The Needs of the Many...

"We aren't aiming to make any one group outstandingly happy but to make the whole city so, as far as possible" (Plato, The Republic, IV, 420b).

Is Utopia always a matter of privileging "the needs of the many" over "the needs of the few (or the one)"? Is it always a matter of communities, rather than individuals?

If so, living as we do in a culture that remains firmly focused on individual rights, responsibilities, and fulfillment, can/will Utopia ever really seem attractive to us?

(re-post from 2013)

Utopia of Socrates

            Near the beginning of the piece, Socrates emphasizes the importance that each individual of this state should be responsible for one and only one job.  The point that Socrates makes is that each individual has an area in which they can excel.  This natural inclination towards certain skill-sets should better qualify people for specific jobs.  The logic follows that if one were to have natural talent in a particular area, that person would be likely to take up an occupation in which their skills are shared in order to benefit the society.  Socrates, to me, seems to overemphasize the need for each individual to do the occupation to which they are best suited, and nothing more.  I believe this to be a dire mistake.  While I certainly understand the idea that specialization is one thing that keeps a society cohesive and effective, I think that each person should have a collection of skills as a precaution for any kind of plague or sudden loss of one sector of the society.  Although this may seem trivial, a society with such strict specialization can collapse if only a small fraction of the population were suddenly gone as the services provided by that sector of the population disappeared with the people.  I also take issue with the idea of a person having natural talent being the career for them instead of the person choosing what their career will be.  Perhaps it is the liberal arts education I currently receive, but I think that what a person wants to do, has a much greater value than something in that they are naturally gifted. If everyone were in the position that were most naturally inclined to take but miserable doing the job, it seems to me that the society would be doomed to fail.  I think a lot can be said for the power of a person to choose. 

            I think that the stories Socrates wanted to edit before telling to the guardians overlooks a critical part of storytelling.  I understand not wanting the names of the gods tarnished, however, I also feel as though the purpose of telling a story is to learn something from the mistakes of the characters within the narrative.  If there are no mistakes and the characters are presented as perfect, then I think we are already starting off these guardians with an unrealistic view of the world with unattainable qualities – I suppose one way of looking at a Utopia. The purpose of editing the stories supposedly gives the guardians something to strive for, but in listening to these stories of perfect beings that do no wrong; I feel the guardians would be ill-prepared to handle the host of mistakes and imperfections that haunt us humans.  I also believe that the guardians learning about the gods as infallible beings is a way of establishing a body of leaders who do not question people they might view as influential.  This can cause issues when there comes an issue of moral conflict when the guardians, having been taught to not question authority figures, agree with the moral standpoint of the person they view as having the most authority.  I think teaching the edited stories would not have the effect that Socrates desires or expects. 

Power! Well, Justice and Injustice.

So I don't know about anyone else, but when I first started reading this piece I was kinda confused. Probably because we started in the beginning of a paragraph. However, I enjoyed this text. I thought it was very amusing. I am confused about who is saying what, but I think I got the whole jist of the read...I think.

So I just went back to the beginning and reread it. A few sentences before we were to start tells us the point of this reading. The point is about what justice and injustice are and the benefits of each. Which one is better than the other. So to determine justice of a man; they are going to create justice of a city and talk about it on a larger scale then on a smaller scale. It is stated that "If we could watch a city coming to be in theory, wouldn't we also see its justice coming to be, and its injustice as well?"

Their creation of this city is funny. The things they want and don't want and change. At first they start building a city with just four or five people, but then they both agree upon the fact that people should only do one job that way they will excel at that one job rather than doing shitty jobs at multiple things. For example, one man can be a farmer, but he cannot build his own tools because he may fuck up at farming. So, they decide to have a city so large that they may have to take neighboring lands by force to accommodate everyone. But then they later start talking about dogs, they say it is natural to be two things at once. A dog can be nice towards people it knows, but mean to people it doesn't.

I also enjoyed reading about some other changes they wanted to make. They said that they young are very impressionable, which is very true, so they didn't want certain stories to be told to them. If people wanted to hear certain stories that were no longer popular there would be a very expensive price to hear them. Nothing bad should be told about gods. Gods are good people and can do no wrong. Those are just some of the things that were said. They said they would talk to Homer and have him change his poems.

What really interests me is to have this much power!!! I know they are being this particular to create a city so they can understand more about justice. But what if they really were creating a real life city? I wouldn't live in their city myself, but to be able to pick and choose over what is going to be read and not read and told and not told. This much control is amazing. I would love to be able to do this stuff. I wouldn't really care that much about the poems and stuff because I think that in order to really really cherish the good, there must be some bad. But if I could create a real life city that would be freaking amazing. (I know I already said it, but...) I would probably be the happiest person in history.

