Dear Stanley,

for sure Plato's positions are elite positions. This is true.

Dear Stanley,

you ask a very difficult question. I think Thrasymachus represents a hard enemy for Socrates. Actually, in spite of the fact that Thrasymachus seems to have been defeated already at the end of book I of the Republic, he has not been defeated, at least in my opinion: both Glaucon's and Adeimantus' positions are a development of Thrasymachus' own positions, or at least they can be interpreted that way too. I think, on the one hand, that the whole system of education, which only a few persons manage to accomplish, is the remedy to Thrasymachus' positions; on the other hand, I think that the defeat or the try at defeating Thrasymachus's positions is being developed through showing that the authentic individual nature is not only the nature portrayed by Thrasymachus or lying at the basis of Thrasymachus' positions. Thrasymachus, Glaucon and Adeimantus do expose descriptions of the individual attitudes which are not completely extraneous to the individual attitudes; individuals are not only, though, what the three expose. I shall write again; I am working on this subject.

Gianluigi

Gianluigi, I would love to read your results.

My knowledge of the period suggests 1) a great number of doctors were not rationalists but employed magical cures, 2) Socrates may here be advertising a certain kind of doctor, similar in thinking to him, 3) most doctors charged, and probably at best only Temple healing was free. Now, although some might say it doesnt matter, unfortunately his argument is based on a certain non/advantage for those who have specialised knowledge...this impacts on knowledge of justice. Justice and its practitioners are idealised. Nonsense! Knowledge like justice provides advantages...it is not moral nor efficient.

Dear Stanley,

I thank you very much for your message.

I sent here as attachment an analysis of mine on the Republic, which I managed to publish some weeks ago; I uploaded the analysis on ResearchGate too. This is only a beginning: I shall complete it with further analyses. I shall write again.

Downloaded it. Just one or two points, if I can? Plato's concept of the 3 kinds of human conditions, stages, parts or whatever was common to Greek or rather Athenian thinking and resurfaced in Freud-s Id, Ego, Superego. The wild or beastly part was the country, the ego was the citizen of a city and the superego how the city was ruled and those that ruled it. Plato-s propositions on good and evil seem extrapulated from this onto notions of order and orderly rule.

Just a quick trip back to the comments I made earlier. As Plato and Socrates knew these so-called empiricist doctors (all ancient societies had them, not just Greece) as they were part of the philosophical thinking of the time, the text is not entirely truthful or rather honest. It has I suspect been taken too seriously. Soctrates and Plato were advocating elite rule through systems of order. On this basis, Thrasymachus is the democratic voice. The political problems of rule (the Republic /or state- after all) have been personified.

Anyway, I find Socrates position dishonest rather than insightful.

Only the just can be organised (Philosopher rulers) but what about the Mafia? Not only have they been wonderfully organised for centuries but they have a justice belief. It is for them perhaps capatalism that is dishonest, the people with business skills Socrates seemingly applauds.

Dear Stanley,

for sure Plato's positions are elite positions. This is true.

Gianluigi, nothing wrong with that but it does seem strangely dishonest. The text picks and chooses facts and beliefs to create doubtful ideas.

Dear Stanley,

A perspective of notion, which are most elucidated as knowledge, is an opinion, which this is too. I would have the opinion, that Socratic or Platonic ideals, were, thought experiments which allowed from unaffected positions, question any topics, which in Modern Globalised world, would be " "Critics" ", as a similar role to that of Hellenic philosophers. We can rather identify the best Form of Constructive Criticism. The agency of discursive methods, in the form as from this Platform (Platonic Form).

Charles, they may be the case but in fact the discourse can be correctly understood as a debate on public behaviour. This is about influential people within the polis setup and whether or not they are corrupt and unjust. Think of your local politician and whether they fit these descriptions. Socrates decides that there are natural leaders, but ones a;lso nurtured to the role. An elite in effect. The arguments of others are traduced and their supporters made to look inadequate when Socrates and Plato are looking for their truth not a or the truth.

I understand extrapulating good and evil propositions from this debate but these were and are abrahamic constructs. Socrates arguments concern public life. Am I making too light of this, or others too much?

Yes, Nancy, but that is one reason I say the text is dishonest. As with most advanced societies of the time doctors were either empirical physicians or employed incantations etc. Most employed both. Empirical doctors were few in number and belonged to cults or schools. They charged, as Sphists did. They charged a great deal and only treated the rich. Some commentators say that their empirical methods were a means of advertising their services, different from others. It involved making money. Greece was a very competitive society in all things.

Therefore, Socrates- opponents were right, he was wrong/and knew he was wrong. An ideal that is a substitute for reality leaves much to be desired.

But of course he is speaking about special natures. Both the doctors, who were not actually successful in their cures but encouraged the analytical approach of Socrates, and ships captains are presented as natural members of the elite. They, like Plato, have a right to rule others who do not possess their inestimable qualities. Plato was an aristocrat who did not approve of democracy. It is something surely of a fascist trope presented as philosophical superiority differentiating the ordinary person from the superior one.

Socrates was presenting a half/truth as a philosophical point. The doctor and captain understand justice naturally, so they rule.

Nancy, adding.

Before Socrate's death the 30 tyrants, all aristocrates, had with Spartan help ruled Athens, killing anyone who went against them. Democracy was crushed. Socrates and his ideas were blamed as many of the tyrants had been his students. He probably was culpable. Those who ordered his death or at least exile were democrates-who Plato loathed. Ideals? Maybe not.

Lost Nancy as to the Marxist interlude. My point would be that ideas cannot or should not exist outside context, as the reader merely accepts the writers position without finding out what they are actually saying. Plato may in fact have been writing about the political situation he faced or had faced and falsifying his position through alternative arguments in an attempt to create distance. Lets say that I was a philosopher who was also a neo-conservative and from social and intellectual prejudice backed a dictator during a period of state crisis. That dictator then acted badly and in order to retain my status, even if later on, as a seer or wise man I required myself to create a different position. Now supposing I had to hand a particular means of enquiry developed from another, respected older seer or wise man and I decided to use it to create a set of ideas that put a different aspect on my behaviour. Bear in mind that my political position did not fundamentally change in that I still despised democracy-the rabble running society and not an elite caste to which I belonged. Would I not reflect my position in exactly the way Plato did, within the logic of a greater truth?

Actually the common view is that he took inspiration from Sparta and in some ways he constructed the first true Fascist state. Fascism took the view from Nietzsche (can never spell his name without looking it up) that supermen (not women mind you) were the natural leaders of all polities. The Great Man Theory Nietzsche or not!

The Marx interlude is possibly an American thing?

Nancy, I have no problem with Marx and Plato together within a process of analysis, certainly as Marx can be said to have based his analytical technique on the Athenian. It is completely justified, just new to me.

Where the doctor business is concerned, most doctors, like elsewhere at the time, would have based their medicine on common traditional techniques and magic, and consequently charged less than the empirical doctors favoured by Socrates and Plato. These doctors, because of the reasoning basis of their medicine, would have been intimately known to Socrates and Plato so given the competitive nature of Greek medicine would have been a form of marketing or advertising. Doctors busily vied for patients especially rich ones. By with holding these preferences, yes Plato falsified. It is nevertheless interesting that he chooses professional middleclass men as examples and not aristocrats, but then he classified leadership in other ways as part animalistic and part character and education. His guardians or state leaders are Spartan hoplites as policemen. Another interesting connection to present day concepts of guardianship to do with internal policing and the old British and present American notion of guardianship of its economic regions abroad through force.