Hello I'm Dr. Anadale, I teach philosophy at Mount st. Mary's
University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Book 4 of Plato's Republic begins with a
discussion of what it means for the guardians of the city to be happy,
excellent, or flourishing. Adeimantus remarks that the Guardians have a very
hard life, they must serve the city and give up many pleasures and comforts to
do so. Socrates responds that we are not aiming to make any one group of people
happy but to make the whole city happy or excellent, and he gives the analogy of
a statue: one does not make the whole statute beautiful by painting the most
beautiful part, the eyes, with the most beautiful color, purple. Rather, one treats
each part in the way necessary in order to best serve the whole. So the Guardians
will have to give up some goods for the good of the whole city. Socrates then
observes that both great wealth and great poverty can corrupt people.
So the guardians should be neither too rich nor too poor. Over the next few pages
Socrates makes several points that are meant to be understood together. First, he
argues that wealth is not necessary for a city to be able to defend itself. What
is necessary is that the Guardians perform their function well, and this is
something that they are better able to do if they are not distracted by riches.
He then argues that a city properly understood must be of a moderate size
and it must be unified. In particular the city must not be divided between rich
and poor, because then there would be not one but two cities. And finally Socrates
again discusses the importance of the Guardians' education, which above all must
cultivate lawfulness and reason in their souls. What ties all of these points
together is the rationality that Socrates believes exists in nature
itself. The universe is a rational place and this rationality can be reflected in
the lives of good individuals and good cities. At 427D Socrates again takes up
the question of where exactly justice and injustice are to be found in
the city he has just described. To make the city completely good four virtues
are required: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. First reading question: find
the definition of each of these four virtues and the social class in the
ideal city that possesses that virtue. Focus especially on the definition of
justice in the city and of injustice in the city. At 435A Socrates moves on
from discussing where justice is found in the city to where it is found in an
individual. This is the political metaphor, you will remember, where justice
in the city can be used to discover the nature of justice in the soul. For this
analogy to work, however, the individual must be like the city in the relevant
ways. In particular each individual must have three parts to his soul to
correspond to the three parts of the city. The rest of this book explains what
these three parts of the soul are and how we are to understand them as parts
of a single soul. Socrates emphasizes that this is a very difficult thing to
understand. He points out that the same thing will not be willing to do or
undergo opposites in the same part of itself in relation to the same thing at
the same time. This is an important and plausible principle: the same thing
cannot be two different ways at the same time. So if we are ever tempted to say
something like this about our souls, to say for example that I am both happy and
sad at the same time, then we know that the soul or the self must have parts, and
if it has parts then the relationship between those parts, the harmony between
the parts, will be crucial. Socrates' theory is that nothing can be,
do, or undergo opposites at the same time, in the same respect, in relation to the
same thing. At 437B Socrates lists pairs of opposites that we might apply
to the soul: assent and dissent, wanting to have something and rejecting it,
taking something and pushing it away, as well as thirst and its opposite, hunger
and its opposite, and other appetites and the wish not to have the appetite. These
are opposites. He considers the case of thirst in
detail. Over the next few pages he explains that thirst as an appetite is
always the result of a feeling, whereas the wish not to have a thirst and the
overriding of the appetite is always the result of rational calculation. But if
this is true then we have found at least two parts of the soul, because they're
having these opposed states at the same time. The third part of the soul is the
spirited part, the part that feels pride and shame. This part is crucial in making
us fully human. With it we have a three part soul just like the three part city.
So your final two reading questions: How does Socrates describe the spirited part
of the soul? and What is justice in the soul and how is it like justice in the
city? This brings us to the end of book 4 of Plato's Republic.
Thanks for watching today; goodbye.