THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

GLUTTONY AND PHILOSOPHICAL MODERATION

IN PLATOS REPUBLIC

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

JOHN U. NEF COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL THOUGHT

BY
HANNAH HINTZE

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
DECEMBER 2009

UMI Number: 3387057

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To D. and S., as partial payment on outstanding debts

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...................................................................................................v
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................1
CHAPTER ONE: CITIES AND LOGOI: AN INTRODUCTION TO PLEONEXIA .........20
1.1 The first city...............................................................................................................22
1.2 The second city ..........................................................................................................46
1.3 The growth of the logos .............................................................................................60
CHAPTER TWO: ORDINARY APPETITES.......................................................................67
2.1. Hunger and Thirst .....................................................................................................67
2.2. Leontius.....................................................................................................................95
2.3. Beyond the necessary................................................................................................104
2.4 Desire for Gain...........................................................................................................113
2.5 Pleonexias contradictions .........................................................................................117
CHAPTER THREE: THE ACTIVITY OF SOPHROSUNE ................................................126
3.1 Expurgation................................................................................................................131
3.2 Harmonization............................................................................................................144
3.3 Correct trophe ............................................................................................................175
3.4 False sophrosune........................................................................................................184
CHAPTER FOUR: PHILOSOPHICAL APPETITES ..........................................................190
4.1 Omnivores of learning ...............................................................................................197
4.2 Philosophical attributes..............................................................................................208
4.3 The philosophers trophe ...........................................................................................231
4.4 Redundancy and the Good .........................................................................................233
CHAPTER FIVE: PHILOSOPHICAL SOPHROSUNE AND THE ALTERNATIVES .....258
5.1 The perfect glutton.....................................................................................................261
5.2 Socrates and Thrasymachus.......................................................................................274
5.3 Cephalus and the unnamed glutton ............................................................................277
5.4 Odysseus as a figure of philosophical sophrosune ....................................................288
5.5 Er/os as observer ........................................................................................................303
BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................326

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks inexpressible to Leon Kass and David Roochnik, the akribestatoi phulakes and
stres of this project. Hearty thanks to Stephanie Nelson, who offered painstaking commentary
on many versions of the first few chapters. Her advice regarding content and style led to many
clear improvements. Allen Speight and Lydia Moland both read versions of the proposed
dissertation and I am grateful to them for their kind encouragement. Many thanks to Jonathan
Lear and Jonathan Beere for their most helpful contributions, and thanks as well to Gabriela
Martinez, true friend and philosophical comrade, for her support from start to finish.

Thanks to my outrageously generous friends and familyMichael and Nancy-Jane

Morizio, John and Lynne Byler, Alice Barmore, and Abigail Jacksonfor providing the
beautiful places in which I wrote most of this dissertation. Thanks to Jason and Marta Lane for
ensuring that the project would be done in time and formatted in a dignified fashion and for their
comments throughout the writing process. Thanks to Brandon and Liv Booth for their gracious
helppractical, intellectual, and (especially) satirical. Thanks first and last to my parents: to
Michael Hintze, my best reader, and to Ann Hintze, the final cause of this work.

INTRODUCTION

Socrates dedicates several lengthy discussions in the Republic to the most vivid of the
epithumetic desires: hunger, thirst, and the tastes that develop from these.1 He warns that these
desires for nourishment and satisfaction and their corresponding pleasures can deform the soul
and distract it from philosophy. But several of Socrates myths, images, and arguments in the
Republic depend on and invite a close comparison between the appetites for food and drink and
the desire to know. This unlikely analogy of appetite and philosophical desire raises needful
questions for philosophy: What kind of satisfaction is possible of the desire to know? Is the goal
of philosophy a state of contentment and repletion? Does knowledge nourish or fill up the soul?
Are its pleasures ever deforming or distractive? Could philosophy ever desire too much, too
quickly, at too high a price? And if it could, is any moderation of potentially gluttonous
philosophy possible, practical, or desirable?
This thesis will attempt to account for Platos use of the appetite analogy, in the
Republic. As I will argue, Platos intentional comparison of the desire to eat and drink and the
desire to know raises the caution that thinking, like feasting, may be susceptible to its own kind
of pleonexia. Just as epithumia tends to seek more and better satisfactions until it undermines its
own pleasures by excessive pursuits, so also, the desire to know can seek too much, too quickly,
at too high a price; one might call this intellectual gluttony.2

1 Enargestatas at 437d3
2 My thesis will appear to conflict rather directly (at least in the first chapters) with one central conclusion

of C.D.C. Reeves Philosopher-Kings (1988), that rational pleonexia is theoretically impossible. I hope that my
treatment of the possibility of rational pleonexia (which Plato takes quite seriously, I think) will supplement Reeves
quite specific argument with commentary on other passages of the Republic that do not fall within the compass of
his argument in that particular work. I hope that my argument will coincide with Reeves on later points, however,
regarding the overall coherence of the Republic and Socrates sincere proposal of the alternately contemplative and
practical life of the just philosopher.

If the pursuits of the rational and ruling part of the soul are subject to pleonexia or
gluttony, then who or what will rule the ruler? Can reason rule its own desires? Can thinking
even recognize its own excesses? I will argue that Platos Socrates promotes a certain rational
self-rule, a philosophical sphrosun that includes moments of serious, even skeptical
consideration of the goodness of the contemplative life.
Finally, I will argue that this philosophical sophrosune is a philosophical response to the
fact of hierarchy among the things to be known. (I do not intend, as do several other
commentators on the Republic, to offer yet another explanation of the philosophers duty to
sacrifice some part of philosophy for the sake of practical or political benefits; philosophical
moderation is not a necessary evil.) Simultaneous orientation towards and interest in both the
vertical and the horizontalthe eternally pure world of being and the poikilos world of human
mutabilityis characteristic of genuine philosophy. Any practice more dismissive of the human
is a caricature of philosophy;3 such an excessively vertical pursuit would not take seriously
enough the necessity that sophia encompass not just the highest things but also the whole. As
Socrates suggests and I will argue, dual (though not equal) interest in high and low (or, best and
all) matched by a dual (though not equal) restraint saves philosophy.
Plato the writer is manifestly drawn to these two poles. The minutiae of human life and
the final, single telos of thought do not come apart in the dialogues (often to our keen
frustration). Walter Pater, a somewhat neglected reader of Plato, sees Platos soul excruciated
upon the divergent axes of the universal and the particular. Platos desire for a solution to this
duality is a desire for sophrosune itself; his genius is finally revealed in restraint, the saving
conscience of soul and of art.4

3 See Rosen, Platos Republic: A Study, 284.

4 Plato and Platonism, 94, 194-195

I agree that the Republic rehearses the world agn between the universal and the
particular (or between the contesting pleasures of ravishing abstraction and intense experience)
and further, that it asks us to arbitrate. Many readers expect that only one winner will emerge
from this battle for sophrosune but I do not think that Plato has in mind the expurgation of one
aim or the other. According to Socrates own definitions, sophrosune requires a synopsis of the
whole that includes and makes peace with the contest staged within.
In other words, Socrates and company may forgo dinner but they are not allowed to
forget it. They may theoretically approve all the Republics infamous excesses of austerity but in
fact they cannot stop talking about eating and drinking and the rest of the lower pursuits that that
were supposed to be sublimated in the desire to know.5 Plato could have written a dialogue in
which philosophy really does replace epithumia (as its perfection, perhaps).6 Instead, he wrote
the Republic, a dialogue riddled with epithumetic distractions that is at the same time Platos
most ambitious attempt to say what philosophy is. Plato may be suggesting that philosophy is
essentially related to the ordinary human pursuits that seem only to disrupt it.

Objections
Objections to what I am calling the appetite analogy are not difficult to come by, as I
have already suggested. Some come directly from the text. As Socrates himself often warns in
the Republic, feasts and the desires that go with them could not be more opposed to the high
pursuits of philosophy. They distract human beings from serious reflection. Those who are at
home with earthly feasting become deformed (as Glaucus, worn down and covered in barnacles

5 To the bitter end, as at 571a or 621a-b.

6 See Bloom, Interpretive Essay, 347; and Strauss, City and Man, 61, 64: the feeding of the body and of

the senses is replaced by the feeding of the mind.

[611d]). They lose the order in their souls that preserves their integrity and identity. Gluttony
ruins the glutton, whereas the pursuit of knowledge is presumably beneficial to the soul.
Further, the mechanism of eating and drinking is so different from the activity of thinking
that the comparison can become almost comic.7 To put it simply, eating and drinking destroy
what is eaten and drunk. The eaters desire to preserve himself trumps his concern for the
integrity of the beautiful dish before him; the satisfaction of his appetite implies the waning
existence of the enticing object, bite by bite. In this respect, especially, appetite appears to be the
opposite of philosophical yearning, which is presumably for a glimpse of things that outlast the
one who yearns for them. To put it forcefully, ideas are intellected, not consumed.8
Again, one might argue more generally that gluttony and moderation simply do not apply
to contemplation. Aristotle, for example, denies that philosophy admits of moderation, or any

7 Even in the Phaedrus (246e-248c; see esp. 247a9-10, 247d2-3, 248b1-c2), arguably a less comic dialogue

than the Republic. The Phaedrus account of the transmigration of souls obviously provides a rich contrast for the
Republics myth of Er. (See 5.5.)
8 Leon Kass draws attention to the very different orientations of the eater and thinker (and lover) to their

respective objects:
To be at work thinking is to be thinking the thinkable; to be at work seeing is to be seeing the visible; to be
at work copulating is to be fusing with the sexual complement, and so on. Yet the relations among agent, activity,
and object in eating differ from all these other cases. In thinking the thinking mind seems to become one with the
thing thought; the thinker is possessed by his thoughts, always changing his mind as the ideas that fill it change.
[] But when we are at work on the world in eating, we do not become the something that we eat; rather the edible
gets assimilated to what we are. [] Whereas in seeing, the sight of the viewer is informed by the visible object, in
eating, the edible object is thoroughly transformed by and re-formed into the eater (1999, 25-26).
The eater looks to the object as a means merely; food and drink are for his pleasure and satisfaction. But the
thinker seeks ideas to some degree for their own sake, not first for the pleasure and satisfaction they will provide.
(In fact, it is possible that an idea may pain, confuse, and disturb the immediate satisfaction of the thinker.) In this
way, true ideas seem to outrank human satisfactions.
So the attempt to feed the soul with ideas or logoi (as the soul tamers of the Republic IX) appears to turn
thinking upside down. In this inverted world, the highest things serve the lowest. Thoughts and speeches are simply
soul-fodder.
One could argue, as does Arlene Saxonhouse (1978), that such absurdities arising from implausible
analogies are meant to undercut Socrates grand proposals. My reading of the implausible appetite analogy
recognizes the comedy but looks for a positive meaning as well. If feasting is the wrong way to think about thinking,
then what is the right way? How are eating and drinking essentially unlike knowing? What is knowing really like?
The burden is upon the detector of irony to improve upon the comic metaphor.

sense of a mean.9 Gluttony of thought simply is not possible because of the nature of thinking.10
Certainly, thoughts are not like strong drinks or heavy foods; a surplus of them is not harmful to
the thinker, nor are the objects of thought diminished by being considered. That being the case, it
seems that we could never desire to know enough. We should strain every nerve, as Aristotle
says, think every thought, and above every other desire, desire to know. The fact that philosophy
does not need to be moderated proves its special character. It would seem to be the only desire of
human beings to which we can give ourselves freely and unstintingly.11
Finally (and simply), philosophical desires are rational and appetite is not.12 Why would
Socrates or Plato want to blur this all-important distinction, upon which depends a central
conclusion of the Republicthat knowledge should rule over ignorant impulse?
The work of this thesis, then, will be to show that despite these several basic
dissimilarities of appetite and philosophical desire and despite the apparent danger to the central
argument that the use of the analogy entails, Plato employs the appetite analogy often and for
good reason. The analogy is particularly useful, I will argue, precisely because it brings unlikely
thingsthe highest and lowest concerns of human beingstogether in a clear light. Socrates
comparison between the lowest and highest desires of human beings is a harmonization of the
sort Socrates urges his interlocutors to make in their own souls. Seen in this light, as a single

9 Nic. Ethics [1117b] and elsewhere.

10 Reeve (1988) arrives at a similar conclusion (arguing from the nature of justice, not thinking, per se) that

rational pleonexia cannot occur in the kallipolis, or more specifically, that there are no unnecessary rational desires.
See also John Harmons argument (1986) that philosophy curbs its potential pleonexia by arguing itself back into the
cave.
11 The pursuit of ethical virtue can be free and unstinting, too, but with a significant qualification: Ethical

virtue is to some extent about the mean. There does not seem to be any obvious mean relative to which one
contemplates.
12 Or at least appetite is much less rational. This is a contentious matter in the literature, as I indicate in

Chapter Two.

account of the diverse aims and interests of the human soul, the Republic itself appears to be a
moderate work.13

Definitions
To avoid confusion at the outset, I will clarify a few basic terms. First, I use the word
gluttony (from glutire, to swallow) to take up several Platonic preoccupations in the Republic: in
particular, pleonexia, lichneia, and unbounded epithumia, or laimargia.
Pleonexia, the appetite for more, has a common political meaning, desire for more than
ones fair share, or desire to get the advantage over an opponent. Socrates and Thrasymachus
use the term this way in their opening argument. But the term has a simpler meaning, too:
greediness for more.14 (Similarly, the verb pleonaz simply means to go to greater lengths,
but has a more concrete meaning as well: to be longwinded.) When I use the term pleonexia
in this thesis, I refer to the simplest meaning of the word, and then to the secondary (but
common) concrete meaning where it is appropriate.15
I have used both appetite and desire to translate Platos epithumia, which can refer to
brute voracity, thirst, and lust or to more cultivated passions. Since it will be a central task of this
dissertation to account for epithumias broad application, I have decided not settle on one
translation or the other from the start.16
13 Containing moments of calculated excess, as I will argue. See Chapter Four, in particular.
14 The LSJ supports these two senses. Myles Burnyeat distinguishes between pleonexia of the thumos

desire to gain an advantage over an opponentand pleonexia of the appetitive part of the souldesire for more
food, drink, sex, and money (2006, 20). See Phaedrus 248a-b, for an example of rational pleonexia, where mortal
charioteers trample one another in their eagerness to see more than the others. See also Republic 586a-b. For divine
causes and social benefits of pleonexia, see Hesiod, Works and Days (1.20-25).
15 As Reeve (1981), who uses both the simple and the political senses of the term.
16 The latter more nearly captures the tone of epi-thume: to set ones heart on, but it lacks the more

vivid gastronomic sense of the former.

There is a debate in the secondary literature about the proper objects of epithumia. As I
see it, and as a common formula has it, epithumia is intense desire for the pleasures and
replenishments of food, drink, sex, and money.17 My thesis concentrates almost entirely on
hunger and thirst, the most vivid of the bodily desires.18
In epithumetic encounters of any kind, the relationship between desirer and desired is
asymmetrical. The epithumts cares about the object insofar as it adds to his pleasure and
satisfaction; apart from this, his beloved is of no consequence to him. In the case of the eater and
eaten, only one of the two survives the encounter.
In the case of an epithumetic sexual encounter, the beloved similarly interests the
lover only insofar as he slakes the desire of the latter; afterwards, he ceases to be of any
interest. Fuller and more attractive (because perhaps more reciprocal, human, and lasting) sexual
relationships belong to the term eros. (Although Platos eros can certainly include the brutality
of epithumia, it is a far broader term, covering instances of love as well as lust.)19
In this dissertation, as I have said, I concentrate on the most vivid cases of epithumia,
the desires to eat and drink. For the most part, I have left aside the sexual senses of the term. I do
this because there is simply much more talk about feasting than sex in the Republic20 and
because I want to draw the readers attention to the strangeness of the appetite analogy. In
contrast, the familiar comparison between erotic lovers and thinkers (as in the Symposium) seems
uncontroversial. The pursuit of wisdom, on the appetite analogy, is like the pursuit of good

17 I will treat the revealing extension of epithumia to money in a brief section of Chapter Two.
18 437d
19 The potential mutuality of eros is arguably an open question in the dialogues, whereas for Aristotle, by

contrast, the roles of lover and beloved are clearly distinct and reciprocity better sought in the realms of justice or
friendship.
20 Fieldings famous summary of the Odyssey could be applied to Republic, too; each is a comprehensive

eating book.

pasture, an excellent chop, or a cool glass of water. Plato uses this unlikely and initially
unpersuasive analogy to urge us to look again with new puzzlement at the strange business of
thinking and wanting to know.
I have deliberately avoided the word love to translate epithumia so as to prevent any
confusion with the Greek eros.21 As many commentators note, sexual eros, that useful and vivid
image of philosophy that motivates the Symposium, Phaedrus, and other Platonic dialogues, is
scarcely to be found in the Republic, at least explicitly. This does not mean, however, that the
Republic presents a falsely austere picture of the philosopher. On the contrary, I will argue, the
Republics unlikely analogy of feasting and philosophizing will bring to light some truths about
the practice of philosophy that the better analogy of sexual eros cannot.
A final clarification: Some readers note that Plato uses epithumia at several moments in
the Republic to refer to the desire to hear speeches, to be esteemed, or even to know or learn.22
(Cephalus desire for speeches (328d), Thrasymachus desire for esteem (338a), or the
philosophers desire for the whole of wisdom (475b) are all epithumiai.) One might conclude
that epithumia means simply intense desire, for any kind of satisfaction.23 But this would be a
mistake.
In fact, Socrates uses epithumia relatively rarely to indicate rational desire and
overwhelmingly more frequently to refer to desires for food, drink, sex, and money. In every one
of the examples listed above, the interlocutors have just been or are about to discuss food, drink,
sex, and/or money explicitly. So when the term epithumia is extended to rational desires in this

21 Although English allows a similar latitude of meaning; someone can be said to love wine or to love

God.
22 In particular, see Hendrik Lorenz 2006.
23 See Lorenz (2006, 46). The LSJ gives this impression, too.

context, it carries certain inescapable physical connotations.24 One might say that epithumia for
knowledge is therefore an analogical rather than a definitive use of the word.25 When Socrates
uses the term epithumia to refer to the desire to know, that is, when he employs the appetite
analogy, this connotative playfulness draws the low to the high to comic and useful effect.
These terms, excessive epithumia (the desires of the lichnos, or glutton, called laimargia
at one point) and pleonexia connote physical and psychic immoderation, ill-judging hastiness,
short-sighted animalistic instinct for satisfaction, along with the complacent belief that desire can
be so easily sated simply by gulping down enough. The excessive pleasures of logoi (or
education), on the appetite analogy, are as tempting as a fragrant dish, tangible realities that can
be cut and allotted and served and chewed and swallowed, and consigned to the inner mental
workings, never to be truly considered again.
Of course, pleonexia, lichneia, and laimargia have another nearly opposite set of
connotations, too: hubris, arrogant reach beyond bounds of the fitting or healthy or just, a sort of
incorrigible boorish daring. Gluttony, the lowest of the vices, dares to do Promethean deeds. (To
feast on the cattle of Helios, for example [Od. XII].) But much more on this to come.
In what follows, I offer a few examples to show the ubiquity of gluttony in the Republic
and to introduce the sorts of general questions to which the examples give rise.

24 As, in English, one might say that a person has a taste for arguments. The latter example, too, has an

exact Greek parallel: geuesthai (to taste) learning or intellectual pleasures. E.g., 475c, 586a.
25 In other words, epithumia for knowledge is not a species of epithumia; rather, the extension of the term

suggests an analogy:
epithumia : food/drink :: epithumia : knowledge.
Socrates challenges us to find a better third term. Similarly, I will argue that Socrates challenges us to
consider the third term in the following:
Gluttony : food/drink :: ? : knowledge.
Sophrosune : food/drink :: ? : knowledge.

The Gluttony Theme

Although Socrates and company never do get dinner, there is a great deal of talk about
feasting, indulging, and refraining, especially around the hinges of the discussion. The analogy
between philosophical desire and appetite is often explicit, as at 437b-439e, where knowledge is
brought in to explain thirst, or at 475b-c, where the philosopher is explicitly an "epithumts of
wisdom" like a lover of food or wine, or at 585a-e, where hunger and ignorance are similar
conditions of emptiness in body and soul.
At the start of Book I, Cephalus counts himself among the eukoloi (329d), those who
have outgrown drinking parties and feasts and are content just to eat what is in front of them; at
the end of Book I, Socrates counts himself among the intellectual gluttons (lichnoi at 354b) who
seize whatever topic happens to be in front of them and tear it to pieces (harpazontes here at
354b, the same word used to describe Thrasymachus on the edge of his seat, about to pounce on
the logos at 336b). The logos between these points is called a feast. (Forms of euoke and
hestia appear between 352b-354b.) At 352b, Thrasymachus bids Socrates to consider what has
been said and feast yourself. Socrates admits he hasnt dined well (ou mentoi kals ge
heistiamai at 354a-b).
Here at the beginning of the Republic and later on, the glutton seizes whatever chance
puts within his reach and uses it up. The unnamed decent soul in Er's story seizes the first life he
happens upon (out of laimargia at 619b). It escapes his notice that this life includes eating his
own children. Socrates' proofs of the tripartite nature of the soul in Book IV turn on healthy or
unhealthy desires for food: The soul nods to itself when it wants a drink at 437c and, at 440a,
Leontius curses his eyes disgusting desire to stare at corpses along the road: Look, you damned

10

wretches, take your fill [emplsthte] of the fair sight!).26 Finally, no food is too terrible for the
tyrants boundless appetite (571d).
Appetite is not unrelated to connoisseurship, however, or concern with the best: Any city
worth considering, says Glaucon, is a city with better foods, for people who really enjoy eating
and notice what they eat (372c-e). Later, the true philosopher must love the best without letting
any part of the imperfect go (475a-c). He must not be finicky about his studies (ta mathmata
duscherainanta). He is the sort of man who is willing to taste every kind of learning with gusto
(euchers pantos mathmatos geuesthai) and approaches learning with delight, and is
insatiable (aplsts).
The glutton, like the philosopher, wants to enjoy the best and everything, too, but he does
not understand his own motives and continually spoils his own chances of happiness or
satisfaction.27 In the last moments of the Republic, gluttons drink away their intelligence: Now
it was necessity for all to drink a certain measure of the water [of the River Carelessness], but
those who were not saved by prudence drank more than the measure. As he drank, each forgot
everything (621a-b). Eagerness for satisfaction in the goods that present themselves at the
moment prevents recollection and the knowledge that comes over time. The gluttons
forgetfulness of his time-bound nature is especially important in this context.

26 I use the Bloom translation throughout, except where noted. I find the Griffith, Reeve, and Sachs

translations helpful as well, and refer to them occasionally, where I find that they bring out the sense of the Greek
more clearly.
27 I will argue that gluttons can have good taste: The transgressions of the gourmand who wants only the

best all the time are examples of pleonexia, all the same. One can argue that his dainty preference for quality over
quantity soon becomes a numbers game (for a provocative treatment of this tendency, see J.-K. Huysmans
influential novel, Against Nature). The O.E.D. and common usage reveal a deep confusion in the matter. Gourmand:
1) one who eats greedily or to excess, a glutton; 2) one who is fond of delicate fare; a judge of good eating. BrillatSavarin notes (and tries to resolve) this perennial ambiguity (1949, 147-155).

11

The sphrn takes another attitude towards time. The non-gluttonous thinker stays,
tarries, loiters, and wanders slowly (as Odysseus in the final myth) in unerotic observation.28
He is peaceful and free (as Cephalus purports to be). What is this slower desire to know? Should
we call this moderate desire? Is this state possible for a true philosopher? (On the other hand,
should one recommend it to men like Meno and Phaedrus, who need to become eager to know
before anything else?) Would such moderation be good for the human being as a whole or for the
philosophical part of the human being or for both?
Or is the true philosopher in fact an unabashed intellectual glutton, immoderate by
definition (despite Socrates claims to the contrary)? Is the eager philosopher fated to be
tyrannized as he is urged ever upward by his love of the good? Is philosophy the same as being
enslaved by higher and higher concerns? Plato suggests that the philosopher does choose his
thoughts and the life that goes with them, according to his own taste and in his own time. This
unhurried choice of life, most visible in the figure of Odysseus in the final myth, seems to make
room for philosophys ever fresh self-critique. The worthiness of the philosophical life is not
self-evident, but becomes apparent only at length and in comparison with the relative worthiness
of all the other possible lives. It may be that philosophys self-justification, while obscure to the
manic devotee, becomes clear only to the moderate thinker.
To confirmed lovers of the Forms, this calm state might look like skepticism. Some might
suspect that the hesitation described above cannot be reconciled with the visionary, intoxicating
(and true) love of wisdom that distinguishes philosophers from mere dabblers in ideas. The selfmoderation of the desire to know and embrace the contemplative life might give the impression
of intellectual exhaustion, misology, petty practicality, or a final and unphilosophical lack of
care. Platos hypothetical moderation of philosophical desire is none of these things, I will argue,

28 Or unimpassioned passion (Pater, 94).

12

but what it really is will be difficult to say with precision. Yet the notion of philosophical
moderation is among the most necessary matters to consider and decide.
If philosophical gluttony really is as problematic as I suspect, (and not just because it
leads to tyrannical political ideologies) then it may be good and necessary for the philosopher to
check his love, even his love of pure contemplation, and to compel himself to creep down into
every corner of the soul (577a) to peer around at slighter matters, including the necessity of a
growling belly. In other words, philosophical moderation, if that is the right term, might be
dual: Perhaps it is good for the highest part of the soul to check its own desires and the desires of
the lower parts; perhaps it is good for philosophy to return to the cave.
To preview the matter, Plato suggests two reasons in particular why philosophers should
concern themselves with gluttony. First, the harmonization of the soul in the light of the Good is
not a single, perfect act. Socrates speaks provocatively about the fully educated guardians who
have seen sufficiently, although they have not come to the end (519c-d), as if they were now
purified for all time by the (incomplete) sight of it; if you could drag them back into the cave,
surely they would never be tempted to join those petty contests that engage the prisoners? Of
course, the educated philosopher knows better than to seek immediate satisfaction in lesser goods
while he is away from home but like Odysseus he doesnt always act according to that
knowledge. Even philosophers are subject to decline (572b). Socrates suggests that the danger is
worse where it is not detected. So, the blissful philosopher who cannot remember slight matters
nearly forgets what it is to act at all: Those who are left to themselves in contemplation too long
(to the end) begin to imagine that they are dead already (519c).29 Is it better to be alive (and

29 The Isles of the Blessed, where indulgent and passive heroes like Menelaus enjoy the best possible

removal from life are a better place to while away eternity than Hades, but only marginally so. Indeed, the argument
can be made that Socrates metaphorically equates Hades and the Isles of the Blessed, where the philosopher trains
his sights on unseen things, oblivious to his mortal nature. Glaucon marvels at these men, who strike him as perfect
statues (540c).

13

concerned with seemingly petty things, such as the necessities of food and drink) or as-good-as
dead (with a view on the invisible absolute)? Here Plato suggests Achilles insight, with inverted
geography: Surely it is better to rule the living in the most squalid little hole in the ground than to
be dead on the surface of the earth, baking in the sun.
Second, uncritical (gluttonous) philosophical interest that would attempt to take total and
final possession of the ideas risks submitting to a worse tyrant than greed or ambition: chance.
Chance gives us our thoughts, as Pascal has it. Certain ideas occur to us because we live where
we do, when we do (because we happen to run into Polemarchus, not Phaedrus, for example) and
because we happen to have become acquainted with and entangled in certain intellectual
traditions. These particular formulations, terms, and favorite discussions are the slips that Chance
scatters over the field. To choose among them is to choose to lead a life of a certain kind and to
think the thoughts that belong to that life. Does the desire to know allow us enough erotic
distance to ask ourselves whether the thoughts that entice us now are really the thoughts we want
to linger over and live with? Time is short for mortal philosophers; yet, for this very reason,
Plato may be saying, each of us needs a moderating contemplative delay, ones own thousandyear journey, before (or as) one makes oneself at home in ones thoughts.

Sources and Methods

Finally, a few points on interpretation. Although I hope that my readers will look to the
chapters ahead to learn how I read Plato, perhaps a few introductory remarks are in order.
Regarding questions of dialogue form, irony, and the obscure voice of Plato, I am sympathetic to
the aims of several different schools. In the midst of the interpretive controversy, Nehamas offers
a practical caution: We need not assume either that Plato always speaks for himself through his
main characters or that he never does (1999, xvii). Thinkers as disparate as Lear (1992) and

14

Rosen (2005) suggest that the ironic Socrates nevertheless means what he says. A good
interpretation will have to come to terms with irony without sacrificing seriousness.
In general, I am relatively certain that Plato, through Socrates, presents a sincere and
positive teaching in the Republic, which may be located (in the mode of Drew Hylands finite
transcendence) in the transformations of the Republics obvious negativesirony, exaggeration,
and failure. Whatever that comprehensive teaching may be (and I do not promise to reach the
pith of it here), I think that it is somewhat more about the soul than about the city per se.30 I do
not look for esoteric political teachings in the Republic in part because any strictly political
reading will miss the Republics rich treatment of more universal themes: old age, mortality, the
possibility of knowledge, and the worth of philosophy, for example. These themes frame the
political questions, it seems to me, and must be pursued first.
I take the dialogue form to be itself a component of the meaning of the Republic. As
many others have argued more capably in many places, the dialogue form puts logos into finite
action in time and into the mouths of living, finite characters, such that the natural complexities
of thought are increased and intensified. Harmonious and dissonant themes reoccur level on level
up through the dialogue, as themes in a musical score. As many have argued, such a score
requires an active interpretation, even a re-performance, by which we readers take part in the
drama.31
Despite this dialectical richness, however, a thesis must be ventured. The most just
response to the Republic may be a line-by-line reading but one cannot deny the natural
philosophical urge to push the argument to its crisis and to try to say in concise phrases what it

30 Of course, this does not require discarding the political. Lears reading of the city as soul-shaping, for

example, is one way of giving the political its due while keeping the focus on the psychological in the Republic.
31 For the most complete reading of the Republic on these lines, see Eva Brann 2004.

15

means. Although Plato is not too delicate to bear this kind of appropriately philosophical
treatment, there are risks for any interpreter who pursues richness and clarity.
And these risks are not merely hermeneutical. The interpretive controversies that have so
roiled Platonic scholarship are flickering shadows of more ponderous metaphysical battlesthe
in itself against the thing in relation, solidity against flux, eternal against only-too-human, whole
against part, one against many, all against best. On one side, there is the danger of responding
too locally to the text (all-too-close commentary on this interchange with this interlocutor at this
time and place). What else is this but idolization of flux, to the neglect of being and the whole?
The dangers of the opposing school (attempting to confirm Platos theory of X, or the
development of Platos theory of X, apart from the poetic distractions of the dialogue-form)
consist in idolizing unity and being to the neglect of many and becoming.
Line-by-line commentary gives due credit to flux and contradiction and to Platos canny
purpose as he presents the mutable human soul as it searches for the truth. More thematic
treatments of the logical content of the dialogues are useful, too, insofar as they take Plato
seriously as more than an intellectual caricaturist. Both ways of approach are necessary. Each
school can be a voice of conscience when the interpretation strays too far in either direction.
In the course of the following chapters, I expect to err on both sides. Certainly there will
be moments where the better reader of the literary side will rankle at my gathering of quotes out
of context that happen to treat a single theme. On the other hand, there will doubtless be
moments where those who are better readers of the arguments will think that I have veered too
far in undercutting or doubting the immediate sincerity of Socrates statements at various points.
These are the risks. In the end, we readers of Plato lay our bets, leaning more heavily on those
statements of Socrates we take to be more secure and forthright and wending a cautious path
through those statements that may crumble, or whose sincere meaning can be discovered only
from the cosmic height of the whole dialogue.
16

Finally, I am aware that the charge of philosophical gluttony could be directed at this
thesis as a whole; I take some consolation in the fact that as the Republic argues, rational
gluttony is not a pure negative. I do not wish to try the patience of the reader with too many
examples of this or that related topic. However, since I am convinced that my limited thesis
about appetite bears on the Republic as a whole and offers a useful vantage from which to sight
all the high peaks of the dialogue, I will occasionally indicate the path one could travel from
appetite to many relevant arguments in and about the dialogue.
Although I have kept my discussions with other scholars to the footnotes (by and large)
this is not to deny my dependence upon a variety of indispensable readings. Works of the
following, in particular, have provided foundation and framework for my reading as well as
useful terms and pivot-points: Julia Annas, Allan Bloom, Eva Brann, Myles Burnyeat, John
Cooper, James Davidson, Kenneth Dorter, Jacob Howland, Drew Hyland, Leon Kass, Jonathan
Lear, Hendrik Lorenz, Paul Ludwig, Stephanie Nelson, Martha Nussbaum, Alan Pichanick,
C.D.C. Reeve, David Roochnik, and Stanley Rosen. For aid in translation and interpretation, I
depend on the commentaries of Adam, Cross and Woosley, and Halliwell, and on Reeves,
Griffiths, and Sachss translations in addition to the Bloom, which is the translation I use
throughout, except where noted. Quotations from the Greek are from the Burnet edition of the
Oxford Classical Text.

Chapter Summaries
Chapter One introduces the main questions of this thesis with a detailed examination of
one famous case of epithumia, Glaucons request for opson in Book II. Glaucons new interest is
the dialogues dramatic expression of the expanding desires that are already transforming the
first city, I argue. A taste for fancier, more dignified, and more various food requires a new,

17

longer speech (368e-374a) and raises the question of excess in logos, too. Philosophical pursuits
such as the present discussion about the nature and benefits of justice may be as susceptible to
pleonexia and dissatisfaction as are the pursuits of ordinary appetite.
In Chapters Two and Three, I begin a detailed investigation of the first half of the
appetite analogy, ordinary epithumia and sophrosune, while Chapters Four and Five consider
the second half of the analogy, philosophical epithumia and the possibility of philosophical
sophrosune. More specifically, Chapter Two treats several passages in the Republic that discuss
epithumia directly and somewhat schematically (in particular, the arguments of Book IV). I will
argue that ordinary epithumia tends towards pleonexia, the desire for more and more. This thesis
is so uncontroversial that one could easily fail to press on to consider an important logical
consequence: Where the goals of ever-changing desire are obscured, the attempt to satisfy even
the lowest appetites becomes a complicated and troubling matter, a problem not only of selfrestraint but of self-knowledge as well.
Sophrosune is the Republics answer to this difficult problem. In Chapter Three, I argue
that sophrosune is a more active virtue than it is often taken to be by readers of the Republic who
highlight the Republics censorship and banishment of low desires (and the things that inspire
and nourish them). According to Socrates exceedingly various treatments of the virtue,
sophrosune involves an awareness of several aims at once such that they can be judged, ordered,
and harmonized with one another. Since only reason is capable of holding more than one thing in
mind at a time (while appetite is more immediate and single-minded), even ordinary sophrosune
is not to be had without active reasoning.
Chapter Four considers the philosophical appetites of the guardians and philosopherkings, as well as Socrates proposals for their intellectual trophe. Several questions guide this
chapter: Does Plato think that philosophers pursue extreme goals in extreme ways? Is the
knowledge they seek a kind of repletion? Why does Socrates compare the intellectual formation
18

of the guardians and philosopher-kings to nourishment (and to animal nourishment)? Do

Socrates philosopher-kings experience perfect satisfaction of their rational appetites? If so, what
does the forced interruption of their state of perfect satiation signify? If, as I suggest, the middle
books of the Republic present an exaggerated portrait of philosophical completeness that
nevertheless precludes an understanding of the whole that would be necessary for real wisdom,
perhaps Plato intends for us to look elsewhere (to Books IX-X, in fact) for a more moderate
expression of the incomplete but indispensable satisfactions of thinking.
Chapter Five will address these questions directly, through consideration of a panoply of
heroes and anti-heroes, including Cephalus and the unnamed tyrant of Book X, Socrates and
Thrasymachus, Er, and of course, Odysseus. Through the consideration of these characters in the
light of the argument of the preceding chapters, several points will become clear: The tyrant is
the perfect glutton, a stay-at-home gourmand. Philosophers can be gluttons too: Plato presents
Socrates and Thrasymachus in Book I as similarly proto-tyrannical in their gluttony for speeches.
The philosophers desire is finally qualitatively different than the tyrants, however; it is not only
according to their objects that they differ.
The second half of the chapter will treat the myth of Er in detail, with particular attention
to Odysseus as a figure of rational sophrosune. Er is similarly moderate. The unnamed tyrannical
soul in the myth bears a great resemblance to Cephalus. This resemblance, I argue, may help us
finally to distinguish the philosopher and the tyrant, and to see how the former can avoid the
perfect gluttony of the latter. The philosophers partial and provisional knowledge is not entirely
satisfying, but it is indispensable to any thinker who wants to avoid tyrannical gluttony. For this
reason alone, being philosophical (the fullest expression of justice in the Republic) turns out to
be necessary for human happiness. And this is what Socrates and company first set out to
demonstrate.

19

CHAPTER ONE
CITIES AND LOGOI: AN INTRODUCTION TO PLEONEXIA

This introductory chapter on pleonexia (the desire for more, often intermingled with the
desire for better) treats, as an example, Glaucons famous request for opsonfancy food and all
that goes with feasting in a dignified and satisfying wayin Book II and the context of his
dissatisfaction, the development from the first city to the second city (369b-374b). I will
argue that the desires that mark the second city are already incipient in the first, and that
Glaucons request speaks these aloud for the first time. Section 1.1 treats the first city and argues
against several readings of it that overestimate its moderation and happiness. Section 1.2 treats
Glaucons opson objection and the openly pleonectic city that develops in response. In section
1.3, I offer a brief preview of the equivalents of opson and pleonexia in argument, and begin to
set out the terms of the appetite analogy.
We know that Glaucon is familiar with the desire for more: As the Republic opens, we
find him postponing an early night in favor of dinner and conversation. Some hours later,
unsatisfied with the banquet of arguments that secured Thrasymachus defeat (or silence, at least)
he presses Socrates to extend the evening a little further and to return to the question of justice
from the beginning (357a-b). In his elegant encomium for injustice, built for Socrates to
demolish, Glaucon argues that pleonexia is the secret truth about all human beings. So, a little
later in Book II (372c-d), his request for more and better food and drink and all the
accoutrements of fine dining is very much in character.
But what is the precise meaning of this request? Is his apparent taste for fancy food
excessive and intemperate or natural and warranted? Is Glaucon in fact a glutton? A gourmet? A
gourmand? Or is his desire promising but misdirected? Perhaps, as Bloom argues, Glaucon
20

mistakes his unformed desires for sexual, political, aesthetic, or philosophical satisfactions for a
pointed interest in a good meal: His wishes are always contradictory, for he always mistakes all
of his great longings for bodily desires but cannot find satisfaction for them thus understood
(Int. Essay, 347). Strauss argues similarly:
[The first city] does not satisfy Glaucons need for luxury, and in the first place for
meat. (He did not get the promised dinner.) But we would greatly underestimate him
if we were to believe him. He does not lie of course, but he is not fully aware of what
induces him to rebel against the healthy city. The healthy city may be just in a sense
but it surely lacks virtue or excellence (cf. 372b7-8 with 607a4): such justice as it
possesses is not virtue. Glaucon is characterized by the fact that he cannot
distinguish between his desire for dinner and his desire for virtue (1964, 95).
Strauss and Bloom sense that gourmanderie per se is not fully the meaning of Glaucons request.
I agreethis chapter admits and explores those fuller meanings of which Glaucon himself is
partly unawarebut I do not dismiss the original form of the request as Bloom and Strauss do
when they take appetite as a natural impulse ripe for sublimation or as merely symbolic of deeper
desires. It is worth asking why Plato chooses to express an incipient desire for virtue as an
impetuous, somewhat playful desire for delicious food. The failure of the promised dinner to
appear is not enough of an explanation (viz. Glaucon is hungry so he puts his souls deepest
desire in terms of eating.) Both matters, the non-arrival of dinner and Glaucons appetite, call
for more than comic parentheses.
Whatever the precise meaning of Glaucons request for opson, Socrates hastens to satisfy
him and hoists voluminous sail for a much lengthier and more complex logos than any of his
interlocutors could have predicted for all their encouragement to expansive conversation.
Glaucons desire for a better dinner requires a remarkably ambitious speech. The dialogue that
results is the longest and the most complex in which Socrates will ever take a part.

21

This chapter will argue that the transition from the first city to the second city,
punctuated by Glaucons culinary disappointment,1 is an example of both ordinary pleonexia (on
the part of the citizens) and rational pleonexia (on the part of the interlocutors), where the latter
might be defined as the tendency of any logos to outgrow its satisfactions and to increase its
scope indefinitely. In the metaphorical shorthand of the Republic, the pursuit of full, complete,
persuasive, solid and satisfying arguments about justice risks something like intellectual
gluttony, according to the appetite analogy that is nearly everywhere in the dialogue.2 He does
not use the term intellectual gluttony, but Plato does make the problem of intellectual
overreaching and the infamous length of the dialogue both explicit themes of the dialogue.3

1.1 The first city

Before we can begin, we must face a perennial interpretative problem: How shall we
refer to the several cities of Book II? The difficulty of identifying, counting, and naming the
various cities (or plateaus of political development, perhaps) begins with Socrates and Glaucon;
they have four names for the original political associations and two for the more sophisticated
stages that follow Glaucons request for opson, thus: the (most) necessary city, the healthy
city, the true city, the city of pigs, and on the other hand, the feverish city, and the
luxurious city. Socrates and Glaucon cannot agree on definitive titles; they pass the problem
on to generations upon generations of Republic commentators, who have provided still more
titles in an attempt to be more exact than Plato, thus: the first city, Adeimantus city, the

1 See Rosen (2005, 75)

2 For an introduction to the analogy, see pgs. 2-19.
3 As in the last few pages of Republic, where Socrates promises not to tell yet another long-winded tale

(614b).

22

original city, the idyllic city, the city of nature, or the second city, Glaucons city, the
appetitive city and so on (and on).4 Unfortunately, none of the names offered in the dialogue
itself or by helpful scholars manages to put into one title the essential differences between the
cities, and all of them are potentially misleading. Socrates pokes fun at Glaucon when he
reminds him that his city of pigs in fact is a city without pigs (373c), since the citizens who may
or may not resemble pigs do not actually own any (because they do not eat any). It is little bit of
comic sophistry but it points to a serious problem.
This infamous difficulty of counting and referring to the cities is philosophically
important. To preview the matter: It is difficult to speak clearly about the city because its desires
are changing and changing it. Among other things, the citys pleonexia brings so many throngs
into the city that counting and reckoning and measuring become nearly useless.5 In short, the
transformations of desire are directly related to the question of the limits of thinking.
However, pointing out the interesting problem is not the same as escaping it. I, too, have
to choose some labels and aim for whatever distinctness is possible. I will refer to the city-stages
that develop up to the point of Glaucons second objection (372d, where he calls the preceding a
city fit for pigs) as the first city, and for the time being whatever follows will be the second
city. These skeletal titles, although clearly insufficient, do reflect Socrates and Glaucons only
explicit indication that they are dealing with another city (at 372d). Further, the use of these
titles will put this discussion in line with some of the more important Republic commentaries
(Annass and Reeves, in particular).6 Finally, these insufficient titles will at least avoid begging

4 And the problem grows worse after this point: Passionate disagreements abound concerning the number

of guardian/philosopher-king/ideal cities that develop through Book VII and what to call them.
5 See Roochnik 2003.
6 Who follow Aristotle (See Pol. 1291a). Aristotle criticizes this first city, because it aims at the

necessary (anankaios) rather than the fine (kallon); those higher classes of the city (warriors, judges, governors) are
actually more essential to the city than its farmers, insofar as the formal cause is prior to the material cause. I argue

23

the question: Since the purpose of the following discussion is to ascertain more precisely what
the difference is between the cities, it will not do to prejudge the matter by using concrete titles
such as healthy, appetitive, natural, and so forth.
Some readers argue that Socrates first city and the city built to Glaucons specifications
are true opposites.7 I agree that the first and second cities do present some kind of opposition
(austere to luxurious, natural to conventional, necessary to unnecessary, healthy to feverish,
content to restless, animal to human, and so on), but I will argue in the following sections that
Plato also takes pains to show that the austere, natural, necessary, healthy, content, animal city is
already incipiently epithumetic, erotic, thumotic, and bent on excess. Close investigation will
reveal that the first city is already potentially the opposite of itself. This incipient pleonexia
explains why Glaucon and Socrates dispense so quickly with the first city and its modes. Further,
pleonexia is as much a problem for the founders as for the citizens. Socrates and Glaucon find
that their simplified discussion about justice thus far has merely whetted their appetite for a
better logos.

here that although Socrates appears to be trying to build a city that provides only necessary material goods, in fact he
allows the fine to become an explicit aim even of this supposedly austere city.
7 Jacob Howland presents this reasonable reading:

The first two cities they construct are opposing extremes, between which the best city must be sought. The
City of Pigs and the souls of its inhabitants are healthy or well-ordered, but radically deficient in eros and thumos
and so incompletely human; the Feverish City, which typifies existing cities, is fully human but disordered or
feverish in its erotic and spirited character. The best citythe city on which Socrates and the others subsequently
set their sightsmay be abstractly envisioned as a whole that combines the health of the first city with the humanity
of the second. The best city would somehow combine eros with good order and moderation: it would be both
philosophical and just. Yet the radical opposition between the City of Pigs and the Feverish City calls into question
the theoretical coherence, let alone the human possibility, of any such middle ground. The first two cities thus clarify
the goal at which Socrates aims, while warning that the healthy city may purchase justice at the cost of deforming
that which is most distinctively human (2004, 88-89).

24

From necessary to fine

The first city grows larger and more complex by the sentence, even before Glaucons
interruption. First there are four or five citizens, then at least nine, then at least fourteen, and so
on, as new needs require new craftsmen and experts. By 371e, Socrates concrete census
includes a farmer, a builder, a weaver, a cobbler, a doctor, carpenters, smiths, cowherds,
shepherds, merchants, sailors, tradesmen, and hired hands.8 Like the philosopher-kings whose
city is doomed to founder (perhaps on the very day of its founding), Socrates and Glaucon
cannot control the expanding population.9
As the number of citizens grows, it becomes difficult to say whether differences in degree
are becoming differences in kind. Is a city with a market-place, accountants, and importers
qualitatively different than a settlement of four men dedicated to survival? Are we viewing one

8 Socrates concrete list here is not yet as comic as the fully Aristophanic heaps of products and experts he

will discover in the second city. In the first city, he attempts (albeit intermittently) to give some reason for each new
addition.
9 Rosen notes: The city expands steadily as we recognize the need for further workers (2005, 73). Cross

and Woozley: This smallest imaginable community must expand immediately (1964, 79). In the view of the latter,
however, the rapid and constant increase in population does not change the character of the city.
One might object at this point that my interpretation makes too much of the growth of the city. After all,
isnt that just what Socrates and Glaucon expect to observe? (If we should watch a city coming into being
[gignomenn polin theasaimetha] in speech [] would we also see its justice coming into being and its injustice?
[369a].) The following remarks are intended to put this unexpected/expected growth into context:
There is a remarkable mixture of passivity and activity in city-building. On one hand, Socrates and
company are to be theroi, observers of a city and its practices (as Socrates and Glaucon traveled to the Piraeus
yesterday to observe its new festivaltheasasthai in the first line of the Republic, 327a). But the growing city they
are to so passively observe is the city they are about to build. They are no foreigners to it, and there is nothing
foreign in it; its shape, size, principles, and form are results of their choices. A few lines later, they indicate this
artificial rather than natural status of the city: they will make a city (t log ex archs poimen polin at 369c), like
craftsmen. In other words, the size, shape, and purpose of the city are in their hands. Since they make the city (it
does not grow up like a plant), any growth beyond coming-into-being is paradoxical; presumably, they would
have made the city perfect in speech if they could have. Why do they then speak about their artifact as if it had a
mind of its own and an unexpected development?
This inevitable but puzzling mixture of activity and passivity in speech/thinking is a serious mystery and
central issue in the Republic, which I will introduce more fully in the third section of this chapter. For the moment,
at least this may be granted: The builders/observers of the city are surprised at points by the growth of the city and
appear to be discovering and allowing its extent and complexity rather than merely making it bigger.

25

city coming into being or several cities? If Socrates is allowing several cities to grow, where are
the natural joints of the logos? Where does one city leave off and the next begin?10
One cannot step twice into the same city. It is constantly outstripping itself as it discovers
new needs and new satisfactions. The city wants increasingly more things, and the quality of its
desire changes too. What is the cause? One might blame a natural drive to complexity: The
natural tendency, whether of intelligible or visible reality, is from unity to multiplicity, from
generality to specialization. Thus as soon as the city is founded it begins to grow through further
specialization (Dorter 2006, 63).
But the problem is deeper still. In fact, the inevitable expansion of the city is written into
its two founding principles. Socrates begins simply enough: The city arises from need (chria).
No individual human being is self-sufficient or strong enough on his own (autarks) but each
needs many things (polln endes) that can be provided only by settling together with a few
neighbors, each of whom devotes himself to the satisfaction of one basic need on behalf of the

10 Kenneth Dorter counts at least eight stages from the first city up to the introduction of guardians:

The transition from the healthy appetitive city to the spirited city went through eight stages, with only
minimal differences at each level, just as Polemarchus spirited concept of justice developed out of a defense of
Cephalus appetitive concept. Although there is a definite moment at which the city ruled by appetite became a city
ruled by spirited guardians, Socrates could have introduced that change at almost any time. The process that led
from the healthy city through the fevered city to the spirited city was completely continuous, and the need for more
land, which leads to war and the ascendancy of warriors, could have been asserted at any point in its expansion.
Spiritedness did not come from somewhere else to take its place alongside appetitiveness, but was an intensification
of something that was present in appetite all along. Something implicit in the insatiability of appetite led to the
inexorable transformation into spiritedness. The fact that the very earliest city kept expanding to accommodate new
appetiteseven if Socrates classified them as necessary rather than unnecessary appetites, a distinction that admits
many borderline casesshows that the temperature was already beginning to rise toward fever pitch from the
outset (2006, 67).
Rosen argues similarly:
There is a certain ambiguity concerning how many cities have been constructed thus far. It seems that
everything from the city of four or five technicians through to Glaucons intervention counts as one developing city,
but there is a break in the exposition when it is recognized that many more specialists than four or five will be
required. This leads to an expansion of the neediest city, which is not identified as a new city but which differs in
being less austere and in the acknowledgement of children and so, by inference, of women. In my opinion, it would
be plausible to say that Socrates is not constructing truly separate cities here but is building up the city step by step.
But if we continue with the traditional reference to separate cities, thus far we have two or three, depending upon
how we divide (2005, 75).

26

whole community (369b). His concentration on one specific task increases his yield many times
over. Each trades his private surplus for the surplus of others so that all needs are met. So, this
city based on need would be more accurately identified as the city based on need and surplus.
The city founded on these twin principles is vulnerable to growth on both counts.
Obviously, if ever the citizens discover that they need something previously unforeseen (or that
they now desire something so pressingly that they fancy they need it), they will have to find and
include new craftsmen to satisfy those new needs. This is a likely event even in an austere city
that aims only at the useful. Greater efficiency (the healthy aim of the separation of technai)
proves to be a slippery standard: The tools of each craftsman can always be tweaked a little
more, the edges ground a little finer, and so on. Such innovation is natural to techn, which
famously multiplies desire as much as yield.11 What cobbler, when he first sets eyes on the new
and improved leather-working blade is not going to say that he needs it? At what precise point
will any craftman refuse more efficient tools that will make his work easier and more
pleasurable, especially if those tools themselves are becoming cheaper because the tool-makers
have discovered ways to increase their own yields?12
On the other hand, insofar as the citizens constantly produce a surplus of their own
particular products, to be a citizen of this city is to be familiar with having more than one
privately needs. In fact, each citizens survival depends on his always continuing to provide more

11 My reading of techn depends almost entirely on Roochniks indispensable treatment of the matter

(1996). Hesiods Works and Days and Aeschylus Prometheus Bound (as well as the Protagoras version of the
story) are the obvious mythic background of my present argument. As Nelson (1998, 75) has noted, Aeschylus
Prometheus presents techn as his answer to a host of previously unmet human needs. But Hesiod sees the tandem
growth of new needs along with new technai as the epochs roll.
12 I do not agree unqualifiedly with Dorter and others who equate this growing economy with progress.

If we take the term in the modern sense, as involving a cheerful hope about the moral and technological future, then
the first city is by no means progressive. It shows little sign of the requisite self-consciousness. To put it another
way, its progress is only technological and appetitive, not moral. Rather, the citizens pattern of immediate
acceptance of the next innovation happens without a conscious judgment about the overall goodness or badness of
the next step or the direction of the city as a whole. (Cf. E.R. Dodds, 1973.)

27

than what is simply necessary. Granted, the excess he pursues is for bartering away, but it is
excess nonetheless. Further, if and when the citizens discover that they are producing more than
they need even for bartering, that surplus and the leisure it affords may free them to discover that
they lack still other previously unforeseen things, for example, ways to use that surplus wealth
and leisure.
Further, in a society so interconnected through an exact balance of needs and
satisfactions, it is likely that the new desires of a few citizens will become needs for the rest of
the citizens, too, whether they will or no.13 Cross and Woozley refer to this problem in passing:
Prudence and enlightened self-interest might dictate the wisdom of supplying a man of whose
products you had no needin case later your positions were reversed (1964, 80). In fact, even
apart from prudential considerations of the future, the citys economy cannot support too many
austere producers who provide much but need little of the surpluses of others. If enough
eccentric citizens were to declare that they have no need for shoes, for example, their austerity
might upset the economic balance of reciprocal production and consumption, with dire
consequences for all, the shoe-lovers and the non-shoe-lovers alike.14 In Socrates first city, any
sudden interest in a new product or craft will affect every citizen. They will have to decide
together which appetites should or should not be satisfied, presumably on the basis of necessity.
But it is not clear how they will decide which products and craftsmen are actually
necessary and to be admitted, and which are actually unnecessary and to be barred from the city.

