44 pages • 1 hour read
PlatoThe Republic
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Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Convention under Attack”
Socrates is returning from a religious festival at Piraeus, a seaport near Athens, when he is seen by someone he knows called Polemarchus. Polemarchus invites Socrates back to his house where several others, including Polemarchus’ father, Cephalus, his brothers, and Thrasymachus of Chalcedon are staying. On entering the house, Socrates is greeted by Cephalus, and they begin discussing the advantages and disadvantages of old age. Cephalus suggests that despite the complaints of some older people, old age is pleasant since it frees one from interest in many physical desires. Thus, he says, it makes one feel “like a slave who has got away from a rabid and savage master” (5).
Socrates notes that Cephalus is wealthy, and asks him “What do you think is the greatest benefit you’ve gained from being rich?” (7) He responds by saying that it is the ability to pay back anyone to whom one still owes money, or who he has wronged. This takes away a great deal of anxiety and fear. His comment leads into a discussion about the nature of morality with Polemarchus. Building on his father’s point about the repayment of debts, Polemarchus defines morality as “the art of giving benefit and harm to friends and enemies respectively” (10).
Socrates disagrees and offers three counterarguments. First, this definition of morality would warrant action we find intuitively morally objectionable, if done for the good of friends. For example, it would sanction stealing, provided it helped them. Second, it assumes that our friends are necessarily good and our enemies bad. Yet, as Socrates says, it is “common to make mistakes about this” (13). Even if we choose as friends only people we assume to be good, it is possible for someone to appear as good when they are not. Finally, Socrates deploys a third argument related to harm. Namely, that to harm one’s enemies is wrong since inflicting suffering on them will make them worse human beings.
Socrates is then confronted by a man named Thrasymachus. He angrily contests many of Socrates’ claims, as well as his habit of asking questions but never stating positions himself. The core of Thrasymachus’s dispute with Socrates centres on the Thrasymachus’s idea that morality is about the stronger gaining advantage. That is, morality is an ideology designed to ensure that weaker people do not challenge established authority. This provokes a broader debate about whether morality benefits its possessor. Thrasymachus uses the example of a dictatorship to argue that it does not. He says that immorality, if taken to an extreme, as in this case, brings happiness to that person. This is because the dictator has total licence to act as they please. They also make themselves immune from retaliation. Moreover, that morality has a bad name is not because people are afraid of being immoral, he says. Rather it is because they fear being the victim of immorality.
Socrates has two main arguments against this position. The first is that moral people have greater expertise in living, so therefore must be happier. This is true insofar as happiness is associated with greater skill and understanding in how to live well. Second, he argues that immorality is ineffective. This is the case as immoral people inevitably clash with themselves, and with others. They are only capable of getting things done to the extent that they are acting harmoniously with others and therefore not being immoral. Socrates concludes this chapter by stating that they have still not determined what morality is.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Challenge to Socrates”
Glaucon, Plato’s brother, is unconvinced by Socrates’ defence of morality in chapter one. He wants Socrates to address the question of whether morality is merely an extrinsic good or good “for its own sake” (45). That is, he wants Socrates to examine whether morality is worthwhile regardless of any external benefits that it produces. To clarify this question, Glaucon summarises the common view of morality’s nature and origins, and the idea that it arises out of self-interest. This is the “contract” view (46). Taken by itself, with this idea, immorality brings more pleasure than morality. However, because the harm of being subject to immorality (for example, through violence) outweighs its pleasure, we agree not harm others in exchange that others will not harm us. This, in broad strokes, is how morality originated and serves our interests.
Glaucon and his older brother Adeimantus seek to clarify another point. Since they are interested in the intrinsic worth of morality, it must be distinguished from the advantages accruing to the mere appearance of morality. In other words, Socrates must also rule out, when considering their question, the benefit that comes from having a reputation as someone moral. For, as they argue, one might be deeply immoral while pretending to be otherwise. Conversely, one can be truly moral while being perceived as immoral.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
In chapter two, Glaucon retells a myth about a shepherd in the ancient kingdom of Lydia who finds a magic ring. He soon discovers that this ring has the power to make him invisible, and he puts it to use. Becoming one of the king’s delegates, he uses the ring’s power to seduce the king’s wife. Then, with her help and the ring, he murders the king and usurps his throne. Glaucon adds, “Suppose there were two such rings, then—one worn by our moral person, the other by the immoral person” (47). According to the cynical view of morality, their behaviour would be identical. There would be no person here, he suggests, strong-willed enough to resist the rewards of wrongdoing and using the ring to get what they desired. That is, there is no one who could resist immorality if they knew it would go unseen.
This myth and thought experiment sums up the challenge facing Socrates in The Republic. Namely, how to combat the idea espoused by the cynic Thrasymachus that “morality is only ever practiced reluctantly, by people who lack the ability to do wrong” (46). In other words, how to address the claim that true moral action, and the moral person, are illusory. That since the rewards of immorality are greater than any hypothetical morality, it is only weakness or fear of punishment that preventing wrongdoing. Moreover, since this is the case, not only does morality not really exist, neither does immorality. Furthermore, this view can easily account for the appearance of morality’s existence via the social contract. Groups of people join to accept laws which restrict their freedom to harm others. This is in exchange for protection from such harm themselves. They call these laws “morality” but they are really self-preservation. Furthermore, they punish those who disobey these laws through the use of force or social stigmatising. This is why people cultivate a good reputation and “an aura of goodness” rather than “genuine goodness” (49). In other words, it is the appearance of morality and the rewards this brings that matters, not being good for its own sake. It is also why the invisibility in Glaucon’s myth is apt. When fear of the other’s view and the resulting social censure is removed, immorality seems suddenly appealing, rational, and unavoidable.
How does Socrates respond to all this? He wants to argue that genuine morality is possible and does exist. To do this he must show two things. First that there are good reasons for being moral and for not being immoral and that these transcend self-interested fear of punishment or censure. Second, he must demonstrate how, in some important way, these benefits are greater than the ones immorality offers. However, his initial arguments on this second point are not especially strong. One of these is that immoral people are “incapable of action” (39). This is because, first, they are in conflict with themselves and, second, with others. Yet history does not bear this out. Countless well organised genocides and atrocities show that immoral people are more than capable of concerted action and of acting with others. Nor is his other argument persuasive. He says that the mind of the moral person is more harmonious and therefore better organised than that of the immoral one. As such, a good, moral mind will be better at navigating life than an immoral mind. Yet, even if this premise was true, an immoral, disorganized person might still reap more rewards in life than a moral, organized person.
Moreover, both arguments appeal to extrinsic claims to make their case. That is, they appeal to the instrumental advantages in life that may accompany being moral, undermining the notion that being moral is its own pursuit rather than a seeking of external reward and validation. For example, if we acted in an ostensibly selfless way by helping others simply to gain a good reputation, it is questionable how far this is truly selfless and moral. As such, if Socrates wants to demonstrate the existence and feasibility of morality, he must change tack. And indeed, this is what he does. Instead of looking at the external rewards of morality or immorality he looks to their inherent, internal rewards. He must look at “what the effect is of its occurrence in someone’s mind, where it is hidden from the eyes of both gods and men” (55). He must examine the effect on the self when worldly rewards are parenthesised. In short, he must uncover the benefit of morality even for one who is wearing the ring. This is the task that will occupy the remainder of the text.
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