I argue that musical education in Plato’sRepublicis not aimed at developing a moral discriminatory faculty in the spirited part, but rather that its benefits are predominantly intellectual, and become fully apparent only at the philosophical stage of the guardians’ education. In order to prove this point, I discuss the intellectual state which the guardians’ philosophical education is meant to bring about, and then show why it is dependent on the earlier cognitive effects of musical education. Ultimately, I show that musical (...) education allows guardians to provide a unified analysis of both culture and nature. (shrink)

Three problems threaten any account of philosophical rule in the Republic. First, Socrates is supposed to show that acting justly is always beneficial, but instead he extols the benefits of having a just soul. He leaves little reason to believe practical justice and psychic justice are connected and thus to believe that philosophers will act justly. In response to this problem, I show that just acts produce just souls. Since philosophers want to have just souls, they will act justly. Second, (...) Socrates’ alleged aim is to demonstrate that justice is beneficial, but philosophers, who have to give up a life of philosophy to rule, actually appear to be harmed by ruling. I explain that, since the founders of the city justly command them to rule, philosophers cannot, in fact, obtain a better life, and so ruling does not harm them. Third, it seems incongruous that philosophers, who should, as just people, jump at the opportunity to rule Kallipolis, must be compelled to rule. I show that Plato carefully constructs an educational system that produces rulers who do not want to rule, since such rulers alone will rule best. (shrink)

In defending the view that justice is the advantage of the stronger, Thrasymachus puzzlingly claims that rulers never err and that any practitioner of a skill or expertise (τέχνη) is infallible. In what follows, Socrates offers a number of arguments directed against Thrasymachus’ views concerning the nature of skill, ruling, and justice. Commentators typically take a dim view of both Thrasymachus’ claims about skill (which are dismissed as an ungrounded and purely ad hoc response to Socrates’ initial criticisms) and Socrates’ (...) latter arguments (which are deemed extremely weak). In this paper, I clarify Thrasymachus’ views (and those of several other ancients) concerning qua locutions and the nature of skill and ability and I reconstruct Socrates’ arguments against Thrasymachus’ views concerning skill and justice. I argue that Thrasymachus’ views are not ungrounded or ad hoc and that Socrates’ arguments are rather different (and significantly stronger) than often supposed. (shrink)

This paper tackles some issues arising from Plato's account of the democratic man in Rep. VIII. One problem is that Plato tends to analyse him in terms of the desires that he fulfils, yet sends out conflicting signals about exactly what kind of desires are at issue. Scholars are divided over whether all of the democrat's desires are appetites. There is, however, strong evidence against seeing him as exclusively appetitive: rather he is someone who satisfies desires from all three parts (...) of his soul, although his rational and spirited desires differ significantly from those of the philosopher or the timocrat. A second problem concerns the question why the democrat ranks so low in Plato's estimation, especially why he is placed beneath the oligarch. My explanation is that Plato presents him as a jumble of desires, someone in whom order and unity have all but disintegrated. In this way he represents a step beyond the merely bipolarised oligarch. The final section of the paper focuses on the democrat's rational part, and asks whether it plays any role in shaping his life as a whole. For the disunity criticism to hold, Plato ought to allow very little global reasoning: if there were a single deliberating reason imposing a life plan upon his life, the fragmentation of life and character discussed earlier would only be superficial. I argue that Plato attributes very little global reasoning to the democrat. Aside from the fact that the text fails to mention such reasoning taking place, Plato's views on the development of character and his use of the state-soul analogy show that the democrat's lifestyle is determined just by the strength of the desires that he happens to feel at any one time. (shrink)

Although most scholars agree that the lexicon of Sophist 232b1-236d4 is similar to that of Republic X, they leave undetermined whether they are theoretically compatible. Notably, both dialogues elucidate the art of imitation through the metaphor of the painter who deceives his pupils through φαντάσματα. I argue that Plato’s conception of imitation of the Republic is not only consistent with that presented in the Sophist, but also importantly integrates it.

Natural philosophers seem to have good reasons to prefer that the kallipolis, the maximally just community of the Republic, is never realized. If such a community is realized, philosophers are under the obligation of a just demand that they govern. However, a life that contains governance as a significant part is not the happiest life a philosopher can live. The happiest life for a philosopher is one consisting entirely or largely in philosophical contemplation. I confront this puzzle by arguing that (...) natural philosophers gain benefits in the kallipolis that are not available to them in other communities, primarily opportunities for correction and punishment. While other communities may offer philosophers more opportunities for philosophical contemplation, these communities do not provide a reliable mechanism for counteracting potentially dangerous moral blindness. In contrast to other communities, the kallipolis institutionalizes and reliably replicates the structures necessary for counteracting moral blindness. (shrink)

The second conjunct of the Republic’s account of justice—that justice is “not meddling in the work of another”—has been neglected in Plato literature. This paper argues that the conjunct does more work than merely reiterating the content of the first conjunct—that justice is “doing one’s own work.” I argue that Socrates develops the concept at work in this conjunct from its introduction with the Principle of Specialization in Book II to its final deployment in the finished conception of justice in (...) Book IV. Crucial to that concept’s development is the way in which the notion of “another” comes to refer to members of distinct classes or parts, i.e. takes on an inter-part connotation beyond a mere intra-part connotation. The first conjunct—that justice is “doing one’s own work”—does not connote the same divisions, and so the conjuncts should not be understood as equivalent or mutually entailed. (shrink)

This paper argues that the dialogical dynamic gives important information on the importance of, and the hierarchy between, the reasons illustrated in favour of justice in Plato’s Republic. Despite his interlocutors’ request to focus exclusively on the effect of justice in and by itself, Socrates indicates that the description of the consequences of justice included in Book 10 is an integral part of his defence, and that some of these consequences, the rewards assigned by the gods in the afterlife, are (...) more important than both the other consequences of justice and the benefit of justice in and by itself. (shrink)