2023

Plato :
Republic
Characters:

Socrates
Thrasymachus
Hesiod
Minor Characters
Cephalus
Polemarchus
Cephalus' son.
Glaucon
Adeimantus
Er
Homer
Simonides
SUMMARY:
After a religious festival, Socrates is invited to the house of a
wealthy merchant named Cephalus. There, Socrates joins a
discussion with
Cephalus,Polemarchus, Glaucon, Adeimantus, and the
Sophist Thrasymachus about the nature of justice. Socrates
soon proves that Cephalus and Polemarchus' conception of
justice as telling the truth and paying what is owed is
insufficient, and he likewise disproves Thrasymachus's belief
that justice is simply whatever is of most advantage to the
stronger person or people.
But Socrates does not state what his own idea of
justice is. Instead, he proposes to "create" an
ideal city that will show justice on a large scale. Once
they have defined a just city, Socrates believes, they'll
be able to examine justice in an individual.
Socrates' ideal city depends on education,
specialization, and social structures that define family,
behavior, and loyalty to the city.
Each person will specialize in a specific occupation,
an occupation that is chosen for them by the city
based on their aptitudes and abilities as children.
Education, especially of the guardians who will
function as guards or soldiers as well as rulers, is the
key to the success of the city. Imitative literature in
which the author creates the voices of different
characters, "imitating" human behavior, is forbidden.
. Literature must reflect only good behavior.
Those who will be laborers or craftsmen will form
the "producer" class. The best of the guardians
are given special education to prepare them to
rule. The others from the initial group of
guardians will become the warriors for the city.
Wives and children of the guardians are
held in common. The rulers will lead very
simple lives, forbidden to touch gold or silver
or to own property. Their daily needs will be
met by the other residents of the city so that
guardians can rule without distraction.
Themes:

Education:

Object of educational System – to produce citizens

who are loyal to the city and who best fill the city’s
need.
Auxilaries
Guardians
Philosopher-Kings

All children-education identically until 18 yrs. Old

-Those destined to be producers- end their education
-remaining students are trained physically and
militarily
-Those destined to be warriors are separated
from the guardians, the future rulers.
-The guardians are educated for several more
years, until the very best, the most loyal to the
city are given further education as pertained
philosophers-kings.
Education- especially for the guardians and
warriors) is destined to encourage the good
of the city as a whole; rather than the good
of the city as a whole; rather than the good
of the family or the individual.
Justice
-Socrates associates justice with structures in
human soul and social structures in the city.
-Justice in the individual is a state in which the
rational soul controls both the spirit and the
appetitive soul. Such person is just, and will
behave justly.
Specialization
-Each person should specialize in an
occupation that he is specifically suited for.
-Education encourages specialization and
determines each individual’s natural
aptitudes.
Ability for warfare- warriors
Gifts needed to rule- guardians
Best of Guardians- Philosopher-kings
Philosopher King
-Only the philosopher has true knowledge;
he can truly know the forms, the ideal
abstracts of objects and ideas.
-Since he has knowledge of the Forms and
he understands how to rule, he is suited to
lead.
The Soul
-Immortal; has three parts

Rational- think, measure, calculate

-Spirit/ Will- emotional aspect
-Appetitive-driven by lusts and appetitives
Just man- rational part dominates,
moderating and controlling the other two
parts.

If either the appetite/ spirit dominate, then

the man is neither just nor happy.
3 parts of soul--- 3 classes of people.

Just City:
Guardians--- rational…. (rule)
Warriors------spirit
Producers----appetitive
Truth
Core virtue of the city and of the philosopher-
king.

Literature that shows gods and men behaving

untruthfully is forbidden. Deceit is forbidden,
except for the guardians who may tell falsehood
for the good of the city.
-true knowledge and true philosophy- require
understanding of the Forms
-For instance, Only the Form of Beauty is truly
Beautiful= changeless, abstract, ideal, perfect.
Others are but just shadowy, reflection, a copy.
2023

