F. M. Cornford
Preface to
Plato’s Republic
αποσπάσματα από την εισαγωγή
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ
Academy
The Academy
was, for the remaining half of his long life, the centre of Plato’s interest
and his means of indirectly influencing the course of politics. It was
primarily a school of philosophfc statesmen, wdiich was to attract from foreign
states young men whose position and prospects w^cre more fortunate than those
of Plato’s own youth, and to train them for the exercise of the Royal Art. Some
of its features were modelled on the Pythagorean communfties, which had been
dispersed in the second half of the previous century, but had found a
rallyingpoint at Tarentum. This city presided over a confederacy of Greek
colonies in South Italy, and was itself under the personal ascendancy of the
Pytliagorean Archytas, who, being also a notable mathematician, was a
successful example of the philosophic ruler in a moderate democracy.
The Republic (600 a, p. 323) mentions
Pythagoras as having surrounded himself with a band of intimate disciples, who
loved him for the inspiration of his society and handed down a ‘way of life’
distinguishing them from the rest of the world.
If Plato
could never hope to rule Athens, he could aspire, as president of the first
university, to animate with his ideals the future rulers of other states. At
the same time he would continue to write Socratic dialogues, setting forth his
own development of the Socratic philosophy in a form which would reach the
educated public throughout the Greek world and attract pupils to the Academy.
The School
owed its name to the grove of a hero Academus (or Hecademus) in the garden
where it was built. The legal ownership was probably vested in the School as a
corporate cult-society, prcsided over by the Muses and their leader Apollo, witb
had their altar and regular offerings. The students must have contributed to
the cost of maintenance.
A wider
circle was admitted to Plato’s lectures; but in the actual teaching the conventional
method of Socrates was, so far as possible, perpetuated. Some already accredited
teachers, like Eudoxus. of Cnidos, joined the society. Aristotle came at the
age of seventeen and remained till Plato’s death twenty years later.
Among the
chief dialogues which may, with some probability, be assigned the two decades
following the foundation of the Academy are the “Meno”, “Phaedo”, “Symposium”, “Republic”, “Phaedrus”. These
works reveal clearly, for the first time, the characteristically Platonic
philosophy, whose twin pillars are the belief a world of intelligible Forms or ‘Ideas’
existing independently of the things we see and touch, and the belief in an
immortal soul existing in separation from the body, both before birth and after
death. It is the philosophy of a spirit which turns away from this mortal
region to set its hopes on things beyond the reach of time and change.
Within the Republic itself, the more completely
Plato discloses all that is meant by the pursuit of wisdom, the farther recedes
the prospect that the evils of human life will ever be cured by the enthronement
of reason in any possible form of society.
There is no
facile optimism in the programme here laid down for the philosophic statesmen
to be trained at the Academy, no compromise between existing conditions and
those enduring and unquestionable principles on which reform must be based, if
reform is to produce a stable and harmonious order. And when the outline of the
perfect society has been traced, the doubt is confessed, whether the perfectibn
of any human institutions can withstand the disintegrating touch of time. The
Muses themselves pronounce the doom of the ideal state before it has even seen
the light: ‘Hard as it may be for a state so framed to be shaken, yet, since
all that comes into being must decay, even a fabric like this will not endure
for ever, but will suffer dissolution’. (546 a, p. 262).
These words
preface an account of the decline of society and of the individual soul, as if
it were written in man’s fate that every attempt to scale the heavens should be
followed by a descent into hell.
The lowest
depth to which the state can fall is despotism; and in the soul of the despotic
man, whom the Greeks called ‘tyrant’, the three most powerful motives,
ambition, fear, and greed, have finally triumphed over reason and humanity. The
startling resemblance between the portrait of this character in chapter xxxii
and some of the present rulers of mankind warns us that Thrasymachus’ doctrine,
professing as it does to lay bare the real truth about human nature in
politics, is still very much alive.
Socrates’
arguments with Thrasymachus in the first Part may strike the reader as
scholastic and abstract in form and too remote from our modern habits of
thought. They are, no doubt, of a kind that Socrates would use in dealing with
the professionally clever disputants known as Sophists. His two young friends
refuse to accept them as conclusive.
