I. Back to the Political
In Book VIII, Socrates resumes the argument interrupted at the beginning of Book V. There the manly Polemarchus and the seeming-moderate Adeimantus raised the issue of women and children held in common. This turned out to be the problem of philosophy, the problem of Socrates in Athens. Having returned to the cave after glimpsing the philosopher, who glimpses the Good, Glaucon recalls the threat that dropped, Now that political philosophy has been inaugurated, Socrates is free to inaugurate political science.

There were four remaining regimes in addition to that of the philosopher-kings. Socrates describes their nature, including their genesis. Each regime honors a particular human type, characterized by a particular form of eros. The man of the aristocratic regime loves justice; the timocrat loves victory, ruling, and honor; the oligarch loves money; the democrat loves license; the tyrant is, so to speak, in love with love.

a. Aristocrats
Why do philosopher-kings, lovers of the best, lose track of the eugenics plan and thus lose rulership of the city? Perhaps because you can’t philosophize and rule at the same time? (It IS difficult to think and command at the same time.) Perhaps because you can drag the philosopher out of the sunshine, but not the sunshine out of the philosopher? That is to say: because the philosopher’s heartfelt opinion of the city is, ‘Let it slide’? Chance, not choice, rules the city, Publius to the contrary.

b. Timocrats
The eros of thumotic men depends too much upon unstable things. The children of the men who do not share in the city’s honors are corrupted by mothers who secretly deride decent but unsuccessful fathers. (Raskolnikov’s mother does that: Crime and Punishment is an Orthodox Christian rewrite of the Republic.) Honor itself is unstable, a kind of opinion; opinion, notoriously can shift from day to day. The love of money, the timocratic love that dares not speak its name, undermines timocracy in a thousand ways.

c. Oligarchs
Having dropped the mask of honor, men now openly love gain. Money being theoretically limitless, oligarchs finally cannot maintain the self-government necessary to discipline the quest. Rich kinds run riot, “gripped by the love of changer” (555d). (This is yet another illustration of the towering genius of Bill Clinton, who finished off the regime of the 1980s by crying “Change! Change!” to a bored and surfeited people. The man is a Platonist, when not an Epicurean.) The city splits between rich and poor. The many poor wrest the ruling offices from the few rich.

d. Democrats
Democracy is the most beautiful regime (557c) and “a sweet regime,” too (558c). It “dispens[es] a certain equality among equals and unequals alike” (558c)—and therefore is not very just. But, in its license, it permits a thousand flowers—some of the ragweed—to bloom in full luxuriance. It is therefore by far the most instructive regime for would-be founders (557d), and a fine subject for philosophic inquiry. In its license it tolerates philosophic inquiry, to a point. The democrat’s soul comes to believe that all desires are equal. It eagerly hears “false and boasting speeches” (560c). It does not want to hear a painful truth, which is why it will finally kill Socrates. It prefers to dream of a ‘Marxian’ utopia (561c-d), flattering itself as it reveals itself in daydreams. No wonder its teachers fear and imitate the young. Soon a demagogue will arise, purging the city of the ‘enemies’ of the many who are poor. Can equality and extreme liberty or license ever cohere for long?

e. Tyrants
The love the tyrant is in love with is eros in its most material form. The erotic tyrant takes the place once occupied by the philosopher-king. The tyrants lives the life democrats secretly want. He is the wish-fulfillment of the democrat, who was the wish-fulfillment of the oligarch, who was the wish-fulfillment of the timocrat, who was not the wish-fulfillment of the philosopher, whose wishes are fulfilled, or at least not frustrated in such a way as to contradict, destroy, himself. Because he loves only things, wants all of them for himself, and is therefore the enemy of all, the tyrant “never tastes freedom or true friendship” (576a). The tyrant is “in truth a real slave” of flatterers (579e). The tyrant’s soul is “forcibly drawn by a gadfly” (577e); elsewhere in the dialogues, Socrates compares himself to a gadfly, stinging the sleepy horse that is Athens; perhaps Athens, perhaps any city, is a sort of tyrant, now somnolent, now frenzied. All the citizens of the real cities (after the nowhere-regime of aristocracy or philosophic kingship) had material eros driving them.

II. Back (briefly) to the Philosophic
The king now replaces the aristocrat in Socrates’ enumeration of rulers (580b). The philosopher enjoys the purer and more self-sufficient pleasures than the tyrants, Glaucon now agrees. He had been the one who had more or less openly disbelieved that the philosopher could have any advantage over the tyrant with respect to happiness. The philosopher attends to the truth (581e), “lays hold of the truth” (572b), and experiences the “truest pleasures” (586d-e). The philosophic life is 729 times more pleasant—that is, more pleasant every day and night of the year—than the tyrant’s. For the philosopher, “the regime within him” (591e) far surpasses any regime outside him. Political men keep hoping, ‘If only this candidate, that reform, those new laws could be had, then I should be happy.’ Glaucon now sees that happiness in the cave is impossible in cave-terms, no matter who rules the cave—even himself.

