither Glaucon nor the others assembled in the home of Polemarchus as ridiculous or as lacking in “measure” (cf. 6.484b). It is only Socrates’ bold pronouncement near the end of Book 5 that “there is no rest from ills for the cities…nor for humankind”3 “unless the philosophers rule as kings or those now called kings and chiefs genuinely and adequately philosophize” (473c-d) that arouses skepticism and scorn (473e-474a). Socrates is fully aware of how outrageous his proposition is: because of its unorthodoxy (para doxan) he is hesitant to speak (473e); he expects to be “drowned in laughter and ill repute” (473c; cf. 499b-c). And in truth, although the first two “waves”—that women ought to be assigned the same jobs as men, and that women and children should be held in common—are incontestably bizarre,4 it is the third, philosophic rule, that seems to defy all common sense:5 could there be any course less reasonable than entrusting the management of a city’s internal and external affairs to men who do nothing but daydream and chatter?6

Socrates sees only one way to render his proposal more palatable to the present company. He must set the record straight on the nature of the philosopher (474b; cf. 490d, 499e-500a), not only bringing him “plainly to light,” but distinguishing (diorisasthai) him from the non-philosopher (474b), showing his nature to be extraordinary, superior. Only then, he thinks, will it be possible to show that “it is by nature fitting for philosophers both to engage in philosophy and to lead a city, and for the rest not to engage in philosophy and to follow the leader” (474b-c).7 Socrates instructs Glaucon to “follow”; Glaucon asks Socrates to “lead.”8

Socrates is quite sure at the start of Book 6 that he has adequately captured, within the confines of Book 5, the distinctive nature of the philosopher. Indeed, he declares without reservation at the inception of Book 6 (484a): “And so, Glaucon, through a somewhat lengthy argument, who the philosophers are and who the non-philosophers has, with considerable effort, somehow been brought to light.” The paradigm of the philosopher advanced in Book 5 is thus intended to be definitive and to set the philosopher decisively apart from those who resemble him merely superficially: only someone who conforms to Book 5’s model will count for Socrates as a genuine or authentic philosopher.

The distinguishing mark of the philosopher in Book 5, the thing that makes him genuine or authentic, is what he loves (philein—475e, 479e), or what he “delights in” (aspazesthai—475c, 476b5, 476b7, 479e, 480a), namely, truth and knowledge concerning “what is.” Even in his youth, the true philosopher is not finicky about what he studies; rather, he is willing to taste every kind of learning; he approaches learning with joy (hasmenōs) and with gusto (eucherōs), and is insatiable (475b-c).9 The philosopher’s delight is reminiscent of the delight that reason evokes in properly raised young men (402a), that the sight of unblemished souls sparks in those who are musical (402d), and that all sorts of boys (474d) and wines (475a) arouse respectively in lovers of boys (erōtikoi) and wine-lovers.10 Indeed, by comparing the philosopher to the erōtikos, Socrates indicates that the love the philosopher experiences is intense.11 Philosophers love, then, as ardently as other lovers do; they differ from those others only in the object of their delight: whereas non-philosophers revel in sights, sounds, arts, opinions, the many beautiful sounds, colors, and shapes, and all that the crafts fashion from such things (476a-b, 479e, 480a)—things subject to flux and change, to coming into existence and perishing, and to variation in accordance with subjective perspective—philosophers prefer truth and knowledge and the beautiful itself, things that are real and stable and the same always. The philosopher loves the things that are “each itself one,” the things that only “look like many” as they “show themselves everywhere in community with actions, bodies, and one another” (5.476a). Moreover, philosophers love all these “ones” and love each of them in its entirety.

There is no suggestion in Book 5 that among the things the philosopher loves are war, hunting, and physical labor—things that clearly belong to the world of flux and change and not to the realm of the immutable and fixed. Indeed, it is not said in Book 5, as it was in Book 3, that it is gentle warriors, men of courage and moderation, who are to lead the city, but rather that the leaders are to be men who fervently love wisdom, truth, and what is. The philosopher of Book 5 “believes that there is something beautiful itself,” and he “is able to catch sight both of it and of what participates in it, and does not believe that what participates is it itself, nor that it itself is what participates” (476c-d). Insofar as he “looks at each thing itself—at the things that are always the same in all respects”—he knows rather than opines (479e), and is awake and not in a dream (476c3, 476c4, 476d).12 He is able to follow a leader to the knowledge of beauty itself,13 and would therefore not take a mere likeness for the thing itself (476d).

