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Fallacy and Political Radicalism in Plato's republic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
The order in which Plato’s thoughts follow upon one another in the Republic is logical, but the dramatic or the picturesque medium through which he is constantly presenting his ideas disguises the logical structure of the work.
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- Copyright © The Authors 1974
Footnotes
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I wish to thank my colleague, Professor Norman Dahl, for the stimulation which led to the writing of this paper, as well as for his helpful comments on an initial version. My thanks also to Professors Thomas Hill, Maury landsman, and Gregory Vlastos for helpful comments.
References
1 Sachs, David “A Fallacy in Plato’s Republic,” The Philosophical Review, LXXII (1963), 141–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reprinted in the Bobbs-Merrill Reprint Series in Philosophy, Reprint No. Phil-183.
2 See the Republic, 442d10-443b2 and elsewhere.
3 Republic, 443e-444a2.
4 Republic, beginning of Bk. II. Sachs discussion of this, op. cit., pp. 144-148 is most valuable.
5 Republic, 484a-487a.
6 Demos, R. “A Fallacy in Plato’s Republic,” The Philosophical Review, LXXIII (1964), 395–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Epistle VII, 341c-344d.
8 As I think Plato is striving to make clear even in the first book of the Republic, the principles of right action are simply not the sorts of things to be captured by a list of do's and don't's.
9 Demos, op. cit., p. 396.
10 Weingartner, Rudolph “Vulgar Justice and Platonic Justice.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XXV (1964), 248–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Hart, H. L. A. “Legal and Moral Obligation,” in Melden, A. I. (ed.), Essays in Moral Philosophy, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1958, pp. 92–93.Google Scholar
12 See the passage quoted from the Phaedo, infra, p.
13 Vlastos, Gregory “The Argument in the Republic that Justice Pays,” Journal of Philosophy, LXV (1968), 665–674;CrossRefGoogle Scholar “Justice and Psychic Harmony in the Republic,” Journal of Philosophy, LXVI (1969), 505-521. The quotation is from the latter, p. 521.
14 Vlastos, (1968), p. 672. Italics mine. Only this notion of conventional justice saves Vlastos’ interpretation from the same criticism which I have made of Weingartner’s.
15 Ibid., p. 673.
16 I shall not be concerned here with whether or not Plato can consistently claim that members of the lower classes, whose morality is based upon the acceptance of “the Golden lie” as well as “massive psychological conditioning,” can achieve genuine morality. For the purposes of my argument, he need only have believed that for most men existence in anything less than an ideally Platonic state robbed them of the opportunity to achieve the maximum morality and rationality which they were capable of attaining.
17 Ibid., pp. 673-674.
18 Not in the sense, which may be the only one which Vlastos had in mind, of viewing these consequences as invalidating his argument.
19 See the Apology, 31d; Epistle VII, especially beginning to 329b; Republic, 496.
20 Nettleship, R. L.. Lectures on the Republic of Plato,2nd Edition, Macmillan and Co., London, 1929, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar
21 It is only in this sense that I am claiming that Plato’s position can be equated with contemporary political radicalism. He would be the last one, for instance, to advocate “power to the people.”
22 Epistle VII, 326ab (translator Post), italics mine.
23 Thus although such radicalism might be met with “moral” condemnation, Plato could claim that it did not violate any of the principles of conventional morality which he was concerned to defend.
24 See Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, U. of Chicago Press, 1962.Google Scholar
25 Republic, 493a-494a.
26 See Sesonske, Alexander “Plato’s Apology: Republic I,” Phronesis, VI (1961), pp. 29–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 The parallels between Plato's radicalism and the thought of Herbert Marcuse are especially striking, but far too extensive to develop here.