 

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Senior year philosophy class is slowly making its way back into my mind although it's hard to pinpoint which school of philosophy belongs to which philosopher. I thought I had read this before, but it turns out I was thinking of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Luckily, The Republic is written differently and is not dry and is amazingly easier to follow than other works by Plato. For those of us who were in British Literature last semester, I imagine I'm not the only one who was reminded of Beelzebub and the other little devils making up their plans for what to do in hell. It was all too easy to picture Socrates and company sitting around in the same way discussing plans for how their city was going to work.

Anyway, I found it especially interesting how a "city" comes into being. This reading made me think of the expression, If you don't like the way it's done, you're welcome to do it yourself. Every day, I know that we all take turns complaining about something, no matter how petty, and talk about how we wish it was different or how we would do something differently. Maybe it's the way a class is graded or how someone conducted an interview. But sometimes it's even larger like how a country is ruled or how a powerful person decides to make a grand decision like go to war or create a new law. Often times, it's so easy for us to disagree or say what we would do instead because we don't actually have that real power to make a change or it's easy to say something when only so few are listening and the situation is purely hypothetical.

So when it comes to the case of creating a utopia, or even just a successful city, it's interesting to see how that plan comes into play. A person might say that we should not have laws because they feel that laws create a lot of pressure for society and restrict peoples' freedom. This all seems well and good until a store gets robbed or a person is murdered and there are no rules against it and no repercussions for doing these things. So then we go back and say, well, maybe laws aren't so bad after all because they protect us. The same trial and error could follow with government, education, guidelines, etc. Plato's writing goes along with this concept as it starts with a single person and the realization that one person cannot do it all, so obviously why not have more than one citizen in this city? So Socrates decides to have a handful of people who each provide different abilities and trades and in turn will use their skills to provide for the other city members. The list of people grows and grows as Socrates and the others realize that so many people are needed to make, share, export and exchange different things. If a person is amazing at a trade, it is better to let them spend all their time practicing and perfecting their trade than to make them juggle several different tricks and trades at a lower quality.

I also was intrigued by the discussion of heroes and leaders that make up a society. There were so many rules and quirks that were necessary to creating the ideal people for general city members to look up to. Heroes had to be tough and unafraid of death and had to be earnest and true. Heroes are designed to show what true justice is and to show humankind that you must be just in order to succeed in both life and the after life. Acting unjust can make you successful in the short-term, but it will catch up with you in the end. Characters in stories also had to act a certain way because young city members may not know how to separate fact and fiction and should only be shown the proper ways to act and values to have in a good society. All of these people, whether real people of the city or people just being talked about or passed around as stories need to be poised both in action and mind and cannot be vicious or graceless because that might give people the wrong idea. I agree with the theory behind this as I do think people are poorly influenced by celebrities who have gone off the rail or criminals who are sensationalized on the news, but I also disagree because I think there is something to be said for learning from mistakes or by learning stories that teach morals and lessons from failures and trials.

Finally, I find the brief discussion of medical necessity interesting. Socrates and the others agree that there is a need for doctors. They also agree that the doctors must be experienced and wise beyond their years, having seen a variety of illnesses and ailments so that nothing comes to them as a surprise. However, they say that these doctors must also have been diseased or injured themselves, because why else would they spend their life caring for the ill if they were not ill themselves? It sounds crazy to us, but if we think about it, a hospital is one of the easiest places to get sick in. We say to avoid them if possible because disease travels and is everywhere and we don't want to make ourselves unnecessarily sick if we don't have to. Maybe doctors should be the same way. You can only treat someone for something you have already been exposed to or had experience with. We also see the ever-popular Utopia-style view on life. Do we treat those with chronic, incurable disease or do we leave them to their fate? In books like The Giver, we learn about "the release" where older people are killed once they reach a certain age or in Utopia where we offer those who can no longer contribute to society an easy way out. Are we being kind by helping people prolong their lives if they are terminal or are we fighting nature? Would these people be more comfortable letting go and accepting their fate? Are we actually being too cruel by letting those live who are mentally ill and have no chance at a normal life?

We all have our own opinions, questions, faiths and morals that we would shape into a city or our own or even a world, but how much of what we want would actually work? Would we eventually run through trial and error and realize that the world we have now is how it should be or is there really a better way?

Utopia within utopia

While reading “The Republic” I couldn’t help thinking about how the conversation between Socrates, Adeimantus, and Glaucon resembled a mini utopia. For me, a utopia is all about a society that functions well as a whole, and that’s what these three men do. Socrates takes hold of the conversation, and Adeimantus and Glaucon happily go along with everything he says about their fake society. On the rare occasion that they don’t understand or agree with Socrates, it just takes another sentence of jargon to put them back on track. The three men are able to come up with their own Socrates’ own version of a society to judge because they function well enough together to map out the aspects of a “luxurious city” (48). If the men didn’t function collectively, it would have taken a much longer time to set up a society.

