Non Virtuous Characters according to Plato
From [[The Republic]] Book 8-9
Important: [[Soul according to Plato]]
- Opposite to virtue is vice (kakia) (Everyone thinks a vicious person is virtuous, sorta like Palpatine in Star Wars)
- But people are not either virtuous or vicious - most of us are in between
- Plato considers these in books 8 and 9
Soul according to Plato
Just like the City in [[The Republic]] has 3 parts, the soul also has 3.
Parts
- Reasoning Part: its virtue is knowledge
- Spirited Part: its virtue is courage
- Appetitive part: no virtue of its own, but temperance is an agreement that the reasoning part should rule and the non-rational parts should be ruled.
Justice: each part doing its own work
Character according to Plato
alias: Forms of government according to Plato
from [[The Republic]]
He ties every constitution of a city to the constitution of character. Every constitutions nurtures a certain character.
He thinks there is a natural, almost inevitable progression downwards, to worse and worse constituion/character. That's why he dislikes change.
[[The Man-City Analogy|Plato's City of pigs]] would be an unchanging one, but there is objection to that, so there is a need for a city with culture that needs to be as restricted as possible.
Types
[[Aristocracy]](the ideal): aristocratic character[[Timocracy]]:[[timocratic character]][[Oligarchy according to Plato]]:[[oligarchic character]]- Democracy: democratic character
- Tyranny: tyrannical character
Aristocracy
→ [[Character according to Plato]]
His portrayal of aristocray/aristocratic character is, in many ways, an attempt to prevent this (always corrupting) change - it is to constrain human nature as much as possible because of its natural tendency to go from good to worse and from worse to as bad as possible.
How does Aristocracy get corrupted?
Plato offers a kind of mythical/cosmological accoung. But the point is that, at some point, the wrong people - unsuited to the role of leaders - will become leaders and by neglecting what needs to be paid attention to, they bring about civil strife.
From Aristocracy to [[Timocracy]]
Quote
The older generation will choose the best of these children but they are unworthy nevertheless, and when they acquire their fathers' powers, they will begin, as guardians, to neglect us Muses. First they will have less consideration for music and poetry that they ought, then they will neglect physical training, so that you young people will become less well educated in music and poetry.
Hence, rulers chosen from among them won't be able to guard well the testing of the golden, silver, bronz, iron races... The intermixing of iron with silver and bronze with gold that results will engender lack of likeness and unharmonious inequality, and these always breed war and hostility wherever they arise...
Timocracy
→ [[Character according to Plato]]
Important
Rulers aren't choosen for their knowledge of what's good for the city anymore
Timocracy emerges from a compromis between the golden and silver people with the iron and bronze people - a compromise between those seeking virtue and those seeking weath and pleasure.
- Rulers have respect
- The fighting class lives like in aristocracy (no other craft or making money, communal eating, and so on).
- But the rulers are not the wise anymore but those who are still wise which are now 'mixed'.
- Bust simple people cannot help by desire and value money - so they will start to pile it up - in secret: "They will possess private treasuries and storehouses, where they can keep it hidden, and have houses to enclose them, like private nests, where they can spend lavishly either on women or on anyone else they wish".
[[Timocratic Character]]
Timocratic Character
dominant in [[Timocracy]]. Example: Sparta
Difference to
[[Aristocracy]]they don't love philosophy, but honor. The spirited part of the soul rules the rational →
[[Soul according to Plato]]
- Dominant Element: Spirit (thumos)
- Core motivation
- Honor, victory, reputation, status
- The timocratic person loves:
- military achievement, competition, recognition, prestige.
- He respects discipline but lacks philosophical wisdom.
- Reason no longer rules; spirit has taken command.
- But love of money creeps in with older age
Oligarchy according to Plato
→ [[Oligarchic Character]]
Difference to the others
The wealthiest should rule
From Timocracy to Oligarchy
- Then, in the end, victory-loving and honor-loving men become lovers of making money, or money-lovers. And they praise and admire wealthy people and appoint them as rulers, while they dishonor poor ones.
- Certainly.
- Then, don't they pass a law that is characteristic of an oligarchic constitution, one that establishes a wealth qualification - higher where the constitution is more oligarchic, less where it's less so - and proclaims that those whose property doesn't reach the stated amount aren't qualified to rule? And they either put this through by force of arms, or else, before it comes to that, they terrorize the people and establish their constitution that way.
- Isn't that so?
