Commentary on Plato's Republic, Book I
Socrates,
Cephalus, Old age and Justice
Book I of the Republic is in many ways the most
interesting and important of all the books in Plato's classic. For me, it
serves the role of foreshadowing much that is to come in the same way that
things are foreshadowed say, in the beginning of the movie, The Wizard of Oz. Once the main argument of the Republic is finished (end of Book IX),
one can return to Book I and appreciate just how much it anticipated and hinted
at what was to follow. So much so
that I find it absolutely absurd that some scholars could claim that Book I was
written separately from the rest of the book and tacked onto it hastily in
order to make it look like a standard Socratic dialogue. However, Book I is
also the most tedious and time-consuming to read, for the arguments are aplenty
and Socrates is at his hairsplitting best, or worst, depending on one's view of
Socrates. I tell my students not to be discouraged by Book One's tedious and
difficult arguments, for the remainder of the Republic reads very differently. Still, Book I is extremely
important and can, I think, be used all by itself to raise important and
interesting questions about justice.
Be all this as it may, the main characters of
Book I are Socrates, Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus. The last three
characters offer, more or less, answers to the Socratic question, “What is
justice?”, and each receives a grilling by the master
critic Socrates in the course of Book I. But before examining the arguments, a
bit of background is needed. The setting of the Republic is the home of Cephalus and Polemarchus. Cephalus is a
well-off, even perhaps wealthy, merchant and businessman and Polemarchus is his
son.
Cephalus and Polemarchus live in the Piraeus,
which is where nonresident aliens (roughly, people who are not Athenian
citizens) reside, a point that is significant and related to the respective
answers they give to the question of "What is Justice?".
Cephalus says that as far as his business activities go, he lies somewhere
between his grandfather and his father, the former amassing a great deal of
wealth and the latter squandering much of it. Cephalus is also said to be in
the twilight of his life. He admits that old age is not the greatest time of
life but also says that he has not found it nearly the burden many do. Cephalus
says that many of his old chums complain that they are no longer able to enjoy
the pleasures of sex, drink and feasts as they once did, and thus life is not
quite what it used to be. (Remember, this takes place long before the discovery
of Viagra!). But Cephalus thinks that old age is not such a bad time of life and
suggests that his buddies are guilty of assuming that life is all about food,
drink and sex. Cephalus quotes Sophocles the playwright and poet as follows:
Cephalus: . . . I was present . . . one time when someone asked the poet Sophocles: "How are you in regard to sex, Sophocles? Can you still make love to a woman?" Hush man, the poet replied, I am very glad to have escaped from this, like a slave who has escaped from a mad and cruel master." I thought then that he was right, and I still think so, for a great peace and freedom from these things come with old age . . . . (329 c).
Cephalus then goes on to say that if one's
entire life is "moderate and contented" then old age will be only
moderately burdensome.
Cephalus is pretty clearly intended by Plato to
represent an honest and moderate merchant, someone who prizes wealth and who
pretty much behaves himself for that very reason, for many desires can be very
expensive to satisfy. By keeping one's desires in check, one can work hard and
hang onto one's earnings. If one remembers the old tale about the industrious
ant and the shiftless and lazy grasshopper, Cephalus can be said to be ant and
his chums the grasshoppers. Although certainly not the worst of characters,
we'll see in the remainder of the Republic
that Plato thinks Cephalus and those he represents are not as virtuous as they
appear to be.
Socrates suggests that perhaps Cephalus has
an easy time with old age because of his wealth. To this Cephalus says that
there is perhaps something to this but wealth is not nearly as important in old
age as some suppose. Socrates then asks what is the greatest benefit Cephalus
has received from the enjoyment of wealth. Cephalus says, roughly, peace of
mind, i.e., wealth keeps one from having to lie and deceive others and also to
leave this life owing nothing to anyone, whether god or human. At this point,
Socrates asks Cephalus whether justice (dikaiosyne--pronounced:
de-cow-eye sue-knee) is simply telling the truth and paying back debts.
Before going on, a word or two about the
Greek term, dikaiosyne, translated as
justice or right. It is obviously the key notion of the Republic. I tell my students that it means, "right
behavior", in the broadest possible sense, especially right behavior
toward others. (Although we will see in the remainder of the book that Plato
regards justice to be a matter of taking care of one's own, of minding one's
own business, whatever it may be). The root of the term, dike, means way or manner of, and was often used to designate the
proper way of behaving for particular groups, including soldiers, kings,
slaves, farmers, etc. That is, a king would have his dike, or standard manner of behavior, a soldier would have a dike, or manner of behavior, and so on.
Finally, we can also take Socrates' question, what is dikaiosune, as asking how one ought to live life, what is the right
way to live? And isn't' that the most important question of all?
Back to Socrates and Cephalus. Oddly,
Cephalus never really answers Socrates' question. Instead, Socrates insists
straightaway that there is a problem with taking justice to be telling the
truth and paying back debts, viz., that on certain occasions, both can end up
being the wrong thing to do. To take a simple case, returning a gun or other
weapon to someone intent on using it to murder another would not be the right
thing to do. Ditto for telling such a person the truth about where to find
his/her intended victim. Cephalus agrees with Socrates that truth telling and
paying back debts does not make for a proper definition of justice.
