Category:PHI 1301 Exam 1

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Exam over Plato's Republic

Characters

• Socrates
  • primary narrator of the story
  • claims to know nothing
• Cephalus
  • father of Polemarchus
  • Defines justice as speaking the truth and repaying what one has borrowed
• Polemarchus. Son of Cephalus
  • Defines justice as:
    1. giving to each what is owed to him
    2. treat friends well and enemies badly
• Thrasymachus.
  • Defines justice as the advantage of the stronger
• Glaucon
  • Companion of Socrates
• Adiemantus
  • Companion of Polemarchus and Thrasymachus

Images and Stories

Know the image and significance of the following:

• Myth of Gyges (Shepherd's ring)
  • shepherd finds ring that makes wearer invisible when turned
  • uses ring to seduce king's wife, kill the king, and take over kingdom
  • anyone who can get away with injustice will do so
• Dogs
  • dogs are able to determine between friend and enemy and treat each accordingly
  • so too should kallipolis guardians
• Delicacies (luxuries)
  • healthy city has none; no one would want to live there!
• City for pigs
  • healthy city is just where people live, work, and die; they don't seem very happy.
• Phoenician tale
  • people are composed of different metals (gold, silver, iron/bronze), each according to class to which he belongs
  • this is how we'll get people to "trust the system"
• Ship's pilot
  • pilot is incompetent
  • shipmates overthrow him and substitute themselves for a variety of reasons
  • the one person who knows how to pilot a ship is seen as a "stargazer and babbler"
• Black-eyed statue
  • painting the most beautiful part of a statue the most beautiful color makes the statue unnatural
  • color of each part makes the whole beautiful
  • city as a whole should be happy (not individually)
• Purple dye for woolen garment (429d–430b)
  • dyed garment should start with a natural white, prepared to absorb color as well as possible, and dyed so it will hold fast and not run
  • guardians' education should be absorbed similarly, and courage should preserve it.
• Lovers of sights and sounds
  • don't love the forms themselves, but love particular things
  • true lover of the forms loves all things
• Bald-headed tinker
  • lady justice left uncourted as eligible young philosophers are corrupted to chase after lesser occupations
  • only person left is the "creep", the "bald-headed tinker"
• Sun
  • just as sun radiates light to illuminate things,
  • so too does the Good radiate Truth to illuminate Knowledge
• Divided line
  • immaterial/invisible/eternal
    • understanding (forms)
    • thought (mathematicals)
  • material/visible/changing
    • trust (things themselves)
    • imagination (images of things)
• Cave
  • people bound and forced to look at shadows on wall and hear echoes
  • after being freed, they see source of shadows and echoes: puppets and puppeteers in front of a fire
  • brought upward out of cave; at first they see only reflections of real things
  • as eyes adjust, they see the things themselves and the sun, the source of light
• Myth of Er
  • people coming and going to/from heaven (reward) and lower underworld (punishment)
  • we get to choose our life, and we have only our education to make that decision
  • moral of story: be virtuous, be pious, and be a philosopher.

Division, Hierarchies, List

• Glaucon's division of three kinds of goods
  1. Good in themselves
  2. Good only in consequences
  3. Good in both selves and consequences
• Parts of the soul
  1. Reason
  2. Spirit
  3. Appetites (irrational)
• Four Virtues
  1. Wisdom
  2. Courage
  3. Moderation
  4. Justice
• Classes of the city
  1. Ruler-guardians
  2. Soldier-guardians (auxiliaries)
  3. Workers/Craftsmen
• Philosophic youth who escape corruption
  1. foreigners/exiles
  2. small-town kids
  3. people of other trades
  4. sick people
  5. blessed/cursed through supernatural intervention
• Corresponding parts of the divided line and the cave:
  1. forms / understanding
  2. mathematicals / thought
  3. things / trust
  4. images / imagination
• Education of guardians
  1. dialectics
  2. mathematics and science
  3. gymnastic
  4. music
• Sciences
  1. Dialectics
  2. Astronomy
  3. Geometry
  4. Arithmetic
• City/Soul Constitutions
  1. aristocratic
  2. timocratic
  3. oligarchic
  4. democratic
  5. tyrannical

Passages to Cogitate

• 504d-505a: the form of the Good, more important than the virtues

  Aren't these virtues, then, the most important things? he asked. Is there anything even more important than justice and the other virtues we discussed?

