PLATOS REPUBLIC BENEFITS OF JUSTICE A HAPPIER AND

PLATO’S REPUBLIC BENEFITS OF JUSTICE: A HAPPIER AND MORE PLEASANT LIFE 陳斐婷 清華大學哲學研究所專任助理教授 ftchen@mx. nthu. edu. tw 1

The role of Books 8 and 9 in the Republic • At the beginning of Book 8, Socrates and Glaucon refer back to the discussion of Book 4. • But the focus in Books 8 & 9 is on the individual rather than the state: the characteristics of states depend on the characteristics of the individual in them (544 d-e), and justice brings the individual a happier and more pleasant life (580 -592). • “Books 8 and 9 form an integral part of the answer to Glaucon’s challenge: justice has been show to be worth having for itself, like health, and now we move beyond the health analogy and show that justice has good consequences, for it benefits the individual and makes his or her life more pleasant. Book 4 showed that justice was worth having for itself; now we see its results, what it does for its possessor (cf. 367 b, d). ” (Annas, 292). 2

Justice and Happiness in the Individual (580 -592) (I) The just person is the happiest (II) The link of justice to happiness 3

The just person is the happiest • The cities and individuals become progressively more unhappy as they become unjust (580 b-d). • This is called “the first proof, ” as the soul’s parts are directed by the part, reason, that can plan for them all, is preferable to the various kinds of obsessive and disrupted lives. • In 580 d-583 b and 583 b-588 b, Plato gives two more proofs that the just person is the happiest, which the rest of Book 9 (the Republic’s main moral argument) is built upon. But this section has been much criticized. • Two main criticisms. 4

Two main criticisms of 580 d-583 b and 583 b-588 b • Firstly, the proofs concern the just person, but “it is the philosopher who throughout figures as the only candidate for being just, and the arguments hinge on this. Plato is carrying on from what the central books have established: to be truly just one must have knowledge, and this requires the kind of understanding that only comes with philosophical training. ” (Annas, 306) • Secondly, the arguments try to prove what Socrates was not asked to show, namely that the just person’s life is more pleasant than the alternatives. Critics have complained that pleasure is irrelevant to the argument, and that Plato is wrong about what pleasure is. Judgments about pleasure are subjective, whereas Plato is treating them as objective. 5

The second proof and the critics • How, given that there are three kinds of life each with its own pleasures, are we to judge which is the most pleasant? • Plato has tried to show that by the objective standard of the Good the philosopher’s life is better than that of the soldier or merchant, since it is more attractive and graceful (588 a). • All three kinds of men sincerely prefer their own lives; none of them can be wrong in thinking that their own life is the most pleasant kind. How can we judge which is right? • “By experience, practical wisdom, and reason” (ἐμπειρίᾳ τε καὶ φρονήσει καὶ λόγῳ) (582 a). • The philosopher will have experienced all three types of pleasure, whereas the others lack the competence to enable them to taste the philosopher’s pleasures. So his judgment is the most authoritative. 6

Problem of the critic • Even if we grant Plato that the philosopher has had experience of the other kinds of life and their pleasures, he cannot tell the others that their lives are less pleasant than they think. It is absurd if the philosopher tells them that they do not enjoy their lives as much as they think they do. • Problem of the above critic: “my life is pleasant” cannot make any claim beyond “I prefer my life. ” “Plato clearly thinks that the pleasantness of a life is an objective matter; but he does not think that this commits him to denying any subjective claims about what people prefer. ” (Annas, 308) • “Lack of experience and thought disqualify a person from knowing what a particular kind of human life is like, what its possibilities are, what sources of pleasure it contains and what others are incompatible with it. ” (Annas, 308 -309) 7

Two further difficulties • Is Plato really entitled to claim that the philosopher has had experience of other kinds of life? Obviously, he hasn’t lived all kinds of life. “To a great extent we are justified in replying on ‘experience’ in a broader sense: knowledge of the world that enables us to make imaginative projections about other kinds of life. ” (Annas, 310) • A more serious objection is Plato’s unclarity as to how we should think of the philosopher. How can a detached lover of learning do justice to the pleasures of gain? The tension in Plato’s notion of the philosopher is nowhere more evident than in this argument: the philosopher has been characterized as though he were contemplating eternal truths; but the argument here requires him to be the practically wise just person. 8

The third proof and the critics: the first section of the proof • The third proof falls into three parts. • In 583 b-585 b activities that most people think are pleasant are not really so, only apparent/illusory, and owe the appearance to a contrast with pain. Only the philosopher’s pleasures are the true, real ones. • But it is not clear that Plato is entitled to suppose that there is one single objective viewpoint, from which all pains and pleasures can be assessed as apparent/illusory or real. • One thing is clear, though. This argument-section requires the practical conception of the philosopher, whereas the next section of the argument shifts to the contemplative view (585 b-586 c). 9

The third proof and the critics: the second section of the proof • Hunger and thirst are kinds of bodily emptiness, which correspond to ignorance and foolishness in the soul. To be filled with knowledge and truth is to be more real and more true than to be filled with food and drink. Therefore, the philosopher’s pleasures are the most real, since they are pleasures in the most real kind of replenishment. • In this passage the philosopher’s wisdom is wholly unworldly and the pleasure the soul takes in learning is sharply cut off from the body, whereas bodily pleasures are spoken of as though the soul had no role in them and they were simply to be identified with the bodily replenishment. 10