At the
beginning of Part II they reopen Thrasymachus’ case with an earnestness which
calls for a more profound analysis and defence of justice. The reply fills the
remainder of the Republic. It rests
ultimately on the conviction that materialistic egoism misconceives that good
‘which every soul pursues as the end of all her actions, dimly divining its
existence, but perplexed and unable to grasp its nature with the same clearness
and assurance as in dealing with other things, and so missing whatever value
those other things might have’ (505 e , p. 21 1). To possess this good would be
happiness; to know it would be wisdom; to seek the knowledge of it is what
Plato means by philosophy.
If it is true
that this knowledge can be gained only by highly gifted natures after a long course
of intellectual discipline and practical experience, then it is hard to deny
the central paradox of the Republic,
that he human race will never see the end of troubles until political power is
entrusted to the lover of wisdom; who has learnt what makes life worth living
and who will ‘despise all existing honours as mean and worthless, caring only
for the right and the honours to be gained from that, and above all for justice
as the one indispensable thing in whose service and maintenance he will
reorganize his own state’ (540 d).
In such terms
the author of the earliest Utopia in European literature confronts the modern
reader with the ultimate problem of politics:
How can the
state be so ordered as to place effective control in the hands of men who
understand that you cannot make either an individual or a society happy by
making them richer or more powerful than their neighbours ?
So long as
knowledge is valued as the means to power, and power as the means to wealth,
the helm of the ship will be grasped by the ambitious man, whose Bible is
Machiavelli’s Prince or by the man of
business, whose Bible is his profit and loss account.
Every reader
will find something to disagree with in Plato’s solution, even when transposed
into terms appropriate to modem conditions; but if he will seriously ask
himself why he disagree and what alternative he can propose, the effort will
help him to clear his own mind. Plato’s purpose will then be achieved, at least
in part; for he never forgot the lesson of Socrates, that wisdom begins when a
man finds out that he does not know what he thinks he knows.
Book
I
SOME
CURRENT VIEWS OF JUSTICE
The main
question to be answered in the Republic
is: What does Justice mean, and how can it be realized in human society? The
Greek word for ‘just’ has as many senses as the English ‘right’. It can mean:
observant of custom or of duty, righteous; fair, honest; legally right, lawful;
w'hat issue to or from a person, deserts, rights; what one ought to do. Thus it
covers the whole field of the individual’s conduct in so far as it affects
others — all that they have a ‘right’ to expect from him or he has a right to expect
from them, whatever is right as opposed to wrong. A proverbial saying declared
that justice is the sum of all virtues.
The demand for
a definition of Justice seems to imply that there is some conception in which
all these applications of the word meet like lines converging to a common
centre; or, in more concrete terms, that there is some principle whereby human
life might be so organized that there would exist a just society composed of
just men. The justice of the society would secure that each member of it should
perform his duties and enjoy his rights. As a quality residing in each
individual, justice would mean that his personal life — or as a Greek would
say, his soul — was correspondingly ordered with respect to the rights and
duties of each part of his nature.
A society so
composed and organized would be ideal, in the sense that it would offer a
standard of perfection by which all existing societies might be measured and
appraised according to the degrees in which they fell short of it. Any proposed
reform, moreover, might be judged by its tendency to bring us nearer to, or
farther from, this goal.
The Republic is the first systematic attempt
ever made to describe this ideal, not as a baseless dream, but as a possible
framework within which man’s nature, with its unalterable claims, might find
well-being and happiness. Without some such goal in view, statecratt must be
either blind and aimless or directed (as it commonly is) to false and worthless
ends.
If a man of
sceptical and inquiring mind were to ask, in any mixed company of inlelligent
people, for a definition of ‘right’ or ‘justice’, the answers produced would be
likely to be superficial and to cover only some part of the field. They might
also reveal fundamental differences of conviction about what Socrates calls the
most important of all questions: how we ought to live.
In the first
Part of the Republic Socrates opens
up the whole range of inquiry by eliciting some typical views of the nature of
justice and criticizing them as either inadequate or false. The criticism
naturally reveals some glimpses of the principles which will guide the
construction that is to follow.
CHAPTER I (I. j 27 - 33 i d)
CEPHALUS: JUSTICE AS HONESTY IN WORD AND DEED
Κέφαλος (ασπηδοπηγός): δικαιοσύνη είναι η εντιμότητα στις συναλλαγές
The whole
imaginary conversation is narrated by Socrates to an unspecified audience. The
company who will take part in it assemble at the house of Cephalus a retired
manufacturer living at the Piraeus the harbour town about five miles from Athens.
