a fallacy on platos republic demos

8/14/2019 A Fallacy on Platos Republic Demos

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Philosophical Review

A Fallacy in Plato's Republic?Author(s): Raphael DemosSource: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Jul., 1964), pp. 395-398Published by: Duke University Presson behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183665.

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A FALLACY IN PLATO'S REPUBLIC?AN ARTICLE published by ProfessorDavid Sachs in the PhilosophicalReview'offers a scholarly and penetrating interpretationof someof Plato's views. Indeed, on some matters I believe that it makes acontribution to our understandingof Plato. In this discussion, however,I will be mainly concerned with Sachs's attribution of a fallacy toPlato, as stated in the title of his article. I agree that there is a gap inthe 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 propositionis inferred from a premise when, in fact, it is not entailed by it. I hopeto prove that Sachs has not made his point; more particularly, that hehas failed to prove that Plato's conclusion could not logically followfrom his premise.

Sachs makes a vital distinction which helps clear up a confusion inPlato's argument. Sachs insists that we must keep apart two questions:(a) Does justice entail happiness? (b) Does justice entail vulgar orconventional morality ((pOPTLKO; Republic, 444e 3)? He rightlyinsists that an answer to the first questions has no bearing on theanswer to the second. In other words, were we to succeed in provingthat a just man will be happy, we should still not know that he will beconventionally moral.A very important use of justice by Plato is the rendering to everyman his due. This is the refrain running throughout Republic ; it is theordinary, the conventional meaning of justice; it is the conception ofjustice as a social virtue. But in Book IV, Plato comes up with a differentand unconventional definition ofjustice; it is, so far as I know, uniquewith Plato among Greek philosophers, and indeed Sachs calls itPlatonic justice. This is the view of justice as (a) the state of the soulin which no part of the soul interferes with the functioning of theother parts-call it the principle of nonintervention-and (b) thestate of the soul in which the various parts are working in mutualharmony and friendship (4ilOvota,,Pbnata;5id 3; 433e 2-4). Shouldanyone wonder whether there is any significant difference between

' A Fallacy' in Plato's Republic, PhilosophicalReview, LXXII (i963),141-158.

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RAPHAEL DEMOSthe two notions, let him reflect on this pair: desegregation and integra-tion.What is odd about Plato's Platonic justice is its seemingly strikingdeparture from ordinary usage. Customarily, justice indicates therelation of a given person to other persons; it is a virtue which operatesin social contexts. But Platonic justice is a personal virtue, definedpurely in terms of the agent. One wonders why Plato should haveintroduced this unusual meaning; is it possible that he regarded it asthe same meaning? Plato likens the soul to the city. In contrast to theouter city, the soul is an inner city; it is a community of parts-ofreason, thumos, and innumerable appetites. Can he then be chargedwith changing, or even stretching, the meaning of the word, if byPlatonic justice he means giving every part of the soul its due? Thechange, if change there be, would seem to be in the conception of thesoul as a community, not in the conception of justice. And if mysuggestion is correct, it should throw light on the lacuna, or whatSachs 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 moralitybut (b) that the latter entails the former as well. In this paper I willdiscuss 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 philo-sophical intelligence. But what of it? Cephalus surely possessed rightopinion; 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 troubleenough 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 willconform to the canons of vulgar morality. ( Plato merely assumesthathaving the one involves having the other ; p. 154.) How could innerharmony entail that a man will not steal, will not betray his friends,will not commit adultery, and so forth? It seems entirely obvious toPlato, and it is entirely unobvious to us. Since I had been acutelyaware of this problem long before I came across Sachs's article, I hopeI may be allowed to put it in my own way, without, I trust, doinginjustice to Sachs's argument. Platonic justice is an individual virtue-how a person behaves toward himself; in fact, it is the harmoniousrealization of the soul in all its parts. But so defined, justice is self-regarding. How then can it possibly imply a concern for other people

