Antony Tran
May 10, 2016
Seminar paper
Perfect
Failure into a Perfect Tyrant
"Shoot for the moon and prepare to be
encompassed by crushing darkness when you miss"
(College Humor). Although dark, this quote holds some relevance to The Republic of Plato. This quote
relates to the idea of perfection in Book 4 when Socrates finds justice in the
city as “the minding of one’s own business and not being a busy body”(433ab).
This means each of the individual parts are working in their own area. Socrates
then shapes the just city into the soul where one must have all the parts; the
calculating, spirited, and desiring, in order.
There
is a perfect harmonization of the parts that work together. In this sense,
justice and perfection are the same, but there is a difference between justice,
the balance between the parts, and perfect justice, which is just something that
is extraordinary and grand. In order to reach justice in the soul, one must
have perfect harmony of the soul. However, when one fails to gain this perfect
harmony, they become tyrants, which are the imitators of rulers, rather than
becoming the philosopher king. “The Allegory of the Cave” illustrates what
happens to those who succeed, but also those who fail.
In “The Allegory of the Cave” there
are three levels: the bottom, the middle, and the outside of the cave. At the
bottom, people are chained in a way that makes them unable to move, so they are
focused on a fixed location. They have been there since childhood and know
nothing other than the shadows and noises created from the people in the middle
(514a). In the middle there are people that carry different artifacts, such as
statues of men and animals, in front of a fire, and cast shadows for the
prisoners at the bottom to see. Some of them talk while others are quiet as
they create these shadows (515a).
The
outside of the cave is where the sun and the real objects are. If a person from
the bottom were able to escape, he would see the real objects and gain knowledge
of the real world. Once up there, he is compelled to help, however, there are
those at the bottom that are not willing to accept their help. The ones that
come back down before reaching the outside are immediately judged by the
prisoners and are laughed at (517a). Those that go out would be able to reason
through this ignorance and consider if the reason for the confusion can be due
to the fact that he came from a place of light into the dark, or because it was
because the lack of knowledge was dazzled by the light (518ab). Then there are
those that are not able to make it out of the cave. They are the individuals
that fail and become imitators. Some imitators remain ignorant and keep the prisoners
at the bottom ignorant, while others do what they can to teach the ones at the
bottom in order for them to escape.
The imitators that remain ignorant
do not know what is right or wrong; they only know what may be right for them.
When asked if an imitator knew about what he was imitating, Glaucon answers:
“the imitator will neither know nor opine righting about what he imitates”
(602a). A tyrant is an imitator because he only knows what a ruler may look
like; to have citizens and to conquer cities. However, as Socrates said, “the
imitator… understands nothing of what is
but rather of what looks like it is”
(601c). This is because an imitator imitates other things, or actions, much
like how a tyrant imitates other rulers in a way so that then those who do not
know anything else are fooled into thinking what they say is correct (601a).
Those at the bottom of the cave assume that the imitator knows what he is
saying, without knowing they are being deceived. They do not know what the
imitator is doing is wrong because they are not able to escape or expand to
other cities.
Moss,
explains that imitation is the likeness of a form, which is the true form,
while there is, as Socrates mentions the painting, the likeness of a likeness
(418). Because they are not the real thing, it is only what is close to the
truth. However, the further it is from the truth such as when Moss says, “the
appearance of a bed – what the painter paints – is nearly as far ‘removed from
the truth’ as the painting of a bed” (419). The truth becomes even more
distorted into a falsehood that becomes the “truth” of those that are ignorant
enough to believe it. The imitators that show these images that are removed
from the truth are keeping others from gaining knowledge. These imitators then
move on to become tyrants because of the ignorance of the bottom of the
cave.
However, there are two types of tyrants.