13 To take two modern examples, if enough citizens come to consider an automobile or internet access

indispensable tools for business, the rest of the citizens will have to follow suit.
14 In such societies, consumption might be considered a civic duty, since the purchase of expensive

products keeps the economy healthy. Conversely, those who produce too much might be paid to produce less so as
not to flood the market with dangerous surplus.
Obviously, the use of a common currency, which I will discuss shortly, will mitigate this problem
somewhat. (The non-shoe lovers can spend what they would have spent on shoes on books, for example.) But the
flexibility that money brings can only stretch so far; at some point, very different notions of what constitutes a
decent standard of living could pull an economy apart.

28

(The necessary and the unnecessary begin to look like purely subjective categories, as I will
argue in detail in Chapter Two.) Socrates blurs the line from the beginning. What do we need the
most? Socrates puts it rather grandly: The first and greatest of needs is the provision of food
[here, troph] for existing and living [tou einai kai zn] (369d).15 The second most needful
thing is shelter (oiksis). The third is clothing (esths). All three answer to basic bodily needs,
nourishment and protection from the elements. However, the order of the last two, housing and
clothing, suggests something more than blunt necessity. Like other animals, human beings need
food and a place to lay their heads; a cave, a den, or a hole in the ground. The first specifically
human need (the least necessary, according to Socrates ranking) is clothing. Socrates says later
that the citizens of the healthy city shirk this necessary item as much as the weather allows,
going naked and shoeless whenever they can, just as the other animals do (372a). In other words,
clothing is not absolutely necessary, except perhaps for half of the year.16 This is the first very
small step towards the unnecessary in this necessary city and from nature to nomos.
This most necessary city (anagkaiotat at 369d11), by which Socrates means the one
most clearly founded in mere survival and also the sorriest little city you could ever imagine,17 is
supposed to have the fewest possible citizens for procuring the most basic necessities. According
to the principle of specialization (one man, one joba notion introduced already in the grammar

15 The common phrase to exist and to live suggests a possible cleavage in meaning: There may be a

difference between the preservation of mere existence (survival) and a living more fully (zn eu). Two kinds or
levels of eating/drinking may be required to meet both of these different aims.
16 Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, 391, where the poet enjoins the plowman to work naked in the warm

season (when he has not a moment to lose to any superfluous concerns such as clothing) and to dress only in the
winter (537-543). Socrates alludes to the Works and Days so often in this section (and sometimes so perversely) that
I sadly cannot treat each instance here. However, I will note the most important moments that bear on my thesis. For
example, echoes of Hesiods insistence on seasonableness and hardship will become a crucial background for my
discussion of the failure of the marriage number (in Chapter Four). The reader who wishes to see better justice done
to Hesiod should read Stephanie Nelsons God and the Land: The Metaphysics of Farming in Hesiod and Vergil
(1998).
17 See Bloom (1991, 448, note II.26)

29

of 369c), one might expect to find three citizens in this city of utmost necessity, one per need: a
food-provider, a house-provider, and a clothes-provider.18 In fact, says Socrates, we will need at
least four citizens to satisfy these three needs, since the satisfaction of the most human of the
three basic needs, clothing, will require two men, a weaver and a shoemaker (469d). It is natural
for Greeks to think about clothing as a dual category, clothing and shoes, just as nourishment is
doubled in food and drink,19 but we should be on our guard as Socrates goes on to double nearly
every human need and product in his poetic encomium to necessary superfluity (372a-d) as he
sums up the first city. (But more on that in a moment.) Here, Socrates invites Glaucon to take on
another citizen, too, whose duties are vague but have to do with caring for the bodya doctor,
probably. (The healthy city, Socrates implies, will not enjoy perfect healthlong before the
indigestion and headaches of the more luxurious city.)20 We have gone from the expectation of
three citizens to four citizens, to perhaps five, in the most necessary of necessary cities.21
The principle of specialization (one man, one job) is already at work, nearly doubling the
size of the city within a few sentences. (Socrates begins to explain this principle at 369e.) One
man, one job means that the population must grow and the city must expand if ever or whenever
the needs or desires of the citizens expand. And each new product brings in throngs.22 When we

18 I use Julia Annass term here (1981, 74-75).

19 See James Davidson (1997).
20 This is in contrast to Hesiods Golden Age (which is often adduced by scholars for its likeness to

Socrates first city). Hesiods happy golden men do not experience illness at all and therefore need neither doctors
nor the art of medicine. See Nelson (1998, 75).
21 Socrates exhibits a noteworthy disregard for exactness at this crucial moment of founding. The city may

have four or five citizens. Socrates merely offers the doctor; the decision to include him is Glaucons and neither
argues that the doctors function is necessary to the survival of the city. An interesting discussion about the ideal or
imperfect status of the city in speech is thereby forestalled.
22 The Greek term is ochloi, and the use of the generally negative term bears watching throughout the

dialogue.

30

discover that we need shoes, for instance, then we must admit a cobbler. But this cobbler must be
clothed, housed and fed, too. Every other citizen then must increase his production to barter with
this newcomer. Not only will the numbers of the various technai increase, so also will the
numbers of citizens specializing in the same techne. (The cobbler will have to take on an
apprentice, then form a cobblers guild, and so on). In other words, a small increase in need
brings exponential growth to the whole city.
And the growth of the city is not just quantitative. It is also qualitative. One advantage of
specialization is the ease (Socrates uses the comparative of hradios at 370c) with which the
specialist does his work. Why is it easy for him? Because, having devoted all his time to his own
business and to honing his particular skill, he will learn to do his job well. He will develop a
certain knack for it; his work will just flow for him. He will waste no motions and have an eye
for the just right moment (kairos) to sow the field or slide the pot from the kiln.23 The goods
he produces will be better than those an ordinary, untrained panourgos could produce, and he is
likely to do his work with a little flair. At 370b, Socrates introduces the crucial word: kallion.
(Who would do a finer job, one man practicing many arts, or one man one art?) The products
of the trained specialist will be beautiful, pleasant to use, finely wrought, not merely useful. Even
in this city supposedly devoted to mere necessity, it matters to the citizens whether or not a thing
is made or provided welleasily, plentifully, and beautifully. Socrates and Glaucon are willing
to commit many new workers to this higher standard. Living well, with a certain unnecessary
gracefulness, ease, and pleasure requires an expansion of the city from four or five to some more
indeterminate throng.24
23 The discovery of such kairos moments is a central concern for Hesiod in the Works and Days.
24 Dorter notes:

The founding principle, that specialized cooperation benefits us, is never satisfied once and for all, but
constantly pushes us into cooperative relationships at increasingly complex and specialized levels. It is the
fundamental principle of what we today call progress, and will be the driving force that leads from this city to the

31

But even this comfortable standard of living that seems to include some grace, beauty,
and plenty is not enough for the citizens. This supposedly self-sufficient city apparently needs
imports. This sudden necessity of imports is ominous. A few pages earlier, Adeimantus alluded
to Hesiods picture of perfect abundance, in which the blessed and just city has no need for trade
with other cities.25 Why is Socrates first city suddenly dependent on trade? Have the citizens
already used up their natural abundance? Or does that abundance no longer satisfy them, as their
desires have grown?
According to the principle of specialization, imports require new kinds of businessmen
(and again, these new citizens need food and housing and clothing and all the rest, too.) More
products and specialties from more distant places throng the city. The use of an established
currency (nomisma at 371bproof that there is already nomos in this natural city) makes this
exotic commerce easy, overcoming the physical limits involved in barter.
Physical limits are overcome among the citizens, too, the most weak-wristed of whom go
to work as accountants in the new agora (371c). This distinction between accountants and
tradesmen who have weak bodies, and wage-earners whose bodies are strong is the beginning of
a class distinction between those who derive authority through some higher human function than
bodily strength and those other citizens who do what they are told, even though they are
next one. The motive force behind the principle of specialization is appetite: things are produced in greater
quantity, of better quality, and more easily, when one person does one thing according to his nature and at the right
time (kairoi) (370c). Our appetite for more and better things, and for doing things with less work, is insatiable, and
will keep pushing us to go ever further in that direction (2006, 64).
Rosen argues that the division of labor and the principle of specialization are already manifestations of
justice, a way of giving the proper offices to the proper citizens and while allowing each to mind his own business.
(However, Rosen does not note, as Hyland does, that minding ones own business here in Book II refers to
attending to all the various needs at once, doing all oneself, which is, of course the opposite of the later meaning of
the phrase.) Care for the most basic bodily needs already leads to the question of justice. In other words, need
needs justice (2005, 72-73).
25 Works and Days, 232-234: For them the land gives a generous crop; in the mountains the top of the oak

tree / bears acorns, and its middle, the honey bees. / Their wooly sheep are weighted down with heavy fleeces. /
Their women give birth to children like their parents. / With all good things, utterly, they prosper, nor do they
voyage on ships / but the grain-giving earth yields them its fruits (Grene trans., in Nelson 1998).

32

brawnier and more numerous. When he has introduced this seed of tripartition, Socrates suggests
that the city is now full. (The money-makers are the final plrma of the city at 371e).
Then has our city already grown to completeness, Adeimantus? asks Socrates.26 What
would this complete state be? Self-sufficiency? But the need for imports already moots that
standard. Perfect satisfaction of desire? But there is no obvious reason why the citizens, who
already want fine tools (to make fine furrows, houses, and clothes [370c]) would not learn to
want even finer things from more distant lands, made by ever more expert craftsmen.27
Indeed Socrates seems to treat pleonexia at every step as an unremarkable fact. His tone
is entirely positive throughout, as if each new stage of desire were not just erotically but
geometrically necessary. Thus, the city begins in the undeniable need for maintaining existence
and life (369d). The city they build to meet those undeniable needs is not just one convenient
example among other possible cities; rather, it is the most necessary city (369d). (The double
meaning of this title is treated above.) Next, each citizen must [dei] put his work at the
disposition of all in common (369e). Anyone doing a job in a leisurely, less than professional
way must fail, since he will miss the kairos moment, and his work will be completely ruined
(diollutai at 370b). It is therefore necessary (anank) that the craftsman concentrate only on his
own job, to follow close upon the thing done, and not as a spare-time occupation. Adeimantus
agrees, It is necessary (anank) (370b-c). Every new need is as indisputable. At 370c, there
must be more than four or five citizens, since the farmer, for example, must not make his plow
himself. Why not? Because, he will not make a fine one, since, according to the principle of

26 uxtai h polis, hst einai telea at 371e9-10.

27 Rosen notes that this apparently full and complete city is in fact composed exclusively of the lowest

class of the final city (2005, 73). Investigation of justice in this city could at most discover only a third of the whole
truth about justice. Had Adeimantus contentment with the first city been universal, Socrates and company could not
have discovered the most important element of the analogy of the human soulthe fact that each have parts which
must work together as one.

33

specialization, he will miss the kairos moment and make his plow ineptlyperhaps he will
utterly destroy it through lack of professional attention and technique.28 Why must the plow be
fine (beautiful, nice, well-formed)? That is a question Socrates does not consider; it is simply
necessary, now, that the citizens have fine things. If anything is finer, then they must have that
thing. And if such automatic concession to pleonexia is surprising, consider the next, at 370e:
And further [], just to found the city itself in the sort of place where there will be
no need of imports is pretty nearly impossible.
Yes, it is impossible. [With his simple adunaton, minus Socrates schedon
ti, Adeimantus seems even more certain.]
Then, there will also be a need [prosdesei] for still other men who will bring whats
needed [deitai] from another city.
Yes, they will be needed [deitai].
So the pattern continues: Each new product, craftsman, and mode of life is an unavoidable
addition. Words indicating need and necessity (dei, anank, chreia) drive every new
development, with the result that the final state of the first city feels like an irrefutable
conclusion (to Adeimantus, at least). Surely they have not overlooked anything, and the growth
of the city that they have overseen has been necessary. Socrates speaks convincingly, now, as if
they had just completed a geometrical proof, with every step accounted for. The citys final
shape is clear, and it is full to the brim with what it needs.
In fact, however, Socrates has fudged the line between desires and needs, and somehow
he has avoided any real debate about whether or not each new object of desire and its maker
should be allowed into the city. New desires have merely to occur to the citizens (and to
Socrates interlocutors) to be called needs. Although Adeimantus and company do wonder for

28 Hesiod prefers that plows be homemade, two per family (WD, 432).

34

a moment at the increasing largeness of their little city (370d-e), they do not balk at a single
addition.
The city is ripe for expansion from this supposedly final point of complete satisfaction,
since all its products could conceivably be produced more plentifully, more easily, and more
beautifully, to use Socrates labor motto (370c). The city and its desires (which it calls needs)
have grown and will continue to grow in number and degree unless something acts to curb them.
For the moment, however, Adeimantus is relatively satisfied (iss, at 371e11) that their account
of the city has reached a perfect end (its telos, at 371e).

A city of eukoloi?
Adeimantus satisfaction is reflected back to him in the city itself, whose citizens enjoy
this telos as if it really were the haven at the end of the journey. Socrates final description of this
content city gives no indication of its immediate history of constant, rapid quantitative growth
and qualitative development that we have just outlined, and little hint of its future expansion:
First, lets consider what manner of life men so provided for [pareskeuasmenoi] will
lead. Wont they make bread, wine, clothing, and shoes? And, when they have built
houses, they will work in the summer, for the most part naked and without shoes,
and in the winter adequately clothed and shod. For food they will prepare barley
meal and wheat flour; they will cook it and knead it. Setting out noble loaves of
barley and wheat on some reeds or clean leaves, they will stretch out on rushes
strewn with yew and myrtle and feast themselves and their children. Afterwards they
will drink wine and, crowned with wreathes [as Cephalus], sing of the gods. So they
will have sweet intercourse with one another, and not produce children beyond their
means, keeping an eye out against poverty or war. (372a-b)
Commentators often mention the exalted, hymn-like poeticism of this tribute to the first city. One
notices especially a peculiar poetic doubling: bread and wine, clothing and shoes, winter and
summer, barley and wheat, cook and knead, reeds and leaves, yew and myrtle. As Davidson
notes, the Greeks traditionally divide troph into food and drink (bread and wine; siton and oinon
35

at 372a6). Similarly, as I noted above, Socrates divides garments into clothing and shoes. But
here, in this encomium, nearly every human product and activity is rendered in sing-song
doubles.29 The effect is paradoxical: a poetic balance and measured progression that nevertheless
reminds the listener that necessity is being overcome at every point. Where only one of each
would suffice (just kneaded uncooked barley meal, served on leaves of myrtle) two are offered.
Where two items are on offer, choice is possible. These generous doubles express the necessary
superfluity in everything that human beings do or make, even in relatively austere cities. The
effect is lovely, and it speaks to human freedom and grace, but the progress could also be viewed
with trepidation: Is this city headed for an infinite diaresis of goods?30 And if so, what will
happen to the possibility of satisfaction?
And it is not just variety. This citys austere meals will contain luxuries, desserts, and
opson explicitly. Adam and Burnyeat (1997) mention that barley meal (alphita), which is
moistened, kneaded, and dried but not cooked, is a true staple but baked wheat loaves (made
from wheat flour, aleura) are already a minor luxury.31 Dessert arrives in a deluge of dishes at
372c (tragma, that which is eaten for eatings sake). And although cooking is already
unnecessary for pure survival, these austere picnickers will boil up whatever is boilable for
their feast (a loose translation of hepsmata hepssontai at 372c6, the verb from which opson
is derived). The doubles of the encomium give way to a tumbling list of delicacies with which

29 Adams commentary on the style of this section is very rich. In particular, he notices a double chiasmus

(alphita, mazantes, mazas) (aleura, pepsantes, artous). The former will be shortly be echoed in Socrates tonguein-cheek concession to Glaucon: hepsmata hepssontai (372c20-21). Burnyeats otherwise insightful reading of the
passage misses these ubiquitous doubles when he refers to the uncouth simplicity of the city (1997, 229).
30 To take a modern example, even the plainest foods can be subject to infinite variations: Rolled oats,

quick oats, Scottish oats, steel-cut oats, strawberry, blueberry, and maple-infused oats, too, are all on offer to appeal
to the tastes of the most fastidiousand healthygourmet.
31 The former is the most basic food of man as man and becomes a proverbial epithet (as in Hesiod,

andrasin alphestesin [WD, 82]).

36

Socrates attempts to satisfy Glaucon and the citizens of the first city: salt, olives, cheese, boiled
onions and greens, figs, pulse, beans, roasted myrtle-berries (and all this in addition to acorns).
The first city knows wine, too, and the practice of consecutive courses, first eating, then
drinking. These citizens who drink after the meal (epipinontes) enjoy a certain amount of
superfluity for the sake of beauty and good order. Once the matter of necessary nourishment is
put away, then convivial, unnecessary drinking is done in orderly fashion, as the cup is passed
from person to person, and the wine itself is measured and shared.32 As some commentators
mention, the symposium is already an image of justice, since it involves orderly and harmonious
dealings between various citizens. And the handing around of the cup is already an image of
tradition (as the older generations hand down the good life to their children).33 The piety of this
happy band might be considered in a similar light: With hymnountes, this city again proves that it
has already moved from nature to nomos, from merely animal self-absorption to consciousness
of some other and better than the human.
This city that Glaucon famously derides already enjoys relative luxury and above all,
leisure. Just as fancy food and orderly drinking add something extra to the ordinary business of
feeding, so leisure adds something extra to labor; it is one obvious difference between merely
living and living well. (Leisure in addition to work is like opson in addition to mere bread.) If we
subscribe to the interpretation of the first city as a primitive, uncouth city of mere necessity, it
should surprise us to find that final telos of this first city is sweet, useless, leisurely feasting and
sociality. When Socrates first introduced the standard of the fine, it applied to the useful tools
of the industrious craftsmen. Now, the standard can be applied to useless things like feasting,

32 Adam notes: Wine was sipped during dessert. hupo- in hupopinontes emphasizes the moderation

already expressed in metris. Not only do they drink at the proper time (epipinontes at 372b7), but they also drink
the right amount (probably just a little according to the LSJ), slowly and moderately (hupopinontes at 372d1).
33 Burnyeats reading of Greek dining practices stresses the matter of cultural tradition (1997, 235).

37

singing, and intercourse. With the addition of leisure in Socrates final encomium, this city has
outstripped its founding principle, the communal labor of each to meet the needs of all. Their
Sunday picnics are a sign that they have superfluous wealth. Their basic needs are apparently
more than met. They can stop working and merely enjoy the fruit of their labor (albeit in a
measured way). This is precisely what Socrates warned against earlier on (farmers idle in the
market place, and the poorly-crafted products from the leisurely pastimes of non-professionals).
One wonders why Socrates does not require professional hymn-singers and experts in mating,
too. (Of course, he soon will.) Socrates introduces this last important advance in leisure rather
incidentally, in the last line: In addition to the rest, they enjoy sweet intercourse with one
another.34 Hdon is an afterthought here in the provocative last line (372b), but it changes
everything, just as the introduction of kallion did earlier. If the citizens aim at what is sweet and
fair, rather than what is simply useful and necessary, where will it all end?
The dangers are already becoming clear. Rosen notes: Thanks to its increase in size,
with the concomitant expansion of production and distribution, of which perhaps the crucial step
is the invention of money, the city seems to have opened itself to the rise of intemperance, or let
us say to the erosion of temperance (2005, 74). In its obvious variety and incipient luxury, the
first city is becoming the second city, whether the citizens notice the change or not.35

34 According to Herodotus, this is a very dangerous moment for a society. Atossa warns her husband,

Darius, that nobles left to themselves in contented leisure will find some secret labors; if they are not made to work
on the battlefield, they will use their free time to plot against the king and overthrow him (History 3.134). The first
city has no distinct class of governors yet, although the seeds of class distinction and stasis are already present.
For Hesiod, too, inordinate or unearned leisure is the path to ruin, since the seasons change, whether human
beings notice or not.
One might contrast the leisure of the first city with the practice of Sabbath observance. The former appears
to be a indefinite or even terminal state, whereas the Sabbath rest is clearly meant to be a temporary pause in the
weeks work. The latter practice is explicitly contemplative, as well, insofar as the Sabbath pause is observed in
conscious remembrance of the divine redemption from bondage in Egypt and in imitation of the activity of a divine
Creator. (See Deuteronomy 5:12-15 and Exodus 20:8-11.)
35 Annas describes the strange status of the first city as an overthrown and undermined ideal:

38

What do we make of the first citys apparent contentment with this obviously unstable
state of affairs? As I mentioned earlier, there is a sort of carelessness about the city that might be
explained in several ways: Some commentators point to the idyllic quality of the city (to the
similarities to Hesiods description of the golden race of godlike men in the Works and Days, in
particular); perhaps the citizens are blessedly unaware of death and decline. Others note a certain
lack of thumos among the citizens, which would arise out of an awareness of the distinction
between what is and what might be and a consciousness of passing time and limited resources.
Others note the citys obliviousness to the body and its desires; perhaps the citizens live in a state
of innocence that precludes shame or self-consciousness. And still others point to the citys
blithe disinterest in matters of the soul (there is neither philosophy nor government in this city,
and very little art).
All of these readings have merit but I will concentrate on the citizens lack of selfconsciousness about the desires that are perpetually changing them and their cityobliviousness
to their own past and future pleonexia.

So what is the first city doing? It was presented as the true and healthy city, and nothing about it made it
inevitable that it would decline to the luxurious one; this step is rather contrived, since Plato does not have to have
Glaucon interrupt (1981, 77).
I argue here, to the contrary, that the first city is bound to become luxurious, just as Glaucons pleonectic
character will not allow him to keep silent at certain moments.
Annas does note, however, that Plato undermines the perfect dichotomy of healthy/true/ideal to
luxurious/inflamed. Socrates is looking to find injustice in either city (meaning that the ideal city contains at least
some measure of corruption or imperfection). And both cities are motivated by expanding self-interest:
Self-interest may well be an entirely respectable motive; but these people [citizens of the first city] are
motivated in their association entirely by self-interest, and this isnt the most glorious way of presenting ideal
human nature. It is true that the first city fulfils only necessary needs, but even this leads to the existence of trading
and marketing, which Plato regards as a function of the lowest side of human nature; the corruption of the luxurious
city differs only in the type of needs satisfied. There seems no reason for making a sharp cut-off between the kind of
people in the first city and the kind of people in the luxurious city; they share the same kind of motivation. [] We
have to conclude, though reluctantly, that Plato has not given the first city a clear place in the Republics moral
argument (1981, 78; my emphasis).

39

One might say that the oblivious citizens are eukoloicontented with what is.36 There is
something piglike in their satisfaction with whatever providential food Socrates throws at them
(even if it appears in doubles). But they are also strangely divine in their obliviousness to the
body and time and in their nave lack of self-consciousness. They dine like middle-management
gods, with piety towards the higher, but also as if their happy state were secure and probably
incorruptible, as long as they keep an eye on it (372b-c). One might say, as many other
commentators have, that this city is inhuman, in some ways above and in others below the level
of the human being.
Lest we exaggerate: Is the city really fit for pigs, as Glaucon complains? Yes, if animals
wore clothes and cooked and used money and measured their servings and enjoyed (some)
choice and leisure. Nonetheless, we are right to sense something animal about this city. Socrates
uses the verb eucheomai (which indicates gluttony and worse, according to Burnyeat) to
describe the kind of quasi-animal feeding that these citizens enjoy, while Glaucon substitutes
hestiaomai,37 which indicates quality. Human beings feast; animals merely feed.38
There is something brutish, too, in the attitude of the citizens who seem to lack a certain
degree of ordinary human restlessness. Like Cephalus in Book I, they are prepared to eat what is
in front of them without demur and to forgo sexual intercourse when it is no longer required (for
the proper maintenance of the proper number of citizens in the city).39 The first city is a city that

36 Possessing a good digestion. For a much more detailed treatment of this word, see the introduction to

Chapter Three.
37 Sniffily, as Burnyeat says. He also notes the use of the noun form of eucheomai at 586a, where

gluttons are like cattle, always looking down and with their heads bent to earth and table, they feed, fattening
themselves, and copulating; and for the sake of getting more of these things, they kick and butt with horns and hoofs
of iron, killing each other because they are insatiable (1997, 229).
38 See Kass (1999).
39 They have sweet intercourse with one another but they do not produce children beyond their means

(372b).

40

does not understand its true nature or recognize the appetites that move under the appearance of
stable virtue. There are not yet bacchanals and brothels and gourmet cakes in this city, but all the
desires for these things are incipiently in place already, under the surface; they have already
changed the city from a little city of survival to a big city with imports, markets, and expert
craftsmen. By daylight, however, this appears to be a happy, holy flock, content with what is and
untroubled by the desire that has been transforming their city and will continue to grow it even
bigger.
Glaucon exaggerates somewhat, but he is right to liken these citizens to Circes
enchanted swine, who forget their human homes while dinner is being served.40 Aristotle makes
a similar complaint in the Politics: Platos first city has no soul, no guiding purpose (1291a); it is
hardly a city of men at all. In fact, even animals evince more orexis for the good than these
citizens do. Later, in Book VII, Socrates will identify similar eukoloi of thought, each of which
is content to receive the unwilling lie and, when it is caught somewhere being ignorant, isnt
vexed but easily accommodates itself, like a swinish beast, to wallowing in lack of learning
(535e).
The citizens are eukoloi like Cephalus in another striking way, as well: There is
something of divine obliviousness about them. Wreathed like that austere eukolos, they are

40 Od. X. Note the subtlety of the passage from human being to animal: While they eat the explicitly

human foodcheese, barley-meal, honey, and mixed winethey forget their proper human homes and become
vulnerable to change (into swine). Once transformed, however, the crew experiences something like a moment of
regret for their gluttony, forgetfulness, and folly. Although they now have pigs bristles and pig-voices, their reason
remained steadfastly as before. Completing the beautiful chiasmus, Circe now casts before them such provender
of acorns, chestnuts and cornel-fruit, as rooting swine commonly devour. The regretful crew, now painfully aware
of the dignity due to them as human beings with aims beyond fattening and homes finer than Circes sties, are quite
like Glaucon, who is affronted by the acorns and berries Socrates tries to put before the citizens of the first city. (It is
probable that Socrates has this passage in mind, too, and baits Glaucons epithumetic and thumotic objection.)

41

solicitous of the divine and somehow divine themselves. Although Cephalus sits on a throne and
they sit on woven mats, they share a similar sacred solemnity.41
The likeness of the first city to Adeimantus (condemnatory) description of the paradise
of the poets (363a-363e) is striking. According to the myths, the reward for virtue is to be led
down into Hades, reclining on couches, in front of an inexhaustible store of goods, i.e., food
and wine (including acorns, honey, barley, wheat, fruit, lamb, and fish). Socrates obviously
draws on Adeimantus challenge, sometimes word for word, in his description of the first city.

41 And a certain obliviousness (even in their feasting) of the body below the crowned head. For all its

apparent devotion to bodily care (commentators often say that the first city is devoted to bodily goods) the first city
is also remarkably forgetful of the body: the need to procreate, for example, and even the existence of women comes
into the account quite late, almost as an afterthought. The most necessary city, populated entirely with males
(andres, not anthropoi, as commentators note) is incapable of reproduction. I would argue that the Hesiodic echoes
(invoking Pandora, in particular, and the happy time before women) argue for a strong reading of andres and put the
stress on the matter of aging, decline, and the passing generations.
Perhaps the citizens of the first city have forgotten that they are not everlasting gods (for whom all food is
opson and never sustenance and all sexual congress is for pleasure, not to replenish the divine ranks), that they are
mortal, that their bodies will age, and that they need therefore to reproduce if they are to persist at all. Socrates
brings these matters up insistently at the end of his description of the first city and one might argue that it is his
references there to death and old age and children that in fact provoke Glaucon to interrupt. Socrates will address
Glaucons uneasy awareness of his own death (as an affront, perhaps to his youth and dignity) and his attempts to
put that mortal limit out of mind in favor of a longer and longer logos in Book X. (See 4.4, Glaucon and Glaucus
especially.)
Compare and contrast Hesiods golden men:
They lived like gods, their hearts undisturbed by cares,
without labour, without misery. Upon them
there came no wretched old age, their hands and their feet were the same
always. They found their joy in feasts,
free of every trouble; and died like those conquered by sleep.
All good things were theirs.
The grain-growing earth bore them crops, full, ungrudgingly
of its own accord. At their will
they leisurely did their work in the midst of their many blessings
And when the earth hid this breed in its depths,
they are Spirits, by the plans of great Zeus;
good, they are still on the earths face and are guardians of mortal men.
They are givers of wealth; this too they obtained as their kingly function.
(WD. 112-126, tr. David Grene, in Nelson 1998).
Of particular thematic interest is the lack of hardship or heavy labor, the irrelevance of aging and death, the
sleepy acceptance of the end of life, and the passive acceptance of daily bread from the earth. Compare the relatively
easy life of the perfectly satisfied philosopher-kings (4.3), who receive their trophe from another bountiful source.

42

Does he mean that the first city is an equally disappointing and insufficient description of
happiness and justice? Short of lamb and fish, Socrates first city looks much like Hades. Living
in this city would be like being dead, with all of life behind and nothing left to do but feast.42
And drink oneself insensible. Adeimantus scorns the happy souls who enjoy a symposium of
the holy; [the poets] make them go through the rest of time drunk, in the belief that the finest
wage of virtue is an eternal drunk.43 To be drunk is to be insensible of the truth and incapable of
discriminating and choosing. Socrates is careful to say that his citizens will not be drunk, but
drink just a little (hupopinontes) and in a measured way (metrios). But they might as well be
drunk, for all the discrimination and deliberation they show. For example, we see all the
available pairs of foods, dining mats, and so on, but we never see the citizens considering which
might be better or choosing one over the other. The rapid exponential growth of the first city is
due to the citizens ever-increasing desire for variety but we have yet to see a clear sign that they
make choices or have preferences according to conscious standards of the just, good, or fine.
(There are no judges, philosophers, priests or governors in this city.)
When Glaucon impetuouslyepithumetically and thumoticallydemands relishes (more
relishes) for the city, he is choosing and discriminating for these citizens, whose way of life falls
short of the human and also paradoxically exceeds it. Like Odysseus, Glaucon will settle on the
human rather than the animal or divine way of life (both of which seem to be susceptible to a
kind of complacent insensibility) and will have to accept all the dangers that belong to it. Not
that Glaucon understands the full meaning of his appetite, yet.

42 See Brann (2004, 118) on Cephalus deaths-head presence over the gathering (since the dating of the

dialogue suggests that he has been dead for perhaps thirty years before the evening in on which the Republic takes
place). Brann refers to Jowetts commentary, II, pp. 2, 7, and 79, on 368a3.
43 Nevertheless, Rosen calls this city a kind of caricature of [Adeimantus] nature (2005, 80).

43

In what sense can this city (or continuum of cities) of pigs or demi-gods be the true
city? Perhaps Socrates intends this compliment to be taken like his compliment of the
democratic city in Book VIII, the fairest city. Neither are false descriptions, but they leave out
so much that they may mislead. In one sense, this city (or set of cities) really is the true city, that
is, the truly existent cityall cities on earth are like this one in their growth and neediness and
their clear obliviousness to the insecurity of that life of desire and neediness.44 Even when they
aim at austerity, they are often (sometimes secretly) expanding in their desires and forms.45 All
cities are truly like this one, incipiently pleonectic but oblivious to that fact; what the ideal and
really true city is (the city as it ought to be) remains to be seen.
Similarly, the soul that contents itself with whatever is presented is actually changing and
growing, while it perpetually imagines that now it has arrived at the end. The city grows in a very
natural and truthful way; it shows us that pleonexia is the secret truth about human beings, just as
Glaucon said. It is not the only truth, however. Chapter Three will begin to discuss sophrosune,
the virtue that answers pleonexia.
For the moment, however, notice that the stability, peace, self-sufficiency, and
contentment of the first city (or cities) could not really be called sophrosune.46 It is too nave,
passive, and uneasy for that. Socrates reminds his listeners that the citizens have to keep an eye
out for war (the expansion of territory out of greed for more, which will in fact occur in the next
few pages) and over-population (the expansion of the citizenry out of epithumia). As mentioned
earlier, the latter is the same problem that defeats the philosopher-kings, who presumably would
be better rulers than the elders of the city of eukoloi. Once more, the city is not perfectly
44 See a similar equation of true and real at 382a-c.
45 As Dorter has it, It is the true city not because it is the best city, but because it is the true beginning of

cities, in contrast with the social contract envisioned by Thrasymachus (2006, 65).
46 Could we call it natural sophrosune? On this point, see the introduction to Chapter 5, note 1.

44

healthy since it requires doctors. Its appearance of moderation betrays a remarkable

vulnerability and passivity. According to Socrates Hesiodic echoes, the earth gives food to the
passive and easy-going citizens. And according to Socrates rhetorical conceit, the citizens do
not primarily get their food themselves; rather, Socrates and Glaucon give it to them (well set
desserts before them at 372c, and the obscure thus provided for at 372a).
This dependency will not yet harm the citizens, since Socrates and Glaucon are good
rulers and want what is truly best for them. But what will happen if a worse ruler should come
along, who looks on the citizens as juicy sheep to be fleeced and reduced to fodder themselves?
What will happen if the earth should suddenly furnish less food less easily for the citizens? In
fact, the citizens should not have confidence that their golden way of life can be preserved
(again, they have no protective laws, no soldiers, and no government). All sorts of terrible
eventualities could befall the citizens, while they have the ability neither to stave off these
contingencies nor to recover themselves once it all beings to go wrong. (There are doctors, but
there is no similar healer-figure for the body politic.) In their first stirrings of trepidation about
the future, they are like animals, sensing that something terrible may come, but shepherdless
without governors or codified lawsthey are unable to prevent the next step. Whatever their lot,
wherever their desire leads them, that is the kind of city they will be. Decline is the only sure
future (as the citizens themselves begin to foresee in the very last line of Socrates description).
Lack of self-consciousness among the citizens means that they do not recognize the new
products and character of their city as chosenas far as they can see, each expansion of the city
was a necessary event. That is simply what happens: Crowds move into the city; the city grows.
As far as they are concerned, they had no choice about any of these things. Further, they do not
realize that the city is still in motion, always becoming different as its desires change. They do

45

not realize at any point that its present form is not complete but rather a mere prelude to the city
that will be.47
One can see that Glaucons interruption is crucial. He provides the self-consciousness
that has not yet arisen to trouble the citizens of the first city.48 Perhaps his concerns would occur
to any citizen of this city, given a little more time. In any case, he says what ought to occur to the
epithumetic citizens.

1.2 The second city

The principle of growth, the insatiability of appetite, speaks again, this time through
Glaucon.49 Any city worth considering, Glaucon interrupts (like Thrasymachus, earlier, who
cannot let the unsatisfying conclusion pass), is a city with fancy foods, for people who really
enjoy eating: You seem to make these men have their feast without relishes (opson) (372cd).50

47 Readers feel this irony; if these citizens only knew the city that is ahead!
48 As Rosen (2005) notes.
49 Dorter (2006, 65)
50 Rosen remarks, as many do, on the curious nature of Glaucons request: [Glaucon] has nothing to say

about the virtual silence about women, nor does he complain about the restrictions on sweet intercourse, perhaps
because it does not rule out homosexual contacts. Curiously enough, his complaint is about the cuisine (2005, 75).
In the next line, Rosen refers to the hungry Glaucon, and jokes (as many other commentators do): Perhaps he is
thinking of the banquet which was promised by Polemarchus but which has been postponed indefinitely by the
conversation. Everyone talks about the non-arrival of dinner, but nobody ever does anything about it. What is the
philosophical import? What does it really mean that Glaucon asks for fancy food in a dialogue in which no food is
offered? And why does it matter that his desire is expressed in appetitive rather than erotic terms?

46

Opson
What is opson? The term has two root meanings and we might discover hundreds of
concrete examples. Opson is derived from heps, to boil.51 It is food that needs to be or has
been cooked in a pot, rather than merely gathered to be eaten raw or roasted directly and swiftly
over the fire. Opson takes some active preparation, time, care, and attentionwe might call it
gourmet food. Boiling tenderizes what would be otherwise tough and melds different
ingredients together (in composite savors, to quote Brillat-Savarin), and reduction intensifies
the flavor. It is the difference between plums and water, and then fruit stew, and then an intense
fruit sauce, and then an intenser fruit syrupall by heating in a pot. Cooking in a pot is slow
(much slower than roasting over a flame). One does not eat opson on the run. (In Book III
[404c], Socrates will note that warriors do not bother to carry heavy pots but simply roast their
dinners directly over the campfire.)
In particular, opson comes to mean the opposite of bread, where the latter is basic food
eaten less for pleasure than for sustenance. Opson, like tragma (from trg, to nibble) is food
that is eaten for the sake of eating, because it tastes good.
When we ask what precisely counts as opson, however, the answers will be diverse.
Whatever is difficult to get or prepare, these foods are opson for the culture that prizes them. For
urban gourmets, who know that such meat is illegal to trade and therefore expensive and rare,
whale would be an exotic opson. For Inuits with the proper whaling permits, it is their

51 If this etymology is false, as Davidson (1997) says it might be, it will not matter for our investigation

here, since Socrates takes it to be a true etymology, and plays on the word heps in his provocative answer to
Glaucons request for opson. Like many false but broadly assumed etymologies among the Greeks, it matters not a
whit whether the parent and child actually belong to one another. (One might consider Aristotles plenteous and
sometimes outrageous false etymologies in this light.) When two words travel together enough, they enjoy a
conferred kinship.

47

unremarkable daily bread. (In that culture, to turn everyday food into opson requires long
fermentation in the skin of a seal.)52
The meaning of opson is inherently elastic, since it really means something more,
something other than went before, something to put on bread, to stand opposite the staples as
an extra delight.53 For the Greeks, bread is the necessary food; opson, the unnecessary
complement. To make this point, Davidson gives a reading of a fascinating moment in Xenophon
where Socrates meets an opsophagos, literally an opson-eater, who prefers to scoop up sauce
and meat without bothering with the bread (Memorabilia, 3.14). This luxurious, greedy fellow
will not bother with the necessary; he desires only what is better, the unnecessary but tasty
addition. But his action in fact nullifies the idea of opson as something special or extra or more,
since opson is only opson when it is compared with bread. (Certainly at some point caviar
scooped up by hand will lose its special allure, or so one would like to discover.)
So, according to the definition of opson as the other to bread, the desire for opson could
be seen as pleonectic or greedy. On the other hand, there is also an inherent measure: Since
opson goes with bread, there is a balance of necessary and superfluous food. (Thus, every time
one reaches for the tasty caviar, one is also reaching for the merely nourishing toast point.) It is
precisely this measure that the opsophagos in Xenophon destroys. It is why he is so despicable:
He turns the graceful, naturally measured eating of opson into mere brutal greediness. Like
Glaucon, he despises the austere and simple without recognizing, perhaps, that these are the

52 See Peter Freuchen on the preparation of mattak and giviak (1961, 139-149): the former consists of

huge flakes of narwhale skin that have been kept in meat caches for several years. In the low temperature they do
not become rancid, they just ferment, so that the skin tastes very much like walnuts while the blubber, turned quite
green, tastes sharpalmost like roquefort cheese.
Davidson (1997) describes fierce debates among the Greeks themselves on this point. In general, to
summarize his nuanced discussion, opson means meat, especially fish, but also sauces, seasonings, fancy foods of all
kinds, things that particularly need to be cooked or are already superfluous, time-consuming, and expensive to get
and prepare involving choice, taste, and pleasure.
53 Kass (1999) stresses this meaning.

48

necessary background against which opson can be opson. Without the conscious and repeated
deference to the necessary, the better no longer appears as better; without bread, opson has no
meaning, and the pursuit of the truly best opson ever, the opson to top all other opson will be
endlessly unsatisfying.
To return to the local problem, Socrates and Glaucon disagree about what really counts as
opson. The former says that the citizens of the first city already have opson and desserts and
fancy foods, but the latter insists that that their opson is not really opson. Socrates sets the table:
Its plain theyll have salt, olives, cheese; and they will boil onions and greens, just
as one gets them in the country. And to be sure, well set desserts before them
[unnecessary but harmless pleasures, according to Glaucons earlier schema]figs,
pulse and beans; and theyll roast myrtle-berries and acorns before the fire and drink
in measure along with it. And so they will live out their lives in peace with health, as
is likely, and at last, dying as old men, they will hand down other similar lives to
their offspring. (372c-d)

Olives preserved with salt, cheese made from otherwise ephemeral milk and cream, and boiled
greens all take a certain amount of attention and time to prepare (and may be eaten over time,
since they are preserved). But none of this counts as real opson to Glaucon. And he may be right
to suspect that Socrates has his tongue is in his cheek as he recites the menu above. Socrates
plays on the common etymology of opson (hepsemata hepsesontai at 372c6), as if to say Will
this satisfy you, Glaucon? Well just boil whatever is around in the country for us to boil. For
this is the bare minimum for something to be considered opson: that it be boiled.
Technically speaking, boiled wild onions are opson. But they do not make for
adventurous cuisine. Such foods are providential and provincial.54 Opson in this merely

54 Simple vegetables prepared simply may be superior to complicated and more luxurious dishes,

according to Hesiod, in a line that Socrates will quote later in the dialogue: [Bribe-swallowing lords
(drophagous)] know not how much more [pleon] the half is than the whole, nor what great advantage there is in
mallow and asphodel (WD, 40-41). Mallow and asphodel, like boiled onions, are poor mans food among the

49

technical, etymologically playful sense is an affront to human dignity; Glaucons thumos is

outraged.
His reaction is easy to predict once we detect Socrates goading. But Socrates
consequent agreement to begin building another citywithout any further discussionis more
surprising. Socrates makes absolutely no objection to Glaucons request and rejects the city they
have been building forthwith; mere mention of new objects of appetite is as good as
acceptance.55 His response to Glaucons earlier objections is puzzling, too: I forgot that theyll
have relishes, too. What does he mean? Perhaps that opson is forgettable by nature, because it is
superfluous, an addition to the essential and necessary, an unimportant pleasure? But surely
Socrates knows that Glaucon would protest this oversight. Socrates knows Glaucon well enough
to know what will not satisfy him. (As I will discuss in Chapter Four, Socrates refers to
Glaucons famously desirous nature at several important moments in the middle books.) What
remains to be discussed is why Socrates provokes and encourages Glaucons passionate
objectionsand then acquiesces to them.

Greeks. (Not so for us. It is a common observation that ordinary, inexpensive American foods are generally
compounded out of many ingredients, preserved, and shipped over large distances, while gourmets spend riches on
local vegetables plucked straight from the field and prepared simply.)
55 Hyland notes this and considers why Socrates does not pursue the usual Socratic elenchus at this point

(1995, 53). See also Rosen (2005, 80): Socrates does not reject Glaucons request to introduce luxury into the city.
He accepts the need to go beyond the so-called true city, which is both sub-political and subnatural, if not unnatural,
because human beings will not consent to maintain their lives at that level of simplicity. [] It is, I think, plain that
Socrates, faced with a choice, would also choose not to live in the true city. Its truth lies in the representation of the
limits that would have to be set upon human nature in order to maintain a happiness that is undisturbed by desire, in
particular, erotic desire. I agree with the first part of Rosens reading, but as I have argued, the first cities are
already troubled by desire, so that there is no city devoid of troubling desire even in speech or theory. The first city
is not constrained, it is just momentarily ignorant about its own desire, which in fact propels it to become the kind of
city Glaucon asks for. Glaucon is the self-consciousness of the first city. One might note here Socrates
observation that nothing stands in the way [ouden apokluei at 372e8] of a discussion of the luxurious city;
Socrates immediate acceptance of a logos about opson (Why not? to translate idiomatically) mirrors the citizens
immediate acceptance of the opsa themselves. If nothing stands in the way, then appetites of all kinds naturally
increase.

50

Some readers take Socrates list of (vegetarian) delicacies and desserts as an honest
concession to Glaucons appetite and a last vain effort to preserve the city in its moderation. It
seems to me, however, that Socrates uses this list of forgotten delicacies to further raise
Glaucons ire, especially by playing on the literal meaning of opson (as discussed above). In any
case, these small concessions to epithumia will not be enough: If you were providing for a city
of sows, Socrates, on what else would you fatten them than this? This life is not dignified.
These citizens are barely human, Glaucon implies; human beings eat real opson.
As Burnyeat notes, it is not the greed of the pigs per se that is emphasized in this
metaphor (piggish does not have precisely the same connotations for the Greeks that it does for
us), but rather the fact that they are stupid about their feasting and incurious about the reasons
they are being fed or their ultimate destiny.56 Glaucons echortazes (from chortos, paddock,
feed-lot, pasture) at 372d recognizes that these citizens might as well be fattened for slaughter. If
Glaucons first objection (where is the opson?) arose from disappointed appetite, this second
objection arises from outraged thumos. Glaucon does not want to be classed with mere animals,
who do not know why they are being led to the trough and do not have much choice about what
to eat or whether or not it is good. Glaucons pleonexia is equally epithumetic and thumotic.57
His exasperation with Socrates seems to be just. If you forget opson, you have
forgotten what human beings are. Opson is a necessary addition if you are going to be true to
human nature and treat human beings as creatures with intellect and the ability to choose either

56 Do not be misled here by thinking of pigs as greedy. This is our cultures stereotype. For the ancient

Greeks, the pig was an emblem rather of ignorance (so Rep. 535e). Any pig would know was the saying. What
Glaucon means is, You describe the feasting of people who do not know how to live. It is uncivilized (1997, 231).
57 This is the beginning of the transition from an appetitive to a spirited city, and it may be fitting that

Glaucon breaks into the conversation to become the catalyst of that change since he himself is described in spirited
terms as courageous (357a) and a lover of victory (548d), but we should also keep in mind that he has done so in the
name of appetite (Dorter 2006, 65). This reading, which takes the interruption as a move forward for thumos and
epithumia is an improvement, I think, on the rather automatic tendency of otherwise careful readers (including
Adam) to treat Glaucons interest in opson as somehow marking the end of appetite rather than its unleashing.

51

what to eat or what path to take in life. Insofar as opson signifies freedom, beauty, and deliberate
choice, it is not something that just slips ones mind.58
Glaucon demonstrates a further complexity of pleonexia: It tries to embrace all and yet to
remain distinguished, choosing only the best. Pleonexia can be quantitative and qualititative at
once, a simultaneous desire for more pleasure and more dignity. One can begin to see how the
underlying motive of shameless luxury and dignified, high asceticism might be the same.
Glaucon simultaneously wants more, nodding his head to every item that Socrates lists, while he
also refuses the worst foods as beneath him. (As will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Two,
epithumia involves a similar simultaneous acceptance and refusal.)

Meat-eating
Glaucon seems to be particularly irked by Socrates devious adherence to the etymology
of opson. As said, according to its derivation from heps, special preparation is key to the
definition. But Glaucon is clearly asking for meat, the common meaning of the word. Instead,
Socrates offers a country stew of whatever vegetables happen to be to hand. This might as well
be grazing, as far as Glaucon is concerned. Such providential foods become only a little more
human by being boiled.59
The true moment of humanization is the moment of meat-eating. The city of pigs was
a city devoted to mere life and health and the simple bodily pleasures, not to great
human achievements. From Glaucons demand for meatwhich Socrates does not
opposebegins the humanization of the city-in-speech. Humanization depends on
the addition of the spirited element (thymos), which not only likes meat but gets

58 The dual sense of opson discussed above might be compared with the Greek word kosmos, which means

a) the superfluous, unnecessary ornament that embellishes the whole or b) the sine qua non of the wholeits
necessary order.
59 See Davidson (1997). Griffith notes in his translation that Glaucons irritation with Socrates arises from

an urban disdain for country food, as well (2000, 55).

52

angry, is ambitious, seeks distinction, defends ones friends and ones honor,
competes in athletics, confronts death, combats harshness, wages war, loves victory,
and gets up off the ground to make a stand in defense of hearth and country.
Spiritedness is a dangerous business, as Socrates clearly shows; it introduces a
feverishness into human affairs that needs to be tamed and moderated. Yet he
welcomes it nonetheless. For the aspiration to live better than cows and pigs seems to
come along with the appetite to eat them. (Kass 1999, 120)
Thumos is a distinction-seeking impulse. The first distinction (prior to any class or individual
distinction) is between animal and human ways of life. Human beings have the ability and will
to choose to eat any food that suits our taste, while animals are bound to eat only the foods that
nature and instinct choose for them and that chance puts in their path.
Why is meat-eating particularly human? Other animals eat meat; some eat meat
exclusively. The human difference lies in the thoughtful activity involved in finding and
choosing the food to be eaten. Carnivores as well as herbivores feed on what presents itself, and
human beings can live this way too (as the citizens of the first city gather providential, noncultivated foods like nuts and berries) but human meat-eating requires more action and a more
active subjection of the natural world. Hunting, trapping, and livestock-raising require a broader
field of action than do crop-gathering or agriculture, which are activities rooted to a certain spot
(as the citizens of the second city discover, when they find that they must annex their neighbors
land). Although agriculture in particular is obviously laborious, it is also obviously passively
dependent on the weather. The raising and feeding of animals for slaughter is somewhat more in
the direct control of the human being (he can withstand a bad growing season by storing silage,
for example, or he can move his flock to another part of the country as conditions change).60

60 On the other hand, agriculture is traditionally considered a first step towards civilization, after

nomadism, Kass reminds me. Consider the pre-agricultural Cyclops, for example, who truly is totally dependent on
the gods to grow his food, since he does not plow or irrigate (Od. IX, 105-115).

53

One might consider Glaucons request for meat in another light. With the addition of
meat to the vegetarian diet, an omnivore is born.61 Of course, there are other omnivores beside
human beings. What is the human difference? Animal omnivores can eat whatever edible things
come into their territory, in the amount that their instinct suggests; but the human being takes his
omnivorousness on the road. He seeks out unfamiliar and exotic foods because they are
unfamiliar and exotic, for the mere pleasure of discovering and capturing and dining upon them,
and for the honor of boasting about it later.62

Glutton, Gourmet, Gourmand

How should the city be, then? Socrates asks Glaucon. As is conventional, he replies.
(Glaucons word is nomizetai at 372d.) Commentators have made copious hay with this remark,
arguing that the first city is natural, without nomos, while the second is the city of convention,
against nature, and so on. But I have been arguing that the first city is shaped by nomos
(explicitly, in its hymns and currency, but also in its customs of feasting, and other ways too),
and that it already does have a taste for the unnecessary and fine. When Glaucon asks for opson
he asks for nothing new.63 We misunderstand Plato here if we take Glaucons word for truth and
call the second city the city of nomos. Glaucon may feel that he has hit on new desires, objects,
and modes, but in fact he is simply pursuing more of what is already present. His desire is
redundant. He forgets that he already possesses (to some degree) the new thing that appeals

61 Everything eatable is at the mercy of his vast appetite, as Brillat-Savarin has it. The M.F.K. Fisher

translation is for once a little drab: everything edible is prey to his vast hunger (1949, 44).
62 For a fuller treatment of bloody-mindedness itself and the disturbing mixture of appetite and fury that

urges the tyrant to total omnivorousness, that is, cannibalism, see 5.1.
63 To be sure, Glaucon exhibits a degree of self-consciousness and visible thumos as he makes this request

on behalf of the less self-conscious and thumotic citizens, but the satisfactions he requests are not different in kind
than those that are already attainable in the first city.

