101 City Soul Analogy as Diagnosis in Book 4 PDF

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City Soul Analogy from the Republic ...

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City-Soul Analogy as Diagnosis Preliminary: Sick City: The craving for luxuries requires that the sick city hold itself if a permanent state of war. So the military class becomes the most important class, and its breeding and training becomes the preoccupation of the rulers. (The Sick City is “ideal” only on condition that the feverish city, based on military efficaciousness, is good and best.) Sick Soul: So in the sick soul the unruliness of the appetites evokes and sustains a permanent conflict in the soul, which requires an alliance between the calculative (“rational”) and spirited parts of the soul in order to maintain order in the soul. Socrates wants his interlocutors (and Plato wants us) to examine the sick city and soul and to see it for what it is.

Virtues in the Sick City (427d-434c) Wisdom of the sick city: --judgment about the whole city and its relations with other cities --possessed only by rulers Problems: --what kind of judgment about the whole? the sick city is concerned primarily only with external goods and luxuries; is at odds with other cities competing for externals --rulers are contrasted with craftsmen; hence the “craft” of ruling is missed --is wisdom to be found only in the elite rulers? (if the city is the model for the soul, shouldn’t we say that each soul of each citizen needs wisdom?

Courage of the sick city: ---power to preserve indoctrinated beliefs about what is to be feared and what is good ---only possessed by the military Problems: ---persons with such a power are closed to learning and intellectual improvement ---there exist non-military forms of courage, such as the intellectual courage to test and to examine one’s own convictions

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Temperance (Moderation) of the sick city: ---desires of the inferior many are controlled by the desires of the superior few ---rulers and ruled agree who should rule ---a harmony among parts of city Problems? ----wrong split between the classes, based on Noble Lie ---desires of the inferior are controlled and repressed but not transformed ---Nazis agreed who should rule ---given their corrupt education, how are the desires of the “elites” superior?

Justice of the sick city: (432c, in shadows) ---no citizen “meddles” in anything other than his own specialty ---everyone “does his own work” and nothing more ---the power that makes possible other virtues to grow and be preserved Problems? ---sometimes whistleblowing is necessary ---why so much specialization? Why can’t each citizen work, fight and rule? ---Critias told Socrates “Do your own work, Socrates” when Socrates stood up Against injustices of the Thirty Tyrants ---sick justice is the power to preserve fake virtues, and so is a phony justice

Virtues in the Sick Soul (432d-end of Book 4) Wisdom of the sick soul: (note well 434d-a; 435cd; 435de; also 437a; 440b; and 441a) ---judgment about the whole soul and its relations with other souls—what is advantageous for each part and for whole soul, what promotes “community” of all three parts ---found only in the rational part of the soul Problems? ---only in rational part? Wrong split between reason and emotion; why can’t there be rational appetites and rational emotions? Sick soul makes reason only an instrumental means-end calculative reasoning, and makes emotions irrational things that determine our goals and ends

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---rational calculation is only about external goods; what about internal goods and emotional appreciation of internal goods ---sick soul modelled on a city which is a violent aggressor against its neighbors (see “Preliminary” at the beginning of this handout)

Courage of the sick soul: ---in the spirited part of soul only ---power to preserve through pain and pleasure the indoctrinated beliefs about what is to be feared and aboutg what is good Problems? ----only in the aggressive part? what about intellectual courage to question and to inquire? ---need for true wisdom about what is to be feared; Cephalus did not, he feared only external punishments

Temperance (Moderation) of the sick soul: ---desires of the superior rational part control the desires of the body ---all parts of the soul agree that the rational part should rule, and no civil war in the soul Problems? ---wrong split between reason and emotion ---if reason is only instrumental means-end reasoning (not reasoning about ends) that calculates how to maximize external goods, why is it superior to bodily desire? Why should instrumental reason rule? ---on this model, two parts of the soul (reason and aggression) control and repress another Part

Justice of the sick soul: (443b dream; 443e-444e; 444a) ---each part of the soul “does its own work” ---keep all the soul parts in their place doing their predefined work, the rational part “ruling” the bodily appetites with the aid of the aggressive part (ruling by force and control) Problems? ---soul is divided, some parts forcing others ---functional roles of soul-parts are set up to serve wrong ends: external goods and

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luxuries (443e: wealth, body, factional politics, private contracts); goal of soul is calculating self-control in pursuit of self-interest; ---model presumes “justice” is nothing but “self-restraint in actions toward others in pursuit of self-interest in respect of external goods; this is the pseudo justice of the autonomous individual; “do what you want so long as you don’t hurt others in their pursuit of doing what they want” (no consideration of what one ought to want); but true justice is meeting the needs of others as a member of a community; ---isn’t the real job of the rational part to think about what is really good and important and in so doing to transform many existing desires? isn’t it failing to do its own real work by “ruling” the rest of the soul in such a way as to maximize luxuries?...