It includes, besides
Plato's elder brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus, Cephalus' sons Polemarchus,
Lysias, well known as a writer of speeches, and Euthydemus; Thrasymachus of Chalcedon a noted teacher of
rhetoric, who may have formulated the definition of justice as “the interest of
the stronger”, though hardly any evidence about his opinions exists outside the
Republic; and a number of Socrates' young friends.
The occasion
is the festival of Bendis, a goddess whose cult had been imported from Thrace.
Cephalus embodies the wisdom of a long life honourably spent in business. He is
well-to-do, but values money as a means to that peace of mind which comes of
honesty and the ability to render to gods and men their due. This is what he
understands by “right” conduct or justice.
CHAPTER II (I. 334e-336a)
POLEMARCHUS: JUSTICE as HELPING FRIENDS and HARMING ENEMIES
Πολέμαρχος: δικαιοσύνη ειναι: ωφελείν φίλους και βλάπτειν εχθρούς
Criticism now
begins. No doubt it is generally right or just to tell the truth and pay one's
debts; but no list of external actions such us these can tell us what is meant by
justice, the name of the quality they have in common. Also what is superficially
the same action, e.g. repayment of a loan, may completely change its character
when we take into account the antecedents and consequences which form its wider
context.
Polemarchus
can only meet this objection by citing a maxim borrowed from a famous poet. In
Greece, where there was sacred book like the Bible, the poets were regarded as
inspired authorities on religion and morals; but Socrates, when he questioned
them, found them unable to give any rational account of their teaching
(Apology, 22 b).
Polemarchus,
too, has never thought out the implications of defining justice as ‘giving every man his due’. What is it
that is due, and to whom?
Socrates’
first object is to bring home to Polemarchus the vagueness of his ideas by
leading him on to an absurd conclusion. In approaching a very large and obscure
question, the first step is to conduce one who thinks he can answer it with a
compact formula that he knows much less than he imagines and cannot even
understand his own formula.
Plato often,
as here, compares the practice of morality to the useful (not the fine) arts or
crafts: medicine, navigation, shoe-making. He even speaks of an ‘art of justice’. He adopted Socrates’
belief that there should be an art of living, analogous to the craftsman’s
knowledge and consequent ability to achieve a purposed end.
A builder,
building a house, knows what he is setting out to do and how to do it; he can
account for all his actions as contributing to his end. This knowledge and
ability constitute the craft embodied in the builder and his special excellence
or ‘virtue’ (arete:αρετή),
qua builder. Similarly a man can live well only if he knows clearly what is the
end of life, what things are of real value, and how they are to be attained.
This knowledge is the moral virtue of man, qua man, and constitutes the art of
living.
If a man
imagines that the end of life is to gain wealth or power, which are valueless
in themselves, all his actions will be misdirected. This doctrine is
fundamental in the Republic. It leads
to the central thesis that society must be ruled by men who have learnt, by
long and severe training, not only the true end of human life, but the meaning
of goodness in all its forms.
CHAPTER III (I. 336b-347e)
THRASYMACHUS: JUSTICE AS THE INTEREST OF THE STRONGER
Socrates has opposed
to the popular conception of justice one of his own deepest convictions,
Polemarchus’ ready acceptance of this provokes a violent protest from
Thrasymachus, who represents the doctrine that ‘might is right’ in an extreme form. He holds that justice or right
is nothing hut the name given by the men actually holding power in any state to
any actions they enjoin by law upon their subjects; and that all their laws are
framed to promote their own personal or class interests, ‘Just’ accordingly means what is for the interest of
the stronger, ruling party. Right and wrong have no other meaning at all.
This is not a
theory of social contract: it is not suggested that the subject has ever made a
bargain with the ruler, sacrificing some of his liberty to gain the benefits of
a social order. The ruler imposes his ‘rights’ by sheer force. The perfect
example of such a rule is the despot (the Greek ‘tyrant’), whose position
Thrasymachus regards as supremely enviable. He is precisely the man who has the
will and the power to ‘do good to himself and his friends and to harm his enemies’.