Although it is early in the game and there is
much more to come, I still find this opening move by Socrates to be very
important indeed, for several reasons. Although a few may challenge Socrates'
contention that telling the truth to a madman intent on murder, or returning
his weapon to him, are not right, most of us willingly allow that telling the
truth and paying back debts is not always the right thing to do. I regard the
moral of this little Socratic maneuver then to be that knowing the right thing
to do in any particular case is not, and probably cannot be, a matter of
blindly following rules. Doing the right thing will always be a result of a
proper assessment of the particularities of the case at hand. Rules or principles are handy guides
but typically their application will involve judgment calls on our part. A blind adherence to rules or
principles can result, obviously, in very bad behavior, regardless of one's
"good intentions". (For a famous discussion illustrating that rules
or principles are not a foolproof means for doing the right thing, see Jonathan
Bennett's wonderful essay, "The Conscience of Huckleberry
Finn"). The upshot is that we
cannot simply close our eyes and "calculate" our way to the right
thing by mechanical application of our prized principles.
Relatedly, life is obviously messy and one
will very likely make incorrect assessments and judgments about people and
situations and events. As such, one may think one is doing the right thing but
in retrospect one can come to appreciate that what one did was not in fact the
right thing in the particular case. Such "mistakes" can be a result
of using the wrong principles or a mistaken assessment of the details of the
case at hand. Just as I can end up with the wrong amount of carpet or tile for
a room by either making a mistake in multiplying the length and width of the
room (corresponding to using a wrong principle, e.g., kill all nonbelievers) or
by mismeasuring the room's dimensions (this corresponds to having a mistaken
assessment of the details of a particular situation, e.g., making a mistake
about whether a person is a nonbeliever).
The Cephalus/Socrates exchange also reveals
Socrates' fussiness about answers to his "What is X?" questions. In
many Platonic dialogues, including Book I of the Republic, Socrates makes use of his infamous elenchus, (a Greek term that can be translated as
"refutation"). The elenchus
begins with Socrates asking a what is X question of someone (where X stands for
an important but also quite abstract notion, including courage, friendship,
piety, knowledge, beauty, love, etc.), the more prominent and respected the
better, getting an answer and then using the person's own beliefs to show that
the original answer was refuted and thus inadequate. Typically, however, a
single counterexample to the definition is seen as sufficient to refute the
definition.
Strictly speaking, of course, one counterexample is sufficient to scotch a
definition but it doesn't show that the original definiens is to be rejected
entirely, something that typically happens in Socratic dialogues. In this
particular case, there is something seriously wrong about rejecting
truth-telling and paying back debts as components or elements of justice simply
because there are or can be circumstances in which truth-telling or paying back
debts turns out to be wrong rather than right. All of us would certainly allow
that in most cases, it is right to tell the truth and return borrowed items.
Furthermore, since Socrates, in the elenchus, appeals only to his
interlocutor's own beliefs, it was clear, at least to him, that the
interlocutor didn't really know what X was, for s/he, by Socrates lights at
least, couldn't provide a proper definition of X. Once again however, it seems
as though Socrates is being overly fussy, is picking at nits. Even if one
grants that a Socratic elenchus was
successful (and this is granting quite a bit, as I'll show below), it doesn't
follow that one really doesn't know what X is, unless one simply assumes that
knowing what X is requires the ability to survive a (legitimate) Socratic elenchus. But why should one assume
this? More technically, why assume that knowing what X is requires one to be
able to articulate the essence of X, i.e., what all and only X things have in
common (where it won't do to say they all have X).
In ordinary parlance, most of us would allow that someone who could properly
separate X things from the nonX things could be granted knowledge of X,
regardless of whether s/he could articulate the principles or criteria used to
effect the separation. But this is obviously not enough for Socrates. For in
almost every case, he and his interlocutors have no difficulty at all in
determining which things, actions or persons do or do not count as X, or as
possessing X. The problem in every case is that of arriving at a proper
articulation of the principles or criteria used to separate Xs from nonXs. As a
philosopher, I do not, of course, wish to call for giving up the search for
such criteria or to regard the search to be as misguided as it is impossible to
complete (in short, I'm no Rorty!). However, I also do not want to indict
people as favoring the trivial over the sublime, or as "without
virtue", for resting content with a workaday knowledge of how to
distinguish Xs from nonXs.
Such was Socrates' goal of course, viz.,
showing the interlocutor that s/he was not nearly as wise (and so not nearly as
"virtuous") as s/he supposed. Truth be told however, Socrates is
antecedently committed to the idea that NO human at all has the sort of
knowledge of X that would enable him/her to give a proper definition of X. As
such, it ought to be kept in mind that Socrates, in the elenchus, is out to defend his belief that no human knows what X is
(in his fussy sense of "know"). Because of this, he is not, shocker
of shockers, inclined to treat his interlocutor's claims in the most
sympathetic manner possible. On the contrary, it's safe to say that Socrates
will pretty much do anything he can to secure a refutation of another's
definition of X, including offering ideas that he himself regards as false, and
purposely twisting one's words and claims so as to distort one's initial ideas.
