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Plato and Common Morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Julia Annas
Julia Annas
Affiliation:
St. Hugh's College, Oxford
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Extract

In the Republic, Socrates undertakes to defend justice as being in itself a benefit to its possessor. Does he do this, or does he change the subject? In a well-known article, David Sachs pointed out that there seems to be a shift in what Plato is defending. The challenge to Socrates is put by Thrasymachus, who admires the successful unjust man, and by Glaucon and Adeimantus, who do not, but are worried that justice has no adequate defence against Thrasymachus. In all these passages justice is discussed in terms of the non-performance of actions which are regarded as unjust according to common morality; Sachs calls this common concept of ordinary justice ‘vulgar justice’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , December 1978 , pp. 437 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1978

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References

1 ‘A Fallacy in Plato's Republic’, Philosophical Review 1963; reprinted in Vlastos (ed.), Plato, ii.Google Scholar

2 Vlastos, , in ‘Justice and Happiness in Plato's Republic’, in Plato ii ed. Vlastos, pp. 67–8, points out that Plato never commits himself to the impossible task of proving ‘that any just act, or arbitrarily selected set of just acts, must “pay”’; what is to be shown to pay is the condition of being a person who dependably does such acts. But the emphasis is still on the actions; it is by them that we identify the state which is beneficial. I shall stress this point heavily later on.Google Scholar

3 Cf. 344 b–c, 348 d, 360 a–c.

4 Vlastos, , op. cit., esp. pp. 68–9.Google Scholar

5 Cf. Kenny, , ‘Mental Health in Plato's Republic’, British Academy lecture 1969, reprinted in The Anatomy of the Soul.Google Scholar

6 Cf. Demos, , ‘A Fallacy in Plato's Republic)’, Philosophical Review (1964)Google Scholar, Weingartner, , ‘Vulgar Justice and Platonic Justice’, Philosophical and Phenomenological Research (1964–1965)Google Scholar, Schiller, , ‘Just Men and Just Acts in Plato's Republic' Journal of the History of Philosophy (1978)Google Scholar, Vlastos, op. cit., Kraut, ‘Reason and Justice in the Republic’ in Exegesis and Argument, Phronesis Suppl. 1, Sartorius, ‘Fallacy and Political Radicalism in Plato's Republic’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy (1974).Google Scholar

7 My approach is closest to Schiller's. Schiller's own analysis is more flawed than he seems to recognize as an answer to Sachs's challenge, since he admits (p.12) that on his account Plato's defence of justice covers different senses of ‘justice’, thereby still leaving Plato with a fallacy of equivocation as bad as the original.

8 This is thq type of answer provided by Demos and Weingartner.

9 In particular, if the rule of reason requires the highest knowledge, of the Forms, only a few will be Platonically just and there will be no road from common to Platonic justice. This difficulty can be met in different ways (see Demos, , p.396Google Scholar, and Weingartner, , p.252), but it lessens the appeal of this approach as a means of closing the gap between Platonic and common justice.Google Scholar

10 pp. 91–5.

11 pp. 214–24.

12 To simplify exposition I shall omit Kraut's terminology of normative and nonnormative rule of parts of the soul. The normative sense, in which reason rules if a man's aims and values are those of reason, is prominent in books 8 and 9. Kraut admits that the main argument in book 4 to distinguish reason from desire establishes only the non-normative sense: reason wins the battle, but in a way compatible with the agent's having many kinds of values. Kraut does not remark that since the important conclusions about justice come at the end of book 4, Plato cannot be distinguishing the two senses as clearly as Kraut does; conclusions appropriate to one are built on the other.

13 Plato, , p.39. Gosling takes this to be a ‘misinterpretation’ once we really understand the nature of Platonic justice; I shall comment on this below.Google Scholar

14 p.215n.ll; pp. 223–4.

15 Cf. Sparshott, , ‘Socrates and Thrasymachus’, Monist (1964), 427–32.Google Scholar

16 There is actually some difficulty in seeing what exactly Plato's attitude to traditional morality is, according to Gosling. In his ch.5 he stresses the revisionary character of what Plato is doing, but ch.14 puts more stress on Plato's continuity with the ordinary moral consciousness (p.227, pp. 237–8.)

17 Also Gosling seem somewhat oddly to go back on this on p.62: ‘In fact Plato insists on talking of human excellence, including ‘justice’, in individual-related rather than species-or community-related terms, with the result that only a few achieve unqualified excellence.’

18 Gosling has to rely heavily on books 8 and 9, where the thumoeides does have a more expansive role. He can do less with the book 4 passages where Plato defines it, esp. 441 a–b, where it is distinguished from reasor by the fact that it is found in animals and very young children. Gosling has to explain this away as being merely the raw material whose tendencies can be exploited; but what he needs is something which is essentially the product of education and training.

