Professor Steven Smith:
There is one person in here,
I don't know who it is,
and you will not know who it is
yet, but there is one person in
here for whom the reading of
Plato's Republic will be
the most important intellectual
experience you have at Yale.
It is a book that one of you
will go back to time and time
again and it will stick with you
forever.
What I would like you to do is
to remember this and four years
from now, when most of you are
ready to graduate,
if that one person in here
would email me and let me know
who it is, okay?
Maybe it will be you.
Maybe?
Possibly.
Or you.
Okay.
This is the book that started
it all.
The Apology,
the Crito,
these are warm-ups to the big
theme, to the big book,
the Republic.
Every other book in this
political science that has since
been written,
beginning with Aristotle's
Politics and moving on to
the present day is,
in one way or another,
an answer, a response to
Plato's Republic.
It started the whole thing.
The first and most obvious
thing to say about the
Republic is that it is a
long book.
Not the longest book you will
ever read, but long enough.
In fact, in part,
because of this,
we are only reading
approximately half the book,
the first five books,
to be more specific.
The first five books that deal
with and culminate in the best
city, Plato's ideal city,
what he calls Kallipolis,
the just city,
the beautiful city,
ruled by philosopher-kings.
The second half of the book
turns in somewhat different,
certainly equally important
directions,
but would take us much more
time than the time we have
allotted to deal with.
So you will read that on your
own.
You can take another course,
what have you.
The Republic is a very
perplexing book,
you will find out.
Its meaning will not be evident
to you on a first reading.
It may not be clear to you on a
tenth reading,
unless you approach it with the
proper questions and the proper
frame of mind.
So let's start by asking a
simple question.
What is the Republic
about?
What does this book deal with?
This is a question that has
perplexed and divided readers of
Plato almost from the beginning.
Is it a book about justice,
as the subtitle of the book
suggests?
Is it a book about what we
today might call moral
psychology and the right
ordering of the human soul,
which is a prominent theme
addressed in this work?
Is it a book about the power of
poetry and myth,
what we would call the whole
domain of culture to shape souls
and to shape our societies?
Or is it a book about
metaphysics and the ultimate
structure of being,
as certainly many of the later
books of the Republic
suggest?
The theory of the forms,
the image of the divided line
and so on and so on.
Of course, it is about all of
these things and several others
as well.
But at least at the beginning,
when we approach the book,
we should stay on its surface,
not dig at least initially too
deeply.
As one of the great readers of
Plato of the last century once
said, "Only the surface of
things reveals the essence of
things."
The surface of the
Republic reveals that it
is a dialogue.
It is a conversation.
We should approach the book,
in other words,
not as we might a treatise,
but as we might approach a work
of literature or drama.
It is a work comparable in
scope to other literary
masterworks--Hamlet,
Don Quixote,
War and Peace,
others you might think of.
As a conversation,
as a dialogue,
it is something the author
wants us to join,
to take part in.
We are invited to be not merely
passive onlookers of this
conversation,
but active participants in that
dialogue that takes place in
this book over the course of a
single evening.
Perhaps the best way to read
this book is to read it aloud,
as you might with a play,
to yourself or with your
friends.
Let's go a little further.
The Republic is also a
utopia, a word that Plato does
not use, was not coined until
many, many centuries later by
Sir Thomas More.
But Plato's book is a utopia.
It is a kind of extreme.
He presents an extreme vision
of politics.
He presents an extreme vision
of the polis.
The guiding thread of the book
is the correspondence,
and we will look at this in
some length and you will discuss
it in your sections,
no doubt.
The guiding thread of the book
is the correspondence,
the symmetry between the parts
of the city and the parts of the
soul.
Discord within the city,
just as discord within the
soul, is regarded as the
greatest evil.
The aim of the Republic
is to establish a harmonious
city, based on a conception of
justice that,
so to speak,
harmonizes the individual and
society, how to achieve that.
The best city would necessarily
be one that seeks to produce the
best or highest type of
individual.