III. Back to the Poetic
Socrates tells Glaucon: Homer, the man, must not be honored before the truth (595c). He has persuaded Glaucon of the forms, which may or may not be real, in order to dissuade him of the love of any person, particularly a poet. Tragic poets extol tyrants, like Oedipus, because they take passions too seriously. Their music is mere fury. Like the semi-redundant solecism, “New School University,” they represent the triumph of sound over sense, image over substance. They make a democratic audience weep over the woes of a tyrant; they teach the democrat how to grieve for his own insatiable, material eros, rejecting the true good for the false. The audience for tragedy looks at its own tyrannical self and pities without self-knowledge.

(The similarities and differences between Athenian and American democracy give useful instruction in the application of Platonic political science. At first sight, Socrates’ critique of democracy seems off the mark in contemporary America. The founders of commercial republicanism intended to make tragedy—in both the classical and the Christian senses–a much more remote experience than it had been. Heroes and martyrs had spilled too much blood. Thumoerotic passion needed moderation and redirection. Nobility became a casualty. As Allan Bloom remarked, the modern tragic hero is an anti-hero: Willie Low-man. But thumoetotic passion can hardly die off; it remains a human possibility. The commercial democrtat instead thrills to the current Swollen-Ego instead of Swollen-Foot—Elvis, Mick, Madonna—or whatever inflated thumoerotic ‘image’ gyrates on the walls of the cave, strings pulled by commercial puppet-masters. Tragedy becomes melodrama; Erica Kane is a thumoerotic type, all right, even if no one confuses her with Medea.)

Poets practice the third, and most dubious kind of art. Some arts are useful (political science aspires to be that); some are productive (‘applied science’ can be that). some arts are neither useful nor productive but imitative. Unfortunately, “imitation keeps company with the part [of the soul] that is far from prudence” (603b); when it produces anything, it “produces a bad regime in the soul of each private man” (605b) by “making phantoms that are very far removed from the truth” (605b). Poetic imitation flatters its audience, watering passions instead of drying them, making pleasure and pain the rulers, not law and argument. Philosophers do not fight over Helen of Troy, or her image (586c); poets encourage such shadow-boxing, leading men to spill real blood for the sake of shadows.

Like any art, poetry is finally neutral, as Socrates finally admits by admitting poets to the city on condition of good behavior. Socrates concludes the dialogue with a poem, the myth of Er. To teach Glaucon that the soul is immortal may be a lie, but it is an inducement to encourage him to think about which life is best chosen—that is, best deliberated about, in a state of moderation, free of the passions of the law court and the marketplace. wily, lying Odysseus replaces ‘sincere,’ ‘authentic,’ but mad-running Achilles, and the Homeric gods are nowhere to be seen. Here is a myth without tragedy, and therefore with no inducement to self-pity. It is not so much a noble as a useful, good, and potentially productive lie. Socrates now speaks of the soul “as it is in truth” (611c)

According to Allan Bloom, Socrates makes the first statement by any thinker of the principle of non-contradiction. “It’s plain that the same thing won’t be willing at the same time to do or suffer opposites with respect to the same part and in relation to the same thing” (436b). Socrates is discussing the three ‘parts’ of the soul, but introduces the principle of non-contradiction with physical examples: the man standing still and waing his arms; the top that spins without moving its axis. The principle of non-contradiction is not only a principle of the mind. In Locke, for example, non-contradiction comes in at the sensual level; it isn’t only that there cannot be something shaded ‘blackwhite’ but that such a thing is inconceivable. The principle of non-contradiction inheres in all of being, ‘inner’ and ‘outer.’

1. Why Noēsis?
Central to the Republic is 473d, where Socrates makes his most outrageous claim: There is “no rest from the ills of cities” or “for human kind” unless “the philosophers rule as kings” or “those now called kings genuinely and adequately philosophize.” Who are the philosophers? They are “lovers of the sight of the truth” (475e). But, Socrates cautions, it is “the nature of acting to attain to less truth than speaking” (473e). The good regime will be easier said than done. Only a regime ruled by kingly philosophers or philosophic kings would govern with the truth in sight. To see the truth means noēsis or insight—the ‘I got it’ response. Without insight, logical analysis would reduce all things to thought-rubble, and logical dialectic would speculate without end. The mind would be trapped either in infinite regress or infinite, but pointless, progress. In the philosophically-governed city, insight will replace the opinion-icons with which rulers rule everywhere else.

2. Why I Am So Peculiar

The one who “from youth on strive[s] as intensely as possible for every kind of truth” (485d) will have weaker desires for other things: a weaker eros for money and for the human-all-too-human generally. This disturbs Adeimantus, who worries that philosophers are at best useless to cities, at worst vicious, and usually damned peculiar. “[Y]ou are telling the truth in saying that the most decent of those in philosophy are useless to the many,” Socrates concedes (489b). Sailors ambitious to rule will call “the true pilot” a stargazer and a prater.  The many want what they want, which is unlikely to be some remote truth. The true pilot is more true than pilot; he is not likely to find work as a pilot.