54

to him now. Thus: The first city was a city of craftsmen, dedicated to the work of human artifice
(not yet, quite for its own sake). Convention is their everyday work, as they hone their technai.
Their conventions allow trade even with other cities so that the citizens can enjoy imported
goods. So when Glaucon asks for a city that is ordinary, like the cities we know now, he is
simply asking for more of the good things that are already in the first city. He puts his request in
terms of quality of life, however, not degree of pleonexia: I suppose men who arent going to be
wretched recline on couches, and eat from tables, and have relishes and desserts just like men
have nowadays.
In what sense could this be a gluttonous request? After all, one might object, Glaucon
wants a better quality of foods and better accoutrements of dining, not simply more of the same.
But as Xenophons opsophagos demonstrates with revolting vividness, intense pursuit of the
better is sometimes indistinguishable from gluttony. Glaucons taste may be finicky but it
accepts every item mentioned by Socrates, nonetheless. Socrates will bring this mysterious
coincidence and repulsion of quality and quantity to light when he stubbornly treats Glaucons
affronted taste for the better as a license to gorge the city with throngs and throngs and heaps
of items, always increasing in number:
Then the city must be made bigger again. This healthy one isnt adequate any more,
but must already be gorged with a bulky mass of things [all d ogkou emplstea kai
plthous], which are not in cities because of necessity.
Socrates treats the city as a Gargantua with one huge mouth that needs cramming (373b), not as a
refined creature that needs better pleasures merely.
Socrates pointwhich we want to underscore hereis the inextricability of the
quantitative and qualitative aspects of pleonexia. Pleonexias dual aims (all and best) are difficult
to reconcile, but woe to the linguist, cultural historian, or philosopher who tries to separate them.
The Greek term lichnos, like our gourmand, means both desirous of much and finicky.
55

Brillat-Savarin himself, as he goes to define gourmandism in the Physiology of Taste, and to

separate it from mere gluttony, will admit the dual definitions that (in his view) plague our
ordinary speech and even our dictionaries:
I have thumbed every dictionary for the word gourmandism, without ever being
satisfied with the definitions I have found. There is a perpetual confusion of
gourmandism in its proper connotation with gluttony and voracity: from which I
have concluded that lexicographers, no matter how knowing otherwise, are not
numbered among those agreeable scholars who can munch pleasurably at a partridge
wing au supreme and then top it off, little finger quirked, with a glass of Lafitte and
Clos Vougeot.
They have completely, utterly forgotten that social gourmandism which unites an
Attic elegance with Roman luxury and French subtlety, the kind which chooses
wisely, asks for an exacting and knowing preparation, savors with vigor, and sums
up the whole with profundity: it is a rare quality, which might easily be named a
virtue, and which is at least one of our surest sources of pure pleasure.
Brillat-Savarin goes on to define gourmandism (an impassioned, considered [pause for a
moment over that dichotomy], and habitual preference for whatever pleases the taste) and to
distinguish it from gluttony for all time:
When gourmandism turns into gluttony, voracity, or perversion, it loses its name, its
attributes, and all its meaning, and becomes fit subject either for the moralist who
can preach upon it or the doctor who can cure it with his prescriptions (147-155).
Part of this overlap between gourmand and glutton may be a sort of slander of
gourmandism, as Brillat-Savarin suggests. We may feel that we are calling the gourmands bluff
when we call him a glutton; he lives for food as much as the glutton does, after all. We may
suspect that the gourmand (or the gourmet) is actually a glutton at heart who pretends a kind of
appreciation of distinction that in fact differs not a whit from bestial greediness.64

64 Thus, the glee in the newspapers when it is announced that a certain blind wine-tasting reveals that

experts cannot in fact tell red from white. Such discoveries seem to prove that the gourmands true concern is age
and price, that is, quantity (measured not in liters, but in years and dollars). On the other hand, there is often an
admixture of admiration in our shock at the newest gold-flecked, caviar-topped dish now on offer at the chicest
venues for the most exorbitant price. Cost and exalted taste go hand in hand, perhaps not finally but at least

56

Brillat-Savarin attempts to drive the quantitative meaning out of the word gourmand, but
the dual sense remains. In fact, the Attic elegance he wants to recapture is not a simple
concept. The two senses of either gourmand or lichnos do not want to be separated because they
are linkedconceptually and experientially; gourmet and glutton are a good try at a distinction
(corresponding to only the best, and all) but both shade over into the other as the terms are
used.65
Socrates deflatesand temptsGlaucons gourmandism in a similar way, by saying, as
it were, You want to see how a luxurious city comes into being, not just any city? Well, here is
the long list of items:
[The foods and furnishings previously mentioned], as it seems, wont satisfy some,
or this way of life, but couches, tables, and other furniture will be added, and, of
course, relishes, perfume, incense, courtesans and cakesall sorts of all of them [not
only the best cakes, but rather, all sorts of all of them]. And, in particular, we cant
still postulate the mere necessities we were talking about at firsthouses, clothes,
and shoes; but painting and embroidery must also be set in motion; and gold, ivory,
and everything of the sort must be obtained.
[] all the hunters and imitators, many concerned with figures and colors, many
with music; and poets and their helpers, rhapsodes, actors, choral dancers,
contractors, and craftsmen of all sorts of equipment, for feminine adornment as well
as other things. And so well need more servants too. Or doesnt it seem there will be
need of teachers, wet nurses, governesses, beauticians, barbers, and, further, relishmakers and cooks? And whats more, were in addition going to need swineherds.
This animal wasnt in our earlier citythere was no needbut in this one, there will
be need of it in addition. And therell also be need of very many other fatted beasts if
someone will eat them, wont there? (372e-373c)

commonly. And it would be nave to imagine that even the most priestly gourmands do not get some enjoyment
from knowing that the dish they enjoy is expensive and rare, and that nonetheless they may have another serving if
they would like.
65 Deeper consideration of the dual aims of the gourmand quickly leads into deeper waters. There is a very

good reason why his attempt to have only the best quality coincides with a desire to have the greatest quantity. As
Hegel has it, in ordinary thinking quality and quantity count as a pair of determinations standing independently side
by side; and we say, therefore, that things are not only qualitatively, but also quantitatively, determined. We make
no further inquiry as to where these determinations come from, or what relationship they have to one another. We
have seen, however, that quantity is nothing but sublated quality (Encyclopedia Logic, 98, add. 2 [1991, 157]).

57

All these new foods and excitements will require more doctors, too (to treat the inevitable
indigestion and headaches, perhaps). Again, more pleasures mean more needs, too. The search
for satisfaction will also bring new ways of being dissatisfied, uncomfortable, and needy.66
The greatest new need is for land, because the people need more food: And the land, of
course, which was then sufficient for feeding the men who were then will now be small although
it was sufficient. (Note Socrates odd use of the temporal, as if this were a developmental
history of an actual race, not an argument.) Then must we cut off a piece of our neighbors land,
if we are going to have sufficient for pasture and tillage [the first city ate only bread and had no
need for pasture land], and they in turn from ours, if they let themselves go to the unlimited
acquisition of money, overstepping the boundary of the necessary. Plato imbues Glaucon with a
little irony: Quite necessarily, Socrates (poll anank at 373e). In other words, the unnecessary
enlargement of the city is necessary, now that the unnecessary is necessary. The sufficient is no
longer sufficient.
And one can certainly feel the correctness of this inescapable paradox. The need to eat in
a dignified way, as human beings eat, leads to many troubles, the least of which is indigestion,
the worst of which is war. If the citizens want real opsonmeat, not just boiled onionsthen
they will need more land, pasture land, not just a back garden. And they will have to get that land
from others. Socrates imagines that they will cut a piece off their neighbors property (from
temno) as one would cut off a slice of meat. Socrates foresaw this conflict, of course, when he
said that even the happy revelers of the healthy city keep an eye out for the dangers of war,
poverty, and over-population.

66 See Burnyeat on the artists, whose imitations make extra, unnecessary worlds (1997, 243). Insofar as

they double the world, making ever more things to possess and desire, they are the authors of new desires, pangs,
and dissatisfactions in the souls of the citizens.

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Fever
The reading of the second city that I have offered above may allow new purchase on the
citys famous feverishness. The word is phlegmainousan at 372e (from phlegma, fire or
flame), meaning inflamed, that is, hot, not swollen per se, as some translate. This is a
thirsty city, the sort of hot place that drives men to cool drink. (As the heat of the underworld
will drive souls to drink from Lethe in the final moments of the Republic.) Its fever is a sickness
that requires treatment, but this sickness is also a sign of life: Only those with an inner flame can
become inflamed. In contrast to the nearly naked and passive inhabitants of the first city, whose
fevers and chills followed the path of the sun, the citizens of the feverish city have some protoenergeia of their own.67
To summarize: What are the crucial differences between the cities, and what do these
distinctions bring to the overall argument of the Republic? Although the healthy, true way of
life that Glaucon rejects is marked by surface contentment and austerity, in fact, I have argued, it
already includes desires and pleasures that belong to a luxurious city. A close look reveals that
the second city is not very different from the first, except insofar as the pleonexia of the second
is more public and self-conscious. This is rather a frustrating thing to discover, unless one takes
the blurred distinction between the cities to be intentional. The overall effect of Socrates
imprecision is a more precise picture of the whole, which is pleonexia. In other words, one might
argue that the development from the first to the second city is a picture of the natural increase of
desire and dissatisfaction that marks all human efforts and productions. Step by step, needs and

67 Cf. Prometheus Bound, which presents pre-techne humanity exposed to elements and ignorant of the

signs of the seasons:

They had neither knowledge of houses built of bricks and turned to face the sun nor yet of work in wood;
but dwelt beneath the ground like swarming ants, in sunless caves. They had no sign either of winter [455] or of
flowery spring or of fruitful summer, on which they could depend but managed everything without judgment, until I
taught them to discern the risings of the stars and their settings, which are difficult to distinguish.
See also 3.2.

59

wants increase and conflate, more citizens are required to meet these new needs and wants, and
these new citizens discover more new needs and wants as the whole grows larger (in territory
and population), more efficient, more various, and more refined. Specifically, the second city
includes meat among its expanding list of opson and in its inflamed pursuit of opson of all kinds,
it appears to be more obviously active and energetic. This fever and growth can be read as
continuous with the goals and tendencies of the first city, however. It is no wonder that it is
difficult to speak distinctly about these cities.

1.3 The growth of the logos

In this final section of the chapter, let us turn briefly from the pleonectic citizens to the
equally pleonectic interlocutors who have dreamt them up. The intense desire for more and
better food and drink (and accoutrements) that grows the first city into the second has a rational
parallel among the cities founders, as we have begun to see. Expressions of the intense desire
for a logos to end all logoi (for an argument that does not leave even the slightest thing aside
[509c]), or for supremacy in the logos, or for satisfaction in the logos abound in the speeches of
Thrasymachus, Adeimantus, Glaucon, and Socrates himself.68 The interlocutors desire for more
speeches of more complexity and more completeness grows the Republic from what would be a
short aporetic Thrasymachus, into a lengthy, positive, sometimes contradictory dialogue.
The city arises out of our need (hmetera chreia) says Socrates as they begin the
discussion of the first city (369c10). Throughout the passage that we have discussed, he eschews
an objective tone, speaking instead as if he and Glaucon and the rest were themselves citizens of
the cities they are building and as if the desires and disappointments of the citizens were their

68 Several such moments in Books V-VI will be treated in detail in the chapters to come (esp. Chapter

Four).

60

own as well. The needs of the citizens to feast and be satisfied are poetically intertwined with the
desires of Socrates and company to achieve a satisfying telos of their account of justice.
The opson-free account of justice in the first city (with which Glaucon is so
dissatisfied) suggests that justice is a certain correct dealing between people who cooperate to
satisfy their needs in moderate austerity. This is a plausible, vague account, a sort of man-on-thestreet answer to the question what is justice? Where in the city would justice and injustice be?
Adeimantus ventures: I cant think, Socrates, unless its somewhere in some need these men
have of one another (372a). Glaucon might agree with this austere account, and his brother
might take it to be an appropriate telos of their labor (371e), but Glaucon seems to want a better,
more expansive version of the answer. Like the citizens of the city in speech, Glaucon desires
more than what is purely necessary. It is not enough for him to look for justice in an apparently
happy, just society; he wants to find it in a luxurious citya city with some depth and danger,
expressed in a logos with depth and danger.69
His request for opson, then, can be read in keeping with his earlier challenge to Socrates
to prove the worth of justice under the heaviest of logical limits (entirely divorced from any
benefits, including good reputation [361b-d]). When Glaucon asks for fancy foods and Socrates
agrees to admit them, they are more or less intentionally welcoming this more interesting
because more challenging argument.

69 It is not the case, as some have argued, that the luxurious city is the first to contain justice and injustice.

Rather, Socrates tells Adeimantus to look for both in the first city; we do not know what they might have
discovered, because it is at this moment that Glaucon interrupts. Note that Socrates bland statement (372e) as he
capitulates to Glaucons new city (and the search for justice and injustice in it) is essentially the same as his earlier
statement (369a). He does not claim that the second city will be any better than the first for demonstrating both
injustice and justice.
On the other hand, it may be that the injustice visible in the first city is too impoverished to be of use in the
overall investigation. If we are to discover justice in its fullness, perhaps we need a fuller accound of injustice, too,
described in the context of fully human causes and appetites, Kass notes.

61

This is not to say that Glaucon knows precisely where his rational desires will lead him,
or that his objection about opson implies a conscious desire for opson-like logoi. For the moment
it is enough to say that he loves logoi and desires more, such that every logos feels like a
prologue to him.
Arguments of the kind Glaucon and others crave (in which a more or less proven thesis is
put through its paces) go long into the night and are susceptible to excess. Such conversations
handicapped, exaggerated, and extendedmake for good sport, but they require an active mind
and are difficult to keep under control. Glaucons request for opson might be read in this light,
too, as a lightly mischievous temptation to excess, another kink to the argument whose
disappointing denouement is apparently at hand, and a challenge to Socrates to embark on a
higher, more adventurous, more pleasurable sort of logos before they all have to gather their
things and turn back home.70
Is this excessive logos intemperate? One might argue that Socrates invited a potentially
intemperate inquiry when he first introduced the idea of isomorphic justice in the city and the
search for answers that are bigger and in a bigger place (368d). We will find more justice in
the city than in the individual, says Socrates, as if it were a resource like coal or wheat, rather
than a ratio or harmony which should logically remain the same among similar things.
Socrates arrives at this bigger picture of justice midway through Book IV (just before the
argument for tripartition): Justice in the city is each class doing what is proper to it without
meddling in the affairs of the other classes. Glaucon could not agree more heartily: It really
doesnt seem to me to be any other way than [what youve just said] (434d). It appears that the
logos has reached its end at last, and now all that remains is to apply this bigger Justice to the
littler justice of the soul. But Socrates is tentative: Lets not assert it so positively just yet.
70 Glaucons frustrations here, as in other places, may not be a response to the philosophical inadequacy of

the preceding arguments. See Rachel Barney (Santas 2007).

62

Moments earlier, when he was leading the hunt for justice and the other cardinal virtues
in the city, Socrates was brought up short in a similar wayby the supposed overreach of the
argument:
It appears, you blessed man, that its been rolling around at our feet from the
beginning and we couldnt see it after all, but were quite ridiculous. As men holding
something in their hand sometimes seek what theyre holding, we too didnt look at
it but turned our gaze somewhere far off, which is also perhaps just the reason it
escaped our notice. (432e).
This comment could as well apply to the whole enterprise of the city in speech that has lead up to
the discussion of the tripartite soul. There is some danger of overlooking the answer when we
turn our gaze somewhere far off. As many commentators insist, the Book IV discussion of
justice in the soul could have been made without the city/soul analogy at all. The methods used
to investigate each are different; the results of each are different.
Perhaps we ought not to have looked so far awayup to the cityand to things that are
too big, in too big a place. Perhaps we should have looked for justice in the soul itself without
the superfluous doubling of the city. The question raised here, of redundancy on a massive scale,
involving unnecessary labors and preposterously high aimsis a recurring theme in the
Republic.71
Socrates suggests a possible way of reconciling the apparently redundant arguments that
depend on the city/soul analogy: Perhaps the differences between the two will stand out against
the similarities and bring justice into focus between the two. Socrates finds that he must test the

71 For a persuasive reading of the Republic as fully dialectical, see Roochnik (2003). As will become clear,

I take this to be a fruitful reading of the dialogue, especially insofar as it allows Platos concluding books of the
Republic to be truly conclusive, that is, not merely supplemental to the arguments of the early and middle books.
Rather, the later books offer a retrospective and more final judgment that surpasses without negating the earlier
moments. Whereas Roochnik concentrates on the way in which Books VIII-IX are dialectically developed from the
tripartite argument in Book IV, I concentrate on Book X as an improvement on the treatment of the philosophers
desires in Book V-VII. For my detailed reading of the hunger/thirst discussion in Book IV, see 2.1. For a reading of
Socrates as Heracles, the famous doer of absurdly unnecessary and increasingly redundant labors, see Brann (2004).
See also my brief note in 5.4.

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justice found in the city against the justice in the individual soul, of which the city was to be an
educative enlargement. Here, if justice in the soul turns out to be different, then the two different
conceptsneither of them the full truth about justicewill have to be compared and contrasted
by rubbing the two together as two sticks, to make justice as a whole burst into flame (435a).
From a certain point of view, the city in speech seems to have been a fools errand. But
conflict between two different notions of the same thing is at least potentially educative. Fire
makes light. Perhaps only a consideration of both togethersocial justice and individual justice,
now admitted to be two separate possibly contradictory things, not simply similar shapes of the
samegives knowledge.72 If this friction sparks a fire it will light the torch that Socrates
attempted to pass on to Polemarchus earlier (427d).
In other words, seemingly over-grand dialogical aims, apparently unnecessary and
redundant paths, can actually benefit the overall argument, since the friction between one
moment and another similar moment can also produce light if one does not give up immediately.
It is possible that Socrates is aiming at this retrospective wisdom when he encourages or gives in
to his spirited interlocutors and embarks on impossibly ambitious (and possibly redundant)
arguments. For this reason, we have a city, and then another city, and then another city, until
neither the participants nor the scholars can count them.
The first city in speech initially appeared to be sufficient for the purposes of the
argument, but Glaucons impatience breaks the illusion of completeness. In retrospect, it is easy
to see what all-important thing was lacking: This first city cannot reveal justice.73 As I will

72 Or perhaps the analogy is built to fail, notes Kass. Perhaps the happiness of the individual and his

justice are not similar to the happiness and justice of the state at large. But it is only by trying and failing to square
the separate realms of human being and citizen that we can being to appreciate the non-identity of the two.
73 Cross and Woozley note this odd omission:

As the declared object of constructing this minimal city was to identify justice in it, after the preliminary
description of the city is complete, the question is by Socrates where justice is (371e). It receives from Adeimantus
the somewhat lame and imprecise answer that he does not know unless perhaps it is somewhere in mens dealings

64

discuss in Chapter Three, justice and moderation (the thread-side of that virtue) insofar as they
involve an active ordering between several distinct parts, cannot be found in a simple substance.
(This first city has only one class.) Where there are no distinct parts to be ordered or any active
ordering principle, where things simply happen among the throngs of citizens, there can be no
justice, only chance equanimity.
Glaucon, Adeimantus, and perhaps Socrates too, expected that the exceedingly efficient
account of the first city rooted in the apparently clear concepts of need or necessity (chreia or
anank) would yield a clear and complete definition of justice so that the dialogue could come to
a satisfying close. Instead, the logos will have to be extended and complicated as a more
obviously luxurious and pleonectic city comes into being. A city is not big enough to reveal
justice. We will need a big city.74
What is the point of this reminiscing? It is simply that when we look back, we see that the
logos grows in the same way the city grows, almost to the surprise of both the speakers and
citizens. Whether we are talking about cities, or human beings, or anything else more or less
concrete, first, we try to say simply what it is. Thus, Book II, 358b: Glaucon wants to know
what justice is all by itself. This request echoes Socrates last lines in Book I, where he says he
should have sought justice all by itself, what it is, but instead he was distracted by all its causes,
consequences, and accidental properties (354a-c).75

with each other. To which Socrates replies that perhaps he is right, but they must examine the suggestion and not
shirk the problem. But in fact they do not then examine it at all: Socrates next gives a short account of the sort of life
that men lead in such a community, and then proceeds immediately to sketch the citys evolution into something
more elaborate. The question of justice is dropped, and not taken up again until Book IV, beginning at 427e (1964,
83).
74 As mentioned earlier, Socrates listeners wonder whether the first city, which grows by leaps and

bounds, is perhaps already a big city (370d-e).

75 Socrates admission of gluttony [lichneia] here will be treated in much greater detail in Chapter Five.

65

But no thing (and no logos) is entirely self-sufficient.76 Cities need imports and
refinements; explanations lead to other explanations. Soon, there are throngs of relevant
arguments that did not seem relevant at the start. Where is the natural limit? What is the cause of
this expansion? Is it in the philosophers growing appetite or somehow in the logos itself? Can
any account be complete enough? Satisfactory? Sufficient? And to open the floodgates of
uncertainty, even if a logos could be judged adequate to the matter it must demonstrate or define,
can any such account ever be fine enough? (At 374a, the fine agreement and the fine tool
are made explicitly parallel, as if to say, The citizens do their work in their crafts, and we do
ours in speech.)
An adequate consideration of this appetite for logoi (only sketched above) is in a sense
the primary quarry of this thesis; if we could understand that appetite and its limits, we would be
closer to understanding the mind behind the interlocutors of the dialogue, who shares, to some
extent, their appetites for knowledge and their trepidation about where that appetite might lead.
For the moment, we will postpone this most important discussion to the final section of Chapter
Four.
This chapter has provided a general introduction to pleonexia in the soul, in the city, and
in the logos. The next four chapters will go to work more specifically on the isomorphism of
ordinary and philosophical appetites and their similar tendencies to pleonexia and immoderation.
Chapters Two and Three will treat ordinary appetite, its nature and tendencies, and ordinary
moderation. Chapters Four and Five will treat philosophical appetites and the possibility of
philosophical moderation.

76 Pace Hegel, to mention one obvious foil. The differences between Hegel and Plato on the possibilities of

a perfect final logos (as far as we can surmise) are stark: The Good is not meant to be a comprehensive logos as
Hegel intends the Absolute to be. Rather, its primacy inheres in its status as the very first among other causes. If it is
like the Beautiful itself in the Symposium, it stands apart from those things that lead to it in a relationship of nonreciprocal participation. (The Beautiful actively excludes all the beautiful instances.)

66

CHAPTER TWO
ORDINARY APPETITES
The discussion of opson in the previous chapter initiated us into the mysteries of
epithumia, but what epithumia is remains to be said. The present chapter will consider passages
in Republic IV that treat the appetites directly and somewhat schematically, with special
attention to the desires for food and drink. After Socrates fails early in discussion to define
epithumia as a simple function of soul, he seems to allow andincreasinglyto argue that
epithumia is an inexorably pleonectic force. The main task of this chapter will be to explain why
this is so: What is the nature of epithumia according to Socrates such that it tends to want more
and more? The last section of the chapter will consider the most troublesome effect of this
pleonexia: the frustrating inability to recognize oneself in ones diverse aims. The problem of
self-restraint will become a problem of self-knowledge as well.
Section 2.1 treats Socrates provocative over-simplification of epithumia, as fully
irrational, and his subsequent introduction of pleasure into the picture. Section 2.2 treats
Leontius as a peculiar mixture of pleasure, fury, and confusion. Section 2.3 argues that the
pleonexia of epithumia consists in its gradual redefinition of the necessary. Section 2.4 considers
Socrates instructive extension of epithumia to wealth. And finally, section 2.5 considers
Socrates and Thrasymachus disagreement about pleonexia in Book I.

2.1. Hunger and Thirst

Arguments about the appetites and their proper objects quickly become a hard swim1 for
Socrates and his interlocutors. This surprises some readers, since appetite in general and hunger

1 Blooms translation of mogis dianeneukamen at 441c. The three waves are yet to come.

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and thirst especially would seem to be simple matters.2 Socrates calls the desires for food and
drink the most vivid examples of epithumia (437d). The word he uses, enargestatas, is a
superlative of enargs, derived from argos, which means bright or shining. And of all the
desires, hunger and thirst do seem to be shining examples. They are the most basic human
desires for the obvious necessities of life. It is easy to tell whether or not we are experiencing
them. (It would be odd to ask, Is this really thirst? as we might ask, Is this really love?) And
their objects would appear to be straightforward: Isnt the one for drink and the other for food?
asks Socrates, expecting only affirmative replies.
The satisfaction of these desires would seem to be a simple matter, as well. The body
needs certain replenishments that can be calculated precisely. To illustrate: when Milo the
wrestler lifts twenty-pound weights for forty minutes in seventy-degree heat, he perspires. His
body requires a replenishment of a certain amount of cool water with a certain mixture of salt.
He becomes thirsty. Milo drinks the appropriate amount of the appropriate drink. His body is
replenished and his thirst disappears. He is restored. In Milos case and in general, the meaning
of eating and drinking seems to be simple: Appetite is the source of motion between a bodily
lack and its repletion.3
Socrates may be suggesting something further about hunger and thirst with a pun on
argos. The homonym argos (not at work: a-ergon) means idle, fallow, lazy, or unemployed,
so that enargestatas would suggest the laziest, idlest and so on.4 Of all the desires, hunger and

2 Desires are directed to the satisfaction of a need: they express an incompleteness and yearn for

completeness. Hunger, thirst, sexual desire, etc., are all immediately related to a goal and their meaning is simple.
Bloom, Interpretive Essay, 348
3 Brillat-Savarin calls appetite a sentinel which sounds warning the moment its resources are no longer in

perfect balance with its needs (1949, 57).

4 LSJ. Enargeia, to coin a term, would be something like the opposite of Aristotles energeia. Plato often

has Socrates employ double meanings or outright puns; as the most necessitous city of Book II, or the three
waves/fetuses (kumata) of Book V. Socrates often puns on names (as Alcinou/alcimou in the final myth).

68

thirst do seem to be the laziest, that is, the most passively experienced. They happen to us
with no apparent work on our part, since they can occur in the body apart from thinking.5
Although rational calculation can prevent us from acting upon thirst, it cannot abolish thirst per
se. (One cannot argue the body out of its obvious material need for hydration.)
Socrates may be suggesting that hunger and thirst are shining examples of epithumia in
this latter sense, too. Appetites seem to be more passive than thinking and choosing: They can be
in us without our full understanding or approval. Epithumia may be sufficient to motivate
action,6 but its motivations can feel foreign to our selves, as if they were the expressions and
leanings of something else in us (a force that overcomes us) and passions rather than our own
deliberate activities. Socrates has just suggested this point two pages before: The appetites for
lower satisfactions are characteristically Thracian, Scythian, Phoenician, or Egyptian, but the
rational love of learningthat is Greek through and through (435e). In other words, thinking and
its desires feel like expressions of our true, native selves, while the lower appetites (for honor,
revenge, food, drink, luxury, and money) flood into us like foreign agents into a city, changing
our own tastes and inclinations almost without our noticing.7 These low desires are ours, too, but
by adoption. On this most basic division of reason and desire, then, in Book IV, the appetites are
enargestatas, vivid but alien.8

5 See Kass (1999, 84)

6 See Lorenz (2006) and Cooper (1999).
7 See Socrates ironic praise of the honor-seekers who debase themselves for any praise whatsoever (475a-

b; See 4.1).
8 Even thumos, which is specifically concerned with self-definition and the preservation of ones

reputation, can rise up in the soul as an unconquerable foreign force (on the battle-field, or in a moment of jealous
fury). In these instances, ones thumos is somehow other than oneself. (Homer pictures this surge of spirit as a
divine co-actor that sometimes incites and at other times masquerades as the warrior.)

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So far, it is hard to disagree with Socrates. But Socrates does not seem to be content with
agreement. From this point on, despite his listeners nodding acceptance, Socrates brings in one
unbidden complication after another. As the argument proceeds, the apparently self-explanatory
drives for nutrition and satisfaction become devilishly difficult to discuss. And although some
scholars take Socrates to be an unwilling interlocutor, forced by others to lengthen his visit to the
Piraeus, here in Book IV, one must admit that Socrates himself is to blame for extending and
complicating the discussion. Socrates (not Glaucon or Adeimantus or Polemarchus) will raise the
objection (to himself) that thirst is for good drink, not just any drink (the drink simpliciter
argument). And his answers to this objection will introduce a confusing analogy of knowledge
and appetite set in an apparently unnecessary discussion of quantitative and qualitative relata. In
short, Socrates will obstruct his own thesis about the simple nature of the lower desires and their
radical distinction from reason, and his arguments against the objections that he has posed will
prove to be perversely complex. Hunger and thirst, the most vivid of the appetites, provoke a
logos in which Socrates and his friends are nearly drowned. How does this happen, and why?
Before considering these complications, it might be useful to indicate their place in the
larger argument of the Republic, and to mention some of the relevant critical responses to these
moments in the overarching logos.
To summarize the context of the passage in question: This first schematic discussion of
hunger and thirst in the Republic (437a-439e) is meant to prove the likeness between the soul and
the tripartite city, whose justice consists in the proper division of labor among three classes. In
order to ascertain the similarity of justice in city and soul, Socrates has first to find out whether
the soul is, like the city, tripartite.9

9 Nicholas White asks why the soul must have precisely three parts. Why can we not simply say that the

soul like the city has ruling and irrational parts that must be harmonized? (1979, 122) Terry Penner argues (in
Vlastos 1971, 96) that the soul has just two parts, rational and irrational. Thumos, he posits, is merely a local

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The motor of the argument is the cardinal rule of rational discourse, the principle of noncontradiction (or the principle of conflict, or the principle of non-opposition): Its plain that
the same thing wont be willing at the same time to do or suffer opposites with respect to the
same part and in relation to the same thing. So if we should ever find that happening in these
things, well know they werent the same but many (436b-c). In those cases where the same
person simultaneously does and does not want a certain object, there must be at least two
(conflicting) principles, forms, or parts of the soul at work in him.10
One thing is clear: When we ask whether the principle of non-contradiction should be
applied to the soul, we are asking whether puzzling conflicts of soul should be explained (i.e.,
attributed to the fact of partition) rather than merely recorded or described. The principle of noncontradiction says that that mind cannot be content with an infinite, fruitless back and forth of a
and not a; if we care at all about the truth (if we want to understand ourselves) then we look for
some overarching explanation that makes sense of the apparent conflict. A thing cannot be and
not be at the same time and in the same respect. (Or from a less metaphysical standpoint, one
cannot apply and deny the same predicate to a certain subject at the same time and in the same

distinction, useful only in this dialogue. See Cross and Woozley for a plausible refutation of this argument (1964,
122-123)
10 Scholars argue about the precise nature of this principle, what to call it, and whether it applies to things

or statements. I will refer to the principle as the principle of non-contradiction since it is at least a clear
predecessor of Aristotles famous principle, and also because in the passage that follows, Plato has his opposed parts
of soul say yes and no about the same thing at the same time. The conflict between the irrational and rational
parts is thus precisely a contradictionan opposing judgment about the same object, namely that it is both desirable
and not desirable. I think that the other common ways of referring to the principle (PC, PNO, etc.) are equally
accurate.
Finally, one should note that famous principle of non-contradiction in Aristotle (as introduced in Met. IV,
for example) is not as clearly stated as a logician might hope. (See Annas, 1981, 137). Things and words are not
treated as distinctly by Aristotle and Plato as we might wish. A statement that appears to be about contradictory
predication may equally apply metaphysically, as a statement about how things actually are. In Aristotles
introduction to the principle of non-contradiction (1005b5-30), his example is both an abstract statement and a man,
Heraclitus, who both says and denies that the same thing is true. Insofar as Heraclitus is one man, a single being, he
cannot actually believe both opposed statements. The same unitary being cannot say contradictory things about the
same objecthe would break apart. Plato puts the problem in the same terms.

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respect.) In the Republic argument, the explanation of the souls conflicting attraction and
repulsion to the same object is simple: The soul must have multiple parts (or forms).
Consider the converse: If the principle of non-contradiction does not apply to the soul,
that is, if the same single soul can at once loathe and hanker for the same thing at the same time
with its whole being, then the soul (a mere node of conflicting desires) can scarcely be
apprehended at all. Such a soul would be without any overarching explanation and inaccessible
to any further investigation. Perhaps we want to leave it at that. But to be clear, if we do not try
to apply the principle of non-contradiction to the soul, we forfeit a logos of it.
Now, it is possible that any attempted logos of the soul will finally fail. Perhaps we
should content ourselves with something closer to a more imprecise but richer muthos instead.
Or perhaps the soul falls under some relaxed principle of non-contradiction (if such a thing is
possible), such that it can be at odds with itself without tearing into parts. But since knowledge
of the soul is a matter of such weight, it seems that Socrates (and we) would be foolish not to try
at least to treat the soul as a subject of rational inquiry. At least, it seems to me, we should push
as hard as we can in the direction of logical clarity, even if (as Socrates warns) there are better
and more thorough ways to approach the soul. Socrates will push as hard as he can in the passage
before us.
Scholars agree that the stakes in the increasingly complex arguments for tripartition are
serious. Roochnik argues that these overly-determined arguments reveal the inadequacy of a
purely arithmetic treatment of the soul (as if the soul were something that could be accounted for
merely by counting its parts), and that a truer account of the soul would include a mytho-poetic
treatment by which the soul might be seen in time as it pursues the goals of its eros. Socrates
didactic misapplication of the principle of non-contradiction, then (if that is what this is), would

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seem to advance the argument that the soul is something more protean than the strict laws of
argument can contain.11
Scholarly vexation over these problems is justified.12 If Socrates argument for the
tripartite soul is invalid, then the city-soul analogy may be in jeopardy, too. And if in fact the
city-soul analogy is false, then we cannot hope to find many useful teachings in the greater part
of the text of the Republic (which treats the city per se).13 Further, insofar as the arguments for
the tripartite soul finally promote the rule of knowledge over appetite, perhaps a central
teaching of the Republic, then the local failure of these overly-complex and over-reaching
arguments portends the failure of the Republics overarching project.
The rest of this chapter will attempt to make sense of Socrates vexing procedures in the
Book IV discussions of epithumia. I will address some of the previous readings of this famous
passage as they relate to various moments in my argument. I think that later sections of the
Republic improve on the Book IV arguments and further develop Platos view of the soul.14 But
I will not look for a complete account of appetite and the appetitive part of the soul in the later
books, for the following reasons: By the end of the Republic, Socrates will still not have a fully
satisfactory name for what we are calling the appetitive part of the soul, never mind a full
description of its function. Despite repeated attempts to clarify the nature of epithumia, Socrates
never fully explains why all the appetites for food, drink, sex, and money should be taken

11 See Roochnik (2003), 6-7, 13, 21-22, 26-27, etc.

12 According to some commentators (notably Adam, Penner, Burnyeat, and Cooper), Socrates apparently

digressive arguments for drink simpliciter, which follow hard upon the introductory lines quoted (far) above, are
actually the birthpangs of a new Platonic stage. In Socrates insistence that appetite cannot know the good (this
interpretation goes) we see the emergence of a post-Socratic Socrates. Lorenz agrees, but wonders about the
noteworthy lack of precision about the view being rejected. (2006, 30)
13 Of course, it is possible that the limits of the city-soul analogy are instructive in themselves.
14 As do Roochnik, G.R.F. Ferrari, Kenneth Dorter, and others.

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together under one eidos. His image of the hydra (588c) warns that the appetites may be
endlessly impossible to simplify. Experience suggests that the desires for food, shelter, progeny,
and the means to supply these belong together, but there is something about this multiplicity that
shuns a precise logos. Hunger and thirst and the desires that arise from these are vivid and
familiar to us, but they may not be clear in themselves.
In the first section of the argument for tripartition, which I am about to discuss, Socrates
separates epithumia from rational discrimination by considering the contradictions in the soul
that accompany hunger and thirst. Socrates main aim is to distinguish appetite from reason
clearly, even severely; however, concrete likenesses between appetite and reason will emerge at
once, and, as I will argue, Socrates encourages this blurring of the line between rational and
irrational parts.15

Acceptance and Refusal

Hunger and thirst stand opposed to reason, says Socrates, as acceptance to refusal
[epineuein, nodding yes, to ananeuein, shaking the head no], longing to take something to
rejecting it, embracing to thrusting away (437b).16 Socrates gives the following examples of
epithumetic acceptance: being thirsty and hungry [dipsein and peinein] and generally the desires
[epithumias] and further, willing and wanting [ethelein and boulesthai]. When we desire
something we reach out to try to get it:

15 Although I am convinced by Lorenz (2006) that appetite really is irrational (although sufficient for

motivation), I want to point out Socrates deliberate analogy between the two.
16 Socrates states here that their investigation of these opposites will not take into account whether any of

these are actions (poimatn) or passions (pathmatn), because it wont make any difference (437b). In his final
summary of the argument, however, Socrates will call appetite the more passive of the two opposites: what leads
and draws is present due to affections (pathmatn) and diseases. (439d)

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Wont you say that the soul of a man who desires either longs for what it desires or
embraces that which it wants to become its own; or again, that, insofar as the soul
wills that something be supplied to it, it nods assent to itself [epineuein touto pros
hautn] as though someone had posed a question and reaches out [eporegomenen]
toward the fulfillment of what it wills? (437c)
Desire welcomes the object; it nods assent. That is what it means to desire, after allto say yes
to an enticing thing, to reach out for it, and to seek to embrace it.17
What does it mean that appetite nods?18 What precisely is the question put to appetite
and who or what is asking it? Translators differ. Adam translates the reflexive, hautn: nods
assent to this in reply to herself. Similarly, Bloom and Reeve have the soul nodding to itself.
This translation could lead to a serious misinterpretation, however. One might think that Socrates
is saying that reason hears the question and nods yes to appetite, giving permission for the
pursuit if it is healthy or just. But that would be a mistake. The two sections on the accepting and
refusing parts of the soul are quite separate here: 437b versus 437c (where Socrates finally
begins to discuss the part of the soul that refuses). According to that division, the part that nods
to itself must be appetite, not reason.
There is a suggestion, then, of agreement (or possible) disagreement within the appetitive
part.19 Here appetite looks as if it were a logos-wielding power, capable of an inner discussion

17 That is perhaps the meaning of the epi (motion toward) in epithumia, as Brann has it: The desires

naturally move people toward acquisition and possession (2004, 253-4).

Socrates uses eros here as well as epithumia. Like eros in the Symposium, here epithumia embraces that
which it wants to become its own. Appetite longs to possess the desired thing. Hunger and thirst, like their
conceptual cousin, sexual desire, try to get their objects. Insofar as the soul wills that something be supplied to it
in an epithumetic encounter, it is not seeking to become lost in something greater than itself. This may be the
beginning of the distinction between epithumia and eros.
18 Epineuein can also mean to assent, to incline towards, to approve. Some commentators note the

logical flavor of the term and its opposite. Reeve brings this out in his translation (2004, 124). Adam notes that it
means passive assent (249).
19 It is possible to take this suggestion too far, and to assume that Socrates is making room here for disgust,

i.e., appetitive refusal. Appetitive refusal is different than reasonable refusal, but Socrates does not seem to allow the
appetitive part to do both things here. If he did, he would be facing a sub-partition of appetite itself. Lorenz
summarizes this common worry about subpartition (2006, 15).

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with itself, asking questions and answering them (the essence of thinking, according to Socrates
in the Philebus).20 Irrational appetite should not be capable of this kind of self-reference,
however.21 Rather, Socrates may be simply prompting his listeners to wonder whether appetite
does have rational resources, or to wonder about the likeness or false likeness between appetite
and reason.22
According to Socrates description thus far, appetite is inherently democratic; all possible
objects are equally to be pursued. They have merely to present themselves to be desired.23 Much
later in the text, when he takes up the democratic man and his appetites, Socrates notes the same
nodding approval of whatever presents itself and points out that acceptance of all is the same as
refusal to distinguish between the various things that happen to present themselves (or to listen to
reasons why one might be preferable to another):
If someone says that there are some pleasures belonging to fine and good desires and
some belonging to bad desires, and that the ones must be practiced and honored and
the others checked and enslaved he shakes his head at all this [ananeuei] and says
that all are alike and must be honored on an equal basis. []

Of course, if Socrates is going to be fully truthful about human experience, he will have to deal with the
experience of disgust at some point. For now, as I will note, he assigns disgust words (as duscheraino) to reason
itself, by itself, not to a reasonable part of appetite.
20 On Adams reading, One part of the soul asks, and the other answers, the psychological process being

compared to a kind of dialectic or question and answer inside the soul.

21 See John Cooper (1999), 135.
22 Griffiths translation gets us into less hot water: It mentally says yes to it, as if in reply to a question

(2005, 132). That is, appetite is a passive yes to the object of desire. The object of desire asks, Do you want me?
And appetite never says no. It nods yes every time, immediately. Do you want an apple? Yes! A doughnut? Yes!
A kiss? Yes! This nodding acceptance is far from rational. Appetite nods mutely (epineuein connotes a silent
inclination or signal of approval), whereas the logistikon would presumably have something to say, perhaps along
the lines of this apple looks sweet and nourishing in itself, and it looks healthier than the doughnut.
23 Why does Socrates focus so much on the exterior proximate causes of desire while neglecting the inner

sense of lack and its corresponding replenishment? What about felt need? (See Kass 1999, 47.) It may be that such
considerations would suggest too much self-awareness within appetite.

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He also lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him [prospiptous
epithumia], at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water
and reducing; now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything;
and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied with philosophy. Often
he engages in politics and, jumping up, says and does whatever chances to come to
him. (561c-d)
The democratic man is the perfectly appetitive man, incapable of saying no to anything.
So much for acceptance. What about refusal? Occasionally, Socrates says, something in
us pulls us away from the desirable thing. Here, in Book IV, Socrates identifies this power or
principle of refusal as reason, the nay-saying part of the soul.24 Not-wanting, and not-willing
and not-desiring [to aboulein kai m ethelein md epithumein] are examples of the souls
thrusting away from itself [apthein] and driving out of itself [apelaunein] that which it
rationally rejects.
This characterization of reason as anti-epithumetic makes some experiential sense,
although logical problems are on the threshold (they will be discussed in the following
paragraphs). For the moment, let us consider what this description gets right. The voice of reason
is famously prohibitive.25 Reason votes against indulgence of various kinds, since things that
seem lovely to appetite can become disgusting if we pause to think about them. Reasons
negative power can be reckoned by considering what happens when it is absent: Where reason is
gone (or sleeping, or befuddled with drink, or poorly trained), appetite has free rein and can drag
the soul to embrace anything that comes into its view.26

24 No, the apple belongs to someone else. No, the doughnut is bad for you. No, the kiss is inappropriate.
25 See Kass (1999), 98. Similarly, Socrates divine voice (famously super-rational) is a nay-sayer, pulling

him back from contemplative or rhetorical indulgences (usually). Socrates speech in the Apology is markedly
unrestrained, since (as he says) his daimon is silent. Perhaps the daimons silence allows Socrates
uncharacteristically positive didacticism in the Republic?
26 Cooper, Lorenz, and others note that the principle of refusal in the soul is nothing more than a force like

appetite; it just happens to be pulling in the other direction. I see the point, and agree that reason is outrageously
underdescribed here in Book IV. However, as I will note, even this simplified reason is more complex than appetite.

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So reason can and often does say no. But does reason always say no? One might
argue that many misreadings of Plato turn on this question.27 According to some readers, Platos
rationality rejects human things, as if it were disgusted by matter, time, and mortal finiteness.
According to this caricature of philosophy, which Socrates certainly encourages at certain
moments in the Republic, thinking is a renunciation of the worlda withdrawal from
experiencethat aims at ideas that recede so far from human life that they are (in Socrates own
words) beyond being.28 In the middle books of the Republic, philosophys highest mode
appears to be an empty, formal no to the world.29
But Socrates persistence on this point provokes a question that may help to counter the
view summarized above. Does reason ever say yes? Certainly, any time reason allows the
restrained person to take the apple, the doughnut, the kiss when the time is right and the action is
fitting. (If reason always said no, we would drop down dead.) But what is thinking when its not
just baby-sitting appetite? What might be reasons positive energeia? What does it mean for
thinking to advance and to discover new items, for example? What does reason want and how
does it reach out for what it wants? Socrates dawdling arguments in Book IV suggest these
essential questions.
Perhaps there is a beginning of an answer here: Even when we consider the rational as
negative, i.e., as discriminating or prohibiting, it seems to be capable of a positive activity too. In
brief, nay-saying implies dualitythe observation and recognition of a thing that is nevertheless
refused. Reasons restraint (as Odysseus binding rope) allows the thinker to consider a thing, to

27 As Nietzche, Nussbaum, Pater, Annas.

28 They do not share their essences, although supposedly other things share in them. (Participation is a

one-way street).
29 See Chapter Three for a discussion of passages that would seem to support this reading (esp. 3.1, on

Expurgation).

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be aware of it, even to desire it and not to embrace it, for the sake of some other good. In this
way, being rational is a way of saying yes and no to the same object at the same time
without violating the principle of non-contradiction. (Filling out this speculation will require an
investigation of moderation, the main matter of Chapter Three.) In any case, nay-saying seems to
be more complex than nodding yes. Reason, in this sense, would not be an equally simple power
that stands opposite appetite. Rather, it would seem to be a more comprehensive power.30
To summarize the argument so far: We do not yet know whether reason will have a
positive function or what its desires will be, although Socrates has encouraged speculation on
these points. The appetitive eidos propels the soul forward, and the rational pulls the soul back
from the brink of actions that satisfy some of those desires. One nods yes and the other shakes
its head, no. Appetite and reason are precisely contradictory here. There could be no clearer
invocation of the principle of non-contradiction.

Brutishness
The semper-affirmative epithumts is weak in will as well as intellect.31 In fact, he is as
passive as a beast, Socrates says at 439b.32 Hunger and thirst drag the otherwise rational soul like
an animal to the brink of the thing it would otherwise refuse to embrace, according to Socrates
simile:

30 See Cooper (1999) on the dual role of reason. Reason is curious and wants to know its own things, but it

also wants to rule over other parts. Ferrari (2007) argues that only one of these roles is essential; the other is due to
the necessity of incarnation (2006, 274). Similarly, Rosen (2005) recognizes that philosophers naturally do and do
not want to rule.
31 To make use of an un-Platonic but useful pair of terms.
32 After a very puzzling digression (437d-439b) that I will discuss below under the subtitle Drink

simpliciter.

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If ever something draws it back when its thirsting, wouldnt that be something
different in it from that which thirsts and leads it like a beast to drink [agontos
hsper therion epi to piein]? For of course, we say, the same thing wouldnt perform
opposed actions concerning the same thing with the same part of itself at the same
time?
In what precise sense is appetite brutish, that is, animal? Is Socrates saying that human
appetite is like animal appetite, such that the essential qualities of the latter apply to the former?
Or that the appetitive part of the soul is like an animal inside us (as in the Book IX images of the
tripartite soul)? Or is Socrates saying that the whole person becomes like an animal when
appetite leads the way (as in the animal metamorphoses of Book X)? This third possibility is
perhaps the direct meaning of the passage above, although the other two senses are certainly in
the background.33 When brutish appetite is the leading motivation, behavior is brutish. Like a
horse led by its master, the appetitive person simply goes wherever his mastering appetite leads.
Appetite is sufficient all on its own to motivate action but the action it motivates is as
thoughtless as an animals feeding or watering. So, in a secondary sense, when one drinks or eats
without thinking, one is drinking and eating as an animal doeswithout deciding or
discriminating. Such actions (if one can call them that) are brutish insofar as they do not exercise
the intellect or will to any great degree.34

33 Some uncertainty arises from a textual question (whether one reads theriou or therion). I prefer the

latter, although there seems to be better manuscript support for the former. Ferrari prefers the former and provides a
helpful overview of the problem (2006, 281). Since both readings are complementary, and one can swiftly
extrapolate from one to the other, I see no need to argue this at length.
34 Socrates deserves the army of objections that inevitably arise on this point. Many lovers of animals will

bridle at his oversimplified and exaggeratedly animal animal appetite. (And it is exaggerated.) Certainly animals are
capable of more than the blind craving Socrates attributes to them here. I am indebted to Stephanie Nelson for the
insight that pigs in fact really enjoy their slop and can be picky about it. Certainly, as Kass suggests (1999, 53), the
lion enjoys his meal and the chase that preceded it more than the horse enjoys the contents of his nosebag (and
certainly more than the bacterium enjoys its sugar), but Socrates exaggerated account reminds us that these
differences in eating among more or less intelligent and active animals pale when contrasted with the human beings
free enjoyment of his dinner, which he cooks, seasons, plates, and pairs with appropriate wines mixed with the
appropriate measure of water.
Further, some apparently rational animal distinctions (made by the cow who prefers grass to bacon, for
example) would be better described as the dictates of instinct. Obviously, animal appetite is not so automatically

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We have an example of this in the city of pigs, the main topic of the previous chapter.
Glaucon objects to Socrates healthy city because citizens there eat like pigs, without
considering, choosing, or enjoying their meals.35 They eat whatever food naturally grows around
themberries, nuts, and barleyhardly cooking it and never seasoning it. Like animals,
unaware that they are being led to the trough and fattened for some reason, Glaucon suggests,
they simply fall to without any interest in the quality, source, or purpose of their feed.36
To summarize: The brutishness of appetitive actions consists in their indiscriminating,
passive, and incurious acceptance of whatever is presented to them for the replenishment of their
hunger and thirst. To exaggerate (as Socrates does), animals can not be said to enjoy or take
pleasure in their meals. Their nourishment is aimed at living, not living well.
On this point, I disagree with Lorenz, who refers to appetites brutishness as a stubborn
drive for pleasure.37 But as I have argued, the brutishness Socrates has in mind is oblivious to
pleasure; the term hedone has not appeared even once in the argument to this point. Socrates will
slip it in at the very last moment of the argument, in the last line (439d), without any previous
open to whatever presents itself that an animal will as likely eat stones and mud as grass and meat. Instinct
recognizes some present objects as edible and inedible. It would be a mistake to call this kind of discrimination free
choice, however. The animal is led by the bridle of his own nature, still a follower, just as Socrates says (albeit in a
more provocative way).
See Kass, also, on the distinction between fressen and essen (1999, 25, 94-127, etc.).
35 See also Lorenzs argument that appetite lacks means-ends reasoning (2006). Animal appetite seeks

immediate goods, without conscious imagination of the future.

See also Annas, on Socrates exaggeratedly irrational appetite: Unfortunately Plato has divided the soul
into a totally irrational, craving part and a rational, cognitive part. [] By making it look contentless, reduced to the
level of animal drive, Plato is apparently limiting desire to the basic biological desires which arise from having a
body, and are independent of ones beliefs. [But as the Republic proceeds], desire is treated as capable of much more
in the way of beliefs and reasoning than this argument seems to allow (1981, 139).
36 Compare Thrasymachus city of sheep, who exist in blissful ignorance of the purposes for which they

are fed (345c-d).

37 Appetites attachment to what in fact gives us pleasure is unreformable. What appetite motivates us to

pursue can be reformed only by reforming what in fact gives us pleasure, within the rather stringent limits imposed
by physiological facts. There is thus something ineliminably and unreformably brutish about appetite, not only about
how it functions, but also about what it motivates us to pursue. (2006, 2)

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argument that appetite is specifically drawn to pleasure rather than to the more immediate (mere)
presence of the desirable object.
Lorenz is certainly correct in the long run to associate pleasure with appetitethat is a
proverbially true, experientially sound, and even philosophically respectable position. Socrates
himself will go on to fault epithumia for its excessive concern with pleasure. But Socrates does
not make any arguments about pleasure here (in the proofs for tripartition). His presentation of
appetite as an exaggeratedly animal drive for whatever comes into view is noteworthy, especially
considering what follows: Such a docile epithumia could easily be moderated, simply by
furnishing it with the right amounts of the right food and drink.38
But as Lorenz, Socrates and we know, appetite is not so easily satisfied; it wants
pleasures, too. When Socrates allows pleasure to slip in (as it always does) he lets us see it for
what it is: something unnecessary, extra, something more. In other words, when Socrates allows
his impossibly and exaggeratedly simple animal appetite to become complicated with pleasures,
he is illustrating appetites inexorable tendency toward expansion, i.e., pleonexia. Moderation of
the appetitive soul (as it really is) will be a much more difficult matter than Socrates initially lets
on.39
A final note on brutishness, looking ahead to the arguments I will make in Chapter Four
(on the trophe of the guardians): According to the soul-division of Book IV, if appetite is animal
or leads to animal behavior, then the opposite part of the soul, reason, must be somehow notanimal. For this reason, any metaphor of thinking or educating that uses animal feeding as one of
its terms is problematic. The appetite analogy in later moments of the Republic (in V and IX
particularly) explicitly likens opposites. Any educative scheme that treats the rational soul as an
38 See Annas (1981, 139)
39 I will consider the addition of pleasure in much more detail in the section entitled Beyond the

necessary.

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animal and ideas as fodder is possibly ironic, or exaggerated, or comic (or something else), not a
full and unproblematic description of reason per se.40 Or, conversely, the Book IV tripartite
scheme which divides all soul events into mutually excluding opposites indicated by alphaprivative neologisms is exaggerated. Or perhaps, as I will argue, there are instructive
exaggerations on both sides.
Socrates continues, after a digression that will be considered in the next section, Now,
would we assert that sometimes there are some men who are thirsty but not willing to drink?
Glaucon responds, Surely, many and often. (439c) Glaucons enthusiasm (pollous kai pollakis)
wins the notice and amusement of commentators. Who are all these many conflicted characters
Glaucon hears about all the time?41 Perhaps indomitable Odysseus, who manages to avoid the
intoxication of Circes potion (and refuses to eat Lotos flowers, or the cattle of Helios)? At the
end of the Republic, Socrates will add more examples to Glaucons evidently long list: A few
souls will save themselves by refusing to drink too much of the River Carelessness (621a).
Socrates concludes the argument: What should one say about them? Isnt there
something in their soul bidding them to drink and something forbidding them to do so,
something different that masters that which bids? Here Socrates goes beyond the archer analogy
(introduced at 439b), in which reason and appetite each contribute to the perfect tension of the
bow, one hand pulling and the other pushing. In that analogy, neither hand mastered the other.
But here, the rational part is not just opposite the irrational part; rather, it is the proper master of
it.

40 Arlene Saxenhouse makes this point in her persuasive essay (1978), although she does not make use of

this Book IV passage to support her argument.

41 Ferrari suggests several possibilities, including the clever observation that the decent man who restrains

his hunger and thirst for tears (606a) is just such a character (2007, 173, 180).

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Drink simpliciter
In the midst of this argument, for purposes that puzzle many commentators, Socrates
tempts Glaucon to consider an apparently unnecessary and troubling objection: Is thirst desire for
anything more (pleonos tinos) than what weve said? Is thirst just desire for any potable thing,
regardless of quality or quantity? The answer to this question will further distinguish reason and
appetite in an unexpected way.
Insofar as its thirst, would it be a desire in the soul for something more than that of
which we say it is a desire? For example, is thirst thirst for hot drink or cold, or much
or little, or, in a word, for any particular kind of drink? Or isnt it rather that in the
case where heat is present in addition to the thirst, the heat would cause the desire to
be also for something cold as well; and where coldness, something hot; and where
the thirst is much on account of the presence of muchness, it will cause the desire to
be for much, and where its little, for little? But, thirsting itself will never be a desire
for anything other than that of which it naturally is a desirefor drink aloneand,
similarly, hungering will be a desire for food? (437d-e)
Glaucon, at first oblivious to Socrates intent, agrees heartily: Thats the way it is. Each
particular desire itself is only for that particular thing itself of which it naturally is, while the
desire for this or that kind depends on additions (prosgignomena). 42
What are these additions that modify brute appetite? We might expect Socrates to say
reason, i.e., the nay-saying part of the soul that decides whether or not to pursue x rather than y
and when and how much. Some commentators speak as though Socrates has done just that, viz.
hunger is a brute bodily inclination to any food whatever, but a hankering for bacon, or cold
water, or Pouilly-Fuiss is due to a rational modification. But no. Socrates and Glaucon agree
here that the additions that modify appetite are explicitly chance circumstances that happen to
draw appetite in one direction or another: If it is hot outside, we want a cold drink. If it is cold
outside, we want a hot drink. If there is much of the drink, we will want much drink; if there is
only a little, our appetite will be for a little (437d-e). Thinking has nothing to do with it.
42 The word means additions but connotes chance additions (things that just happen).