Plato's famous answer to this
is that this city--any
city--will never be free of
conflict,
will never be free of factional
strife until,
in his famous formula,
kings become philosophers and
philosophers become kings.
The Republic asks us to
consider seriously,
what would a city look like
ruled by philosophers?
In this respect,
it would seem to be the sort of
perfect bookend to the
Apology.
Remember, the Apology
viewed the dangers posed to
philosophy and the philosopher
and the philosophical life from
the city.
The Republic asks us,
what would a city be like if it
were ruled by Socrates or
someone like him?
What would it be like for
philosophers to rule?
Such a city would require,
so Socrates tells us throughout
the opening books,
the severe censorship of poetry
and theology,
the abolition of private
property and the family,
at least among the guardian
class of the city,
and the use of selected lies
and myths,
what would today probably be
called ideology or propaganda,
as tools of political rule.
It would seem that far from
utopia, the Republic
represents a radical dystopia,
a satire, in some sense,
of the best polity.
In fact, much of modern
political science is directed
against Plato's legacy.
The modern state,
as we have come to understand
it, is based upon the separation
of civil society from governing
authority.
The entire domain of what we
call private life separated from
the state.
But Plato's Republic
recognizes no such separation or
no such independence for a
private sphere.
For this reason,
Plato has often been cast as a
kind of harbinger of the modern
totalitarian state.
A famous professor at a distant
university was said to have
begun his lectures on the
Republic by saying,
"Now we will consider Plato,
the fascist."
This was, in fact,
the view popularized by one of
the most influential books about
Plato written in the last
century,
a book written by a Viennese
émigré by the name of Karl
Popper, who in the very early
1950s,
right at the height of the Cold
War and of course the end of the
conclusion of the Second World
War,
wrote a book called The Open
Society and Its Enemies.
He wanted to know what were the
causes or who was responsible
for the experiences of
totalitarianism,
both in Stalin's Russia and in
Hitler's Germany.
In the course of this inquiry,
he concluded that not only
Hegel and Marx were important in
that particular genealogy,
but this went back to Plato as
well, Plato principally.
Plato, who Popper accuses in a
passionate, albeit not very well
written book,
accuses Plato of being the
first to establish a kind of
totalitarian dictatorship.
Is that true?
Plato's Republic is,
we will discover as you read,
a republic of a very special
kind.
It is not a regime like ours
devoted to maximizing individual
liberties, but it is one that
puts the education of its
citizens,
the education of its members,
as its highest duty.
The Republic,
like the Greek polis,
was a kind of tutelary
association.
Its principal good,
its principal goal,
was the education of citizens
for positions of public
leadership and high political
responsibilities.
It is always worthwhile to
remember that Plato was,
above all, a teacher.
He was the founder of the first
university, the Academy,
the Platonic Academy,
where we will find out later
Aristotle came to study,
among many others--Aristotle
being but the most famous.
Plato was the founder of this
school.
This, in turn,
spawned other philosophical
schools throughout the Greek
world and later,
the Roman world.
With the demise of Rome,
in the early Christian
centuries, these philosophical
academies,
these philosophical schools,
were absorbed into the medieval
monasteries.
These, in turn,
became the basis of the first
European universities in places
like Bologna,
Paris, Oxford.
These were, in turn,
later transplanted to the New
World and established in towns
like Cambridge and,
of course, New Haven.
We can say today that this
university is a direct ancestor
of the platonic republic of
Plato's Academy.
We are all here the heirs of
Plato.
Think of that.
Without Plato, no Yale.
We would not be here today.
I think that is a fact.
Just ponder that for a moment.
In fact, let me even say a
little more about this.
The institutional and
educational requirements of
Plato's Republic share
many features with a place like
Yale.
For example,
in both the Platonic
Kallipolis, the just city,
as well as this place,
men and women--men and
women--are selected at a
relatively early age because of
their capacities for leadership,
for courage,
for self-discipline,
and responsibility.
They spend several years living
together, eating together in
common mess halls,
exercising together,
and studying together,
of course, far from the
oversight of their parents.
