Philosophical Review

A Fallacy in Plato's Republic? Author(s): Raphael Demos Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Jul., 1964), pp. 395-398 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183665 . Accessed: 25/12/2010 10:23
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A FALLACY IN PLATO'S REPUBLIC?

ARTICLE published by ProfessorDavid Sachs in the Philosophical Review'offers a scholarly and penetrating interpretation of some of Plato's views. Indeed, on some matters I believe that it makes a contribution to our understanding of Plato. In this discussion, however, I will be mainly concerned with Sachs's attribution of a fallacy to Plato, as stated in the title of his article. I agree that there is a gap in the argument, but a gap is a lacuna and a lacuna is not a fallacy. Mathematicians often skip steps in an inference, thinking them obvious. I take it that a fallacy is invalid inference: it exists when a proposition is inferred from a premise when, in fact, it is not entailed by it. I hope to prove that Sachs has not made his point; more particularly, that he has failed to prove that Plato's conclusion could not logically follow from his premise. Sachs makes a vital distinction which helps clear up a confusion in Plato's argument. Sachs insists that we must keep apart two questions: (a) Does justice entail happiness? (b) Does justice entail vulgar or Republic, 444e 3)? He rightly conventional morality ((pOPTLKO; insists that an answer to the first questions has no bearing on the answer to the second. In other words, were we to succeed in proving that a just man will be happy, we should still not know that he will be conventionally moral. A very important use of "justice" by Plato is the rendering to every I; it is the man his due. This is the refrain running throughout Republic ordinary, the conventional meaning of justice; it is the conception of justice as a social virtue. But in Book IV, Plato comes up with a different and unconventional definition ofjustice; it is, so far as I know, unique with Plato among Greek philosophers, and indeed Sachs calls it Platonic justice. This is the view of justice as (a) the state of the soul in which no part of the soul interferes with the functioning of the other parts-call it the principle of nonintervention-and (b) the state of the soul in which the various parts are working in mutual 35id 3; 433e 2-4). Should harmony and friendship (4ilOvota,,Pbnata; anyone wonder whether there is any significant difference between

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the two notions, let him reflect on this pair: desegregation and integration. What is odd about Plato's "Platonic" justice is its seemingly striking departure from ordinary usage. Customarily, justice indicates the relation of a given person to other persons; it is a virtue which operates in social contexts. But Platonic justice is a personal virtue, defined purely in terms of the agent. One wonders why Plato should have introduced this unusual meaning; is it possible that he regarded it as the same meaning? Plato likens the soul to the city. In contrast to the outer city, the soul is an inner city; it is a community of parts-of reason, thumos, and innumerable appetites. Can he then be charged with changing, or even stretching, the meaning of the word, if by Platonic justice he means giving every part of the soul its due? The change, if change there be, would seem to be in the conception of the soul as a community, not in the conception of justice. And if my suggestion is correct, it should throw light on the lacuna, or what Sachs calls the fallacy of irrelevance. Sachs finds two missing links in Plato's argument. Plato, he says, has to show not only (a) that Platonic justice entails vulgar morality but (b) that the latter entails the former as well. In this paper I will discuss the trouble caused by (a) only; I am not really sure that (b) is necessary to Plato's argument. Sachs refers to Cephalus; now, Cephalus certainly was just in the vulgar sense, yet he lacked philosophical intelligence. But what of it? Cephalus surely possessed right opinion; in this way a man may achieve the level of demotic (vulgar?) and political (social) virtue (Phaedo, 82a io-b i; also Republic, Food 8). Therefore I will limit myself to Sachs' (a), and there will be trouble enough in making sense out of Plato, even so. Sachs is surely quite right in criticizing Plato's way of dealing with (a). Plato blandly assumes that a man who is Platonically just will conform to the canons of vulgar morality. ("Plato merely assumes that having the one involves having the other"; p. 154.) How could inner harmony entail that a man will not steal, will not betray his friends, will not commit adultery, and so forth? It seems entirely obvious to Plato, and it is entirely unobvious to us. Since I had been acutely aware of this problem long before I came across Sachs's article, I hope I may be allowed to put it in my own way, without, I trust, doing injustice to Sachs's argument. Platonic justice is an individual virtuehow a person behaves toward himself; in fact, it is the harmonious realization of the soul in all its parts. But so defined, justice is selfregarding. How then can it possibly imply a concern for other people 396

A FALLACT IN PLATO'S REPUBLIC?

