Book review
One of the best books I have ever read! Period.
The book, throughout, is designed over the principle that the city is a magnification of each individual that comprises the city. Socrates attempts to find individual justice through civic justice, which is a magnified form of justice. Readers may ask whether a city is just a collection of individuals or something more. According to Gestalt psychology, that may not be true, and Socrates’s initial assumption would turn out to be too simplistic.
One nice challenge while reading Plato is that because his arguments are wishy-washy (contrary to Aristotle, who is more precise), you have to constantly engage your mind to assess his arguments. Although Plato intends to introduce Glaucon and Adeimantus, Socrates’s conversational partners, as ideal students of philosophy, now that we have 2400+ years of civilization under the belt, we would have to be more careful about agreeing with Socrates when Glaucon and Adeimantus mostly do (they are almost like yay-sayers). In short, the book will make you think, and the conversational format encourages that.
I shall now list ten books and review each of them.
Book I: Socrates uses his Socratic method (elenchus) to battle with the sophist Thrasymachus, who claims that ‘justice is the advantage of the stronger.’ Although Socrates overturns the sophistic statement to Thrasymachus’s grudge, Plato does not end his investigation of justice here. For the next eight books, he will attempt to give a positive definition of what justice is and further demonstrate that justice is good for its own sake, not just because of its reward.
Book II: This is where Plato first mentions the division of labor. According to Plato, people don’t change over their lives, so they should be assigned to the tasks they’re suited for. Once the role is assigned, however, they are stuck there for the rest of their lives. Human freedom of wanting to do something else, therefore, will be suppressed in Plato’s ideal society.
Afterward, Plato claims that all poems, except those praising the gods and heroes, must be banned due to their unwholesome nature. Although it is important that the children not be mostly exposed to stories that could implant a healthy overview toward the world (I hope that no one, hopefully, would read American Psycho to their toddlers as a bedtime story), censoring the art for the masses bears many similarities with propaganda that socialist regimes have used to control people’s opinions.
Book III: Interesting discussion of music and poetry. Dorian and Phrygian modes are said to encourage the courageous spirit. Ionian mode, on which much of Western classical music and popular songs are based, are said to be relaxed and suitable for drinking parties. Ha!
Book IV: Plato divides the just city into three parts: the rulers led by reason, the guardians led by emotions, and the producers led by appetites. Because each individual is a miniature version of the city, Plato likewise divides the human mind into three parts: rational, spirited, and appetitive. Moderation is achieved when the three parts of the mind are in the right relationship: the rational part must rule over both the spirited and the appetitive parts. I found it interesting that this division later inspired Freud to divide the mind into id, ego, and superego. Here id corresponds to the instincts; ego, reality; superego, morality. Freud’s conception of healthy psyche is also different from Plato’s moderation: the ego must be a mediator between the id and the superego.
Book V: Because guardians and rulers must have no private properties to lust after, even wives and children must be shared. Children shall never know who their parents are so that they treat all adults as their father and mother. Likewise, all adults shall treat the children as their own. Plato claims that this will reduce the intergenerational conflict and advance the harmony of the regime.
Note that guardians and rulers will only breed with each other, leaving producers to breed with their own. Because the masses wouldn’t be able to understand the full-fledged philosophical argument, Plato even advocates spreading the myth of the metals to encourage men of higher metals (gold and silver) and baser metals (bronze and iron) to breed with their own kinds. The unfit ones would not even receive medical services to not pollute the gene pool (or metal pool, as the Greeks would say) of the city. This rings too similar to a socialist regime spreading propaganda to encourage eugenics. Ouch.
Book VI: This is where Plato expounds on his theory of Forms through multiple analogies. He claims that because only philosophers could study and grasp the Forms, which is the source of all knowledge, only they would know what is good for the city. The sensory world that the appetitive people are attracted to is nothing but a shadow of the Forms that fleets away. Therefore, a just city would be ruled by a philosopher-king. Plato emphasizes that men with a philosophical nature should not be exploited by others for their personal gain; that leads to those without the philosophical nature to take the position of philosophers – most of them become sophists, a kind that Socrates denounces.