The
discussion begins by clearing up the ambiguities of Thrasymachus’ formula, The
word translated ‘stronger’ commonly means also ‘superior’ or ‘better’; but ‘better’
has no moral sense for Thrasymachus, who does not recognise the existence of
morality. The superiority of the stronger lies in the skill and determination
which enable them to seize and hold power, ‘Interest’, again, means the
personal satisfaction and aggrandizement of the ruling individuals.
CHAPTER IV (I. 347 e-364c)
TIIRASYMACHUS: IS INJUSTICE MORE PROFITABLE THAN
JUSTICE?
Socrates now
turns from the art of government to Thrasymachus' whole view of life: that
injustice, unlimited self-seeking, pursued with enough force of character and
skill to ensure success, brings welfare and happiness. This is what he
ultimately means by the interest of the stronger.
Socrates and
Thrasymachus have a common ground for argument in that both accept the notion
of an art of living, comparable to the
special crafts in which trained intelligence creates some product. The
goodness. excellence or virtue of a workman lies in his efficiency, the Greek ‘arete:αρετή’,
a word which, with the corresponding adjective agathos(αγαθός),
‘good’ never lost its wide application to whatever does its work or fulfils its
function well as a good knife is one that cuts efficiently. The workman’s
efficiency involves trained intelligence or skill an old sense of the word sophia
(σοφία),
which also means wisdom. None of these words necessarily bears any moral sense;
but they can be applied to the art of living. Here the product to be aimed at
is assumed to be a man's own happiness and well-being.
The
efficiency which makes him good at attaining this end is called ‘virtue’; the
implied knowledge of the end and of the means to it is like the craftsman’s
skill and may he called ‘wisdom’. But as it sounds in English almost a
contradiction to say that to be unjust is to be virtuous or good and wise, the
comparatively colourless phrase ‘superior in character and intelligence’ will
be used instead.
Where
Socrates and Thrasymachus differ is in their views of the feature of happiness
or well-being. Thrasymachus thinks it consists in getting more than your fair
share of what are commonly called the good things of life, pleasure, wealth,
power. Thus virtue and wisdom mean to him efficiency and skill in achieving
injustice.
PART II (Books Il-IV, 445 b)
JUSTICE IN THE STATE AND IN THE INDIVIDUAL
CHAPTER V (fr. 357 a-367 e)
THE PROBLEM STATED
The question,
what justice or Right ultimately means, being still unanswered, the conversation so far amounts to a
preliminary survey of the ground to be covered in the rest of the Republic. Plato does not pretend that an
immoralist like Thrasymachus could be silenced by summary arguments which seem
formal and unconvincing until the whole view of life that lies behind them has
been disclosed.
The case
which Socrates has to meet is reopened by Glaucon and Adeimantus, young men
with a generous belief that justice has a valid meaning, but puzzled by the
doctrine, current in intellectual circles, that it is a mere matter of social convention,
imposed from without, and is practised
as an unwelcome necessity. They demand a proof that justice is not merely
useful as bringing external rewards, but intrinsically good as an inward state
of the soul even though the just man be persecuted rotifer than rewarded. In
dealing with inquirers like these, who really wish to discover the truth,
Socrates drops his role of ironical critic and becomes constructive.
Glaucon opens
with one of the earliest statements of the Social Contract theory. The essence
of this is that all the customary rules of religion and moral conduct imposed
on the individual by social sanctions have their origin in human intelligence
and will and always rest on tacit consent. They are neither laws of nature nor
divine enactments, but conventions which man who made them can alter, as laws
are changed or repealed by legislative bodies. It is assumed that, if all these
artificial restraints were removed, the natural man would be left only with
purely egoistic instincts and desires, which he would indulge in all that
Thrasymathus commended as injustice.
Adeimantus
supplements Glaucon’s case by an attack on current moral education and some
forms of mystery religion, as tacitly encouraging immorality by valuing justice
only for the rewards it brings. Since these can be gained in this life by seeming
just without being so, and after death by buying the favour of heaven, the
young conclude that the ideal is injustice masked by a good reputation and
atoned for by bribery.
Both speakers
accordingly demand that external rewards shall he ruled out of account and
justice proved to he worth having for its own sake. The prospect of rewards and
punishments after death is reserved for the myth at the end of the dialogue.
CHAPTER VI (II. 367e-372a)
THE RUDIMENTS OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
Socrates has
been challenged to define justice and its effects in the individual soul. Since
the life of a political society manifests the life of the men composing it on a
larger scale, he proposes to look first for the principle which makes a state
just and then to see if the same principle has similar effects in a man. So he
starts to build up a social structure from its necessary rudiments.