No doubt this explains why so many of Socrates' fellow citizens were less than
impressed with Socrates' "refutations" of prominent citizens, viz.,
they found him guilty of distorting the words and ideas of his interlocutors.
Although Socrates contends, in the Apology,
that he was satisfied in every case that he had shown, via the elenchus, that his interlocutors
"did not know what they thought they knew", I suggest that this
satisfaction was not universally shared by his fellow Athenians. On the
contrary, it's safe to say that most came away thinking that Socrates was little
more than a not-so-slick word mangler and distorter, intent on making his
opponent look silly. Whether Socrates was so, or whether he was, as he claimed,
a great benefactor of Athens, I do not know. But judging from only the Apology and Book I of the Republic, I would have to say that
Socrates has a rather inflated regard for his talents and his views of life.
(More on this as I go).
The upshot of my digression on Socrates and
Socratic method is that one should not uncritically accept the view of many a
professor of philosophy that Socrates was a noble and great philosopher intent
on getting at the truth of things. Unfortunately, I think this rather
flattering picture of Socrates is one that has and continues to hold sway among
the majority of professors who still have something to do with ancient Greek
philosophy. The truth, I think, is somewhat different.
A nice corrective (although one that is perhaps not entirely fair) to the rosy
picture of Socrates presented by too many of my colleagues, is to see Socrates
as more like a present-day street preacher urging us all to change our
materialistic ways in favor of a life devoted to God. Most importantly, perhaps, one should not, as I am afraid
many of my fellow philosophy professors do, assume that Socrates' refutations
and arguments constitute something like the gold standard for philosophical
reasoning. I will never forget the
day, some years back, that I suggested to another philosopher that many of the
arguments Socrates puts forth in Book I of the Republic were anything but convincing. His response made it clear that he found the suggestion both
outrageous and patently false ( a response, frankly,
that I found a bit shocking, for I had assumed that the weakness of some of the
arguments in Book I was a well-known fact, and it is to some; silly me) and he
immediately challenged me to back up my claim. I did so but whether I succeeded in wiping some of the
luster off of my colleague's image of Socrates, I cannot say. I was content to get him to appreciate
that Socrates' arguments had some holes in them and could not stand as
presented in the text. I turn now to revealing some of these holes.
Socrates
and Polemarchus
Let's return to Book I of Republic. After Cephalus and Socrates agree that truth-telling and
paying back debts is not a proper definition of justice, Polemarchus jumps in
for his father and says that it is a proper definition, if, that is, the poet
Simonides is to be believed. At
this point Cephalus leaves the scene, letting Polemarchus incur Socratic
examination. (It's odd that Cephalus simply leaves, for he had earlier told
Socrates that at his age he enjoys conversation more and more; perhaps the
point is being made here that although Cephalus appreciates the art of
conversation he in fact does not enjoy it nearly as much as he thinks he
ought). Polemarchus says that according to Simonides, it is just to give to
each what is owed (or due) to him. Under Socratic questioning, this is altered
to the claim that it is just to do good to friends and
not harm and to give something harmful to one's enemies. At this point,
Socrates, as he often did, appeals to the notion of a craft (techne), which covers any skill or
activity requiring a specialized knowledge, including farming, being a doctor,
ship's pilot, cobbling, cooking, etc. Socrates assumes that justice is a craft
of some sort, as the following exchange makes clear:
Socrates: What, and to whom, does that craft give which we would call justice?
Polemarchus: It must follow from what was said before, Socrates, that is is that which benefits friends and harms one's enemies.
I suspect that many suppose, incorrectly I
believe, that Socrates is committed to the view that justice is a craft. But
there is no warrant for such a belief. As noted above, the fact that Socrates
asks Polemarchus what the craft of justice does and to whom, does not mean that
he is committed to regarding justice as a craft. It simply means that he has
assumed this in the course of the discussion. So long as Polemarchus does not
balk at the assumption, Socrates can feel free to use the assumption in his elenchus. Be this as it may, I believe
that it is wrong to identify justice as a craft. So if Socrates does believe
this, he is simply mistaken. Indeed, it is pretty clear from Socrates'
discussion with Polemarchus that justice ought not be regarded as a craft. (More on this below).
Socrates'
First Argument against Polemarchus
Socrates goes on to raise the question of what activity and task a just person
is most able to benefit friends and harm enemies. Socrates reasons that in
matters of health and disease a physician, not a just person, is most capable
of benefiting friends and harming enemies. Similarly, a ship's captain is most
able to do so when sailing is to be done. Thus, Socrates assumes that a just
person must have a special ability and area of expertise. But already things
seem odd. Just people need not have any special expertise, or at least whatever
expertise they may possess is irrelevant, in most cases, to their being just or
no. And just people certainly don't have a particular field of operation a la the doctor or ship's captain. So
much is obvious from the fact that we may always ask about the justice of
anyone, whatever his/her field of expertise.