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Socrates provocative point is that appetite (even apparently sophisticated appetite) has
absolutely no rational resources. Appetite just wants; it does not want anything in particular until
chance circumstances tell it what kind of thing to want and how much of it. Appetite simply
reaches out for something to fill it, and leaves the decision about quality and quantity to fortune.
(Again, appetite does not linger over the possibilities: It always says yes to whatever appears.)
In this sense, too, hunger and thirst are the laziest of all the appetites. They are entirely
followers, entirely idle passions modified and brought to a point by various contingencies of the
here and now. By contrast, sexual desire longs for the beloved when he is absent (as Aristotle
points out as he distinguishes love from friendship in the Nic. Ethics) and the love of money
imagines a future state of wealth. But hunger and thirst in Socrates exaggerated picture are the
most immediate of the passions, incapable of entertaining anything like a counter-factual.
It would seem that Socrates has reached the conclusion of the argument. Appetite is
clearly at odds with the rational part of the soul; it is so opposed to reason, in fact, that it cannot
even make use of any rational resources. It must be a fully separate eidos. Everyone agrees. So
Socrates has to bring in an unnamed objector:
Now let no one catch us unprepared and cause a disturbance, alleging that no one
desires drink, but good (chrstou) drink, nor food, but good (chrstou) food; for
everyone, after all, desires good things (tn agathn); if, then, thirst is a desire, it
would be for good (chrstou) drink or for good whatever it is, and similarly, with the
other desires. (438a)
As I noted earlier, many scholars hasten to identify the unnamed disturber as Socrates, so
that all that is said here becomes an argument against the Socrates of earlier dialogues, who
argued, famously, that when we desire something, we always think that it is good and desire it
because of that judgment.
Yet Socrates self-refuting digression at the hands of Plato, if that is what this is, does not
seem to add much to the argument. And if it is a serious argument against the early Socrates,
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why isnt the argument made in the same terms used by Socrates in other dialogues? A
comparable situation in the Protagoras, for example (the kind of argument of which the present
discussion is presumed to be a recantation) uses the word healthy explicitly.43 Why doesnt
Socrates go on to talk about the healthy and the unhealthy (as Burnyeat, Annas, and others
assume he does)? I think that here, chrestos need not mean only healthy. It could mean
beneficial in generalor just, good. Socrates himself interchanges chrestos and agathos in this
passage. In other words, Socrates unnamed objector says, when we want something we think
that it is a good thing: beneficial, pleasurable, fine, beautiful, healthy, or otherwise choiceworthy.
If Socrates meant by chrestos/agathos actually good for us (i.e., actually healthy) he could
have said so. For these reasons, among others, I do not think that Socrates is ironically
convicting himself (or his early self) when he brings in the unnamed objector.44 These scholars
have the wrong man.
I think that Socrates unnamed objector is Glaucon, who raised a previous ruckus in
Book II (372d-c), although he does not recognize or stand up for himself here until Socrates
prods him. It was Glaucon who brought the argument to a halt when he claimed that people
hunger and thirst for good food, not just pig-fodder. Perhaps appetite does want something
more than barley paste and room-temperature wine. At 438a, I submit, Glaucon recognizes his
argument in Socrates mouth and finally defends himself, Perhaps the man who says that would
seem to make some sense. I.e., me! I hungered after good things and thought the citizens
would, too.

43 313a-314b. See also Protagoras speech at 334a-c

44 As Lorenz suggests. There is a noteworthy lack of precision, already mentioned, about what exactly the

view is that is being rejectedthat what any desire is for is always a good example of its kind, or something or other
as what it is good to do. If Platos focus were on Socrates view of human desire, one would expect that view to be
pinpointed with a little more precision (2006, 30).

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And his objection is still apt, all these pages later: Hunger and thirst simpliciter are
abstractions.45 Human beings never experience qualitatively and quantitatively neutral appetites
(hunger qua hunger) except perhaps in direst extremis, when they really would be eating as
animals eat. It is only in such exceptional cases that human beings would not care about the taste
of rotten meat, tallow, or shoe leatherthey will eat them whether or not they are good. To be
fair, in these few cases, Socrates is righthunger is blind. Anything solid, whether good or not,
will appease the stomachs grumbling. (And one might call this in itself a very limited good.)
But even in these extreme cases, the stomach might very well turn as the human beings moral,
aesthetic, and rational objections prevent such blind, brutal feeding. Human beings can feel
disgust for poor quality feed in a way that hungry dogs and goats cannot.46
In summary, Socrates uses the provocative drink simpliciter argument to drive Glaucon
to recognize himself as the objector and to reclaim his earlier objection, that appetite is a matter
of necessary replenishment and something more. In other words, Socrates drives Glaucon to say
that appetite is pleonectic. Once he has done this, Socrates will drive him to recant his pleonexia.
By the end of IV, Glaucon is ready to say that his request for good food (relish, and all that that
entails) was reckless:
If life doesnt seem livable with the bodys nature corrupted, not even with every sort
of food and drink and every sort of wealth and every sort of rule, will it then be
livable when the nature of that very thing by which we live is confused and
corrupted, even if a man does whatever else he might want except that which will rid
him of vice and injustice and will enable him to acquire justice and virtue? (445a-b).
To parse his complex conditional: What good is it to have every sort of food, drink, and
advantage if the body is corrupted by them? Similarly, what does it profit a man to do whatever

45 Benardete argues that Socrates is trying to make Ideas out of themThirst Itself and Hunger Itselfas

if such desires and their objects could be understood so abstractly (1989, 86).
46 Dogs frequently bring up what they ought not to have eaten (and eat it again) without qualm. Goats are

said to eat suspenders and cans.

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he wants, if the soul that wants all these things is in confusion? Wouldnt it be far better to
forego relishes and keep the soul and body in order?
How and why does Socrates effect this conversion in Glaucon? The next few sections
will look for the answers to these questions in the passages that conclude with Glaucons
recantation.47

Quantitative and qualitative relata

In order to explain how pure hunger and thirst become specialized desires for particular
foods and drinks, Socrates introduces an increasingly obscure discussion of things that are
related to other things: Of all things that are such as to be related to something, those that are of
a certain kind are related to a thing of a certain kind, as it seems to me, while those that are
severally themselves are related only to a thing that is itself (438a). Glaucon answers for every
reader of this section: I dont understand.

47 As discussed earlier, Glaucon will repent not only of his demand for good food, but also of his initial

challenge to Socrates to prove that justice is good even in the absence of the rewards and reputation due to it. In
other words, he will recant the whole project of the Republic since Book II; but because Socrates will not finally let
him recant, the Republic is longer than four books.
This sort of reading that focuses on Socrates attention to Glaucons soul runs the risk of appearing to take
Socrates therapeutic intentions too seriously and neglecting Socrates abstract arguments about justice and his
sincere desire to understand them. I am sensitive to this objection and try to balance my interpretation between
attention to character and to argument. At the same time, I believe that it is hard to shine light into Socrates soul
and guess his true intentions. Like all good teachers, he is probably simultaneously seeking and leading.
As I will argue in Chapter Four, Glaucons (Book II) overly abstract challenge to Socrates to prove that it is
good to be just cannot be answered by an abstract argument. Rather, Glaucon must understand the real costs of
injustice in the human soul. Further, I take encouragement from Socrates himself (in the Protagoras, for example) to
take character and its development as a central matter. (This problem falls under the logos/ergon distinction.)
Knowledgeespecially ethical knowledgeis not gathered like eggs in a basket, to be held in the mind only.
Rather, argument feeds character, so that one must look into the soul to see how it has been nourished and fed. This
may give an apparently ad hominem flavor to the argument, but there it is. Again, although I certainly do not think
that Socrates is mischievously manipulative, one must recognize the irony in the fact that although Socrates and
company have trodden these paths many times before (the pinnacle of their discussionthe Goodis a topic they
have discovered many times before, as Socrates notes)only Socrates remembers.

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At this point, some commentators skip ahead to summarize, mentioning but not
explaining Socrates obscurity.48 I will try to be more precise about Socrates intentions here, as
far as I can understand them. His obscurity in this section (like his obscurity in some of the most
mathematical passages of the Republic) is deliberate, and with a little work from the reader it can
even be instructive.
Socrates lists two kinds of related pairs in the section that follows: quantitative relata and
qualitative relata. Examples of the first include greater/less, much-greater/much-less, oncegreater/once-less, going-to-be-greater/going-to-be-less, more/fewer, double/half, heavier/lighter,
faster/slower, and hot/cold.
It is clear that the first pair of quantitative relata is the simplest and least concrete and that
all the pairs that follow are more concrete modifications of this simple relationship of
greater/less.49 How do these pairs help us to understand the modifications of desire? Perhaps
Socrates means something on the following lines. Hunger itself is for food itself; but a taste for
steak in particular arises when certain circumstances converge that that are favorable to steakeating: good pasture for cows, the presence of butchers and cooks and the money to pay them,
particular bodily needs for protein. When all the circumstances are regularly in place, one might
develop a habitual taste for steak so that ones appetite could really be called an appetite for
steak in particular.

48 See Rosen (2005) and Lorenz (2006). In contrast, see Roochnik (2003), 23-25.
49 See Lorenz (2006, 28), for a helpful summary of this point. Kass notes that with more/fewer, Socrates

flirts with discrete quantity, whereas all the other examples are of continuous magnitude, which is not amenable to
the handy measure of arithmos: The scandal of muchness is that it lacks a logical measure. The problem of
pleonexia is worst wherever number cannot be applied. There are other sorts of measure than counting, however;
Socrates will finally say that pleonexia can be somewhat restrained through something like a geometric ratio. But
much more on this to come. (See esp. 3.2 and 5.4-5.5).

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But the explanatory value of this curious set of pairs is limited, I think. As Socrates
introduces example after example of greater and less, he sounds like a figure of pleonexia
himself who hypothesizes that if a few obscure relata are good, then more are better.
So much for quantitative relata. Now for qualitative relata. In the next step of the
argument, Socrates explains hunger and its modifications by likening them to knowledge and its
related modifications. This is a counterintuitive move, to say the least, considering that Socrates
explicit aim in the tripartite argument is to show that hunger and knowing are radically different.
Examples of qualitative relata include knowledge/learning itself (or whatever it is to
which knowledge should be related), and then housebuilding/knowledge of building houses,
medicine/knowledge of healthy and sick, and ethics (or some such unnamed science)/knowledge
of good and bad.
Socrates points out that we call general knowledge knowledge, but when knowledge in
general focuses on some particular thing then that knowledge itself becomes particularized
(modified) and we give it a new name, such as house-building:
And what about the various sorts of knowledge? Isnt it the same way? Knowledge
itself is knowledge of learning itself, or of whatever it is to which knowledge should
be related; while a particular kind of knowledge is of a particular kind of thing. I
mean something like this. When knowledge of constructing houses came to be,
didnt it differ from the other kinds of knowledge and was thus called housebuilding?
Or medicine:
When knowledge became knowledge not of that alone to which knowledge is related
but of a particular sort of thing, and this was health and sickness, it as a consequence
also became of a certain sort itself; and this caused it not to be called knowledge
simply any more but, with the particular kind having been added to it, medicine.
Glaucon claims to understand now, and heartily agrees that epithumia is just like knowledge,
originally pure and unspecified, and then (given the right circumstances) modified and concrete.
Socrates asks: And then, as for thirst, why dont you include it among those things that are
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related to something? Surely thirst is in relation to . . . Glaucon jumps right in to supply the
conclusion: I will, and its related to drink. (That is, drink itself, drink simpliciter.)
Socrates concludes: So a particular kind of thirst is for a particular kind of drink, but
thirst itself is neither for much nor little, good nor bad, nor, in a word, for any particular kind, but
thirst itself is naturally only for drink. [] Therefore, the soul of the man whos thirsty, insofar
as it thirsts, wishes nothing other than to drink, and strives for this and is impelled toward it.
Glaucon is utterly convinced.
But the reader should be warier than Glaucon. One might wonder what is this general
knowledge or pure appetite before they are modified? Are these theoretical concepts like prime
matter that are somehow divisible in thought but never existent in fact? This pure knowledge
(too pure for a specific object, even) is impossible to imagine. Socrates himself has some trouble
figuring out what to call these most general objects of unspecified knowledge (whatever it
is).
And we run into some strange possibilities on the other side of the analogy, too. Perfectly
pure appetite would have to be indifferent to the good. It would have to be blind to any
qualitative or quantitative specificity whatever. Drink and hunger simpliciter would be totally
empty desires. They would nod yes to anything, whatever circumstances present. If it is hot
outside, then previously unmodified thirst will specify a long, cold drink. If one is surrounded by
acorns and bread, then previously unmodified appetite will desire acorns and bread.50 But orexis
for nothing in particular (for whatever presents itself, or whatever circumstances demand) does

50 By this measure, culture looks like a chance circumstance, too, determining for good or ill what one

desires and how much. (Compare Lear [Kraut 1997, 65].) This would account for the real but limited good of
education and culture to produce decent citizens. Such decent, cultured citizens would still be still dependent, and
their desires, shaped by good cultural circumstances, might look simply like appetitesmere tastes, about which
they do not think critically.

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not ring true. Appetite simpliciter (along the lines of qualitative and quantitative relata) would
care about getting things, but it would not care what those things are. What is happening here?
First, Socrates is not exaggerating (and then blurring) the distinction between rational and
appetitive pursuits for mischievous purposes. Rather, he is putting a vexing problem to us in the
most vexing terms possible: the limited likeness of desire and reason. Wanting must be different
than thinking in some way. (If it is not, then there is no point in arguing about justice, or
anything else.) But wanting and thinking are not exclusive categories; it seems that reason cannot
be an inert power of calculation and restraint merely. That is, reason is also (somehow)
desiderative.
The troublesome analogy between reasoning/thinking/knowing and appetite is a perfect
expression of this difficult problem. It addresses some of the most pressing questions about the
desire to know: How we can develop an intellectual taste for the best things, that is, how we
learn to desire what we understand to be the best? Is desire, like sight, a power that can be turned
on many diverse things and learn to love them? Or is it of another quality; does it change as its
objects change (as Pausanius vulgar and high Aphrodite)? Or, if the desire to know is essentially
a different kind of desire than the appetite for food and drink, how do we develop the former out
of the latter? What changes in the soul? How do we accomplish that change? These are the
general questions Socrates inspires when he compares appetite and its objects to knowledge and
its objects, and they are vexing.
What do we learn from these relata in particular? What do they add to a discussion of
hunger and thirst? To summarize the benefits to the argument so far: First, to pound the point
home, the complexity and abstract obscurity of the argument about appetite is Socrates rather
extravagant way of demonstrating that appetite naturally tends toward infinite excess. His long
list of relata reminds us that appetite can be modified in an infinite number of ways, both
qualitatively and quantitatively. For this reason, any very restricted or simple definition (as
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brutish desire for mere necessities) will fail to comprehend epithumia. Perhaps we should say
that appetite is dual: It has a simple nature that it is always in danger of exceeding. We are
correct to think about appetite in this dual way, as Socrates demonstrations imply. Appetites
simple, brutal, and passive character is somehow amenable to infinite modification and increase.
Second, a point on relata in general: Every desire involves a relation between two
separate terms. (As Diotima says in the Symposium, love is love of something.) Socrates asks the
question: Are all desires simply modifications of a single force in the soul, differing only their
objects? In other words, could one turn the love of good food into the love of ideas simply by
taking the plate away and substituting a book? (Or to put it another way, is the love of wisdom a
sublimation of our lower desires?) Or is the desire for each different kind of thing different in
other ways, too?
Third, appetite seems to be able to consider only one thing at a time, and to be incapable
of saying that one thing is better than another (which would require the simultaneous
consideration of two things, possibly two contradictory things.) But Socrates reminds us here
that specified knowledge is of a pair of things (sickness and health) whereas specified desire is
still only for one thing. (If its hot, its for cold drink. If its cold, then for hot drink.) When
knowledge is specified it deals with a multiplicity, at least two things at the same time (good and
bad, healthy and sick), and stands at a distance from the two, whereas even specified appetitive
urges are singular and deal with a single necessary want.
As Socrates concludes the first section of the argument for tripartition (439d), he begins
to make positive charges against appetite. Appetite is not just a neutral function of soul (by
which Milo connects need to satisfaction, for instance), as he has argued to this point. Rather,
what leads and draws is present due to affections and diseases [pathematon and nosematon].
At best, appetite is something we suffer; at worst, it is a symptom of disease. A man with a fever
might become very thirsty but the best thing may not be to drink as much he wants. We cannot
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trust our appetites to be true appetites that is, indicative of a need. Sometimes the things they
want are opposed to what the body needs and perhaps even harmful to it. Here we have the first
suggestion that appetite can be either necessary or unnecessary, harmless or harmful.51
Socrates concludes the first soul-partition argument with a little joke:
So we wont be irrational [alogs], if we claim they are two and different from each
other, naming the part of the soul with which it calculates, the calculating [logismos],
and the part with which it loves [from eros], hungers, thirsts and is agitated by the
other desires [epithumias], the irrational [alogiston] and desiring [epithumtikon],
companion [hetairon] of certain replenishments [plrsin] and pleasures [hdonn].
(439d)
The irrational part of the soul is a friend of certain replenishments and pleasures. The
small addition of hdon introduces pleonexia. There has been no previous mention of pleasure
in the entire Book IV passage, no argument at all that pleasure has anything to do with the
heretofore exaggeratedly brutish business of nodding yes to anything that looks to fill desire.
Here, as I mentioned earlier, Socrates displays his habit of slipping one new crucial detail to the
summary sections of his arguments that would launch the debate into increasingly more
comprehensive matters if anyone in the dialogue noticed. Adeimantus suspects just such a sly
movement in Socrates arguments about the truly philosophical character in Book VI, when he
worries that Socrates is leading them astray as he always does, little by little.52 But when these
littles are added up, they are really a lot. The addition of pleasure is a little thing that bears
watching.
Now, it is obvious to every human being aliveincluding Socratesthat appetite has to
do with pleasure, but Socrates has presented appetite thus far as an exaggeratedly simple
business of replenishment. Replenishment suggests a necessary amount; pleasure, on the
51 We do not yet know whether this is due to the corrosive power of rational/aesthetic considerationsthe

dangers of thinking that might tempt desire beyond what is necessary.

52 487b

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other hand suggests something more. Of course, in actual experience, the pleasures and
replenishments of nourishing are not so easily separated. Socrates is well aware of this, and his
exaggerations and failures in the simple picture of Book IV53 are a provocative introduction to
the discussion of the actually mixed aims of epithumia. Socrates otherwise unaccountable
insistence on pure, brutal, necessary replenishment drives Glaucon and every reader of the
Republic to ask, What about relishes? What about the pleasures of eating and drinking? Our
impatience with Socrates on this point is the experience of epithumia as it reaches beyond the
necessary to that something more than passive emptying and filling that characterizes us as
human beings (who can be aware and appreciative of our complex experiences) rather than
vessels or engines or mere animals.54

2.2. Leontius
Let us allow that Socrates has successfully divided the soul into two parts or principles,
rational and irrational, albeit with some similarity between the two. Now, to distinguish a third
part, thumos, and to show that thumos is allied to reason, not to epithumia, Socrates tells a
famous anecdote about the infamous Athenian, Leontius (437b-441c). The story is meant
primarily to bring thumos on the scene, but it also helps to distinguish reason from appetite
somewhat more clearly.
Coming up from the Piraeus (as Socrates was just trying to do, a few hours ago), under
the cover of the north wall (the philosophers favorite quiet study-spot, outside the city, as
Socrates says later) a man named Leontius notices executed corpses that happen to be lying there

53 As Lorenz calls it (2006).

54 See 2.3 and 4.3. Replenishments and pleasures are treated together in the Gorgias image of the human

being as a leaky vessel and worse (493b); see also 4.4 for other parallels between the two dialogues.

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beside their executioner. He desired to look, but at the same time he was disgusted. Leontius is
epithumos but he is simultaneously duschersirritated, vexed, or disgusted (439e9). Socrates
uses the same word later to describe finicky eaters (475b-c). He cannot bear to look at the
corpses; but he cannot stop himself from looking. He wants to cover his eyes and open them
wide at the same time.55 Here we have another example of the pushing and pulling that
characterize epithumetic struggles.56
What attracts Leontius to the corpses? Why does he desire to look? According to the
explicit terms of the argument, he is driven by unconquerable epithumia, formulaically, the
desire for food, drink, sex, (or money). Which of these things does Leontius epithumia want?
None of the above, really, though scholars diagnose several possible perversions, among them
cannibalism or necrophilia.57 On the former diagnosis, Leontius does not want to eat these
bodies, nevertheless his desire for the repletion of his eyes is very similar to the desire for
repletion that characterizes ordinary hunger and thirst. On the latter diagnosis, Leontius might be
drawn to the beautiful pallor of the dead.58 But we should be clear: Leontius epithumia is not
straightforward or ordinary. (It does not want food, drink, sex, or money explicitly.)59

55 He covers his face just as Socrates suggests they do at particularly complex moments later in the

dialogue, to scurry by without becoming bogged down in an increasingly lengthy argument.

56 Unless pulling and pushing come from the same eidos, as in Benardetes interesting but finally

unconvincing reading (1989, 99)

57 Ferrari (2007) finds these readings unconvincing.
58 See Roochnik 2003.
59 Socrates will return to hunger and thirst explicitly in order to further distinguish the thumotic character:

The nobler the man, the less angry he will be about suffering hunger and cold justly. And he will not care about
hunger and cold if they are unjustly applied either. The only thing he cares about is standing firm: Even if it suffers
in hunger, cold, and everything of the sort, doesnt it stand firm and conquer, and not cease from its noble efforts
before it has succeeded, or death intervenes, or before it becomes gentle, having been called in by the speech within
him like a dog by its herdsman? (440c-d).
Thumos guards moderation which here disregards hunger and thirstwhether justly or unjustly
experienced. Does thumos disregard justice and injustice, too? Socrates apparently anti-Leontian charge to

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His epithumia is like the desires for food, drink, and sex, but it has a complex rational
component, too. When Leontius cries out take your fill of the fair sight! this is caustic
contempt, not an innocent judgment of the beauty of the corpses. They are not beautiful. Eros is
not a natural response.60 And Leontius knows this. As he flogs himself to pursue that which he
knows cannot satisfy, he is a perfect image of self-conscious and frustrated pleonexia:
[He] made himself turn away; and for a while he struggled and covered his face. But
finally, overpowered by the desire [epithumia], he opened his eyes wide, ran toward
the corpses and said: Look, you damned wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.
What kind of satisfaction can he expect? What kind of repletion? What kind of pleasure?
Leontius frustration may have several causes; there is a great difference between eating
and seeing insofar as the satisfaction of the first involves solid repletion. But the eyes are not
containers; they never get full as bellies can. So, whereas eating and drinking have at least
some physical limits, Leontius could stare and stare until the sun goes down and still not have
reached a point of repletion. And between seeing and understanding there is an even greater
difference. No matter how long he stares, sight itself cannot gather the meaning of what is seen,
why these men were executed, or why all men must die. Rather, as Socrates will say later in the
middle books, the frustrated senses must toss the matter up to reason or continue to be frustrated
forever.61
Does Leontius want anything more than what the senses can give him? Perhaps his
epithumia is an appetite to understand. These are the corpses of executed men, about to be
buried; this is that last chance to see them, short of unearthing them. Is he curious about death
itself? Perhaps Leontius is interested in dead bodies insofar as they are pale images of living
disregard death and the needs of the human body is here juxtaposed with a disregard of the distinction between
justice and injustice, the main topic of the dialogue. It is hard to gauge the level of Socratic irony here.
60 See Augustine on the lust of the eyes, Confessions X, where he takes the example of a corpse, as well.
61 523b-525a

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men.62 There is an undeniable human attraction toward toying with the sleeping, drunk, or dead.
Perhaps they bring out primitive sadism. Or perhaps part of the fascination, and the attempt to
manipulate, touch, look at the lifeless body has to do with our natural curiosity at the total loss of
agency in a being that looks so life-like. As if he were poking a dead crocodile with a stick,
Leontius might enjoy the excitement of getting away with something while the agency of the
other is so mysteriously abrogated. The dead body that walked and spoke and moved just
moments ago is now nothing other than meat for dogs and vultures (or perhaps passive sexual
objects), now that they are unable to avoid the actions and gaze of living human beings, on the
other side of the divide.
The curiosity that leads to the grotesque suggestions of necrophilia and cannibalism is in
fact an astonishment at death itself and the total powerlessness of the dead.63 When Leontius
looks at the corpses, he sees an image of himself, insofar as he will also die and insofar as he also
experiences some of the frustrated agency of the dead. Like the dead, he cannot master his own
body; they cannot avoid being looked at, and he cannot avoid looking.
Possibly these interests become grotesque and extreme precisely because one could never
fill up enough on this mystery. There is no end, because the dead never tell us what death is
like; there is no intellectual satisfaction to be had there. The ordinary human interest in the fact
of death and in the mute bodies of those who could now tell us about it is not hard to understand.
(The Myth of Er will try to make the dead speak and tell us what they know.) We can look all we
like and still not understand this terrifying change. It is just as well that we bury what we cannot
comprehend.

62 As Aristotle notes, human beings love to see sights, whether fair or not, even images of dead men.
63 As the young boy in Joyces Two Sisters, who stands paralyzed, shivering with excited fear under the

window of the dead man and whispering paralysis.

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This matter, the most common human experience and the most worthy of our interest as
mortal beings, is also worthy of taboo. One ought not to look some things in the face. As the
elderly Oedipus is translated to immortality, even his nearest and dearest are prevented from
seeing the event or the place. In contrast (as Glaucon tells the tale in Book II), Gyges ancestors
matter-of-fact desecration of a naked corpse proves that he does not think anything of death. No
taboo prevents him from climbing down into a grave, peering through the windows of the
curious bronze casket, breaking in, and handling the corpse as he pulls the ring off of the giants
finger.
Is Leontius curious about justice, the sub-title of the dialogue? The corpses have been
executed by Athenian decree. Perhaps, as Benardete suggests, his enjoyment or satisfaction is the
satisfaction of an Athenian seeing justice done to the criminal.64
Is it pleonexia to want to understand these things? Is Leontius interest going too far?
Or not far enough? How much can we justify of his epithumia?
I think that Leontius does go too far, and that we should not go too far in trying to
rationalize what is still, for all its interesting complications, a perverse desire. Finally, Leontius
frustrated appetite is something darker than anything I have already suggested. Leontius knows
that his eyes will not be filled, just as he knows that the sight is not beautiful.65 Such relatively

64 Danielle Allen argues to the contrary, that Leontius rejects Athenian retributive principles of justice

when he refuses to pass by the corpses without a pause, and that this rejection (in favor of reformative punishments)
reflects Platos own beliefs (2000, 245-6). I am not finally persuaded by this reading for two reasons: First, it does
not explain Leontius epithumia, which is what this part of the argument was supposed to do, and second, it would
render entirely ironic Socrates comments to Glaucon following the story, which condemn Leontius appetitive act
as a disordered exception to the normal workings of the soul. On Allens reading, if Socrates agrees with Plato who
agrees with Leontius, then Socrates ironically condemns Leontius and shames Glaucon into the same false
judgment, or Socrates disagrees with Plato, and the irony of the passage is translated to a higher level. In my
judgment, neither of these highly ironic readings seem to offer much to the overall interpretation of the whole
Republic. However, Allens concentration on the onlookers judgment of the condemned usefully links the present
passage to the final myth, in which Er becomes an observer like (or unlike) Leontius, and the those meting out
justice invite him to look carefully at the condemned and to judge them.
65 Compare take your fill of the fair sight to the fairest regime of Book VIII.

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self-conscious desire for what is neither beautiful nor filling might involve a love of the
frustration itself, a love of tragedy. The experience of contradiction and alienation in the soul is
exciting in itself; to increase the contradiction by running at it with eyes wide open can be a way
of scratching the inflammationa kind of secondary contentment in the frustration itself.
Socrates will call such tragic appetites for contradiction a thirst for tears in Book X. Furious
indulgence of hated and incomprehensible epithumia is a deep kind of voyeurism of the soul
itself, in which fury and desire feed on each other, take pleasure in the frustration and seek
fulfillment in the state of stasis.
Socrates alludes to a similar moment in the Odyssey when he praises Odysseus for his
moderation and endurance: He smote his breast and reproached his heart with a word (Od. XX,
17-18).66 This snippet summary of moderation (first quoted at 390d) is rather a favorite of
Socrates. Here it is offered as proof that reason and spirit can conflict and must therefore be
separate principles. Apart from his value to the argument, Odysseus makes an interesting parallel
to Leontius It may be that Socrates brings him on the scene primarily for that reason.
Odysseus, the famously moderate character, might seem at first to be the opposite of
Leontius, since his reason does finally win out against his irrational nature. But a close look at
the context of Socrates favorite quote reveals that Odysseian moderation is of a peculiar kind: a
roiling, furious epithumetic storm, in which reason barely gets the upper hand. Unlike the
famous Roman slave with his hand in the fire or Socrates himself, marching barefoot in the frost,
Odysseus and Leontius indulge certain impulses while they refrain from them, voyeuristically,
violently, and secretly. Odysseus, still disguised, fumes at the suitors as he tries to fall asleep:
Yet sleep would not come, because his heart was too active in planning evil against
the suitors: for whom, besides, after a while those women that nightly played the

66 This is Blooms in situ translation of the Homer. For longer spans of quoted material from the Odyssey, I

usually turn to the Lawrence translation, as in the passage following.

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strumpet poured out with laughter and loud jest from the servants quarter. His gorge
rose then: impulse and reason warred within him, now wanting to charge forth and
give each whore her death, now to yield them a latest and last chambering. Over this
his secret self snarled like a bitch standing guard over her helpless litter, when she
stiffens with a growl to fly at any approaching stranger. So the anger rumbled within
Odysseus at their lechery: but he smote his breast in self-rebuke, saying, Be patient,
heart. [The verb is tetlathi, be enduring,; this is Odysseus core trait, beneath all
his disguises, according to Telemachus.] You stood a grimmer trial, that day Cyclops
devoured my splendid fellows. Steadfastly you bore it, till your cunning had frayed
you a path from that cave you thought your death-trap. (XX, 5-21; Lawrence trans.)
Lawrences translation to yield them a latest and last chambering leaves open the
possibility that Odysseus is tempted to do that chambering himself (although the Greek does
not). The translation is canny, nonetheless. The state of Odysseus feverish soul is far from the
steadfast moral clarity of the Roman slave, or of Socrates in the snow. Odysseus is revolted and
fascinated by the epithumetic disorder he sees and hears in the house. He cooks himself with his
own fury, like a sausage by the fire (literally, a stuffed belly: gaster emplein at XX, 25-26)
as he listens to the sounds of feasting, drunkenness, and whoring. As his imagination stalks the
criminals from room to room, he plans their gory punishments in detail (as he recalls the
Cyclops cannibalism and gory punishment). Odysseus may be the only one in the house who
can string the bow, keeping his rational and irrational parts in tension, but his epic moderation
involves a fascination with the thing to be avoided that is noteworthy. (His famous desire to hear
the sirens without answering their call might be considered in this context.)67 Finally, since I will
argue that the self-control and self-knowledge that Leontius lacks involves a rapprochement of
one and many, it is perhaps worth noting here that Odysseus interior struggle is said to center on
a similar problem: how his single self could get the many shameless suitors into his grasp
(mounos en polesi at XX, 30).

67 Nelson notes that while Odysseus roiling inner struggle is less obviously about the problem of self-

knowledge than Leontius agonizing self-contempt, the allusion to the Cyclops episode (and Odysseus
identification as Nobody) brings the question of self-knowledge into the distant background at least.
See also Charles Griswold (2003), on the self-alienation and self-disgust involved in self-rule.

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The story of Leontius is too rich to prove beyond a doubt that the soul has three separate
parts that really stay separate at all.68 Why does Socrates choose such a richly problematic case?
Perhaps he means to provoke certain strong reactions in Glaucon that more persuasive but less
dramatic arguments would not arouse. With this vivid story, Socrates shames Glaucon into
agreement: You have never noticed (aesthesthai at 440b6, the same word used to describe
Leontius noticing corpses) desires like Leontius in anyone else, or in yourself? You would
never notice corpses, would you? Glaucon swears that such an interest would not even cross his
mind. He is not perversely curious: No, by Zeus! But what would be wrong about noticing a
similar conflict in himself or pondering such a conflict in another? Perhaps Glaucon should look
to see if there are perverse longings in his own soul.
Out of squeamishness or fear for his reputation or for some other reason, Glaucon misses
an opportunity for self-knowledge. Perhaps he should look at things that are so low and people
that are so conflicted and think about them. Or at least, he should admit that he has looked at
and considered such things: When Glaucon told the story of curious Gyges ancestor crawling
down into a barrow, peeping through the windows at the naked corpse,69 and slipping the ring
from its dead hand, Glaucons imagination went at least as far as Leontius eyes.70
Leontius contradictory soul, embracing the same thing it condemns, is a portrait of
pleonectic confusion. The divided soul is not just a theoretical problem, as Socrates treated it in
the first part of the argument. It is an existential problem, too. Socrates tells this dramatic
anecdote to highlight the existential drama of the divided soul, and perhaps to prompt the
following questions: Should we try to understand our own souls at all? Will the investigation of
68 As Roochnik (2003) notes.
69 As I picture the scene, the windows through which Gyges ancestor peers are the eyes of the hollow

bronze horse.
70 Glaucon claimed not fifteen lines earlier to know the Leontius story already, too (440a).

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soul conflicts lead to any satisfying conclusion? Will it lead to more contradiction (and more
suffering)? Is there a single I there to be found, underneath the passing desires and
contradictory voices? Is the soul a knowable unity at all?
Leontius needs some way to understand the pushing and pulling in his soul, some kind of
unitary account of his simultaneous, multiple aims. Moderation in this context (contradiction,
alienation, and even violence between psychic parts, tragic fascination with lack of agency,
death, and justice, taboo-breaking, and secret, voyeuristic pleonectic desire) will be something
more serious and needful than good manners, or knowing when to say no to another glass of
wine. Moderation will be nothing less than a necessary condition of the unity (that is, the being)
and knowability of the soul as it reaches out for various satisfactions, something closer to selfknowledge, the best of the definitions for sophrosune in the Charmides. This will be the main
subject of Chapter Three.
The need to see the soul all at once, as one (hama) is an existential matter, not just a
logical one. Leontius fury with himself (for wanting things he does not want) is the experiential
side of the abstract problem of the tripartite soul. Which desire expresses the real Leontius? How
can he explain himself to himself? The simultaneity of his opposite desires is a real problem (not,
as Roochnik argues, an exaggeratedly abstract puzzle). This real conflict cannot be explained
merely by introducing temporality (i.e., at one moment Leontius wants x, but later he wants y).
Rather, Leontius simultaneous aversion and attraction requires an explanation that takes up
Leontius whole soul altogether, hama, and tries to give a single account of itself.71

71 Roochnik (2003) argues that insoluble problems arise when one tries to examine the soul hama, at once,

out of time, logically dissected. I agree. The soul is best considered in time, stretching out along the paths that its
desire sets for it, not purely arithmetically, as a problem to be solved by abstract consideration based on the principle
of non-contradiction. And I agree that it is capable of a certain amount of self-contradiction that logical statements
cannot allow. However, that does not stop the soul from wanting to know itself hama, all at once, as it tries to
explain its conflicts to itself.
The tragic wisdom not to call anyone happy until he is dead is one expression of this problem. At any one
moment, a person may be desiring something contrary to or in line with the deepest desires of his being (what he

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But back to Glaucon: what does any of this have to do with his recantation? I think that
Glaucon hastens to deny his appetites for relishes and the like because Socrates has just shown
him hell itself: souls in torment, roasting in their own conflicting desires. It is the picture of the
divided, warring soul more than the severe logic that converts him. He is willing to sacrifice
anything (even luxuries of food and drink, even the dignity of sitting on couches) only to prevent
the terrible conflicts Socrates conjures here. Such nave expurgation of unnecessary appetite is
not actually possible, for reasons that will be discussed in the next section, but at least Glaucon is
now considering the question of desire, satisfaction, misery, justice and injustice in the proper
context: the individual soul, not the abstract argument.

2.3. Beyond the necessary

Appetite tends towards pleonexia. The Republic itself contains many moments that
illustrate this granite fact of human life, but it is hard to imagine that anyone within or without
the dialogue thinks that a proof is needed. Thus, Lorenz: Plato thinks that appetite has an inbuilt
tendency towards excess, in that the pleasures experienced in satisfying appetitive desires tend to
engender new, and even more intense, appetitive desires that aim at renewed or amplified
pleasurable experiences (Republic 4, 442 A 7-8). Reeve agrees (1988, 45-49).
My reading of the natural pleonexia of appetite differs slightly from this reading. As
discussed above, pleasure comes almost as an afterthought in Socrates first schematic
really loves). We are what we desire, but if the soul is understood only according to the fluctuations of desires,
then the soul is unknowable, a moving target. We could tell the whole history of a life, including every action we
can remember and every desire that ever flitted through the soul. But what is the unitary account that draws all these
highs and lows together? The consideration of the soul over time still does not provide us with a one out of manyit
does not explain the soul. And further, since it requires the death of the subject, there is no self-knowledge of the
soul on this model.
Perhaps it does not have to be either/or. Perhaps, as Aristotle has it, we can tell the story of one action that
displays the whole soul. The Leontius story is tragic in that sense. In order to take the measure of a full life
hamawe can look to a few shining actions (or perhaps just one) that indicate both the eros and the arithmos of a
certain soul in a limited period of time. This short tragic narrative would be somehow indicative of the whole soul
and its deepest, most characteristic desires. I will return to this possibility in Chapters Four and Five.

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investigation of appetite (439d). Necessary, even slavish acceptance of whatever presents itself,
whether it is good or not, is the focus there; and the brutishness of appetite that pulls the soul to
the object is more of an instinct for repletion than a yen for pleasure.
But Lorenz is of course correct that that appetite comes to be more and more about
pleasure. Over the course of the Republic, Socrates will call the epithumtikon the seat of all the
desires for more and more outlandish and intense pleasures. Certainly, then, the pursuit of
pleasure is a defining attribute of epithumia.
Why, then, does Socrates paint such a stark, brutal picture of appetite in Book IV (which
really seems to exclude pleasures, strictly speaking). And why does he then expand appetites
wants, objects, and aims? What is the nature of the pleonexia of appetite, such that appetite goes
beyond brutishness towards more human (and more potentially culpable and perverse) excesses?
The brutish side of appetite is its immediate acceptance of the desirable object (that is,
whatever happens to be in front of it); but appetite also learns to dream of things that are beyond
the immediate and necessary replenishments that satisfy animals. Socrates initial exaggerated
feint in the direction of necessity prepared Glaucon and the readers to understand that appetite is
essentially excessive, insofar as it is about pleasure at all, and to wonder why appetite wants to
be talked about in both waysas a simple drive for necessaries of life and also as a pleonectic
drive for goods and pleasures that go infinitely beyond the necessary.
In this section, I will clarify epithumias pleonectic overreaching, by considering the
context of necessary and unnecessary desires. I will argue that the distinction between these
kinds of desires (with regard to which the distinct soul and regime types of Books VIII and IX
are anatomized) cannot finally hold.72 This failure is intentional on Plato/Socrates part. To

72 Even within each class of the city (see Reeve 1988).

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foreshadow the conclusion somewhat oracularly: pleonexia means the failure of any distinction
between necessary and unnecessary goods and pleasures.

Glaucons classification of goods

Glaucon is the first to address the problem of necessary vs. unnecessary goods and
pleasures in a schematic way, although he uses other terms. In Book II (357b-358d), he claims
that there are three kinds of goods in human life. Some things are 1) good for their own sake, i.e.,
harmless pleasures, others are 2) good for their own sake and for their consequences, i.e.,
thinking, seeing, health, and still others are 3) good only for their consequences, i.e., exercise,
medicine, and crafts (drudgery). Glaucon wants Socrates to prove that justice belongs to the
second category, the finest kind: that which is good in itself and for its consequences.73
Glaucon gives no examples of the first kind of good, harmless pleasures. The harmless
pleasures would be good in themselves but with negligible consequences for good or ill. They
would be the most useless satisfactions. What might fall into that category? Does he mean eating
desserts? Playing games? Day-dreaming? Are the first-category goods easy to achieve? Do they,
like the third-category goods, require any kind of work? Glaucons silence on the matter invites
all these questions. This much is clear: Whatever these first-category goods, activities, or
pleasures are, we should be able to do without them. They are unnecessary, insofar as the
possession or enjoyment of them has no effect on the rest of life. (In particular, they do not
accomplish repletion or nourishment of the body.)

73 Glaucons inclusion of thinking (along with health) in the second category, suggests that thinking can be

useful and useless, necessary and unnecessary, good in itself and capable of being considered apart from its
consequences (and therefore capable of being considered apart from limitsas a potentially intemperate activity)
and capable of being considered as a means to certain ends (able to be curbed by considering the practical
consequences of certain thoughts).

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One might find examples of food and drink in all three categories. To illustrate: 1) A
person might stop for a beer after work not because he is thirsty but rather because beer is
pleasantly cool and frothy and precisely because the drinking of a beer is an end in itself and a
pleasant retreat from the relentless purposiveness of the rest of the business day in which nearly
every event is a necessary means to some other necessary event. 2) A tired, hungry child might
appreciate a good turkey sandwich because it is delicious and also because it will give him
energy to play a game of soccer. 3) A doctor might prescribe a bitter medicine that is unpleasant
to drink but produces some good in the body.
Glaucon will soon display his particular interest in first-category eating and drinking
when he complains that Socrates deprives the citizens of opson at 372c. With this little addition,
he introduces a pattern of elaborations that starts with a few little culinary pleasures and ends in
many great pleasures of a very different kind (including the pleasure of the nourishment of
knowledge).

Necessary and unnecessary desires

The term opson arises long before Glaucons interruption, however, and in a context that
already questions the distinction between necessary and unnecessary pleasures and goods. At
332c-d, Socrates suggests that one ought try to understand justice (here, giving to each person
his due) as correct feeding. The just person gives what is fitting or owed to each person in the
same way that doctors give fitting foods, drinks, and medicines to the sick and chefs give
seasonings to meat (hdusmata to opsois). Socrates says that these delicacies are owed, fitting,
or justly ladled onto the meat as if the meat deserved or needed them.74 But since opsa, meats or
other fancy foods, are already unnecessary, how much more unnecessary are sauces or

74 See Rosen (2005, 32).

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seasonings added to the meat? These pleasing sauces or seasonings are like the paintings of
couches in Book X, superfluous twice over.75
That is the argument from theory. But from the standpoint of experience, Socrates is
right: Sometimes just the right amount of pepper and salt or the perfect reduction really can fit
the meat, as if it needed just the right treatment from the chef, resulting in a dish that is perfect
of its kind. The twice-superfluous hdusmata (especially if they are reductions made of the meat
they embellish) can make the meat taste more like itself, in fact.
How to bring theory and experience together on this point? Pleasure is theoretically
unnecessary to the life of the body: Pleasure is to nourishment as sauce is to meat.76 One can be
nourished by food and drink without being pleased by it. One will not drop down dead because
the chicken was insipid. Good flavor is not necessary, strictly speaking. But what do we mean by
necessary strictly speaking? Pleasure is not necessary for life. But it is necessary for living
well. To live well, as a human being rather than a brute, requires some pleasures. What kinds of
pleasures are necessary to make life worth living? How many of these pleasures do we need?
How intense must they be? How often do we have to have them? The meaning of necessary is
plastic. Thought and experience may give different answers.
Socrates makes this point in his several investigations of necessary (anankaios) and
unnecessary desires, pleasures, and goods. He first defines necessary desires at the end of
Book VIII, in the context of the decline of the oligarchic man into a democratic one: Wouldnt
those we arent able to turn aside justly be called necessary, as well as all those whose
satisfaction benefits us (phelousin)? We are by nature quite compelled to long for both of these,
arent we? (558d-e).
75 See Chapter One for an extended discussion of the nature of opson.
76 Except perhaps as an indication of health; the ability to experience pleasure from time to time might be a

natural gauge of proper bodily function, Roochnik notes.

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Naturally, we want the things our bodies needbut by nature we also want things that
are goodthat benefit us by giving us pleasure. In other words, it is human nature, not human
perversion, to want more than the bare minimum.77 One might say that for human beings, as
opposed to animals, the bare minimum is more than the bare minimum. Our natures compel us to
call at least some strictly unnecessary pleasures and goods necessary. The most necessitous
city (369d) is at the theoretical pinnacle of human self-sufficiency and psychic health but a
moments truthful consideration reveals it to be a sorry little city of pigs, not of human beings,
not so much necessary as needy, as Socrates pun suggests. Yet this neediest city is unaware of
its own lack, and supposedly untroubled by the sorts of promptings that are familiar to Glaucon.
The category of unnecessary desires is uncertain, too. Socrates first defines them not
according to their essence, but rather, according to their eradicability: Unnecessary desires could
be removed by practice from youth onward, and in any case, do no good (or even possible
harm) when present. These would include Glaucons first-category goods, which have no
consequences, and presumably, it would include opson and all the other pleasures we should be
able to learn not to love.
Socrates finds it necessary to address unnecessary desires again before he describes the
genesis of the tyrant out of the democratic man (571a-d):
Of all the unnecessary pleasures and desires, there are, in my opinion, some that are
hostile to law and that probably come to be in everyone; but, when checked by the
laws and the better desires, with the help of argument, in some human beings they
are entirely gotten rid of or only a few weak ones are left, while in others stronger
and more numerous ones remain.
Which ones do you mean?

77 As an example of an opson-free life, consider that age-lengthening starvation diets that apparently give

the body only what is precisely calculated to keep the body alive may allow mice and human beings to live longer,
without living well (beautifully, graciously, pleasurably).

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Those [] that wake up in sleep when the rest of the soulall that belongs to the
calculating, tame, and ruling part of itslumbers, while the beastly and wild part,
gorged with food or drink, is skittish and, pushing sleep away, seeks to go and satisfy
its dispositions. You know that in such a state it dares to do everything as though it
were released from, and rid of, all shame and prudence. And it doesnt shrink from
attempting intercourse, as it supposes, with a mother or with anyone else at all
human beings, gods, and beasts; or attempting any foul murder at all, and there is no
food from which it abstains. And, in a word, it omits no act of folly of
shamelessness.78
Unnecessary desires, initially defined as eradicable, now fall into two subcategories: hostile to
but also generally submissive to law, and hostile to law and also ineradicable. In other words, the
two subcategories of eradicable desire are 1) mostly eradicable and 2) not eradicable. Socrates is
clearly contradicting himself.79
Socrates goes even further out of his way to blur the distinction between necessary and
unnecessary desires when he explicitly includes opson among the necessary, and calls the
necessary both healthy and beneficial: Wouldnt the desire of eating as long as it is for health
and good condition (euexias), the desire of mere bread and relishbe necessary? (559b). Here,
both bare necessities (bread) and gourmet delights (relish) are necessary, since both contribute to
a good condition. But where is the end of that question? Almost anything good could
conceivably contribute to a better condition. Why not one more chapter, one more beautiful
sunset, one more lap around the park, one more glass of wine? Granted, euexia, with its physical
connotations, is not exactly the same as eudaimonia, but it is still difficult to say where the limits
lie for either. Socrates reminds his listeners at one point that there is even such a thing as too
much concern with good health (407b). But how much is too much?
Here, the necessary for man includes not just what will keep a man alive but also
whatever promotes a good condition: relishes, couches, feasting, philosophizing, and on and on.

78 For a reading of this rich passage in the context of defining sophrosune, see 3.2.
79 Reeves division of desires does not recognize this contradiction.

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Living well is necessary for human beings. Or again, the good and beautiful things and our
thoughtful but free engagement with them are necessary for human beings (as necessary as mere
bread). There will always be the danger of immoderation (the line between necessary and
unnecessary pleasures is not firm), but the danger is worth risking: In fact, as I will argue in
Chapter Five, it is the whole risk for human beings.
Socrates notes in this passage that the desire for bread, at least, is presumably necessary
on both counts, in that it is beneficial and that the lack of it capable of putting an end to life.
Adeimantus agrees. In the line that follows, Socrates explicitly and pointedly extends the
category of the necessary to include goods and pleasures that were originally considered
unnecessary: And so is the desire for relish, if in any way it is beneficial to good condition
(559b). This is an astonishing extension. Can a lack of relish be capable of putting an end to life?
We wont die if we dont have opson.
But what about the desire that goes beyond toward sorts of food other than this, of
which the many can be rid if it is checked in youth and educated, and is harmful to
the body and to the soul with respect to prudence and moderation? Wouldnt it
rightly be called unnecessary?
Over-reaching now applies to other foods, other than the other to bread (relish), that are
harmful to body and soul, so that Socrates himself has expanded the argument beyond the limits
set earlier. There is no meaningful essential distinction between necessary and unnecessary
desires and goods.80

80 For these reasons, the common assumption among those who argue for the practicability of Kallipolis,

that those who are sufficiently educated can simply avoid unnecessary desires and satisfy the necessary ones, as if
there were a clear distinction between the two, is mistaken. As Lorenz: Even in the well-disposed, virtuous soul,
reason and spirit will need to watch over appetite, and will on occasion need to weed out inappropriate desires that
appetite will give rise to (Republic 4, 442 A 4-B 3; Republic 9, 589 A 6-B 6). Reeve argues similarly, in greater
depth (1988, 43-50). See also Lear (Kraut 1997, 72-73). All three of these interpretations recognize that appetite is
naturally pleonectic, but they do not consider the problems of pleonexia in detail, especially where the question of
necessity arises.

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This is not say that Socrates encouragement to suppress, strangle, and starve bad
appetites is merely ironic. I take him at his word: We should try to curb our worst desires.
However, one should also take Socrates at his word when he says that this fight will be difficult,
if not endless. In the Myth of Er, we learn that the struggle with protean appetite continues even
after death. So, in short, sophrosune will not be a simple matter of recognizing and discarding
unnecessary desires.81
Finally, to address a trope that often arises in commentary on the Platonic concept of
desire: It is common to speak about human desires of all kinds as forms of neediness or
poverty (penia, as Socrates has it in the Symposium). But needinessnecessary desire for
necessary goodsis not a sufficient description of the human experience of the desires for food
and drink, never mind the desires that complicate mating, making money, making and collecting
art, curiosity, wonder, or philosophy. Neediness implies objects without which the
impoverished cannot continue to live, just as the beggar must have bread and water. We observe
this distinction in English when we ask, do you need it, or do you want it? The latter implies
that we can survive without the object, or that the object is not due to us.
Aesthetic and wisdom-seeking impulses aim at Glaucons first-category goods,
pleasures desired for their own sake (the opsa of human experience). Our sense of poverty in the
face of the beautiful, true, and good, and the otherwise perfect does not prove that these goals of
desire are somehow due to us, or useful to us, or fill a certain lack in the human being. It would
be strange to say that we have need of an experience of these perfect realities that clearly outstrip
our finite nature.
Yet we are drawn to these unnecessary pleasures, as beggars to bread. The possession of
a superfluous beauty or insightthe satisfaction of curiosity or wonderthis is in a way a

81 As I will argue in detail in Chapter Three.

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necessary thing.82 The desire to behold the good, true, and beautiful is neither a trivial or
superfluous matter, but is it not a matter of necessary replenishment, either.83
To put the problem paradoxically, human beings need to possess some unnecessary
pleasures. They may even need to possess the most unnecessary pleasures.84 The Promethean
difficulty will lie in deciding which excesses are too harmful to pursue and which others are still
worth pursuing.85

2.4 Desire for Gain

To this point the chapter has dealt almost exclusively with epithumia for food and drink.
This section will consider Socrates eventual extension of epithumia to money in Book IX
(580e). Although there is obviously some interpretive risk in skipping so far ahead in the
dialogue, I think that Socrates final treatment of the appetitive part of the soul as the gainloving part (from philokerdeia), brings pleonexia into sharper focus and of course it indicates
Socrates logical goal in the overall argument about desire. To preview his final judgment on
gain-loving: Without rational guidance, epithumia outgrows its qualitative interest in certain

82 We might call it an erotic rather than a geometrical necessity (as Glaucon does at 458d).
83 Chapter Four will take up the problems I have merely introduced here in more detail.
84 To paraphrase Heidegger, this going beyond is what it is to be human.
85 A final note on the birth of unnecessary desires: Kass argues (in quite another context) that it is free

rationality that opens the doors to unnecessary pleasures, insofar as it expands the natural/animal desires for basic
necessities:
Because we have free choicethat is, because our desires are not simply given by instinctand because
our reason, through its working on our imagination, influences and alters natural appetites, human appetite increases
beyond what is necessary and good for us. Precisely because we are rational and hence, free, we can freely desire
things that are harmful to life, health, and well-being. Thus, a proscriptive limitation on human eating and human
omnivorousness metaphorically (and perfectly) highlights the dangers freedom poses to healthy natural desire
(2003, 65-66).
Socrates treatment of animal/instinctual desire is somewhat different; animal desire, according to Book IV,
is just as potentially disastrously open to any object as are more cunning desires. This explains why Socrates can
later call the cleverest, most sophisticated tyrant a (mere) wolf.

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kinds of satisfactions and distinct goals and becomes a self-frustrating appetite for the finally
meaningless goal of more quantity in general (finally erasing the distinction between discrete and
continuous quantity as well, as units of currency cease to be meaningful measures of the rich
mans substance.)
As for the third [part of the soul], because of its many forms, we had no peculiar
name to call it by, but we named it by what was biggest and strongest in it. For we
called it the desiring part [epithumtikon] on account of the intensity of the desires
concerned with eating, drinking, sex, and all their followers; and so, we also called it
the money-loving part, because such desires are most fulfilled by means of money.
(580e)
Socrates oversimplifies somewhat: Although the desire of the gain-loving person for
money might seem at first glance to be a very different sort of desire, or merely a secondary tool
by which the real first-order desires are sated, in fact the love of money reveals the truth about
the desires for these first-order things. Socrates introduces wealth as the key to the satisfaction of
all the other desires (money purchases the things that satisfy hunger, thirst, and lust),86 but it
becomes clear that the formless, nameless epithumtikon desires increase for the sake of increase
alone. The immediate love of moneypure quantification of gainis in fact a perfect
expression of epithumia, not just its tool.
One sees this most clearly in the psychological portrait of the miserly oligarch, for whom
money has become an end in itself, and not at all a means for getting other pleasures, and in the
portrait of the dissolute pleasure-seeker, as well. They both love gain in itself. The pleasure
seeker wants more, bigger, newer, more intense, more long-lasting, more exotic pleasures, and
leaves those he has already experienced as rungs on a ladder. He wants what is next only because
it is more than what he had before. Similarly, the miser just wants more; his money is the proof
that he indeed has more than he had before. The appetites of both of these types are blind to the
86 With respect to the last, perhaps Socrates has in mind the expensive perfumes and necklaces that are the

currency of courtesans. See 373a and 420a.

