Plato's Republic: Democracy Is One Demagogue Away from Tyranny
Plato held that democracy contains within itself the passage to tyranny, and that it is only a matter of time before an ambitious man exploits it; and that justice is not external behaviour but an order within the soul.
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Justice is just the interest of the stronger
Thrasymachus throws down the challenge at the very start of the book: whether the city-state is a monarchy, an oligarchy or a democracy, those who hold power are the strong; they legislate in their own interest, then force the ruled to obey, and call that obedience justice. So the ruled, in obeying the law, are merely serving the interest of the stronger — a fool who has been duped. He pushes the discussion further, from politics into the private sphere: injustice is serving one's own interest as effectively and ruthlessly as possible, and justice is a fool's game. Socrates will need all ten books to answer this challenge.
— Angie HobbsThrasymachus conceives of the good life too narrowly
The fulcrum Socrates can use to lever open this debate lies in how narrow Thrasymachus's understanding of ‘flourishing’ is: he equates living well with having power over others, possessing great material wealth and good things. Socrates cuts in here, pointing out that this is a narrow conception of the ‘good life’. The debate is then restated as: whether a just person always lives better, no matter how successful the unjust person is in the world; and whether justice itself is good.
— Angie HobbsLook first at the city writ large, then at the soul writ small
Socrates proposes a direct analogy between justice in the city and justice in the individual: if one can call a city just, one can likewise call a person just, and both are talking about the same thing. So he suggests looking first at justice in the city ‘writ large’, then inferring from it to justice in the individual ‘writ small’. But McCabe reminds us that what the book really sets out to answer is individual justice, and that the whole picture of political justice in the city is always in service of that analogy; others hold that political justice itself is the focus of the discussion — this is a divergence in interpretation.
— M.M. McCabeThe guardians are designed to own nothing
The ideal city is ruled by philosophers, whose legitimacy comes from their grasp of knowledge about true reality, namely the ‘Forms’. But to ensure they are not corrupted, Plato designs an extreme arrangement of life: the rulers and auxiliaries form the guardian class, living in communal camps, permitted no property at all, not even allowed to touch gold or silver, with no nuclear family, women and children held in common, and infants taken from their guardian mothers at birth so that no one knows who their blood relatives are. Their food, clothing and shelter are provided by the producer class, which has no power at all but does have property and families. Plato thereby separates power from wealth completely, to eliminate the opportunities for corruption, nepotism and distraction.
— Angie HobbsThe prisoners recognise neither the shadows nor the chains
In the cave allegory, the prisoners are bound by the neck and feet and can only look forward; a fire behind them casts the shadows of objects onto the cave wall, and those shadows are their entire world. James Warren points out that there are two failures here: the prisoners neither recognise that the shadows are only shadows, nor realise that they are prisoners, bound. This is precisely where Plato criticises democracy — democrats proclaim freedom as the slogan of the state, but these people are in fact bound by their own cognitive deficiencies. And the one who leaves the cave and has seen the sun and the stars is the only one who can recognise the shadows, because he has seen the originals.
— James WarrenDemocracy slides into tyranny once a demagogue exploits it
The cave allegory paves the way for the theory of constitutional decline in Books VIII and IX: the ideal city first degenerates into a constitution that prizes honour and ambition, then into an oligarchy that prizes money, then into democracy, and finally slides into tyranny. Angie Hobbs considers this one of the strongest parts of the book — Plato gives a brilliant account of how democracy is exploited by an unscrupulous demagogue and turned into tyranny. The image of the cave lets one see how fragile democracy is, and how impoverished our supposed freedom and knowledge are.
— Angie HobbsArt is placed three levels away from reality
The cave allegory also leads to Plato's criticism of art. In the early education of the philosopher-rulers, poetry has already been strictly censored, with anything deemed to misrepresent the gods or encourage moral vice cut out. By Book X, almost all art is censored: Socrates says art originates in, appeals to and nourishes the dangerous irrational part of the soul, and that what art deals with is three levels away from reality — the artist merely reproduces the appearance of objects in the world of phenomena, while the world of phenomena itself is at best a reproduction of the perfect Forms. So the artist gives us shadows rather than reality, and does not know what he is talking about.
— Angie HobbsHe asked the right questions; his answers were too extreme
Angie Hobbs disagrees with the claim that ‘Plato failed’: he asked the right questions, but his answers were often too extreme, and became a source for later far-left and far-right totalitarian thinking. She gives the example that taking infants from their mothers at birth is repellent, but the question itself — ‘if women are to hold high office in the state, to rule, to serve in the army, how should we arrange family life to make this possible’ — is entirely correct, and we are still struggling with it today. So he did not fail; it is just that many of his solutions were too extreme.
— Angie HobbsIn their own words · checked verbatim
this justice, it is simply the interest of the stronger.
Angie Hobbs7:31
injustice is, in fact, simply serving your own interests as effectively and as ruthlessly as you can.
Angie Hobbs9:37
they don't recognize that they're prisoners
James Warren29:33
plato has written a dialogue which later generations called the republic … which would i think be banned … from the ideally just state that it describes
M.M. McCabe35:46
the philosophy shouts to the person who gets to work on it rather than giving us these theories to wave around.
M.M. McCabe46:12
we don't just need sort of ratiocinative activity and appetitive activity. We need to feel that we can't, and we matter in the world.
Angie Hobbs50:20
Figures
| Date of composition of the Republic | c. 380 BC | 2:03 |
| Dramatic date of the dialogue | c. 430 BC | 3:04 |
| Year of the Athenian oligarchic coup | c. 404 BC | 4:09 |
| Year of Socrates' execution | 399 BC | 5:30 |
| Age at which philosophers begin to rule | about 50 | 23:23 |
| Multiple by which the just man is happier than the unjust | 729 times | 47:15 |
Glossary
- Thrasymachus
- The Sophist teacher in Book I of the Republic who puts forward the claim that ‘justice is the interest of the stronger’.
- the Forms
- The perfect, intelligible realities that, for Plato, sensible things imitate.
- the cave
- The allegory in Book VII of the Republic: prisoners can see only shadows on the cave wall and mistake them for reality.
- the ring of Gyges
- The ring in Book II of the Republic that makes its wearer invisible, used to ask whether everyone would be unjust if they could escape punishment.
- tripartite soul
- Plato's division of the soul into three parts: reason, spirit (thumos) and appetite.
- demagogue
- A politician who gains power by inflaming the emotions of the crowd; Plato held that democracy would be exploited by such a man and slide into tyranny.
How to listen
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