We can ask whether our doctor is just or not, and whether our ship's captain is
just or not, etc. Such questions do not ask whether our doctor is really two
experts in one, that is, it is not like asking whether our doctor is also an
auto mechanic. It simply asks whether our doctor is someone who does the right
thing. (The question is ambiguous between asking about the doctor's justness
qua doctor or asking about the doctor's justness qua human being but this fact
doesn't challenge the point I am making). It is clear then that Socrates'
assumption that justice is a craft is a poor one.
Be this as it may, Polemarchus does give an
answer to Socrates' question, claiming that a just man is most capable of
benefiting friends and harming enemies "in waging war and alliances".
Of course, the obvious response to this claim would be to say that it's wrong,
for a general or other military expert would be much more capable than a just
person in benefiting friends and harming enemies in the case of wars and
alliances. But Socrates has bigger fish to fry and so does not give the obvious
response to Polemarchus' lame and ultimately futile effort to make justice out
to be some sort of craft. Instead, Socrates notes that most experts are at
various times of no use to others and asks how those who are not at war are to
be helped by the just person. Polemarchus says that justice helps one "use
or acquire" contracts, broadly construed. Socrates once again presses the
matter of what special abilities or areas of expertise does the just person
have to make him/her helpful in "contracts".
Socrates notes that in many associations with others, it is a particular sort
of expert that is helpful; a checkers player in a game
of checkers, a builder when bricks and stone are to be put together, a musician
in matters of music, etc. Polemarchus says that "in money matters", a
just person is helpful. Socrates presses the attack again and says this doesn't
seem to be so when money is to be used. Should I wish to buy or sell a horse, a
horse trader would be a more useful associate than a just person, for buying a
boat, a shipbuilder, claims Socrates. Polemarchus says just people are best at
keeping money, or other items safe, i.e., they are good at guarding them. At
this point, Socrates concludes that justice seems not to be very important
since with all things justice is "useless in their use, but useful when
they are not in use." That is, Socrates claims that justice isn't
important because it consists of merely guarding things, be it money or some
other valuable item.
Had sanity reigned at this point, two things
should have happened. First, Polemarchus should have challenged Socrates' claim
that justice as guarding seems not to be important. I am not sure what sort of
considerations go into weighing the importance of various activities but
guarding things seems at least as important as nearly any other activity. Two,
and most importantly, both men should have appreciated that something had gone
terribly wrong once the discussion concluded that justice is a matter of
guarding valuables and the just person is a guarder of such valuables.
Relatedly, of course, and as suggested above, the key problem with Socrates'
argument is that it fails to appreciate that justice is something that can be
present or absent in the case of any particular "craftsperson".
A doctor can be just or unjust, as can a ship's captain, a horse trader, a
builder, and a checkers player. But a just doctor is not someone who is skilled
at two crafts, like a doctor who is an expert checkers player. A just doctor is
a doctor who is just and so who treats others differently from an unjust
doctor. Saying exactly how or why a just doctor treats others differently from
an unjust doctor is the trick, of course. However, it is important to see what
Socrates and Polemarchus do not see here, viz., that any particular
craftsperson can be a just or unjust craftsperson and it is the just one,
rather than the unjust one, that is likely to make the better associate in
"contracts". (Obviously, there can be and are exceptions. Citing them
and examining them would, I think, help one get a better idea about justice and
the just person. But some of the cases I have in mind here are covered in the
second argument below).
The
Second Argument
Socrates' next complaint against
Polemarchus' account of justice again depends on the bogus assumption that
justice is a craft. In this
complaint, Socrates leans on the fact that craftspersons, or the best ones
anyway, have a "capacity for opposites". The idea is best illustrated by the case of a doctor. A skilled doctor is very good at
healing people, at keeping them alive but could also be very good at killing
them, if so inclined. As I joke in
my classes, if I was going to kill my wife (and I am not going to, I assure you!)
I would very likely have to lean on a very crude method, making it obvious to
all that she had been murdered (a la
O.J. Simpson). But a doctor might
very well be able to kill his/her spouse in such a way that no one knew the
spouse had been murdered. Such is the doctor's capacity for opposites. Socrates
reasons that if a just person is good at guarding
things, s/he would also be very good at stealing them as well, so the just
person turns out to be a kind of thief. At this point Polemarchus admits that
he didn't mean to make justice out to be craft of thieving but still believes
nonetheless that justice is to benefit one's friends and harm one's enemies.
