Untitled Flashcards Set

In class essay is on Plato

• We should minimize cruelty

• “Every adult should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear as is compatible with the like freedom of every other adult”

Some fear is normal, but we shouldn’t fear cruelty of others

• Defined as unexpected, arbitrary, unnecessary and unlicensed force and terror are “absolute evil” that naturally horrified us

• Government should minimize said cruelty

• Deontological: Injustice is against the law or moral rules

  • Emmanuel Kant (treat others as means, not ends (how you want to be treated))

  • Chidi from The Good Place

  • Injustice is irrational

  • Injustice disturbs our sense of justice (moral justice arguments)

• Consequentialist: Injustice has bad consequences

  • Utilitarianism: something is just if it benefits the greeted number of people 

    • Trolley problem

  • Injustice is destabilizing

  • Leads to greater injustice

Lecture 3: 1/29 Introduction to Plato and The Republic

Humanities Now: Dissent on Campus – February 13 5:00 pm - honors optional

Elvehjem Building L150

Plato: 429 - 347 BCE

• Most influential western philosopher

• All western philosophy after has been a series of “footnotes to Plato”

• Wrote about 43 dialogues 

• Disciple/Student of Socrates [annoying guy in book 1 haha] known for asking people questions about their core ideas and supposedly “corrupting the youth” 

  • He never wrote his thoughts down, so only known through his students (including Zenephon)

  • Very close to Socrates and depressed when he was put to death by Athenian government

• Founder of Academy

• Wealthy and powerful Athenian citizen

  • Son of Aristocles who was an Athenian politician

  • Uncle was part of the group who took power when Athenian democracy ends (member of the Thirty Tyrants)

  • Called politeia by Plato in 380 BCE (means constitution or polity)

  • Set 30-40 years before in 420 BCE

• Second phase of Peloponnesian War (Sparta vs Athens) was 431-404 BCE

• First large war of the ancient world

Written as a dialogue/conversation

• Uses dialectical reasoning

  • Questioning and discussion to come to a conclusion

• The characters in this dialogue matter in interpreting the text

  • Speaker does not necessarily represent the author’s opinion

• Dramatic setting of the book matters to interpret the text

Utopia

• Describes ideal political society

• Possibly dystopian?

Characters:

• Socrates: Neighborhood busy-body/philosopher, employs elenchus, main character of many Plato dialogues including Apology

  • Method of questioning or badgering to get others to respond to the question

• Glaucon: Ariston’s son/Plato’s brother, kalos kai agathos, “bright-eye/owl-eyed”

  • “The noble and the good”

  • Athenian man of power in a social position to go into politics

  • Pretty intelligent

• Adeimantus: Ariston’s son/Plato’s brother, kalos kai agathos, sooth singer/singer of oracles

  • Also pretty smart and musical

  • A person of nobility likely to go into politics

• Polemarchus: wealthy medic, sone of Cephalus, “leader of war”

  • Arms dealer

  • Foreigner

  • About to take over the family business

  • Very wealthy but cannot vote in the assembly/Athenian democracy

• Cephalus:Wealthy medic and aems dealer, elderly, “head”

• Thrasymachus: famous sophist (travelling rhetoric guy, trains future politicians)

  • Pretty well known and good at his job

  • “Fierce fighter”

Setting:

• The Piraeus, Athen’s gritty and ancient port

  • Outside the main city with many foreigners

  • Site where democracy falls at the end of the Peloponnesian War

  • Site of Thirty Tyrant’s win and also their defeat and restoration of democracy

    • Were only in power for about 8 months but 1500 wealthy noblemen were killed and property seized

• Cephalus’ home

  • Signifies wealth and power

  • Safe environment for subversive conversation?

Plot:

• Initial discussion about justice with some interlocutors

  • Foreshadows Allegory of the Cave [most famous]

• Prelude to the work as a whole

  • What is justice and injustice?

  • Why should we be just rather than unjust?

3 Views of Justice:

• Cephalus: paying one’s debts and telling the truth; giving what is owed 

  • What is due to them

• Polemarchus: doing good to one’s friends and harm to one’s enemies (i.e. what is owed)

• Thrasymachus: what is advantageous to the stronger

  • If you’re not in power justice is not in your interest

  • Do not follow the law because you simply think it is just

  • Be unjust to gain power (?)

