Plato’s Republic 11: A Tyrant’s Life
Summary
This episode covers book 9 of Republic.
In this episode, Socrates is going to finally answer the question that started it all. Back in book 2, Glaucon and Adeimantus challenged Socrates to prove to them that it’s worthwhile to be just. To them, the life of injustice looks pretty good, if you can get away with it. Money, sex, power, what’s not to like?
Socrates has been building up his answer since episode 4 of this series. He’s built an imaginary city, and education system and a group of superhuman philosopher kings to rule it all.
In this episode, he’s going to finally explain what’s wrong with injustice. While the tyrant’s life may look fun from the outside, Socrates says it’s not so great when you get behind the music. According to him, the tyrant’s life is desperate, paranoid, and miserable. Not only is the philosopher king happier than the tyrant, he’s 729 times happier!
Credits
Adeimantus: Rebecca Amzallag
Glaucon: Zachary Amzallag
Ancient music: Michael Levy
Intro theme: Clayton Tapp
Outro theme: David Zikovitz
Transcript
Note: this is transcribed using an online transcription service so it’s probably going to have a lot of errors. We do don’t have time to go through these all carefully but still thought that it would be more helpful than having no transcript at all.
Republic 11 Tyrant's life TO POST
Sat, 6/19 2:05PM • 35:57
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
tyrant, desires, socrates, soul, tyrannical, people, pleasure, life, satisfy, city, friends, beast, person, man, arguments, feeding, unjust, appetite, bad, human
SPEAKERS
Socrates, Adeimantus, Glaucon, Clif Mark
Clif Mark 00:14
Today, Socrates does a cautionary Behind the Music tale about the rock'n'roll lifestyle that is led by the political tyrant. I'm Clif Mark, this is good in theory. Today, we're on to book nine of Plato's Republic. And this is where Socrates finally lands the long meandering magic carpet ride of an argument that he's been flying for the past 10 episodes. It all started in Book Two, when glaucon and Adam mantas challenged Socrates to prove to them that it was better to be good, even when they could get away with being bad. And as part of the challenge glaucon created two models. As Socrates puts it, he polished up two men, just like statues. The first was the perfectly unjust man, he gets away with everything he tries, becomes rich, powerful. Everyone loves him, including the gods. And the second was the perfectly just man who does all the right things. But out of bad luck gets a reputation for injustice. And so everyone hates him, he's punished by the gods, because he can't pay for sacrifices, and his fellow citizens are always arresting and torturing him. And the challenge was to show that even if you take away the benefits of reputation, it's still worthwhile to be just, the boys wanted Socrates to show them what justice would do to their souls. And Socrates says, he'll give it a shot. But it will take a while, because before you can figure out whether justice is good for you, you have to figure out what justice is. And because justice in the individual is such a complicated thing, they have to start by finding justice in the city. And then they were off creating education systems and class hierarchies. And in general, a perfectly just city, which also happened to be a machine for producing perfectly just people, also known as the philosopher kings. To respond to glaucon. And Adam mantises challenge, Socrates is polishing up his own statues. And the philosopher kings are his model of the perfectly just individual. The philosopher is rational, and virtuous and good looking. They've got it all. And on top of all that, they are happy. They are doing philosophy all day, and it gives them the greatest possible pleasure. They're like Arnold Schwarzenegger in pumping iron. In fact, their life is so good, that ruling the entire city isn't even fun for them anymore. It's a chore that you have to force them to do. Of course, the city in speech and the philosopher kings do not exist in the empirical world. They're utopian constructs. So in the last episode, Socrates took a step back from utopia. And he started analyzing real world political regimes, and the kind of people that these different regimes produce. When we left off, they had just finished talking about the tyrannical political regime. And in this episode, they're going to analyze the tyrannical individual. Back in Book Two, the boys thought the tyrants life sounded pretty fun. You could kill all your enemies or word your friends have sex with whoever you want. And everyone cheers you on the whole time, because you control the city, rock and roll. In this episode, Socrates is going to try to counter that by polishing up his own statue of the perfectly unjust man, to show that the tyrannical life isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Adeimantus 04:03
Now tell us about the tyrannical man. What's his story? Is he happy?