I have never understood why anyone should be
shocked at the idea that just people turn out to be capable of theft, or
better, theft from one's enemies. Without getting bogged down in too many
subtleties, we have no trouble imagining scenarios where it would be just or
right to steal something from someone, particularly one's enemies. Unless one has naive ideas about just
people such that only choir boys, boy scouts and Ghandi and his followers count
as "really" just, it shouldn't be a shocker at all that just people
may from time to time have to act in ways not associated with choir boys and
the like. Furthermore, the fact
that a just person would turn out to be capable of, and perhaps do, things that
we would not typically regard as "just", should come as no surprise
at all given Polemarchus' definition of justice as helping friends and harming
enemies.
This should have been obvious from the start and hardly needed to be teased out
by appeal to the notion of a craft. Socrates could have simply asked straight-away whether Polemarchus thought it just to lie to,
steal from or otherwise harm one's enemies. One suspects
that Polemarchus would have said "Yes" and then a real debate could
have ensued. Finally, and this point seems to have been missed by most
commentators, Socrates himself is already committed to saying that
circumstances can make all the difference concerning whether a particular kind
of action is just or not. In arguing with Cephalus, Socrates already claimed
that truth telling is not always just, nor paying off one's debts. This commits
him to claiming that in the proper circumstances, lying may very well be just
or right. Ditto for stealing.
Nor is there much trouble in imagining scenarios where murder, or killing
"innocent people" may be right or just. (Some there are who would
regard murdering Hitler as just. There is also the infamous case of the fat
man, pardon me, the overweight person, in the mouth of the cave, who must be
killed in order to save many others). Socrates is being hypocritical then in
criticizing Polemarchus' definition on the grounds that it leads to the
conclusion that just people may have to be thieves from time to time.
The
Third Argument
Socrates' third argument appeals
to the possibility of making mistakes about one's friends and enemies. I might
believe that Jones is my enemy and Smith my friend and the reality may be
exactly opposite. If so, by helping Jones and harming Smith, I will end up
having harmed a friend (someone who is good) and helped an enemy (someone who
is bad), "a conclusion which is the opposite of what we said was the
meaning of Simonides". (Socrates, 334e). Now the
obvious response to this alleged "difficulty" is to remind ourselves that the discussion concerns people who are
mistaken about who their friends and enemies are. Because of their mistake,
they would end up harming friends (the good) and helping enemies (the bad).
But this doesn't reveal a problem with one's understanding of the meaning of
Simonides' definition, nor with the definition so understood. It simply shows that if one makes a
mistake in applying the definition to life, there is no guarantee that one will
in fact be doing just things. But
so what? Does Socrates expect
Simonides and Polemarchus to give us an account of justice which can be
unerringly followed, or which can never be followed incorrectly? That would seem to be a bit much to ask
of any account. If I tell you that
you can catch the bus to Nashville at 8:20 in the morning and you arrive at the
station believing it's 8:20 but because of a faulty watch it's really 10:20, I
am not to be blamed for you missing the bus.
Though he has been given no good reason to,
Polemarchus allows that he was mistaken to say that a friend was "one who
was thought to be helpful" and now wishes to say that "a friend is
one who is both thought to be helpful and also is [helpful]; one who is thought
to be, but is not, helpful is thought to be a friend but is not. And so also
with the enemy." (Polemarchus, 335). Basically
then, Polemarchus guarantees that one only helps those who in fact help oneself and harms only those who harm oneself. (How one
behaves, or is supposed to behave, toward those one thinks are helpful but are
not, we are never told. Ditto for how one behaves toward those one thinks are
harmful but are not. A bit of reflection suggests that this failure could
result in our not knowing how to behave toward a great number of people).
The
Fourth Argument
At this point, Socrates pulls out
his trump card and offers us his most plausible complaint against the notion of
justice advocated by Simonides and Polemarchus, even though it was a card that
Socrates could have played right from the start. Socrates asks Polemarchus:
"[I]s it ever the part of a just person to harm
anyone at all?" (Socrates, 335b). This is a good
question and Socrates offers us an argument designed to show that it is never
just to harm anyone. Unfortunately, the argument is really quite bad, for
several reasons. First, as many commentators have noted, Socrates clearly
distorts the notion of 'harm' such that by his lights, to harm someone amounts
to corrupting that someone, making him/her unjust. Although this makes it
practically analytic that no just person can harm another, it is also obviously
a distortion of Polemarchus' meaning and any standard meaning of 'harm' and so
does nothing to undermine the view that justice may involve lying to enemies,
stealing from them, killing them, etc.
For each of these activities can be agreed to harm the enemy but cannot be said
to render one's enemy corrupt or unjust. Worse yet, it is obvious that Socrates
himself is here leaning on ideas that he does not accept. It is pretty well
agreed that by Socrates' lights, no one else can make one corrupt or unjust but
oneself. It is only one's deliberate actions which do
so. (Not terribly surprising that Socrates believes this given that he believes
that akrasia or weakness of will is
impossible). As such, I do not see how Socrates could claim here that my
enemies are able to corrupt me or make me unjust by things they do to me,
including lying to me, stealing from me, maiming me, or killing my loved ones,
etc. Such a claim is clearly at odds with Socratic doctrine, as well as good old fashioned common sense.