19 Gosling tries to avoid this problem by arguing later in the book that these studies are not as value-neutral as they seem to us. However, Plato thinks that there is at least a prima-facie conflict between the Guardians' intellectual desires and what justice demands of them (520 a–e), as Gosling admits pp. 69–71). For a more convincing defence of this point see Cooper, J., ‘The Psychology of Justice in Plato’, American Philosophical Quarterly (1977).Google Scholar

20 e.g. Popper, , The Open Society and its Enemies, vol.1, pp. 121–6, esp. 121: ‘“Whom do you call true philosophers? – Those who love truth” we read in the Republic. But Plato himself is not truthful when he makes this statement. He does not really believe in it, for he declares in other places rather bluntly that it is one of the royal privileges of the sovreign to make full use of lies and deceit.’Google Scholar

21 p.78.

22 Cf. the interesting though confused passage at 382, where Plato distinguishes the ‘lie in the soul’ from its mere image in words. This reads as though mere words could form a lie, without the benefit of any intention, whereas what he really needs is a distinction between lies told with good intent and lies told with bad intent. It is significant all the same that we find an attempt to distinguish an act of lying from the act of a liar.

23 Cf. Dent, , ‘Virtues and Actions’, Philosophical Quarterly (1975), von Wright, The Varieties of Goodness, Burnyeat, ‘Virtues in Action’, in Socrates, ed. Vlastos.Google Scholar

14 It is interesting to note the dominance of the agent-centred concept in Stoic ethics; rules can be given, in the main, for or appropriate actions which are not peculiar to the good man, whereas or morally good actions proceeding from a virtuous disposition cannot be listed by their content. Stoicism takes to an extreme the notion that the range of right actions is given by the notion of the good agent and what he thinks fit to do; according to some Stoics at least, even cannibalism and incest may in appropriate circumstances be right, as performed by the good man. On the test case of truth-telling the Stoics hold unequivocally that the good man may say, with good intent, a statement which is false and yet still be in possession of ‘the truth’, because he has knowledge of the truth as a whole. (See Plutarch, , Stoic, rep. 1057Google Scholar a–c, Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. vii. 38–45Google Scholar (and PH. 80–3); Long, A. A., pp. 98–102Google Scholar in Problems in Stoicism, ed. Long, and ‘The Stoic Distinction between truth and the true’ in Brunschwig (ed.), Les Stoicïens et leur logique.)

25 Dent claims that the agent-centred approach fails for a virtue like justice which is essentially other-regarding, although it gives an adequate account of a self-regarding virtue like temperance.

26 This is the line taken by Demos, (p.396Google Scholar) and Weingartner, (pp. 251–2.)Google Scholar

27 Schiller, (pp. 8–10)Google Scholar, Vlastos, (pp. 89–92)Google Scholar, Kraut, (pp. 215–16).Google Scholar

28 Nicomachean Ethics 2, 1103a31-b25.Google Scholar

29 I am indebted to Myles Burnyeat for making me aware of this point.

30 Nic. Ethics 1107a9–17. Complicatior are added by the fact that according to Aristotle there are also some which it is always wrong to have, and this brings in the agent's character. However, the wrongness of these is as unexplained by the doctrine of the mean itself as the wrongness of the actions which should never be done.

31 It is often thought that Plato wanted moral Forms in order to provide stability md objectivity for moral judgements. Cf. Cherniss, ‘The Philosophical Economy of the Theory of Ideas’, in Plato i. ed. Vlastos, pp.17–19Google Scholar. But there is no real evidence for this; :learly moral Forms are important for Plato, ind do provide practical as well as theoretical reason with stable and unchanging objects; but there are no arguments directed against the insufficiency of alternative accounts of noral reasoning as such. Cf. Moravcsik, , ‘Recollecting the Theory of Forms’, in Facets of Plato's Philosophy, Phronesis Suppl. 2, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

32 Sartorius stresses the political radicalism implicit in Plato's conclusion that Platonic justice can only be attained by a few unless existing social conditions are completely changed. This is an important side to the Republic's argument, one which I have neglected in this paper in order to concentrate on the change in moral ways of thinking.

33 ‘The Good of Others in Plato's Republic’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1972–1973).Google Scholar

34 For some criticisms of a similar type, against the unreality of a moral theory, cf. Lukes, S., ‘Moral Weakness’, Philosophical Quarterly 1965.Google Scholar

35 Cf. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 9 on the methodology of moral argument.

36 This paper has followed the existing debate in focusing on the Republic, where the points at issue are discussed most fully. It is worth while, however, to compare other dialogues, notably Gorgias 505–8 where psychic order and harmony are presented as leading to commonly just actions. The ‘justification’ of common morality offered at Laws 660–4 is interestingly different in structure, but retains the hint (663 d ff.) that manipulation and deceit are regarded as legitimate ways of producing just actions in the state.

37 I am grateful to Myles Burnyeat, Christopher Gill, and Anthony Long for helpful discussion and comments.