3. Why Dialogues?

This is why Plato writes dialogues. A philosopher, fixing his attention on what is, will want to ignore the ever-changing, petty struggles for ‘power,’ ‘riches,’ and other false goods. But Plato’s Socrates, even when asking his friends to lift their eyes to the stars, never forgets the person in front of him. He does not argue in the same way to Cephalus as he does to Polemarchus, to Glaucon as he does to Adeimantus. Socrates is the first political philosopher. The noble lie is noble because it is the true cure for the variety of souls that are untrue to themselves. Pre-Socratic natural philosophy had supposed that it could brush opinions/conventions aside. Socratic political wisdom, or prudence, seen in his conversations, can mollify most of the many, as the philosopher ranges between the lowest persons and topics to the highest thoughts, from opinion to noēsis—both presented through logos. The truth of what is must be filtered through what one may say, and who is saying it. By doing so, the philosopher avoids naivete about the ability of the human mind to jump beyond itself, to make a fast and easy break with sub-philosophic opinion.

But Socratic prudence enrages the thumotic few—Thrasymachus, for example—who fear any potential rivals (cf. 493b). In this dialogue, Thrasymachus is tamed (and Cephalus banished, and Polemarchus disarmed). In Athens, certain ‘Thrasymachuses’ were not tamed, and they eventually executed the political philosopher. Political philosophy is a shield because it is politic, but it is a red flag because it is political. Political philosophy raises the stakes een as it plays with a stronger hand.

4. What Should I Strive For?

Dialectical inquiry concerning opinions concerning justice lead eventually to “the idea of the good.” What, then, is “the good”? Inquiring minds (like Glaucon’s) want to know. No retreating into professions of ignorance on this one, old boy. Instead, Socrates advances an image: The good is like the sun, which causes knowledge and truth, causes the ‘isness’ of what is. In contrast to the sun and its light there is the cave, where the inhabitants worship false icons, loving what they believe to be their own. The man educated, drawn out of the cave, is a man converted—his soul “turned around” (518c), away from ‘his own’ and toward the good. Never diminished by being beheld, the good underlies the only true communism. The good is what is truly everyone’s own, unseen by those insufficiently erotic and thumotic to make the ascent, unseen by those overwhelmingly erotic and thumotic souls who prefer to rule in the cave than to serve in the light of the sun, as Milton’s Satan almost put it. The difficulty in answering Glaucon’s question directly is clear: noetically to see the good requires soul-turning, conversion; Glaucon is not a philosopher, so his question is as impertinent as it is pertinent. The same goes for Plato’s readers. Plato writes dialogues, not essays, not dictionaries or encyclopedias. Browsers need not apply.

5. Would Philosophers Rule?

The many don’t want the philosophers to rule them. So said Adeimantus. Nor do the philosophers want to rule the many. So now says Glaucon, Adeimantus’ superior in mind and heart. These twin, stubborn truths make the ‘actual’ establishment of philosophic rule highly unlikely. The only good ruler is he who does not love ruling, Socrates says. Only in the philosophic city can philosophers be justly compelled to rule, for only there do they owe their philosophy to the city. There is now no philosophic city, except in speech; ergo, there will never be a philosophic city, except in speech, unless the philosophers are unjustly compelled to rule, either by a populace somehow made desirous for being ruled by the apparently useless and peculiar, or by the few who suddenly decide to relinquish their dreams of supreme victory and honor. That is, philosophers will rule when their rule—when anyone’s rule—is no longer much needed.

6. What Is Going ON, Here?

Education in truth of guardians—that is, a political-philosophic education—is never more obviously unlikely than in the latter half of Book VII. The ascent of the soul from mathematics to dialectic in Callipolis, the beautiful city, leads to the profoundly undogmatic, and therefore unpolitical, thought that the looks of ultimate things cannot be properly insisted upon, although their existence can be insisted upon. The anger is that young souls trained in dialectic act like puppies; they chew on the carpet. The young should not learn to despise the laws too quickly, if ever; they will become lawless without becoming philosophic—which, in political terms, means that they will not become prudent. Prudence is the one virtue of the soul that is fully natural, not produced by habits and exercise (518e). (In terms of the Protagoras, prudence is the true virtue, as it is a form of knowledge but it cannot be taught, is not technical.) Ultimately, these observations make Socrates conclude that the founding of the beautiful city will require the exile of all except philosophers and children ten years of age and younger. Socrates has founded not a city but a school. This leaves city-founding in any ordinary sense far behind, and is another specimen of Socratic irony.

7. Why Socrates Is Not a Nice Guy

“Irony I can get from my children. From my deli man, I expect wisdom.” So said the lady in the radio commercial for a New York City deli, whose owner was portrayed Socratically, that is, as ironic and wise. Ironic children are unhousebroken puppies. Ironic wise men are irritating, not-nice. They may display the most tasty delicacies, courtesans and cakes for the soul. But those goods are always just out of reach for most would-be customers. Irony itself is a sort of lie or untruth, perpetrated by one who thinks he knows the truth better than his interlocutor. Surely our lives would be less troublesome if we simply killed the wise? So thought, and did, the Athenians. The founders of the commercial republic hoped to make the world safe for the wise by claiming that the wise are useful, insisting that they be. This is the noble lie of the Enlightenment. Those who doubt it are not nice.