Plato's Republic: Not All Bad.
I'm beginning to like Plato—hear me out!
Posts this week are going to consist of quotes; between my four-course term, extracurricular commitments, research, travel, job applications, wanton mismanagement of my time, etc., &c.1 I don’t have time for protracted diatribes.
Anyway, I’ve really been liking Plato. I mean, really liking Plato. I mean, liking-Plato-so-much-that-my-metaphysics-are-changing degree of affinity to Plato and his arguments. I’ve found the foundations and case for Plato’s Theory of the Forms most persuasive in Apology, Meno, and Phaedo.
Now my class has moved on to Republic. Predictably, I am not fan of Plato’s epistocratic, classist, tyrannical conception of the ideal state. That much admitted, there is much to be said for the rest of Republic. To that end, I would like to say a bit about Plato’s tripartite formulation of the soul comprising the rational, the spirited (the most interesting of the three, in my view), and the appetitive (read: affective/corporeal). Well, I’ll let Plato speak for himself:
Soc: [G]rief prevents the very thing we most need in such circumstances from coming into play as quickly as possible
Glaucon: What are you referring to?
Soc: Deliberation. We must accept what has happened as we would the fall of the dice, and then arrange our affairs in whatever way reason determines to be best. We mustn’t hug the hurt part and spend our time weeping and wailing like children when they trip. Instead, we should always accustom our souls to turn as quickly as possible to healing the disease and putting the disaster right, replacing lamentation with cure.
Glaucon: That would be the best way to deal with misfortune, at any rate.
Soc: Accordingly, we say that it is the best part of us that is willing to follow this rational calculation.
Glaucon: Clearly.
Soc: Then won’t we also say that the part that leads us to dwell on our misfortunes and to lamentation, and that can never get enough of these things, is irrational, idle, and a friend of cowardice?
Glaucon: We certainly will.2
We certainly will, Plato. Thanks for the advice from two-and-a-half millennia hence.
That’s right. I used two abbreviations of “et cetera” next to each other.
Plato, Republic X, 604d-e. Edited by Cooper and Hutchinson.