Although Socrates is satisfied that he has extracted in Book 5 the essential core of the genuine philosopher as a lover of truth concerning “what is,” one who indeed not only recognizes the existence of the single Itselfs that are manifest in their corresponding manys in the visible realm but is able to see them (476c-d, 479e, 484b), he nevertheless undertakes anew in Book 6 a thorough investigation of the philosophic nature. That Book 6’s philosophic natures are the same as Book 5’s philosophers is certain: “About philosophic natures, let us agree that…just like the lovers of honor and the erotic men we described before [that is, in Book 5, at 474e-475c], they love all of it” (485a-b). And both the philosophers of Book 5 and the philosophic natures of Book 6 are described as loving “that which discloses to them something of the being that is always” (485b; cf. 479e). The full description of the philosophic nature that begins in Book 6 at 485a and ends at 502c thus applies equally to the philosophers of Book 5’s third wave. Indeed, both the brief depiction of philosophers in Book 5 and the more expansive elaboration of the philosophic nature in Book 6 culminate in the same way: we have reached our goal “with [or, after] considerable effort” (mogis—6.484a; 502c).

What is strikingly new in Book 6, however, is the extensive catalogue it contains of the philosopher’s moral, intellectual, and personal virtues. If the extravagant praise it lavishes on the philosophic nature seems exaggerated at first, a second look at the beginning of Rep. 6 reveals that it is Glaucon’s skepticism that is the cause of the apparent excess. For when Socrates at 484b poses a patently rhetorical question, “Since philosophers are those who are able to grasp what is always the same in all respects, while those who are not able to do so but wander among what is many and varies in all ways are not philosophers, which should be the leaders of the city?” Glaucon’s reply is not the expected compliant one “Why, the philosophers, of course, Socrates,” but is instead “How should we put it so as to speak in a measured way (metriōs)?” Socrates, as we have seen, had assumed (or trusted) that once “who the philosophers are” came plainly to light, it would be immediately evident that they should rule in the city (5.474b-c). Yet apparently, far from being persuaded that philosophers should rule, Glaucon is doubtful: he is not prepared to admit, certainly not without reservation or qualification, that “those who are able to grasp what is always the same in all respects” should lead the city. Indeed, Glaucon is no more sympathetic to the notion of philosophic rule now than he was when Socrates first proposed it at 5.473d. At 473e-474a Glaucon, projecting his own dismay and alarm onto his companions, predicted that they would attack Socrates, both with weapons and with ridicule, should he fail to offer a plausible defense of this view. Thus, when at the beginning of Book 6 Socrates is still promoting the single-minded devotee of “what is” as the best ruler, Glaucon calls for measure: surely a more nuanced figure is in order. Socrates must revisit his depiction of the philosopher if he is to have any hope of persuading Glaucon that philosophers, and only philosophers, should rule.

In an attempt to put the matter “in a measured way,”14 Socrates takes the sharp-sightedness that is “able to grasp what is always the same in all respects” (484b), that discerns “what each thing is” or “what is truest” and “contemplates it as precisely as possible” (484d),15 and recasts it as something that is needed and is most useful for guarding (phulaxai) or watching over (tērein) the laws and practices of cities.” (Punning does the work here: how can one watch and guard unless one “sees” well?) In addition, he requires that the men who are to be set up as guardians “not lack experience or fall short of the others in any other part of virtue” (484e). He thus endows the philosopher not only with extraordinary intellect but also with the same qualities that any good leader—whether philosopher or not—would need, qualities that are indeed relevant both to making new law when needed and to preserving existing law (484d).16 Glaucon is mollified: he is prepared to endorse the rule of those who see well, so long as “these men do not lack the rest”—that is, are not deficient in moral virtue.17

As Socrates proceeds, he considers whether it is possible that the...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Philosophers by Nature
• 2. Philosophers by Design I
• 3. Philosophers by Design II
• 4. Socratic Piety
• 5. Justice as Moderation
• Conclusion
• Works Cited