Plato is not
here describing the historical development of any actual state. (In Laws III he says that civilization has
often been destroyed by natural cataclysms. and he traces its growth from a
simple pastoral phase on lines quite unlike those followed here.)
He takes the
type of state in which he Iived, the Greek city-state. The construction is
based on an analysis of such a society into parts corresponding to fundamental
needs of human nature. These parts are put together successively in a logical,
not an historical, order.
As against
the social contract theory, Plato denies
that society is ‘unnatural’, either as being the artificial outcome of an
arbitrary compact or as thwarting the individual’s natural instincts which
Thrasymachus assumed to be purely egoistic impulses to unlimited
self-assertion.
Men are not
born self-sufficient or all alike; hence an organized society in which they are
interdependent and specialize according to innate aptitudes is, according to Plato,
both natural and advantageous to all the individuals.
In this
chapter society is considered merely as an economic structure providing for the
lowest of needs, a healthy animal existence. This aspect is isolated by
abstraction from the higher elements of civilization and culture that will soon
be added. The purpose is to establish the principle of specialization or
division of labour as dictated by Nature. This will turn out to be the form
that justice takes on this lowest economic level.
Nothing is
said here about slaves, perhaps because they would first appear in the
luxurious state of the next chapter. In any case the slaves (who at Athens made
up more than a third of the population) were not citizens and so formed no part
of the state. The institution was uviversally recognized and Plato seems to
assume that it will continue (for instance at 469 c).
CHAPTER VII (II. 372 a-374e)
THE LUXURIOUS STATE
The answer to
Socrates’ last question — that justice on the level of economic relations lies
in the principle of the division of labour according to natural aptitudes —
will be given (433 a) only when other aspects of justice have enterged.
Here follows a picture of life in a society in which only physical needs are
satisfied. It is partly a satire on sentimental nostalgia for a supposed
primitive state of nature. to which, had it ever existed, there could, as Plato
saw, be no return. (A picture of primitive patriarchal society after the Deluge
is given in Laws III. 678 ff.)
But the
economic organization of the last chapter [which included manufacture for
export and oveseas trade] was not a self-contained primitive society; it was
only the lowest storey in the structure of a civilized state. To the
necessaries of existence there provided are now added the refinements of civilization
and culture. These satisfy higher needs, but have also entailed unhealthy
elements of luxury. Hence, in contrast with the idyllic picture of the simple life,
society as now existing appears morbidly ‘inflamed’, needing to be purged until
only the features of genuine culture remain. The further construction of the
ideal state can thus be treated as a reformation of Athenian society in Plato's
own day, ‘purging our commonwealth of luxurious excess’ (399 e).
His problem
is not to build a Utopia in the air, but to discover the least changes which
would radically cure the distempers of Athens.
From this
standpoint it is clear why he does not contemplate the abolition of war, which could cease only if all states were
united in a world-state or if every state were reformed on Photo's principles.
Neither of these issues is considered even as a possibility.
He describes
a single city-state, surrounded by others which are unreformed and by an outer world
of non-hellenic nations. The state will need to be defended by specialists in
the art of war. So we hear, on the first time, of a distinct order of
Guardians.
CHAPTER XVI (V. 457b-466d)
ABOLITION OF THE FAMILY FOR THE GUARDIANS
The principle
‘Friends have all things in common’ is now applied by abolishing private homes
and families for the Cuardians (only), so that they may form a single family.
The chief
aims are: ( l ) to breed and rear children of the highest type by the eugenic
methods used in breeding domestic animals; (2) to free the Cuardians from the
temptation to prefer family interests to those of the whole community; (3) to
ensure the greatest possible unity in the state.
There must be
no private property in women and children. It is in this negative sense that wives
and children are to be held in common; anything like promiscuity would defeat
the eugenic purpose even more than it is now defeated where individuals are
allowed free choice of partners.
Hence sexual intercourse is to be more strictly controlled and limited by the Rulers than it has ever been in civilized society. This throws on the Rulers an invidius task. They will be protected from the imputation of favouritism or personal spite by making it appear that the choice of partners is made by drawing lots, which they will in fact secretly manipulate.