  • The unjust man is wiser than than the just man

The first two both share common features:

• Conventional

• Consider justice to be what is lawful

• Assume justice is a good thing and injustice is bad

What is missing:

• Poor people who may steal/cheat would be considered unjust immediately which is not fair

• “What is lawful is good” which is not always true

• How do you build a society dependent on each person’s friends/family

• Not considering previous injustice: just current social order

• Power inequities can be in a society

Injustice is better than justice

• Injustice is the pursuit of your own advantage

  • Justice is “very high-minded innocence” while injustice is “good counsel”

  • The highest kind of injustice is best

Thrasymachus distinguishes between nomos and physis

• Nomos: customs, convention, positive laws

• Physis: nature, natural law

• Insists that physis supersedes nomos, there is no natural justice

Sophists emphasized gult between natural law and positive law

Could there be a more nuanced version of injustice where it requires on stepping on other people to achieve more power? Whereas justice may require breaking laws in a way which does not harm others to achieve equality?

This challenge by Thrasymachus reframes the whole book

• No conclusive ending: aporia

• Socrates admits he knows nothing including what injustice is

• Thrasmachus gives up but challenge stands

Why shouldn’t we be unjust?

Pg 35-56 and 63-96

Book 2 and 3

Focus on Glaucon’s typology of goods, ring of gyges, noble lie, myth of metals

Lecture 4: ⅖

• The brother’s challenge: Glaucon’s typology of goods and Ring of Gyges

• The city in speech

• City-soul analogy

• Kallipolis – the noble and beautiful city

Varying definitions of Justice

Caphalus: paying one’s debts and being honest, giving what’s owed

Polemarchus: doing harm to one’s enemies and good to one’s friend (also what is owed)

Tharsymachus: the advantage of the stronger

• The positive law (conventional, legal justice) is simply whatever those in power say it is

Glaucon: injustice is naturally good, but suffering said injustice is terrible (358e)

• Following justice if not in power is stupid – you should be unjust

• Law basically exists for the fact that some will naturally be stronger and some naturally weaker 

  • Justice should be a mean between extremes (doing injustice with impunity/what is best, and suffering injustice powerlessly/what is worst) 359a

• Justice is a kind of contract but only those who are afraid of suffering injustice

  • A man who can truly do injustice would never agree to such a contract and would instead do injustice

Glaucon’s typology of goods:

• Intrinsic

• Instrumental goods

• Both intrinsic and instrumental

Rewrite:

• Good for you but not good for the consequences

  • Like happiness and love

• Good in itself but not pleasurable to do - Glacuon

  • People do it because they are afraid of punishment/judgement

• Both good for you and good for consequences - Socrates

**We do not want to suffer the consequences of doing injustice

The Ring of Gyges

• Does this to demonstrate most people care about the apperance of justice

  • Everyone would be like him if they could – everyone is inherently unjust

  • Apperances or reputations matter

    • Being unjust and appearing just > being just and appearing unjust

• Gyges finds a ring that gifts him invisibility, which he uses to sleep with the king’s wife, kill the king, and become king himself

What is a city in speech:

• A city which is produced by thought but not actually be possible 

How does that answer the question?

• Provides reasoning for the injustices in the real world and shows what a truly just society would look like

• The city in speech is one which everyone is provided what they are needed and provide for each other

Socrates argues that the city is the soul writ large

• It is easier to see justice at the larger level than the smaller level 

Discussion 2/10

• Craftspeople → material desire / bronze

• Auxiliaries → desire honor / silver

• Guardians → truth / gold

  • Are philosophers

A just soul has the same hierarchy as the perfect city

Wave 1: Men and women have the same capacities in that they should carry out their best duties but as a whole women are weaker than men. It would be an injustice if a woman was not able to serve in their best role.

Wave 2: Only the auxiliaries have communal families but orgy parties are for all – only the best people can breed with each other

Wave 3: Philosophers should be the guardians

• Seeks only the most true form of justice

• Beautiful things vs. Beauty Itself

  • Rulers prefer beautiful things, philosophers beauty itself

• Keeps track of the big picture where normal rulers can get caught up in the small things

Lecture 5: 2/10 

• How to create kallipolis (the perfect city)

  • Community of women and children

  • Community of pleasure and pain

  • Noble Lie and the Myth of the Metals

  • Justice in the city and justice in the soul

The brother’s challenge and the city in speech

The final city in speech has three classes:

• Craftsmen: produce goods to meet new needs

• Auxiliaries: protect the city and meet war needs

• Guardians: protect city, but more so rule

The perfect city requires lots of social engineering and social institutions to create the perfect city:

• Censorship and propaganda

  • Music, poetry, religion, etc.