Plato :
Phaedrus
Characters

Socrates
Phaedrus
Lysias

Minor Characters
Theuth
Thamus
The philosopher Socrates encounters
Phaedrus, a young student of rhetoric, outside
the Athens city walls. When he learns that
Phaedrus has just come from hearing Lysias, a
famous orator, Socrates is interested in hearing
Lysias’s speech for himself. He persuades
Phaedrus, who’s carrying a copy of Lysias’s
speech, to read it aloud.
Lysias’s speech is addressed to a young man, arguing that
it’s better to have a sexual relationship with someone who’s
not in love with you than with someone who is. A primary
reason for this, according to Lysias, is that people in love
aren’t in their right mind, and they act under the compulsion
of madness rather than according to free choice. Lysias
also tries to persuade his listener that the long-term social
advantages are greater when a relationship is grounded in
friendship rather than passion.
When Phaedrus sees that Socrates isn’t impressed
with Lysias’s speech, he prevails upon his friend to
deliver his own speech in response. Though he’s not
enthusiastic about doing so, Socrates agrees and
gives a speech parodying Lysias’s. Like Lysias,
Socrates speaks as a man trying to persuade a
younger man to sleep with him even though they’re
not in love.
He defines love as a form of madness that occurs
when desire overpowers one’s better judgment. This
madness causes lovers to deprive their beloved of
good things out of jealousy, even keeping them from
philosophy, that source of greatest happiness. Love
eventually spends itself and fizzles out, leaving both
men in a worse condition than they were before.
After Socrates finishes his speech and is about to leave, he
senses a supernatural nudge warning him that his words
have displeased the gods by slandering Eros, the god of
love. Socrates starts over with a second speech. He
completely changes tactics by arguing that it’s wrong to
reject the advances of a lover on the ground of the lover’s
madness. When madness is given by the gods, it is a
praiseworthy thing. The very best “madness” is love.
In defense of this idea, Socrates gives an elaborate explanation
of the nature of the soul. He describes the soul metaphorically as
a winged chariot driven by two horses, one noble and one filled
with lowly desires. Souls that can control their “horses” attain the
summit of heaven and glimpse eternal realities, but most are
dragged back toward earth by the lowly horse. Those who can
remember their soul’s glimpse of eternal beauty in an earlier
existence are constantly oriented heavenward, making average
people assume they’re mad.
Socrates goes on to explain that the philosophically inclined soul
will work hard to restrain his “bad” horse through self-control and
remembrance of heavenly beauty. With lots of practice, the lowly
horse is eventually subdued, and the lover enjoys a passionate
relationship with his beloved, but it’s focused on the beauties of
philosophy, not on sex. Only this kind of relationship orients
someone’s soul heavenward; thus, there are greater benefits in
a relationship with one who’s in love with you than with someone
who isn’t.
Socrates and Phaedrus then discuss rhetoric and the difference
between good and bad speaking, since Phaedrus admits that
Socrates’s second speech is superior to Lysias’s speech, but he
can’t explain why. Socrates begins by establishing that rhetoric
must be concerned with the truth, not just with what appears to
be persuasive. Next, he explains that, if rhetoric is a “leading of
the soul by means of speech,” then it’s important for a speaker to
understand the nature of the soul.
Together they examine Lysias’s speech and discuss
Lysias’s failure to properly define his subject from the
beginning. Socrates explains that precise definition is
important and is connected to the philosophical practice of
dialectic—of clarifying a topic through step-by-step inquiry.
He shows how he carefully divided up the topic of
“madness” in his own speech in order to lead his audience
through his argument that love is a desirable form of
madness.
He also argues for the indispensability of the
soul to the practice of rhetoric; no one who has
merely mastered rhetorical skills can claim to
be an expert in the art of rhetoric unless he
knows how to apply rhetorical remedies to
specific souls in specific contexts.
Finally, Socrates and Phaedrus discuss the propriety of
writing speeches. Writing is a relatively new and ambivalent
technology in Socrates’s eyes—it promotes the appearance
of wisdom while undercutting the reality of it. This is
because writing is silent and lifeless, unable to respond to
inquiry or challenge. Philosophical dialectic is superior,
because it’s adapted to each specific soul and, through
interaction, guides that soul toward wisdom.
Themes:
Soul’s Struggle for Wisdom

Soul – a winged pair of horses and their

charioteer
-one is noble and good
He other is the opposite
Perfectly winged soul- sail above the earth;
govern cosmos

Souls lost their wings- fall to earth; mortal

bodies
Plato rejects determinism- soul
must continually strive to look
beyond earthly beauties to eternal,
heavenly beauty..
-extricate their base desire (bad
horse)
One must continually battle desire
if one hopes to contemplate
genuine truth; for most people
distractions of the world make this
fight prohibitively difficult.
Soul determines the form it will
occupy in its next existence
(depends on the ability to achieve a
vision of reality.
Souls weighed down will be planted in the seed of humans
occupying various stations in life.

Saw most= lover of wisdom (a philosopher)

Subsequent levels: kings, athletes, physicians, mystics

Less respectable- demagogues and tyrants

Key to regain one’s wings-
remember the beauty one has seen
while following the gods among the
rim of heaven; in short,
contemplation.
A philosopher uses earthly
reminders of beauty to raise him up
again to ultimate beauty.
Limits of Writing
Writing things down
- not common
- Ambivalent new technology
- Has inherent limitations; can’t replace the
interactive, personalized nurturing of
individual souls through philosophical
discourse.
- Does not improve memory
- Mere reminder: appearance of wisdom
instead of wisdom itself.
- Will repeatedly read about knowledge but
won’t actually internalize it.
- Dead letter; unlike philosophical dialectic-
conveyed through conversation

-Has strange feature: like painting, they stand

as if alive, but of asked, will preserve a solemn
silence.
Speech is more flexible and
customizable; it can be
tailored depending on the
audience.
Irony of Socrates and Phaedrus’ discussion
- It takes place in a dialogue that’s been written down.
- Plato obviously saw value in preserving and passing
down his ideas.
- Only that Plato makes a serious point about the
pedagogical limitations of writing and the importance of
attending to the needs of actual, flesh-and-blood
learners through personal, spoken discourse.
Love and Madness