[οι τεχνητές κληρώσεις για τις ερωτικές διασταυρώσεις των φυλάκων σε συγκεκριμένα χρονικά διαστήματα και υπό το πρόσχημα θρησκευτικών εορτών. Τις τεχνητές κληρώσεις επιλογής των ερωτικών ζευγών τις ελέγχουν οι «παντελείς». Οι απλοί φύλακες δεν έχουν επίγνωση ότι η κλήρωση ήταν «φτιαχτή» και ότι ο πρωτεύσας φύλακας στον πόλεμο θα διασταυρωνόταν αντίστοιχα με την πρωτεύσασα στη μάχη, κ.ο.κ..]
Plato does not seem to have
thought out very clearly the details of his marriage regulations. Some obscure
points will be dealt with in notes.
Note 1:
The inferior children
of Guardians were to 'thrust out among the craftsmen and farmers' (415 c), and
this is repeated at Timaeus (19A). A breeder of race-horses would keep (a
common meaning of τρέφειν)
the best foals, but not kill the rest.
CHAPTER XXIII (VI. 502 c-509 c)
THE GOOD AS THE HIGHEST OBJECT OF KN\OWLEDGE
{ Tο «αγαθόν» ως το ύψιστο αντικείμενο
της Γνώσης }
Granted that a
Philosopher-King might possibly he produced, how is he to be trained? The rest
of this Part asserts the higher education in mathematics and moral philosophy
which the prospective Rulers, after the
elementary education of Chapter IX and two or three years of intensive physical
training, will receive from the age of twenty to thirty-five (537 b). The account
may also be taken as a sort of ideal programme of studies at the Academy.
Plato first
defines the ultimate goal, the knowledge of the Good (τη γνώση του «αγαθού»).
For the saviour of society the one thing needful is a certain and immediate
knowledge of values, the ends which all life, private or public, should realize.
Both Plato
(Charmides 173), (Euthydemus 288 D), and Aristotle (Ethics I) picture social
life as a domain in which all forms of ‘art’ or specialized skill have their
several fields, each with its peculiar end: medicine producing health, the art
of war victory, business wealth, and so on. Above them is the Royal Art, or Art of Statesmanship
(‘Politics’), which sees these special ends as means to, or elements in,
the ultimate end or perfection («τέλος»)
of life, human well-being or happiness («ευδαιμονία»),
‘the Good for Man’.
All effort
will be perverted and falsely orientated if this end is misconceived — if a
statesman, e.g. believes that his nation should aim at imperial domination or
unlimited wealth or if an individual imagines that wealth or power or pleasure
will suffice to make him happy. It is of this 'Human Good' that Plato first speaks,
as the most important object of knowledge. Plato rejects the popular belief
that it is pleasure («ηδονή»).
The more
refined view, that it is "knowledge'' (insight, wisdom) [ότι το
«αγαθόν»
είναι γνώση]
may be attributed to the Socrates pictured in Plato's early dialogues. He held
that man's happiness consists in the full realization of his characteristic virtue
and function [Chap. IV], and that his virtue, as a rational being, is a clear insight into the true end of life, 'knowledge of the Good' (γνώση του «αγαθού»).
Such knowledge, once attained, cannot fail to determine will and action.
But in the latter
part of this chapter (506 B) 'the Good' (το αγαθόν)
receives the much wider meaning it bears in Plato's own theory of Forms ('Ideas').
In Greek
"the Good' is normally synonymmous with "Goodness itself'. This is
the supreme Form or Essence manifested not only in the
special kinds of mοral
goodness, Justice, Courage, etc, but throughout all Nature (for every living
creature has its own 'good') and especially in the beautiful and harmonious
order of the heavenly bodies (502 B).
The knowledge
of the Good, on which well-being depends, [η γνώση του «αγαθού»
πάνω στην οποία στηρίζεται η «ευδαιμονία»],
is now to include an understanding of the moral and physical order of the whole
universe. As the object of a purpose attributed to a divine Reason operating in
the world, this supreme Good (αυτό το υπέρτατο αγαθό),
makes the world intelligible, as a work of human craftsmanship becomes
intelligible when we see the purpose it is designed to serve.
As thus
illuminating and accounting for the rational aspect of the universe, the Good is analogous to the Sun, which, as the source of light, is
the cause of vision and of visibility, and also of all mortal existence.
