Please read from Key Lessons from Plato’s Republic — Book I, as this story is part of a broader series on Plato’s Republic.
Under the tyranny of erotic love he has permanently become while awake what he used to become occasionally while asleep.
In Book IX, Socrates introduces the tyrannical man’s long and strategically astute portrait. The tyrannical person is ruled by lawless desires, the kind of desires that occurs only rarely in dreams in normal individuals (desires for illicit sexual unions or heinous murders). The sexual man of the tyrannical man is taking him down this nightmarish path, and egging him continually on to greater excess love, and consider it as a dangerous passion, the greatest tyrant of all, best resisted by decent ones.
The life of a man who is not only a private tyrant, but who becomes an actual political tyrant is even worse. Imagine what would happen if this private tyrant, along with his entire family and all his slaves, were moved to a deserted island. Without the law to protect him from his mistreated slaves, would not the tyrant fear terribly for his life and the life of his family? And what if he were then surrounded by people who did not look kindly on those who abused their slaves? Would he not then be in even greater danger? But this is just what it is like to be an actual tyrant. The tyrant is in continual danger of being killed in revenge for all the crimes he committed against his subjects, whom he has made into slaves. He cannot leave his own house for fear of all his enemies. He becomes a captive and lives in terror. The real tyrant is also in a better position to indulge all his awful whims and to sink further into degeneracy.
The tyrant, who is also the most unjust man, is the least happy. The aristocrat, the most just man, is the most happy. Therefore, in relation to the lesson from book II, it pays to be Just.
Key Observations: Plato never considers the possibility that reason itself can lead us toward evil, and perhaps he would try to maintain his position even in the face of recent history.
Socrates has just provided us with one compelling reason to believe that justice is worthwhile: he has shown how much happier the just man is than the unjust. Now he provides us with a second argument for the conclusion that the just life is the most pleasant. There are three sorts of people in the world, goes the argument: truth-loving, honor-loving, and profit-loving. Each one of these people takes the greatest pleasure in whatever it is they most value and thinks that the best life is the life that involves the most of this pleasure. Yet among these, only one of them can be proved to be right. Only the philosopher is in a position to make this judgement, because only he has actually experienced all three pleasures. So we ought to believe the philosopher when he says that the pleasure of truth-seeking is the greatest pleasure. If the philosopher is right, the pleasure one gets from having a just soul (i.e., a soul aiming at fulfilling reason’s desires) is the best kind of pleasure. So, once again, we see that it does pay to be just.
Socrates argues that the pleasure of the philosopher is the only real pleasure. All other pleasures are actually relief from pain, not positive pleasure. Other pleasures are not real pleasures because other desires can never be completely satisfied. All we do is quench those yearnings temporarily, easing the pain of wanting. The philosophical desire can be completely fulfilled by grasping the Form of the Good.
Socrates declares that it is best for everyone to be ruled by divine reason, and while ideally such reason would be within oneself, the second best scenario is to have reason imposed from outside. This is the aim of having laws. The purpose of laws is not to harm people, as Thrasymachus claims, but to help them. The laws impose reason on those whose rational part is not strong enough to rule the soul.
Key Observations: If knowledge of the form of the good is what makes the just life worthwhile, does anyone but the philosopher live a worthwhile life? If the Forms are the source of all worth and only the philosophers consort with the Forms, what can we say about everyone else? Do they have no chance at all to live a good life? Plato might respond to this question by stressing that any man can bring his soul toward the Forms to some extent by making sure that their soul is ordered and harmonious. In other words, by being just — by making sure that reason rules spirit and appetite — a man lives a worthwhile life even if he never grasps the Forms with his intellect.