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qualities of the things gained. Quite reasonably, since, as argued above, under the feverish eye of
epithumia, qualities shift, and the same thing that was unnecessary a moment before becomes
necessary, and the pleasurable fails to continue to please. Quantity appears to be the only secure
measure of satisfaction (e.g., ten lovers, five steaks, 40-year-old wine, 2.3 billion). Of course, the
distinctness of quantity is an illusion, too.
Socrates said earlier (in Book IV) that the appetitive part of the soul always says Yes!
no matter what the quality of the thing on offer, and if much is available, it says yes to much.
The love of money is thus the apotheosis of irrational epithumia: perfect blindness to the
qualities of the things it loves while always wanting more of them (586a). Money itself is
symbolic of gainit proves that one is better off than formerlybut it is hardly a thing in itself;
it is perfect quantity, purged of qualitative difference. Wealth for its own sake, wealth in the
bank, not spent on wine and dinner and houses and art and anything else that gives pleasure, is an
irrational thing to love directly, as a number of units, the value of which cannot be determined
apart from what it can buy. This is the misers aphrosune.
Further, as with every species of epithumia, dissatisfaction is the rule. There is no
satisfying the desire for money, because it admits of no greatest amount. Satisfaction is not to
be understood mathematically (Socrates claim that the philosopher is 729 times happier than the
tyrant notwithstanding).87
One might argue the benefits of philokerdeia as a more stable, conventional, and cultured
expression of epithumia.88 Love of money, then, would be better than the wilder, more
immediate appetites for food and drink that are presumably sublimated in philokerdeia.

87 See Roochnik (2003) on overconfidence in quantitative measure.

88 As Lear (1992) and Lorenz (2006).

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Therefore, insofar as philokerdeias goals are long-term (indeed, infinitely so), lovers of money
are famously conservative and opposed to change.
But one can argue that although love of money is a cause of stability in the state, in the
soul, it is more contradictory and pleonectically frustrating than lust or gluttony. Logically, there
can be no satisfaction of it, since the love of money is the love of a means that never becomes a
means. In this sense, too, it is a perfect expression of epithumia, which is essentially incapable of
means-ends reasoning.89 Direct love of moneylove of a means as an endimplies (as in VIII)
the frustration of the very desires for which money was supposed to be a tool of satisfaction.
Obviously, the satisfactions of food and drink are somehow more distinct than those of
money-making. The stomach can only hold so much food. Barns can only hold so much grain.
But money, which is essentially a quantitative measure of value, recorded in silver or paper or
finally in digital code, is finally not anything solid at all. Because the body and even material
space offer no defining limits to the pursuit of wealth, it is difficult to define what financial
satiety might be. The pure and indistinct plural goal of philokerdeia is chrmata, needed heaps
of things, whatever they may be.90
No one can deny the short-lived satisfaction of a good bank receipt. But where there is no
highest or best number, there is no being full. There is no intrinsic reason (in the numbers)
why satisfaction should not turn to dissatisfaction, wherever pure quantities are concerned. The
same numbers that originally gave so much pleasure cease to please, and in fact, one might argue
that the logic of philokerdeia excludes the matters of pleasure and satisfaction. It wants the most
expensive wine not in order to drink it but as an investment, that is, because of its quantitative
value quite apart from its quality. Taste and enjoyment become more and more distant concerns

89 As Lorenz (2006) also argues.

90 David Roochnik drew my attention to this point.

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to the true lover of gain. This indefinitely open-ended desire for more can even disregard
pleasure (as in Socrates account of the stingy oligarch, who might, like Scrooge, prefer the
discomfort of a cold house and a questionable supper to the pleasures that his money could buy.)
This is obviously, even proverbially true about the love of money. But it is also true about
any other desires, of which the love of money is simply the most extreme and illustrative
example. Pleonexia, the natural tendency of appetite, is the universal law of flux in the soul. It
prevents satisfaction (since greediness never stops to enjoy what it has) and self-knowledge. The
experience of increasing greed (whether for money or for any other thing) can be unpleasant and
confusing.91

2.5 Pleonexias contradictions

To close this chapter, I will concentrate on pleonexia itself as Socrates speaks directly
about it. In particular, I want to show the close relation between pleonexia and contradiction in
the soul. Commentators tend to be more interested in pleonexia at the level of the city, as a sin
against just distribution of goods among the citizens.92 But as most recognize (if only in
passing), pleonexia is also a personal vice.
Burnyeat is helpful here: Thrasymachus assumed, and Glaucon did not deny, that what
lies deepest in human nature is pleonexia. This term covers both the desire for more and more
and the desire for more than others have. It is both greed and competitiveness, all rolled into one.
The doctrine of the divided soul separates these two aspects: greed is a vice of appetite,
assertiveness a vice of spirit (2006, 20). We know what pleonexia does in the city when one

91 Augustine calls it the lash of appetite that drives the soul forward without rest or satisfaction

(Enchiridion, VIII.24).
92 See Reeve 1988, Allen 2000.

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spirited citizen squares off against another for the sake of honor, reputation, and victory.
Pleonexia is the author of strife between spirited citizens who claim more than their fair share of
available goods and powers, to increase their own possessions, capabilities, and reputations.93
But what does pleonexia do in the individual soul? Certainly it is possible to be greedy by
oneself. But one might argue in addition, that absent other souls to vie with, the pleonectic soul
vies with itself, that is, that it always wants more that it had before, despising its former state,
and it wants more than its reasonable part had previously allowed. Pleonexia in the soul means
conflict with oneself.
In Glaucons introduction to the story of Gyges ancestors ring, Glaucon denies that
pleonexia in the soul leads to any such inner conflict. When we take the individual soul by
himself (without any other witnesses), he argues, greed is immediately acted upon without a
moment of hesitation or shame either before or after the crime. Since the soul is not visibly vying
with others for limited resources, the soul takes whatever it pleases in peace. Pleonexia disturbs
the soul not a whit:
Give each, the just man and the unjust, license to do whatever he wants, while we
follow and watch where his desire will lead each. We would catch the just man redhanded (ep autophri) going the same way (eis tauton ionta) as the unjust man out
of a desire to get the better (dia tn pleonexian) (359c)
Socrates will have to prove to Glaucon that he is wrong and that pleonexia (or, injustice) are in
fact unpleasant, unhappy states, whether or not anyone catches us exercising these vices. He will
have to prove that the desire for more and more means painful conflict in the soul. An earlier
section of this chapter discussed Socrates presentation of Leontius pleonexia as a persuasive
rhetorical argument against Glaucon. The following section, by contrast, will consider Socrates
more abstract and schematic arguments about pleonexia as a harmful and disturbing state of soul.

93 Such strife is not always detrimental, according to Hesiod (Works and Days, 11-25)

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The argument with Thrasymachus

The argument with Thrasymachus (336b-350c) is the first place many scholars look to
understand the meaning of pleonexia. Here Thrasymachus famously defines justice as the
advantage of the stronger (kreittonos sumpheron at 338c), by which he means that whatever
group of citizens already has the greatest power, that group sets down laws that will benefit it
(and not the ruled) and calls them just (338e). The stronger keeps control of strength and
advantage and seeks to increase it. One might expect that the desire for more would be strongest
among those who lack advantage, but Thrasymachus view of power-struggle is more interesting
and perhaps more realistic than this. In his view, the desire for power and advantage does not
produce a master/slave dialectic or a cyclical alternation of power, such that the strong become
weak, and the weak, desiring more, become strong (as in Herodotus and Hegel). Rather, as
Thrasymachus describes it, pleonexia is most fierce among those who already possess the most
(the kreittonos).
To repeat, according to Thrasymachus introduction to the matter, the possession of
goods and powers does not satisfy desire. On the contrary, the possession of goods and powers
produces the desire for more goods and powers. The desire to protect present possessions and
powers becomes a desire for more possessions and powers. Whoever has more (whoever is
bigger) should get more and (thereby) get bigger. And, as Glaucon will argue, when he takes up
Thrasymachus cause in Book II, every human being is subject to this iron law of expansion: If
chance gives anyone the opportunity to get the better of someone else, and to take what is the
others, he will do it if he possibly can.94

94 A. E. Taylor (1964, 269) claims that Thrasymachus and Socrates argument about pleonexia is terribly

misunderstood, by which (I think) he means that it is taken too seriously by some readers. Bluff is part of
Thrasymachus demonstration; it is the swagger that is natural to human beings. Taylor argues that Socrates truly
does do away with the immoralist doctrine propounded here by Thrasymachus (or at least, that he offers the seed
of the perennial argument against immoralism), for whom exaggeration is a way of speaking: Bluster is a
mannerism with him, as it is in fact with some successful advocates (268). (One might argue that Agathons

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Thrasymachus demonstrates this pleonexia from the first (336b), where Socrates
describes him taking over the argument by force, seizing the speakers role unjustly, after many
tries: Now Thrasymachus had many times started out to take over the argument in the midst of
our discussion, but he had been restrained by the men sitting near him, who wanted to hear the
argument out. But when we paused and I said this, he could no longer keep quiet; hunched up
like a wild beast, he flung himself at us as if to tear us to pieces.
Thrasymachus accuses Socrates of the same pleonexia. Socrates (he says) pursues
philosophical discussions because he desires to refute his challengers and to be lauded by all
(336c). Socrates has the appearance of a truth-seeker but underneath he is as unjust and hungry
for advantage as every other man, including Thrasymachus. Socrates apparently sincere claim to
pursue a thing more precious than a great deal of gold (336e) is merely ironic (337a).95
Without going into great detail about Socrates and Thrasymachus much-discussed
arguments, two points must be made: First (and this may seem simple-minded), Thrasymachus
loses because he ignores the distinction between the just man and the unjust man.96 Second,
Thrasymachus perturbation upon losing is an excellent picture of the dissatisfactions and
conflicts of pleonexia.
How does Socrates win the argument? At 349b, he asks Thrasymachus whether the just
man tries to get the better of the unjust man and the just man alike. Thrasymachus says that he
does, and implies that he ought to be lauded for his struggles to take most of all for himself. In
other words, the unjust man is to be preferred to the just man because he tries to get the better of

exaggerations in the Symposium exhibit a successful bluster of another stripe.) According to Taylor, Glaucon and
Adeimantus offer the genuine version of Thrasymachus argument.
95 For a fuller discussion of this apparent likeness between Socrates and Thrasymachus in the context of

tyranny, see 5.2.

96 Thrasymachus, the wild beast, seizes upon the present argument without discriminating (as brutal

appetite in Book IV). I will take up this moment in more detail in Chapter Five.

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every other person, without making a distinction between just victims and unjust victims. For his
purposes, there is no distinction between just and unjust. One can begin to divine Thrasymachus
failure already: The unjust man is better and different than the just man, but at the same time, the
unjust man (like Thrasymachus) ought to ignore the distinction between the just and unjust.
By means of an apparently shallow argument that aligns like and unlike things (hinging
on the unjust mans disregard of the distinction between the just and unjust), Socrates cobbles up
an equation between the just and goodness and wisdom, concluding that the unjust must be
vicious and stupid. It is a successful game that Thrasymachus loses because of something more
serious: his choice not to distinguish between just men and unjust ones while preferring the latter
to the former. Like the democratic or brutish man (discussed earlier in the chapter) or like the
dubiously moderate man who ignores hunger and thirst, Thrasymachus tries to shake his head at
any distinctions and to treat all as if they were of equal quality, differing only in the degree of
their power. Socrates takes advantage and gets the better of Thrasymachus.
Thrasymachus produces a wonderful quantity of sweat (350d) and blushes. We do not
know whether to attribute these symptoms to the hot weather or Thrasymachus sense of
humiliation. Perhaps Thrasymachus feels like Leontius, ashamed of his failure. It is hard to tell.
At 350e, Thrasymachus will not confess that he is beaten, and in fact, he promises never to be
beaten since from now on he will just nod yes to whatever Socrates says next (like the appetitive
part of the soul in IV). He will pretend that nothing Socrates says can disturb him. (Again, as
Agathon in the Symposium, he will agree without really agreeing, as if the whole exchange
were beneath him, since he really does not care to hold fast to any distinctions.)
Thrasymachus frustrated desire appears to discomfit him (as he shouts and sweats and
blushes) but it is hard to see into his soul and to ascertain whether he is himself a proof that
pleonexia causes perturbation and conflict. We do know that he is not satisfied with the logos
heretofore (350d). It is difficult to imagine what kind of logos could ever satisfy him. If he had
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bested Socrates in the argument, one imagines that he would then have to keep up his reputation
and guard his advantage, perhaps seeking out other interlocutors to crush them too or to tell them
the story of how he bested Socrates. In any case, his restless blustering does not seem to aim at
an ultimately attainable goal.
Socrates offers other examples to show what pleonexia must mean in the soul. At 359c,
Glaucon makes the case that the unjust and just man are one and the same, and equally subject to
pleonexia, given the chance. Great possessions seem small to the pleonekts (442a-b), whose
desires grow and change as he himself grows bigger. At 571b-c, pleonectic epithumia
paradoxically postponesor even ignoresits own satisfaction: The beastly and wild part,
gorged with food or drink [] seeks to go and satisfy its dispositions. Being full is the
beginning, not the end, of the souls hankering. Perhaps Aristotle is alluding to this puzzling
aspect of appetite when he says that the glutton wants nothing better than a long neckso that he
can perpetually be in the process of being satisfied without ever arriving at the end. No wonder,
then, that pleonexia is a state of confusion: The soul recognizes that it wants and does not want
the satisfying objects of its desire at the same time.
Finally, pleonexia invites violent instability into the city and soul (585e-586b). Fighting
others to get the upper hand and a greater portion of riches and power puts ones own substance
and life at risk.97

97 One might add a fourth contradictory state of appetite, which Plato does not call pleonexia explicitly:

When human beings want food and drink, they want something more than replenishment and something more than
the pleasure of satisfying the body. The table is also about our families (our mothers especially), about our culture,
as well as about style, dignity, and beauty, so that when we sit down to the table, our desires aim far beyond it
(seeking to recapture past pleasures, too). This seems to be a common and appropriate pleonexia, although
potentially insatiable and in need of some tempering curb.
See Brillat-Savarin: At the same time ones soul concerns itself with things connected with its own needs;
memory recalls dishes that have pleased the taste; imagination pretends to see them; there is something dreamlike
about this process (1949, 57).

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To say yes to the semper-affirmative pleonexia of the appetites is to say yes to unending
contradiction. Perhaps it is to approve of that state of contradiction. For a certain kind of human
being, tragic division of soul is itself the truth about the soul, and a state to be enjoyed.98 But as
far as Socrates is concerned, the pleonectic soul is the most wretched, full of confusion and
regret (577c-d, 578b).

Pleonexia and soul-types

But perhaps the matter is not so dire. Depending on the psychological type under
consideration, perhaps the appetites are more or less amenable to curbs or even cures. The tyrant
would be the most pathological type, most susceptible to pleonexia, and perhaps incurable. The
philosopher would be the least pathological type and least susceptible to pleonexia. Between
these would fall the democratic, oligarchic, and timocratic natures, in order of decreasing
pathology and pleonexia. Reeve (1988) argues along these lines:
Each of these types, including the philosophic man who is not a philosopher-king
(496d9-497b2), is pathological. [] But in the Kallipolis a normal type corresponds
to each of them. Corresponding to tyrannical, democratic, and oligarchic people are
the producers. [] Corresponding to timocratic people are the guardians. []
Corresponding to philosophic people are the philosopher kings. [] Within the
Kallipolis money-lovers and honour-lovers, who would otherwise be ruled by
appetite and aspiration respectively, are ruled by reasonnot internally by their own
rational parts (only the philosopher-kings manage that) but externally by the reason
of their philosopher rulers.
Reeve goes on to posit a separate satisfaction according to class: Then, instead of having a
desire structure that is pathologically self-frustrating, each psychological type will fully achieve
its own primary ends, its own happiness (586d4-e2). Depending on what you like (according to

98 I will discuss this tragic temperament in more detail in Chapter Four.

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this reading), perfect satisfaction is possible within the laws and under the guidance of rational
rule.
My disagreement with this interpretation centers on two points: First, in his eight-fold
division of desires (1988, 46), Reeve treats the soul-types and their inclinations as permanent
distinctions, while Socrates presents them as stages of decline, so that one is always becoming
the other.99 I grant that pleonexia would be less of a problem if souls really had certain
immovable characters, but Socrates insists that souls are in motion and always subject to decline.
Thus, for example, the aristocratic youth becomes an timocratic man (549a-b) as he grows up to
vie with his father, the timocrat becomes the oligarch, the oligarch becomes the democratic man,
and the democratic man becomes a tyrant, and as Socrates says colorfully, the worst tyrant
becomes a wolf.100 As Strauss notes (with some bemusement), Socrates and Glaucon are more
interested in the genesis of justice and injustice than in a pure definition of each state.101 The
increasing pleonexia of each declining soul-type takes on all sorts of forms as the soul itself
changes. Chapter Five will argue that the shape-changing souls of the final myth are Socrates
final statement about the radical, constant changeability of the human soul.
Second, Leontius is a challenge to Reeves trust in rational rule to (nearly) eliminate
pleonexia. Leontius mindfulness of rational rule (as he curses his eyes, which ought not to look)
simply increases his frustration and dissatisfaction. Further, rational curbs introduce another,
perhaps more maddening pleonexia, a desire to transgress the rational curb simply in order to do
what is forbidden. Plato is certainly aware of this particular sickness of soul, for all the talk in
other dialogues about the impossibility of willingly doing what is bad. Later in the Republic,

99 Somewhat similar to Hesiods stages of decline the Works and Days.

100 For a discussion of this metamorphosis, see 5.1.
101 1964, 86

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Socrates will say that the tyrant leaves nothing evil undone as if he aimed at complete
transgression of every type. Surely some terrible, savage, and lawless form of desires is in every
man, even in some of us who seem to be ever so measured.
Appetites for food, drink, sex, and money tend toward pleonexia, sometimes becoming
perfect expressions of it, as I have argued above. Pleonexia explains the motions and conflicts
of appetite. Indeed pleonexia is the reason for the great diversity of objects pursued by a single
part of the soul. Whatever seems necessary and satisfactory at one time will certainly seem to be
too little a little later.
To summarize the conclusions of this chapter: Why is the discussion of epithumia such a
hard swim? Because 1) appetite is naturally subject to pleonexia. the indiscriminating desire for
more and better. Its aimsbeyond pleasureare difficult to pinpoint. It does not stay the
same. Because 2) appetite is passively and indiscriminately open to the satisfaction of the
moment. It cannot make plans about future desires or gauge its present satisfaction. It cannot
understand itself. Nor, 3) is the problem solved through diligent diaresis of unnecessary and
necessary desires and pleasures. Socrates lets slip in several obvious ways that these are
moveable categories. Therefore it is difficult to speak about epithumia clearly, or even to name
it. Like the soul that it characterizes, epithumia is amorphous, aimless, unprincipled. None of its
interests or objects is finally definitive. The pleonekts, like the desiring part that leads him
along, is indistinct, a node of disparate and conflicting interests rather than a distinct being. And
as the figures of Leontius and Thrasymachus demonstrate, the dissatisfactions of the appetitive
soul are dual: The pleonectic person cannot satisfy his growing desires nor can he understand his
own mutable self.
Epithumia as it has been described in this chapter will be answered by a complex virtue,
sophrosune, the main topic of the next chapter.

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CHAPTER THREE

THE ACTIVITY OF SOPHROSUNE

Sphrosun is a notoriously elusive virtue, rendered variously by translators (as, for
example, moderation, temperance, self-discipline, self-control, self-mastery or soundmindedness) and variously defined by Socrates and others throughout the Platonic corpus. At
certain moments in certain dialoguesin the Symposium and Gorgias, and at certain moments in
the Republic, for examplethe virtue looks to be nothing other than restraint of the all-toohuman desires for food, drink, sex, and wealth.1 Defined alternatively as minding ones own
business at one point in the Charmides, sophrosune looks to be the same as justice in the
Republic.2 Again, according to another definition in the former dialogue, sophrosune aims to be
a much more universal wisdom of wisdoms. In short, sophrosune might easily be confused with
at least two of the other cardinal virtues and its activities might range from the ordinary business
of keeping sober to the exalted task of knowing oneself and ones place in the cosmos.
Within the Republic itself, sophrosune may be espied under several forms. One might
organize these divergent definitions and images in several effective ways; for the moment,
perhaps a rough division under the familiar headings appetitive and rational will suffice.
Perhaps, as some commentators have argued, there is one sophrosune for controlling appetite and
another for knowing oneself.3 The objects of ordinary sophrosune might be described as peace

1 Though not in the only dialogue aimed explicitly at defining sophrosune, the Charmides. See Alan

Pichanick (2005, 4). Several points in this chapter, especially, are prompted by questions raised in his excellent
reading of that dialogue.
2 See Brann (2004) and Pichanick (2005) on this similarity.
3 See Pichanick (2005, 8) on these two levels of sophrosune. Annas identifies two poles of sophrosune:

deferential and self-controlled behavior and self-knowledge, where the latter looks like the intellectual basis

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in the body through the restraint of physical appetites in harmony with better appetites, whereas
philosophical sophrosune, if that is the right term, might strive with rational desires
themselves, to restrain and harmonize them for the sake of the sphrns stable unified being, a
necessary condition of self-knowledge (since there must be some self to know and to be known).
The present chapter attempts to describe the activities of the former, ordinary sophrosune,
while Chapter Five will look to complete the analogy.
Ordinary sophrosune is itself divisible into two opposite notions: expurgation (katharsis)
and harmonization (harmonia).4 The moderate person is so named either because he keeps
himself pure from low, unhealthy, or extreme desires and their objects, banishing them from his
life, or he is called moderate because he balances his high and low pleasures, living in
measured harmony with all. The tension between these clearly opposed notions of moderation
(katharsis and harmonia) will be a main topic of this chapter. I will argue that according to the
Republic, sophrosune is something more active than expurgation of low desires and their objects
in the soul and city.5 In order to make this point, Plato offers several instances of pseudomoderation, a near-virtue based entirely on the model of expurgation, that is often mistaken by

of all the virtues (1981, 115). Cf. Adam, who notes that Socrates various treatments of sophrosune fall along a
continuum from more general, common-sense descriptions to more scientific definitions (See note for 389d27).
4 See Aryeh Kosmans striking essay on the two opposite activities of justice in Ferrari (2007): 116. One

might argue that collection and division are prime activities of sophrosune, too. Kosman remarks, as well, on the
particularly elusive quality of sophrosune.
5 On this point, see Nussbaum (1986, 158), who implies that this harmony is only a euphemism for

expurgation (or weaning from lesser attachments). Of course harmonization of soul could hardly be difficult for
someone who has already banished all but the highest desires. I hope that the present chapter will answer this very
reasonable objection.
And on the topic of euphemism, I would be remiss not to indicate here at the very start the very bodily,
ordinary sense of katharsis that accompanies any high-faluting philosophical, moral, or religious secondary concepts
of purification: the Greek word refers also to a purgation of the bowels by laxative or enema. It is important to keep
this digestive meaning in mind so as not to underestimate purgation as a matter of tidying, or improving the city
and soul; in fact, purgation is a radical attempt to be free from that which defiles and sickens the city and soul, the
value of which off-scourings is precisely nothing.
On katharsis in Aristotle and Freud, particularly, see Lear 2001 and 1998.

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readers of the Republic and characters in it for the real thing. Careful attention to this false
version of sophrosune shows the difference, however. Only true sophrosune, I will argue, can
truly answer the problems of pleonectic appetite.
I have chosen this verb (answer) for lack of a more perfect one and with some
misgiving. I do not mean that sophrosune solves the problems of appetite without further ado.
Rather, sophrosune is simply the actively harmonizing principle of soul that sees the problems of
appetite and tells the whole soul what to do about them. As I argued in Chapter Two, appetite
is mute acceptance of present objects of desire. But moderation has logos; indeed, it is a logos. I
hope to make this somewhat mysterious activity of moderation clearer over the course of the
chapter.
I offer here a few brief and introductory etymological notes that might serve as a concrete
introduction to the themes of the chapter. The roots of sophrosune, ss and phrn, invoking
soundness or preservation of mind are commonly discussed in the scholarship.6 It is clear
that to a speaker of ancient Greek, the word will invoke the rational level of the virtue even if the
immediate denotation is the mastery of mere hunger and thirst, for example.
The word eukolos, which appears four times in the dialogue at crucial moments, deserves
some etymological attention as well. In the first two instances, Cephalus uses the word
approvingly of himself, Sophocles, and other moderate characters (329d4, 330a6). At 453d4,
the word means easy, and points to the simple and unassailable argument that seems to be out
of reach now that the interlocutors must discuss erotic arrangements. And finally at 535e3, the
word has become fully negative: The eukolos character is as lazy as a pig, wallowing in
ignorance. 7

6 See Pichanick (2005, vii.).

7 See Chapter 1.1, and the subsection A city of eukoloi? for an introduction to the term in context.

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The root of eukoloskolos/onallows a significant pun. The adjective means docked,

trimmed, or pruned. It refers more specifically to oxen or goats whose powerful horns have
been cut away. On the other hand, to kolon, a nearly identical root, refers to digestionboth the
belly and the food that goes into it. In short, although the derivations are not certain, there is at
least a homonym between 1) kolon, food (=trophe)8 especially preserved food, and the innards
that digest it, and 2) kolos/on, docked, pruned, or trimmed.
More or less distant relations to these similar roots include kolouz, akolasia, and
duskolos. The common word, kolouz means to punish, restrain, cut back, or prune. For
Aristotle, immoderation is a-kolasia, the intentional habit of being unpruned, unrestrained,
undisciplined (unpunished), that is, profligate in desire and action, especially regarding food and
drink.9
For Cephalus in Book I, the eu-kolosthe man with a good digestion who is easily
satisfied with whatever food is put before him (opp. duskolos) is precisely not profligate, but
only because the desires of his youth for wine, women, and food have withered away (329a-d).
Such restraint is entirely passive; as life dwindles and the body ages, capacities for gluttonous
or erotic feasts are cut off perforce. If only the highest desires (for speeches, as Cephalus
claims) are left behind, one should thank time and chance, not the mind and will of the
moderate man. It would be a mistake to call this eukolos well-disciplined, or restrained, or
self-controlled. If Cephalus had the chanceif his body obliged and he could somehow get
away with it (thanks to a magic ring or a magic pill)he might very well pursue all of those
profligate ways again. For this reason, perhaps, eukolos also has the meaning easily led.
Although forms of this word appear only four times in the dialogue, the idea of a passively

8 For an extended treatment of this latter term, see 3.3.

9 Nic. Ethics III.x-xii.

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attained or preserved moderation is an important one for the meaning of the dialogue as a
whole, and provides the type against which Plato/Socrates true and better sophron becomes
evident.
To state this chapters conclusion in etymological terms: Eukolasia is not true
moderation. Passive contentment with what remains after katharsis is not sufficient for virtue,
moral or intellectual. The purity of soul that is the hoped-for result of old age or utopian
upbringing (by cutting off the opportunities for certain desires to flourish) is not the same as
virtue. Rather, moderation must be something more active and thoughtful than mere expurgation
of the causes of low or violent desires from ones environs or self.
As I examine the various accounts of sophrosune in the Republic, my aims are twofold:
first, to make sense of the two apparently opposed notions of moderation (expurgation and
harmony) and second, to show how Plato draws and develops the lower, more concrete, bodily
meanings of sophrosune into the higher, ever more rational meaning of sophrosune, and to begin
to explain how this apparently low-caliber moral virtue comes to look like perhaps the highest
intellectual virtue on offer in the Republic. This chapter will begin that task, but a close
consideration of the education of the philosopher-kings and the intellectual moderation of
Odysseus in the final myth (Chapters Four and Five) will be required as well.
Sections 3.1 and 3.2 of the present chapter consider moderation as expurgation and
harmony, respectively. Section 3.3 considers Socrates surprising advice that the best way to
keep the lower desires in check is to feed them. And finally, section 3.4 presents an example of
false moderation. Overall, this consideration of ordinary moderations complex character will
lay the foundation for Chapter Five, which treats the possibility of philosophical moderation.

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3.1 Expurgation
Anyone with all little knowledge of the Republic may suspect that Socrates favors an
exaggeratedly austere life and harsh censorship, to boot. Indeed, Socrates seems to argue at
certain points in the Republic that moderation is nothing other than expurgation of unhealthy or
low desires and their objects (katharsis at 399e) along with the poetry that approves them.10 At
these moments, when Socrates says be moderate he appears to be saying cleanse your soul of
inferior concerns, and remove from society any enticements to bodily pleasure, but what does
he mean? In this section I will examine Socrates list of banned quotes bemoaning death by
starvation, fearing hunger, celebrating the pleasures of eating and drinking, or approving of
wealth, and then his much shorter list of banned comestibles themselves. Remove these
incitements to disordered passion, he seems to promise, and the souls that grow up without these
poetic and real temptations will be moderate.
Doubts about the possibility and indeed the desirability of such moderation by
expurgation alone will arise at once, however. The first mention of the purging of the city
(399e) implies that that project was somehow accomplished without Socrates or Glaucons
conscious intention. Looking back over their discussion of the second city, Socrates exclaims,
By the dog! Unawares weve again purged the city that a while ago we said was luxurious
[lelthamen ge diakathairontes palin hn arti truphan ephamen polin]. The process of purgation
would appear to be as unintentional and passively experienced as the pleonexia that first grew
the austere city into the luxurious one.11

10 In the famous figure of the diverted stream (485d-e), for example, which is meant to illustrate the single-

mindedness of the true philosopher, who [forsakes] those pleasures that come through the body, or clips them off
like heavy weights, according to another controversial illustration (519a-b).
11 Socrates palin is inexplicable, at least as Bloom translates it (as again). Socrates seems to have

forgotten that this is fact the first time that they have inadvertently purged the city. Blooms decision to read palin
on its own rather than somehow with the verb, ephamen, as a version of speaking to the contrary, underlines the
confused passivity of all the speakers, for whom the logos is something that happens to them, not something they

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Glaucon is not at all troubled by their Lethean passivity: Thats a sign of our moderation
[sphronountes ge hemeis dhos]. According to Glaucons equation, moderation is the same
as expurgation of whatever is dangerously low or unhealthy by any means at all, whether active
or passive. Socrates and Glaucons present state of moderation is less an intentional
achievement than a happy accident. Two other characters in the dialogue experience similar
lucky breaks toward virtue: Cephalus, the absent host of the discussion, now too old for feasts
and sex and grateful for the purification that old age granted him, seems to have achieved
moderation in spite of himself. Theages, also, has a chance illness to thank for his ultimately
philosophical bent (496b-c).12 Both of these characters are restrained by the bridle of physical
debility; their present interests, high as they may be, are chosen for them by Chance.
In the forgetful carelessness of Glaucon and these other passive characters, we see the
real limits of sophrosune by expurgation in an exaggerated form. But even among the Republics
exalted law-givers or political thinkers who more actively censor and expurgate for the sake of
moderation, small oversights and moments of neglect lead to terrible and consequential
misjudgments.13 In the passages I will now consider, Socrates treatments of music and then
gymnastic in Books II-III (the nitty-gritty of katharsis, starting at 376e), the limits of expurgation
become clear.

make or do. Reeve translates the palin strongly with his we have certainly been unwittingly re-purifying the city.
Griffith has without meaning to, we have purged the city, and does not translate the palin separately. Sachs seems
to take palin with polis: without noticing it, weve been making a city pure again that we just now claimed was
living in luxury.
12 Socrates goes on in this passage to identify himself as a similar character, whose daimonion is a unique

voice of restraint (about which Socrates, moderately, does not want to speak at length). Socrates differs from
Theages and Cephalus, insofar as he freely chooses to restrain himself from doing or saying what he has in his
power to say and do, whereas the latter characters choose the life of the mind only because their bodies have given
out.
13 Greatest among these is the failure of the marriage number, which is essentially a mistake about proper

measure that leads to ungovernable excess. I will discuss this matter in detail in Chapter Five.

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The first things to be cut out of the city are not (as we might expect) cakes themselves or
wine or any other delicious food or drink, but rather snippets of poetry, certain musical modes,
certain rhythms, gracelessly produced crafts, or crafts that present gracelessness. Why does not
Socrates simply set about to prove that certain foods, drinks and other luxuries are unnecessary
or harmful and then purge the city of them? As I argued in the previous chapters, the necessary
and opson are moveable categories. There is no obvious way to distinguish between needful
and unnecessary foods and pleasures. Opson is in the city to stay; one cannot stop delicacies
from flooding in, not least because one cannot distinguish the newer, slightly more luxurious
delights from the luxuries that already stuff and intoxicate the city.
So Socrates does what can be done. He looks to change the thoughts and constitutions of
the pleonectic citizens who do not know how to say no to the ever-increasing luxury that
surrounds them in a luxurious city. Only when he has done this does he return to the difficult
problem of sifting the various delicacies themselves.14
The first part of expurgation, therefore, is the expurgation of certain speeches about food
and drink. To begin, says Socrates, we must not encourage the young or the many to take hunger
too seriously as a pain or feasting too seriously as a pleasure; the good citizen will be impervious
to the pressures of either. It is therefore terrible and blameworthy to tell stories of divine or
heroic ravenousness:15
The man who told the biggest lie about the biggest things didnt tell a fine liehow
Uranus did what Hesiod said he did, and how Cronos in his turn took revenge on
him. And Cronos deeds and his sufferings at the hands of his son, not even if they
were true would I suppose they should so easily be told to thoughtless young things;

14 As in the Charmides, ills of the mind are treated before ills of the body.
15 It is also blameworthy when a man in speech makes a bad representation of what gods and heroes are

like, just as a painter who paints something that doesnt resemble the things whose likeness he wished to paint
(377e). Socrates convicts himself since he soon will deliberately misquote Odysseus (in the sections I will discuss
shortly).

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best would be to keep quiet, but if there were some necessity to tell, as few as
possible ought to hear them as unspeakable secrets, after making a sacrifice, not of a
pig but of some great offering thats hard to come by, so that it will come to the ears
of the smallest possible number. (377e-378a)
Socrates nearly follows his own advice, referring only obliquely to Cronos rebellion against his
father and grotesque meal of his own children to protect his tyranny.16 Further, in Socrates
oblique dig at Glaucon, his implication that a pig will not be anything special or difficult to
acquire in this city of meat-eaters (that is, no longer true opson), we see another example of
quietness about appetite and its excesses; Socrates merely alludes to the pigs and the pig-like
characters that they were recently discussing forthrightly. To be quiet, (tactful or self-censoring)
in this way, is to be moderate, according to one common definition of the term.17

Odysseus censored
Even Odysseus, the wisest of men (390a) and the famous hero of moderation will be
censored. As the opening lines of the Odyssey reveal, Odysseus can rightly be said to have saved
his life by restraining his hunger and refusing to feast on the cattle of Helios. This heroic and
complex act of sophrosune sets him apart from all his gluttonous crew, who think that hunger
truly is the most pitiful way to die and therefore doom themselves to death by eating.18

16 Hesiod, Theogony 154-210 and 453-506. A similar unspeakable act of cannibalism by a father upon his

children will be spelled out in the tale of Er, where an unsuspecting, unnamed soul chooses a life including this very
act. (See 5.3 for a discussion of this moment.)
17 Quietness (hsuchia) is Charmides first definition of sophrosune in the dialogue named for him, and

apparently commonly linked with sophrosune in the Greek imagination. (See Pichanick 2005.) Socrates first actual
definition of sophrosune in the Republic emerges as he considers two Homeric quotes about hsuchia (389d-e).
18 In a familiar variation on this figure, Odysseus bound to the mast of his ship is the most tempted and

appetitive man on board (only he hears the sirens) but he chooses restraints that prevent him from indulging that
desire. For more on Odysseus as a hero of restraint, see Segal (1994). The literature on Platos use of Homer and of
Odysseus in particular is oceanic. Some of the best treatments include Howland (2004), Brann (2004), and Planinc
(2003).

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Yet Socrates misquotes this hero of moderation and then misattributes a censorable quote
to him, as well. First, the misleadingly foreshortened quote:
What about making the wisest of men say that, in his opinion, the finest of all things
is when The tables are full of bread and meat / And the wine bearer draws wine
from the bowl / And brings it to pour in the goblets? (390a-b)
Socrates leaves out the decisive phrase of these famous first lines of Book IX of the Odyssey:
listening to the singer. Far from glorifying the meat and drink on the table as the pinnacle
satisfactions of human desire, Odysseus here praises Demodocus powerful song. According to
Odysseus, the finest of all things is a harmonious feast in which eating and drinking are not the
main thing but the rather the occasion for listening, reflecting, and recollecting amongst similarly
civilized and sympathetic company.19 Sometimes such reflection prevents eating and drinking
(as Odysseus in Circes home), and at other times the voice of appetite drowns out reflection and
even grief (as Odysseus claims when he first enters the Phaiakian court, in a passage that will be
discussed below). But best of all is a graceful harmony of listening and eating.
Socrates further misrepresents Odysseus when he misapplies the following line from a
crucial (and famous) scene in the Odyssey: Hunger is the most pitiful way to die and find ones
fate (Od. XII.341-2). Of course, Odysseus never utters this sentence. The true speaker of the
line is the rebellious sailor Eurylokus, whose famous words incite the crew to slaughter and
devour the cattle of Helios. Eurylokus, not Odysseus, so terribly overestimates the seriousness of
appetite. When he awakes from his divine sleep, the self-controlled Odysseus stands against the
guilty deed and confirms his virtue by continuing to refuse to touch the obviously inappropriate
food: still bellowing meat (and crawling hides). That Odysseus endures hunger for seven days is

19 As Bloom notes. This listening together in harmony is not far from Platos own description of

sophrosune at 399b-c. See Segal (1994, 116), who puts the point gracefully.

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something of an ultimate test of moderation. By that time, we might excuse him for concluding
that since the deed is done, continued restraint would be pointless.
This is perhaps the sentiment of the doomed crewmen, who have become insatiable for
divine meat since the first slaughter. It is no longer necessity that drives them to eat on day two,
day three, day four, and so on (since presumably they are no longer starving). Only Odysseus
remains hungry. Yet according to him it is still better die of hunger than to eat wrongly.20
Odysseus alone among them is heroically moderate. As mentioned above, it is for this
heroic act of restraint in particular that Odysseus is praised in the proem to the Odyssey. We may
pity and admire Odysseus for his sufferings, his cleverness, his homesickness, his courage, his
arrogance, his curiosity, but it is his act of sophrosune that saved him.
Why then does Socrates treat Odysseus so recklessly here, by first misquoting him and
then misattributing to him Eurylokus counsel of desperate gluttony? For that matter, why does
Socrates overlook Odysseus express thoughts on hunger, found in the episode of the
Phaiakians? When Odysseus finds hospitality with this quasi-immortal race, who suspect that he
is divine as well, he speaks eloquently about his hunger and its meaning:
I am not like the Immortals of spacious heaven, either in my body or in my nature,
which are altogether mortal and bound to suffer death. Think, rather, of those men
who in your experience have been most vexed with pains and griefs: for it is to them
that I would liken myself in my miseries. Indeed I might drool on and on, telling the
tale of all that I have suffered, of the manifold trials inflicted on me by the will of the
Gods.
But instead I will ask leave to obey my instincts and fall upon this supper, as I would
do despite my burden of woe. See now, there is not anything so exigent as a mans
ravening belly, which will not let him alone to feel even so sore a grief as this grief
in my heart; but prefers to overwhelm his misery with its needs for meat and drink,
forcibly and shamelessly compelling him to put its replenishments above his souls
agony. (Od. VII, Lawrence trans., 100)

20 Here, Odysseus proves to be the opposite of the censored Cronos, too, who eats heroically wrongly.

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Perhaps Socrates has in mind the line there is not anything so exigent [literally, dog-like]
as a mans ravening belly when he misattributes Eurylokus line to Odysseus. But Odysseus
statement about appetite here is much more nuanced than the one misattributed to him.
According to this speech to the Phaiakians, appetite is shameful because it is passively
experienced (not willed) and brutish (it forces the soul to notice it) and because it distracts the
soul from the things that really matterthe souls more serious agonies and desires.21 Odysseus
claims to be of two minds about hunger: He is abashed by its brutishness and yet he is careful to
give it its due at the proper time and in the proper way. He will not pretend to the sort of quasidivinity that is insensitive to its pangs. In other words, according to the heroically moderate
Odysseus, hunger is not nothing.
Socrates, on the other hand, would have the guardians disregard the pains of hunger
altogether. (Whether this stated intention is ironic or not remains to be seen). At this point in the
expurgation of the city, at least, Socrates does not want his citizens to hear the voice of human
limitation. Insofar as Odysseus admission of hunger is an admission of mortality and an
indication of his preference for mortality over immortality (of kleos as Achilles in Hades, or as
divine paramour with Calypso), perhaps Socrates should be wary of quoting it. Citizens who lack
experience of the highest aims and appetites of human beings to be somehow more than human
might mistake Odysseus choice of mortality (exhibited in the recognition of hunger and
frailty) as a counsel of complacency rather than a profound decision reached by a great man at
the end of his adventure.
Still, we might ask why Socrates or Plato would encourage such expurgation for any
reason. If, as many have argued,22 Platos central concerns include human limitation, frailty, and

21 See Chapter 2.1 for a fuller treatment of the brutishness of appetite.

22 Strauss, Bloom, Griswold, Roochnik, and Hyland in particular.

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imperfectability, why would he allow Socrates to censor this same mortal wisdom when
Odysseus speaks it?23
Perhaps Socrates adduces these matters imperfectly and brings Odysseus on the scene
(repeatedly) in controversial fashion because the matter of eating and drinking and the proper
attention due to hunger, in particular, as a petty but necessary thing, definitive of the mortal
being but also a distraction from his nobler nature, is a complicated matter that deserves the sort
of second glance that baldly incorrect quotations will prompt in the reader and listener. Such
misquotations serve another purpose as well: to keep the readers attention on Odysseus
character. From the underestimation of his moderation here in Book III to the overestimation of
it in Book IV,24 these controversial treatments prepare the reader for the final scene of the
dialogue, in which Odysseus chooses a life. Socrates rough treatment thereto guarantees that we
will be keen to judge Odysseus at the end and to determine whether or not his final choice is
truly virtuous.25
Finally, Socrates use and misuse of Odysseus here demonstrates yet another truth about
moderation-by-katharsis: Even well-meaning excisions are dangerous. Socrates purification
of Homer eliminates poetry that might immediately incite or excuse gluttony, but the price is

23 Perhaps Socrates censorship achieves a certain poetic justice: Odysseus own censorship of Circes dire

warnings about Scylla even as he puts on a frank face to his crew is an act of terrible betrayal (for which Dante
consigns him to Hell, and Homer himself arranges punishment in the form of the crews pitiful cries as they call out
Odysseus name again and again as they are caught up in Scyllas many jaws). See Od. XII, 173-174: Friends, I do
not mean to keep to myself, or among just one or two, the disclosures now made me by Circe, Goddess of
Goddesses: but I will now publish them freely I order that we may dieif we dieinformed: or else trick death and
fate to get clean away. [] Scylla I did not mention.
24 See 2.2.
25 As I will discuss at in Chapter Five, the enigma of Odysseus interiority separates him from Homers

other heroesAchilles in particular. One might argue that the difficulty of judging Odysseus quiet motives and
inner character becomes itself a trope. Sophocles, for example, dramatizes him in two nearly opposite ways, Nelson
reminds me. See also Agamemnons misinterpretation of Odysseus watchful restraint before battle (and his
supposed greed at the table) at Il. 380-420. Socrates treatment of the elusive Odysseus might be understood as
another step in this tradition.

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heavy. The censored version of the Odyssey cannot make sense of Odysseus self-defining and
self-preserving act of moderation in Book XII, since it is missing the crucial passages that reveal
Odysseus disagreement with Eurylokus, his praise of song as the ornament of civilized feasting,
and his wry judgment of the lowest of human desires. Without that background, we cannot hope
to understand why Odysseus does what he does (or refrains from doing what everyone else
does).26
I have gone to some lengths to reveal the distance between Socrates and Homers
Odysseus in order to show that in this instance, at least, moderation-by-katharsis prevents human
beings from understanding the actions and character of another human being whose uncensored
struggles might actually instruct and encourage. This mistreatment of Homer is all the more
frustrating, since, as Socrates knows, Homer teaches sophrosune above all in the enigmatic
character of Odysseus.27
After Socrates has censored certain snippets of poetry, he proceeds to ban certain musical
modes (harmoniai at 398e1) altogether (Lydian and Ionian, or certain sub-categories of these.)
This particular example of katharsis is almost too ironic to untangle: Harmoniathe clear
conceptual opposite of purgationis to be achieved by purging harmoniai.28
The instruments most suited to pan-harmonic carryings-on are also to be banned from the
city. These include lutes, harps, flutes (the aulos, a reed instrument like our oboe), and any other

26 And if Socrates cannot get it right, among this group of philosophically-minded friends, how much more

incomprehensible would be the version of the Odyssey that the Kallipolis presents to its confused citizens?
27 I will treat these problems in more detail in my discussion of the Myth of Er in Chapter Five, where, I

will argue, Odysseus becomes just the right sort of elusive hero of Socrates/Platos elusive virtue.
28 Nussbaums suspicions about Platos curiously high-minded harmonia may arise from passages such

as this. I will treat the modes again in 3.2 in this larger context, as well as the uncertain status of post-kartharsis
harmonia.

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many-stringed instruments capable of playing songs in many modes.29 The only instruments
allowed into the city will be the lyre and the cither (and perhaps the shepherds pipe), which are
tuned to play in only one mode at a time.30
Finally, certain rhythms have to gowhich ones in particular, Socrates leaves to the
experts, since figuring it out for themselves would lengthen the dialogue inordinately (400c).
Note that in the katharsis of modes and rhythms, Socrates defers to some other authority
(Glaucon and Damon, respectively) to tell him what to censor.

Homers feasts
From music Socrates moves on to gymnastic, which includes the proper diet for the body
and a concrete list of food and drink to be excluded from the city. Although Socrates finds
specious fault with Odysseus for his attitude towards hunger and feasting, he praises Homer
himself for the diet he apparently prescribes for his warriors:
From Homer, too, one could learn things very much of this sort. For you know that,
during the campaign, at the feasts of the heroes, he doesnt feast them on fishand
that, although they are by the sea at the Hellespontnor on boiled meats [hephthois,
from heps (to boil), related to opson] but only roasted, which would be especially

29 Adeimantus (or Plato) quips at 397d that man who tries to do more that one job or produce more than

one song (contrary to the labor maxim established in Book II) does not harmonize with the city. This is rather an
impoverished view of harmonia, however. Instead of tuning this fellow to the city, they will proceed to purge him
and his kind entirely. This light-hearted katharsis of an ungraceful fellow is the first step in an increasingly ominous
process of cleansing that proceeds to the banishment of artists and then to the exile of the entire adult population, the
quickest and easiest way to set the city on a moderate footing (541a). The process reaches its violent apogee in the
pre-tyrants and tyrants of Books VIII-IX, who also appreciate the quick efficiency of exile: Bad advisors of the
soon-to-be democratic man invite all the bad desires back from exile and purge his soul of all remaining measure
(560a-561b). Finally, the tyrants fine purgation (567c) of anyone of any worth (whether friend or enemy) is the
opposite of the doctors purgation, since they [doctors] take off the worst and leave the best, while he does the
opposite.
30 The piano is the modern equivalent of the pan-harmonic aulos, since the player can easily move in and

out of various keys and modes without retuning the instrument; a contemporary equivalent of the lyre is the bagpipe,
whose nine fixed pitches (minus the drone) cannot perfectly reproduce tunes in any other modes than A mixolydian,
and whose sound is nearly universally equated with brave sincerity.

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easy for soldiers to come by; for, so to speak, everywhere its easier to come by the
use of fire alone than to carry pots around.
Nor does Homer, I believe, ever make mention of sweets. Dont even the other
athletes know that if a body is going to be in good shape it must keep away from
everything of the sort? (404b-c)
This is the language of expurgation, againrestraint for the sake of health and simplicity. Note
that convenience is not the sole criterion for judging which foods ought to be allowed. The need
to drag heavy pots makes boiled food too bothersome for an army on the move,31 but Socrates
notes that the warriors do not eat fish, either, although they are by the sea at the Hellespont.
(Nothing could be more convenient than to net a few fish and throw them on the fire.)
Rather, fish are to be avoided because they are proverbially the delicacy of delicacies
among the Greeks, because they glisten like silver and gold, because they share the sinuous
curves of women, because of their mutability (they are soft shape-changers and they spoil
quickly), and because of their vast variety (unlike the predictable forms of goats, pigs, and
cattle), which encourages specific preferences among gourmands.32 Because fish signify change
and luxury and encourage an appreciation of what is changeable and luxurious, Homers warriors
and Socrates guardians must have nothing to do with them.
Socrates follows with a further list of banned pleasures, foods and cuisines: the
Syracusan table, Sicilian refinement at cooking, and the reputed joys of Attic cakes.33
Foods such as these, andwhat is more importantthe vibrant and multicolored way of life
(diaitan at 404d11) that includes them give birth to illness just as the panharmonic mode
and its rhythms promoted licentiousness (akolasian). Conversely, Socrates concludes,

31 See 1.2.
32 See Davidson (1997).
33 Not to mention Corinthian mistresses. Dorter (1997) notes that the list of banned delights nearly

mirrors the delights added to the feverish city earlier: perfumes, courtesans, and then pastries.

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simplicity (haplots at 404e4) in music and gymnastic will produce moderation in souls and
health in bodies.
Note the foreignness of all these banned delights. Socrates is perhaps less interested in
the precise foods to be cut out of their diets (whether olives, salt, pulse, pigs, cheesehe does
not say), and rather more in their status as imported. Imported foods are obviously opson to the
city that imports them, but they would probably not be opson to the citizens of the city that
exports them. Thus, there is nothing intrinsic to Syracusan, Sicilian, Corinthian, or Attic delights
that makes them unhealthy (high in fat or sugar, and so on).34 Rather, as in the case of Homers
heavy pots, the difficulties involved in procuring such foods and moving them over large
distances make them too fussy for the guardians of the purified city.35 In other words, the danger
of fancy foods is less to the bodies than to the culture of those who import, i.e., that they will
spend so much time and attention attending to food-matters that they will neglect more important
needs. Or to put this point more universally: Too much attention to the body distracts from the
life of the mind.
The reader might be surprised to see that although Socrates suggests a ban on unhealthy
sweets, he goes on to deny a direct connection between healthy foods and health. In fact,
Socrates goes out of his way to discount the idea that doctors ought to prescribe certain curative
foods for certain diseases and conditions (405e-406a, 408a-b). One is cured or one is not; the
scrupulous eating and drinking of precisely the right amount of this or that food or drink takes

34 Except, perhaps, Attic cakes. Even so, it is not clear whether it is the proportion of unhealthy ingredients

in them or the fact that they must be imported and treated with the gustatory reverence due to them according to
their reputation that most bothers Socrates.
Note that Socrates singles out no problem dishes from Sparta. Indeed, the public mess halls Socrates will
establish at 416e are clearly inspired by Spartan practices.
35 It would be difficult to make a general rule about importation per se, however. To take a trivial

contemporary parallel: The importation of water is now generally taken to be a wasteful extravagance, whereas
imported wine is still taken to be a healthy and reasonable opson.

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food and drink too seriously.36 And in any case, too much attention to health in general is unwise
(406a-e and 407b), because such excessive care for the body (whether in the form of perfect
cures or imported treats) wastes the citizens already short lives.
One might object at this point that if Socrates is ambivalent about bodily health, then
surely he does not care about ordinary moderation, which I have suggested is something like
peace and harmony in the body. Socrates might answer that health and ordinary moderation
are good means to a full and happy life, especially if they keep the body quiet for contemplation
and ready for action, but that they are dangerously absorbing as final ends.37 The idolization of
health forgets that health is only a condition of action and contemplationand a negotiable
condition. Excessive pursuit of peace in the body through restrictive and peculiar diets reveals
a fundamental misunderstanding about the human condition: No matter how carefully we eat, all
human beings will die. Indeed, that we must eat should be a daily reminder of our mortality.
Each mortal being has only so many days to spend in pursuit of only so many aims, and as Er
learns in the final myth, length of life is determined by higher intelligences than doctors and
trainers. The pursuit of the highest and most glorious aims might be aided by a healthy and
peaceful physical constitution, but this ordinary sophrosune already points far beyond itself to
a sophrosune that looks more like wisdom about oneself and the whole, by which one might
judge that fewer days spent in higher pursuits are better than many more spent in the hospital or
at the table. In other words, ordinary sophrosune is already aiming at rational ends that outstrip
mere peace in the body.

