The Republic
These notes are old and were written while reading — they don’t necessarily reflect my current views.
Summary
Sokrates is chilling in the harbour when he starts a fight with an old man, he asks him how it’s like being so old. The man says its fine because I don’t have any debts to be paid, no unfinished business so I’m all good. Sokrates then says: Ok so now you defined justice as given back what you took, which is wrong because you should not e.g. give back a dagger to an aggressive person. (That’s a shit argument but whatever)Then other people try to define justice: as the right of more powerful (sophist perspective) Again Sokrates makes some bullshit up about why that’s wrong. So someone asks Sokrates to tell everyone what justice is, if he is so smart. Sokrates believes justice to be isomorphic on the state and the individual level. Therefore, Sokrates begins to tell the story of the perfect society: The republic.
This republic is just a city with devision of labor in the beginning, but people want more and more stuff so the city has to invade other cities for land. (By the way he doesn’t tell us if he thinks war is good or bad) But now in our devision of labor we need warriors. These are dangerous because they could just take the stuff from the others. Therefore, we need education (brainwashing, meaning education with strong censorship) so that they just steal from people outside the city. Additionally, in the perfect society we need to lie about people and tell them that they were born from the ground, we should establish a cast-system und apply eugenics in order to enforce it. One should abolish the family and replace it with communism. This includes abolishing private homes, private space, possessions, private rights and private reproduction. Everything will be done in the commune. There is no meaning in life, we strive for a “good” life which is the only one that counts. An interesting thought that was brought up in the lecture on Plato’s republic was that the social contract theory doesn’t see justice as an inherently good. Under social contract theory we want freedom, but we also want peace from others. Therefore, we compromise on a justice system that gives us a balance between freedom and peace by taking some of both. That’s an interesting thought knowing that social contract theory is the foundation of the modern western state. He then says that we should kill everyone over the age of 10, so that no one knows the old system. The fucking marriage number. Thanos joined the chat. Now the question is, does he want to show us the perfect city or does he want to show us the worst possible city. Chances are it’s the latter. The marriage number fails in his description and it seems like a pretty absurd proposal in general. He is just trolling the others with his answer. But this also means that he has no answer. Asked why its better being just then unjust, he says justice is the most human part of us.
Government
Timocracy: Conflicted between power and excellence. It’s moderation. The best of the worst regimes. It leads to Oligarchy, where the oligarch tries to accumulate wealth. This leads to democracy where the people rebel against the oligarch; this then leads to tyranny where the tyrant rises through the inevitable populism in democracy. This is the worst of all forms. Aristocracy should be advised.
Other core concepts
Eros is a main concept in Plato’s philosophy, he seems to believe, that only a man with eros can be a philosopher (or a tyrant).
Plato also includes his theory of forms, in which the essence of a thing preceds it’s existence. Its superior in ontology and epistimology.
Plato argues against democracy by saying that it‘s a competition of how to get elected instead of focusing on the real issues. The people most willing to be in government should least be in government. Also the many are fundamentally bad. They are too focused on particulars.
- The divided line
Then there is Sokrates hatred of art, because it’s an adaptation of reality and reality is the most good.