  There is nothing more important. However, even for the virtues themselves, it isn't enough to look at a mere sketch, as we did before, while neglecting the most complete account. It's ridiculous, isn't it, to strain every nerve to attain the utmost exactness and clarity about other things of little value and not to consider the most important things worthy of the greatest exactness?

  It certainly is. But do you think that anyone is going to let you off without asking you what this most important subject is and what it concerns?

  No, indeed, and you can ask me too. You've certainly heard the answer often enough, but now either you aren't thinking or you intend to make trouble for me again by interrupting. And I suspect the latter, for you've often heard it said that the form of the good is the most important thing to learn about and that it's by their relation to it that just things and the others become useful and beneficial. You know very well now that I am going to say this, and, besides, that we have no adequate knowledge of it. And you also know that, if we don't know it, even the fullest possible knowledge of other things is of no benefit t o us, any more than if we acquire any possession without the good of it.

• 532a-b: The song that dialectic sings

  Then isn't this at last, Glaucon, the song that dialectic sings? It is intelligible, but it is imitated by the power of sight. We said that sight tries at last to look at the animals themselves, the stars themselves, and, in the end, at the sun itself. In the same way, whenever someone tries through argument and apart from all sense perceptions to find the being itself of each thing and doesn't give up until he grasps the good itself with understanding itself, he reaches the end of the intelligible, just as the other reached the end of he visible.

• 591b-592: The person of understanding as a citizen in the heavenly kallipolis

  Then won't a person of understanding direct all his efforts to attaining that state of his soul?

  1. First he'll value the studies that produce and despise the others? — Clearly so.
  2. Second, he won't entrust the condition and nurture of his body to the irrational pleasure of the beast within or turn his life in that direction, but neither will he make health his aim or assign first place to being strong, healthy, and beautiful, unless he happens to acquire moderation as a result. Rather, it's clear that he will always cultivate the harmony of his body for the sake of consonance in his soul. — He certainly will, if indeed he's to be truly trained in music and poetry.
  3. Will he also keep order and consonance in his acquisition of money, with that same end in view? Or, even though he isn't dazzled by the size of the majority into accepting their idea of blessed happiness, will he increase his wealth without limit and so have unlimited evils? — Not in my view. — Rather he'll look to the constitution within him and guard against disturbing anything in it, either by too much money or too little. And, in this way, he'll direct both the increase and expenditure of his wealth, as far as he can. — That's exactly what he'll do.
  4. And he'll look to the same thing where honors are concerned. He'll willingly share in and taste those that he believes will make him better, but he'll avoid any public or private honor that might overthrow the established condition of his soul. —If that's his chief concern, he won't be willing to take part in politics.
  5. Yes, by the dog, he certainly will, at least in his own kind of city. But he may not be willing to do so in his fatherland, unless some divine good luck chances to be his.

  I understand. You mean that he'll be willing to take part in the politics of the city we were founding and describing, the one that exists in theory, for I don't think it exists anywhere on earth.

  But perhaps, I said, there is a model of it in heaven, for anyone who wants to look at it and to make himself its citizen on the strength of what he sees. It makes no difference whether it is or ever will be somewhere, for he would take part in the practical affairs of that city and no other.

  Probably so, he said.

• 621b-d: "If persuaded by me [Socrates] … do well and be happy."

  But if we are persuaded by me, we'll believe that the soul is immortal and able to endure every evil and every good, and we'll always hold to the upward path, practicing virtue with reason in every way. That way we'll be friends to both ourselves and to the gods while we remain here on earth and afterwards—like victors in the games who go around collecting their prizes—we'll receive our rewards. Hence, both in this life and on the thousand-year journey we've described, we'll do well and be happy.

Questions to Ponder

• How does philosophy contribute to the right order of the soul?
• What advantage do you think Socrates sees in his use of images in his conversation?
• If conversation with Socrates in the Republic is successful, what do you think counts as success?