36 For a crankier expression of this, see Timaeus 88e-89d. See also Blooms note (III. 59).
37 According to an ancient anecdote, Socrates disapproval of the portliness of a certain young man,

Epigenes, derives not chiefly from a concern about health per se; instead, he is worried about what would happen if
war broke out and the citizens were too unfit to fight. (Xenophon, Mem. (3.12)

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Where does this leave us? We know that some kinds of opson (foreign, fishy, and sweet)
should probably be purged from the diet of the citizens for the sake of preserving a simple and
stable way of life as well as generally good health. But Socrates does not offer clear standards to
judge what further delicacies should be banned. Nor does he conclude that diet is destiny; health
is not good character, and ill health might even encourage greater virtue.38 Expurgation, whether
of specific luxurious foods or of poetry that seems to encourage pleonexia, is not sufficient to
produce the rich, active virtue of moderation that is the Republics final aim. As I will argue in
the coming sections, Socrates presents sophrosune not only as a prudent practice of exclusion but
also as a positive activity of harmonization.39

3.2 Harmonization
Although the negative activity of moderationexpurgation under the rubric either of
censorship or dietary regulationis the most infamous in Socrates account and draws the
noisiest criticism both within and without the dialogue, in fact it is the positive activity of

38 See Socrates comments on the bridle of Theages (496b-c). See Roochnik (2003, 47).
39 The procedure of expurgation, by which the healthy, simple way of life is discovered along with its

proper pleasures, desires, and activities gives the pattern to a logical procedure that might be called an argument by
purgation (or elimination), Socrates common dialectical practice of striking out one after another of items in a
complete set until he arrives at the last remaining item, which is thus proven to be what was sought. One obvious
example of such a procedure is the discovery of the sub-title topic of the dialogue: justice, in Book IV. By this
procedure, Socrates and company remove all that belongs to the other of the four cardinal virtues until they are left
with what must be justice, for no other reason that that it is the only virtue left. No further argument in Book IV is
made about the true nature of justice, nor is any worry spent on the possible incompleteness of the ready-made list
from which one item after another is removed.
This is a dicey mode of proof, as any logician knows, especially if there is any uncertainty about the
completeness of the set of possibilities at the start. (Hegel makes just this complaint about Kants categories: Does
Kant begin with a complete set? How can he be sure that it is complete? And what will the argument amount to that
depends on this unargued foundational list? Hegel criticizes Aristotle for his unargued lists, as well [Lectures].)
Annas (1981) notes that we cannot tell whether Socrates is working with a set of four or five traditional cardinal
virtues in this Book IV argument, or whence, precisely, he gathered the items on his list. On the same lines, consider
Socrates discovery of the violent and voluntary harmonic modes by eliminating the other modes from a
complete list he confesses not to know (398d-399c).

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moderationactive harmony of soulthat most commands Socrates interest. Indeed, he treats

harmony of soul so often and in so many ways throughout the dialogue that the scrupulous
commentator is hard-pressed to choose among them. I offer brief treatments below of only the
most indispensable passages.

Obedient rulers
We begin with the proto-harmonia Socrates proposes in his earliest pass at sophrosune in
the dialogue (389d), where the virtue is presented as a dual attribute involving the agreement of
at least two parts of the soul.40 In its most basic form, suitable to the needs of the unruly many or
the young, sophrosune is being obedient to the rulers, and being themselves rulers (autous
archontas) of the pleasures of drink, sex, and eating (389d-390c, my emphasis). Many
commentators fail to note the already complex nature of this basic moderation: According to
Socrates, the sophron must be both a subject and a ruler at the same time.41 The moderate young
man or ordinary citizen should aim to be both a lawgiver and subject to the law, both a speaker
and a listener. This mystery of self-controlcontrol of self by selfwill be on stage for some
time, then, before the puzzles of the tripartite soul in Book IV (in the midst of which Socrates
asks, How could a man be stronger than himself?). And this complex activity of even the
most basic form of sophrosune is prophetic of sophrosunes loftier aims, including selfknowledge.

40 This is the second mention of sophrosune in the dialogue. The first is at 364a, where Adeimantus says

that according to the poets, moderation and justice require unpleasant drudgery, while intemperance and injustice are
pleasant and easy.
41 Contrast Pichanick (2005), who argues that Charmides would be presumptuous if he offered self-

mastery as an ordinary definition of sophrosune, since a young Greek man ought to be entirely deferential, not
himself a master of anything. Adam overlooks the complexity, somewhat, with his note that the present passage
displays only the most obvious and conspicuous aspects of self-control which poets should chiefly impress upon
the multitude. Compare Gorgias 491d.

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Contrast sophrosune with the simpler virtue of courage. Socrates could have presented
moderation as he did courage, as a mode of blindperhaps deceivedobedience to
commanders.42 One could work up the analogy quite readily: Reason would be the old king and
the appetites would be the unruly young rebels under his sway. But Socrates does not
oversimplify. There is an essential difference between courage and moderation: One can be
brave without sharing the mind of the ruler, but one cannot be moderate according to Socrates
examples without understanding the commanders rules and then taking them up as ones own
in short, becoming ruler over ones own rebellious appetites which (according to the application
of the city/soul analogy in this case) must themselves rule and be ruled.43 Even ordinary
moderation has built into it a natural modicum of self-consciousness and knowledge.
This activities of this basic moderation are already complex, even contradictory:
So I suppose well assert that its fine to say the sort of thing Diomede says in
Homer, Friend, keep quiet, and obey my word and whats connected with this,
Breathing might the Achaeans went, In silence, afraid of their leaders.44
The sophron is a heroic warrior, breathing might but nary a word, strong but controlled,
powerful but also subject to authority, substantial in himself but inferior to another at the same
time, afraid of the ruler but also his friend. It would be easy to misjudge these silent types,45

42 Rosen notes that lying and courage are treated together (2005, 99).
43 If we are already concerned about an emerging infinite regress herethe same infamous regress that

troubles Socrates treatment of justice (but not courage or prudence)we have perhaps gotten a bit ahead of
ourselves, but at least this demonstrates that sophrosune is no simple virtue, even in its simplest form.
44 These quotes are clipped from Iliad IV, 412 (where the restrained Diomedes authoritatively chides the

young Sthenelus for his disrespectful speech against the older generation and the generals that outrank them both);
III, 8; IV, 431. In the latter passage, the silent, orderly univocal Argives, holding their voices in their chests, are
contrasted with the noisy and disparate Trojans, who stream onto the battlefield like a flock of bleating sheep, not
one cry, no common voice to bind them all together, their tongues mixed and clashed, their men hailed from so
many far-flung countries (Fagles trans., 507-508). (Compare a similar moment between Odysseus and Thersites at
II, 212.)
45 They are exceedingly difficult to dramatize on stage (604e).

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since their deference, mixed with understanding and inner authority, could be known only from
the inside, as an unspoken logos, or better, an invisible ratio.46
These early passes at sophrosune establish that the virtue is not the same as purity or
homogenous austerity. Rather, even basic sophrosune is a complex activity of rule and obedience
among unequal parts. It follows, therefore, that katharsis, the purgation of lower interests and
impulses for the sake of health and peace is actually insufficient even for basic moderation. To
be sure, katharsis got something right: Unanimity (one-souledness) is the intuitively correct
aim of sophrosune. But as Socrates is beginning to argue, there is more than one way to achieve
that state. Harmony or agreement between disparate parts is another way in which the soul can
be one with one voice.47

Modes of harmonia
But what, exactly, is harmonia? Derived from harmoz, which denotes joining, and
binding or fitting together, the word refers most concretely to the joints of a ship, the strong
stays that keep separate planks togetherside by sidesuch that they form a single vessel.48
Harmonia refers to other kinds of joining, as well: to artificial sutures and natural joints of the
body, to political constitutions and agreements, to marriages and betrothals, and to the
arrangement of words in a speech.49 In the musical sphere, harmonia refers to one of several
46 Diomedes moderation consists in precisely this: keeping silent when appropriate, even though he has

something to say. Socrates will tell us much more about the inner logos or ratio of the soul soonstarting with the
tripartite arguments in Book IV.
47 As opposed to being monoeids, a possibility Socrates still holds open in Book X (612a4).
48 See Od. 5.247-248, 361. As he embarks from Calypsos island into the dangers of the open sea,

Odysseus must trust in his handmade harmoniai to keep him safe from drowning. Socrates echoes Odysseus
moving speech (5.356-364), I think, at certain points throughout the Republic where he must play a similar role, as
master-craftsman of a nevertheless leaky logos.
49 See Socrates advice to Phaedrus in the eponymous dialogue to cut the logos at the joints (265e).

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specific modes (fixed ratios of pitch, within which limits certain melodies can be composed that
are intended to provoke or express certain emotions),50 to the controlled and invisible tension of
the lyre-string (as in Heraclitus famous fragment),51 to the adjustment of pitches or instruments
with one another (what we would call tuning), or to the wholemusic itself and the goddess
who oversees it.52 In the Laws, harmonia is nothing other than the mixture of high and low in
sound.53 And at the end of Republic, harmonia is the diversity-in-unity of the singing cosmos
(617b).
Moderation is like a kind of harmony, says Socrates at 431e, but which kind? The work
of this section will be to discover which of the senses of harmonia listed above are most
important to Socrates as he defines and describes sophrosune, and to show why these various
senses carry us swiftly out of the realm of irrational appetites and into the realm of thinking.
At first glance, harmonia might seem to be a regressive step in the conceptual
development of sophrosune. Moderation-by-katharsis rested on the reasonable hypothesis that
some things are good and healthy and others are less good and less healthy and that we can tell

50 No commentator ancient or modern seems to be able to decide definitively which emotions belong to

which modes. See Adam, who points to Aristotle. Socrates himself admits to ignorance on this important point
(399a).
51 Diels Fragment 51. See also Fragment 10: Joints: whole and not whole, connected-separate, consonant-

dissonant. Harmonia is a near auto-antonymor Janus wordlike cleave or hew (each of which can denote
precisely opposite meanings) since it refers both to a point of separation between two parts and also to the
connection that unifies those parts. In short, harmonia is one obvious approach to the perennial problem of the one
and the many.
52 This Harmonia (or another goddess by the same name) is the indirect cause of strife as well, since for the

sake of obtaining her necklace, Eriphyle betrays her husband Amphiaraus to his strange tragi-comic end in the
doomed assault of the Seven against Thebes. This gloss might seem to be far afield, except that Socrates refers to
Eriphyle and her treacherous epithumia by name in the last thirty pages of the dialogue (590a). Her husbanda
boar-hunter, impressed into war, deceived by his wife, rescued from death at the last moment and preserved
immortalis a remarkable and complex double of Odysseus, Er, Heracles, and Menelaus, as well.
53 Literally, sharp and heavy: tou te oxeos hama kai bareos sugkerannumenn at 665a. That this

mixture is a taxisan orderingis suggested but not stated.

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the difference. At 399e, where Socrates began to distinguish between allowed and banned
musical modes (harmoniai), we were given to believe that the guardians moderation consists in
nothing other than winnowing better from worse and banning the latter, but in Book IV and
elsewhere, moderation is said to [stretch] throughout the whole (432a).54 This latter version of
moderation may seem to accept everything back into the fold, higgledy-piggledy, low desires as
well as high ones, all mixed together.55 Yet the active harmonization at which Socrates aims is
not panharmonically chaotic, as I will argue. Although Socrates finally forgoes purity as the goal
of moderation, the resulting whole of disparate parts will not be a relativistic, democratic,
panharmonic mash of all human pursuits.
We know that Socrates recognizes the difference between a mixture and an
ordering.56 To backtrack slightly, a few pages before Socrates winnowed the modes, he
questioned the mixed imitations of the double or manifold narrator, who imitates anything at
all: thunder, the noises of winds, hailstorms, axles and pulleys, the voices of trumpets, flutes,
and all the instruments, and even the sound of dogs, sheep, and birds (397a). Mixed narrations
of any old thing in any old order are in a way a one out of many, but they fall short of what
Socrates means by harmonia. The artist who imitates so liberally doesnt harmonize with our
regime (397d); indeed, because his soul is such a democratic mixture of equal imitations, one
wonders if he can harmonize himself, or whether his inspired poetry flows forth as mysteriously
and unselfconsciously as prophecies of the Pythia. Should a poet appear who really can imitate
all things, and display a sort of divine grasp of the whole, Socrates suggests that he should be
lauded for his remarkable degree of wisdom (however he gained it, and whatever it amounts to in

54 I treat this passage in detail below.

55 Like the bleating flock of disordered Trojans mentioned above (Il. IV).
56 In other words, pan v. holon.

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the broad scheme of human understanding) and then be banished from the city nonetheless
(398a). Why? Because this kind of cosmic view of all the particulars is still misleading to the
polis and perhaps to the individual soul, since it presents all the particulars in a heap, not in order
of value. What does it profit us to be presented with all that there is to experience in the world
without the tools or structures by which to compare one speck of knowledge with another? One
might as well attempt to look into a sandstorm as be instructed by such amorphously mixed
poetry.57
But it is even worse when these heaps of meanings are expressed in melodies composed
in certain modes that dissolve agency and intelligence: Lydian modes that are supposed to be
particularly expressive of sorrow and both Ionian and Lydian modes that are supposed to express
drunkenness, softness, and idleness. The only modes Socrates will allow are the Phrygian and
Dorian, which (Socrates hopesalthough, again, he admits "I don't know the modes" [399a])
will nourish and express courage and moderation: the mode of decisive action and the mode of
active listening and persuading. These modes, summarized at 399c, are commonly called the
violent (biaion) and the voluntary (hekousion).
Within this dyad of violent and voluntary, moderation is equal to rationality in so many
words. The mode that promotes moderation is suited to a sophron when he is
either persuading someone of something and making a requestwhether a god by
prayer or a human being by instruction and exhortationor, on the contrary, holding
himself in check for someone else who makes a request or instructs him or persuades
him to change, and as a result acting intelligently [praxanta kata noun], not behaving
arrogantly, but in all these things acting moderately and in measure [metris] and
being content [agapnta] with the consequences (399b-c).

57 To put the problem in the terms of the next chapter, such poetry frustrates its own purposes by favoring

all to the neglect of the best. Where an interest in the principle of distinction and priority is lacking there can be no
knowledge.

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Indeed, sophrosune is not just kata nounit is almost the same as philosophy itself as Socrates
describes it in the Symposium. Both philosophy and sophrosune are messenger spirits en t
metaxu, who carry prayers up to the gods and bring instructions and exhortations back down to
men, joining high to low by voicing to each the thoughts of the other. The moderate man or the
philosophical go-between is equipped to listen to good instruction and to give it. He must know
the difference between high and low, good and bad, gods and men, those who should be listened
to and those who should be taught.58 The sophrons choice to be a teacher or a student (superior
or inferior) in any particular situation rests upon his good judgment of other human beings and
their speeches and his adequate self-knowledgehis truthful assessment of what he knows and
does not know. In sum, 1) sophrosune involves good judgment of ones self and others and 2) its
intermediary function is explicitly in terms of logos (sophrosune speaks and it is reasonable).
The moderate/rational/philosophical/harmonious soul is alternatively active and passive,
but even its passive phase is aimed at action and active understanding. The sophron listens and
commands. He says yes (and even changes his ways) when he judges that the speech of another
is reasonable and correct, and he says no to every bit of harmful counsel.59
What does the sophron gain from his sophrosune? It seems he can laugh at misfortune. At
the end of this poetic passage, the fortunate and unfortunate are alike;60 circumstances
apparently cannot destroy the sophron. Even surrounded by swarm of evil counselors, he will not
stumble, since he knows to whom he must listen. And his couragethe other side of the
violent/voluntary dyadwill achieve a similar freedom from exterior or circumstantial
determinations. Through his courageous endurance, he stands up firmly and patiently against

58 In this respect, he is the opposite of the omni-imitative poet, who hums and mimics whatever he hears.
59 See 2.1 on acceptance and refusal as the dual signs of reason (vs. semper-affirmative irrational appetite).
60 The Greek is dustuchountn eutuchountn at 399c1, as if to say potato potahto.

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chance (399b).61 And the courageous sophron will content himselfagapnta (399c1)with
the consequences of his deeds and arguments, whatever they will be.62
In the discussion of the musical modes, which I have just treated, and later, at 410b-412,
a sort of higher-level moderation begins to emerge which consists in the proper attunement of
moderation and courage, or, more universally, reason and action. Through this curious ascent, we
can begin to look at moderation as a whole of which it is simultaneously a part, such that
harmonia is a harmonia of itself and andreia.63 The guardians must have both of the these two
natures, but they must be harmonized [attuned] with one another (410e).64
Socrates is careful not to overstateimmoderatelythe importance of lower-level
harmony, which, unrestrained, quickly melts the iron of the soul (sidron emalaxen at 411a)
from useless blunt solidity (through some unspoken but good middle state) to soft impotence.
Too much music and we become soft aesthetes or salon intellectuals who cannot stir ourselves to
action. Although it is good to be musical and susceptible to good musical influence, no one
should allow65 sugary (glukeias at 411a7) soft melodies to be poured66 into his soul (in a strange

61 Even while falling into disaster (pesontos at 399b1). See my remarks on Socrates sphallomenoi

(drunks, gluttons, and sleepwalkers) at the close of this section. Blooms translation is uncharacteristically pallid
here; in fact, Socrates seems to be saying that the courageous man (successfully) wards off (amunomenou) chance
by steadily maintaining his inner battle formation (paratetagmens).
62 Socrates remarks here should be read as preparation for the final moments of the dialogue, in which a

bios agaptos is said to be within reach, no matter what chance brings (619b). See Nussbaum (1986) on this point.
63 Compare the manikin of the soul that Glaucon later molds, which is a man containing a man and other

items (588c). The passage is discussed below.

64 These two opposite natures might be characterized alternatively as Dorian and Ionian, bodily and

rational, solid and fluid. See Paters excellent discussion of this balance in Greek art and thought (2005 [1893], 1314). See also 5.5.
65 The word is parech at 411a5, with the sense of self-submission.
66 The word is kataulein, which simply means to play upon the flute (aulos) for an audience, but has the

connotation of charming or overpowering into silence and submission (like the melodies of snake-charmers,
perhaps; indeed, Socrates uses a form of kleto bewitch or charmat 411b9). The passivity of the listener is

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variation on the appetite analogy), as if his ears were funnels and his entire life were reserved for
humming whatever he hears.
The Greek word for funnels is chns (at 411a6), a term borrowed from the
blacksmiths shop that refers to the melting pot from which one pours liquified metal into molds
(or to the molds themselves). Four strong suggestions follow from this clever simile: 1) The soul
is a passive container ready for repletion by whichever artificers of cultural influence we
choose.67 2) The ears are like mouths that drink down sweet melodies. But this implied simile
introduces a certain violence into the delicate process of music-appreciation: Ears, unlike
mouths, cannot be filled with liquid and still function. Repletion of the ears is the end of hearing.
68

Indeed, 3) The music that at first flowed so softly into the ear like honey or sweet wine will

harden at some point into a solid steel mindsetits influence is not passing (as it first appeared)
but permanent. However we are shaped at that receptive moment in our lives, that is the shape
that we will keep forever, for good or ill. 4) On the other hand, if the iron of the soul can be
melted once, perhaps it can be melted again. Perhaps the souls persistent form can be resoftened and remolded (for good or ill). Indeed, the soul might require such continuous and
active maintenanceheating and cooling, melting and reforming, to say nothing of

confirmed by a famous parallel passage in the Laws (790e) that refers to a mothers singing and rocking a baby to
sleep (as Adam notes). The full passage (790c-e), with its extended description of the work of the trophos and
tithenos (from thsai, to suckle; wetnurses/nurturers, as in Thrasymachus two insults in Book I) is well worth
careful reading as a preparation for Platos many and various evocations of trophe in the Republic, some of which I
treat in 3.3 and 4.3.
67 Socrates playful Greek in this passage obscures the extent to which the listener is responsible for

handing himself over to the activities of anotherthe unnamed poet or politician who holds does the pouring. (See
Adam.) On the other hand, ones ears are ones own; perhaps each of us does the pouring and no one else is to
blame.
68 Glaucon and Socrates both complain about Thrasymachus in these terms: Thrasymachus is the violent

bathman who pours logoi into the ears at 344d. By 358c, he has talked Glaucon deaf. I treat both of these passages
elsewhere, esp. 4.5. I treat a parallel problem, the filling of the eyes in 4.4.

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hammeringto preserve its strong but flexible edge.69 Perhaps, I speculate and Socrates
suggests, we should vigilantly hone our own souls and not submit ourselves as passive raw
material for some other demiurge to shape.70
Even the best part of the soul, the musical part that craves harmony and measure (the
rational part, according to Socrates descriptions thus far) must itself be relaxed so that it can be
harmonized with thumos, the principle of action in the soul. One should be calm, peaceful,
rational, and measured only to a point: Sincere bursts of spirit must be allowed as well, when the
occasion warrants. (For example, thumos must not be so tame that it cannot flare out on the
battlefield or in the midst of argument.)71 Sometimes we simply must act and curtail the fine
tuning of reason.72
When a person gives himself to too much rarified, delicate experience for too long, he
cuts out, as it were, the sinews (neura at 411b) from his soul and makes it a feeble warrior.
This feeble warrior, or more accurately, this lispingly soft spearpoint/spearman (malthakos
aichmts, picking up on Socrates continuing metallurgical metaphor) is the proverbially
passive, impotent, and luxurious Menelaus (Il. XVII, 588). Another important reference to this

69 Tempering, in English.
70 See my comments on 588c (Molding the soul) below. See also Socrates conclusive treatment of these

questions in the figure of Glaucus (611b-612a), treated in 4.4.

71 Innumerable examples of appropriately unrestrained thumosdaring feats of warfare and stirring

moments of oratory that change the course of human historymay be found in Herodotus and Thucydides, for
example.
72 Who tells the rational/musical part to yield at the proper moment to the tougher principle of soul? The

rational/musical musical part, of coursethe part that knows all about harmonia. Once again, if we consider this
structure too strictly, we will face an infinite regress of persons within persons. But experience may bear up
Socrates claims; what else is it but our reason that tells us occasionally to relax our cogitation for a moment if only
for the sake of fresher, better thoughts later?

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slack and blessed hero appears (twice) at the peak of Socrates Book VII description of the
philosophers paradise of complete knowledge.73
The sinews of the body are nothing other than harmoniai, according to one definition
of the word noted abovethe cords that attach one bone to the other, such that the whole person
can flex and walk and run and fight. There is need of a similar joining in the soul. Too much
harmonia/music wrecks the harmoniai/joints of the soul, so that it cannot gather itself up as one
organic being and decide and act. And again, the sinews are the strings of the soul (to take the
another meaning of neura) whose tension must be just right, if the soul as a whole is to be like a
well-tuned lyre or bow.
On the other hand, if we give ourselves too excessively to gymnasticif we focus too
much on decisive action and its immediate requisites (hearty food and strong muscles)we
become brutal. Socrates turns to the appetite analogy again as if to make his point in language a
very physical man will understand:
Now what about the man who labors a great deal at gymnastic and feasts himself
very well [from euke] but never touches [from hapt] music and philosophy? []
Even if there was some love of learning in his soul, because it never tastes [from
geu] of any kind of learning or investigation nor partakes in speech or the rest of
music, doesnt it become weak, deaf, and blind because it isnt awakened or trained
and its perceptions arent purified [diakathairomenn]? (411c-d)
One must be either an omnivorewith diverse tastes for learning and for doingor else a beast.
The hearty feaster who hasnt tasted music and philosophy becomes a hater of speech, and thus,
a hater of the specific human difference. Such a man becomes a misologist and unmusical. He
no longer makes any use of persuasion by means of speech but goes about everything with force
and savageness, like a wild beast; and he lives ignorantly and awkwardly without rhythm or
grace (411d-e). If the soft spearman was Menelaus, this brutal character is Thrasymachus

73 At 519c and 540b. (See 4.4.)

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(336b) who cannot stop talking even though he seems to hate logos (and indeed, would rather
pour logos in others ears than have to hear any himself). Particularly relevant here is
Thrasymachus incapacity for contentment or satisfaction as he blushesangry, ashamed,
frustrated, but unwilling to continue with the argument that has gotten the better of him. He is the
most brutal of the company but also the weakest, since he cannot in any way achieve what he
most desires.74 Hearty feasting of the thumos and imprudent starving of the musical part are as
dangerous to the souls condition as were the floods of sugary/iron harmoniai. Excesses on both
sides (savageness and hardness on the one hand, softness and tameness on the other [410d])
lead to similar states of weakness. The blunt solidity of the former character and the fluid
receptivity of the latter come to the same thing.
Only some sort of higher-level moderation can prevent the extremes to which unguarded
moderation and courage will go. The desired ratio between these two parts cannot be established
without a certain inward turn: a self-conscious tending to the part of the soul that most craves
harmony and the other part that most craves action, such that neither forgets that the other exists.
Between music and gymnastic (or mind and body) there is a necessary alternation, or perhaps a
simultaneous back-bent tension.
The musical modes, feasts, and practices that destroy this vital tension between action
and thought deposit us on our fainting couches, rock us to sleep, charm us into inaction, blunt our
sensibilities, harden us into brutes or statues, and in many other ways blind, deafen, and
dehumanize us until we stop acting kata noun or at all.75

74 For more on his misologist insatiability, see 4.5.

75 The souls that get this ratio right, however, might look like Homers quiet but mighty warriors (389d-e),

who listen at the appropriate time and actively rule themselves, as well. (See above.)

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Is harmonia unphilosophical?
For all our talk about sophrosune as ratio or measure, one might object at this point that
the harmony Socrates has been discussing here (Books II-III) applies only to the guard-dogs of
the early books but that the philosophers that will eventually emerge from this class have no
need of it. One might argue, as Socrates sometimes does, that true philosophers should practice a
thoroughly kathartic moderation, cutting off every non-philosophical concern so that they can
press forward and upward to the Good, unencumbered by the burdens that weigh down their
fellow citizens. Perhaps the overwhelming pleasure and goodness of a life dedicated to the
contemplation of the highest things with the highest part of the soul truly does make the rest of
life irrelevant, just as Socrates says (sometimes). Perhaps true philosophers will do well to
eschew harmonia, as a bourgeois preference for a peaceful city and a peaceful digestionand
to pursue even those truths that ruin our constitutions, roil our stomachs, and tear the polis apart.
Certainly the ancient Greeks and we moderns can claim many great and infamous poets,
novelists, painters, and philosophers who let everything else go to pieces while they pursue the
best. Their inspired recklessness in life, their absent-mindedness and even physical neglect (to
the point of ruin and death) for the sake of the life of the mind is pitiable, laughable, and
wonderful.76 This is a strong and attractive counterpoint to my thesis. Chapters Four and Five
will face it head-on.

Harmonious friendship
As Socrates suggested in his first pass at sophrosune (the basic moderation of self-ruling
and obedient warriors at 389d), the higher parts do not rule the lower parts by force. Rather,
76 Rosens quip that, of course, one must continue to be alive in order to philosophize (2005, 232) cuts to

the heart of a deep Platonic concern in the Republic. The extent to which the dialogue is an apology for mortal
philosophy, specifically, will be discussed in the last two chapters. See also Blooms note (IX.1) on the melancholia
of exceptional men.

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higher and lower share the same mind and speak with the same voice. Indeed, they must be
friends. Socrates returns to this theme in Book IV:
And what about this? Isnt [a single man] moderate because of the friendship [philia]
and accord [sumphnia] of these partswhen the ruling part and the two ruled parts
are of the single opinion that the calculating part ought to rule and dont raise a
faction against it? (442c-d)
Socrates friend, Glaucon, agrees whole-heartedly that moderation is nothing other than this.
As we have seen thus far, moderation-as-harmonia is many things in addition to this, but perhaps
Glaucon is right to acknowledge friendship as a definitive state or activity of sophrosune.
First, friendship is not and cannot be forced. The shared opinions of friends, insofar as
they are actual opinions, and not forced promises of loyalty, are free agreements between equally
free (although otherwise unequal) partners. And insofar as they are freely choosing their
association, their harmony is stable; indeed, it depends on each party doing exactly what he
wants. Friendships do not deteriorate into civil war unless one or the other of the friends changes
substantially in character.
Second, friendship is not and cannot be erotic. The various parts of the soul or classes of
the city should not seek the passionate connections that join lovers and beloveds.77 Socrates will
say in Book IX that the tyrannical city is defined by just such an erotic relationship between its
classes.78 The tyrant and his subject relate only as lover/beloved, by means of flattery, heroworship, intercourse or other slavish relationships. The tyrants magnetic charisma attracts the
populace like lovers and their excitement and devotion to their beloved (especially at the start of

77 As the harmonia of marriage contracts or betrothals might suggest.

78 I realize that the eros/philia distinction is extremely vexed, and that philia often means exactly the same

thing as epithumiaas in oenophilia, for example, which I will treat in the next chapter. However, there are
moments when Plato (and Aristotle and all human beings) try mightily to distinguish the two, such that two people
can be dear to one another without being desired. I think that this discussion of the friendless but erotic tyrant is
one such moment where the two ideas really do come apart.

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the courtship) looks very much like erotic frenzy, with all the attending surges, rejections,
jealousy, repression, fear, betrayal, and revenge.79
Eros in the city, unlike philia, increases inequality, such that the people abase themselves
in adulation and fear and flattery of their leader, while the leader lords over them like a god, and
alternatively, as the wheel of fortune makes its circuit, the tyrant abases himself to court and
flatter the public, whose power he secretly fears and respects even as he despises its intelligence
(and spares no thought for its intellectual and cultural training, such that he and the masses could
ever be of one mind and freely agree about what the city should be).
Many of the tyrants bodyguards, upon whom he depends for his life, since he must
protect himself from the violence he has perpetrated on his own people (and on his closest
advisors and flatterers who brought him into power, presumably, when their worthiness marks
them as potential rivals), are foreign. The friendless tyrant imports friendseither exiles of
better regimes or foreigners from other cities and cultures, whose unanimity with their new
tyrant, their agreement with him that he ought to rule, lasts only as long as their wages (567d).
These new friends are as destabilizing to the city as the imports that first flooded it in Book II.80
And like the foreign appetites81 of Books III and IV, their aims are external to the city and do
not necessarily include its stability, integrity, and preservation.82
The spasms of excessive pleasure (and hidden terror) of the mob and their beloved leader
are also contrary to the spirit of moderation. The ratios of power and desire in such an erotic

79 See 568a-b: These companions admire him [in fact, they marvel at him; thaumazousi at 568a4] and

the new citizens have intercourse with him [or would very much like to; the verb is related to sunousia, which
includes the sexual meaning]. See also 578a, 578e-579a. 579e.
80 See 1.1-1.2.
81 See 2.1 and 3.1.
82 Socrates also mentions that freeing and hiring and befriending the slaves of the citizens as his own

bodyguards produces a trustworthy group as wellor so the tyrant imagines (567e-568a).

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relationship are always pitching towards change.83 Instability is the price of epithumia, as I
argued in Chapter Two. The unfriendly but passionate relationship between tyrants and their
cities always decline into revolution, since the overthrow and downfall of the powerful is simply
an expression in time of what is always secretly the case when desire and force (rather than
friendship) are the only actual bonds between the diverse parts. To repeat, if we want a stable
ratio between classes in the city or elements in the soul, their various epithumiai cannot be
harmonized by epithumetic intercourse. Rather, the stable ratio must be sought in calm
friendship between unequal parts, where being of one mind neutralizes the inequality of power
and priority.
Of all the virtues, it belongs peculiarly to sophrosune to bring together multitudes (of
concerns, of aims, of people, of classes, of ideas), to reconcile them in a whole that contains
distinctions. True sophrosune, as opposed to the unnatural silence of the tyrannical city (or soul),
produces a real and innerly differentiated one (rather than a forced rule of one) and it is
persistently peaceful (not always on the brink of revolution). Such harmonia must include an
awareness of all, with due credit to each, such that the fact of hierarchy among the functions and
parts of the soul or city and their various desiderata is acknowledged and maintained, without
expurgation of the lower. This harmonious friendshipmoderationof the state cannot be
required by law (indeed, it stands behind the law), yet it is the most needful thing for the state. In
fact, moderation understood as a non-erotic political arrangement or friendly harmonia of the
various elements of soul or city is nearly indistinguishable from justice.84 This curious
inextricability of moderation and justice, such that their very definitions could be confused, is the
subject of the next section.
83 See 402e-403a.
84 See Aristotles remarks on justice and friendship (Nic. Ethics, VIII.4). Justice only approximates

friendship, which can do more for the general happiness than justice ever could.

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The thread side of justice

A strange thing happens when Socrates gets around to discussing moderation in Book IV
(430d-432b). Although Socrates had no trouble going through the first two of the four cardinal
virtues, courage and prudence, when he arrives at moderation, the last virtue to be eliminated
such that justice can be revealed, he appears to want to skip over it entirely. His feint forces
Glaucon to interrupt and play an unaccustomed role as advocate for moderation. Two points
about this maneuver are relevant: If Socrates had managed to skip over moderation, he would
have vitiated his entire argument by elimination. (Since they are almost closing in on the third
of four virtues, whatever is left over will be justice.) To skip moderation would be to put the final
conclusion, the definition of justice, in jeopardy.
But more to the point, to skip ahead to justice would be an act of intellectual gluttony.
This hurrying ahead to the next course before giving due attention to the courses previous is the
behavior of gluttons (lichnoi at 354b2) whose excessive eagerness actually deprives them of a
dish or two.85 Why then does Socrates try (or pretend) to skip over moderation here?
At a similar moment in the Laws, the Athenian Stranger tries to pass by sophrosune in
silence (696d), where moderation is the adjunct. Perhaps silence is appropriate to sophrosune
because sophrosune is a kind of quiet might, as I suggested earlier. Sophrosune is in a sense the
knowing silence of a character who wants to do or have x, yet keeps himself from that distant
goal. Perhaps, as I argued in Chapter Two, it is a way of saying no whilesilently
acknowledging the limited good or attraction of the object. To have actual (not chance)

85 Socrates confesses such an act of gluttony at the end of Book I: Before finding out what we were

considering at firstwhat the just isI let go of that and pursued the consideration of whether it is vice and lack of
learning, or wisdom and virtue. And later, when in its turn an argument that injustice is more profitable than justice
fell in my way, I could not restrain myself from leaving the other one and going after this one, so that now as a result
of the discussion I know nothing (354b). There is a superficial parallel between justice and moderation here, insofar
as Socrates attempts to skip the first in Book I and the second in Book IV. For more on Socrates as lichnos and
intellectual gluttony in general see 5.2.

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moderation, there must be awareness without indulgence. Moderation might be a way of living
at a distance from desires that should not always and everywhere be fed or spoken aloud.
Whether or not these speculations explain the Socrates strange feint in Book IV, they at least
introduce some related problems that will reemerge in Books V-VII.86
After that strange introduction, Socrates gives the meatiest description of moderation thus
far: It is a harmony that stretches through the whole of soul and city. Moderation is the diversity
in unity of soul and city. It is therefore unlike courage and wisdom,
each of which resides in a part, the one making the city wise and the other
courageous. Moderation doesnt work that way, but actually stretches throughout the
whole, from top to bottom of the entire scale, making the weaker, the stronger, and
those in the middlewhether you wish to view them as such in terms of prudence,
of if you wish, in terms of strength, or multitude, money or anything else whatever of
that sortsing the same chant together. So that we would quite rightly claim that this
unanimity is moderation, an accord of worse and better, according to nature, as to
which must rule in the city and in each one. [431e-432a]
The moderate soul is a single distinct thing that is more readily understood than the disparate
node of desires that is the immoderate, dissonant soul.87 As I say, this description of moderation
is perhaps the richest Socrates has offered so far, yet the more he tells us about this virtue, the
harder it is to distinguish it from justice.
Socrates seems to be running into some trouble at the end of Book IV, where his final
definition of justice is now clearly and explicitly in terms of moderation:
He doesnt let each part in him mind the other peoples business or the three classes
in the soul meddle with each other, but really sets his house in good order and rules
himself; he arranges himself, becomes his own friend, and harmonizes the three
parts, exactly like three notes in a harmonic scale, lowest, highest, and middle. And

86 And will be treated in 4.4. For another reading of Socrates feint, see Roochnik (2003, 25)
87 Musical harmony is the one way in which many can talk at once without cacophony. See also 554c-e.

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if there are some other parts in between, he binds them together and becomes entirely
one from many, moderate and harmonized.88
Then, and only then, he acts, if he does act in some wayeither concerning the
acquisition of money, or the care of the body, or something political, or concerning
private contracts [sumbolaia]. In all these actions he believes and names a just and
fine action one that preserves and helps to produce this condition [tn hexin sz te
kai sunapergazetai]. (443d-e, my emphasis)
It seems that justice consists in being moderate. The only clear distinction between these virtues
is a matter of emphasis: Justice aims at diversity in unity, while moderation aims at diversity in
unity. In other words, moderation is the thread side of justice. It is the complementary and
quieter background virtue (involving a drive for wholeness and oneness among parts) behind
justices more public drive for distinctness (the non-meddling between parts, such that
distinctions between high and low become visible, such that a certain proper ruler can be
identified).89 The two virtues are interwoven, such that to have one is to have the other.
Furthermore, as the first virtue to be hinted at in the dialogue,90 the central function of the
philosophers and guardians as preservers of the city, and the last to be dramatized,91 moderation
looks to be as central to the Republic as justice, the stated quarry of the dialogue.
88 This last line gives many commentators pause, since it allows, quite breezily, that the soul might have

more than three partsor even an indefinite number of parts. We can either argue forever about whether Socrates
really intends to break with the tripartition of Book IV, or we can allow that Socrates is at least suggesting a kind of
infinity in the soul that is nevertheless amenable to a certain kind of unification. That we can act out of such a deeply
textured soul is a kind of miracle not unlike the melody that the musician coaxes out of the infinite resources of
sound.
89 Kosman speaks of justice as a principle of appropriate difference (in Ferrari 2007, 117), and extends

its discriminating power far beyond the ethical. Insofar as sight/eikasia is always about the similarity between
distinct things and the discernment of wholes among the multiplicity of instances, all the imaging and ratio-making
on the divided line are expressions of a certain global justice. And insofar as moderation is the thread side of
justice, these are the activities of moderation, too. (See 2007, 132.) On Socrates tendency to blur moderation and
justice, see Rosen (2005, 95, 99-100): [obedience to rulers] is not usually associated with temperance; it would
seem to be closer to justice.
90 See Cephalus description of old age (328c-331d). His word is eukolos, not sophron, however, as I have

noted above.
91 621a.

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It seems that moderation must be understood in this relation to justice; for this reason, too, the
kartharsis model (which removes parts for the sake of purity), is not a sufficient description of
this complementary virtue.92

Molding the soul

Moderation is, above all, an active harmonization of the various parts and appetites of the
single soul. Plato has Socrates display this aspect most colorfully and puzzlingly, I think, in the
Book IX encouragement to Glaucon to mold an image (eikn) of the moderate/just soul in speech
so that certain spoken objections may become visible to the one who has been speaking them
(588b).93 The imperative, from platt (to mold from wax or clay, to put in a certain form, to
fabricate or forge), is play on Platos own name. This invocation of the master-sculptor Plato
invites the reader to draw back and see the whole dialogue at once as an enclosed cosmos of
figures nested within figures nested within figures all disclosing the soul: Glaucon forms a
manikin out of his inner images and memories which itself contains a man, a lion, and a scylla.
And Socrates contains Glaucon, as he recounts and shapes his memories of the previous days
discussion to an unknown listener. And Plato, the cleverest molder, contains Socrates.94
92 Yet again, the distinctness we sought in katharsis finds a better expression in justice.
93 Technically speaking, logos is invisible; it is heard by the ear or understood by the inner sense or spoken

by the mouth, not seen by the eye. But here, Socrates seems to be pushing for a certain surprising synaesthesia:
eikna log eide legn elegen. In the extended metallurgical simile treated above, the ears became
mouths. Here, speaking, hearing and seeing are blended. Of course, the close analogy of sight and understanding is
ancient and built into the language (oida, eidos, etc.); in English, too, we substitute I see, for I have heard and
comprehended your words. For a consideration of the much stranger blend of eating and seeing, see 4.2. Compare
and contrast 369a, as well, where Socrates and company first establish the city/soul analogy and decide to watch a
city coming into being in, as it were, the medium of speech (rather than matter). This earlier instance of seeing,
however, is closely linked to reading: Socrates and Glaucon will look at the city in order to read the letters in it.
94 He is the true deinou plastou (588d1), the final molder of the many-headed dialogue that contains

Socrates and Glaucon and the rest, and if that dialogue is an integrated single whole, I think he wants us wonder to
what extent it is a natural or an artificial whole. (On this point, see 4.5.) Platos preoccupation here with the molded
eikona of the soul has an obvious parallel in Alcibiades description of the statuette-containing Socrates in the

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The patterns Glaucon will use for his molding are the monsters of Greek mythology: the
Chimaera, Scylla, Cerberus, and certain others, a throng of them, which are said to have been
many ideas grown naturally together in one.95 There is one great difference, however, between
these patterns and the many-headed soul Glaucon is molding. The multi-form monsters grew
naturally (sumpephukuiai at 588c4) but Glaucons many-headed but unified soul will be
explicitly a work of arta little statue molded of mental images rather than wax or clay. What
exactly Glaucon is doing (or thinks he is doing) in this procedure is not clear. At one point he
says that his medium is logos, which is easily molded (588d). But in fact, he does not speak at
all, and appears instead to be actively imagining each step as Socrates presents it, that is,
sculpting his various mental images into one. Glaucons harmonizing laborwhatever it really
isis invisible to the reader.96

Symposium. One might consider less obvious parallels, too: Aristotles observation that the soul is the topon eidn
(forms, not images, of course [De Anima, 429a2]) and that Nous is destined to think about Nous. These indefinitely
many nesting images suggest Heraclitus saying, as well, that the logos of the soul is endless (Diels, Fr. 45; see also
Fr. 115).
The suggestion here of infinity in the soul (agents within agents within agents) is similar to the suggestions
in the tripartite arguments Book IV that give certain commentators indigestion (Bobonich [1994], Williams [1997],
Annas [1982]), all well-summarized in Roochnik [2003, 19-20, 22], who argues that we can avoid these infinities
and the absurdities involved if we simply realize that we act with the soul as a whole rather than by means on three
separate parts and allow a certain inaccessible depth in the soul that escapes the rigors of arithmos. I agree with
Roochnik (as does Aristotle: the whole man acts) about the single source of action, but I am tolerant of infinity
when it comes to thinking: In short, Platos indefinitely many manikins within manikins provide a vivid image of
self-consciousness. (See Roochnik 2003, 25-26.) The human being is humanhis inside matches his outside
insofar as he thinks endlessly about what the human being is and how to balance his various desires.
As soon as his more immediate and apparently satisfiable appetites devour the others (589a), lending him a
false single-mindedness and unity of purposefor drink alone, for food alone, for women alone, for money alone,
for honor aloneat that moment, he is a dog, a beast, a wolf, not a man whose delicate preoccupation with the
proper harmony of all his parts under the headship of one of his parts preserves him as a man. But much more on
this problem to come (5.4-5.5).
95 Heracles famously subdues several of these (or several versions of these), while Odysseus famously fails

to subdue Scylla, in particular. See 5.4 for a brief comparison of these heroes.
96 Contrast this moment with his more active statue-making and polishing in Book II (361d), still to be

discussed in 4.4.

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Like a democratic city, the appetitive part of the soul is many-colored: mold a single
idea for a many-colored, many-headed [poikilou kai polukephalou] beast that has a ring of heads
of tame and savage beasts and can change them and make all of them grow from itself.97 It
appears that Glaucon must be something of a divine demiurgenot only must he shape the little
statue, he has to give it the gift of life, too, such that its heads grow from itself (phuein ex
hautou) in such a way that the principle of change (metaballein) is in the monster, not its
artificer. At the risk of taking the passage too literally, once his creature can move and grow on
its own, it is no longer an image of a living soulit is the real thing.
Alongside the amorphous hydra of desires, whose infinite nature and uncertain look
could not stump Glaucon, he is to mold another single idea for spirited part and then another for
the philosophical part. Appetite is by far the biggest and brawniest, followed by the lion, and
then the man. Well, then, join them (sunapte), says Socrates, they are threein one (eis
hen tria onta), so that in some way (p) they grow naturally together with each other (588d).
Socrates obviously miscounts here: In fact, there not just three parts that need joining, since the
biggest part is itself a shape-changing hydra of indeterminately many heads.98 In what way
Glaucon is supposed to unify this many (or square the circle, or spin this hay into gold) is left
unsaid. The verb suggests a kind of harmonia, or binding, but it is hard to see what Socrates
means.
Worse still, by the end, there will still be no priority among the parts: The human and lion
heads in the final Frankensteins monster may be lost in a sea of other headsjust two more
equally possible nodes of striving in the midst of all the other writhings. Reason and spirit look
like just two more appetites, no better than the others that outnumber them in the soul.
97 Cephalus, by contrast, becomes the only head left after all the others have withered away, as his name

suggests.
98 See Roochnik (2003) on the failure of arithmos when applied to the soul.

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For this reason, perhaps, Socrates introduces a fourth principle, a single casing for the
whole: Then mold about them on the outside an image of onethat of the human beingso
that to the man whos not able to see whats inside, but sees only the outer shell, it looks like one
animal, a human being. This covering is a remarkable turn in the procedure, since the stated
purpose of this strange artifact was to make the invisible visible. Perhaps Socrates knows that he
must concede: When we look at the human being, we can easily perceive his outer unity, but the
complex inner reality of his soul is unimaginable (in fact, one cannot make an eikon of it).99
What, in the end, does the mysterious molding tell us about moderation? Perhaps it
suggests the following: that to be a soul at all is to be an intentional unity of distinct parts and
aims, and that by means of some process of active poesis, or self-sculpting such that the unity
begins to grows naturally togetheras a sort of second nature, perhaps.100 Being a single
harmony of disparate parts does not just happenit is also something that we attempt to achieve,
by fitting the planks firmly together and smoothing the joints, such that one is a single being out
of many. This single soul is both artificial and natural; it grows together naturally and it requires
a craftsman whose work is nothing other than harmoniajoining together of all the disparate
parts of the human soul under the ruling and containing principle of human being (not lion or
hydra).

99 See Roochnik (2003, 26) on this point. See also Brann on the visible/unimaginable spheres in Book X:

But the myth is also a great vision, a cosmic image, which I have briefly described. In truth it is
indescribable. Intensely visual though it seems to be, we dont succeed in picturing it as a coherent whole. In this
scintillatingly indefinite spatial character it resembles the ultimate vision at the end of Dantes Paradiso, which is a
spatially impossible yet brilliantly visual image of the union of the human form with the three divine circles of the
triune god. In both images the imagination is baffled by trying to fit a sensory shape into a supersensory container;
in Socrates image that means fitting the merely mathematical model into its meaningful mythical frame (2004,
263).
100 It is possible that Plato has something like habit in mind hereit is experientially true that one

hammers away at ones soul trying to get it into good order, but that the moment in which one realizes that one has
developed a good habitthat one does the right thing smoothly and automaticallyall of a sudden, it is as if the
soul comes to life, and has a life of its own that finally (for the moment) does not require exterior activity to keep it
in line.

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To be harmonious, or moderate, is also to make my outer self match the inner part that is
most meto identify myself most closely with the highest part of my soul, and so to continue to
be as human as I can possibly be.101 Conversely, immoderation is the lack of a stable, single
soul, and that, through a lack of doing what is necessary to join it together under the restraining
but friendly form of the highest part.

Drunks, gluttons, and sleepwalkers

Why does such moderation matter? What are the risks for the immoderate? Socrates
argues in several points throughout the dialogue that sophrosune aims above all at steadinessasphaleia,which means safety or security from falling down or falling apart. The sophron
does not sway or stumble or fall down in his being. His opposites include the fall-down drunk,
the sleepy glutton, and the sleep walker. All these unsteady types are led around and pulled apart
by their inner hydras of disordered appetites. They are always stumblinginto bed, into the arms
of the wrong lovers, to the floor, and if they are unlucky, straight into Hades, where (according
to Er, at least), there are even deeper opportunities for falling. In this life and in the next one, it is
only as a stable, steady one that a human being can think and act. It is only as a steady,
persisting one that the human being can know himself. Only such a one can be happy. One sees
that this integrity-preserving harmonia is not merely a pleasant notion of Platos; it is a necessary
condition of being and knowing.
One might begin to trace this serious theme from Socrates early remarks about laughter
(beginning at 388e), where he argues that the guardian should not be a lover of laughter (among
the philogeltas at 388e5) since, as I parse it, the shaky spasms of laughter are unrestrained,
passive reactions to something more powerful than oneself. Such laughter is a public exhibition

101 See Ferraris excellent treatment of this passage and topic (2007, 194-195).

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of incapacity. The man who laughs too heartily risks losing himselfforgetting that he is the
master of his own face and character. Indeed, Socrates says, the lover of laughter is seeking to be
changed.102 When he laughs, he gives over his quiet might to the mighty change like a warrior
surrendering without being provoked. Why, Socrates asks, would he let himself go like that?103
The theme of character steadiness arises again in Socrates discussion of imitation and its
dangers (394e-398b): It is impossible to be steady when one imitates more than one thing at a
time. (A writer of tragedy and comedy, for example, will not be able to do both well, whatever
Socrates argues in the Symposium). The danger of multiple imitations is here not epistemological
(that one person cannot understand both tragic and comic views of human life), but rather,
ethical: Ones character will become muddled by attempting too many perspectives.
Referring in particular to imitations of narrative, and how the gentleman ought to present
himself, Socrates remarks:
He will imitate the good man most when he is acting steadily [a-sphals] and
prudently; less, and less willingly, when hes unsteadied by diseases, loves, drink, or
some other misfortune. But when he meets someone unworthy of himself, he wont
be willing seriously to represent himself as an inferior, unless, of course, its brief,
when the man does something good; rather, hell ashamed, both because hes
unpracticed at imitating such men and because he cant stand forming himself
according to, and fitting himself into, the models of worse men (396c-e, my
emphasis).
In short, a good man preserves his dignity and does not present himself as anything other than a
good man; especially, he will not imitate unsteady, drunken, erotic men. Bad men, it appears, do
not attempt to preserve their dignity but imitate anything, whether good or bad.

102 The word is ztei at 388e6.

103 Socrates quotes Homers description (Il. I. 599-600) of the undignified hilarity of the gods at the sight

of the graceless Hephaestus, the famously fallen Olympian (He falls like dead weight for a full day before he hits
the ground at Lemnos), hobbling around as a servant. Bloom translates a-sbestos gel s (from sbennumi) at 389a5
as unquenchable laughter. Their uninhibited jollity may have something to do with the ambrosia Hephaestus has
just poured around, too.

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In particular (in a passage quoted above in the second subsection of 3.2), they are drawn
to imitate animals or even mere inanimate things, including horses neighing, bulls lowing, the
roaring of rivers, the crashing of the sea, thunder and the noises of winds, hailstorms, axles and
pulleys, the voices of trumpets, flutes, and all the instruments, and even the sound of dogs, sheep,
and birds (396b, 397a). Bad men imitate what is less than human, those natural forces, manmade tools, or animals that do not choose or think for themselves, as human beings do. The
moderate steadiness of the good imitator is therefore his steadiness and persistence in human
nature, which is rational and active (kata logon), not irrational and passive (like the noises that
are produced when you strike rocks together, or blow air into a flute, or the instinctual noises of
animals who do not have language).
Socrates continues in this vein in his discussion of the proper modes for gentlemen (398e399e), and points again to the ultimate exemplar of unsteadiness: the drunk. The Lydian modes
are to be banished because they encourage the passivity and slackness that we have just
discussed: drunkenness, softness, and idleness are most unseemly for guardians.
As discussed in 3.1, all descriptions of drunkenness must be purged from the art of the
city. There must be no mention of Iliad 1.225, for instance: Heavy with wine, with the eyes of a
dog and heart of a deer. It is unhealthy both to be a drunk and to laugh at one: If the citizens are
ever to become moderate, they cannot be leering and cheering at shameful drunken men
(395e).104 The city should not permit imitations of decent men, either, at bad moments,
unsteadied by diseases, loves, drink, or some other misfortune (396c-d). The guardians
themselves must not be drunkards, or soft or idle as drunkards always are (398e). Surely its
more permissible for anyone, other than a guardian, to be drunk and not to know where on earth
he is. Glaucon replies: Its ridiculous if the guardian needs a guardian (403e-404e).
104 This shameless enjoyment in observing the weak at their weakestlaid out on the ground before us,

perhaps unable to stand at allrecalls the unhealthy curiosity of Leontius and Gyges ancestor.

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Why is Socrates so insistent on this little matter of overindulgence in drink?105 To be

drunk is to be passive, soft, easily led, incapable of action or contemplation. The drunkard cannot
receive instruction or be persuaded, nor can he make decisions and stand up for himself. Through
immoderation, he puts himself in anothers hands; someone else must be in charge of him, since
he cannot pilot his own life. The indignity of drunkenness consists in the forfeiture of the human
differences: intellect and will.
As with drink, so with food. As drunks lose intellect and will, so overeaters or overlycossetted eaters become too sleepy to act, argue, or think (404a-b). Socrates comments on food,
like those about wine, are aimed at a certain steadiness and the preservation of the human being
as a human being. The guardians diet will be rather different than that of athletes whose present
diet and training makes them 1) sleepy and 2) unsteady (sphalera; fallible):
Or dont you see that [well-fed athletes] sleep their life away; and if they depart a bit
[even the tiniest bitsmikra] from their fixed [tetagmenesorderly] way of life,
these athletes get very critically ill?
Theres need then for a subtler exercise [kompsoterasmore refined] for these
combatants in war, since they must be sleepless like hounds, see and hear as sharply
as possible, and in their campaigns undergo many changes [metaballontas] of water,
food, the suns heat [heilsen], and winds without being too highly tuned
[akrosphaleis] for steadiness in health.
To address the latter (unsteadiness) first: Moderation in food and drink is for remaining relatively
immune to the effects of food and drink. As athletes are currently trained, Socrates says, a
metabol in the athletes circumstances dictates a metabol in the athlete.106 As the seasons
change (according to the changes of the sun), or as the sun rises each day until the hottest point,

105 Contrast the Athenian Strangers arguments for organized drunkenness in the Laws, for example. See

also the Symposium account of Socrates infamous steadiness. No matter how much you get him to drink, you
cannot get him drunk. No matter how much you exhaust him or starve him, you cannot get him to fall asleep or into
a stupor. Socrates seems to be a bottomless well, incapable of gluttony because he has no limits.
106 When applied to the day, the word can mean an eclipse.