Socrates
refuses to define this supreme Good. The apprehension of it is rather to be
thought of as a revelation which can only follow upon a long intellectual
training (540 a).
Neither
Glaucon nor the readers of the Republic
have been so prepared. Also Plato would never commit his deepest thoughts to
writing (Epistle vii. 341 c) [7η Επιστολή].
CHAPTER XXV (VII. 514 a-521 b)
THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
( η αλληγορία του Σπηλαίου )
The progress
of the mind from the lowest state of unenlightenment to knowledge of the Good («αγαθόν») is now illustrated by the famous parable
comparing the world of appearance to an underground Cave,
In Empedocles’
religious poem the powers which conduct the soul to its incarnation say, 'We have come under this cavern’s roof.'
The image was probably taken from mysteries held in caves or dark chambers
representing the underworld, through which the candidates for initiation were
led to the revelation of sacred objects in a blaze of light. The idea that the
body is a prison-house, to which the soul is condemned for past misdeeds, is
attributed by Plato to the Orphics.
Μετάφραση στα Ελληνικά:
Η πρόοδος του νου από την κατώτερη κατάσταση μη
φώτισης στη γνώση του Καλού («αγαθόν») απεικονίζεται τώρα από τη διάσημη
παραβολή που συγκρίνει τον κόσμο της εμφάνισης (αισθητό κόσμο, κόσμο των
αισθήσεων) με μια υπόγεια σπηλιά,
Στο θρησκευτικό ποίημα του Εμπεδοκλή («Καθαρμοί») οι δυνάμεις που
οδηγούν την ψυχή στην ενσάρκωσή της λένε: «Ήρθαμε κάτω από τη στέγη αυτού του
σπηλαίου». Η εικόνα πιθανότατα λήφθηκε από μυστήρια που γίνονταν σε σπηλιές ή
σκοτεινούς θαλάμους που αντιπροσώπευαν τον κάτω κόσμο, μέσω των οποίων οι
υποψήφιοι για μύηση οδηγούνταν στην αποκάλυψη ιερών αντικειμένων σε μια φλόγα
φωτός. Η ιδέα ότι το σώμα είναι μια φυλακή, στην οποία η ψυχή είναι
καταδικασμένη για παρελθούσες ατασθαλίες, αποδίδεται από τον Πλάτωνα στους
Ορφικούς.
One moral of the allegory is
drawn from the distress caused by a too sudden passage from darkness to light.
The earlier warning against plunging untrained minds into the discussion of
moral problems (498 A), as the Sophists and Socrates himself had done, is
reinforced by the picture of the dazed prisoner dragged out into the sunlight,
Plato's ten years' course of pure mathematics is to habituate the intellect to
abstract reasoning before moral ideas are called in question (537 e).
Μετάφραση στα Ελληνικά:
Ένα ηθικό δίδαγμα της αλληγορίας αντλείται από την αγωνία που
προκαλείται από ένα το ξαφνικό πέρασμα από το σκοτάδι στο φως. Η προηγούμενη
προειδοποίηση κατά της βύθισης των ανεκπαίδευτων μυαλών στη συζήτηση των ηθικών
προβλημάτων (498 Α), όπως είχαν κάνει οι Σοφιστές και ο ίδιος ο Σωκράτης,
ενισχύεται από την εικόνα του ζαλισμένου κρατούμενου που σύρεται έξω στο φως
του ήλιου. Η δεκαετής πορεία, που επιβάλλει ο Πλάτων, στα καθαρά μαθηματικά
είναι για να συνηθίσει τη νόηση σε αφηρημένο συλλογισμό (αφαιρετική σκέψη) πριν
τεθούν υπό αμφισβήτηση (υπό έλεγχο) οι ηθικές ιδέες (537 e).
Περιεχόμενα:
INTRODUCTION
CONTENTS
PART
I (Book I).
SOME CURRENT VIEWS OF JUSTICE
Chap. I (i. 327-331 d).
Cephalus. Justice as Honesty in word and deed
II (331 e-33l).
Polemarchus. Justice as Giving every man his due
III (336 b-347 e).
Thrasymachus. Justice as the interest of the Stronger
IV (347 e-354 c).
Thrasymachus. Is Injustice more profitable than
Justice?
PART II (Books II-IV, 445 b).
JUSTICE IN THE STATE AND IN THE INDIVIDUAL
V (ii. 357 A-367 e).
