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Lecture 04 Notes

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Inner Politics, Inner Morality

 

Plan of the Lecture

I.    The Fundamentals of Inner Politics
II.   Inner and Outer Morality

I.    The Fundamentals of Inner Politics

A.   A Closer Look at the Political Analogues

Political Analogue: There are different kinds of jobs that people try to master
  • "there are diversities of natures among us which are suited to different occupations."  (370b)
  • "...and will you have work better done when the workman has many occupations or when he has only one?  When he has only one." (370b)
  • Classes of occupation are:
  1. Commercial (farmers, merchants, cobblers, business people)
  2. Military
  3. Rulers

 

Political Analogue: there is a class of experts who train the people by ruling them, and whose reasons for ruling are not disclosed to citizens.
  • We will see this in more detail when we discuss the governing class.
  • Notice Socrates's remarks about special training required to be a soldier:  "And the higher the duties of the guardian, I said, the more time, and skill, and art, and application will be needed by him." (374e)
  • Notice also the comparison of soldiers to animals, 375a-376c.
  • "The city will be courageous in virtue of a portion of herself which preserves under all circumstances that opinion about the nature of things to be feared and not to be feared in which our legislator educated them." (429c, emphasis added)

 

B.   Taking Stock

  • We now know a lot about morality.  It has, for example, the following features:
  1. It is social in a way that Thrasymachus can't account for.
  2. It is excellence in a craft and entails a complex social context.
  3. This social context includes a self-sufficient society with a high degree of differentiation and people suited by nature for various occupations.
  • We don't yet know what morality is; which is to say that we don't yet know what thing has these features.
  • Morality is the state of a sound soul, as health is the state of a sound body.  To be a good person is to be free of psychic conflicts, free of sicknesses of the soul.  It is to have a soul that is well-functioning.
  • Is this plausible?
  • The Upshot:
"Now as you have admitted that justice is one of that highest class of goods which are desired indeed for their results, but in a far greater degree for their own sakes--like sight or hearing or knowledge or health, or any other real and natural and not merely conventional good--I would ask you in your praise of justice to regard one point only: I mean the essential good and evil which justice and injustice work in the possessors of them. Let others praise justice and censure injustice, magnifying the rewards and honours of the one and abusing the other; that is a manner of arguing which, coming from them, I am ready to tolerate, but from you who have spent your whole life in the consideration of this question, unless I hear the contrary from your own lips, I expect something better. And therefore, I say, not only prove to us that justice is better than injustice, but show what they either of them do to the possessor of them, which makes the one to be a good and the other an evil, whether seen or unseen by gods and men." (367d, emphasis added)
  • Two important cautionary notes:
  1. We have a range of Christian conceptions that Plato does not.

    • Morality for us is importantly connected to an all-good, all-loving, all-powerful God who regularly intervenes in human history, especially, but not only, in the Incarnation.

    • We think of the soul as a substance that can exist without the body and which is calledo eternal life with God provided we satisfy certain conditions. Plato may think that the soul is immortal, but perhaps not in the same way.  For Plato, the soul is the locus of thought and personality, the seat of intellect and emotion.  It is a part of a person just as an eye, liver, or arm is part of a person (even if the soul is the most important part).  Like these other parts, the soul can function well or badly.

  3. We have a range of democratic notions that Plato does not.  One thing that is very important to us--but not to Plato--is individual freedom.  We give it paramount value.

 

II.   Inner Morality

If Plato wants to maintain the view that the person is composed of parts (and the soul is one of them), he must then identify those parts of the soul that are well-disposed by morality, as one would have to identify parts of knee that make its functioning possible.

A.   Plato Identifies Three Parts of the Soul.

  1. The Appetitive Part: The locus of desire for comfort, food, drink, and sex.
  2. The Spirited Part: The locus of aggressive emotions.
  3. The Intellect: The locus of intelligence, wisdom, and insight.

B.   Each Person Has All Three Parts to Some Degree.

  • The predominant part in each individual dictates the type of character possessed by the person as well as that person's citizenship class.

C.   An Excellently Functioning Part Has a Corresponding Virtue

  1. When the appetites are well regulated, a person is said to have self-discipline.
  2. When the spirited part is well regulated, a person is said to have courage.
  3. When the intellect is well regulated, a person is said to have wisdom.
  4. When all three parts function well together without conflict, a person is good.
 

 

Assignment: Paper 2



Copyright 2009, by the Contributing Authors. Cite/attribute Resource. Weithman, P. (2006, September 19). Lecture 04 Notes. Retrieved November 23, 2009, from Notre Dame OpenCourseWare Web site: http://ocw.nd.edu/philosophy/introduction-to-philosophy/lectures/lecture-04-notes. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Creative Commons License