It is odd that Socrates made use of the bogus
identification of harming someone with corrupting that someone or making him/her
unjust. Surely it was open to
Socrates to claim that justice is incompatible with harming others, even if one
understands 'harming others' in the usual way, i.e., understands it such that
it cannot be identified with corrupting others or making others unjust. Pacifists there are who would argue
that harming others is always unjust and they would not feel obliged to lean on
a bogus understanding of 'harming others' to do so. The key idea of such arguments is that those who harm others
harm themselves, whether they know it or not. A much more plausible and consistent line for Socrates to
take here then, but one which he does not take, is to claim that by harming
one's enemies, one will be rendering oneself unjust, making oneself less
excellent (arete) or virtuous.
Furthermore, there is textual evidence to suggest that Socrates was sympathetic
to such ideas. For example, in the
Crito, Socrates seems to advocate a
pacifism that would condemn as wrong any sort of harm to others, including
especially harm to others done in circumstances in which many of us would be
inclined to do it ourselves, i.e., harm done in the name of retaliation for
harm done to me or my family or friends. Indeed, Socrates notes the radicalness
of his idea by noting:
"So one ought not to return
a wrong or an injury to any person, whatever the provocation is.
. . . I know that there are and always will be few people who think like this,
and consequently between those who do think so and those who do not there can
be no agreement on principle; they must always feel contempt when they observe
one another's decisions." (Crito, 49d).
But the Gorgias contains what is perhaps Socrates' most explicit account of
the idea that wrongdoers and those who harm others are really doing harm to themselves.
It's a mystery then why Socrates does not here simply claim that harming of
others is always wrong (unjust), even in the usual case where the harm cannot
be said to corrupt others or to render them unjust, and it is so because it
corrupts the harmer, makes him/her unjust. Although I am not sympathetic to the idea that just persons
never harm anyone, given the usual notion of 'harm' (e.g., putting a guilty
person in prison for life without parole harms that person but it is not, ceteris paribus, unjust), Socrates would
have done better here to argue from the effects that harming others has on
harmers rather than "arguing" that harming others renders those who
are harmed more unjust. For the latter
argument not only rests on a distortion of Polemarchus' meaning of 'harm' (as
well as the standard meaning of 'harm'), it also leans on an idea at odds with
a fundamental Socratic doctrine, viz., that no one but me can corrupt me or
make me unjust. It also keeps
Socrates from addressing the real question, viz., whether harming others, in
the usual sense, is compatible with justice.
At the end of his discussion with
Polemarchus, Socrates makes a point of claiming that Simonides (or Bias or
Pittacus, two of the reputed seven wise men of Greece) ought not be understood
as claiming that justice is helping friends and harming enemies. Rather, it is more likely, says
Socrates, to be the view of wealthy tyrants who believe that might makes right.
A Digression on Other Commentaries on
Socrates' last argument against Polemarchus
Julia Annas, in An Introduction to Plato's Republic
In
her well-known An Introduction to Plato's
Republic, Julia Annas says that Socrates' last argument with Polemarchus
"is the most dubious, though in some ways the most interesting." (Annas, p. 31). Annas also calls it "an irritating
argument". I am, of course, sympathetic to both of these claims. However,
Annas sees herself as rejecting the standard view that sees Socrates' argument
trading on an ambiguity about the word translated as 'harm' (blaptein). By her lights, the standard
view has it that blaptein is
ambiguous between 'hurt' and 'harm' and Socrates draws a conclusion about
harming when Polemarchus was talking about hurting. I don't recognize this as
the standard view. The standard view has nothing to do with an ambiguity
between 'hurt' and 'harm', which ambiguity I'm not sure I see myself. Rather,
the standard view is that there is nothing in the notion of hurting or harming
to warrant the claim that to hurt or harm someone is to corrupt him/her,
detract from his/her arete or virtue,
to render him/her unjust or more unjust.
According to
Annas, "the fault in the argument, as often in Book I, is not an easily
locatable ambiguity. There is nothing wrong with the argument. The problems lie
rather in interpreting the premises." (Annas, p. 32).
With this I am sympathetic but it is echoed by standard accounts of the
argument as well. Annas goes on to say that Polemarchus "agrees without
argument that justice is the human excellence or arete, that is, that justice is to people what being a good
specimen of its type is to a horse or a dog." (Annas, pp. 32-3). I do not
see that Polemarchus in fact agrees to this. At best, Polemarchus agrees that
justice is a human excellence but not one that is definitive of human nature.
Annas goes on to say that the view that justice is the human excellence
"is rather a breathtaking assumption". (Annas, p.
33).
I agree but neither Socrates nor Polemarchus seem to me to make it. More
importantly, although Annas complains that this assumption is implausible and
that Socrates is not entitled to appeal to it here (Annas claims that Socrates
argues for the assumption later in the Republic,
a contention that I find somewhat dubious), she fails to connect any real
difficulties with the assumption or its use in Socrates' argument. But if
Polemarchus did accept the assumption as Annas claims (which I don't think he
does, for the assumption seems too strong to be identified with any parts of
Socrates' argument), it would be irrelevant whether Socrates had provided any
support for it. He is, after all, trying to argue against Polemarchus, not the
world.