The Problem stated
VI (367 E-372 a).
The Rudiments of Social Organization
VII (372 A-374 e).
The Luxurious State
VIII (375 A-376 e).
The Guardian’s Temperament
IX (376 E-iii. 412 b).
Primary Education of the Guardians
§ I (376 E-iii. 392 c).
Censorship of Literature for School Use
§ 2 (392 c-398 b).
The Influence of Dramatic Recitation
§ 3 (398 c-400 c).
Musical Accompaniment and Metre
§ 4 (400 c-403 c).
The Aim of Education in Poetry and Music
§ 5 (403 C-412 b).
Physical Training. Physicians and Judges
X (412 B-iv. 421 c).
Selection of Rulers: The Guardians’ Manner of Living
XI (42i c-427 c).
The Guardians’ Duties
XII (427 c-434 d).
The Virtues in the State
XIII (434 D-441 c).
The Three Parts of the Soul
(η τριμερής διαίρεση της ψυχής:
Λογιστικόν - θυμοειδές - αλόγιστον ή επιθυμητικόν )
XIV (441 c-445 b).
The Virtues in the Individual
PART II, Appendix (Books IV, 445 b-V, 47 1 c).
THE
POSITION OF WOMEN AND THE USAGES OF WAR
XV (445 b-v. 457 b).
The Equality of Women
XVI (457 b - 466 d).
Abolition of the Family for the Guardians
XVII (466 D-471 c).
Usages of War
PART III (Books V, 471 c-VII).
THE PHILOSOPHER-KING
XVIII (471 c-474 b).
The Paradox: Philosophers must be Kings
XIX (474b-480).
Definition of the Philosopher. The Two Worlds
XX (VI. 484a-487a).
The Philosopher’s Fitness to Rule
XXI (487 b-497 a).
Why the Philosophic Nature is useless or corrupted in
existing Society
XXII (497 A-502 c).
A Philosophic Ruler is not an Impossibility
XXIII (502 c-509 c).
The Good as the Highest Object of Knowledge
(το «αγαθόν»)
XXIV (509D-511 e).
Four Stages of Cognition. The Line
( 4 αναβαθμοί της γνώσης
)
ΒΙΒΛΙΟ Ζ΄
XXV (vii. 514A-521 b).
The Allegory of the Cave
( η αλληγορία του Σπηλαίου )
XXVI
(521 C-531
c).
Higher Education. Mathematics
§I (5240-5260). Arithmetic
§2 (5260-5270). Geometry
§3 (527 D-528 e). Solid Geometry
§4 (528 E-530 c). Astronomy
§5 (5300-5310). Harmonics
XXVII (531
c-535 a).
Dialectic
XXVIII (53$ A-541 b).
Programme of Studies
PART IV(Books VIII-IX).
THE DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL.
COMPARISON OF THE JUST AND UNJUST LIVES
XXIX (viii. 543A-550C).
The Fall of the Ideal State
Timocracy and the Timocratic Man .
XXX (530 c-555 b).
Oligarchy (Plutocracy) and the Oligarchic Man
XXXI (5:55 B-562 a).
Democracy and the Democratic Man
XXXII (562 A-ii. 576 b).
Despotism and the Despotic Man
(τυραννία και τυραννικός χαρακτήρας)
XXXIII (5763-588 a).
The Just and Unjust Lives compared in respect of
Happiness
XXXIV (588 B-592 b).
Justice, not Injustice, is profitable
PART V (Book X, 595 A-608 b).
the QUARREL BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY
XXXV (i. 595 A-602 b).
How Representation in Art is related to Truth
XXXVI (602 c-605 c).
Dramatic Poetry appeals to the Emotions, not to the
Reason
XXXVII (605 0608 b).
The Effect of Dramatic Poetry on Character
PART VI (Book X, 608 c-end).
IMMORTALITY AND
THE REWARDS OF JUSTICE
XXXVIII (608 C-612 a).
A Proof of Immortality
XXXIX (612 A-613 e).
The Rewards of Justice in this Life
XL (613 e-end).
The Rewards of Justice after Death
The Myth of Er
ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΓΡΑΦΟΣ
[ ανάρτηση 1 Δεκεμβρίου 2024 :
F. M. Cornford
Preface to Plato’s Republic
αποσπάσματα
από την εισαγωγή
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ ]
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