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The Republic
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Chapters 11-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Warped Minds, Warped Societies”
Socrates looks again at whether morality makes one happy. To do this he examines four types of political systems, other than the ideal already described, and where they go wrong. He will use these as analogues for types of person, determining “whether or not the best person is also the happiest person” (278). Socrates starts with “timarchy.” This is a system, practiced in Ancient Sparta, where there is rule by people interested in status and military values. Socrates describes how his ideal community, which he defines as an aristocracy, meaning rule by the best, degenerates into timarchy. This occurs when people start to have children at the wrong times and with non-ideal partners. This causes the quality of the next generation of guardians to worsen. Over time this creates conflict as the guardian class is diluted with more people of “copper” rather than true “silver” quality. The guardians start owning property and gold, and there is a loss of respect for philosophers. As such, “there’ll be reluctance to choose men of knowledge for political office” (282) Such a society has an excessive respect for martial values. The character type corresponding to it is competitive, ambitious, and dominated by the passionate part of their mind.
The next type of society is “oligarchy”. More precisely, as Socrates describes it, this is plutocracy, or rule by the rich. This develops from timocracy as guardians acquire more and more wealth, and money comes to be more highly regarded than martial values. From being competitive and ambitious, society becomes “acquisitive and mercenary” (287). It comes fully into being when laws are passed allowing only the wealthy to participate in government. Such a society is “inevitably divided into the haves and the have-nots” (288), with increasing disparities of wealth and power. Under such conditions an underclass of beggars and criminals will likely emerge. Further, the character corresponding to this society is mercenary, subordinating rationality and passion to the goal of making money. At the same time, this character is ascetic and reluctant to part with any of his wealth. Just like the state to which he corresponds this type has beggarly and criminal desires which he suppresses. Thus, he is a person characterised by internal conflict and disunity.
The next type of government, democracy, is born of oligarchy. This occurs when the increasing numbers of poor who have long ceased to respect their rulers notice how their rulers’ easy lives have made them weak and rebel. They establish equal political rights for all citizens and rule by the people. Democracy is characterised by the diversity of types of person and of experiments in government. It is also constituted by a poor and inconsistent system of education and lack of cohesion. In terms of personality type, democracy is characterised by someone who seeks to satisfy many unnecessary and fleeting desires. This type tends towards faddishness and novelty seeking, lacking any unified goal in life.
Finally, dictatorship follows. Freedom is the highest value in democratic societies, but its excess leads to lawlessness and lack of respect for authority. Thus, democratic societies often precipitate states of absolute authority, as society swings from one extreme to the next. More specifically, a dictator emerges from democracy by posing as a “champion” of the people. This is against the class of the wealthy. Bit by bit this demagogue takes away people’s rights as he seeks to protect his position from potential enemies. He starts to kill anyone who opposes him. First these purges are aimed at the wealthy class, but eventually they spread also to affect the people who first brought him to power. The character of the dictatorial person is someone totally without self-control. They have succumbed to every dark desire, especially lust, which rules over their minds like a dictator. They are willing to do anything to satisfy it, including dishonouring family, stealing, and committing murder.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Happiness and Unhappiness”
Socrates proceeds to rank the various types of government and the types of individual corresponding to them. This is according to the criterion of happiness and is to finally conclude whether the most moral person and system is the happiest. As such, he starts by looking at the dictatorial system and personality. For such a person, “Oppression and servitude must pervade his mind, with the truly good parts of it being oppressed, and an evil, crazed minority doing the oppressing” (322). This person, like the community ruled by a dictator, is the most unhappy of all the types. This is because they are slaves to their desires and are entirely unfree. It is also though because they are condemned to live in a state of constant fear of others. Socrates uses the fact that the dictatorial state is both the least moral and least happy to infer that the other types must be happier in proportion to their goodness. As such, the happiest person and state must be that of the perfectly moral community and the philosopher king.
Chapters 11-12 Analysis
Socrates’ account of the ideal community by chapter eleven has now finally and definitively been rounded off. He has provided a sense for the meaning of the good through his three analogies. He has also explained the ideal model of education for prospective philosopher kings. Having “finished with all that,” Socrates now enjoins Glaucon to “resume our journey by recalling where we were when we took the side-turning that led us here” (277). In other words, they are going to return to the original point of The Republic. This was to establish that the moral life is also the happiest. And this was to be done by comparing the various effects that morality and immorality have on the mind. For this would prove that the benefits of morality outweigh those of immorality and hence that there is a eudemonistic justification for the former.
The difference now is that the necessary groundwork has been done. The description of the ideal community has put Socrates in a position to broach the question of the mind directly. He is now able to fully tackle the issue of morality and happiness. Further, his argument rests on the value of autonomy. Looking at various models of society and the character types corresponding to them he concludes that dictatorship is the worst. The mind of the person corresponding to dictatorship will “constantly be subject to the overpowering whims of its lust” and so will “hardly ever be free to do what it wants” (322). Here Socrates equates autonomy with rationality. In an inversion of how freedom is often conceived, to be free here does not mean the absence of external constraints on one’s actions. This is merely being a slave to one’s desires. Instead, freedom is about controlling and mastering the different elements of oneself. It is about obeying the laws one has made for oneself so to live as a harmonious whole.
From the idea that the “dictatorial” type is unfree, Socrates further concludes that he must also be unhappy. As he says, “a person with a dictatorial mind is bound to be in a constant state of poverty and need” (322). Their enslavement to desire means, ironically, they are never sated. Dependent on external objects for satisfaction, they are in a constant state of absence and want. Indeed, the fulfilment of one desire may simply lead to new and more depraved ones forming. The problem comes for Socrates, however, with the next stage of the argument. Extrapolating from dictatorship and its corresponding character, he constructs a hierarchy of happiness and morals. Since the dictatorial type is the both the most immoral and the most unhappy of the types, Socrates concludes that the inverse must be true. That is, the most moral community and the hence the most moral character corresponding to it must be the happiest. Thus, there is a strong eudemonistic motivation for morality.
These final moves seem to depend on a fallacy. Even leaving aside the details of the hierarchy of states and character types that Socrates sets up, the inferiority of one extreme does not necessarily prove the superiority of the other. Consider, for example, one’s relationship to alcohol. At one extreme there is heavy drinking and alcoholism. At the other extreme is total sobriety and abstinence. Most people would accept that in terms of happiness and health alcoholism is the worst relationship to alcohol possible. Yet it does not automatically follow that total abstinence is the best or most healthy. A middle ground, say drinking in moderation, might in fact be the alternative most conducive to happiness. So too with morality. Someone who is morally depraved might also be extremely unhappy. We might accept that theirs’ is the worst relationship to morality, from a eudemonistic view, possible. Nevertheless, the most moral person is not necessarily the happiest. Again, a middle ground might, potentially, be preferable. Living a generally good and honest life, but occasionally lying or acting selfishly way when necessary might be optimal. This could be the life corresponding to Socrates’ description of timarchy. That is, someone who enjoys the mental equilibrium that comes with morality, but who avoids the stress or anxiety that total adherence to it might entail.
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