2. Surprise #1:
Democracy gets third place
“There is your much admired Cretan or Spartan
type; ... second in common estimation, though it’s
burdened with many evils, there is the type called
oligarchy; thirdly, and by contrast, follows
democracy; and finally comes tyranny, often
thought the finest and most outstanding of all, but
really the most diseased.” (544d)
3. Surprise #2:
Rulers need to be unenthusiastic
“ ... the state whose prospective rulers come to
their duties with the least enthusiasm is bound to
have the best and most tranquil government, and
the state whose rulers are eager to rule the worst.”
4. Surprise #3:
Status quo vs. change
Unchanging episteme (knowledge) vs. fickle doxa (opinion)
“If philosophers have the capacity to grasp the eternal and
immutable, while those who have no such capacity are not
philosophers and are lost in multiplicity and change, which of
the two should be in charge of a state?”
...
“...we will appoint as Guardians whichever of them seem
able to guard the laws and customs of society.” (484c)
5. Payment & selflessness
“At any rate, they expect to be paid for them,
which shows that they don’t expect any benefit for
themselves but only for their subjects.” (346a)
6. One of the most alarming
claims ever made?
SOCRATES: “The society we have described can never grow into
a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the
troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself,
till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now
call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and
political power and philosophy thus come into the same
hands ...”
GLAUCON: “My dear Socrates, if you make pronouncements of
that sort, you can’t be surprised if a large number of decent
people take their coats off, pick up the nearest weapon, and
come after you in their shirt sleeves to do something terrible to
you. ...” (474a)
7. Education & duty
“‘But,’ we shall say, ‘we have bred you both for your own
sake and that of the whole community to act as leaders
and king-bees in a hive; you are better and more fully
educated than the rest and better qualified to combine
the practice of philosophy and politics. You must
therefore each descend in turn and live with your fellows
in the cave ...” (520c)
8. Democratic man
“He’ll establish a kind of equality of pleasures, and will
give the pleasure of the moment its turn of complete
control till it is satisfied, and then move on to another, so
that none is underprivileged and all have their fair share
of encouragement.” (561b)
...
“There’s no order or restraint in his life, and he reckons
his way of living is pleasant, free and happy, and sticks to
it through thick and thin.” (561d)
9. The masses: “a large and powerful animal”
“Suppose a man was in charge of a large and powerful
animal, and made a study of its moods and wants; he would
learn to approach and handle it, when and why it was
especially savage or gentle, what the different noises it made
meant, and what tone of voice to use to soothe or annoy it.
All this he might learn by long experience or familiarity ...
But he would not really know which of the creature’s tastes
and desires was admirable or shameful, good or bad, right
or wrong; he would simply use the terms on the basis of its
reactions, calling what pleased it good, what annoyed it
bad.” (493b-c)
10. Mind as government
“In the end they capture the seat of government,
having discovered that the young man’s mind is
devoid of sound knowledge and practices and
true principles, the most effective safeguards the
mind of man can be blessed with ... The vacant
citadel in the young man’s mind is filled instead by
an invasion of pretentious fallacies and
opinions.” (560b-c)
11. Tyrannies of scale
Thrasymachus: “Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and
violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred or profane,
private or public. If you are caught committing such crimes in
detail you are punished and disgraced: sacrilege,
kidnapping, burglary, fraud, theft are the names we give to
such petty forms of wrongdoing. But when a man succeeds
in robbing the whole body of citizens and reducing them to
slavery, they forget these ugly names and call him happy and
fortunate... So we see that injustice, given scope, has greater
strength and freedom and power than justice...” (344b)
12. Dreaming & waking
“Look; isn’t dreaming simply the confusion between a resemblance
and the reality which it resembles, whether the dreamer be asleep or
awake?” (476c)
“ ... And so our state and yours will be really awake, and not merely
dreaming like most societies today, with their shadow battles and their
struggles for political power, which they treat as some great
prize.” (520d)
“...even in the outwardly most respectable of us there is a terribly
bestial and immoral type of desire, which manifests itself particularly in
dreams” (572b)
“...under the tyranny of the master passion he becomes in his waking
life what he was once only in his dreams, and there’s nothing, no
taboo, no murder, however terrible, from which he will shrink. His
passion tyrannises over him...” (575a)
14. Harmonious / oppressive?
“The object of our legislation ... is not the special
welfare of any particular class in our society, but of
the society as a whole; and it uses persuasion or
compulsion to unite all citizens and make them
share together the benefits which each individually
can confer on the community; and its purpose in
fostering this attitude is not to leave everyone to
please himself, but to make each man a link in the
unity of the whole.” (519e-520a)
15. A clean slate
“The first thing our artists must do ... and it’s not
easy — is to wipe the slate of human society and
human habits clean. For our philosophic artists
differ at once from all others in being unwilling to
start work on an individual or a city, or draw out
laws, until they are given, or have made
themselves, a clean canvas.” (501a)
“On a blank sheet of paper, free from any mark,
the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be
drawn.” (Mao Zedong)
16. Ruling as techne
Techne: “It may thus be said to cover any skilled activity with its rules of
operation, the knowledge of which is acquired by training. But it is a
very elusive word to translate, varying between art, craft, professional
skill, and science according to the emphasis of the context.” (p.14-15,
Penguin 2007 ed.)
Socrates: “And training to the interest of the horse and not its owner.
Nor does any form of skill seek its own interest (it needs nothing) but
that of its subject matter.” (342c)
“And therefore, my dear Thrasymachus... no ruler of any kind, qua ruler,
exercises his authority, whatever its sphere, with his own interest in view,
but that of the subject of his skill. It is his subject and his subject’s
proper interest to which he looks in all he says and does.” (342e)