The imperfect tyrant has made it to the middle of the cave and stopped and the
perfect tyrant that has made it to the edge of the cave but turned around before
the saw the light. This is evident when Socrates says, “the longer he lives in
tyranny, the more he becomes like that” (576b). Socrates is saying that the tyrant
does not start off at it’s worst, but will end there. Although Socrates did not
mention the perfect tyrant much, it can be assumed because of the different
levels in the cave. Escaping to the middle versus escaping to the good on the
outside. When one is leaving the cave, they are just, however, when one exits the cave they become perfectly just. They are perfectly just because exiting the cave "provided truth and intelligence" (517c). However, these tyrants still never escape the cave. They are “brought
down and then back again to the middle… since they don’t go beyond this, they
don’t look upward toward what is truly above” (586a). If these perfect tyrants
felt as if they have already reached the top, there is no need for them to look
back up. Instead they, “after the fashion of cattle, always looking down and
with their heads bent to earth and table, they feed… they kick and butt with
horns and hoofs of iron, killing each other because they are insatiable”
(586b). They only do so because they it is what they desire and there is no
logic behind it because the tyrants left the calculating part behind.
Once
a leader has become a tyrant, he is no longer concerned with the whole of the city,
but with himself and does not know what a good ruler is. He starts by being
kind to the citizens; however, as Socrates explains to Adeimantus, “he is
always setting some war in motion, so that the people will be in need of a
leader” (566e). In order to maintain his status, the tyrant must be able to
identify a problem for the city. That way his citizens will constantly rely on
the tyrant. However, in order to keep control of the people, the tyrant “must,
therefore, look sharply to see who is courageous, who is great-minded, who is
prudent, who is rich… and plot against them until he purges the city”
(567bc). He is getting rid of the best
of the city, so there will be no one else to oppose him.
As
Parry explains, “the tyrant is one who cultivates whichever kind of appetites
he wants… his pleasures come from his grandly satisfying them” (394). In this,
Parry is saying that a tyrant only knows to follow his desires. These desires
lead him to not be good for the city, especially because it is an insatiable
desire. What he is doing is not for the best of his people, as Parry later
explains that “hunger that does not aim at restoring equilibrium can become
gluttony, No matter how much one eats, he still wants more” (397). In order to
gain more, he will have to be able to keep the citizens from the knowledgeable.
The citizens that are allowed to stay are trapped in the city. They are kept
there and “can’t go anywhere abroad or see all the things the other free men
desire to see; but, stuck in his house for the most part” (579b). The tyrant
keeps his citizens from learning about what is truly going on by keeping them
in place, much like the prisoners at the bottom of the cave.
Just like there are two types of
tyrants, there are also two types of individuals in the middle of the cave. Those
that are trying to escape, Glaucon, and those that are trying to prevent
individuals from escaping. Those that try to escape do so by learning “should
never attempt to learn anything imperfect, anything that doesn’t always come
out at the point where everything ought to arrive” (530e). Socrates says this
to Glaucon meaning that those at the bottoms cannot learn from the shadows. In
order to escape, they must “pay special attention to the education” (534d).
Socrates says that there should be dialectic at the top of the studies, this
way there can be a test and who ever is able to release themselves from the
bottom, will be able to search for the truth (537d). However, with those that try to escape, there
are still those that try to mislead those at the bottom in order to keep them
there.
There
are people at the middle of the cave that keep the prisoners at the bottom. They
are the ones that continue to show their prisoners the truth as “nothing other
than the shadows of artificial things” (515c). The ones in the middle are
individuals that were able to escape the bottom of the cave, but not able to
escape the cave itself. Socrates was asking Glaucon, “Do you suppose that a man
brought from the downward region to the middle would suppose anything else than
that he was bring brought up? Would he believe he was elsewhere than in the
upper region since he hasn’t seen the true up” (584d)? Glaucon answered that
there was no way that they would think otherwise. If they were able to escape
the cave, they would have seen the sun and “once seen, it must be concluded
that this is in fact the cause of all that is right… it provided truth and
intelligence” (517c). The ones in the middle do not have this knowledge because
they only cast shadows for those at the bottom.
They
allow the prisoners to believe that the shadows are the truth and that “the
pleasures they live with… mere phantoms and shadow paintings of true pleasure”
(586a). Without the knowledge of the outside, they are left ignorant and can
only leave those at the bottom clueless to what is real. If they were truly
able to escape the cave, they would know that casting shadows and making noises
would not be enough to convince the prisoners at the bottom of the cave that
they are ignorant of the real world. Instead, those that are in the middle feel
as if they have reached the outside and know how to educate the ones at the
bottom.