Socrates 04:10
Before we get to that we're still missing something. You remember when we said that there was a difference between the necessary and unnecessary desires? Sure. Well, there's also different kinds of unnecessary desires. Some of them are harmless, but some of them are violent and lawless. Everyone's born with these ones, but you usually just don't notice because law and reason weaken or eliminate them and most people.
Adeimantus 04:37
What desires are you talking about?
Socrates 04:39
I'm talking about the desires that wake up when the conscious part of your soul is asleep. I'm talking about the shameless and fearless beast in your dreams that runs around, eating whatever it wants, murdering whoever it wants, and fucking anything at once. I'm talking humans, Gods animals, mothers, just go into town. You know what I mean? A man says,
Adeimantus 05:01
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
Socrates 05:03
Right? And my point is that everyone has these lawless desires, even if they never show them.
Adeimantus 05:11
I see. Now, are you going to tell us how the tyrannical man comes into being?
Socrates 05:15
Yes, I was just getting to that. You remember how the democratic man grew up,
Adeimantus 05:20
of course, torn between his cheap father and his party friends,
Socrates 05:23
right? And he ended up halfway in between. He wasn't stingy like his dad. But he wasn't totally lawless, like his friends. Now, can you guess what happens when the democratic man has a son?
Adeimantus 05:35
Probably the same kind of thing. He falls in with a bad crowd.
Socrates 05:39
Yes. But this time, it's not just harmless fun. his so called friends are like magicians and tyrant makers. And they implant one great love in him. It's like a giant winged drone. And that love becomes a champion of all his idol desires.
Adeimantus 05:59
This doesn't sound promising. What happens next?
Socrates 06:03
He's living that life, wine, incense, flower garlands, and all of those other desires. They feed this giant drone. And they plant this thing of longing into it until one day, the boy snaps, he goes mad. His love takes over his soul. And it goes on a rampage in a purchase his mind of all his old ideas about right and wrong, all his moderate desires, anything that might make him feel the least bit ashamed, he gets rid of those and he liberates his other thoughts that used to only come out in his dreams.
Adeimantus 06:34
Well, that's a perfect description of how tyrannical man appears.
Socrates 06:37
And then he just goes on to tear feasts, wine, sex workers of all kinds, his needs and desires multiplying all the time. And when he spends everything he has, in everything he can borrow, he starts spending his parents money. And if they refuse, when desires the tyrant of his soul, he won't stop at anything. He just takes the money anyway. And when that runs out, he turns to picking pockets and robbing temples. And that is what the life of the tyrannical man it's like.
Adeimantus 07:07
That's exactly what it's like. And what happens to the city when this kind of person appears?
Socrates 07:13
If there's only a few of them, they just become mercenaries and join a war abroad. Or they start committing petty crimes, robbing people taking bribes and court kidnapping.
Adeimantus 07:24
You call those petty crimes?
Socrates 07:27
Well, yes, because I'm comparing to them to the crime of tyranny itself. And that happens when there are lots of these people around and they become aware of each other. And they find the most bloated, tyrannical soul among them, and they make him the tyrant of the entire city.
Adeimantus 07:44
And what if the people don't accept their new leader?
Socrates 07:48
Then, just like the child brings in his friends to tame his parents, the tyrant brings in foreign cronies to force the people to accept him.
Adeimantus 07:57
Well, that's a tyrant for you. In this
Socrates 07:59
kind of person, he only has two kinds of relationships. He has relationships with weaker people who just flatter and suck up to him. Or if he needs something from someone, he always cringes and sucks up to them.
Adeimantus 08:11
They're always either master or slave. They never know actual friendship,
Socrates 08:16
or freedom. And if we were right about everything we said, This person is very unjust,
Adeimantus 08:23
very.
