Happiness, Justice, Truth, and the State in Plato's "The Republic"

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Happiness, Justice, Truth, and the State in Plato’s “The Republic”

Introduction
In Book II of the Republic, Adeimantus tells Socrates that “Appearance tyrannizes over truth and is the lord of happiness” (365c). Plato’s optimism about how his ideas would be received, digested, and understood could be gleaned from how the more challenging questions to the “wisest” and “justest” man that ever lived, Socrates, were posed by two youths, Glaucon and Adeimantus. While with no lesser capacity for understanding than his brother Adeimantus, who is graver and apt to probe deeper and directly, Glaucon glides and jests and nevertheless helps the discussion to draw out the normally ironic and “unphilosophic” Socrates so that Plato’s teacher and main character in the dialogue could be explicit about his theory on justice, happiness, and the state. The two youths, like all young people, are believers, but would deign that they have to be convinced about why Socrates was able to demolish the sophistry of a character like Thrasymachus in Book I of the Republic. What is the meat behind the great teacher’s seeming reluctance to embrace definitions or to be chained to the solidity of words or statements? And indeed, a true philosopher, such as Socrates, could not pass up the challenge from a worthy student and proceeds to overturn Adeimantus’s statement – that on the contrary, truth and happiness are allies or are under one roof, which Plato call’s the Good, and appearances are mere shadows, and are, in fact, not real. In the Republic, Socrates, however, recognizing and not outrightly dismissing the keen observation of Adeimantus, proceeds to paint the picture of Plato’s ethical and political philosophy by a method that is thoroughly deductive and one that is hinged on how the individual and the State are the
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two points of reference from which concepts such as happiness, justice, true knowledge, and philosophy could be adequately understood or seen.
The modern society, now armed with the instruments of science, as well as the recognized experts and authorities of how governments must be structured and function have dismissed Plato as an authoritarian, one who seemingly distrusts democracy and one who endorses “the well-ordered state” – a state that functions wherein citizens have pre-assigned lots or usefulness, with his “prescriptions” on who constitutes the rulers, guardians, and auxiliaries. However, this reading of Plato will fall exactly behind to what Adeimantus has termed as “appearances” which cannot be understood in its proper light, without a thorough reading of “The Republic” as a text – a text that has been erroneously or simplistically seen as merely providing the choices for the forms of government. What Plato set out to do in The Republic was to outline or establish no less than the moral foundations of the state. And these foundations should constitute the proper reading of Plato.
Justice lodged in the individual and in the state
No ordinary sane, functioning citizen, whether of ancient Greece or of the modern society or the existing states, can outrightly dismiss Adeimantus’s observation which he posed to Socrates. In fact, it is an accepted notion. What the youthful challenger to Socrates meant is exactly the problem of practically every individual who wishes to follow what has been taught him or her in his youth, that truth and honesty, are to be valued. But the notion of happiness, tempered by experience, is where the problem lies –

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this can be gleaned from the practice that no adult, parent or otherwise, explicitly teaches the young that truth leads to happiness. Doing so would be tantamount to deceit, not because it is lie, but because it has never been proven as so – or at least, it cannot be adequately explained. And the young are not apt to be deceived, but neither are they are adequately constituted for the truth. Perhaps that is why, elders who know, but wish to guide without being explicit, are careful with solid prescriptions. The seeming solidity of appearances, since we live in a physical world, is where we all naturally start from. The notion of happiness, at least from where Adeimantus is coming from or what he seemingly points at, is equated with what much of the society recognizes as happiness – for one, success is equated with happiness. One is happy or we judge people as happy because they have what society has sanctioned as constituting happiness. However, most people, because one can only know so many people in one’s lifetime, cannot probe deeper; that is, to probe deeper what lies behind this façade or appearances – of being happy. This is what the philosopher Plato had set out to do in the Republic – to probe deeper behind appearances.
The primary question posed in the Republic is whether the just turns out to be better or happier than the unjust – when in fact most, if not all, people acknowledge that we are all under the spell of appearances, if we live in a society, and that truth and happiness take a backseat with the preoccupation with appearances. Plato’s choice was to situate the individual in the State so that he could define and explain the concepts of justice, truth, and happiness. From Book I, Socrates already, by demolishing sophistry, has established

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that justice is psychological unity in the individual – that is, justice is defined in one who is true to his or her soul’s make-up – and this he loosely define as being constituted of three elements, the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive aspects of an individual. Enter Adeimantus, who says that justice is merely a necessary evil that citizens agree upon to have and enforce, through laws, so that one is protected from other’s encroachments. Accordingly, this justice is only founded on the fear of being punished. Therefore, justice, according to this prescription, is a deterrent to the recognized tendency in human beings to be a law or a world unto himself or herself, without boundaries or limits. Thus, Socrates and Adeimantus have both given a true account of justice, more or less, as it is lodged and constituted in the individual and the society respectively. The challenge however, is to show how justice in an individual is related to public or societal justice. For Plato, the individual and society must co-exist in order for justice, truth, and happiness to have moorings and solidity.
The visible and intelligible
Plato would not be able to show the hidden fallacy in Adeimantus observation if Socrates has not explained first how we see, perceive, or conceive reality. In various metaphors (which are all brilliant and shows how Plato, who wishes to expunge art and artists from his ideal state, in fact, uses the artist’s or poet’s way to show or explain his theory) Socrates establishes first that appearances or the solidity are in fact mere shadows or images of a false light. From the “allegory of the cave,” people in the society are portrayed as prisoners who only see what puppets show them – and these pictures, or “appearances” they see as real because they cannot see any other, not when they cannot
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even turn their heads for them to realize that the light that gives shapes to the figures on the wall is only a fire in the cave. The real light, if these prisoners should venture out of the cave, is of course outside. This is the sun, which Plato conceives as the source of reality or true illumination, because with it we see things clearly, with their shadows, yes, but more importantly, we see the solidity and the real shapes of things, things that we can see, touch, and feel, without puppets who project them in different shapes, without showing their true form or forms. Much of the condemnation of Plato’s philosophy has been his seeming elitist notion that only philosophers could see things as they are and that they are only the ones who venture out of the cave or who see the sun, the source of light. However, Socrates explains that in everyone, there is the element of reason or the rational side, that is in fact waiting to be tapped, should one be equal to the task. The guardians or the rulers of the utopian state which Plato conceives must be equipped with the arms of science and mathematics to keep the state in step with the psychological unity of the just individual. In the illustration of the divided line, it is the philosophers who cross the line into much wider span of the intelligible world – compared with the shorter span of the visible world – the one where appearances (images), as well as the solid, actual representation of the material world. Most people, perhaps the most adjusted, could go only to the border between the visible and intelligible. This is because the intelligible is a place probably steeped with challenges and one must be well be equipped with venture into it. Those who cross over have ventured into first the hypothetical, mathematical representation of the visible world – this is the world of scientists, experts, people whom

