Republic (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (69 page)

27
(10.614b)
I will tell you a tale:
Like
Republic, Gorgias
and
Phaedo
conclude with tales about the afterlife, which describe the experiences of the soul when separated from the body; in
Phaedrus
246a-256e, Socrates presents another, quite lengthy eschatological myth. Like the myth of Er in
Republic,
these stories describe the rewards received after death by those who have been virtuous in life and, conversely, the punishments of those who have been unjust, but their details and emphases differ considerably. Glaucon prefaces the myth in
Republic
by claiming that nothing would be “more pleasant”
(hedion
in Greek—Jowett’s translation of Glaucon’s statement “there are few things which I would more gladly hear” is less than literal). Although the myth’s concerns are very serious, Glaucon’s words suggest that Plato did not mean his readers to take it as literal truth. As with the different arguments for the soul’s existence in Republic and other dialogues, it is worth considering how the details and emphases in this and the other eschatological myths may be determined by the particular concerns of their dialogues.

28
(10.614b)
not one of the tales which Odysseus tells to the hero Alcinoüs, yet this, too, is a tale of a hero, Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth:
Books 9-12 of Odyssey, in which Odysseus tells Alcinoüs, king of the Phaea cians, about his wanderings after the fall of Troy, were traditionally called “the tales to Alcinoüs”
(apologoi Alcinou).
The phrase rendered by Jowett as “a tale of a hero”
(apologon alkimou andros)
is plainly meant to be a pun on
apologos
Alcinou. There has been a good deal of speculation since antiquity on Plato’s source(s) for the story of Er, son of Armenius. Pamphylia was a territory in southern Asia Minor, and the names “Er” and “Armenius” also suggest that the story has an origin in the Near East. Some scholars have also interpreted “Pamphylia” as meaning “from every tribe” (that is,
pan
+
phylon),
thus suggesting that Er is a figure universally representative of humanity.

29
(10.616b-c)
another day’s journey brought them to the place, and there, in the midst of the light, they saw the ends of the chains of heaven let down from above:
It is difficult to determine where exactly Er and his fellow travelers are standing; what kind of place could afford this comprehensive view of the cosmos, in all its enormity? Other elements in the description are equally challenging; how, for example, does the spindle of Necessity hang from the ends of the light shaft that binds heaven and earth together but also turn on Necessity’s knees? There is much scholarly debate over the significance of various details in the description that follows, and it seems wisest to approach the whole picture with a flexible imagination. However its details are construed, the overall purpose of Er’s vision of the light binding the universe together and of the spindle of Necessity is to convey the sense of cosmic order. All that happens in human life, including and especially the judgment of one’s past life and one’s choice of the next life ( 10.617d-620d), occurs in accordance with this order, and thus “justice” is shown to be a fundamental cosmic principle.

30
( 10.616c)
for this light is the belt of heaven, and holds together the circle of the universe:
The “line of light, straight as a column” mentioned just above is envisioned as penetrating the center of both the heavens and the earth, which is itself at the center of the heavens. Some scholars interpret the reference to “under-girders of a trireme” to mean that bands of light must also wrap around the outside of the heavens. The term “under-girders”
(hypozomata),
however, can refer to cables that pass from bow to stern within a ship’s hull and hold it together lengthwise. If these kinds of cables are what Plato had in mind, then it seems likely that we are meant to envision heaven and earth held together by only a single, central shaft of light.

31
(10.616c)
the whorl is made partly of steel and also partly of other materials:
The whorl of Necessity’s spindle differs from ordinary whorls in that it is perfectly hemispherical and composed of eight hollow hemispheres of different thicknesses and materials and colors, which fit together, one inside the other. Each hemisphere contains or represents—it is not entirely clear which is the more proper conception—a heavenly body and its placement in the heavens, except for the outermost one, which contains or represents “the fixed stars” and so has several heavenly bodies. The “movements” of the heavenly bodies and the appearances of their different rates of speed are accounted for by the rotations (at different speeds) of the hemispheres, which are counter to the rotation of the spindle as a whole.

32
(10.617b)
a siren, who goes round with them, hymning a single tone or note:
The notion of “astral music” is clearly Pythagorean; compare 7.530d, where the studies of astronomy and harmonics are said, following the Pythagoreans, to be “sister sciences.”

33
(10.617b)
The eight together form one harmony: Harmonia,
literally “tuning,” usually refers to notes that are sequentially rather than simultaneously sung or played. Although it may be that the sirens emit their single notes simultaneously, it is perhaps more reasonable to assume that they sing in sequence, and that the notes they emit make up two tetrachords.

34
(10.617e)
“the responsibility is with the chooser—God is justified”:
The prophet’s pronouncement begins
Republic’s
final argument for the utility of philosophy. Not only does the person who practices philosophy choose wisely and so become “happy” while he or she is alive on earth, but the ability that he or she gains to “learn and discern between good and evil,” and to determine (literally, “reason out”) which qualities of the soul are better and worse, is the only thing that will enable him or her to choose the next life wisely, “undazzled by the desire of wealth or the other allurements of evil ...” (10.618b-619b). Without philosophy, one lacks the reasoning ability
(logos)
to make the best decisions, as is borne out by the example of the man whose
aretê
in his former life “was a matter of habit only,” and who has no logos to keep him from choosing the greatest tyranny as his next life (10.619b-d). So, too, it is only the saving grace of philosophic
logos
that keeps souls from drinking too much from the river of Unmindfulness (10.621a). The fact that the myth is offered as a fanciful and “pleasant” construction does not detract from the overall seriousness and significance of what it conveys. This passage, which accentuates the responsibility that individuals have for shaping their lives, is very much in keeping with the major concerns of Republic. That there is a lottery determining the order in which one may choose one’s future life is a concession to the fact that control over circumstances is not complete; nonetheless, as the prophet insists, “Even for the last comer, if he chooses wisely ... there is appointed a happy and not undesirable existence” (10.619b).