Clif Mark 08:32
The tyrannical man is the mirror image of the philosopher, the philosopher King, his soul reflects the political structure of the perfect city. It's a pyramid with reason on top, spirit in the middle, and appetite on the bottom, being controlled by the other to every part of the soul, mind his own business and listens to reason. And that's what makes the philosopher just in the tyrant soul, the pyramids upside down. appetite is in control. And it's not just any appetites. It's the worst kinds of appetites that most of us only know from our dreams. These desires force him to break every taboo, including robbing his parents and resorting to crime. How does this happen? The tyrannical man and the philosopher don't just turn out differently. They also have opposite education's the philosopher kings were educated in the ideal regime, where everything they encountered every bit of culture, poetry, the architecture, they saw every argument they heard, all of these things helped to shape their souls in a healthy way. The tyrannical man, on the other hand, grew up in a democracy, which obviously, is highly relevant to Socrates, his Athenian audience, in a democracy, according to Socrates, the highest value is freedom. Do whatever you feel like there's no serious respect for the laws. And the tyrannical boy grows up with a democratic father, who can't really teach him right from wrong In the ideal regime, your soul is completely shaped by unconscious unconscious forces to be just. But in a democracy, you're on your own, you get no moral guidance at all. And so when this kid falls in with some party friends, he's vulnerable. Some of them are manipulators, and they implant one master desire into his soul. It's not 100% clear from the text, what this desire is, it might be love of an individual, it might be love of a certain scene or kind of sex, or some academics even talk about it in terms of substance addiction, it doesn't really matter. The one thing we do know about the tyrants great love is that, at least to start with, it's not something evil in itself. Socrates says that the bad friends, they implant a great winged drone. And we know from earlier that the winged drones don't have stings, they're not the dangerous kinds. That means that the tyrant, he isn't a bad seat, he isn't born with a cruel nature, and then seizes power to satisfy his sick desires. He's just a kid who does not have enough discipline in his life. He has no strong role models. And when he gets a great passion, it takes over his soul. Where it really goes wrong is when he's living the symposium life with incense and wine. And all those different desires start feeding into each other, and they become more demanding. And that's when he snaps. Then, as Socrates puts it, his friends put the sting of longing into his new love. And he elevates satisfying his desire to the throne of his soul. At this point, he forgets about everything else, all his previous ideas of morality and decency and his sense of shame go out the window. And that is the moment that the democratic boy becomes the tyrannical man. It's when desire becomes a tyrant in the regime of his soul. One thing I want to point out here is that when Socrates describes different kinds of souls, there are two components there the desires, the kinds of things that the person wants, honor, money, pleasure, whatever. But there's also an ideological component. A person also has moral ideas that help to control or influence their desires. And it's when these moral ideas are purged from the time radical man soul, that he really starts to spiral. Then there's this feedback loop where indulging his desires make the desire stronger and more demanding, which leads to more indulgence, which leads to new and stronger desires, until they take over his soul and he defies every law of God and man to serve them. And to this day, the idea of a tyrannical soul completely in the grip of its own desires is a familiar character trope. The classic on the nose, political tyrant is someone like Caligula think of the 70s movie. He's this Roman emperor who inherits power. Then he goes completely insane. And he spends the whole movie doing orgies and murders and torture and incest and it comes to a bad end. But tyrannical souls are everywhere. Cartman from South Park seems like a tyrant to me. tyrants are huge in reality TV. So bridezilla is the children from Danny 911. A lot of the characters and intervention, a lot of Behind the Music tales of rock'n'roll excess gone wrong, take your pick, the basic principle of the tyrannical soul is that it's completely dominated by desire, and they will do anything to satisfy them, and usually come to a very bad end doing it. Now that we know what the tyrants soul is, like, Socrates is going to pose the question that they started with, is he happy. And just to note, in this section, the characters start referring to the ideal regime as monarchy instead of aristocracy. They still mean exactly the same thing. It's ruled by a philosopher King. It's just that there's one of them instead of a whole crew.
Adeimantus 14:13
So it seems like the person with a tyrant soul is like the worst dream self of other people.
Socrates 14:20
Exactly. And the longer he lives like that, the worse he gets. But we still haven't said if he's happy,
Glaucon 14:27
happy, how can he be happy?
Socrates 14:29
Why wouldn't we be glaucon?
Glaucon 14:32
Because the worst person has to be the most miserable just like the worst city. Which cities do you mean by the worst? Well, the best city is a monarchy and that corresponds to the king sorry, the philosopher King, and the worst is a tyranny, which corresponds to the tyrant.