I was also applying Socrates’ ideas for a society to the three men. Socrates says that the best results come when “each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited, does it at the right time, and is released from having to do any others” (45). This notion can be applied to Socrates, Adeimantus, and Glaucon. Socrates puts all of his thoughts into building a fake society, and by the end of Book III we are presented with a society that is completely mapped out with its members, literature, music, food, protection, etc. If Socrates spoke of other things and took his mind away from building a society, it wouldn’t be as complete as it is. I agree with his idea that restricting people to one profession is better than having people do multiple jobs. Being proficient in one thing is better than knowing a little about a lot of things. In the same regard, Adeimantus and Glaucon are consistent in their continual agreement with Socrates. It’s like their singular profession is to boost Socrates’ ego.

Socrates’ belief that the rulers of a society are the best of the guardians (89) can also be tweaked to fit the three men. Among the three men, Socrates is the best at setting up the fake society (that may be because the other two never really get a chance to talk, but let’s go with it). If that’s so, shouldn’t he be the ruler of the group of men? I’d argue that he is. Adeimantus and Glaucon agree with everything Socrates is saying as if he is the master of how a society is developed. If no one goes against Socrates’ concepts of what a society is, then he’s the ruler of that fake society.

Applying Socrates’ notions of utopian society to the three men speaking helped me picture the society more clearly. There were definitely parts that confused me, like all the chatter about music, but there were also parts that resonated with me. I think the basis of Socrates’ argument is that a utopia needs individual people who are willing to perform tasks that benefit the society as a whole, and that’s something that I agree with completely. Utopia isn’t about pleasing people, it’s about making people work together cohesively to form a functioning civilization.

Censorship brings about a just society?

I believe that the idea of censorship is one that a few people have touched on in their posts already, but this is the point that struck me most about The Republic so far. As a society, I think most of our ideas of utopia before this class were that in a very simplified form, utopia = freedom. When we take Dr. MB’s definition into account, we can see the flaw in our thinking but most people aren’t as lucky as us to be taking this class (not sarcastic!!)

So why do we associate utopia and freedom? I think this starts from the misconception that utopia is a perfect place and so for us freedom is perfection and so utopia is a free place.

In addition to this, there is the misconception of utopias and dystopias being the direct opposite. Dystopias are where only the privileged are free to do as they like and everyone else is oppressed and must rise against the evil dictators.

Reading The Republic challenges our ideas of what a utopia is. Socrates begins his excruciatingly long metaphor with the statement that he will present a just city to his listeners: “Perhaps, then, there is more justice in the larger thing, and it will be easier to learn what it is. So, if you’re willing, let’s first find out what sort of thing justice is in the city and afterwards look for it in the individual, observing the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger” (Book II, 369a.) So we know from the beginning that Socrates is thinking of this fictional city as a utopia.

Socrates begins to explain how they will censor their literature and their mythology so that the citizens of this city will only hear stories that uphold the values of their society. He says “Whenever anyone says such things about a god, we’ll be angry with him, refuse him a chorus, and not allow his poetry to be used in the education of the young, so that our guardians will be as god-fearing and godlike as human beings can be” (Book II, 383c.)

This is where we are faced with the contradiction (in our previous beliefs) that a utopia is not necessarily free or our idea of benevolent.

The act of censorship in our society is viewed as an attack; historically, literature has generally been censored because it was written by oppressed people, or because the subject matter makes people uncomfortable. Here neither seems to apply. Socrates may be uncomfortable with the subject matter if only because he believes it will bring about less than desirable traits in the soldiers guarding the utopia.

In the end, all of this is an extended metaphor for what makes up a just man. If the soldiers exist in the city, they exist in the man. What Socrates seems to be expressing is a desire for censorship of the education, information, and literature we consume, even when those may be as beautiful as Homer’s poetry.

I’m not sure about you but this doesn’t sound like a utopia I would want to live in. 

Socrates Talking to Himself About Nature vs. Nurture

When I started reading “The Republic,” it seemed as if Socrates was talking to himself. As Hayley mentioned in her blog post, Socrates is “desperate to display his own intelligence.” I too think that he wants to show off how intelligent he is, so much so that it seems like he is talking to himself because his friend’s replies are some what of the “yeah yeah whatever you say just please shut up” nature. While I may have started reading with similar thoughts in my head as the responses of Adeimantus and Galucon, I gradually began to be interested in what Socrates was actually trying to say.

            Early on in the reading I came across a footnote that said “a city is a collection of people, not a collection of buildings” (14). Though this may seem like a simple concept to grasp, there’s actually quite a lot of depth to it. Rather than focusing on just the idea of Utopia as a whole, like in other readings, Socrates is diving into the specific details of the lives of the people who make up/create this society. Shortly afterward Socrates starts developing his plan by beginning with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (defined in Noel’s previous post) realizing that people first need food and shelter then they can start thinking about their jobs and roles in the society.