An example of this is when Glaucon
assumes that it would be unjust if Socrates were to leave the people at the
bottom prisoners. Socrates answers that they should not drag them out, but
harmonize “the citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them share with
one another the benefit that each is able to bring to the common wealth”
(519d). Instead of forcing the prisoners out, Socrates wants there to be
guidance for them. In this instance, it shows that Glaucon still has not
reached the outside of the cave. He felt as if he knew what he should do in
order to help others, but Socrates was able to inform him that he was wrong.
Without the right guidance, the people in the middle become tyrants for their
city.
Those that make it to the middle of
the cave, and stay there, are imitators that become tyrants. In the middle of
the cave, the people cast shadows for the people at the bottom. This serves as
their truth because those at the bottom know nothing else. An imitator
“produces a bad regime in the soul of each private man by making phantoms that
are very far removed from the truth” (605c). These “phantoms” serve as the
truth for those that are too ignorant to know what is real. Both the middle of
the cave and an imitator has an artificial truth to what they do. They keep the
people at the bottom blind just like a tyrant. As stated before, in order to
keep the people ignorant, the tyrant must to purge the city of those who may be
knowledgeable enough to see what may be happening. Also, those that came from
the bottom of the cave were never free before they were able to escape. They
spent their whole life chained to a fixed position. Tyrants are similar because
“they live their whole life… always one man’s master or another’s slave. The
tyrannic nature never has a taste of freedom or true friendship” (576a).
Without the experience of freedom or friendship, Socrates calls them faithless,
which would make them unjust.
In order to become just, one must
become perfectly harmonized with all other parts. However, one can be just without
knowing what justice is, which is shown in the Myth of Er, In this myth, Er
dies and finds that his soul went on a journey and had judgment passed upon him
and other souls. Depending on whether the soul had a just or unjust life was
where they went. If they were unjust, they had to suffer through a thousand
years of unhappiness while the just went to heaven. Once the time is up, they
most go and choose which life they would like to live. Those that suffered a
thousand years chose the just life, while those who did not suffer were not careful
about their choice, which caused them to stay in a loop.
The
ones lucky enough to choose a just life each time do not do so because they
know what the just life is, but because they do it by chance. In order for them
to escape, they must “find out who will give him the capacity and the knowledge
to distinguish the good and the bad life” (618c). This will make it so that the
choice of living a just life isn’t random and they will finally see what is
just. There will no longer be ignorance because they will “know the effects,
bad and good… and the effects of any particular mixture with one another of
good and bad birth” (618d). Without this knowledge, there is no way that one
can choose to be just and know the reason for it.
In
order to avoid this, one must strive for perfect harmony of the virtues, there
is a cost for those who are unable to make it. They become imitators and
tyrants that are not able to do what is just. What imitators do is “far from
the truth…because it lays hold of a certain small part of each thing” (598b).
Everything that is said by a tyrant has a little bit of truth to it; however,
it is twisted so that it seems as if they are still needed. He makes enemies
out of those he is purging the city from not because they are a threat to the
city, but because they are a threat to himself. This causes the tyrant give to
the desiring part “and nourishes it, and, by making it strong, destroys the
calculating part” (605b). Without the calculating part, the soul is no longer
just and is thrown into chaos. If the soul is not just, then it is unjust. The
calculating part is no longer calculating, and the desiring has taken over. The
tyrant is not able to control himself but still attempts to rule others (579c).
I feel that in order to stop a tyrant from forming, there needs to be guidance
from an individual, such as Socrates with Glaucon and Adeimantus. That way, if
one were to stray from the path of perfection, there will be someone to lead
them outside of the cave.
Works Cited
Moss, J. (n.d.). What Is Imitative Poetry and Why Is It Bad? The Cambridge Companion to
Plato's Republic, 415-444. doi:10.1017/ccol0521839637.015
Parry, R. D. (n.d.). The Unhappy Tyrant and the Craft of Inner Rule. The Cambridge
Companion to Plato's Republic, 386-414. doi:10.1017/ccol0521839637.014
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