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the world naturally looks on for reliable “truths.” However, most people, again people in the visible world, mistakenly think that this place where science takes her abode is where truths lie, and it is all too common in modern society, for example, to take what scientists and experts or authoritative figures say, do, or prescribe as gospel truths, without realizing that what science dishes out, anywhere in time, whether in the past, present, or future, will always be a tentative knowledge. Plato therefore conceives of the place where the absolute, unchanging, reality resides – the abode of the forms, or the Form, where the ultimate Good resides. For Plato, the visible world, or even the intelligible world where science and mathematics reign, is subject to a multiplicity of representation or images that may have infinite patterns and will be subject to change. In contrast, his quasi-religious conception of the abode of the Good or the absolute Form is ceaseless and unchanging, but is the source and the cause of the multiplicity of images and representation that we all see and even conceive. Perhaps Christian and modern religions had taken a page out of Plato in his concept of the ultimate Form as well as scientists. For example, Aristotle, Plato’s student, who is perhaps the first true modern practicing scientist, with his championing of the inductive method, has termed the first cause of motion as the Unmoved Mover and the cause of all change in the physical world.
The well-ordered state
After explaining the nature of reality, Socrates then shows how justice would be preserved in the state. Much of the characteristics of the state in Plato’s The Republic have been erroneously pointed out to indict Plato as an enemy of democracy and that he endorses eugenics and even communism, with his prescription of the abolition of private
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property. However, again, a thorough, systematic reading of the text would reveal that Plato’s state, like St. Thomas More’s Utopia is in fact a “no-place” – meaning it is out of this world, and should only be used as an ironic solution to the hard realities and challenges of a society composed of people who have different constitutions, temperaments, beliefs, and tendencies. The actual, operational form may be and can be dismissed – like Plato’s five forms of government (aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny, in their order of preference) based on the soul or souls of people who constitute them – but the spirit or moral foundation is altogether real. The reality in Plato’s well ordered state is moored on the realistic reading of human nature. For example, he says that traders must be focused on making money, guardians must be focused on the guarding the state, and philosophers must be the rulers. In modern political systems, to establish the relevance of Plato’s utopian state, it is accepted that interest groups or parties with relations in authorities ideally must not meddle in the workings of the state because conflict of interest is an altogether enemy or a hindrance to the well-functioning government or state. Therefore, the lot of people in a well-ordered state must be preserved, otherwise, according to Plato, there will be chaos. Plato conceives of democracy as a form of government wherein the state has altogether degenerated and is on its way to collapse, toward the ultimate evil, tyranny. For him, democracy is where people’s constitutive appetites have taken over the rational side which should decide what must be valued or pursued. Thus, this form of government, wherein philosophers are either seen as the enemies or are rendered useless, is evil and

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far from the best form of government, which he writes as the aristocracy, where philosophers are the rulers or the kings. Accordingly, philosophers or the just should
reign because their rational side has clearly established what must be pursued and one that is after the good of everybody in the state. Moreover, one indication that this must be so is that philosophers do not want to rule, but have to be forced by necessity. In the allegory of the cave, Plato opines that those who have seen the light must come back to the cave so that others who are still prisoners of unreal images and opinions can also have the choice and be told that the images on the wall are not all there is.
Conclusion
By the end of Book X of the Republic, Socrates has shown that Adeimantus’s statement is at best, like the shadows or images in the cave, mere opinions, that are only distortion of reality. As to the question of whether the just turns out to be better or happy than the unjust, Socrates says that there are two condition which point toward the positive, unrecognized but hoped for supposition: one is that being just is its own reward and that happiness resides in those who follow their nature and act in accordance with them, for according to Socrates, one cannot be great in one aspect and not neglect the other parts; and yet, secondly, in a well-ordered state, the society wherein the seeker of the truth should look to, there is hope for just compensation, and one can be assigned the lot that one is most equipped for it – and this goes for both the just and the unjust. As Socrates says, “Let a man do what is just, whether he have the ring of Gyges or not, and even if in addition to the ring of Gyges he put on the helmet of Hades. Power as lodged in this metaphorical ring can be the test to see whether one is true to his or her nature. In the
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end, once can see that Plato is not the airy head that one supposes that he is – his idealism is rooted in moorings of the society, which he likes to be perfected, according to his
conception of the Good. Whether this perfection is attainable does not seem to preoccupy Plato in the Republic. What he is after is the discovery and the presentation of reality – and that the truth and our hopes, dreams, and desires should use this reality as the starting point.