Book VII: The famous analogy of the cave is employed to further advocate the philosopher-king. Socrates emphasizes that education must not be compulsory but voluntary because children would absorb the materials better that way – something that I wholeheartedly agreed with. Socrates also claims that the students should not learn dialectics, the highest form of study, until they turn thirty, because it could be used for sophistic arguments without adequate philosophical nature and training. Given that there are smart alecks in the world, there’s probably a kernel of truth in the previous statement. I found his comparison between mathematics and dialectics very interesting. He claims that dialectics is a higher form of learning than mathematics because while mathematics hinges on unprovable hypotheses, dialectics don’t need any hypotheses at all. But then, can there ever be a subject that relies on no prior assumptions at all? Can something be built over nothing? Can a castle be erected on thin air?
Book VIII: This was an insightful book on different political systems lesser than the aristocracy. Because everything eventually decays and things fall apart, aristocracy devolves into timocracy, which in turn devolves into oligarchy; democracy; and finally tyranny. Note that democracy, upon which many modern societies are built, is the second-worst form of government. As Socrates mentioned earlier, human freedom to do what he or she wants will not be tolerated in a just city. Democracy is fraught with chaos due to these many desires, and at this point of degeneracy, rich people will do whatever to extort money from poor people. Therefore, the poor people will plot a revolution against the rich, and they would appoint the drones, who don’t belong to any of the societal roles, to overthrow the rich. Substitute ‘poor people’ with the proletariat and ‘the rich’ with bourgeoise, and you will see the uncanny similarity with the rise of the Socialist movement. It turns out that those drones, after overthrowing the rich, become the despot that oppresses the poor. Therefore, the drone leader resembles the modern dictator in this respect. However, unlike the drones who become the leader to satiate their appetitive nature, many modern dictators have become leaders due to their flawed ideologies (think Nazism of Hilter and extreme nationalism of Pol Pot) based on reason, which ironically Plato praises over.
Following the principle that the individual is a miniature version of the city, Plato also describes different constitutions that a man can take. He also explains how the corruption of the personal constitution happens over generations. Drones are the problem! It was very fun to reflect on which constitution I followed the most.
Book IX: Plato paints a chilling portrait of a political tyrant, who fears being killed in revenge for all the crimes he committed. Therefore, political tyrants live the most wretched life. Therefore, by connecting the civic justice to individual justice, Socrates has shown that justice is good for its own sake! Finally, his goal is achieved. However, there is one more book left. Why would have Plato appended another book? Read on…
Book X: That’s it, Socrates said it: all poets must be banished! From his harsh criticism of the poets, it is clear that Plato held a low view of art due to its imitative nature; art is fickle, easily changed by different viewpoints. Plato follows the similar logic in his another dialogue Ion to claim that poets don’t know about the subject that they talk about, that they must be divinely inspired by the Muses to hold and sway the emotions.
Finally, Socrates concludes his long treatise with a fantastic picture of an afterlife based on the myth of Er. Those who lived just lives will be rewarded tenfold in the afterlife, and those who lived unjust lives punished tenfold. Afterward, each is given a chance to choose his or her future life. Those trained in philosophy will choose wisely, but those ignorant will choose a tyrannical life. An interesting implication is that even though a person lived justly in the previous life, if he or she has little to no philosophical knowledge, the person is likely to choose tyrannical life due to its apparent comfort. Therefore, Socrates makes a strong statement that even though one may not be a philosopher, it is still important for the one to obey the philosophers and be well-versed in the subject so that the one will choose a better life next time. Therefore, by learning philosophy, you will continue to improve your quality of life through iterations. Isn’t that a powerful argument for why one should study philosophy? I certainly think so!
- Goodreads rating – 3.96
- SUMMARY – Unpil