The best of them are winnowed
out to pursue further study and
eventually assume positions of
public leadership and
responsibility.
Throughout all of this,
they are subjected to a course
of rigorous study and physical
training that will lead them to
adopt prominent positions in the
military and other branches of
public service.
Does this sound at all familiar
to you?
It should.
Let me put it another way.
If Plato is a fascist,
what does that make you?
Plato, of course,
is an extremist.
He pushes his ideas to their
most radical conclusions.
That's what it is to be a
philosopher.
But he is also defining a kind
of school.
He regards the Politea
or the Republic,
because that is the original
Greek title of the book,
Politea or regime.
He regards the politea
as a school whose chief goal is
preparation for guidance and
leadership of a community.
If you don't believe me about
this, maybe you will consider
the words of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, one of the great
readers of Plato's
Republic.
Rousseau wrote in his
Emile,
"To get a good idea of public
education," he says,
"read Plato's Republic.
It is not a political treatise,
as those who merely judge books
by their title think,
but it is the finest,
most beautiful work on
education ever written."
Rousseau.
So, there we go.
Let's now peek into the book
itself.
Just peek.
We won't go too far.
Let's start with the first line.
Who remembers what the first
line is?
Oh, come on.
You should know this.
You're looking at the book.
You're cheating.
"I went down to the Piraeus."
I went down to the Piraeus.
Why does Plato begin with this
line?
There's a story that I heard.
I'm not sure if it's altogether
true, but it's a good story,
at least, about the famous
German philosopher Martin
Heidegger,
who said that on his first
teaching of the Republic,
he went through the whole book,
taught the whole book in one
seminar, one semester.
The last time he taught it,
the final time he taught it,
he never got beyond the first
sentence, "I went down to the
Piraeus."
What does it mean?
Why does he begin with this?
"I went down," a going down.
The Greek word for this is
catabasis.
"I had made a descent."
There is a book by a famous
contemporary to Plato.
It's a man named Xenophon,
who wrote a book called the
Anabasis.
The anabasis means a
going up, an ascent.
But Plato begins this dialogue
with this stigma.
"I went down."
The descent to the Piraeus.
It is clearly modeled on
Odysseus' descent to Hades in
the Odyssey.
In fact, the work is a kind of
philosophical odyssey that both
imitates Homer,
but also anticipates other
great odysseys of the human
mind, works by those like
Cervantes or Joyce.
The book is full,
you will see,
of a number of descents and
ascents.
The most famous climb upward,
although we will not actually
read these parts for this class,
concerns the climb to the
divided line,
the famous image of the divided
line in Book VI,
and the ascent to the world of
the imperishable forms.
Then, in the last book of the
Republic,
Book X, there is,
once again, a descent to the
underworld, to the world of
Hades.
The work is not,
in a sense, written simply as a
sort of timeless philosophical
treatise,
but as a dramatic dialogue with
a setting, a cast of characters
and a firm location in time and
place.
Let's say a little more about
that time and place already
indicated in the sentence,
"I went down to the Piraeus."
Plato was born in 427,
which is four years after the
commencement of the
Peloponnesian War.
He was a young man of 23 when
the democracy in Athens was
defeated.
He was only 28 when the
restored democracy executed his
friend and teacher,
Socrates, in 399.
Almost immediately after the
trial of Socrates,
Plato left Athens and traveled
extensively throughout the Greek
world.
Upon his return,
he established this school at
Athens he called the Academy,
for the training of
philosophers,
statesmen, and legislators.
Plato lived a long time.
He lived until the age of 80.
Except for two expeditions to
Sicily, where he went at the
request of Dionysius to help try
to establish a philosophical
kingship in Syracuse,
he remained in Athens teaching
and writing.
The Republic belongs to
that period of Plato's work
after his return to Athens,
after the execution of
Socrates.
The dominant feature of Plato's
political theory,
David Grene,
a great reader of Plato,
has said is "the root and
branch character of the change
it advocates and existing
institutions."