Socrates 14:49
I'm not sure everyone shares your opinion that the tyrant is miserable. So let's take it slowly. It's easy to be fooled by the Granger of power all the outfits and displays that they have So let's peek into every corner of the tyrannical city in every corner of the tyrant soul. So we're sure we understand him before we give our answer.
Glaucon 15:10
Sure, Socrates, you ask all answer.
Socrates 15:13
Good. Now tell me, is the city ruled by a tyrant free or enslaved?
Glaucon 15:20
Well, there are a few free men but the city as a whole is enslaved, especially the best part of it.
Socrates 15:25
Then, if the tyrannical man is like the tyrannical city, do we see the same thing? The best parts of his soul in slave to the worst parts?
Glaucon 15:36
I think so.
Socrates 15:37
In the city that's ruled by a tyrant do it at once?
Glaucon 15:39
Absolutely not. At best,
Socrates 15:42
it does what the tyrant wants? And can the soul rule by a tyrant do it at once?
Glaucon 15:46
No, it's always dissatisfied and driven by desire and can accomplish anything.
Socrates 15:52
In art the city and soul ruled by tyrants are full of poverty and suffering and grief and fear. Of course, that's why the tyrannical city and the tyrannical men are the most unhappy of all. And that's where I disagree.
Glaucon 16:06
What, why?
Socrates 16:07
I think that there's someone even more miserable than a man with a tyrannical soul.
Glaucon 16:14
Who could be more miserable than that.
Socrates 16:17
A man who has a tyrannical soul, and has the terrible misfortune of actually becoming tyrant?
Glaucon 16:25
Well, I guess with everything we said earlier, you must be right.
Socrates 16:29
Don't guess glaucon? We're talking about what's the best life to live? This is an important question. So consider this example. What is the difference between the people in our city who own a lot of slaves and an actual tyrant?
Glaucon 16:45
The tyrant controls a lot more people.
Socrates 16:48
Yes, there's that. But what about this? Is the rich man in our city, normally afraid of his own slaves?
Glaucon 16:56
Of course not. If any of his slaves get out of line, the whole city will put them back in their place. Very true.
Socrates 17:03
But now imagine that somehow he in his wife and children and all of his property and slaves are transported far away from the city to some isolated place where no one can reach them.
Glaucon 17:15
Okay, now, I think you'd be afraid.
Socrates 17:19
And what do you think he do in that situation?
Glaucon 17:22
Well, he'd have to free at least some of his slaves and start promising them anything he could to help him keep power.
Socrates 17:29
And what if by chance, his neighbors didn't like the idea of slavery and wouldn't tolerate slave owners.
Glaucon 17:35
He'd be surrounded by enemies.
Socrates 17:38
Think about his life. He's in a prison. Even if he lives in a palace. his desires are still raging, but he can't even leave his house or travel abroad or do anything that any normal citizen can do, because he's terrified of everyone around him. That's awful. Which is why the worst thing that can happen to someone who has a tyrannical soul is to actually get power.
Glaucon 18:05
It sounds like the tyrant is the true slave. How do you mean, his life is off, you're in pain, he spends his life falling on the most worthless people, and he never satisfies any of his desires. He's just like the city he rules.
Socrates 18:22
Very interesting glob con, the now's your chance. You're the judge. Tell me who do you think is happiest? The kingly man, the democratic man, oligarchic band democratic man or the tyrannical man himself?
Glaucon 18:38
In just the order you said? The most virtuous man is the most happy and the most vicious man is the most miserable?
Socrates 18:44
Well, well, shall we hire a herald? Or should I climb up on the rooftop and proclaim it myself? That glaucon son of Eris dawn says that the most just man is the happiest, and not the worst, the most unjust man is the most wretched.
Glaucon 19:01
Here you consider the proclamation made?
Socrates 19:05
Even if the unjust man never gets caught in the just man gets a bad reputation. Even so. Consider that one proof that the king is happier than the tyrant. Shall we go on to the second? What's that? Remember how the soul was divided into three the same way as the city? Sure.