            Toward the beginning of Book Three, Socrates starts to share ideas that remind me of the nature vs. nurture debate in psychology. On page 72 he says, “haven’t you noticed that imitations practiced from youth become part of nature and settle into habits of gesture, voice, and thought?” Socrates seems to be suggesting that children imitate many behaviors that they learn quickly at a young age, and continue many of these behaviors the rest of their lives. If this is the case, then he believes that from an early age, as they are creating this Utopia, the proper ideas need to be practiced and installed into people’s heads as to not create conflict in the future. Though I think this is a good idea, especially if you want a Utopia to remain a Utopia, I think Socrates has to keep in mind that many people act a certain way not solely because of their nurture but greatly because of their nature (how their genes are wired). This being said, Socrates can do all he wants to make his society perfect, but ultimately he cannot completely persuade people to do one thing or another because he cannot control their nurture.

            I do apologize for this post being a bit all over the place, but perhaps that makes it more like Socrates thoughts. Although I find many of his ideas quite insightful, I do not find them all plausible. Yes, over a great period of time society can drastically change, but does every individual change? Are people only acting a certain way because they are in this new society and think they all have to act a certain way? What would happen if you isolated people after years of trying to develop Socrates ideal society, would they go back to their old ways?

More Like Suck-rates

I can totally get behind the idea of the city where people select one skill and practice it excessively until they are masters. There's something to be said for having a breadth of knowledge, but also something to be remembered about how good one can become at a task when he does nothing save that task day in and day out for decades, and doesn't bother with stuff that he knows Google can do for him, or any basic electronic with a calculator function. I'm looking at you, core requirements of art appreciation, foreign language, and math.

You'll never get a real job if you can't recite this book by memory.

In any case, Socrates does a decent job  of setting us up to understand the various necessities of a growing city, what with it requiring people with all sorts of trade-skills, entertainment values, military training, etc. No thanks, however, goes to his uselessly agreeable friends, who, when they raise the rare question, are immediately dismissed by more of Socrates' truth-bombs. When Socrates comes to the realization that a soldier cannot possibly be fierce to the enemy without being fierce to his own townspeople, his peers agree right away, and the group decides it isn't possible to be a good guardian. 

It takes Socrates' input after a few seconds of silence to realize that a dog is capable of loyalty, so a person should be, too. Really? I know he's one of the original thinkers, but come on. Maybe if the guy had some smarter friends who talked with him instead of just bobbing their heads, he'd have remembered sooner what a dog is.

How I imagine everyone Socrates is talking to.

Then he talks for several pages about precisely what literature and stories these theoretical guards should be exposed to so that they mentally develop the correct moral and ethical values to be adequate guards, and become as god-fearing as possible. With our luxurious city of agreeable philosophers guarded by sufficiently terrified soldiers, we move on to Book III.

Book III begins by continuing to talk about stuff the soldiers can't read, and then Socrates decides to become the over-protective mother of a religious high-schooler and begins to make (the first ever?) a challenged book list. This list consists mostly of edits he would have made to famous texts so that the characters within them find death a perfectly suitable fate, and thus, our soldiers having read these texts, will no longer be afraid to die, making them more courageous - and therefore, better - warriors.

 Just a few quick edits so we don't scare the soldiers.

The rest of the book can be summarized fairly simply: there's some talk about what poetry and songs a person must be versed in to be a well-rounded person, so that they are gentle but firm like our guards. Then there's some talk about how people need not show too much emotion, because fear is not a good trait, nor violent laughter, nor practicing things without moderation. So our "utopia" (if we're calling it that yet) is basically just a normally functioning city where everyone does the bare minimum to get by, the guards are basically educated through edited versions of epic poetry, and people generally agree with Socrates because he talks too much for everyone else to have time to think properly.

To: Socrates. From: the folks you're "conversing" with.

It’s by no means a bad plan for a city, and he’s right on many accounts, but I can’t help wanting to hear another side of this. Plenty of things (for example, the description of an ideal guardian needing not to fear death or a master craftsman not wasting time with any other practice) are subjective, or at the very least open to debate, which we don’t receive from Socrates’ passive friends, who serve only to enhance his intellectual masturbation. I’d argue that it’s fine to fear death if one’s fear of death is lesser than his will to protect his people, but Socrates doesn’t leave any room for that side of the coin. Furthermore, he doesn’t really touch on the fact that editing texts only for the guardians is basically lying to them, so that they have no chance to make up their minds about things, because they’re only shown what we choose to show them, which makes sense for Socrates to suggest, because as we know, he doesn’t need the input of others, only their confirmation. I'd be much more inclined to agree with him if he acknowledged ideas that weren't his own.