(rendering to everyone his due) ? In short, there seems to be a leap from the conception of justice as caring for one's own good to caring for other people's good. Plato asserts that justice is to the human soul what health is to the human body; but surely no living body aims at anything but its own health. Platonic justice is the proper ordering of one's own life; why then should a just man in this sense ofjustice care to bring about a proper ordering of otherpeople's lives? There certainly is a gap; is there a fallacy? Sachs's reasoning to show that there is a fallacy (of irrelevance) seems to consist of two steps. First he says-what I have already agreed to-that Plato fails to show that Platonicjustice entails vulgar morality. This is only a lacuna; what is needed, in order to demonstrate a fallacy, is a proof that Platonic justice could not (logically) lead to vulgar morality. So let us proceed to Sachs's second point. Sachs goes on to say that the assumption is implausible ("The assumption, moreover,is implausible"; p. I54, italics mine.). What is characterized as implausible is the supposition that there exists a logical connection (entailment) between premise and conclusion. To say, however, that it is implausible is not to say that the logical link does not in fact exist. How much force does the word "implausible" carry? To me it suggests a first look, a first impression, to be followed by detailed exploration: I find no such exploration in Sachs's article. Sachs does not prove (does not even try to prove) that the conclusion is not entailed by the premise. All his reasoning shows is that we do not knowwhether there is a fallacy or not; at best it shows that there maybe a fallacy.2 In the comments that follow I will suggest that a logical connection can be found, and I will indicate what this may be. But first, two reservations. I claim only that the intervening links which I will supply are consistent with Plato's general theory; I do not claim that they are links he actually had in mind. Also, nothing that I have said in the preceding paragraph is undermined, even if my argument fails. Should the latter be the case, we remain agnostics. Plato says that one is Platonically just in the sense that each part of his soul does its own work in the matter of ruling and being ruled (443b I-3). Of course the ruling principle is reason, and (a) reason is
2 Referring to the secondrequirement which Sachslays down in orderthat Plato's argument be complete-namely, that vulgar justice entails being Platonically just-Sachs writes: "Apartfrom the fact that Plato never states that being vulgarlyjust entails being Platonically just, one may wonder if such a claim is at all plausible.It does not seem to be" (p. 157). Notice the weakness of "it does not seem to be."

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the apprehension of the truth and of the good. (b) Reason is also a form of desire ('r tvkcda, 58od 6-8). Thus reason is both an apprehension and an aspiration to the ideal. (c) The good which is the target of reason includes or entails justice; in order to understand the nature of the various virtues (including justice) we must travel along a longer way, so Plato tells us, and this is the path leading to the good (5o4c io; see also 5o6a 6-io). (d) Reason grasps forms-that is, universals: the good, or wisdom, or justice as such, not my good in a sense which would exclude the good of others. (e) Finally, we know from the Symposium that the eros of the good and of beauty leads to accomplishment (rotEZv); that is, to instantiations of the forms (Symposium, 205c-2o6e). To aim at the good is also to aim at the of good things; thus for an individual to aim at justice means production that he cares not only for justice in the abstract, but also that justice should be embodied in human beings in general. Earlier I said that each soul cares for its own health just as the body does. But now this statement, though true, is seen to be open to a different interpretation. The health of the soul includes, above all, the fulfillment of its reason: and the concern of reason is that the good should be exemplified everywhere. The concern for my self-fulfillment is analyzable into a concern that everyone should attain psychical fulfillment; that I am inwardly just means that I want everyone to have his due. Such, then, I suggest is the bridge which links Platonic justice with justice in the sense of rendering to everyone what is his due. I have not, to be sure, literally shown that Platonic justice inevitably leads to vulgar morality (Sachs's formulation of the problem). But is there really any difference between the vulgar and the "noble" senses of morality? To embezzle money, to steal, to betray friends, to be faithless in one's promises, to commit adultery, to neglect parents and to exploit orphans, and all the rest of it-is not all this a case of failing to give others what is their due? Surely these various kinds of vulgarly bad actions are no more than specific violations of the principle that one should avoid acts of injustice to others.
RAPHAEL DEMOS

McGill University

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