Glaucon 19:21
It has the reasoning part, the spirited part, and then the part that desired food and sex and all that,
Socrates 19:27
right. And each part of the soul has its own particular kind of pleasure and desire. Reason, desires knowledge and takes pleasure in learning spirit loves power and victory and honor. In the third part of the soul. Well, it desires a lot of things, but we can call it the money making part of the soul because money is the best way to satisfy those desires. And there are three kinds of people depending on which part of the soul is dominant. Got it. So who do you think has the best and most pleasurable life the wisdom lover, the Honorable Or the money lover?
Glaucon 20:02
Well, it depends on who you ask the money lover is going to tell you that his favorite pleasure is best. And the others will tell you the same thing about their own favorite pleasures. True,
Socrates 20:13
they will all tell us different things, but I think we should believe the wisdom lover. Hmm.
Glaucon 20:18
Of course, you would say that. But why should we believe him?
Socrates 20:22
Well, he's the only one who's experienced all three types of pleasures. And he's the one who's most likely to have actually reflected on his experience.
Glaucon 20:31
Right? Because people who just care about money don't really take the time for the pleasures of reason.
Socrates 20:37
Very good. That makes two proofs. Shall we try? One more?
Glaucon 20:42
three's a charm.
Socrates 20:44
Then for the grand finale. I will say that, except for the wisdom lover. Most of the things that people call pleasure aren't pleasures at all. They're just to kind of shadow painting or image of pleasure.
Glaucon 20:57
What do you mean by that?
Socrates 20:58
You know how when people are sick or in pain, they just say that relief would be the greatest pleasure? Of course. Well, the wrong. That's just an illusion. The absence of pain isn't true pleasure. It just seems that way because of the pain that came before.
Glaucon 21:14
Okay, then what's true pleasure.
Socrates 21:17
the truest in realest pleasures come from the truest in realest things.
Glaucon 21:21
How do you mean?
Socrates 21:23
What do you think is more real, eternal, unchanging things like knowledge and intelligence and virtue? Or bread and food? and things that change all the time?
Glaucon 21:32
Well, the eternal things by far,
Socrates 21:34
and what do you think is more satisfying and pleasurable? things that are true and real, or things that
Glaucon 21:39
aren't true and real, I guess,
Socrates 21:41
right. But the people who spend their lives chasing the pleasures of the body, they just go from pain to relief without ever learning what true pleasure is all about. like cattle, wandering around facedown, feeding fucking and fighting with their horns and hooves, driven by desires that they don't know how to satisfy.
Glaucon 22:01
Did everyone hear that? sock? You sound like an Oracle, perfect description of most people's lives. What about the spirited part of the soul, though? What about the people who love victory and honor?
Socrates 22:12
The same thing happens to that. If you pursue those things without reason it leads to envy, violence and anger. Let me put it this way. When the desiring and the spirited parts of the soul, when they follow reason, then each part of the soul does what it's supposed to do. And each can enjoy its own particular pleasures. But if the unreasonable desires take control, that disrupts the whole soul. And not only do these desires miss out on the true pleasures of reason, but they can't even satisfy themselves. And the more unreasonable the desires that take control are, the more unhappy the person is going to be.
Glaucon 22:51
And that's why the tyrant is so unhappy. He's got the wildest desires.
Socrates 22:55
Exactly. And do you know how much less happy the tyrant is? No, tell me. It's simple. There are three kinds of pleasures and the tyrant is at the third removed from the oligarchic man and the oligarchic man is at the third remove from the king, which puts the tyrant at three times three removes from true pleasure. So based on the number of its length, the Phantom of the tyrants pleasure would be a plane. So the square and the cube shows the exact difference.
Glaucon 23:20
It sure does. It's a lot.
Socrates 23:24
It's 729 o'clock, the king lives 729 times more pleasantly than the tyrant. Wow, that is a lot. And if the king's life is that much more pleasurable, don't you think it'd also be more gracious and beautiful and virtuous? Absolutely.