• Public surveillance

  • Of musicians, children, terror-inducing tests of fidelity

• Public health regime

  • Controlled diet, gymnastics, weeding off the weak (ex: letting the chronically ill die)

• Communism

  • Abolition of private property among certain classes, moderate wealth inequality

Socrates insists that two institutions, "if possible,” do “the greatest good” (457d)

• Community of women & children: no private couplings or private child-rearing

• Community of pleasure & pain: individuals share pleasures and pains of all

• Citizens should consider themselves as all part of the same community: call each other “citizens”

• Equal education of women based on relative sex equality - can also hold political offices because the capabilities are among both men and women

  • “If, then, we use the women for the same things as the men, they must also be taught the same things” (451e)

  • Might appear “ridiculous” (452a)

• Marriages are sacred but are meant to have men and women from the same class, but guardian men can fuck whoever they want

• Communal child raising

  • Consequence of political equality and education: women cannot be relegated to being a housewife as they are expected to do the same jobs as men

The Noble Lie

• The “noble lie” must be told to all citizens so they believe these institutions are the right institutions

• Makes the city appear natural (physis)

1. Citizens are told that they are all brothers and sisters of the earth to promote the rightfulness of communal life

2. The Myth of the Metals: each citizen is told their soul contains a particular metal for rightfulness of the class

   1. Gold - guardians

   2. Silver - auxiliary

   3. Bronze - craftsmen

Noble because it takes bravery and dedication to pull it off? Because it is upholding the idea of justice – specifically the idea that is is everyone in society holding up their roles (allows for realization of justice)

Is it persuasive?

• “None at all for these men themselves; however for their sons and their successors and the rest of human beings who come afterwards” (415d

• This would need to start with raising kids within the system and they would accept it because they know nothing else

• Get rid of the people who don’t agree in order to realize the just society

If the just city is founded, it will have four cardinal virtues

• Wisdom - guardians

  • Political knowledge, not practical or technical

• Courage - auxiliary

  • Political courage, not military or conviction, but preservation of the law

• Moderation - craftsmen

  • Political moderation, harmony of the whole, not the individual

• Justice

  • What’s left over: minding one’s own business/tending to your own duties

Injustice: meddling among the classes, and exchange with one another

Plato, Republic, Books 7 (through 520d), 9-10 (pgs. 193-199, 251-275, 287

[beginning at 603c]-303)

Focus on the allegory of the cave, rule by philosopher kings, tyrants, Myth of Er

16

Lecture 6: 2/12

• City soul analogy

• Tripartite division of the soul

• Rule by philosopher kings

• Philosophic rule vs tyrannical rule

• Why shouldn’t we be unjust

  • The party division of pleasures

  • The myth of Er

Justice and Injustice in the soul

• Socrates claims justice in the soul is analogous to justice in the city

  • The form of each virtue is the same, though it’s instantiation varies

  • Platonic forms are general, absolute truths about the world

    • Like the Pythagorean Theorem or mathematical truths

• If a just city is wise, courage, moderate, and just, then a just person is also wise, courageous, moderate, and just

  • Just people have a soul whose parts are well-ordered

Logos: Reason/speech → wisdom!

Thymos: Spiritedness → courage!

Epithymos: Desire → moderation!

**Justice is doing your duty

A well-ordered souls – the just person allows logos to rule over the desiring and spirited parts

Logos → thymos → epithymum

Philosophers (guardians) like logos in the individual, should rule

It will come to light that by nature, it is fitting for philosophers to both engage in philosophy and lead a city, and for the rest to not

• They have the ability to have knowledge of the Forms – they can distinguish truth from appearance

  • Various forms or ideas are intelligible but not visible

    • Universal truths even if you can’t actual see them, like Pythagorean Theorem

Book VII illustrates this with the cave allegory

• Explains how philosophers are enlighted and thus their legitimate claim to rule

Cave:

Prisoners in a cave shown only shadows →

Believe these shadows are reality →

Released prisoner would find sunlight painful and scorn it →

Escaped prisoner after adjusting and recognizing reality, would never want to return to the darkness of the cave

What if you had someone who saw the truth go back in the cave and preach the gospel?

