Plato's Republic: A Philosophical Commentary PDF
Preview Plato's Republic: A Philosophical Commentary
PLATO'S REPUBLIC \( PLATO'S ,, REPUBLIC A Philosophical Commentary 'l ,, R. C. CROSS Regius Professor of Logic Universiry of Aberdeen AND A. D. WOOZLEY Professor of Philosophy Universiry of Virginia \\ :rc..- lt , Pea C7fo c.3 JBc" MACMILLAN ST MARTIN'S PRESS Thomas J. Bata Library TRENT UNIVERSITY PETERBOROUGH, ONTARIO © R. C. Cross and A. D. Woozley 1964 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First Edition 1964 Reprinted 1966, 1.970, 1971 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in New York Toronto Dublin Aielbourne Johannesburg and lvfadras SBN 333 08727 5 (hard cover) Printed in Great Britain by REDWOOD PRESS LIMITED Trowbridge & London PREFACE Ev year thousands of bewildered university students are ER Y introduced to philosophy, and many of them meet it first in Plato's Republic. Most of what Plato has written in the Republic, but not quite all, is, in our opinion, philosophically important; and views about what is important, and how important it is, vary from one philosophical generation to another. What we have tried to do is to produce a book that will serve as some- thing of an introduction to philosophy via the Republic, rather than a specialised Platonic study. We have therefore chosen to concentrate on the main themes of the work, rather than produce notes on almost everything. And, because we do think that some parts of the Republic, whatever other interest they may have, have no philosophical interest, we have said nothing about them ; for example, there is no discussion of Plato's views on school education. Introductions to philosophy cannot be easy - they would be no use if they were - but, although we have not tried to make out the philosophical doctrines and arguments contained in the Republic to be easier than they are, and although conse- quently students at different levels of advance may find differ- ent parts of the book more useful, we have throughout aimed at presenting the arguments and our comments on them as clearly as we could. The disadvantages of reading the Republic in an English translation, and of discussing it without constant reference to the Greek text, are considerable, partly because in certain respects the conceptual structure of thought in Western Europe of the twentieth century A.D. is very different from that of Athens of the fourth century B.c., with the consequence that it is impossible always to find words and phrases in English to match at all neatly the words and phrases in Greek ; partly because a given word in one language often has a wider range .. V PLATO'S REPUBLIC V1 of meaning than its nearest single counterpart in the other, with the consequence that a reader dependent entirely on a translation may be seriously misled. This may be illustrated in a minor way by the title of the work, and, more importantly, by its subject-matter. The title 'Republic' is quite inaccurate, if the word is used in its modern sense, to mean a constitution headed by an elected president, as contrasted with either a dictatorship or a hereditary monarchy. Plato's word 1roAL-rE{a (politeia) was far more general, meaning any form of political organisation at all which a community the size of a Greek city state was capable of assuming. 'Republic' therefore has to be understood, not in its specialised modern sense, but as the literal equivalent of 'respublica ', which was the standard Latin translation of 1roALTELa. Again, the subject-matter of the Republic is usually said to be Justice, simply because 'justice' is the most commonly used translation of the Greek word oiKaLoavv'YJ ( dikaiosyne). Now dikaiosyne is the main topic, or the main official topic, of the Republic, but 'justice' is a thoroughly unsuitable word to use as a translation of the Greek word. First, 'justice' has for us a strongly legal flavour: justice is what magistrates, juries and judges of appeal concern themselves with, i.e. the realm of civil and criminal law. But that is not in the least what Plato is talking about; nowhere in the whole work is there more than passing reference to the administration of justice or to provision for litigation. His dikaiosyne was something which a man could, or could fail to, exercise or express throughout his personal and social life. Again, while we do use the adjectives ('just' and 'unjust') and the adverbs ('justly' and 'unjustly') much more commonly than the noun ('justice') in a moral rather than a legal con- text, it is a very special moral context, viz., that in which one persop is in a position of superiority, or power, or authority over another. A stepmother, a schoolmaster, a prefect may treat a small boy unjustly, but one small boy cannot treat another unjustly, if their positions are roughly equal. What he may do is to treat him wrongly or badly; and right or wrong, good or bad, conduct is what Plato is talking about. The Republic has for so long been said to be about Justice that there is now little hope of changing the usage, but 'justice' has PREFACE vii to be understood in a fundamentally moral, not a legal, sense, and in an unrestricted moral context. That Plato's dikaiosyne turned out to be political is true, but this is because he thought the specification of the moral life for man in society was political. The word itself was a word of morals, as even more clearly were the adjectives 8{Kaios- and a8iKos- (dikaios and adikos) which could be applied to a man's character, meaning that it was good or bad, or to his conduct, meaning that it was right or wrong. Two translations of the Republic are most widely in use at present: The Republic of Plato, by F. M. Cornford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), and Plato: the Republic, by H. D. P. Lee (London : Penguin Books, 1955). From time to time we have quarrelled with each; but, where we give translations from passages in the Greek, we often use one or other of these renderings, although we have also in many cases made our own translations. We have tried to keep down to an unavoidable minimum the use of Greek words, and have instead employed their English transliterations which, although ugly, do serve to remind the Greekless reader that he is trying to grapple with an author who neither wrote nor thought in English. Finally, we have two people to thank, a pair of very efficient secretaries, Miss V. Harvey and Miss D. Robertson, who by the speed and accuracy with which they typed out our manu- script disposed of the myth that each of us has almost entirely illegible handwriting. R. C. C. A. D. W. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE V INTRODUCTION Xl CHAP. I __ .-- I. THE ARGUMENT WITH POLEMARCHUS 2. THE ARGUMENT WITH THRASYMACHUS 23 --- 3. A NEW APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF JUSTICE 61 4· FORMATION OF THE FIRST CITY 75 i.,g: EVOLUTION OF THE IDEAL CITY 94 ~ 6. JUSTICE IN THE SouL 112 'v7:' THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHER AND . - THE NoN-PHILOSOPHER 134 8. 166~ / KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF AND THE FORMS g. 196 / SUN, LINE AND CAVE IO. MATHEMATICS AND PHILOSOPHY COMPARISON OF JUST AND UNJUST LIVES 12. ART 270 BIBLIOGRAPHY 289 INDEX 293 IX
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