Clif Mark 23:48
That was it. That's where Socrates wins over the boys by polishing up his own statue of the tyrant. He's already shown that having a soul that's tyrannized by desire is miserable. But glaucon an adamant is. They weren't asking about a regular guy who was out of control appetites. They were asking about the person who had wild desires, and who had unlimited power to satisfy them. Back in Book Two Glock and an adamant is made this life look pretty good. It looks like you're just having sex all the time killing your enemies, the whole city's cheering you on because you're the man you're the tyrant. Socrates says this life isn't how it appears. If you look behind the public facade, the trappings of power the palace Instagram accounts. If you look at the tyrants life up close, Socrates says it's awful. being dominated by your desires is bad. But getting the power to feed them makes things a lot worse. This is counterintuitive because having the power to satisfy all your desires does seem nice. But Socrates says you're never going to get any satisfaction because these kinds Have desires. When you indulge them, they just grow and multiply, and they spiral and they suck you in. Also, even though the tyrant seems popular, like everyone loves him, he doesn't have any real friends. He is the master of everyone. But no one's the master of everyone. He has to trust some people, but he can't. He's paranoid. He's always looking over his shoulder, he winds up stuck in the palace with fake friends that he's afraid will betray him at any time. It's a miserable life. And at that point, glaucon he says he's willing to hire a herald to proclaim from the rooftops that the life of the unjust man is awful. And the life of the perfectly just man is the best. So Socrates has won him over. But even so, he decides to do a couple of victory laps and throws in some extra arguments about why the philosophical life is exactly 729 times more pleasurable than the tyrannical life. I personally do not find those arguments that persuasive. I don't want to get into them too deeply. But they do get us to that weirdly precise figure of 729, which is always stuck in my head. And they also get us to the next point that I want to talk about in this section, which is Socrates is more down to earth explanation for why we'll be happier if we're just for Socrates being just means having a properly ordered soul, reason in charge, spirit and appetite following reason. He says that, when you make appetite or spirit your priority, it winds up being self defeating. For example, chasing pleasure can bring you into all sorts of conflict with other people, other pleasures, other parts of your soul, you might chase a pleasure that interferes with spirit and you wind up feeling ashamed or angry at yourself. And similarly, if you focus exclusively on victory, and glory and competition, the things that spirit loves, that can also mess up other parts of your life. You wind up like cattle heads down, fighting each other over small pleasures. But when you're just when you submit all parts of the soul to reason, not only do you get the highest pleasures, the pleasures of reason, philosophy, stuff like that, you also do a better job of satisfying the other parts of the soul. you satisfy your appetites in a reasonable way. So you avoid the tyrant spiral, in the end wind up getting more pleasure than you would if you pursued it directly. So all that, ultimately, is Socrates his answer to the initial question of how being just as profitable, why Glock on an item Mantis should be good, even when they can get away with being bad. It'll keep their soul in shape. And now that Socrates has made his argument for why it's good to be good, he's going to bring it together in a really vivid image. And also give a little meta, and talk about why it's also good to argue that it's good to be good.
Socrates 28:07
Now, let's go back to the claim that started this whole conversation, which, if I remember correctly, was that being unjust is profitable. As long as you keep your reputation for being just
Glaucon 28:19
that was the claim. Then
Socrates 28:21
with your help, I'd like to construct a model to show what happens when a person makes that kind of claim what they're doing.
Glaucon 28:29
Let's do it.
Socrates 28:30
You know those ancient stories about Chi miras, the creatures that are a combination of different species,
Glaucon 28:37
of course,
Socrates 28:38
let's build one of those. Start with the many colored beast as a whole ring of heads. Some are tame animals, some are Savage, everything. And they're always changing and new ones are growing all the time.
Glaucon 28:51
Many headed monster got it.
Socrates 28:54
And combine that with a lion and a human being. So make the beast the biggest part in the lion should be in the middle and the human will be the smallest. That would be tricky to sculpt in stone, but I've got it. Now put that combined creature inside a human shell. So from the outside, it just looks like a human being done. Ideally, you want the little human and control. When the human strong enough, it can control the beast with the help of the lion. And then he'll be like a farmer. He'll feed the tame heads will stop the savage heads from growing, and all three parts will be satisfied and live together as friends. But if the human is weak than the lion, the beast will fight and bite each other and the human will just get pulled wherever those who want to go.
Glaucon 29:41
So how do we do that? How, how do we keep the human in charge? And what does this have to do with praising injustice?
Socrates 29:48
The problem with crazy injustice is that it feeds the lion and the Beast and it starves the human and the human gets too weak to control the others. The same kind of thing happens when people get away with doing injustice. And when we praise justice, and when we act justly, we strengthen the human.