Finally,
there is much in the remainder of Annas' discussion that is puzzling. On pp.
33-4 Annas says: ". . . Socrates has shown that
even on Polemarchus' conception of justice, it cannot be right [just] to harm
the bad [one's enemies who are in fact bad]. However, the argument was presented as though Socrates was
not merely pointing up another inadequacy in Polemarchus' conception but was
making a point that he holds himself. And so there is some awkwardness, for Socrates accepts the
conclusion of the argument, but he does not accept Polemarchus' conception of
justice which is used to reach it." This is puzzling, given Annas' opening
statement that Socrates' last argument is "irritating" and "the
most dubious". For Annas here
seems to say that Socrates has successfully established "even on
Polemarchus' conception of justice", that it cannot be right or just to
harm the bad. But if Socrates can
be said to have established this claim then whither the dubiousness of
Socrates' last argument? For if
one holds that Socrates' claim is legitimate, the conclusion that harming
enemies cannot be part of justice cannot be avoided.
For
starters, I don't understand Annas' "even on . . ." clause, since
that is the conception that Socrates is challenging throughout the argument. Would Annas have Socrates establish
something here that concerns a different conception of justice from that of
Polemarchus' conception? I admit I am confused. And as noted above, if Annas
thinks Socrates has established that it cannot be right or just to harm the bad
(albeit assuming Polemarchus' conception of justice) then why does she call the
argument "the most dubious" of those Socrates uses against
Polemarchus? Once again, I am
confused. Finally, I want to
dissolve Annas' difficulty about Socrates arriving at a conclusion he accepts
while using a conception of justice he doesn't accept.
To begin with, Annas never makes clear what "conclusion" she has in
mind here. I'll assume the conclusion is, "It cannot be just to harm the
bad (or anyone, for that matter), for that is the only conclusion she mentions
in this section. But this is
surely an odd way of putting things. I do not see Socrates
"concluding" that it cannot be just to harm the bad. Rather, he concludes that it cannot be
just or justice to make another unjust and he arrives
at this conclusion by claiming that to harm someone is to make him/her unjust.
So the argument is as follows: Polemarchus
claims that justice involves, in part at least, harming the bad. Socrates claims that harming someone
makes him/her unjust or more unjust. Thus, on Polemarchus' conception of
justice, it's just to make people unjust. This is obviously absurd, forcing
Polemarchus to reject the second premise or reject his conception of justice.
Contra
Annas, I do not see that Socrates uses the conclusion that it cannot be just to
harm the bad. If there is room for
puzzlement here, we might wonder how it is possible for Socrates to claim that
harming someone makes him/her unjust, if Socrates is working with Polemarchus'
conception of justice. That is,
how can someone who is working under the assumption that justice is helping
friends and harming enemies possibly claim that harming someone makes him/her
unjust?
Relatedly, and perhaps this is part of Annas' worry, how can the claim that
harming someone makes him/her unjust be true on Socrates' own, presumably non-Polemarchian,
notion of justice? Taking the
second point first, I see no difficulty at all that a claim that reduces one
conception of justice to absurdity could simultaneously be one that holds true
of another conception. As for the
first point, the easy answer is, of course, that it one can do no such thing. That is, it isn't possible for the
"justice is helping friends and harming enemies" crowd to claim that
harming someone is to make him/her unjust. But this is just to say that the latter, if accepted, reduces
Polemarchus' notion of justice to absurdity. If Polemarchus sees no way to reject the idea that harming
someone makes him/her unjust, he's got a dilemma that can only be resolved by
giving up his notion of justice.
However, as noted above, most of us find it absurd to suppose that
harming someone (e.g., torturing him/her) makes him/her less excellent, less
just.
Terence Irwin in Plato's Ethics
Irwin
rightly notes, among other things, that Socrates' assumption that to harm other
people is to make them more unjust, is controversial. Irwin also claims, controversially so by
my lights, that Socrates' assumption that it is not a proper exercise of
justice to make other people unjust, is also
controversial. In the former case,
Irwin says that the first assumption "would be true if justice were
necessary and sufficient for happiness; for in that case the only way to make
people worse off would be to make them more unjust." (Irwin,
p. 172).
Irwin presumably finds it controversial to suppose that justice is necessary
and sufficient for happiness. As
such, I find difficulties here. First, I don't see how justice being necessary
and sufficient for happiness would make it true that to harm others is to make
them more unjust. The only way to
render this plausible is by accepting the implausible claim that those who are harmed, are rendered unhappy. At the very least, Irwin should allow that such a claim is in
need of clarification concerning the boundaries and scope of human happiness. Do harms have to render me irretrievably
unhappy? If so, it's not clear there has been a single harm in the history of
humankind. Similar remarks apply
to Irwin's claim that justice being necessary and sufficient for happiness
leaves the only way to make people worse off that of making them more unjust,
i.e., unhappy.