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A FALLACTIN PLATO'S REPUBLIC?(rendering to everyone his due) ? In short, there seems to be a leapfrom the conception of justice as caring for one's own good to caringfor other people's good. Plato asserts that justice is to the human soulwhat health is to the human body; but surely no living body aims atanything but its ownhealth. Platonic justice is the proper ordering ofone's own life; why then should a just man in this sense ofjustice careto bring about a proper ordering of otherpeople's lives?There certainly is a gap; is there a fallacy? Sachs's reasoning toshow that there is a fallacy (of irrelevance) seems to consist of twosteps. First he says-what I have already agreed to-that Plato fails toshow that Platonicjustice entails vulgar morality. This is only a lacuna;what is needed, in order to demonstrate a fallacy, is a proof thatPlatonic justice could not (logically) lead to vulgar morality. So let usproceed to Sachs's second point. Sachs goes on to say that the assump-tion is implausible ( The assumption, moreover, s implausible ;p. I54, italics mine.). What is characterized as implausible is thesupposition that there exists a logical connection (entailment) betweenpremise and conclusion. To say, however, that it is implausible is notto say that the logical link does not infact exist. How much force doesthe word implausible carry? To me it suggests a first look, a firstimpression, to be followed by detailed exploration: I find no suchexploration in Sachs's article. Sachs does not prove (does not even tryto prove) that the conclusion is not entailed by the premise. All hisreasoning shows is that we do not knowwhether there is a fallacy ornot; at best it shows that there maybe a fallacy.2In the comments that follow I will suggest that a logical connectioncan be found, and I will indicate what this may be. But first, two

reservations. I claim only that the intervening links which I willsupply are consistent with Plato's general theory; I do not claim thatthey are links he actually had in mind. Also, nothing that I have saidin 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 ofhis 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 is2 Referringo the secondrequirementwhich Sachs aysdownin orderthatPlato's argumentbe complete-namely, that vulgar justice entails beingPlatonically ust-Sachs writes: Apart rom the fact that Plato never statesthat being vulgarly ust entailsbeing Platonically ust, one may wonder ifsuch a claim is at all plausible.It does not seem to be (p. 157). Notice theweakness of it does not seem to be.

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RAPHAEL DEMOSthe apprehension of the truth and of the good. (b) Reason is also aform of desire ('r tvkcda, 58od 6-8). Thus reason is both an appre-hension and an aspiration to the ideal. (c) The good which is thetarget of reason includes or entails justice; in order to understand thenature of the various virtues (including justice) we must travel alonga 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 asense which would exclude the good of others. (e) Finally, we knowfrom the Symposiumhat the eros of the good and of beauty leads toaccomplishment (rotEZv); that is, to instantiations of the forms(Symposium, 205c-2o6e). To aim at the good is also to aim at theproductionf good things; thus for an individual to aim at justice meansthat he cares not only for justice in the abstract, but also that justiceshould be embodied in human beings in general.

Earlier I said that each soul cares for its own health just as the bodydoes. But now this statement, though true, is seen to be open to adifferent interpretation. The health of the soul includes, above all, thefulfillment of its reason: and the concern of reason is that the goodshould be exemplified everywhere. The concern for my self-fulfillmentis analyzable into a concern that everyone should attain psychicalfulfillment; that I am inwardly just means that I want everyone tohave his due.

Such, then, I suggest is the bridge which links Platonic justice withjustice in the sense of rendering to everyone what is his due. I have not,to be sure, literally shown that Platonic justice inevitably leads tovulgar morality (Sachs's formulation of the problem). But is therereally any difference between the vulgar and the noble senses ofmorality? To embezzle money, to steal, to betray friends,to be faithlessin one's promises, to commit adultery, to neglect parents and to exploitorphans, and all the rest of it-is not all this a case of failing to giveothers what is their due? Surely these various kinds of vulgarly badactions are no more than specific violations of the principle that oneshould avoid acts of injustice to others.

RAPHAEL DEMOSMcGill University

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a fallacy on platos republic demos

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