Plato's desire for a kind of
radical makeover,
of Athenian and Greek political
institutions and cultures,
grew out of his experience of
political defeat and despair.
The utopianism of the book is,
in many ways,
the reverse side of the sense
of profound disillusionment that
he felt at the actual experience
of the Athenian polis.
This was not only true of his
experience at home,
but of his failed efforts to
turn Dionysius' kingship in
Sicily into a successful example
of philosophical rule.
In fact, we have--and I want to
read to you in just a moment--a
lengthy transcript of Plato's
own account of why he came to
write the Republic.
One thing, of course,
you note in the
Republic,
is that Plato is nowhere
present.
He is not a participant in his
own dialogue.
He is the author,
but not the participant.
We don't know precisely what
Plato thought,
but we are helped,
at least, by a kind of
intellectual autobiography that
he wrote and that we still have,
in what is conventionally
referred to as The Seventh
Letter.
Plato wrote a series of letters
that we have.
People have argued over the
authenticity of them,
although I think by now it is
established that they are his.
In the most famous of these
letters, the lengthy seventh
one, he gives us,
again,
something of an autobiography
and tells us a little bit about
why he came to write this book.
Isn't this amazing that
2,000-2,500 years ago,
we still have the letters of
the man who wrote this book?
Let me read to you what Plato
says about how he came to write
this book.
"When I was a young man," he
said--and this is written as he
is very old.
"When I was a young man,
I felt as yet many young men
do.
I felt at the very moment I
attained my majority I should
engage in public affairs.
And there came my way an
opportunity that I want to tell
you about.
The democratic constitution,
then loudly decried by many
people, was abolished.
And the leaders of the
revolution set themselves up as
a government of 30 men with
supreme authority."
He's referring to the Tyranny
of the Thirty that existed after
the Athenian defeat.
"Some of these men ,
you must understand,
were relatives of mine and well
known to me.
And what is more,
they actually invited me at
once to join them,
as though politics and I were a
fit match.
I was very young then and it is
not surprising that I felt as I
did.
I thought that the city was
then living a kind of life which
was unjust and that they would
bend it to a just one and so
administer it more justly.
So I eagerly watched to see
what they would do.
And you must know,
as I looked on,
I saw those men in a short time
make the former democracy look
like a golden age."
He is referring to his
relatives, men like Critias and
Charmides, who turned Athenian
politics into a tyranny and,
which he says,
makes the "democracy look like
a golden age."
Let me continue in Plato's
words.
"I looked at this,
you see, and at the men who
were in politics,
at the laws and customs.
And the more I looked and the
older I grew,
the more difficult it seemed to
me to administer political
affairs justly.
For you cannot do so without
friends and comrades you can
trust.
In such men it was not easy to
find.
For the city,
you see, no longer lived in the
fashion and ways of our fathers.
Eager as I had once been to go
into politics,
as I look at these things and
saw everything taking any course
at all with no direction or
management,
I ended up feeling dizzy.
I did not abandon my interest
in politics to discover how it
might be bettered in other
respects, and I was perpetually
awaiting my opportunity.
But at last,
I saw that as far as all states
now existing are concerned,
they are all badly governed.
For the condition of their laws
is bad almost past cure,
except for some miraculous
accident.
So I was compelled to say,
in praising true philosophy,
that it was from it alone that
was able to discern any justice.
And so I said that the nations
of the world will never cease
from trouble until either the
true breed of philosophers shall
come to political office or
until that of the rulers shall,
by some divine law,
take the pursuit of
philosophy."
There you see in that wonderful
and a kind of probing
self-examination of his early
motives and expectations,
you see the disillusionment of
the older Plato looking on what
the Tyranny had done.
But also looking at the states,
the nations of his time,
seeing their management,
seeing their decay and conflict
and saying and suggesting that
no justice will ever be expected
until,
as he says at the end,
kings become philosophers and
philosophers kings,
a direct reference to the
Republic.