This claim seems to require us to assume, again implausibly so, that the only
way to harm someone, or make them worse off, is to make them unhappy. Whether I am happy or not about my enemy
killing my spouse, or burning down my house, the fact is that I have been
harmed by such acts, rendered worse off as a result. The bottom line here
however is that Irwin seems to me to have made a bad and unnecessarily
sophisticated case for a correct claim, viz., that there are problems in
Socrates' claim that harming others makes them more unjust. As I noted above, the key difficulty
with Socrates' assumption is the implausibility that someone can, by doing
something to me (harm or otherwise), make me unjust. This assumption is clearly incompatible with Socrates' belief
(and common sense) that it is only one's deliberate actions that determine
one's justness or not. The claim
is equally implausible as well for those who hold that some harms
may very well be conducive to my justice, e.g., incarceration or other
punishments for my wrongdoing.
As for
Irwin's claim that there is something controversial about Socrates' assumption
that it is not a proper exercise of justice to make other people unjust, his
reasoning is as follows: ". . . [H]ow do we know that the just person will not make other
people more unjust? Socrates
answers that the exercise of justice will always benefit others and make them
more just; why should we believe that?" (Irwin, p. 172).
It seems to me that Irwin has given Socrates too much credit. Socrates doesn't
really argue for the claim that it cannot be the function of just people to
make others more unjust (unless one thinks that reiterating a claim in
different words constitutes an argument; more on this below). Rather, he simply assumes it is true,
regarding it as a truism. So Irwin
is giving Socrates too much credit here when he says that Socrates answers the
question: "How do we know that the just person will not make other people
more unjust?"
Socrates doesn't answer this epistemological question (again, unless one thinks
repeating oneself in different words is answering; more on this below) because
he doesn't think it needs an answer, anymore than the question, "How do we
know poor people aren't rich?" needs an answer. We know that poor people
aren't rich because if they were, they wouldn't be poor. Similarly, we know that just people
don't make others unjust because if they did they wouldn't be just. (The mental
feat needed to appreciate this claim is identical to
that needed to appreciate the following: We know that knaves cannot be truth-tellers because if they
were, they wouldn't be knaves). As such, Irwin's claim that Socrates' answers
the first question above by claiming that the exercise of justice will always
benefit others and make them more just, is off the mark, for Socrates never
asks the question, "How do we know . . . ?"
As Muddy Waters might say, you can't answer what you ain't
never asked.
As suggested
above, there is also a difficulty with "the answer" which Irwin puts
in the mouth of Socrates,viz., it doesn't answer the
question Irwin raises. Although it is true that Socrates uses the analogy of
heat and dry to claim that it is the function of the good (just) to benefit people
(make them just?), this can hardly be said to be a proper answer to the
question: "How do we know that the just person will not make other people
more unjust?" For it is
nothing more than the positive form of the very statement which led Irwin to
ask the original: "How do we know . . .?"
question. That is, anyone willing to ask how we know that just people do not
make others unjust ought not be satisfied by being told that just people always
benefit others and make them more just. For this "answer" does nothing more than beg the
original question.
So Irwin is certainly correct that Socrates' alleged "answer" permits
one to ask the very same question as he asked about Socrates claim that just
people will not make others unjust, viz., "How do we know . . . ?" Irwin
is correct about this because Socrates' alleged "answer" is nothing
more than a restatement of Socrates' assumption that just people cannot make
other people more unjust. So
anyone who has doubts about this assumption will, and ought, to have doubts
about the claim that just people always make others more just. Irwin's mistake then is to think that
Socrates regards his assumption that just people don't make others unjust to be
in need of support. Socrates
regards it as a truism, on a par with the claim that it is not the function of
hot things to cool nor the function of dry things to make things wet.
But now for
the $64 question: What about Irwin's worry? That is, is Socrates right or justified in ignoring Irwin's
question: "How do we know that just people will not make others
unjust?" Or, to put it differently, is Socrates correct in thinking it a
truism that just people don't make others unjust? I think he is, for the claim strikes me as a truism as well. Of course, it is always possible for someone
to question the truth of what one regards as a truism. It is possible that
someone asks: "How do we know that dryness does not make things wet?"
But the question betrays a conceptual misunderstanding, in this case a failure
to understand the concepts, dry and wet respectively. Ditto, by my lights, for ‘just’ and unjust’.
More importantly, in order for the question to make sense, we must be able to
make sense of the possibility of a dry thing making something wet. I confess, a la Parmenides, to not being able to make sense of this. Similarly, the sense of Irwin's question
requires us to take seriously the possibility of a just person's just actions
somehow making another person unjust. I do not know what I would say to someone who took this
possibility seriously. But at the
very least, we can dismiss Irwin's claim that there is something controversial
about Socrates' assumption that it is not a proper exercise of justice to make
other people unjust, until he can offer us a way of making sense of the
possibility of just actions making others unjust.
Last modified September 17, 2011
JAH, Professor
Dept. of Philosophy