• They would not want to listen and would likely try to hurt him. The guy who realizes would leave them there and not liberate

For philosophic rule to be just, philosophers cannot coerce others but must be coerced to rule

• This is an injustice to coerce them to rule -Glaucon

• Philosopher-kings use the art of “turning around souls” (like the prisoners being turned to the sun) from focusing on shadows and falsities toward absolute truths

  • Question/doubt their reality rather than coerce enlightenment

  • Every individual has sight, but not everyone focuses on the right things

When the eager ruler, they are likely to become tyrants

• They pursue and unnecessary pleasures and desires that are hostile to law

  • Believes that complete freedom (physis) is complete hostility to the law (nomos)

• Everyone is somewhat tyrannical

  • Tyrants emerge from democracies

    • Democracies over generations lack moderation

    • Pursues eros without restraint and ruins himself by spending money and effort on desires

So, why is Thrasymachus incorrect?

• The biggest and most extreme tyrant will be unhappy and insecure

  • Enslaved by desires and fear, therefore, not free

  • Surrounded by followers, not true friends

  • Intrinsically worse off and less happy

  • Life is full of fear, overflowing with convulsions and pains

→ proves this unhappiness back to tyranny at the city level

Gold → silver → bronze
Guardians → auxiliaries → craftsmen

Logos → thymos → epithymos

Truth (human being) → honor (lion) → money or gain (multi-headed beast)

Wisdom → courage → moderation

Wisdom loving is best

The most just are happier than the most unjust

• Tyrants may think they are happier, but like cave people from chains not yet in the light

• Mistake lower pleasures for the higher and best kind

  • This idea of the best, middle, and worst, and fluctuations between the worst and the middle and perceiving the middle as the best

• Philosophers know that all pleasures should be enjoyed in moderation

• Nomos/law helps properly order souls in accordance with physis/nature

Book X – gives an instrumental reason for people to be just

• Appeals to heaven because he already provide intrinsic value of justice

Myth of Er

• Er dies in battle, then reincarnated 12 days later

• Tells a story of the afterlife in which souls are judged for their behavior on earth and either taken to heaven or under the earth (hell)

• Unjust are punished 10x over for their crimes and thrown in Tartarus and skin stripped off

• After souls pay debts or reap benefits, they get to choose next lives and are reincarnated

• Only philosophers (or those who can distinguish between the good and bad life) choose well

Gods are always watching → they punish injustice and reward justice

Soul is immortal – so we have potential to be rewarded/punished over and over again

Notes from Book 3:

• The guardians should be told things which make them fear death the least as to be courageous - 386a

• Guardians are most of all self-sufficient and do have the least need of someone else to provide this – 387e

• “Take out the wailings of the renowned men and give them to women – and not the serious ones at that – and to all the bad men” 388a

  • Women are treated as second-class citizens consistently throughout the book. Later they are told they should be guardians alongside men (in the fashion that dogs hunt alongside their owners) because even though they are weaker than men (as a collective, sometimes not as an individual level) there are some women whose nature is best suited for guardianship and therefore must play that function in society.

• Guardians should not be lovers of laughter. -388e

  • The happiness of the guardians is disputed a few times throughout the book, but they should not be individually so happy but content with what they have as their contents provide for the abilities of the whole

• Guardians mustn’t imitate or do anything else to be perfect at their craft – 395c

  • But if they do imitate, it must be what’s appropriate to them from childhood – 395c

    • This leans in heavily on the state-governed media and censorship ideas which is “we must control what we teach as to raise a just society”

• Lies are useless to gods and useful to human beings as as form of remedy - 389b

  • It only should be put to use by doctors and rulers. 

  • “It’s appropriate for the rulers to lie for the benefit of the city in cases involving enemies or citizens” – 389c

  • If anyone is caught lying in the city, the ruler will punish him for being subversive and destructive to the health of the city – 389d

• “Isn’t everything that’s said by tellers of tales or poets a narrative of what has come to pass, what is, or what is going to be?” – 392c 

Allegory of the cave image

• Can only see the forms because of the sun, can only see the shadows because of the fire

• The cave is nomos while the outside of the cave is physis

  • The outside of the cave lets you see the perfect justice: the perfect form of it (the metaphysical idea)

  • The cave is what allows you to see conventional justice

• The good exists whether or not we are there

• You can transcend the conventional by philosophic education and only then can see both sides of it

• Say philosophical education in essay

• Willing to die for physis if you have reached enlightenment

**Can draw any argument from this cave