This little autobiography,
goes on at considerably greater
length, I should say.
But this provides a kind of
introduction,
as it were, to the
Republic.
We have in Plato's own words
here, the way he viewed politics
and his reasons for his
political philosophy.
Yet, in many respects,
if the Republic was the
result of comprehensive despair
and disillusionment with the
prospects of reform,
the dialogue itself points back
to an earlier moment in Plato's
life and the life of the city of
Athens.
This remarkable letter was
written when Plato was very old,
approximately 50 years after
the trial and execution of
Socrates.
But the action of the
Republic takes place long
before the defeat of Athens,
before the rise of the Thirty
and the execution of Athens .
It refers to that period that
Plato says in the letter looked
like "a golden age,
when many things seemed
possible."
That brings us back to the
opening, the descent to the
Piraeus.
The action of the dialogue
begins at the Piraeus,
the port city of Athens,
somewhere around the year 411,
during what was called the
Peace of Nicias,
that is to say,
the peace that endured a kind
of respite,
truce that was established
during the fighting between
Sparta and Athens.
At the very beginning of the
dialogue, we see Socrates and
his friend Glaucon.
What are they doing?
What are they doing?
Do you remember?
What are they doing at the very
beginning?
Student: Professor
Steven Smith: Where?
Student: [inaudible]
Professor Steven Smith:
Right.
Let me put it a slightly--yes,
they are walking back to Athens
from the Piraeus.
But maybe to put it a slightly
different way,
they're trolling the
waterfront.
What is the Piraeus?
It is the harbor of Athens.
What do you expect from harbors?
What are harbor cities like?
What do you find down at
harbors?
Student: [inaudible]
Professor Steven Smith:
Water, yeah.
They're seedy, aren't they?
You find various kinds of
disreputable and maybe unseemly
things going on there.
We are forced to ask ourselves:
What are Socrates and Glaucon
doing there?
Why are they there together?
What are they doing?
What do they expect to find?
These seem to be questions that
immediately come to mind.
We learn shortly afterwards
that they have taken this
descent to the Piraeus to view a
festival, a kind of carnival.
It sounds like something one
might expect to see in a Fellini
film.
A kind of carnival,
a carnivale,
a Mardi Gras,
where a festival is going on.
What's more,
a new goddess is being
introduced into the pantheon of
deities.
This seems to suggest
that--referring back to the
Apology,
that it is not Socrates,
but the Athenians who innovate,
who create and introduce new
deities.
Socrates remarks that the
Thracians, the display of the
Thracians, put on a good show,
showing that his own
perspective is not simply bound
by that of a city.
It suggests,
from the beginning,
a kind of loftiness and
impartiality of perspective
characteristic of the
philosopher,
but not necessarily the citizen.
On their way back from this
festival, from this carnival,
on their way back they're
accosted, you remember.
They're accosted by a slave
who's been sent on by
Polemarchus and his friends and
who orders Socrates and Glaucon
to wait.
"Polemarchus orders you to
wait," the slave says.
He orders you to wait.
He is coming up behind you.
Just wait.
"Of course we'll wait," Glaucon
replies.
When Polemarchus and his
friends arrive,
we find that his friends
include Adeimantus,
who is Glaucon's brother and
Niceratus, who is the son of
Nicias, the general who has just
brokered the peace that they are
now enjoying.
That's the famous Peace of
Nicias.
They challenge Socrates.
"Stay with us or prove
stronger."
Stay with us or prove stronger.
"Could we not persuade you?"
Socrates asked.
"Could we not persuade you to
let us go?"
"Not if we won't listen,"
Polemarchus says.
Instead, they reach a
compromise.
But Socrates and Glaucon come
with Polemarchus and the others
to the home of Polemarchus'
father,
where dinner will be provided
for them, and later,
a return to the festival where
there will be a horseback race.
"It seems," Glaucon says,
"we must stay."
And Socrates concurs.
Why does the book begin with
this, let's say,
opening gambit?