- Of course it is
Faults
- It allwos those who are not qualified to lead because they are wealthy
- It divides the society into the rich and the poor-thus turning one city into two-two cities 'living in the same place and always plotting against one another'
- The rich use the poor to fight the wars and so must arm them (but then they have to fear them) but they will have hard time paying for merceneries too, because of their love of money.
- There will be meddling in other people's affairs: the same people will be farmers, money-makers, and soldiers simultaneously.
- The greatest evil: the creation of disposed people:
- Allowing someone to sell all his possessions and someone else to buy them and then allowing the one who has sold them to go on living in the city, while belonging to none of its parts, for he's neither a money-maker, a craftsman, a member of the cavalry, or a hoplite, but a poor person without means.
Still not too bad things
- The oligarchic person, by prioritizing wealth, needs self-control-and so he or she still needs to keep their desires and in check and not allow them to run freely - after all, they love money more than anything else and so that is more compatible with not spending than spending (or with spending not one's own but another persons' money)
- So, in a way, there is still a semblance or projection of some facets of virue even though highly distorted.
Oligarchic Character
→ [[Oligarchy according to Plato]]
- Dominant element: Necessary appetites
- Core Motivation
- Money and security.
- The oligarchic person loves wealth
- Is cautious, calculating, and disciplined primarily because he wants to preserve and increase his property.
- Reason serves greed rather than truth
Klassenkampf nach Platon
Comes from [[Oligarchy according to Plato]] and establishes [[Democracy according to Plato]]
Warning
Plato really dislikes it, even though he thinks that democracy is beautiful, because he thinks democracy always ends in tyranny
- The desire to become as rich as possible is ultimately insatiable - and so they create impoverished and disempowered people and do so more and more (since it is profitable to do so). This leads ultimately to civl war:
What happens
Democracy comes about when the poor are victorious, killing some of their opponents and expelling others, and giving the rest an equal share in ruling under the constitution, and for the most part assigning people to positions of rule by lot
- Once they win - they have freed themselves from the yoke of the oligarchs and so the freedom becomes their value →
[[Democracy according to Plato]]
Democracy according to Plato
Problem
You have to allow any desire that a person might have, even though it's a nightmare. Virtue gets lost
Faults (Rise of Populism)
- One major problem is the inherent instability of democracy which inevitably leads to
[[tyranny]]. - In other words, as beautiful as democracy might look like, because it ultimately (in Plato's eyes) abandons the objective notion of truth, people tend to see their own desire - whatever they are - as true and those who praise them as having just those desires as the best people
In the Text
[Plato, 2010, p. 1527](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZSB9NDFU?page=1527&annotation=RQLKP55M)
- First of all, then, aren’t they free? And isn’t the city full of freedom and freedom of speech? And doesn’t everyone in it have the license to do what he wants?
- That’s what they say, at any rate.
- And where people have this license, it’s clear that each of them will arrange his own life in whatever manner pleases him.
- It is.
- Then I suppose that it’s most of all under this constitution that one finds [c] people of all varieties.
- Of course.
- Then it looks as though this is the finest or most beautiful of the constitutions, for, like a coat embroidered with every kind of ornament, this city, embroidered with every kind of character type, would seem to be the most beautiful. And many people would probably judge it to be so, as women and children do when they see something multicolored.
- They certainly would.
- It’s also a convenient place to look for a constitution.
- Why’s that?
- Because it contains all kinds of constitutions on account of the license it gives its citizens. So it looks as though anyone who wants to put a city in
[Plato, 2010, p. 1528](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZSB9NDFU?page=1528&annotation=XTBTKF36)
- order, as we were doing, should probably go to a democracy, as to a supermarket of constitutions, pick out whatever pleases him, and establish that. [e] He probably wouldn’t be at a loss for models, at any rate.
- In this city, there is no requirement to rule, even if you’re capable of it, or again to be ruled if you don’t want to be, or to be at war when the others are, or at peace unless you happen to want it. And there is no requirement in the least that you not serve in public office as a juror, if you happen to want to serve, even if there is a law forbidding you to do so. Isn’t that a divine and pleasant life, while it lasts? [558]
[Plato, 2010, p. 1528](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZSB9NDFU?page=1528&annotation=I8NNKKJW)
- And what about the city’s tolerance? Isn’t it so completely lacking in [b] small-mindedness that it utterly despises the things we took so seriously when we were founding our city, namely, that unless someone had transcendent natural gifts, he’d never become good unless he played the right games and followed a fine way of life from early childhood? Istn’ it magnificent the way it tramples all this underfoot, by giving no thought to what someone was doing before he entered public life and by honoring him if only he tells them that he wishes the majority well? [c]
[[Democratic Character]]
Democratic Character
from [[Democracy according to Plato]]
- Dominant element: many equal appetites
- Core motivation
- Freedom and variety.
