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.
I believe you hit the nail on the head when it comes to this dialogue. Socrates created the entire city to prove his point that justice is better than injustice. The way the speakers invent their city is basically what goes through the mind of every Utopian writer since: "if I (or we) founded a city, what would it me like?" That's how you create a utopia that involves multiple (albeit fictional) people. By the way, I think the dog thing has to do with Socrates vision of the military in section 375: dangerous to enemies but gentle to friends.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about power though, is that even though Socrates and friends are creating the city, they later determine that there is actually no room for philosophers in the city, even though only a philosopher would be the only person able to establish such a place. So even though they dictate what would make this city function, they have no place themselves in it, and therefore really have no power at all.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree. The philosophers are the ones who created their city the way they thought it out; therefore have power. They had power to add or take things away; overall their influence has a lasting effect on the population.
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