Is it simply a ruse to get the
reader's attention in some sense
or to rope you in with some
promise of what's to follow?
Already from the very opening
lines we see in this a clue to
the theme that is going to
follow.
Who has the title to rule?
Is it Polemarchus and his
friends who claim to rule by
strength of numbers?
"Can we persuade you?"
"Not if we don't listen," he
says.
Or Socrates and Glaucon,
who hope to rule by the powers
of reason, speech,
and argument?
Can we convince you?
Can we persuade you?
Can democracy that expresses
the will of the majority,
the will of the greater number
be rendered compatible with the
needs of philosophy and the
claims to respect only reason
and a better argument?
That seems to be the question
already posed in this opening
scene.
Can a compromise be reached
between the two?
Can the strength of numbers,
as well as respect for reason
and a better argument be,
in some sense,
harmonized?
Can they be brought together?
Is the just city,
perhaps, that Socrates will
later consider,
a combination of these two--of
both force and persuasion?
That will be something left to
see.
But I think you can see the big
themes of the book already very
present in the opening scene of
the dialogue.
The first book is really a kind
of preamble to everything that
follows.
Okay?
Are you with me so far on this?
Let's talk a little bit about
the participants in this
dialogue.
It is a dialogue.
It has a fairly large number of
characters, although only a
relatively few number of them
speak in the book.
Yet, it's something very
important, as we would want to
know in any play or novel or
movie.
We want to note something about
the particular people who
inhabit this dinner party that
Socrates and Glaucon have been
promised.
Who are they and what do they
represent?
There is Cephalus,
who we will see very quickly,
the father of Polemarchus and
whose home they are attending.
The venerable
paterfamilias,
the venerable father of the
family.
Polemarchus,
his son, a solid patriot who
defends not only his father's
honor, but that of his friends
and fellow citizens.
We will also see Thrasymachus,
a cynical intellectual who
rivals Socrates as an educator
of future leaders and statesmen.
Of course, it is the exchange
between Socrates and
Thrasymachus that is one of the
most famous moments of the book.
There is, in the first set of
dialogues, a distinct hierarchy
of characters,
you might say,
who we see later on express
those distinctive features of
the soul and the city.
Cephalus, we learn,
has spent his life in the
acquisitive arts.
That is to say,
he's a businessman.
He's been concerned with
satisfying the needs of his body
and making money.
He represents what will later
be called in the Republic
the appetitive part of the soul,
the appetites.
Polemarchus,
whose name actually means
"warlord."
Think of that.
The warlord is preoccupied with
questions of honor and loyalty.
He tells us,
to get a little bit ahead of
ourselves, that justice is
helping your friends and harming
your enemies.
He seems to represent what
Plato or Socrates will later
call the spirited part of the
soul, something that we want to
return to.
Thrasymachus,
a visiting sophist,
seeks to teach and educate,
anticipating what the
Republic will call the
rational soul,
the rational part of the soul.
Each of these figures,
in many ways,
prefigure the relatively
superior natures of those who
come later in the dialogue.
The two brothers,
Glaucon and Adeimantus,
whose exchange with Socrates
occupies,
for the most part,
the rest of the dialogue from
Book Two onward,
the two brothers who,
incidentally,
are the brothers of Plato.
I should say,
to my knowledge,
we know nothing more about
Glaucon and Adeimantus from
history, but Plato put them into
his dialogue.
They will always be remembered
as the two brothers in the
dialogue.
Again, they seem to represent
something quite different.
Bear this in mind as you are
reading the book,
because it is easy to kind of
forget who's talking and what
they represent.
Adeimantus is,
we will find,
the kind of hedonistic and
pleasure-seeking brother.
Glaucon, whose name means
something like "gleaming",
"shining," is the fierce and
war-like of the two brothers.
Of course, there is the
philosophically-minded Socrates.
Again, each of them seems to
represent, in a superior way,
the key components of the human
soul,
the appetitive,
the war-like or spirited,
and the rational.
Together, these figures form a
kind of microcosm of humanity.
