[Serious] Thomism: Then & Now

[Belacqua]

Yeah, that analogy seems familiar from the first book or two, where he talks about the captain of a ship not being about sailing per se (ie with the sailing aspect being basically incidental - it being more about ruling men), but I just haven't yet got to the point where such an example is concretely installed in this abstract ideal state of theirs (I know that sounds like an oxymoron ).

In your study of the Republic, have you been working with the idea that the whole thing is largely allegorical? There is a theory that Plato's primary interest is in how one governs oneself, and that the idea of a city-state is used largely because it's easier to talk about than psychology. Waterfield's introduction to his translation has this good passage:

Republic is Plato’s main attempt to define in non-abstract terms how an individual can fulfil himself, can attain happiness or ‘live the good life’, as a Greek would have said. A Greek would have expected such a discussion to be couched in political terms—and that is what we get, though not entirely in the way a Greek would have expected. 

Overt discussion of political and other external issues would be a ‘hard’ aspect of the book; in Republic there are also ‘soft’ aspects to this discussion. It is possible to read the book as a predominantly individualist approach to the issues, with the tra­ditional political terminology of the debate suborned and largely turned over to metaphorical purposes, to describe the inner state of the individual. Metaphor is a familiar method for turning hard aspects into soft aspects; and it is typical of Plato’s sense of humour that he would turn the usual terms of debate on their head in this way.

This is not to say, of course, that the soft aspects of the book (those concerned with the inner state of an individual) are all the book consists of. As Plato projects the inner life of an individual out on to the larger screen of a mythical world where political factors play a part, he does also make some proposals which
are more concerned with outer politics than the inner politics of the individual—which are hard rather than soft. In fact, because he is such a skilful writer, he often writes for both layers simultaneously. But the hard aspects of the book are less than one might expect: the outside world takes on a half-life, but the inner life of the individual is the primary concern of the book. As a metaphor, the politics of Republic is stimulating and coherent; as a manifesto, it is naive and fragmentary. Anyone reading the book with a view to finding a political philosophy to follow or to criticize is going to be disappointed and will be forced to supply a lot of the evidence.

The ambitious project of the book is to demonstrate that morality is beneficial to its possessor—that, in fact, an individual gains in happiness by being moral whether or not any external advantages accrue to him. At the beginning of Chapter 3 Plato says that this is a tough task, since it is difficult to look inside a person’s mind and see what is good or bad there. He therefore proposes to work with a political analogy: perhaps morality will be easier to see if we construct a community, describe its political system, and look for morality in this imaginary community. If the analogy with an individual is exact, we shall then be able to dis­cover the features of the ‘political’ state of affairs in an individual. There is nothing ambiguous about this. In Republic Plato is not primarily interested in politics in the real world: he is constructing
an imaginary community, to serve as a paradigm. The primary purpose for any political exploration that will occur in the book is a ‘soft’ purpose—to help us understand an individual. And Plato constantly reminds us that this is the point of the ‘politics’: time and again he mentions the individual who is supposed to cor­respond to the imaginary state. These reminders can be found at 35ie, 369a, 43zb, 434d, 441c, 445c, 47zc-d, 541b, 543d~544a and throughout Chapters 11 and iz, 605b, and 608a—b.

This and the Symposium are both, in the end, largely challenges and puzzles -- in this way perhaps more like literature than the philosophy we're accustomed to. Waterfield is surely right to say that Plato is a genius writer, and capable of working at different levels and doing any number of things at once.

Socrates is said to have given up his scientific inquires because he thought science is worthless to us if we're still bad people. Likewise, I suspect that Plato's interest in politics is largely based on his desire to help us become good individuals.