Glaucon 30:05
So everything that weakens the reasonable part of the soul is bad for us.
Socrates 30:09
Yes. Why do you think everyone looks down on manual laborers? What? Because they're always working with their hands, and never working with the reason. strong hands, weak mind. And that's why people like that always wind up serving the beast. And that's also why they should be slaves to better people.
Glaucon 30:27
Okay? Why is that? Again,
Socrates 30:30
don't misunderstand me. For Simic is here, he thinks that it's always bad to be a slave. But that's not true. The most important thing is that we're all ruled by wisdom. And if we have our own wisdom, great. And if we don't have any wisdom, then it should be imposed on us from outside. It's like raising kids, we only set them free when they develop their own reason to take the place of their parents.
Glaucon 30:54
True. That is what we do with kids.
Socrates 30:57
And if you ask me, anyone with any sense, will live their life doing everything they can to keep their soul in the right condition, and will avoid anything that disrupts it. So the intelligent man won't try to get too much money, he won't try to have too little, and no only accept the honors that will make him a better person, and avoid any other ones that might upset the balance of his soul.
Glaucon 31:22
Well, in that case, he won't go into politics. Well,
Socrates 31:25
maybe he will, in his own city, though, just not in the city he was born in.
Glaucon 31:31
Hang on Socrates, when you say his own city, do you mean the city we described earlier, because that city only exists in words and not you know, anywhere on Earth.
Socrates 31:40
Maybe it doesn't matter if that city doesn't exist on Earth. Maybe it's enough that there's a pattern in heaven, and that anyone who sees it can use that pattern to found a regime in his own soul. And that will be the only city whose politics he'd cared to get involved in.
Clif Mark 32:05
I like the beast line, human thing. It gives a nice way to remember Socrates is takeaway advice. And that's whenever you face any decision at all, evaluate what it's going to do to your soul. Consider which desires you're feeding. And whether that'll help strengthen the rule of reason, the little human within, or whether it just feeds the beast, it makes it harder to control. Our decisions, and our actions are not just about their immediate consequences. It says Socrates, they also influence what kind of person we become. But Socrates is also getting meta here. Because the question at the beginning of the section isn't about doing justice or injustice. It's about the effect of praising justice or injustice. Socrates is bringing back the theme of ideology. And he says, that the person who praises injustice, like the brothers did, and like their civic is did at the beginning of the book. They're just feeding the beast. And the person who praises justice strengthens the men, our ideas, the arguments that we're exposed to, and the arguments that we see with our own mouths, they matter. Being good isn't just an act of will. It's not about having good intentions in the moment. Our good intentions need the support of ideology, we need a set of beliefs and arguments about what's right and wrong, to help us do the right thing. This is why people who grew up in democracies are so vulnerable to getting tyrannical souls. The Democratic ideology is anti ideological. It's about refusing to define good and bad desires. People in democracies, they don't want anyone to tell them how to live, and they don't want to tell anyone else had to live either. But that easygoing attitude, according to Socrates, makes it hard for them to know how they ought to live. They can't explain to themselves or to anyone else, why one set of preferences are better than another. So everything just becomes a question of preference, what you want in the moment. So the problem with the democratic person who becomes tyrannical, it isn't just that he has worse friends, or that he's genetically more susceptible to pleasure. We all have wild thoughts and desires. The tyrants problem is that when these desires come along, he's got no arguments in his soul to fight against them. Nobody in his life has helped him tame the beast, or strengthen the man. So the beast just takes over. And we ought to add, that this is the situation that Socrates his little friends are in their young men living in a democracy that's full of people like Thrasymachus, who praise injustice and tyranny. And most of these boys are posh and rich. They have the resources to go wrong in a very big way. And a lot of them do, which is why Socrates was eventually convicted for corrupting the youth. Here, Socrates is trying to work against that by giving arguments and stories that reinforce the boy's commitment to virtue. Because whether our souls are ruled by the reasonable little human being, or the many headed beast of desire is a question of culture and education. It's about the stories we tell each other the myths in poetry and music, and this is where Socrates is headed. Next episode