Each of the participants in the
dialogue represents one of the
specific classes or groups that
will eventually occupy the just
city to which Plato or Socrates
gives the name Kallipolis,
the beautiful city.
Alright?
In the five minutes or so that
remain, let's just talk for a
moment about the first
conversation with the head of
the family, Cephalus.
We don't need to look at this
at great length.
You can, I'm sure in your
sections, you might want to talk
about the arguments a little
more specifically that are used
in these first three sets of
conversations between Cephalus,
Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus.
The question,
more importantly-- the
question, I don't know that it's
more importantly,
but the question that I want us
to examine a little bit here in
the time remaining is what,
again, these characters
represent.
Cephalus, as his name implies,
Cephalus.
What does that mean?
Do you know?
Head, yes, Cephalus,
head, the head of the
household, but also clearly the
claims of age,
of tradition,
of family.
At the beginning of the
dialogue when Polemarchus
brought his friends back to the
house, we see the aged father,
Cephalus.
He is just returning from
prayer.
He has just returned from
performing certain acts of
ritual sacrifice.
He greets Socrates,
in many ways,
as a long, lost friend.
Perhaps you have had this
experience yourself,
always a slightly uncomfortable
one.
When you bring a group of your
friends back to your house,
you're expecting to have a good
time,
and your grandparent is there
and says, "Oh,
it's so good to see a bunch of
young people.
I want to talk with you."
It's always a slightly
uncomfortable moment,
you might say.
We all have experienced this
kind of thing.
Everybody knows it from either
end.
I'm not a grandparent,
thank god.
But I feel the same thing often
when my son brings his friends,
maybe that I've known for a
long time.
"Oh, how are you doing?"
and they want to get away.
Socrates does something rather
abrupt.
"Tell me, Cephalus,
what's it like to be so old?"
"What is it like to be like
you?"
"Do you still feel the need for
sex?"
Can you imagine saying that to
someone's grandfather?
It gives you a little idea of
the character of Socrates.
Cephalus is so happy.
"Oh, thank god I'm past that,"
he says.
"Thank god I no longer feel
this erotic desire.
At my old age,
I can spend my time--" "When I
was a young man,
that's all I did.
I was thinking about sex all
the time and when I wasn't
thinking about that,
I was making money.
But now I've had my fill of
both and I can spend my later
years, the twilight of my life,
turning to the things about the
gods, performing sacrifices
commanded by the gods."
Why does Plato begin this way?
Well, Cephalus is,
as should be clear,
the very embodiment of the
conventional,
in both senses of that term.
He's not a bad man,
by any means.
But he is a thoroughly
unreflective one.
In attacking Cephalus as he
does, Socrates attacks the
embodiment of conventional
opinion, the Nomos supporting
the city.
Note the way Socrates
manipulates the dialogue,
the conversation.
Cephalus says that the pious
man, the just man practices
justice by sacrificing to the
gods.
Socrates turns that into the
statement that justice means
paying your debts and returning
what is owed to you.
Cephalus, in an easygoing
manner, agrees and then Socrates
says, "What would you think
about returning a weapon that
you had borrowed from a friend
or someone who was in a very
depressed"--we might say a
depressed "frame of mind.
Would that be just?
How do you explain that?
Would you do that if justice
means paying your debts and
giving back to each what is
owed?"
At that moment,
Cephalus excuses himself from
the dialogue and says,
rather abruptly,
"I have to go out and continue
my sacrifices in the garden."
Socrates, in other words,
has broken the bond of
tradition and traditional
authority that holds the ancient
city and the ancient family
together.
Cephalus is banished from the
dialogue.
Tradition is banished and we
never hear another word about it
for the next 400 or so pages.
That's the way Socrates begins
this dialogue,
or that's the way Plato has
Socrates begin it.
We'll look a little more at
some of these in our class for
next time and then move into the
characters of Adeimantus and
Glaucon.
Anyway, start your reading.
Continue your reading.
Your sections are going on this
week, so enjoy yourselves.
 