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the athlete will sicken for lack of the cool drink he automatically desires. As the wind blows
cooler, the athlete will shiver until his trainer gives him a hot drink. Put much on the table, and
he will want to eat much and suffer whenever there happens to be less. Put only a little at his
disposal, and he will sicken at the thought of more. That a strong man should cut be off at the
knees by such small changes in temperature and diet is dismaying to Socrates. Far better, we
might speculate, to be omnivores and eukoloi, so that whatever the circumstances, the warrior
can remain himselfactive, content, and healthy. And it is clear that Socrates is not talking only
about athletes; these problems will appear again in his discussion of hunger and thirst in Book
IV, where it appears, ad absurdam, that all human beings are at the mercy of automatic and
untrainable desires.107
Sleepiness, then, is just the utmost extreme of the passivity we have been discussing. The
guardian must not become sleepy, since his strength will be useless if he cannot keep control of
it. Even the strong become helpless when they fall asleep. And the stronger they are when they
are awake, the more pitable and passive they look stretched out on the ground.108 In the
Symposium account of the conception of Eros, Poros, who has all that he needs and more, is
nevertheless as helpless as a baby when he falls asleep on the lawn and all those resources are
exposed to the watchful scheming of Penia, who manages to stay awake and seize the
opportunity. To apply these warnings to the individual soul: The sophron must be sharply aware
of all his changing circumstances without being changed himself, so that the soul as a whole
remains healthy and steady and secure in its integritynot drunk, not sleepy, but observant.
Once we move from the level of the whole human being to a consideration of his various
elements, however, wakefulness and sleepiness are no longer absolute values. When Socrates

107 437d-439e. For a detailed treatment of this passage, see 2.1.

108 Or underground, as Gyges ancestors giant.

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sets out restrainedly (at 571b), to address the unnecessary appetites that law and reason
cannot expurgate it is clear that some parts of the soul really ought to be as sleepy as possible. As
quoted above:
Those that wake up in sleep when the rest of the soulall that belongs to the
calculating, tame, and ruling part of itslumbers, while the beastly and wild part,
gorged with food or drink [ sitn meths plsthen], is skittish [from skirta: to
leap forward, bound, frisk like a satyr, as if driven by the wind] and, pushing sleep
away, seeks to go and satisfy [apopimplanai] its dispositions [th].
Like the unfortunate dreams and imaginings that trouble Cephalus in the late hours of the night
(330a), certain violent and beastly appetites in every soul have a mind of their own, and seek to
take over and make a fool of the otherwise mighty and dignified human being when he is off his
guard. It does not matter that they are already glutted before bedthey still leap forward like
gluttons 109 to attempt the impossible and painful: to fill their already full stomachs.110
And these wakeful parts of the soul want increasingly more grotesque and nightmarish
satisfactions. Again, as quoted above:
You know [oisth] that in such a state it dares to do everything as though it were
released from, and rid of, all shame and prudence. And it doesnt shrink from
attempting intercourse [epicheirein mignusthai], as it supposes [hs oietai], with a
mother or with anyone else at allhuman beings, gods, and beasts; or attempting
any foul murder at all, and there is no food from which it abstains. And, in a word, it
omits [elleipei] no act of folly or shamelessness.
The immoderate soul omits no act of folly or shamelessness, as if it had a yen for complete
badness. The gluttonous, panourgeic desires want the whole, in their perverse wayto do all, to
seduce all (including gods and beasts), to eat all (including other human beings), to drink all, and

109 See 354b

110 Another interpretation of this passage is possible: Drunken feasts proverbially lead to sexual

debauchery, so that filling up with wine and food reminds the party-goer how much he needs sexual
satisfaction, as well. Perhaps Plato has this in mind, but he does not set aside the matter of gluttony per se; in a few
lines, the already full eater and drinker will not abstain from any food whatsoever (571d).

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to kill everyone.111 Yet the deeds of this heroic pleonexia will look foolish and shameful in the
cold light of day: The sleep-lover supposes that he has seduced a goddess; perhaps it was
actually a laurel tree. The sleep-murderer supposes that he has strangled his father; perhaps it is
was his pillow. The sleep-eater supposes that he has eaten the stars; perhaps it was a dozen raw
eggs out of his neighbors refrigerator. It is possible, too, that the sleep-walker will discover that
he done worse deeds than he dreamed112 or that he has in fact not stirred a muscle all night.
Even so, the unruly appetites will overestimate the satisfactions they will reap from the
next nights sleepwalking, and continue to imagine that next time they wont get caught. Every
night when they push back sleep and head out the door (as they suppose), they suppose that they
will get away with it, as though they were released from shame and prudence. But of course,
the thumos and logistikon are not deadthey are only sleeping, and when they awake, all the
vain things that were attempted or merely imagined during the night will be revealed (until they
are forgotten again, as the sleeper forgets his dreams).
And we are all potentially vulnerable to these truly irrational desires (they are naturally
born in everyone)113 Socrates says, no matter how measured we appear to be. Socrates oisth at
571c7, like his dig at Glaucon in the Leontius passage of Book IV (aesthesthai at 440b6)114
implicates all human beings, and he immediately backtracks regarding his claim that in some
human beings they are entirely gotten rid of (571b). There is no katharsis of these frightening

111 This desire for total action is analogous to the desire for total knowledge, I will argue later, and reaches

its apogee in the tyrant, the stay-at-home gourmand, who wants to do all and taste all, but remains a prisoner in his
own lavish home, unable even to go out-of-doors, never mind traverse the byways of his own city. He is the
perfectly ridiculous guardian who needs a guardian. (See 5.1).
112 Adam mentions Medea in this context; similarly, Ajaxs dreams of death and mayhem are more terrible

and more honorable than the sheep-slaughter he actually commits.

113 See Adams note on eggignesthai panti (571b10)
114 See 2.2.

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expressions of the selves that are least ourselves, and one day or other, Socrates suggests, they
will make fools or criminals of every one of us, should we ever get the chance to do in the
daylight what we only imagine at night. Short of never sleeping again, how can we moderate
these devious desires that cannot finally be banished even from a good and healthy soul? I will
consider Socrates surprising answer in the following section.

3.3 Correct trophe

One might expect that a dialogue infamous for its supposed despite of the body would
promote uncomplicated asceticism in straightforward terms, but this is not the case with the
Republic. On the contrary, Socrates argues at several points that we ought to gentle our
appetiteseven our most potentially dangerous appetitesby feeding them.
The word that arises repeatedly in such passages is troph, from trephein, which refers
originally to the clabbering or curdling of milk, and then to the nourishment and rearing of the
milk-fed animal or child.115 Through the liquid and then solid replenishments of trophe, the
young become fat and solid and sleek. Trophe is first a mothers (or wetnurses) milk or fodder
for animals, but the term is commonly extended to mean food provisions in general (for the
young and then for maintaining the army) for which reason it starts to take on the sense of daily
bread (kath hmeran troph). The term refers more broadly, too, to rearing and upbringing,
from the nurses lullabies and stories to the education and then the philosophical satisfactions of
the citys most advanced students. In other words, trophe for body and soul is an instance of the
appetite analogy written right into the language.

115 See 331a, 373c, 401b-402a, 412b, 423e, 424a, 430a, 431a, 436a, 450c, 451d-552e, 453d, 458d, 460c-e,

461c, 464c, 465d-e, 491d-e, 495a, 509b, 520b, 543c, 585b-c, 589b, 591c, among others. See 4.3 for further
discussion of several of these passages.

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The Republics preoccupation with trophe can be measured by the preponderance of

nursemaids (trophoi), wet-nurses (tithnoi, from thsai, to suckle), animal husbanders, feeders
of the army, and educators of several kinds that populate the dialogue. I will treat several of these
specific characters in Chapter Four. For our purposes here, I simply want to have established
trophes broad connotations: mothers-milk, solid replenishment, fodder, ephemeral satisfaction
(daily bread is received and eaten day-by-day), and intellectual rearing.

Putting the soul to bed

The previous sections of this chapter (3.1-3.2) argued that the soul must be harmonized or
risk the loss of its integrity. Glaucons strange molding suggests that that harmonization is as
much a thing that we accomplish as a thing that happens to us: Harmonia is an active balance of
art and nature involving an active recognition of the highest part as the outer covering. But the
souls harmoniaunlike the wholly artificial harmonia of a sculpture, for instanceis not such a
thing as to be produced once and for all. Once we have shaped and harmonized our souls, then
we have to preserve that harmonia.
In the previous section (3.2), I introduced the great obstacles to continued harmonia in the
soul: the wakeful and wayward irrational appetites that seek to go out and do every foolish and
shameful thing that they can dream up to do while the rest of the soul sleeps (571c-d). Socrates
goes on to suggest that we can combat these gluttonous desires by careful trophe of the following
kind:
But, on the other hand, I can suppose a man who has a healthy and moderate
[sphrons] relationship to himself and who goes to sleep only after he does the
following: first, he awakens his calculating part and feasts it on fair arguments and
considerations [logn kaln kai skepsen], coming to an understanding [sunnoian]
with himself (571d).

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According to the appetite analogy, the mind eats logoi. The outer man (or the whole
man, or the ego, or the outer mold) plays host to the best element within and lays the table
for it. And this sharing of logoi brings the outer man and the inner rational part together into
agreement. This coming to an understanding with himself is the fulfillment of the appetites
obscure nod to itself in IV, and the answer to Leontius frustration, as well. In his case, one
part of the soul was scandalized, furious, and astonished while all his other desires scattered like
thieves each to their supposedly secret exploits, dragging the whole soul with it by force. That is,
Book IVs mere tripartition left every part alienated from every other part, and ready to fight for
its own aims above all.116 But this Book IX image of sunnoia between the outer mold and the
best element of the inner man suggests that the man can be a friend to himself, that if he looks
inside himself, he will find a part that looks just like him, and is similarly minded towards the
elements within him that are foreign and disruptive.
One thing about which the outer man and the inner man agree is that these lower
appetites cannot be left to themselves. There are two parts to this agreement, 1) that the rational
part should rule, and 2) that there are these terrible desires within every human being that must
be controlled, trained, or otherwise tamed. This recognition of the ineradicable and potentially
powerful hydra in the soul is a tremendous advance on Glaucons earlier denial that he has ever
noticed anything as awful and perverse as Leontius crisis in himself or others.117 We are now on
the track of a moderation that includes deep wisdom about human weakness.
Second, he feeds the desiring part in such a way that it is neither in want nor
surfeited [endeia plsmone at 571e1-2]in order that it will rest and not disturb
the best part by its joy or its pain, but rather leave that best part alone pure
[katharon] and by itself, to consider and to long for [skopein kai oregesthai] the

116 In Leontius case, even the limited partnership of thumos and logistikon failed.
117 See 2.2.

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perception of something that it doesnt know, either something that has been, or is, or
is going to be.
A little attention to hunger and thirst before bed pays off in the most extraordinary fashion.
Moderate souls who keep their appetites satisfied and calmbut not completely filledcan
expect to desire and to dream not of cannibalism, murder, rape, and other crimes, but the other
cosmic extreme: eternal truth.118 Here, moderation looks to include divine or prophetic wisdom
about all the beings and events of all time, or at least the desire for such wisdom.119 Note too,
that Socrates is now claiming that katharsis of the best part of the soul is somehow reconcilable
with due attention to and nurture of the lowest parts. Katharsis of mind cannot be accomplished
by ascetic neglect of the lower desires.
and third, he soothes the spirited part in the same way and does not fall asleep with
his spirit aroused because there are some he got angry at.
When a man has silenced these two latter forms and set the thirdthe one in which
prudent thinking comes to bein motion, and only then takes his rest, you know that
in such a state he most lays hold of the truth and at this time the sights that are hostile
to law show up least in his dreams.
Recall that in the earlier image of music flowing into the ear (treated in 3.2), we mentioned the
parallel of the mother or nurse rocking the child to sleep with lullabies. Here, Socrates suggests
that we become our own nurses, providing our own trophefood and speech and song. How
exactly are we to provide this trophe? And what are the limits of this metaphor? Unfortunately,
Socrates leaves it at that: We have said too much about this (572b).
This much is clear: Socrates prescribes logoi for the parts that can understand, but mere
food for the irrational parts. He is not suggesting that the authoritative, rational part can prove its

118 The Greek, plsmone, like the English repletion indicates 1) perfect fullness and 2) surfeit, as if they

amounted to the same thing.

119 Socrates may have a specific practice of divination in mind here. See Adam. For a detailed discussion

of the philosophical appetites echoed here, see Chapter Four.

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authority and reasonableness to the irrational appetites.120 Logoi are food for the intellect, meant
to wake it up and make it an active thinker and observer. Food for the appetite should be
provided in a measured waynot too much, not too little, so as to quiet the appetite during the
night. Most of all, it is important that the appetites get used to being only barely satisfied, not
glutted, since being filled seems to unleash them for more painful and ridiculous exploits
overnight. Appetite will always seek unreasonable completeness of its desires; it doesnt know
that it is full when it is full. But if the appetite becomes accustomed to being only partly satisfied,
it will not consider fullness or completeness its birthright, and thus go out seeking complete
experience of every appetitive aim.
And it is clear that this program is not meant to be a final cure. Preserving the soul is a
daily task, since surely some terrible, savage, and lawless form of desires is in every man, even
in some of us who seem to be ever so measured. And surely this becomes plain in dreams
(572b). The terrible desires of the hydra in the soul are not subdued once for all by hacking away
at them. They are always slowly regrowing and regrouping. The soul-tamer should apply the
counsel of Circe, who warned Odysseus not to think that he can take up arms and slay the manyheaded monster. Epithumia is not so easily outwitted and conquered. Rather, the sophron keeps
one eye on the monster while he is awake, and he does what he can to mitigate its
destructiveness while he sleeps.
Socrates is not asking for the impossible: He does not say, never fall asleep.121 Simply
vowing to stay awake and fast as long as one can is the youthful, daring, solution to the
problem of forgetfulness and creeping pleonexia. But in fact, all human beings need to sleep and

120 Thumos, however, which is midway between reasoning and desire, can be lulled by quasi-logical

meanssongs, rather than speeches.

121 The Symposium and the Republic describe two sleepless nights for Socrates, but even Socrates will

have to rest at some point.

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eat. True moderation will consist not in banishing or ignoring these fact of mortal life but in
tending to necessity in the safest way. All human beings, whether moderate or not, will go
through cycles of awareness and forgetfulness, so Socrates prescribes the best practice possible
for mitigating the natural weakness of human beings.
The practice of proper trophe that Socrates suggests here logoi for the parts that can
befriend the outer man, and food for the parts that go wild when they are gluttedis to be a daily
ritual, something like evening supper, prayers, and lullabies. It will have to be repeated every
night before bed. Such watchful and prospective harmonization provides only an ephemeral
good, not a once-and-for-all harmonious solution to the problems of pleonexia.122

Feeding and starving the multiform soul

Socrates returns to this mysterious practice at 588e, the conclusion of the passage we
treated earlier in this chapter.123 Once Glaucon has shaped and breathed life into his little eikn
containing eikna, he is responsible for feeding it and keeping it alive. Correct nurture of the
multiform being within the man seems to involve both modes of moderation, harmonia and
katharsis (here, feeding and starving) where the latter serves the former. The sophron will give
even the lowest appetites their due, if only to keep them in their place, so that they do not try
later to devour the other appetites and masquerade as rational/deliberative wisdom about how to
live:124
Then lets say to the one who says that its profitable for this human being to do
injustice, and that its not advantageous for him to do just things, that hes affirming

122 See Lear 2001, 110: In actual life, the psychological achievements of maturity do tend to be somewhat

fragile. There is always and everywhere the possibility of being overwhelmed.

123 See 3.2, under Molding the soul.
124 Offering such pearls of wisdom as Better to die eating the cattle of Helios than to die of hunger.

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nothing other than that it is profitable for him to feast and make strong the manifold
beast and the lion and whats connected with the lion, while starving [limoktonein]
the human being and making him weak so that he can be drawn wherever either of
the others leads and doesnt habituate them to one another or make them friends but
lets them bite and fight and devour one another.
The mismanagement of the soul is not a small matter; for if certain appetites are neglected
altogether, they seek extreme and self-destroying satisfactions. According to Socrates startling
metaphor, the mismanaged soul self-cannibalizes itself.
A gentler hand is needed:
it is necessary to do and say those things from which the human being within will
most be in control of the human being and take charge of the many-headed beast
like a farmer, nourishing and cultivating [trephn kai tithaseun] the tame heads,
while hindering the growth [apoklun phuesthai] of the savage onesmaking the
lions nature an ally and, caring for all in common, making them friends with each
other and himself, and so rear them [threpsai] (589a).
Only bad husbandmen starve their animals. Only when the lowest appetites are in control does
any one part go entirely without sustenance. By contrast, when reason is in control, the savage
heads are prevented from gaining in bulk but they are not to be starved outright. Their diet is
restricted, but they are not to be neglected or banished.125 Indeed, the lion and perhaps the
appetites themselves are invited to be friends with one another.
The state of injustice, where the basest part rules the noble part, is not friendship but
slavery:
if he enslaves the most divine part of himself to the most godless and polluted part
and has no pity, wont he then be wretched and accept golden gifts for a destruction
more terrible by far than Eriphyles accepting the necklace for her husbands soul?
Here Socrates recalls the doomed assault on Thebes and the unfortunate/fortunate end of
Eriphyles husband, whose life she sells for the ironically provenanced necklace of Harmonia.
For her wretched act of epithumia, a noble man is given over to a bizarre sort of destruction:

125 As Cerberus.

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Amphiaraus, forced to go to war, knowing that he is doomed, and standing at the threshold of
old age126 is suddenly spared deathby Zeus thunderbolt. The ground opens up underneath
him, and he is whisked away living to dwell among the dead.
Socrates concludes:
Then wont the man who has intelligence strain all of his powers to that end as long
as he lives; in the first place, honoring the studies that will make his soul such, while
despising the rest? [] Next, not only wont he turn the habit and nourishment of the
body over to the bestial and irrational pleasure and live turned in that direction, but
hell not even look to health, nor give precedence to being strong, healthy, or fair
unless hes also going to become moderate as a result of them; rather he will always
be seen adjusting the bodys harmony for the sake of the accord in the soul. (591c-d).
Finally Socrates argues against gain in general:127
Wont he also maintain order and concord in the acquisition of money? And, since
hes not impressed with what the many deem to be blessedness, will he give
boundless increase to the bulk of his property and thus possess boundless evils?
[] Rather, he looks fixedly at the regime within him, and guards against upsetting
anything in it by the possession of too much or too little substance. In this way,
insofar as possible, he governs his additions to, and expenditure of, his substance.
[] And, further, with honors too, he looks to the same thing; he will willingly
partake of and taste those that he believes will make him better, while those that
would overturn his established habit he will flee, in private and in public.
The object is not to gain substance, but to remain the same as one ever was. Note that the
sophron looks at the regime within him: What he wants to be is to already in him, not an
exterior goal. He wants to continue to be what he already is. This desire for preservation of the
human being is a perfect expression of the ss in sphrosun.
So where do we stand thus far? It seems that moderation is an active work of the soul that
aims at unanimity, that is one-souledness, not by expurgating all lesser aims, but by

126 As Cephalus is said to be (328c), and by allusion, Priam (See Il. 22.60; 24.481 and Od. 15.246).
127 For a fuller treatment of philokerdeia, see Chapter 2.4.

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harmonizing the desires of all parts of the soul and neither fully satisfying nor entirely starving
the lowest of them. Since every part of the soul seems to have desires and some share in
rationality, sophrosune cannot simply be a matter of doing what is reasonable against what is
merely desired. Rather, sophrosune must mean endeavoring to rear better desires and tame
lower desires. Sophrosune is the harmony of high and low, ruling and being ruled, that is
especially or initially concerned with bringing epithumia under reason. Although moderation is
concerned with satisfaction, it must be conceded that the satisfaction of the whole person may
require the momentary or limited dissatisfaction of one part.
However, as I argued in the previous chapter, the appetitive part of the soul is not capable
of satisfaction when left to itself, because epithumia is pleonectic by nature. And its discontent is
compounded by the confusion it experiences as the expected fulfillment of its desires recedes
from reach. Appetite cannot understand the infinity it has blundered into, and alternates between
complacent hope that satisfaction is just within reach, and short-lived frustration at the teasing
emptiness of its objects. Seen in the light of this existential problem, the rule of reason over
appetite cannot mean a practical sacrifice of bodily satisfaction for the sake of some higher
good.128 What is needed is an inner logos by which the entire soul becomes a one with distinct
parts, each of which must be nourished in turn such that the whole can be at peace and the
highest part can pursue what it loves best.

128 Taylor (2001 [1937], 269: The point is that in all application of intelligence to the conduct of activity

of any kind, the supreme wisdom is to know just where to stop, and to stop just there and nowhere else. The wise
man, like the musician or the physician, knows what the fool or the quack never knows, how much is enough.
The mistake common to the fool in the management of life and the bungler tuning a musical instrument or treating a
sick man, is that they believe in the adage that you cant have too much of a good thing. On the strength of this
misleading faith, one ruins his instrument, another kills his patient, and the third spoils his own life. There is a just
right in all the affairs of life, and to go beyond it is to spoil your performance, and consequently, to miss
happiness. I disagree with Taylor here in the following respect: The kairos is a relative term, even among great
artists and technicians, who still argue among themselves about how browned a steak should be, or how close to a
certain temperament an instrument should be tuned, and so on. For the true perfectionist in any art, even the
momentary capture of the just right at the just right moment cannot be satisfying, since it is temporary, and for
good or ill, desire wants to possess the good, true and beautiful forever.

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3.4 False sophrosune

At certain moments throughout the Republic, Plato illustrates or has one of the characters
promote a certain false sophrosune that bears a surface likeness to the real virtue. Like the true
sophron, the pseudo-sophron leads a quiet life, but the peace he enjoys is a passive state, attained
solely by the expurgation of low desires and objects and at the command of an exterior authority
or by chance.
In this final section of the chapter, I consider an illustrative moment in Socrates third
argument for the superiority of justice over injustice in Book IX: Socrates criticism of a middle
state of repose (hsuchia) between pain and pleasure (583b-585a). Insofar as the passage deals
with the pleasures of hunger and thirst specifically, it is clearly relevant. (Indeed, this argument
is so important that I will treat it again in more depth and in context in Chapter Four, where I
discuss the notion of knowledge as replenishment.)
The passage in question follows the city-building and purgation of the early books (IIIV), the difficult digressions of the middle books (V-VII), and the subsequent catalogue of
political and individual degeneration (VIII-IX). Here, towards the end of Book IX, Socrates
finally gives Glaucon what he requested from the beginning (358c-d, 368c), supposedly airtight
and satisfying arguments for the superiority of justice over injustice. Socrates offers three such
arguments (571a-588a) and dedicates the third to Zeus Savior, the traditional eponym marking
the third of three libations to the gods and heroes.129
In the midst of his argument that only the philosophers pleasure is true and pure,
Socrates introduces the notion of a neutral middle state between pain and pleasure that may be
misjudged in two ways: The person who has been suffering will take the cessation of pain to be

129 Socrates compares this last argument to the third and final throw in traditional Olympic wrestling, as

well. (See Bloom.) For more on the significance of this eponym and a related question of redundancy in argument,
see 4.5.

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joy itself. The person who has been experiencing joy will mistake the cessation of it as a positive
injury.
Then would you be surprised if those who are inexperienced in truth, as they have
unhealthy opinions about many other things, so too they are disposed toward
pleasure and pain and whats between them in such a way that, then they are brought
to the painful, they suppose [oiontai] truly and are really in pain, but, when brought
from the painful to the in-between [to metaxu], they seriously suppose [sphodra
oiontiai] they are nearing fulfillment [plrsei] and pleasure; and, as though out of
lack of experience of white they looked from gray to black, out of experience of
pleasure they look from pain to the painless and are deceived? (584e-585a)
Those who make serious mistakes about their own pleasures and pains, who cannot tell whether
to be pleased and satisfied or not are deceived about a most important topic: themselves. They
do not know themselves. Like many of the souls who return to the central, neutral field in the
Myth of Er, they are determined by their immediate history to choose the state that is before
them as if it were choiceworthy in itself. They know that they are coming from a more painful to
a less painful state, but they do not realize that they have reached only the neutral middle plain,
not the extreme telos of fulfilling pleasure.
Such judgments of sick or suffering men or of those who are recovering from intense
pleasures are mistaken: How can it be right to believe that the absence of suffering is pleasant
or that the absence of enjoyment is grievous? says Socrates. It is not so, [] but when it is
next to the painful, repose looks pleasant and next to the pleasant, painful; and in these
appearances there is nothing sound, so far as the truth of pleasure goes. (584a).
This being a mean is not the same as the virtue of moderation, since it is deceived, and
apart from this, it is attained by the chance occurrence of less or more pain. This middle state
(metaxu) or certain repose of the soul (hsuchian tina peri tauta ts psuchs at 583c) in the mean
(en mes) must not be mistaken for the active work of moderationthe self-conscious motion of

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the sophron in the metaxu who carries messages back and forth between high and low.130 This
certain quietness and expectation of fulfillment may be false (585a). If it is a state of quietness
and contentment, it is not the rest of the just. This is an illegitimate contentment (if one can
imagine such a thing), issuing from a false sense that one has already reached a satisfactory
haven and telos, the highest and best pleasure and state that is possible. How could anyone be
confused about his or her own happiness? If I experience x state as fully satisfactory, and the
most pleasant, why does it matter that this state is objectively only a middle state, the absence
of pain, or a second-rate pleasure? It would not make any difference, I think, to someone who
could stay in that middle state. But no one can stay in the middle. That is Socrates point; we are
always moving through the middle stateto or from pain, or from one degree of pleasure to
another. Our illusion of finality will constantly be dashed, and we will not know where we are or
where we are going.
What is the solution to this problem? To recognize the moderate and relative good of any
pleasure or state in which we find ourselves; to recognize that we are in fact in the middle,
passing between one state and another, and that (so far as we can tell) no state yet reached has
been the final, best, highest, absolute good. (Not even Socrates and his interlocutors will reach
that absolute Good in the dialogue.)
Souls that are confused about their true happiness in this way are like sick men, says
Socrates (583c), who say that they forgot just how pleasant mere health is, once they become
sick. Glaucon agrees: Repose (hsuchia) perhaps becomes pleasant and enough to content them
(agapton).
Like necessary and unnecessary desires, the pleasant appears to be a moveable
category. What appears to be pleasant to us may not be truly pleasant just as what appears to

130 See above.

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be necessary to us may not be truly necessary. Furthermore, given a little time and chance,
what seems necessary or pleasant now may not seem so a little later.
Now, there may very well exist pleasures that are truei.e. pleasant in themselves and
not because they stand next to newly-escaped pains. Socrates argument will go on to discuss just
such pleasures, and to claim that they belong only to the philosopher. For the moment, I will
leave discussion of the rest of the argument to Chapter Four.
For now, consider just one relevant part of the argument: The metaxu that Socrates
criticizes here is a sort of false moderation. The peaceful, quiet, contented one whose desires
have been erased or lost stands in the mean as an escapee from appetite, not as its master.
Whatever desire remains to him is mild and static, not as in the Symposium, an active spirit that
brings messages from one to the other, from human to divine, from hunger, thirst, fear, lust,
greed, to politics, to the sciences, to the highest sciences, to the divine. In this forgetful middle
state, there is no awareness of the other extremes, or sense of futurity, only an automatic reaction
to immediate history of pain or pleasure. Cephalus supposed moderation is of precisely this sort,
as I will argue in the last chapter.

Conclusions
This chapter has argued that sophrosune understood as primarily kathartic could not
address the real problems of pleonectic epithumia. Desires and circumstances never stay the
same. Terrible desires carefully trained out of the consciousness of the purified soul will simply
emerge in their dreams. Like a hydra with re-sprouting heads, one labors in vain merely to hack
off one after another, especially by blank fiat.131

131 See 426e.

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Socrates is well aware of the problem and moves early on in the dialogue to redefine
sophrosune as a self-conscious unanimity. According to this nuanced version of moderation, it is
better to be an actively harmonized unity of parts than a pure and homogenous unity.
In addition to his positive descriptions of the harmonious soul, Socrates presents an
exaggerated picture of purely expurgative moderation that turns out not to be moderate at all.
Although slightly better than conscious gluttony (the desire for the impossible and unhealthy,
along with the belief that these can provide satisfaction and pleasure), eukolasiafalse
moderationshares many of its qualities.132 As chance and circumstances allow, the passively
moderate and apparently content eukolos will seize whatever comes suddenly into his reach.
(Socrates describes just such a man in Book X, as I will discuss in Chapter Five.) In any case,
such moderation by expurgation (effecting true eu-kolasia, well-trimmedness, according to
the pun) could not be a true virtue even if it were possible; the person cut off from every
occasion of intemperance and snipped free of all low and leaden appetites (519b) would not be a
discriminating or deliberating agent.133
Finally, this chapter has argued, sophrosune is a principle of intelligibility. It makes sense
of the soul to itselfby constituting it and preserving it as a one out of many. Like the effective
light of the sun, sophrosune will be the cause of the souls ordered distinct being and of its
intelligibility to others and to itself. This rational sense of the virtue is implicit in the etymology:
sophrosune implies safety, soundness, and wholeness [ss] of mind [phrn]. To be moderate is

132 It is possible that Plato intends that eukolos should recall eucheomai, which evokes gluttony and

worse (Burnyeat [1997], 229). See Rep. 586a.

133 As Aristotles foolhardy courageous men who do not sacrifice much when they greet death, since

they have little to lose or to fear (Nic. Ethics III.x.4-6). Their courage falls far below that of the truly virtuous man,
whose life is happy and full and hard to relinquish. Platos first take on courage (Book III) is courage of the former
type. To be clear, I am not arguing that the truly virtuous must struggle or be confused about the greater good (that
might be a sign of akrasia, not full human activity, as Aristotle says). Rather, true courage (or moderation) involves
thinking and choosing for oneself at ones peril and in the face of several possibilities.

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first to be in ones right mind, so that ones action can be rational and deliberate, rather than
brutish, automatic, or manic.
It is clear that even the most familiar form of sophrosune in the Republic (self-control
with regard to food, drink, and sex) is already indicative of reason, since even ordinary
moderation requires a certain amount of rational effort. Even ordinary sophrosune is rational
insofar as it is self-consciously inward-looking, insofar as it aims for a proper ratio between its
parts, insofar as it is the whole souls vote for reason as the proper ruler, and insofar as it actively
seeks to maintain that harmony, integrity, and identity. In this respect, Platos sophrosune will
differ from Aristotles, which is a virtue concerning the irrational appetites of the soul almost
exclusively. In the Republic, by contrast, sophrosunes true opposite is not mere akolasia134 but
aphrosun, the foolishness, forgetfulness, and absence of mind that make gluttony possible (as at
619b).135
Only in its role as a voice of reason can sophrosune begin to address all of the
problems that appetite introduces into the soul (as discussed in Chapter Two), including the
existential concernsthe confusing state of the conflicted, epithumetically changeable soul, for
example. In other words, sophrosune will finally have to include the activity of selfknowledge.136

134 As Nich. Ethics III.x.

135 The LSJ identifies mania as the opposite of sophrosune.
136 Pichanick 2005 also stresses the part of self-knowledge in sophrosune (and the proper understanding of

the term), and deserves a more detailed response here than practicality allows. Many of Pichanicks observations
about sophrosune, especially as it relates to Socrates famous disavowal of positive knowledge, apply to the
Republic in spadesbut also in strange converse, given Socrates positive tone in parts of the dialogue.

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CHAPTER FOUR
PHILOSOPHICAL APPETITES

Anyone who is to live aright should suffer his appetites to

grow to the greatest extent and not check them, and
through courage and intelligence should be competent to
minister to them at their greatest and to satisfy every
appetite with what it craves.
Gorgias 491e-492a1
Is there a pleonexia of thinking? Is it logically or practically possible to desire to know
too much? And if so, what might that too much entail? (Excessively many fields of investigation?
Excessive hours spent in contemplation and argument? Excessively lofty objects of pursuit?) Is
intellectual insatiability best understood as a virtue, a vice, a passing pang that is eventually
cured by knowledge, or simply the inevitable state of the finite philosopher whose object of
desire seems always to be beyond? When Socrates compares thinking and knowing to
nourishment and its satisfactions, he raises all these questions.
Perhaps Socrates appetite analogy is meant to reveal deep differences between our lower
desires and our very highest ones (to know the best things by means of our best faculties, as
Aristotle has it). Or perhaps the appetite analogy warns us that the love of wisdom is subjectno
less than any other human desireto gluttonous and immoderate impulses.2
In Chapter Two, the discussion treated Socrates somewhat exaggerated distinction
between the epithumetikon and the logistikon. In this chapter, we tell the rest of the story; in fact,

1 trans. W.D. Woodhead, in the Collected Dialogues (Hamilton and Cairns)

2 Cf. Annas (1981), who argues that moderation finally applies more to the lowest classes than to the

philosopher/guardian classes, whose desires (since they are better) presumably would never require restraint: There
is, then, a way in which moderation is displayed by all the citizens, but also a way in which it can be thought of as
peculiarly the virtue of the productive class, because it is only from them that this common agreement demands
restraint in the way they behave (116).

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there are epithumiai that belong to each part of the soul (not just the epithumetikon) and one of
these is rational epithumia. What are we to make of this hybrid? On its fathers side (appetite), it
says yes to all; on its mothers side (reasoning), it denies and restrains. On one side, it is
susceptible to pleonexia; on the other side, it is about measure. Rational epithumia seems to be
drawn immediately to all that can be known, but at the same time, it prides itself on the
superiority of its objects: It aims at the very highest principles and causes. It appears to want all
and only the best, passionately and according to judgment, recklessly and moderately, to the
potential harm and benefit of the rationally appetitive philosopher.
This chapter considers several high moments in Books V-VII that display or describe
intense philosophical desire for complete and rare knowledge, in order to determine whether or
not rational appetite is inescapably pleonectic and more important, whether that kind of
pleonexia is a problem. Platos precise meaning (or doctrine) in these middle books has long
been a matter of strong dispute, but many divergent readers agree that the dialogue in some way
goes too far in these grand moments, whether intentionally or unintentionally.3 Some argue
that the image of philosophy unveiled here at the rhetorical peak of the dialogue is monstrously
out of proportion to and irreconcilable with ordinary human life (and ordinary human justice).4

3 On this point, Popper, Nussbaum, Strauss, Rosen, Roochnik and Annas agree. At best, the program may

well turn out to be hopelessly ambitious (Annas 1981, 10).

4 Socrates himself and his interlocutors comment on the excessive nature of their conversation (its

inordinate length, its audacious scope and outlandish conclusions). For one example (among many yet to be
discussed in this chapter), see Socrates prolonged statement of trepidation at the outset of Book V (450a-451b). At
the beginning of the great central digression of the Republic (V-VII), with which this chapter is primarily concerned,
Socrates indicates that he is ready to go forward to discuss injustice, since they have already treated justice in full
(449a). With the interruption of Polemarchus, however, the impending treatment of injustice will be replaced with
Books V-VII. Many readers take the implied cue that what follows in this lengthy digression is a picture of perfect
injustice, nonetheless. According to one interpretation, the extreme and excessive pursuit of perfect justice in these
middle books ends in perfect injustice. Poppers famous critique might be considered in this light. See Ludwig (in
Ferrari 2007), for a largely unironic reading that praises philosophical appetite in the middle books for its very
profligacy.
Others have argued against this literalist reading of the middle books and for a more skeptical
Plato/Socrates, whose noble failures in the middle books are meant to teach the limits of political idealism. Some

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The ruling inhabitants of Socrates beautiful city are perhaps excessively austere, excessively
disembodied, excessively unified, excessively mathematical, excessively earnest about order, or
excessively optimistic about what can be known.5 Some readers take the digressions of Books VVII to be reckless thought experiments (on Socrates and/or Platos part); others take them to be
straightforward propaganda for totalitarian rule. These interpretations are well known.
My interest in the apparent excesses of the middle books is somewhat different. Where
others have concentrated on the justice or practicability of the political structure outlined in the
middle books and the meaning of excess in that context, I am interested in what the provocative
city-building reveals about the nature of philosophical discussions in general and the desires that
drive them to extremes. In other words, I am looking for the philosophical meaning of the
Republics excesses and the broader context in which Socrates uncharacteristically positive and
(I think) intentionally outsized digressions can be understood.
Two questions need answering. First, what precisely is excessive about the philosophers
desire to know or Socrates digressive discussion of it in Books V-VII, and how might these
excesses differ from those of ordinary epithumia? And second, to what extent might the
excesses of the middle books still encourage truly philosophical attitudes, natures, and pursuits?
Here, gluttony (whose ordinary form has been treated in earlier chapters) will be our
analogical guide. The excesses of thinkers are something like the excesses of gluttons. More

within this tradition (as Rosen 2006) attempt to square some of the positive teachings of the middle books with what
they take to be Plato/Socrates final regretful skepticism and make the pragmatists argument that some injustice is
better than no government.
Roochnik (2003) argues that the excesses of the middle books are meant to be taken neither as absurdities
(which disprove their hypotheses) nor as unproblematically positive Platonic teachings, but rather, as moments in
the dialectical progress of the Republic, whose truth is in the whole but in none of the parts taken singly.
5 Nussbaums is a famous expression of this interpretation: By the arguments end, Socrates will have

defended as the best human life a life much more extreme in its detachment than Cephaluss: the life of the
philosopher, whose soul the Phaedo describes as akin to the forms it contemplates: pure, hard, single, unchanging,
unchangeable. A life, then, of goodness without fragility. We would like to understand his arguments for the
superior value of this life (1986, 138).

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concretely, the philosophers desires to be filled and nourished with knowledge until they
suppose that they have reached the Isles of the Blessed and the end of all questions may be an
instance of supreme intellectual gluttony. And gluttony of this kind may or may not be good
for philosophy.
This chapter will take up these matters part by part and concretely. Section 4.1 describes
the divergent aims of philosophical epithumia, beginning with Socrates discussion of the
omnivores (and omnibibulants) of food, wine, and learning (474c-475d). Section 4.2 treats
Socrates various lists of philosophical attributes in Books V-VI. Section 4.3 discusses Socrates
proposals for the trophe of his philosopher-kings and considers what happens in Book VI when
Socrates replaces the belly with the eye and the contradictions that arise when we seek the
repletion of that organ. The last subsection treats a the ambiguous telos of learning in the the
Republic, the Isles of Blessed, whose statuesque inhabitants experience the perfect satisfaction of
their intellectual appetites. The last section, 4.4, entitled Redundancy and the Good, treats the
daimonically excessive (daimonias huperbols at 509c) but meager account of the Good in
Book VI and connects the Goods ineffable centrality to certain obvious and inescapable
excesses of philosophical conversation.

The argument thus far

The previous chapters have followed Glaucons journey from demander of opson in Book
II to humble recanter of epithumia in the last paragraphs of Book IV: [further inquiry about the
benefits of justice] looks to me as though it has become ridiculous by now. If life doesnt seem
livable with the bodys nature corrupted, not even with every sort of food and drink and every
sort of wealth and every sort of rule, will it then be livable when the nature of that very thing by

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which we live is confused and corrupted? (445a-b, my emphasis). The newly moderate Glaucon
would rather give up opson altogether than risk confusion and corruption of body and soul.
Now that Socrates has settled the desires of opson-loving Glaucon and the Glauconian
citizens (rather, now that each has learned to [set] his own house in order and to [harmonize]
the three parts of his soul under the single rule of reason over desire and spirit [443d]), the
argument about justicewhat it is and why it is preferable to injusticeis as good as
complete.6Then that dream of ours has reached its fulfillment (443b) says Socrates. All that
remains is a brief and presumably breezy discussion of injustice, whose essencethe converse
of justiceshould be easy to derive and whose noteworthy forms will be just four in number. In
just a few moments, then, we can expect that the dialogue will come to its proper end. The
question has been answered. Justice is preferable to injustice in itself and for its consequences.
Glaucon can now gather his himation, say his farewells, and wend his way back home with
Socrates to Athens, whither they were hastening in the first lines of the dialogue. Alternatively,
this would seem to be an apt moment for Polemarchus to produce the promised dinner.7
Plato does not let on what might have happened. Polemarchus interrupts, not to play the
host, but to ask another question, and Books V-VII are born. The desire to know more (about
desire, as it happens) postpones the tantalizing end of the logos and what would have been the
dramatic satisfaction of the dialogue: Socrates and Glaucons resumed nostos.
How to approach this pinnacle digression? Some suggest that eros qua eros is the key,
noting that Book V marks the emergence of eros as a visible, now irrepressible topic in the

6 For a full description of the two opposite movements that accomplish moderation, see Chapter Three.
7 Of course, Glaucons renunciation of fancy food and drink might make dinner an awkward affair at this

point. In any case, Polemarchus failure to play the host in the place of the absent Cephalus is a fascinating subtopic
(contrast him with Agathon in the Symposium, for example), to which I will give some attention in Chapter Five.

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Republic.8 But of course its cousin, epithumia, has been on the scene from the start of the
dialogue.9 Polemarchus present interest in specifically sexual desire echoesas it hones
Glaucons epithumetic interruption in Book II. The earlier question what about good food? led
to the present question what about sexual desire, jealousy, and the complications that arise from
its discriminating tendency? Some might consider this latter to be the more promising subject.
Yet eros by no means replaces epithumia from this point on. There will be plenty of gluttony and
moderation in the books to come and the higher-level treatment of these matters is the more
interesting for being continuous with the treatments of the earlier books. (Whereas those who
focus on eros qua eros in Book V are faced with a new topic altogether, or at least a new
mode of inquiry.) As I stated in my introduction, I will leave it to others to do justice to the erosstrand that runs parallel from Book V onward and provides a useful contrast to the
gluttony/moderation strand, my central topic.
Alternatively, some commentators concentrate on Polemarchus forcible re-arrest of
Socrates at this point as the interpretive key to the following three-book digression. Certainly the
opening of Book V recalls the reader to the opening of Book I. (Polemarchus tug on
Adeimantus cloak is one obvious dramatic cue.)10 But as in the first moments of the dialogue,
Socrates part as a victim of force should not obscure his active role as a tempter of intellectual
desire. To return to the local example: Although Glaucons epithumia for logos seems to run out
(445a-b), his interlocutor will not accept victory and go on his way. Although Socrates agrees
that further discussion is ridiculous, by which he means perhaps superfluous, excessive, or
unnecessary, his response is nonetheless protreptic: Yes it is ridiculous, but all the same, since
8 See esp. Roochnik 2003.
9 Cephalus speech, for example, referred to epithumia and aphrodisia. (A fuller anatomy of epithumia is

offered in Chapter Two.)

10 See Dorter (2006, 138), Sachs (2007, 143 n.71), among others.

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weve come to the place from which we are able to see most clearly that these things are so, we
mustnt weary (445b). And his refusal to be done with the logos spurs on the others.
Surely they have reached a lookout-point (skopia) in the logos, says Socrates
encouragingly. Since they can see what is ahead (one form for virtue and an unlimited number
for vice, but some four among them [] worth mentioning [445c]) they will not be arguing
blind and might as well stay a little longer to complete the investigation. They need not fear that
their dialogue will open out into an unlimited discussion, since Socrates can judge which vices
are worth mentioning (axion epimnsthnai) and which others are not.
He does not mention any standard of judgment, nor should it reassure his listeners that it
is likely that the number of important vices is exactly equal to the traditional number of
political regimes. Indeed, Socrates slip from axia theas at 445c2 to axion epimnsthnai at
445c7 allows that there are countless things not worth mentioning that are still worth a look. The
non-identity of these two sets is a philosophical Pandoras box.
That is to say, Socrates invites Polemarchus and Adeimantus curious interruption in
Book V. His forthright encouragements not to weary along with his frequent hints about a realm
of unsaid but intriguing side-logoi increase their desire to go the distance and to welcome a new
swarm of countless unknown arguments about women and children and desire and the
expansion of the city and the disruption of the communal peace and they know not what else.
The word is hesmon at 450a, as in a swarm of stinging bees, an image that will reoccur later in
the Republic in a rather darker context (beginning with the synonym smnos at 552c-e). The
similarity is suggestive. Swarms of advisors can corrupt a weak man; can swarms of arguments
corrupt a weak thinker? Do arguments have stingers? The approaching swarm is a formless
whole with uncountable parts. Considered as a blurry mass or bee by bee, the living swarm
evades cognition. Socrates says that he attempted to pass by these troublesome logoi without a
word.
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Polemarchus and the others are full of sincere expectation but they are destined for
terrible trouble.11 Although they heartily welcome the future logos (or logoi?), they dont
know (450a) what shape it will take or what might be its new telos (such that they could
recognize it when it arrives).12 Will the question about desire replace the question about justice?
Or will the digression help to prove that justice is better than injustice (a conclusion Glaucon has
already reached in Book IV)? The caution is clear: A longer, broader, and higher-reaching
dialogue will not necessarily be a more satisfying dialogue. Socrates eager listeners accept the
challenge. They are now embarked on the teleologically vague, formless, uncountable, and
troublesome logos as from the beginning (450a8). Rational epithumia figures twice, then, in
our investigation of the middle books, as the topic of and the reason for the conversation.

4.1 Omnivores of learning

Socratess first stab at intellectual epithumia in Book V (starting at 474c) compares
philosophers to omnivores. In this key discussion, Socrates plays the tempter of rational
epithumia again, encouraging the previously mollified and apologetic Glaucon to own his
pleonectic self again. The context of this strange encouragement is the third wave of Book V.
At 473d-e, Socrates declared that for the city to come into being, philosophers must rule or rulers
must philosophize. Socrates account of the true philosopher and his peculiar appetite for
knowledge, offered in support of his apparently outrageous proposition, will discomfit Glaucons
recently-achieved freedom from desire and remind him who he is.

11 The word is ochlon at 450b1, which has a double meaning: Socrates passed by so as not to produce

undue trouble or a mob of objectors, which will soon be on the scene, stripped and ready to do murder (473e474a ). See Roochnik (2003, 57-58).
12 See Aristotle on the necessity of locating the end before the discussion begins (Metaphysics 995a35-b5).

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The encouragement to pleonexia begins with a bid for recollection: Will you need to be
reminded, or do you remember that when we say a man loves something, if it is rightly said of
him, he mustnt show a love for one part of it and not for another, but must cherish all of it?
(474c) Glaucon answers: I need reminding, as it seems, for I scarcely understand. Moderate
Glaucon has forgotten who Glaucon is:
It was proper for another, Glaucon, to say what youre saying . But its not proper for
an erotic man to forget that all boys in the bloom of youth in one way or another put
their sting in an erotic lover of boys and arouse him; all seem worthy of attention and
delight. Or dont you people behave that way with the fair? You praise the boy with
a snub nose by calling him cute; the hook-nose of another you say is kingly; and
the boy between these two is well-proportioned; the dark look manly; and the
white are children of the gods. And as for the honey-colored, do you suppose
their very name is the work of anyone other than a lover who renders sallowness
endearing and easily puts up with it if it accompanies the bloom of youth? And, in a
word, you people take advantage of every excuse and employ any expression so as to
reject none of those who glow with the bloom of youth. (474d-475a)
It is only to be expected that passionate people will respond to every lovely young thing that
crosses their path. It is a sign of its vigor and truth that their passion is immediate and allembracing. True love knows no bounds and disregards all petty reasons not to love. Thus far the
text.
Yet one can see at once that such omni-appreciation has its seamy side. Like the gluttons
of Book IV, these undignified omni-appreciators have no standards; better and worse are all the
same to them. All boys sting them with desire. Like democratic citizens, the omni-appreciators
love all by turns. They say yes to every boy they meet; and they make use of every excuse
and any expression in order to do so. What are these lovers but vicious, weak say-alls, lovealls, and do-alls? This is epithumia at its worstindiscriminate, passive, and semperaffirmative.13

13 See Chapter Two.

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Socrates imaginary lovers of all boys have no trouble finessing physical weaknesses into
virtues because, to put it bluntly, they are not moved by the beautiful. Socrates underlines this
point with his examples of the snub-nosed (a.k.a. cute), hook-nosed (a.k.a. kingly) and the
one that stands in the middle (a.k.a. well-proportioned, the essence, in fact, of the actually
beautiful) [474d-e]. Indiscriminate, omnivorous desire loves both ugly extremes (snub and
hooked) as well as the (actually beautiful) measured and balanced form that stands in the
middle.14 Beauty or excellence apparently has no especial draw.15
These lovers are too ashamed to admit it, however. So these omni-appreciators must
dissemble and pretend that they care about the beautiful, or quality per se. (Socrates verb in the
last line of the passage is derived from prophasis, a negative term meaning pretext or
pretense.) They call the ugly beautiful (cute or kingly and so on) either to protect their
honor among others or to justify themselves in their own eyes. Their clever renaming allows
these lovers to appear to be discriminating and distinguished; they must care about being judged
by the standards that they secretly disregard. This desire to have it both waysto give in wholeheartedly to whatever is presently stinging while at least appearing to care about greater or lesser
qualityexpresses a problem that will preoccupy Socrates for much of the next two books. But
more on this (let us call it the problem of all and best for the moment) to follow.

14 Socrates conclusion, that desire desires (any instance whatever of) the whole form (tou eidous at 475b5)

strangely overvalues and undervalues form at the same time; viz. I love noses. All noses. Every nose. The
(beautiful, measured) form of the nose means nothing to me. This love of universal form (all noses because they are
noses) is blind to the meaning or the logos (including the measurable dimensions) of any form. It is because all
instances belong to a set that they are loved, not because of they are more perfect instantiations of nose-ness.
Aristotles several discussions of snub-nosedness in the Metaphysics are obviously relevant here, especially
VII.5, which touches on the mystery of individuality. (What makes Callias Callias? And can he be known/loved on
account of his peculiar qualities, rather than on account of his belonging to the form human being?)
And of course, Diotimas claim in the Symposium that kinship matters more than the peculiar loveliness
of the individual speaks to this perennial drama as well.
15 See Aristophanes absurdly comic version of this point in the Ecclesiazusae, where ugliness (and even

old agethe only quality at which people like Glaucon will balk) puts women first in line to be loved. (Adam
notes many other similarities between the two works as well.)

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Glaucons response to Socrates identification is halfhearted: If you want to point to me

while you speak about what erotic men do, I agree for the sake of the argument (475a).
Glaucon, forgetful of himself, refuses to own his place as the erotic one of the company,
perhaps because Socrates has just put omni-appreciation in such a questionable light. Indeed,
Socrates thorough-going use of the second person (you people) turns this tongue-in-cheek
description of universal love into something like an accusation. Socrates pointedly does not
include himself among Glaucons group. Is Socrates above this kind of omni-appreciation? Is he
suggesting that Glaucon ought to be, too? If that is so, why does he encourage Glaucon to recall
that he is this kind of undignified lover?
If the reader is still inclined to take Socrates description of the omni-appreciative lovers
as a straightforward praise of erotic profligacy,16 consider the example of Socratean mtis
immediately following: And what about this? Dont you see wine-lovers doing the same thing?
Do they delight in every kind of wine, and on every pretext? (475a). What kind of drinkers
delight in every kind of wine, calling the vinegary bold and the insipid mellow, for example?
Surely such omni-bibulants are not wine-lovers but winos.17 Indifference to greater and lesser
quality (indifference to the good in the realm of wine) is the opposite of love. Socrates
provocative remarks here recall his provocations in Book IV, where he insisted, ad absurdam,
that thirst is thirst simpliciter, not desire for good drink.18
Socrates brings in another example of omni-appreciative desire, the undignified and
certainly immoderate lovers of honor [tous philotimous]: And further, I suppose you see that
lovers of honor, if they cant become generals, are lieutenants, and if they cant be honored by

16 As Ludwig does, in his essay in Ferrari 2007, 219.

17 See White (1979, 154) and Dorter (2006, 150).
18 See 2.1.

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greater and more august men, are content to be honored by lesser and more ordinary men
because they are desirers of honor as a whole (475b). Socrates allows that lovers of honor
love even unworthy praises from unworthy men. Their love of honor is so entire that they will
stoop to receive whatever is available (quite unlike Aristotles magnanimous man, who deigns to
accept only those plaudits and offices that are in fact worthy of him). But stooping for honor is
surely the opposite of being honorable (just as swilling plonk is the opposite of wine-loving).
And even these lovers of unworthy praise would rather not be so omni-appreciative. Note that
they would naturally prefer the praise of the best men, but will content themselves with the
praise of lesser men if the former is unavailable. In other words, they would not be omniappreciative if they could be assured of the best.
On the other hand, although one cannot deny the indignity of these omni-appreciators (of
boys, wines, and honors), Socrates tongue-in-cheek praise does not entirely damn the universal
aims of desire. After all, who but the true lover of wine could fully enjoy the little pleasures of
for examplethe modest vintage that tries admirably to measure up to the paradigmatic wine of
its type? Perhaps only the wine expert can enjoy the broad range of lesser wines because only he
knows what they aim to be. 19 Further, things that fall short of the ideal can be appreciated as
perfect of their kind, or excellent given the parameters.
Indeed, if we took our objection to omni-appreciation too seriously, and claimed, for
example, that true oenophilia enjoys only the best, we would likely discover no lovers of wine
at all. Consider the problem: If quality is the sole determination of desire, presumably a single
sip of the absolutely best wine would have to extinguish for all time the desire for any other
(lesser) wines. And unless the wine-lover can continue to drink this perfect wine (and be forever

19 As, for example, the expert scholar of Petrarch may find more to love in a students fair attempt at a

sonnet than an amateur reader might, or the sophisticated Casanova might take a lover who reminds him somehow
of a more perfect creature he has once known.