More real and more true • In the central books, being was to be understood predicatively; something which is, is F. • But here we are told that the soul and the soul’s filling partake more of being than the body and the body’s filling (585 d); and this can hardly mean that knowledge is more truly knowledge, and the soul more truly soul. • “In this argument being is actually introduced by the notions of changelessness and stability (585 c). Something has true being if it is changeless and immortal, it is claimed, and is concerned with and comes about in what is changeless and immortal…This is why Plato moves (585 d-e) from ‘filled with what really is’ to ‘is really filled’; to be filled by what is stable is to be stably filled. ” (Annas, 312) 11

Problems of construing being as something changeless and stable • Firstly, being is still treated in this argument as a matter of degree: some objects are more than others. But it is hard to see how being changeless could be a matter of degree. • Secondly, it is not clear how this passage should be related to claims elsewhere about Forms. “For the contrast drawn here is not one between Forms and other things, since it has as much application to soul and body as to other things (585 d), and the soul is not a Form. ” (Annas, 313) • Thirdly, the familiar objections apply: why should grasp of the unchangeable make one a better judge between everyday matters of pleasure and pain? 12

The third proof and the critics: the final section of the proof • At 586 c Plato returns to the superiority of the philosopher’s practical reason: when reason attains its proper pleasures, then all parts will be satisfied (586 e). The just person versus the unjust tyrant (587 b-588 a). “Just people are the happiest because only in them does reason rule so as to produce the pleasure that each part of the soul seeks when it is performing its own appropriate role. ” (Annas, 313) • “Plato is not making an obvious mistake when he claims that the pleasantness, as well as the goodness, of the just person’s life is objectively superior…The arguments go wrong rather in their lack of caution. Claims about pleasantness which have some plausibility when applied to a whole life are incautiously extended to all cases of pleasure. ” (Annas, 313 -314) 13

The link of justice to happiness • “We should bear in mind, though, that this is not a separate problem with the arguments about pleasure; it is already implicit in Plato’s shift to justice as an inner state, psychic harmony. ” (Annas, 315) • Distinguish two senses of happiness: • (a) Plato has shown that justice is an inner state of the agent, but it is hard to see what grounds there could be for thinking that an inner state will lead to happiness as most people think of that. And Plato cannot convincingly link that with psychic harmony. • (b) Rather, Plato wants to persuade us that happiness, like justice, is more in ourselves than we tend to think it is. It is crucial that all the arguments about happiness and pleasure are cast in terms of the soul’s parts and their ordering. 14

The problem of happiness • Plato does not defend his redefinition of happiness even to the extent that he defends his redefinition of justice. • But, even if we accept that happiness produced by a life is intrinsic to that life, and not obtainable by living any other kind of life, can happiness really be something depending entirely on the agent’s inner condition? • Plato raises a point of genuine difficulty, which modern ethics tend to overlook. On the one hand, happiness cannot lie entirely in what the agent makes of his or her life; the social environment, disasters, and misfortunes do affect the agent’s happiness. On the other hand, happiness must depend on what the agent does with his or her life. (Cf. Aristotle) • How important are “external” versus “internal goods”? How far is my happiness dependent on what I do with my life, and how far is it contingent on luck and what others do? 15

A unified account of why a just life is desirable • Justice produces happiness; it is a consequence of justice that cannot be separated from justice and attained by being unjust instead. The argument of Books 8 and 9 would not convince anyone not already convinced by the arguments of Book 4. • “The argument was to show that it [sc. justice] was desirable for itself and for its consequences. Now we see that there has been indeed a single argument to that conclusion. There have not been two logically distinct arguments…Rather, Plato shows first that justice is psychic harmony, something that to a great extent changes our view on what is essential to justice; then he shows that, so conceived, it is the kind of thing that is bound to lead to a happiness which the unjust cannot have. ” (Annas, 317 -318) 16

Plato on pleasure • Paradoxically, in spite of the weakness of the arguments about pleasure and happiness, Books 8 & 9 are underestimated. They express a deep point which modern theories of ethics find hard to address: “the point that the happiness and pleasure that can be got from a life of a certain moral type is in important ways intrinsic to that life. Utilitarians prefer to think of pleasure as something that can be got indifferently from any moral source, and so as something to be maximized and distributed to people, regardless of what they are like. Plato’s ideas here about pleasure, though not particularly well put, are more profound than any thing to be found in any utilitarian theory. ” (Annas, 318) 17

Plato’s Moral Theories 18

“Justice pays” vs. impersonality of justice • Thrasymachus claimed that sacrifice of your own interests benefits only the weak. In Books 2 -4 and 8 -9 Socrates undertakes to show that justice itself benefits the agent. “Justice is worth having for itself, as the ordered state of health is preferable to the disordered state of disease. And it is also worth having for its consequences, because it brings happiness in a way not attainable through other kinds of life. ” (Annas, 321) • “In Books 5 -7 Plato develops what is meant to be an extension of this line of thought, to take into account the implications of justice for our relations to others. But the line of thought developed turns out to be rather different Now Plato claims that to be just one must be a philosopher…But to achieve this understanding…is to reject the idea that justice must be in my interests for it to be something that I have reason to have. ” 19 (Annas, 321 -322)

Conflict between the main argument and the central books • “A very common way of characterizing moral reasons is that they are universalizable, and this is often understood to mean that they apply to all rational beings in an impersonal way. But if moral reasons are those that apply to all impersonally, then the demand for a moral reason to be just must be quite distinct from any demand that the agent be benefited by being just. If we look at the matter this way (which is quite common in moral philosophy), then it will be the main argument, that ‘justice pays, ’ which will be the mistake, and Plato will be offering a properly moral argument in the central books. ” 20