The Idea of Virtue in Antiquity (I): Plato (A)
This blog posting is dedicated to the memory of Robert W. Bretzlaff (1918 - 1988), who was a master farmer in Champaign County, Illinois; who maintained interests in agriculture and civil engineering; and who held all matters of music and of the mind in high regard. He would have been 105 years old as of the day of this posting, and he has been greatly missed. From 1854 to the present day, from his predecessors Gustave and Henry W.; and to his successors Robert S., William S., Zachary J., and Ethan H.; this Bretzlaff line in the U.S.A. has greatly enjoyed the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - - and not even to mention the benefits of occasional blog postings!
In this blog posting (and its successors), we want to investigate the idea of virtue in Plato’s Republic (Books I - IV), which is famously centered on the idea of justice in a city-state. For initial working definitions, let us assume that a virtue is a trait of excellence in action (moral virtue) or in thought (intellectual virtue); and that justice is the actual awarding to an individual human person of his due, or what he has earned, be it reward (distributive justice) or punishment (retributive justice). There may be other traits besides justice that are virtues, as well as alternative definitions of justice. Moreover, there might be disagreement regarding whether justice is properly predicated of individual human persons, of society at large, or of both.
Background regarding justice: Someone claiming proceeds from labor or capital might be told “Having been subsidized by good government, ‘you didn’t build that,’ meaning that you didn’t earn anything beyond the subsidy; and any continuing income stream accrues to the government!” Someone requesting protection from illegal activity via the deterring effect of a criminal justice system might be told “Having been oppressed by bad government and evil victimizers, some individuals previously known as criminals have been recategorized as “the victimized”; whose conduct has been contextualized, and whose punishment has been cancelled!” If such claims and requests are routinely denied, then, evidently, one would be forced either to abandon the possibility of justice or else to re-examine its underlying rationale. Perhaps there are alternative ways to ground justice as rights and obligations pertaining to life, liberty, and property; and if so, then those rights and obligations must be secured by a sovereign who - - although striking terror into the minds of a rebellious populace - - can at least prevent life from becoming truly solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Plato’s dialog, the Republic, bears the title Politeia in transliterated Greek and De Republica in Latin. The Latin title may also be rendered in English as “On the Public Thing” or “Public Affairs.” The Republic examines the ethical questions: “What is virtue?” “What is justice?” and “Why should a person or city be just?”
For a work widely known as a discussion of political theory, the Republic gets off to a somewhat surprising start: Socrates’ interlocutor, Cephalus, fields a question about the greatest benefit that accrues, in old age, from the possession of property (Book I: 330d - 331b). Cephalus states that he is concerned about his personal fate in the afterlife. Not being personally aware of any debt that he still owes to other individuals, to his city-state, or to the ancient Greek deities - - and evidently presupposing that unencumbered wealth is an independent, summary indicaton of being debt-free - - Cephalus hopes to attain to the poetic model of a man living out his days in justice and piety.
Of course, the mere mention of a concept or idea like justice entices Socrates to start one of his typical examinations. Socrates, Cephalus, and Polemarchus consider the definition of justice (331c - 336a) and advance to the point of saying that to be just is to benefit friends and harm enemies. Suddenly, Thrasymachus breaks into the conversation, maintaining that “the just is ‘nothing else’ than the advantage of the stronger” (336b - 338c).
Whereas Cephalus had started with the presupposition that being just is an attribute of an individual human person, Thrasymachus stated an abstract version of the just that could be applied equally well to governments, their ultimate rulers, and by extension, to any individual human person. In fact, Socrates quickly pivots from individuals to governments and their leaders (338c - 356b). Socrates deduces that justice is virtue and wisdom, while injustice is vice and ignorance (350d); that disunity (inner faction and lack of self-agreement) destroys individuals, while political faction destroys cities (351e - 352a); and that injustice can never be more profitable than justice (354a).
It is during this dialog with Thrasymachus that Socrates enunciates the Greek presuppositions that the soul (psyche, or principle of life) has its own unique work (353d); that a good or bad soul manages “things” (living generally) either well or badly (353e); and that he who lives well is either happy (be it on a dichotomous or on a continuous scale) or even blessed (as an asymptotic limit to the continuous variable of happiness - see 354a).
“Happiness” is a value term, synonymous with well-being or flourishing. A second construal is as a word that purports to be a purely descriptive psychological term, grouped together with terms like ecstatic, tranquil, or depressed; and serving as a metric for relentlessly utilitarian government programs. The purely psychological construal is certainly not what Plato had in mind, because Platonic happiness requires ethical action in order to live consistently with the objective essence of rational human persons.
Later in the Republic, Book IV, we will be told that the soul can be considered as having three faculties: See 436a for the distinction between learning [facts or reasons], desiring [and willing] pleasures, and feeling anger. This “psychology section” in Book IV runs from 436a to at least 440d. The three-fold faculties of the human soul are referred to the intellect, the will (or desire), and the emotions. It is taken to be self-evidently true that the intellect - - dealing as it does with rational processes - - is the highest faculty of that rational animal known as the individual human person; and that, for the favored few, the rational process known as the contemplation of the Forms of truth, beauty, and goodness is the highest activity, approaching the limit of blessedness.
Returning to the end of Book I, Thrasymachus “abandons the field,” and Socrates summarizes the investigation so far as follows (Book I: 354b): We interlocutors have failed to determine “what justice is” (regarding its essential nature) before trying to ascertain “something about it” (regarding its description as virtue or vice). Asking whether justice is virtue and knowledge, or whether injustice is ignorance and vice, is premature as long as no one knows “what justice is.” Consequently, Socrates says that “the present outcome of the discussion is that I know nothing. For if I don’t know what the just [or justice] is, I shall hardly know whether it [justice] is a virtue or not, and whether its possessor is or is not happy.”
Glaucon and Adimantus now ask Socrates (Book II: 357b) if he had really thought that he had convinced them of the superiority of justice during his previous argument against Thrasymachus. In other words, “Is it always better to be just than unjust?” Glaucon challenges Socrates to give a better argument for his [Socrates’] position (357b - 358d). Socrates accepts the challenge (358d). Glaucon then recapitulates and embellishes Thrasymachus’ argument (358e - 362c). Next, Adimantus continues the development of Thrasymachus’ objections to the thesis of the superiority of justice over injustice (362e - 367e).
At that point (368c - d), Socrates remarks that their examination of the nature and origin of justice requires keen vision. This keenness is like that required for seeing, from a distance, small letters (of the alphabet) drawn on a wall or surface. Reading larger drawn letters on a larger, closer surface would be helpful in discerning letters, words, sentences, and meaning. It is accepted by Adimantus that there is an analogy between discerning such drawn letters by sight and discerning justice by intellectual vision and rational argument.
In 368e - 369a, we are told that because there is more justice in the larger object [city or city-state], therefore the city-state is more amenable to the analysis of justice than is the individual person. We want to continue “looking for the likeness of the greater in the form of the less.” (The idea of “more justice in the larger object” is also mentioned in Book IV: 434d - e.) Moreover, if we can theoretically construct the origin of a city-state, then we should be able to pinpoint the origin of justice and injustice within the city-state. In other words, Socrates believes that an account of the nature and origin of a good city - - and of its justice and virtue - - will help identify justice and virtue in an individual human person.
Next week we will continue to follow Plato’s construction of the ideal city-state and his illumination of the idea of virtue in the ancient world.