35
( 10.621c)
And it shall be well with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years which we have been describing:
Literally rendered, the last words of
Republic
are, “and as we receive the rewards of justice, just like victors in games collecting prizes, both here and in the thousand-year journey that we have described, let us do well.” The phrase “let us do well” (eu
prattômen)
is in the subjunctive mood and is therefore hortatory, not declar ative. In Greek the expression “to do well” has some of the same ambiguities that it can have in English, since it means both “to act well” and “to do good things,” and also “to fare well.”
Eu prattômen
is a favorite phrase of salutation and farewell in the letters attributed to Plato, and it may reflect his personal usage. They are fitting closing words for
Republic,
which has been concerned all along with “doing” and “faring” well.

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” Alfred North Whitehead’s wry assessment of Plato’s importance to the philosophical tradition of Europe is something of an exaggeration. Yet it is not wholly inaccurate. Beginning with Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.), who spent twenty years as Plato’s student at the Academy, virtually all philosophers and philosophical schools active in lands exposed to Hellenic culture owe significant debts of inspiration to Plato. As is abundantly evident from Aristotle’s extant works, the efforts of later philosophers to respond to key Platonic texts such as
Republic
have necessarily entailed the interpretation and transformation and (at times) misrepresentation of Plato’s thought. Thus, as we consider the legacy of Plato both in and beyond the field of philosophy, we will do well to keep in mind that, at times, the relationship between what Plato may have intended to convey and what he inspired can be tenuous.

Aristotle expected his readers and students to be familiar with the Platonic dialogues, and it is fair to say that some of his best-known works—
Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Poetics,
and
Metaphysics-are
fundamentally “inspired by”
Republic,
insofar as they seek to refine and (in places) contest what Plato has Socrates suggest about the relationship between moral excellence and happiness in the individual, the proper organization of a functional political community, the need to censor poetry (especially tragedy), and the theory of the “ideas.” The Academy ceased to be the chief institution for the study and transmission of Plato’s thought in the third century B.C.E., but, by this time, Plato’s works were widely read in the Hellenic world, and they became popular in the elite philhellenic circles of Roman society during the second and first centuries B.C.E. The Roman politician, orator, and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.E.) was profoundly influenced by Plato, and he modeled several of his philosophical treatises on Platonic dialogues, including his De republica (On the
Commonwealth
), which was intended as a Romanized version of Republic. A few centuries later Plotinus (205-270 C.E.), after settling in Rome to teach philosophy, developed a comprehensive system of philosophical thought and religious belief that was founded on key concepts derived from Plato’s works—most notably, the idea of the good in books 6-7 of
Republic-which
Plotinus identified with “the One.” This system came to be known as “Platonism,” or “NeoPlatonism”; its principal tenets are expounded in six collections of Plotinus’ writings, which Plotinus’ student Porphyry (c.234-c.305 C.E.) published at the beginning of the fourth century, and which came to be called
Enneads.
It is through
Enneads
and the writings of Porphyry that Saint Augustine (354-430 C.E.) was exposed to Platonism, ensuring that Plato’s thought had a lasting (albeit indirect) influence upon the philosophical direction of Christianity for the next thousand years. In 529 C.E., on the order of the emperor Justinian, the Academy (along with all other philosophical schools in Athens) was forced to close. Before this happened, the Neo-Platonist philosopher Proclus (c.410-485) brought the study of Plato back to the Academy. Proclus served as the Academy’s head for several years and wrote commentaries on
Republic, Timaeus,
and
Parmenides,
which are still extant today.

The writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274), particularly the
Summa Theologica
(1266-1273), established Aristotle as the most important ancient philosopher in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. “Platonism,” however, enjoyed a second flowering in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries thanks to the efforts of the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), whose effort to forge a fresh integration of Platonic thought and Christianity—an effort that found its most complete expression in
Platonic Theology
(1482)—was deeply influenced by Plotinus and Proclus. By the end of the sixteenth century, literate people in Europe had access to printed texts of Plato’s dialogues, both in Greek and in translations into various modem languages. It is accordingly no surprise to find that, during the modern period, Plato’s words and thoughts have been quoted and referred to—and reaffirmed and disputed and praised and condemned—by numerous important philosophers in Europe and Great Britain: among them, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), François Marie Arouet (“Voltaire,” 1694-1778), Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), Georg Hegel ( 1770-1831 ), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and Karl Popper (1902-1994). Meriting special mention here is the famous group of “Cambridge Platonists,” led by Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1683), who sought at the beginning of the scientific age—in a particularly difficult period of British history—to reconcile Christian beliefs with the Platonic conception of a rationally ordered universe.