- The democratic person rejects hierarchy among desires
- One day: studying philosophy; the next day: drinking; the dary after that: exercising; and another day: making money
- Reason serves desires, but no desire remains in charge for long
Faulty Character
[Plato, 2010, p. 1532](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZSB9NDFU?page=1532&annotation=J4BRV48G)
- And he doesn’t admit any word of truth into the guardhouse, for if someone tells him that some pleasures belong to fine and good desires [c] and others to evil ones and that he must pursue and value the former and restrain and enslave the latter, he denies all this and declares that all pleasures are equal and must be valued equally.
- That’s just what someone in that condition would do.
- And so he lives on, yielding day by day to the desire at hand. Sometimes he drinks heavily while listening to the flute; at other times, he drinks only water and is on a diet; sometimes he goes in for physical training; [d] at other times, he’s idle and neglects everything; and sometimes he even occupies himself with what he takes to be philosophy. He often engages in politics, leaping up from his seat and saying and doing whatever comes into his mind. If he happens to admire soldiers, he’s carried in that direction, if money-makers, in that one. There’s neither order nor necessity in his life, but he calls it pleasant, free, and blessedly happy, and he follows it for as long as he lives.
Tyranny
Once champions of the people get a taste of power, they can't help but get their hands on unrestrained power.
[[Tyrannical Character]]
The Rise of a Tyrant
[Plato, 2010, p. 1537](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZSB9NDFU?page=1537&annotation=9DM6VBQA)
- Now, aren’t the people always in the habit of setting up one man as their special champion, nurturing him and making him great?
- They are. [d]
- And it’s clear that, when a tyrant arises, this special leadership is the sole root from which he sprouts.
- It is.
- What is the beginning of the transformation from leader of the people to tyrant? Isn’t it clear that it happens when the leader begins to behave like the man in the story told about the temple of the Lycean Zeus13 in Arcadia? What story is that?
- That anyone who tastes the one piece of human innards that’s chopped up with those of other sacrificial victims must inevitably become a wolf. [e] Haven’t you heard that story? I have.
- Then doesn’t the same happen with a leader of the people who dominates a docile mob and doesn’t restrain himself from spilling kindred blood? He brings someone to trial on false charges and murders him (as tyrants so often do), and, by thus blotting out a human life, his impious tongue and lips taste kindred citizen blood. He banishes some, kills others, and drops hints to the people about the cancellation of debts and the redistribution [566] of land. And because of these things, isn’t a man like that inevitably fated either to be killed by his enemies or to be transformed from a man into a wolf by becoming a tyrant?
The Reign of a Tyrant
[Plato, 2010, p. 1539](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZSB9NDFU?page=1539&annotation=SGXIUSNM)
- Besides, if he suspects some people of having thoughts of freedom and of not favoring his rule, can’t he find a pretext for putting them at the mercy of the enemy in order to destroy them? And for all these reasons, isn’t it necessary for a tyrant to be always stirring up war?
- It is.
- And because of this, isn’t he all the more readily hated by the citizens? [b]
- Of course.
- Moreover, don’t the bravest of those who helped to establish his tyranny and who hold positions of power within it speak freely to each other and to him, criticizing what’s happening?
- They probably do.
- Then the tyrant will have to do away with all of them if he intends to rule, until he’s left with neither friend nor enemy of any worth.
- Clearly.
- He must, therefore, keep a sharp lookout for anyone who is brave, largeminded, knowledgeable, or rich. And so happy is he that he must be the [c] enemy of them all, whether he wants to be or not, and plot against them until he has purged them from the city.
Tyrannical Character
from [[tyranny]]
- Dominant element: Lawless appetite
- Core motivation
- Unrestrained desires of the worst kind.
- The tyrannical person is ruled by a single overwhelming appetite (lust, greed, power)
- Reason and spirit are entirely enslaved.
- Reasonable/necessary desires are suppressed.
In Democracy, you get the idea that all desires are equal, which produces a lot of culture, but also allows bad desires to fester.