Lysias- relationship with men who don’t love them (not

driven mad by desire)- based on self interest ( one who will
share their advantages )

Socrates: (Plato) God-given madness of love orients

people toward a philosophical life;
(2nd)
- God’s greatest gift is love
- Metaphor of the soul:
Two horses: -noble
-bad
-The soul remembers the beauty- eternal beauty continually
with these two horses when in the presence of a beautiful
lover
The more often the “bad horse” is forcibly
subdued by restraint, accompanied by the
remembrance of true beauty, the more
passion becomes tamed. Instead of being
tempted to sexual indulgence, “the soul of
the lover follows the beloved in reverence
and awe” and is more and more oriented
toward a life of philosophy.
Besides harmony in this life, such a
philosophical soul is on its way to regaining
the heavenly sight of beauty, and thus
immortality. People who are occupied with
such things are usually dismissed as
“mad,” but this madness is god-given, and
is the wellspring from which love flows.
To sum up Socrates’s argument, then,
it’s preferable for a man to have a relationship
with one who’s in love with him. If he doesn’t
grapple with the “madness” that springs from
love, he won’t have the opportunity to train the
“horses” leading his “chariot,” thus gaining the
pleasures of philosophy and the eventual vision
of true beauty.
In contrast, if one embraces the seeming
“good sense” of a relationship with
someone who’s not in love with him, he’ll
only gain “miserly benefits of a mortal
kind,” causing him to “wallow mindlessly
around the earth” instead of contemplating
eternal truth and beauty.
Rhetoric and Philosophy

-Rhetoric (Soc)- “ a kind of leading the soul

by means of speech was sometimes
dismissed as a manipulative art that held
loosely to the Truth.
-Isn’t a shameful pursuit; but isn’t enough
for a speaker to master rhetorical tools.
- To truly speak/write well, he must
understand souls; a good rhetorician
must be a philosopher
- Socrates rejects the idea that the goal of
rhetoric is persuasion alone.
Socrates argues that rhetorical tools are
indispensable for speaking and writing well.
Socrates suggests that they examine the
speech Lysias gave, and the speeches
Socrates gave in response, to understand the
proper use of rhetoric.
When Phaedrus reads Lysias’s speech again,
Socrates points out that Lysias doesn’t define “love”
from the beginning. This is a problem because, while
audiences have the same meanings in mind when
they hear concrete terms like “iron” or “silver,” an
abstract term like “love” sends everyone in different
mental directions.
Socrates explains that “every speech should be put
together like a living creature, as it were with a body
of its own, so as not to lack either a head or feet but
to have both middle parts and extremities”; that is,
each part should fit with each other part and with the
whole. This organic structure serves truth by
ensuring that the orator’s argument can be clearly
understood throughout.
Socrates explains that a speech needs to be divided
at its “natural joints,” not sliced up like the work of an
“inexpert butcher.” Because Lysias failed to divide
his subject properly, he discussed madness as
though it were a single thing, while Socrates divided
“madness” up into various kinds and was thus able
to show how love is a praiseworthy form of it.
Socrates goes on to explain that this ability to collect and
divide so as to speak and write properly is actually not
rhetoric per se, but dialectic—the systematic inquiry into the
truth which Socrates held to be the heart of philosophy.
When dialectic, with its concern for truth, is joined to other
rhetorical tools, rhetoric is on its way to being truly
philosophical. One more thing is needed, however.
To use the tools of rhetoric and dialectic well,
Socrates argues, it’s necessary to have a thorough
knowledge of the soul. Socrates explains that if
somebody claimed to be an expert doctor, but in
reality only knew how to cause a patient to vomit or
help their bowels move, people would say that that
“doctor” may have stumbled upon a remedy or two,
but didn’t know anything of the science of medicine.
Likewise, a novice musician can’t claim to be
an expert on harmony just because he knows
how to produce high and low notes on his
strings. Such things are necessary rudiments
and prerequisites, but in no way does grasping
them suggest mastery over the sciences of
which they’re part.
From this Socrates argues that, if rhetoric is indeed
the leading of the soul by means of speech, then
“the man who means to be an expert in rhetoric must
know how many forms soul has,” “why some people
are like this, and others like that,” why different
people are responsive to different methods of
persuasion, and so on.
. Only when someone has learned these things and
observed them in real life is he then prepared to
speak in different ways suitable to different
occasions (that is, be a true rhetorician). Whenever
someone lacks the fullness of this knowledge of
souls and how to address them, he isn’t truly
speaking according to the science of rhetoric,
regardless of what he claims.
By having Socrates examine the three speeches that occur
earlier in the dialogue, Plato is able to build a nuanced
argument for the necessity of rhetoric as well as its
insufficiency by itself for speaking well. He neither
dismisses the value of rhetoric as a persuasive tool nor
disregards its potential risks; instead, he raises the broader
contemporary debate about rhetoric to another level by
showing that the orator must also be vitally concerned with
whom he is persuading—that is, he must be a philosopher.