20. yüzyılın ikinci yarısında Platon’un Devlet’te ortaya koyduğu vatandaşlık ve yönetim teorisi totaliter, ırkçı ve eşitlikçilik karşıtı olmakla suçlanmıştır. Özellikle ulus ve yurttaş kimliği yaratmak için yönetici elitler tarafından kurgulanması öngörülen asil yalan hikayesinin vatandaşları doğuştan gelen politik ve ekonomik bir hiyerarşiye inandırmak için bir propaganda aracı gibi kullanılması haklı olarak yoğun eleştirilere maruz kalmıştır. Platon’u yukarıdaki suçlamalar karşısında tamamen aklamayacak olsa bile, asil yalanın epistemik statüsü ve ikna etme gücü hakkında yapılacak dilsel ve mantıksal analizler bize Platon’un felsefi amacına (...) dair kapsamlı bir resim sunabilir. Bu bağlamda, (i) asil yalanın filozof-yönetici olmak için eğitilecekleri Kallipolis’in ve vatandaşların iyiliği için çalışmaya yönlendirmek için kurgulanmış olduğu; (ii) Platon’un bu yalanla ne kendini tamamıyla gerçekleştirmiş filozof-yöneticilerin ne de halkın geri kalanının Kallipolis’in yönetim biçiminin iyiliği ve yararı konusunda ikna olmasını beklemediği iddia edilecektir. Bu hikâye hem Devlet’i okuyacak sıradan halkın Platon’un idealini anlaması için hem de eğer bir gün Kallipolis kurulacaksa rasyonel argümanları anlayamayacak vatandaşları ikna etmek için kullanılabilir. Sonuç olarak, bu makale Platon’un asil yalanın ideal devletinin ne kuruluşu ne de istikrarlı bir şekilde sürdürülmesi için güvence sağlayamayacağının farkında olduğunu, asil yalanın politik ideali için ne zorunlu ne de gerekli olduğunu göstermeyi hedeflemektedir. (shrink)

This paper reevaluates the role of Adeimantus in Book 2 of Plato's Republic, arguing that his challenge to Socrates' view of justice—specifically, his interest in the influence of the outer world on our inner lives—serves a crucial yet underappreciated purpose in initiating the political project of the work. I suggest that it's due to Adeimantus' contribution in the Republic that Plato's wide-ranging inquiry into issues in ethics, politics, psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics hangs together as an integrated whole. A further benefit (...) of this reevaluation, I argue, is the way it illuminates Plato's assessment of poetry in the dialogue. This paper was delivered this past year as part of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy. Comments are welcome but please do not cite without permission. (shrink)

This thesis poses the question ‘What is the critique of democracy in Plato’s Republic?’ It is not the first to do so. But contrary to standard readings, this thesis does not assume neither epistemological nor elitist explanations. Rather, it sees the Kallipolis, ‘the beautiful city in words’ as predicated on a particular anthropology. This theory of human nature, which claims that it is human to be greedy for wealth, sex, and power is contributed by Glaucon, Socrates’ main interlocutor in the (...) dialogue. Noting this, the argument of this thesis makes the following interpretational claims about the Republic: First, I claim that the Kallipolis should be read as an answer to the following question: What would a just city look like given the anthropology of Glaucon? The second claim informing this thesis is the following: Reading the Republic itself as challenging this anthropology, the function of the anthropology it provides is not so much a positive theory of human nature as it is revealing of what Glaucon, in most regards a paradigmatic Athenian citizen, thinks is human nature. His ideas and character are thus central to my reading of the Republic. What has this got to do with democracy? Glaucon’s beliefs, ideas, and his character can not be understood without reference to the society which has produced him, that is, the democratic polis of Ancient Athens. This premise is inserted by the city-soul analogy, a central tenet of the argument of the Republic. As this thesis argues, the tripartite soul provides an explanatory model which accounts for why and how the human soul is moldable and plastic. Furthermore, the thesis contributes to the issue of akrasia, by that it based on this interpretation becomes possible to say that cases of akrasia, – breakdowns of rationality – differ in its causes like the souls of humans differ in their internal constitutions: Humans, the Republic postulates, simply attribute different weight to different reasons, depending on what part of our soul rules, and hence, what the soul has set as its ‘good’. Building on this account of individual decision-making, this thesis offers a twofold analysis of how the interaction between regime and man is portrayed in the Republic, first with regard to the social institutions, secondly with regard to the political institutions. This analysis is based on the premise that the Kallipolis represents an implicit critique against democratic Athens, but rather than being an ideal to offset democratic shortcomings, I argue that the Kallipolis is the realization of democratic desires combined with a need for justice. If, and only if, Glaucon’s is the true anthropology of man, is Kallipolis the most just state. But, as this thesis will show, Glaucon’s anthropology is not universalizable, but is rather an expression of the particularly democratic anthropology. Ultimately, Socrates will show that if allowed to evolve unchecked, the natural culmination of the democracy is tyranny. In order to make this argument, the Republic mobilizes tropes related to tyranny which already abound within democratic and dissenting discourse, in order to posit the democratic value of ‘freedom’ as closely related to the tyrannical lust for power. Following this interpretation, the answer to the initial question is that the Republic criticizes democracy’s institutional practices, poetic tradition, and theoretical ideals showing how democracy instills in its citizens the kind of desires and values that will make them susceptible to the tyrannical coups which the Athenians of the fifth century seemed more than eager to avoid. In my reading of the Republic, the main threat was not outside forces, but their own desires and internal constitutions. Only through developing self-knowledge in the philosophical sense can the Athenian, represented by Glaucon, truly learn to guard himself against tyranny from within. (shrink)