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sure that it is in fact the absolutely best wine in existence, and not a poor imitation of some as yet
untasted vintage), the wine-lover becomes nothing other than a wine-hater. If there there is to be
any actual oenophilia in this world, then there must be relatively happy drinkers of admittedly
lesser vintages.
And this is not just a practical matter. Desire wants only the best, but it also (famously)
reaches out for complete wholeness, debasing itself (as it were) for a taste of every instance of
the beloved thing. This complete love is undignified; but discriminate love is perhaps
incomplete.
How does this apply to rational epithumia? Socrates ironic charge to omnivorousness
manages to propose that true philosophical desire is a) broad and concerned with universality and
completeness, b) distinguished and concerned with the distinctively good and the best, and
therefore c) a problem.
Socrates begins with the former aim, and pushes it to the extreme. Philosophers, like
omnivores, shamelessly desire all kinds of learning:
The philosopher is a desirer [epithumtn] of wisdom, not of one part and not
another, but of all of it. [] Well deny, therefore, that the one whos finicky about
his learning [peri ta mathemata duscherainonta], especially when hes young and
doesnt yet have an account of whats useful and not, is a lover of learning or a
philosopher, just as we say that the man whos finicky about his food [peri ta sitia
duscher] isnt hungry, doesnt desire food, and isnt a lover of food [philositon] but
a bad eater [kakositon]. [] But the one who is willing to taste [geuesthai] every
kind of learning with gusto [euchers], and who approaches learning with delight,
and is insatiable [aplsts], we shall justly assert to be a philosopher, wont we?
(475b-c).
Socrates rhetoric is potent. The intellectual kakositon manages to look spoiled and effete, a
finicky elitist rather than a hardy, vigorous character who makes do with what is, for whom any
conversation is a pleasure and any meal a feast. Nevertheless, intellectual omnivorousness is
subject to the same problems that bedeviled oenophilia and timophilia. If a philosopher has

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available to him only subpar philosophical pursuits (if, for example, he blunders into a trivial
conversation or is put upon to answer a poorly formulated question) will he love every one of
these pursuits nonetheless? Will just any discussion be equally pleasing to him? Would he show
a disdainful lack of interest for all if he tried to direct the conversation to a few topics in
particular?
Following the lines of the analogy, the good eater/arguer will presumably content himself
to rename logoi just as the lover renames the ugly characteristics of whatever fine young things
happen to cross his path. To take a far-fetched example, chatter about yesterdays episode of
Reality Show X becomes a fascinating dissection of contemporary mores. Or less
anachronistically, a vain ethical debate with a confirmed sophist might become a fulfilling
inquiry into the good, in the eyes of the omnivorous thinker.
But he would be fooling himself. It cannot be equally profitable or fulfilling to listen to
the melodies of Apollo or Marsyas, to love the pursuits to which one has been assigned by fate or
chance, no matter where they fall along the vertical axis of intellectual disciplines.20

20 Or by government mandateas might occur in the Republics kallipolis, where many judged to be silver

rather than gold (or perhaps more or less golden) will have their pursuits in the city decided for them.
Ludwig argues (in Ferrari 2007, 209) that omni-appreciation (in his context, thumos-free eros) is in fact
the highest instance of desire. Eros without attachment, without permanent belonging [on the model of the marriage
lottery] is what the elite philosophers feel toward their subject matter []. The philosophic eros is profligate and
promiscuous: the philosophers in their quest for knowledge move from one erotic object to the next. The guardians
are being asked to conduct their sex lives after the same fashion.
As I have noted above at several points, I take Socrates encouragements to free-floating omni-appreciative
eros to be more ironic than Ludwig admits.
I also believe that Ludwig (following a tradition that begins with Aristotles mine/thine discussion in the
Politics) overemphasizes the role of thumos and forgets that discrimination is natural to eros, too. [T]he
philosophical perspective on eros is that pure eros desires no exclusive possession; indeed, the objects of thought
cannot be exclusively possessed. [] Thumos seems to be at the root of all possessiveness (224).
But the mine/thine of thumos is only one important instance of discrimination. Eros, free of the taint of
thumos would still be fiercely discriminating. Eros prizes beautiful form above all, the distinct form of the beloved.
It is by means of its form that a beautiful thing distinguishes itself from all others and surpasses them. The most
surpassingly beautiful objects of desire are so distinct that they famously wont share their essences with lower
instances. And eros famously wants only the best of these forms. No thumos is required to make the most elite
lover cling to x and shun y.

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This objection finally occurs to Glaucon, too: Can you be a philosopher at all if you are
blind to better and worse? Are philosophers the kind of people who run from place to place
looking to learn just anything they manage to pick up? 21 Surely intellectual desire can make
some distinctions without denying its reach for the whole:
Then youll have many strange [philosophers]. For all the lovers of sights are in my
opinion what they are because they enjoy learning; and the lovers of hearing would
be some of the strangest to include among philosophers, those who would never be
willing to go voluntarily to a discussion and such occupations but whojust as
though they had hired out their ears for hearingrun around to every chorus at the
Dionysia, missing none in the cities or the villages. Will we say that all these men
and other learners of such things and the petty arts are philosophers? (475d-e)
The scene strikes Glaucon as comic. These fanatic slaves to the cultural calendar, omnivores
equally of classical or pop, city ballet or Podunk community theater would make strange
philosophers, indeed. The only thing they cannot stomach is a philosophical discussion like the
one in which Glaucon is now engaged.
It is not clear whether Glaucon has grasped the irony of his critique. He and Socrates
came to the Pireaus as philotheamones just like the ones he criticizes, who race around from city
to suburb and back again (atopoi, as Glaucon says [475d1]). Curious to see the new religious
spectacles (theasasthai at 327a3), Socrates and Glaucon went down to the port suburb; satisfied,
they raced back up to Athens (hrmemonous at 327b1); then, half-way home, suddenly presented
with the promise of yet another spectacle (and dinner), they hastened back to the suburbs again.
Neither Socrates nor Glaucon journeyed from Athens in search of a philosophical discussion;
rather the discussion that postpones the promised spectacle (and offers more static entertainment)
found them. Forgetful of their recent very ordinary motivations, Glaucon approves himself and
Ludwig is correct to say that the highest principles can be loved without being possessed exclusively by
one thinker or another, but he neglects the fact that they are still loved because they are the best and distinct from all
else, and most beautiful and worthy of love. In short, remove thumos from eros, and you still have a problem of
eross despite of all (or any old beloved) and its aim at only the best.
21 Obviously, Glaucons objection mirrors his opson objection in Book II.

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company as real lovers of learning who really deserve the title of philosopher. He is not a
hypocrite, I think; the unreflective Glaucon simply cannot account for himself and his diverse
appetites. Ashamed to be an omnivore of culture, he now purports to love only the most dignified
pursuits.
In fact, lovers of conversation are similar to philotheamones in some essential respects.
Socrates says as much at 475e, and Platos frequent use of theoria (from the same root, denoting
sight) throughout the dialogue points up this similarity. Socrates and company will set their
sights on a truly novel and beautiful city, and later, they will make a sequential tour of the
crumbling cities of Books VIII-IX.22 Nevertheless, Glaucon is right to note that theoria of this
kind is distinct: For one thing, it means staying indoors in one place for a long time without
moving or being moved.23 It is less frenetic than hiring out ones ears and physically hastening
from city to city. But it is more active: Observers of the city in speech ask and answer
questionsthey talkwhereas spectators of theater, religious ritual, and sport often must be
silent so that the spectacle can continue. These passive observers may certainly learn something,
too, but their mode of learning does not expose their private thoughts and intentions to
interlocutors who might challenge, refute, or put them to shame.
Further, true philosophers are more actively discriminating about which sights they want
to see. They do not love just any old (or rather, new) sight or sound. Instead, they are lovers of
the sight of the truth (475e).24 Here Socrates eases away from his provocative exaggerations

22 The technical term for such pilgrim observers is theroi.

23 Plato uses derivatives of the word men (to stay) six times in the first page of the dialogue; the

physical push and pull of motion and stasis, flux and solidity, hastening and waiting plays out in Socrates
forced/desired stay in the house of Cephalus, and deserves some attention that cannot be spared here. Paters
otherwise old-fashioned reading of the dialogue is very fresh on this point, and would be an excellent place to start.
24 Bloom overtranslates slightly. Philotheamones is one word, so that the phrase is more accurately

translated as sight-lovers of the truth, that is, lovers of sights who care about the truth of what they see, not lovers
of some Platonic version of the beatific vision, the sight of the truth. (Griffith has spectators of the truth, while

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about the omnivorous aims of philosophy. Finally, we seem to be getting a distinction that will
stick. What is the difference between lovers of sights (philotheamones at 475ed2) and lovers
of the sight of the truth (tous ts altheias philotheamonas at 475e4)? The former hold opinions
about matters that lack stable definition and being, while the latter seek knowledge about that
which really truly is.
The arguments by which opinion and knowledge are distinguished here are famous for
their fallacies, as a glance at the secondary literature will show.25 Whether or not these flawed
arguments hold, one thesisthat being has various degrees, to which opinion and knowledge
correlateis relevant to our problem of all and best.26
Some things simply are better (more stable, more beautiful, more substantial, more
perfect) than others. Socrates jokes that Glaucon will understand just what hes getting at, since
Glaucon is who he is (475e).27 Earlier, Socrates mock-accused Glaucon of loving too omniappreciatively, as if beauty or quality were insignificant (474d); here, he notes that Glaucon is an
infamous lover of distinctionsin particular, the distinction between the beautiful and the ugly
(475e). Glaucons reputation is dual; he is famous for loving all and for loving only the best. If
he recognizes both of these divergent aims of desire in himself, it is because Socrates has
reminded him.

Reeve renders it lovers of seeing the truth.) I make this pedantic point here in anticipation of trouble further on. It
will turn out that seeing falls very far short of knowing, and its metaphorical value is limited. In fact, seeing can be
at odds with understanding, since it offers a deceptively complete grasp of the thing we want to know. But much
more on this topic to come.
25 For a recent summary of these fallacies, see Dorter 2006.
26 See 478a-d, where ignorance belongs to what is not, knowledge belongs to what is, and opinion belongs

to that which is between being and nothing.

27 To explain Socrates ad hominem comment, Dorter (2006) points to the fact that Glaucon earlier

accepted an equally flawed argument for the distinction between the three parts of the soul. But I take Socrates
personal dig along with his earlier and opposite accusation against Glauconthat he is an erotic omnivore.

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But can the distinction between opinion and knowledge founded on the doctrine of the
degrees of being resolve Glaucons problem (his simultaneous reach for all and best)? Let us see
if the argument leads to the solution we seek: Philosophers are omnivores, but they are not
stupid. They love all of what really is; they do not try to love what is not.28 Nobody can love a
thing that is not, but only the philosopher realizes this. Lovers of any old sight do not understand
that some apparent objects of desire are only mirages (things about which one can have only
shifting opinions), and their misfiring thirst must seem comic to the philosopher who loves only
things that actually are, i.e., things that can be loved, things that have more substance, things that
can be more fully known.
If all there (really) is is the best (substantial, fully knowable, permanent being), then what
a lucky break for the philosopher! True philosophers can feel free to embrace and to seek to
know all that (truly) is, since all that is is the best. Completeness and distinction may be had
simultaneously. The battle between all and best should now be overthe two are
coextensive, as only the mirage-shunning, truth-embracing philosopher knows.
On the other hand, woe to the unreflective omni-appreciators. The lovers of all sights
(not just the sight of the truth) will become as unstable as their dubious objects, says Socrates.
As they wander aimlessly among various opinions without any sense of what ought to be
considered before or after anything else, they become unsteady themselves. They will have to be
satisfied with that (or pretend to be).
By contrast, the true philosopher will not be satisfied until he sees the final truth, the
very best and most immovable object of rational appetite. His every misguided desire and
purported satisfaction to that point will have to be challenged; he will challenge them himself,
perhaps. By the end, he will know himself as well as he knows the objects of his considered
28 Must we, therefore, call philosophers rather than lovers of opinion those who delight in each thing that

is itself? Socrates asks at the conclusion of the argument (480a).

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desire, and he will have everything he could possibly want. His fixed character will answer to his
singular object: truth that does not wander around but simply, stably is.
One might expect that this hard-won distinction between opinion and knowledge would
answer once and for all the objection that the philosopher is an undignified, profligate lover of
all, whether high or low, excessive in his aims, restless in his modes. But in fact, the discussion
is far, far from over.29 Although it appeared to have been described in sufficient detail after a
lengthy argument, leading up to the first line of Book VI,30 in fact, Socrates and company are
far from done describing the philosophers nature, his excessively zealous twin interests in
knowing all and only the best.

4.2 Philosophical attributes

The tension between all and best that arose first in the discussion of intellectual
omnivorousness returns in Socrates long discussions of the philosopher/guardian that follow,
most evidently in several lists of the philosophical attributes in Books VI and VII. Socrates offers
the first at 484c-487a. He then recapitulates those points in response to Adeimantus objections
(that the philosopher is nonetheless useless or vicious) in a muthos (488a-489d) and another list
(489d-497a). He recapitulates the list of philosophical attributes again as the interlocutors set
about to decide the proper studies for guardians (503b-504a). Socrates final recapitulation of

29 Is this due to the faulty reasoning of the arguments that distinguish opinion and knowledge which we

have merely summarized here, in order to avoid a hornets nest of secondary criticism which adds little to my thesis?
Perhaps. But even if Socrates had provided better arguments, we would still be left wondering what the philosopher
does with opinions: Ignore them as unreal (yet they are not non-beings, requiring ignorance)? Look for the morsel of
truth in them? Does he mar his philosophical dignity by starting with them (as Aristotle often does) rather than
starting with being qua being?
30 And so, Glaucon, I said, through a somewhat lengthy argument, who the philosophers are and who

the nonphilosophers has, with considerable effort, somehow been brought to light.
Perhaps, he said, because it could not easily have been done through a short one.(484a)

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this list of philosophical attributes introduces a discussion of the proper ages of the guardians
(535a-540c). The list of attributes differs subtly from recapitulation to recapitulation. But all the
variations recall the theme of conflict between all and best.31 I will offer some detailed
commentary on these passages, since they offer direct and rich descriptions of the philosophers
nature and appetites and may help us to discover how pleonexia might come to trouble even the
true philosopher.
To address one obvious objection before we begin: It could be argued that the
descriptions of the philosophers that we are about to discuss apply to philosophers only insofar
as they are also rulers. For example, one would expect that leaders of a city possess some
practical familiarity with the quotidian realm and a not-too-excessive attachment to abstruse,
purely philosophical contemplation (the highest and best); after all, they must supervise and
judge in day-to-day matters that would (we guess) be uninteresting to a philosopher qua
philosopher. But (the objection continues) for philosophers qua philosophers there would be no
tension between high and low, all and best. They would love only the highest and best and would
not trouble themselves with the rest. In other words (the objection concludes), the Republics
philosophers are built to overcome Glaucons and Adeimantus objections against dangerously
pure philosophy, which really would shock us and the interlocutors if it were to be revealed in
this dialogue as it actually is.
I will argue (against this objection) that when Socrates claims that real philosophers can
actually be good at ruling, he is showing something intrinsic to philosophy and its desires, not
just something that can be done with some pitifully tempered form of it. If Socrates wanted to
offer a neutered politics-friendly version of philosophy, why does he allow the many clear

31 It is because they describe this tension (rather than a unified picture of philosophical desire) that these

passages cannot be reduced to brief and unproblematic summaries, as happens more often than not in the secondary
literature. Two exceptions to this simplifying tendency are Burnyeat and White.

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excesses he is about to describe among his philosophers in the lists we are about discuss? He
could have offered a picture of philosophical appetite that omits its over-reaching, infinite goals,
inner conflicts and its divergent aims, but he does not. Indeed, the incipient pleonexia contained
in the lists of philosophical attributes that follow has frightened some commentators into the
opposite corner: the notion that Plato believes that philosophy cannot be reconciled with
practical (especially political) matters at all. Before we take a stand in this debate, let us see what
Socrates actually says.
Almost as soon as he has established the priority and desirability of knowledge above all
other human pursuits (including opining, appreciating art, eating and drinking), Socrates claims
that knowledge of what is is nevertheless somehow insufficient: Shall we set these men up as
guardians rather than those who not only know [egnkotas] what each thing is but also dont lack
experience [empeiria] or fall short of the others in any other part of virtue [apeths]? Socrates
continues: Then shouldnt we say how the same men will be able to possess these two distinct
sets of qualities? (485a). It will not be enough to know only the best; rather, the same people
who see through the mirages and half-truths of opinion and its objects will nevertheless immerse
themselves in this ephemeral sphere as well. Philosophers will also desire to know (or be familiar
with) the ordinary.
The lists of philosophical attributes that follow are aimed at reconciling the philosophers
dual aimsexperience in all realms in addition to knowledge of what really is. Some
commentators take this to be an exclusively ethical question: For these, the reconciliation of
knowledge and experience (along with the broad range of virtues) answers the question, Is the
knowledgeable man good? or Does he have the virtues that all ordinary people require from
one another? Adeimantus certainly objects in this vein, and with these ethical concerns. But
Socrates has a more ponderous problem in mind, too, namely: What is the philosophers relation
to the world of lesser beings and thoughts? How does the philosopher look at that which is less?
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Do lesser things attract him? Interest him? What is the nature of his experience (if not
knowledge) of them? This will become an urgent question, as I will try to show.
But first, what are the various attributes that belong to the philosophic nature, to a soul
that is going to partake adequately and perfectly in what is (486e)? As we have heard before,
philosophers love to ponder what is truly the highest and best:
1) they are always in love [aei ersin at 485b] with that learning which discloses to
them something of the being that is always [aei] and does not wander about, driven
by generation and decay.
As Aristotle has it in the Metaphysics (1.2), the wise man is said to know the highest and
most secure principles. Socrates wordplay suggests that philosophers are like the things they
love; they are forever (aei) fixed on beings that exist forever (aei). To follow the arc of the
hyperbole, philosophers do not wander either, and they are not born, and they do not die. They
stay the same forever because they love what is unchanging and best.
Clearly, to such eternally-minded natures, the ephemeral matters of eating, mating, and
worldly success count for little. According to this attribute, the philosopher would be
uninterested as well in the Republics vast catalogue of generation and decay, both the account of
the coming-to-be of the city and the justice in it (Books II through most of VI and VII) and the
corresponding account of the decline of the various regimes, their citizens, and rulers (Books
VIII through most of X).
Nevertheless, continues Socrates, philosophers are are also omni-appreciators, drawn to
all, whether high or low:
2) just like the lovers of honor and the erotic men we described before, they love all
of [learning] and dont willingly let any part go, whether smaller [smikrou] or bigger,
more honorable or more contemptible [atimoterou].
Aristotle agrees that the wise man is said to know everything, in some way (Met. 1.2).
But Socrates terms are more provocative. The philosopher will not give up even contemptible
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learning (or contemptible beingsSocrates does not clarify what the lovable whole is
precisely) without a fight. What is contemptible learning? And who contemns it? And how does
this statement square with Book Vs distinction between opinion and knowledge? By the
contemptible does Socrates mean actual knowledge of that which is less? But true
knowledge was said to be only of what is absolutely, permanently, and in the best way. That
which is less was supposed to be amenable to opinion, not knowledge; does Socrates mean that
philosophers love mere opinions, too?
According to attribute #2, the philosopher will not banish anything from his view. But
now we get a qualification:
3) philosophers have no taste [here, just willingness, hekontas] for falsehood;
that is, they are completely unwilling to admit whats false but hate it, while
cherishing the truth (485c). Socrates continues: [it is] entirely necessary that a man
who is by nature erotically disposed toward someone cares for everything related and
akin to his boy. [] Now could you find anything more akin to wisdom than truth?
[] Now is it possible that the same nature be both a lover of wisdom and a lover of
falsehood? [] Therefore the man who is really a lover of learning must from youth
on strive as intensely as possible for every kind of truth.
So, the philosopher will not let any bit of learning go, no matter how contemptible, but he
draws the line at falsehood.32This banishment of falsehood (including all opinions?In opinions
here is inherently some falsehood) focuses the philosophers gaze on the best things:
4) we surely know that when someones desires incline strongly to some one thing,
they are therefore weaker with respect to the rest, like a stream that has been
channeled off in that other direction (485d). So, when in someone they have
flowed toward learning and all thats like it, I suppose they would be concerned with
the pleasure of the soul itself with respect to itself and would forsake those pleasures
that come through the bodyif he isnt a counterfeit but a true philosopher.

32 Cross and Woozley note here that this falsehood is not the falsehood of lies but rather of willing self-

deceit, also known as ignorance (382b).

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What shall we make of this apparently contradictory quality? According to attribute #2,
the philosopher isnt willing to let anything go, whether great or small, dignified or contemptible,
so long as it is in some way akin to the thing he loves. But according to attribute #4, the
philosopher willingly forgoes physical pleasures (and sensual knowledge in general?), insofar as
his attention is flowing toward the pleasures of the mind. Perhaps we can reconcile these two
attributes: The philosopher loves all knowledge, whether knowledge of lower or higher, but he
does not love all the things he knows for their own sake. He loves low things as objects of
knowledge, but not as causes of sensual pleasure. In other words, perhaps he takes joy in
contemplating even the smallest, most contemptible things, but he does not seek physical
enjoyment from them. This is a plausible reconciliation of all and best, at least for the
moment.33
Again, note the similarity of the philosopher and the thing known: He hates everything
false (#3); he himself is false (the adverb is peplasmens at 485d12) if he does not put down his
desire for bodily pleasures (#4).
The next attribute is a particularization of attribute #4 that throws some doubt on the
plausible reconciliation proposed above:
5) Such a man is, further, moderate and in no way a lover of money. Money and the
great expense that accompanies it are pursued for the sake of things that any other
man rather than this one is likely to take seriously (485e).
The philosophers moderate nature prevents him from becoming a philochrmatos. According to
the previous attribute (#4), appetite is re-directed but never extinguished. If the philosopher does

33 Already problems arise, however, if one considers that the satisfaction of the senses as they function

well, bringing the world to us through hearing, touch, taste, and sightis nothing other than a kind of sensual
pleasure. Dorter points to another difficulty: [T]his image intensifies rather than resolves the problem of
combining the philosophers love of intelligible forms with experiences requirement of attentiveness to individual
things, for if the philosophers erotic stream requires them to abandon concern with what is experienced through the
body, then philosophy does indeed prevent the acquisition of experience (2006, 166).

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not care for monetary gain, will his intense desire spill into philosophy instead, and if so, will the
intense desires now directed purely to the highest things ever sweep him away? If he manages
not to care about a thing besides wisdom, and directs his every care and desire to the acquisition
of it, will his intense appetite still count as moderate?
This straightforward proscription of money-loving also touches on the deep problem of
the philosophers relationship with anything less than the highest objects of contemplation: What
exactly should a philosopher take seriously (spoudazein)? And what does taking it seriously
mean? Obviously, a philosopher concerned with the highest things should not be susceptible to
the undignified draw of cash, but does that mean that money and the desire for it are trivial
matters to him? Clearly, the philosopher will not pursue wealth and luxuries for himself, but
might he not be (seriously) interested in them as topics of discussion? Might not a philosopher
judge that the desire for wealth is a serious human motivation and spend much time and energy
attempting to understand it and the human beings that find themselves in its thrall? The fact that
money does not matter to him does not prevent the philosopher from taking it seriously, as a
cause that explains why people and cities are the way they areas Socrates himself is doing
now. Does a philosophers serious and correct judgement of the priority and worth of what is
best keep him from pondering what is less than best? Perhaps the philosopher lacks the novelists
or the poets interest in all of human life, including human faults. These speculations prepare us
for Socrates next, infamous attribute in the list:
6) And you too must of course consider something else when youre going to judge
whether a nature is philosophic or not. [] You mustnt let its partaking in
illiberality [aneleutherias] get by you unnoticed. For petty speech [smikrologia] is of
course most opposite to a soul that is always going to reach out for the whole and for
everything divine and human. [] To an understanding endowed with magnificence
[megaloprepia] and the contemplation of all time and all being, do you think it
possible that human life seem anything great?

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This is all the proof some readers need to condemn Plato as a cold, inhumane idealist.
Apparently, the philosophers love of the whole will make him despise human lifenot just the
physical pleasures of the lowest functions of living but even the contemplation of these.
But we must not take this excessive austerity out of context. According to attribute #2,
the philosopher is unblushingly attached to the little [smikros] and the contemptible [atimos]. He
wont willingly let anything go, much less despise all of human life. I submit that Socrates
swings the pendulum rather violently from all to best in this frustrating list of attributes because
the alternation between the two is a serious problem for philosophical desire and because he
wants to make that dual character clear with all the problems that attend.
Socrates full exaggeration of the high dignity of philosophy can be seen in the following
attribute:
7) Wont such a man also believe that death is not something terrible? [] So a
cowardly and illiberal nature would not, as it seems, participate in true philosophy.
The philosophers despite for all that is human encompasses not only human life but
human death, too. And the objection arises again: Does the fact that the philosopher judges some
thing or things more important than death mean that he does not take death seriously as an object
of contemplation? He does not fear death, but does mortality mean anything to him?34
Socrates offers an uncertain summary of the list thus far: What then? Is there any way in
which the orderly man, who isnt a lover of money, or illiberal, or a boaster, or a coward, could
become a hard-bargainer or unjust? Note the unstated step in the argument: If the philosopher
lacks the flaws of the money-makers (greed, illiberality, or other disorders of epithumia) or the

34 I disagree with several commentators who take this attribute to be a false conflation of thumotic and

philosophical attributes perpetrated by Socrates to make philosophers look like soldiers in order to sell the
unnatural order of the kallipolis. It is not unreasonable to think that true philosophers are unafraid of death, and that
their courage might issue directly from their knowledge about what matters most: For example, they might
reasonably judge that their existence is less weighty than the eternal being of whatever is above the human.
Socrates death-bed calm in the Phaedo is often cited as an example of this philosophical fearlessness.

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spirited class (boasting, cowardice, or other disorders of thumos), then he could not become
unjust. Does Socrates mean to suggest that there are no potential flaws peculiar to the highest
class?
If there are any vices native to thinking, Socrates does not mention them here.
Adeimantus objection in the next few lines gestures towards this unspoken possibility, however.
The most dedicated philosophers become quite queer, not to say completely vicious while the
decent ones become useless to cities. And Socrates will later answer his rhetorical question
with a two-book-long description of the decline of the orderly man into a state of utter injustice
(beginning at 491b). Socrates overstatements here protest too much against the accusation that
philosophy is potentially unstable and susceptible to its own kind of disorder.
The next few attributes in Socrates list describe the philosophers ability to learn:
8) And further, when you are considering whether a soul is philosophic or not,
youll also take into consideration whether, from youth on, it is both just and tame or
hard to be a partner with and savage. (486b)
9) [Consider whether the soul] learns well or with difficulty. Or do you even expect
anyone would care sufficiently for a thing that, when he does it, he does painfully,
accomplishing little with much effort? (486c)
Socrates apparently sincere accomplishing little with much effort could be taken in
quite another way, as an honest if wry assessment of the actual satisfactions of philosophy.35 As
the saying goes, fine things are difficult. Whenever Socrates appears to love his own largely
unrewarding and perhaps painful philosophical attempts in moments of this dialogue or others,
Socrates disproves his present statement (#9). Indeed, he claims outright in the Apology and
elsewhere to have spent all of his life hard at work discovering only this little fact, that so far as
he can tell no one knows anything more than Socrates does, which is only this little piece of

35 As does Socrates following remark: toiling without profit, dont you suppose hell finally be

compelled to hate both himself and an activity of this sort?

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knowledge: that he does not know (and that he feels that emptinessthe meaning of ta erotika,
his purported speciality in the Symposium). This is the Socrates we all recognize. What shall we
make of the Socrates here in Republic, Book VI, who doubts that a person could continue to love
knowledge while failing to gain it quickly and easily enough? The existential problem is visible
in the following attribute, too:
10) And what if he were able to preserve nothing of what he learns, being full of
forgetfulness [lths n ples]? Would it be possible he be not empty [kenos] of
knowledge? (486c)
Secure knowledge, even if it were attainable, is not secure for all time. Knowledge
always slips away.36 Only those who can conquer their own forgetfulness have any hope of
wisdom. According to the metaphor of recollection (common in other dialogues, and integral to
the conclusion of this one), all human beings have forgotten the most important things and those
who want to be wise are always attempting to recall them.37
Socrates conclusion is sober: So, toiling without profit, dont you suppose hell finally
be compelled to hate both himself and an activity of this sort?38
Without memory, there is no philosophy: Let us never, then, admit a forgetful soul into
the ranks of those that are adequately39 philosophic; in our search, let us rather demand a soul
with a memory. Its penultimate place in the list of philosophical attributes is a sign of its

36 Like Aristotles soldiers fleeing the field in Post. An. II.19.

37 See 5.5.
38 Socrates focus on profit (reading anonta here at 486c10) throws a shadow on the upcoming discussion

of the Good (beginning at 505a), where it does not profit a soul to know anything while it is still ignorant of the
most difficult and elusive object of knowledge (the word is phelima/ophelos, benefit at 505a and 505e), about
which not even Socrates will venture (even) an opinion.
39 The word is hikans, a slippery term, whose vagaries are treated in Chapter One.

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importance. And Socrates will continue to harp and quip on memory and its battle with
forgetfulness throughout the dialogue.
At first read, Socrates insistence on the primacy of memory might seem strange.
According to our modern sense of all the attributes that make up I.Q., for example, memory is
just one among many on the list, alongside spatial reasoning, for instance, or computational
agility. But for Socrates the ability to recall is more integral to the philosophic project and not
just in the dialogues that center on recollection: Memory is the safeguard of philosophical
satisfaction. Of what benefit is any piece of knowledge if we cannot retain possession of it? As
human beings are said to desire to possess the good and beautiful forever (as in the Symposium),
so also, there is a natural human desire to keep hold of the true.
The problem of memory introduces the problem of repletion, which I will treat at length
in the next section (4.3). According to the terms of the metaphor (at 486c) to remember is to be
full [ples] of knowledge and to remain full. Note, however, how carelessly comically Socrates
treats this matter. To be full of knowledge is to be empty of forgetfulness, and to be full of
forgetfulness is to be empty of knowledge. This early play undercuts the seriousness of the
repletion model of knowledge long before Socrates presents it as a serious image of wisdom.
40

The final qualities Socrates attributes to the philosophical nature are measure (emmetria)
and graceful charm (eukaria):

40 Furthermore, with his exaggeratedly digital model of knowledge here (empty or full), Socrates dodges

the deep and frustrating truth about knowing, that forgetting the truth is not the same as losing it, and that
recollection is a matter of bringing what is known obscurely into the light of conscious reflection. On this topic, see
Augustine on forgetfulness (Conf. X.16). Among the greatest mysteries of the human soul is its capacity for
inaccessible richesthings simultaneously known and not known, kept and lost. Forgetfulness is different than pure
ignorance, since it involves a sort of knowing unknowingwhen we have forgotten, we know about its absence.
Augustine describes the inner treasury of half-remembered thoughts and experiences in Conf. X.17: numberless
fields, and caves, and caverns of memory in a passage that could be mistaken for a detailed commentary on
Republic VI.

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11) Further, we would deny that what has an unmusical [amousou] and graceless
[aschmonos] nature is drawn in any direction other than that of want of measure
[ametrian, that is, excess].
To put this in more elegant positive terms, musical and graceful characters are drawn to the
measured. Philosophers shun excess. In short, philosophers aim at moderation.41
What is the measured thing they so harmoniously seek? Socrates could hardly be more
vague: Truth is related to measure [suggen at 486d7]. Does he mean that truth is a kind of
measure, that by which all other things are judged? Or does he mean that truth is somehow
measured in itself? Is it not beyond measure in its totality and priority? According to Aristotle,
we should not say that the divine first principle is moderate or measured, nor does moderation
apply to contemplation, which is quasi-divine. By contrast, Socrates philosophers are moderate
and they seek the measured. Then, besides the other things, let us seek for an understanding
endowed by nature with measure and charm, one whose nature grows by itself in such a way as
to make it easily led to the idea of each thing that is. A careless reader might skim this passage,
mistaking it for a bland allusion to the kalos kagathos sensible young man that every welleducated Greek boy should aim to be. But I think that Socrates is hinting at much much more.
We will have to wait until the myth of Er for the final revelation of the philosophers character
and burden, but let us say in anticipation that moderation and the proper measure may be truly
and finally the philosophers concern, in a way that Socrates suggests only vaguely here.
At 487a, Socrates gives a summary of the philosophers nature: Is there any way, then,
in which you could blame a practice like this that a man could never adequately [hikans] pursue
if he were not by nature a rememberer, a good learner, magnificent, charming, and a friend and

41 See Blooms note on the near indistinguishability of metrion and sophrosune (390e, n. 31). See also my

discussion of harmonia in Chapter Three. To gloss ametrion, Adam points to Nic. Ethics IV.8, where Aristotle
condemns the buffoon, whose humor goes to vulgar excess, and praises the man of tact, who observes the mean
even in the relaxed venues of social life. Tact might seem to be a minor virtue indeedAristotle himself says that it
concerns pleasure, not truthbut I think that Plato and Aristotle and the Greek historians and dramatists, for that
matter, might agree that small expressions of virtue and even smaller transgressions are nonetheless telling.

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kinsman of truth, justice, courage, and moderation? This is quite a mouthful (and an
exaggeration, since it is not clear that Socrates list of intellectual virtues and tendencies
necessarily will produce the cardinal moral virtues he lists rather peremptorily at the end).
Nevertheless, this summary is still incomplete, since Socrates seems to have forgotten the
difficult and contradictory attributes (e.g., #2, #3, #6) that express the philosophers dual aims
(all and best). It is these neglected attributes which most mark the philosopher as a queer
character whose pursuits are useless to himself and the city, either because his quibbling,
pedantic interest in all means that he wont let anything go, or because his attitude toward
anything less than his useless but exalted pursuit is contemptuously elitist (and perhaps secretly
vicious).
Adeimantus senses the elision and objects at 487b on behalf of a listener who may worry
that he is being misled a little by the argument; and when the littles are collected at the end of
the arguments, the slip turns out to be great. 42 This person might say that in speech [log] he
cant contradict you at each particular thing asked, but in deed, he sees [horan] that of all those
who start out on philosophynot those who take it up for the sake of getting educated when they
are young and then drop it, but those who linger in it for a longer time [makroteron
endiatripssin]most become quite queer [allokotous], not to say completely vicious
[pamponrous]; while the ones who seem perfectly decent do nevertheless suffer at least one
consequence of the practice you are praisingthey become useless [achrstous] to cities.
In addition to the common rhetorical use of logos v. ergon, there is another disjunction in
the first line of this passage that bears watching, between logos and mute seeing (horan).
Adeimantus objector cannot muster the words to prove that Socrates is wrong in any particular
detail of his defense of philosophy but he thinks that one has only to look at philosophers to see
42 Compare this to the gradual poisoning of cattle by bad grass in Socrates image of the dangerous

influence of poetic images at 401b-d, a passage I treat in the next section, 4.3.

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that they are bad characters. He trusts what he can see with his eyes. So Socrates answers him
with an image (he must, as he says at 487e), a vivid eikn43 to appeal to his inner sight. Since the
objector distrusts discursive logos with all its little slippages (some of which we have noted
above), Socrates must use images that present the argument as a whole, the persuasive power of
which is subjective. Yet these images are also aimed at reconciling the beholder to logos, to the
rational structure behind the visible appearances of things.
Socrates answers the first part of the objection (that the philosopher is useless) with an
ironic confession of gluttony: Listen to the image so you may see how greedy I am for images
[hs glischrs eikaz at 488a], he begins.44 This is a remarkable locution, terser in the Greek
than in the translation here. Literally, it means I liken greedily. And since words for greed and
gluttony in Greek as well as in English tend to contain opposite meanings, the phrase means also
I liken in a finicky manner. Or, to translate the difficult verb eikaz (to liken or portray by
means of an image or likeness) more loosely, What a connoisseur I am of images, and What a
pig I am for images.45
The abstract noun drawn from the verb, eikasia (sometimes translated imagination),
will soon appear at 511e2 as the function of soul that pertains to the plethora of images that make
up the first section of the divided line. According to Jacob Kleins famous treatment, eikasia is
the ability to see an image as an image (1965, 114). As a rule, Klein argues, we do not mistake

43 Like the eikonesimages, reflections, shadowsof the first segment of the divided line and the lowest

level of the cave (including skias and phantasmata at 509e and skias at 515a7). Compare the eikn Glaucon molds
in Book X (588b, treated in the previous chapter, 3.2)
44 Socrates plays speech against sight with his injunction to listen (akoue) to the visible image (eikn).
45 Adam comments on the dual meaning of the adverb, suggesting niggardly or stingy as a secondary

meaning, noting Socrates use of the word in Book VIII (553c) in his description of the oligarchs rise. (The noun,
glischrn appears to mean miser in many instances.) But I see no problem with Blooms translation at that point:
he turns greedily to money-making. Adam also points to the etymology: glia is glue, so that the one who is
greedy in this way is sticky with desire. He accretes notions and possessions almost without trying, simply by
bumping up against them.

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the eikn for the original, but see the second through the first with a certain degree of selfconscious awareness of the double object. We should not underestimate the complexity of this
lowest faculty of human beings.46
However, there is something in the nature of visible images that encourages the
contradictories of pleonexia: gluttony, stultification, excess, and complacency. We do not need to
mistake the image for the original in order to experience these bad states of soul. We need only
to overestimate the importance of the image seen as an image. No reasonably intelligent person
will mistake the image of a tiger for the real thing but plenty of intelligent people will prefer the
image to the smelly, toothy original. Eikasia is dual and points beyond itself, and it may be
dangerous for just that reason. We lovers of sights might be tempted to choose figurative realities
over direct experiencesthe opportunity to see a tiger without being mauled, the thing without
the dangers and discomforts attendant upon seeking it itself, wherever it may be. Insofar as
visible images abstract from the smell, taste, touch, and sound of their originals, insofar as they
give us the thing through sight only, they offer a mode of engagement with the world that is
almost too pure, too rare, and too safe.
Those blessed with occasions for self-conscious eikasia know that the images are not the
real thing, but they do not care. This is arguably the state of the modern consumer of visual
media, whose experience of televised and computer images far outstrips his primary experiences
of the world. This is a dangerous satisfaction. As Klein says, the image is uniquely that which is
not what it is (1965, 115). For the moment, let us say that there is something suspect about the
visible image and that our qualms in this matter have something to do with the possibilities of
false satisfaction.

46 As Klein points out, the prisoners in the cave do not attain to eikasia until they have been freed to turn

their heads to see the originals, such that they could recognize the shadows as shadows of the solid figures
interposed between the fire and wall (1965, 115).

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In the strange parable that follows Socrates confession of image-gluttony, the owner of a
ship (who looks like the demos) and his crew (who look like the powerful in the city, including
sophists and rulers) are undone by eating and drinking: Enchaining [sumpodisantas, at 488c5]
the noble shipowner with mandrake [mandragora], drink, or something else, [the crew] rule the
ship, using whats in it; and drinking and feasting, they sail as such men would be thought likely
to sail. (That is, to their peril.) Socrates addition of mandrake to the list of enslaving substances
somewhat clarifies the dangers of gluttony: overindulgence in food and drink, like mandrake,
dulls pain and puts the soul to sleep. All the little alarms and discomforts that would have
encouraged action in a sober crew and captain are purged and the ship runs ashore while they
sleep.47
Socrates conclusion is clear. Blame the famous uselessness of philosophers on those
who dont use them, or in the terms of the image, those who get drunk and full and sleepy and
forget that they need philosophy. If omnivorousness was presented as a laudable state earlier in
Book V, here the dangers of gluttony are once again apparent. Gluttony enchains the glutton, to
his peril. Like the prisoners bound head and foot, gluttons can look at only one thing. Thus,
unfettered appetite is not an expression of freedom, but opposed to it. According to the terms of
the parable, only philosophy stands between the ship of state and the enslavement that leads to
ruin. The citizens and their leaders would be foolish not to avail themselves of true philosophers.
Socrates takes this to be an adequate answer to Adeimantus charge. But of course this
image of the ship and pilot does much more; it allows him to turn away from muthoi back to the
more abstract form of argumentation Adeimantus originally distrusted. Socrates accomplishes

47 Slumber through the onset of a catastrophe is a recurring motif in the Odyssey. Particularly relevant here

is the moment when Odysseus crew open the mysterious bag of Aeolus and blow the ship along with its sleeping
captain back from the sight of Ithaka into the open sea. And of course there is the Thrinakian episode. Odysseus
restless tossing and turning on the hearth upon his return is a sort of poetic redemption of the earlier moments of
perilous sleepiness. See 3.3 for a fuller treatment of the sleepy unsteadiness of gluttons.

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this by allowing his listeners to realize the ignorance of the crew who judge the potential pilot by
visible appearances only. To their sight, he is a useless dolt staring up at the stars. But they are
deceived. The crew judge the pilot by his visible appearance; they do not realize what he is
doing. In fact, far from idly staring at the sky, he is hard at work calculating, using the visible
stars to arrive at invisible (because abstract) measurements and logoi.48 His logoi are invisible to
the eye. Yet the effects of his invisible activity would be very real; he could keep the ship from
running aground. Logos may have its little slippages but its actual utility and power cannot be
denied.
Socrates now turns to Adeimantus second objection with a recapitulatory list-account of
philosophical attributes, aiming, this time, to explain why true philosophers are not vicious
(489d-497a). Socrates list changes on this second try, with enough little differences to worry
any attentive listener. First, Socrates says, we should remind ourselves that the true philosopher
is guided by truth and that he had to pursue it entirely and in every way (pants kai pant at
490a2, a direct quote of 485d, attribute #4).49 Socrates continues to play moderation against
(appropriate) excess in his further description of the philosophers appetites (490a-b):
So then, wont we make a sensible apology [metris apologsmetha] in saying that
it is the nature of the real lover of learning [onts philomaths] to strive
[hamillasthai, as in racing] for what is [to on];
Philosophical appetite longs for the best and most essential knowledge, and will not waste time
considering all the mere opinions that present themselves:
and he does not tarry [epimenoi]50 by each of the many things opined to be but goes
forward [ioi] and does not lose the keenness [amblunoito]51 of his passionate love

48 Compare Socrates famous moments of trance described in the Symposium.

49 It is good that Socrates remembers philosophical omnivorousness here, since he forgot to mention it in

his summary of the preceding section (487a).

50 See previous note on Pater.

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[ertos] nor cease from it [apolgoi] before he grasps [hapsasthai] the nature itself of
each thing which is with the part of the soul fit to grasp a thing of that sort; and it is
the part akin to it that is fit. And once near it and coupled with what really is [migeis
t onti onts], having begotten [gennsas] intelligence and truth, he knows and lives
truly, is nourished [trephoito] and so ceases from his labor pains [dinos], but not
before (490a-b).
The real lover of learning is apparently driven to keep moving, to race to the end, not to tarry, not
to lose intensity, not to cease until he has comprehended the telos. And not just comprehended.
According to the metaphor, the true lover of learning wants to mate with the truth.52
Here, begetting and being nourished are two intertwined results of the omnivorous
pursuit of knowledge.53 Hunger and labor pains, although opposite functions with opposite
desideratato overcome painful emptiness or to be delivered of painful fullnessboth end in
true knowledge and the true life.54 Becoming wise, in this instance, is dual: The happy
philosopher both takes in nourishment and gives forth understanding. And being happy has two
parts: knowing truly and living truly.
Having delivered this richer but certainly more extreme version of philosophic
omnivorousness, Socrates supposes that they do not have to go through all the rest of the
attributesincluding memory, of coursesince they surely remember (490c-d) them. His
irony is evidently pointed at Adeimantus brother, who sits silently in the background through
this exchange. Throughout the dialogue, Glaucon demonstrates an astonishing ability to recall

51 Amblunsis refers to dullness, in general, and to the senses of sight and hearing in particular.
52 Once again, the philosopher is said to be like the thing he desires, and well-suited to it: lover and

beloved are both true, both real.

53 Adam is unwilling here to translate dinos as labor pain, since it would appear to confuse the issue if

Socrates brings in a birthing metaphor (like those in the Symposium or Theatetus) along with love-pangs and hungerpangs, but I think that gennsas pretty well settles the matter, so we are left having to make sense of the mixed
metaphors.
54 I will treat the trophe metaphor and the accompanying concept of repletion in sections 4.3 and 4.4. See

also my introduction to trophe in Chapter Three.

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the general progression of the argument (for example, he picks up the threads at Book VIII as if
the digression of the middle books had never occurred). He displays amazing wit and logical
purposefulness in his rhetorical praise of injustice, too (358d-361d). But it is a running joke in
the Republic that although he is the closest thing among the interlocutors to a desirer of wisdom,
he cannot manage to recall the list of philosophical attributes, however many times they repeat it.
Later, as they prepare to discuss philosophical education (beginning at 503a), Socrates
reminds his listeners once again what philosophers are like: patriotic, moderate, tough, and
tested, and so on. But this recapitulation is more reflective than the last two. For here, Socrates
finally acknowledges that the attributes that belong to the philosophers are contradictory.55 They
possess natures that are good at learning, have memories, are shrewd and quick and everything
else that goes along with these qualities, and are as well full of youthful fire and magnificence
such natures dont willingly grow together with understandings that choose orderly lives which
are quiet and steady. Rather, the men who possess them are carried away by their quickness
wherever chance leads and all steadiness goes out of them (503c).
That is to say, the very qualities that make them excellent students of philosophy are the
qualities which, unrestrained, drive them out of philosophy. Their quick responsiveness to the
world puts them at the mercy of chance. As soon as anything captures their interest, they are off;
they cannot stay still or remain the same, since their identity changes with their interests. If they
are what they pursue, then they are by moments astrono-cultural-histori-mytho-philosophers,
perhaps too busy learning all to to attain deep wisdom about any matter in particular.
Here, finally, Socrates seems to be admitting a potential vice native to philosophers
themselves. Like the spendthrifts and drunkards in the lower classes, they have their own way of

55 The philosophers very nature is disjointed and must be unified, Adam notes. Bloom has For the parts

of the nature that we described as a necessary condition for them are rarely willing to grow together in the same
place; rather, its many parts grow forcibly separated from each other (503b).

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squandering their substance and enslaving themselves to chance. When they fall into
philosophical profligacy, they no longer choose what they will be; rather, chance determines
their interests, pursuits, and finally, their essence. This is the beginning of the answer to the
question Is philosophy subject to its own pleonexia?
If philosophers want to avoid this state, they must develop the dual and opposite qualities
like those contradictory attributes already listed several times over: And on the other hand,
those steady, not easily changeable dispositions, which one would be inclined to count on as
trustworthy and which in war are hard to move in the face of fears, act the same way in the face
of studies. They are hard to move and hard to teach, as if they had become numb; and they are
filled with sleep and yawning when they must work through anything of the sort. [] This
nature must participate in both in good and fair fashion (503d). The philosopher (like the
warrior of the early books) must have two distinct sets of qualities (485a). He must pay singleminded attention to what is itself, but he must also devote himself to gaining wide experience
and developing the rest of the virtues.
Continuing in this theme, philosophers must be sharp-eyed and experienced enough to
take an interest in what is around them (they must not be blind or numb) yet they must not be
overwhelmed by that interest to the point of intellectual slavery to whatever topics happen to
occur to them. Their intellectual desire has to reach horizontallysince everything that appears
could be a good/desirable source of knowledgeand vertically, such that they can choose the
better out of all the possible objects and understand them as multiple instances of a single idea.
Some sort of testing is required, to make sure that the soul in question has both quickness
and slowness: It must be tested in the labors, fears, and pleasures we mentioned then; and
moreoverwhat we passed over then but mention nowit must be given gymnastic in many
studies to see whether it will be able to bear the greatest studies, or whether it will turn out to be
a coward, as some turn out to be cowards in the other things. Practice in different kinds of
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learning will challenge and prepare the philosopher for the most difficult and highest study. (I
will postpone a discussion of this highest study to the final sections of this chapter.)
The final list of philosophical attributes in the Republic appears at 535a-540c. Socrates
and Glaucon are about to discuss the proper ages at which the philosopher should embark upon
his various studies and duties. Before they begin, Socrates again asks whether Glaucon
remembers the nature of the philosopher (535a). He does not.56 So Socrates reminds him:
keenness at studies, memory and bodily endurance. The philosopher must be both quick and
slow. Both sides are necessary: In the first place, the man who is to take it up must not be lame
in his love of labor, loving half the labor while having no taste [here apononquiet, leisurely,
idle] for the other half. This is the case when a man is a lover of gymnastic and the hunt and
loves all the labor done by the body, while he isnt a lover of learning or of listening and isnt an
inquirer, but hates the labor involved in all that. Lame as well is the man whose love of labor is
directed exclusively to the other extreme. The philosophers aims, interests, desires, and
practices stretch him perhaps beyond the limits of plausibility. Perhaps such a human being
could never exist.
We are now prepared to take up that problem in the context of a more obvious question:
Why does the Republic contain these several imperfectly recapitulated lists of philosophical
attributes? We might explain the first two treatments by matching the account to the audience:
The first description is aimed at Glaucon (the eleven or so point list of philosophical attributes,
ending in memory, charm, and measure), while the next is tailored to the logos-wary

56 Although he knows that he ought to: How could I not remember? he jokes, just before asking Socrates

what those philosophical attributes are. Socrates makarie at 535b5 expresses his amazed frustration with the
blithely forgetful Glaucon. In fact, blessedness and forgetfulness go hand in hand. Section 4.4 treats the
philosophical makarioi whose forgetfulness about their own nature is perhaps revelatory of Platos final teaching
about philosophical desire.

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Adeimantus.57 (In response to the latter, Socrates offers the the image of the ship-pilot and
another list account of philosophical attributes.) But what about the rest of the recapitulatory
lists? One might account for the multiple and various lists by noting whether the attributes are
native and undeveloped traits, or later, developed (educated) philosophical habits.
Whether either of these readings holds, I think that the multiple recapitulations
demonstrate at the very least that the work of describing the philosophers nature is lengthy and
uncertain. Socrates notes at the beginning of VI that it is a topic that deserves its own logos, and
the others agree that it is not a topic that can be covered except at length (484a). The imperfect
repetition of attributes also raises the question first put in Books II and III (regarding the
puzzling simultaneity of gentleness and spirit): Can such a human being exist? Is the guardian
or later, the philosopheran impossible being? If we have trouble even recollecting his various
attributes, what are the chances that they can actually coexist in any one person?
The near-repetition of the lists brings another pertinent thematic concern as well: the
philosophers existential need to recollect himself. Glaucon, the most likely philosopher of the
group, nevertheless must be reminded again and again throughout the dialogue what a
philosopher is. Certain traits slip in and out of the recapitulations as Socrates tries repeatedly to
describe the complete virtues of the philosopher. The lists become a kind of litany performed in
the face of the philosophers own self-forgetfulness. Considering how divergent are his aims and
interests (high and low, petty and important, best and all) perhaps we should not wonder that the
philosopher loses sight of all that he wishes and prays to be.
When Glaucon forgets (or relinquishes) one side or the other of the philosophical
temperament, Socrates reminds him what he ought to love and what sort of being he has
forgotten to be. Thus, when Glaucon pines for only the best opson, Socrates tempts his

57 See Burnyeat 1997.

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omnivorousness and crams the logos with apparently extraneous concerns, but when Glaucons
desire reaches out horizontally for all that he can reach no matter how contemptible, Socrates
encourages him to demand distinctions. Socrates is not toying with Glauconhe is reminding
him that it is the philosophers lot to pursue these frustratingly dual aims. Thinking always wants
more because thinkers are always remembering the opposite aims of thinking. Empty abstraction
or petty concreteness are the natural extremes. Simply searching out the first principles is not
enough; nor is broad attention to what is known as a whole, in all the small details. Thinking
seems to be doomed, then, to a kind of restless pleonexia. In order to be fully philosophical, one
must desire two incompatible things either simultaneously, or alternatively, as one recalls the
side that is presently neglected. What strikes the reader of the Republic as excessive repetition or
recapitulation may in fact be the natural alternation of thinking.58 Either completeness is
sacrificed for understanding of the few most important principles, or the attempt to capture every
detail, no matter how petty becomes a tedious democracy of thoughts in which order or rank is
lost. Perhaps philosophers will always feel the pull of one extreme or the other.
We do not know yet whether either of these dual appetites for all and best can be satisfied
singly, never mind simultaneously. All that we have done so far is to locate one cause of
pleonexia in thinking. All the markers of ordinary pleonexia sketched in Chapters One and Two
belong to philosophical pleonexia as well. The philosopher pulled between all and best clearly
feels the contradiction in himself. Clearly, his pursuits go beyond the necessary in both
directions. As far as pleasure and gain are concerned, Adeimantus is perhaps correct to question
the purity or public-mindedness of the peculiar characters that get swept up in the intellectual
life: What are they really after when they retreat from society to pursue their own lofty aims?
What pleasures do they prefer to doing their duty like everyone else? The philosophers peculiar

58 I will return to this matter in the final section of this chapter (4.4).

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desires differ at least superficially from the brutish drives of epithumia, however, when the
philosophers imagine themselves to be gods, towering as far above the human as gluttons fall
below it.59

4.3 The philosophers trophe

How can such philosophers be satisfied? This section will treat Socrates attempts on this
score to provide sufficient trophe, or nourishment, for the philosophers intellectual appetites.
Socrates earliest attempt to feed the citizens of the city in speech met with Glaucons indignant
opson objection, in Book II.60 Can the trophe he provides here in Books VI-VII make or keep
would-be philosophers happy? I will argue in this section that the trophe metaphor itself deserves
some attention; while it clearly falls short of capturing the precise nature of intellectual
development and satisfaction, its peculiar unsuitability actually works well to suggest the
excesses to which intellectual desire is susceptible.
As I argued in Chapter Two, ordinary epithumia may appear to aim at necessary
repletion, but in fact it is a complex and pleonectic drive past the necessary to the pleasurable
and beyond, to mere gain for the sake of gain. Having more is the beginning of wanting more.
The present chapter argues that the aims of philosophical epithumia are similarly obscure. The
desire to know appears to aim at predictable satisfactions: the proper definition of the term, the
adequate explanation of the event, the sufficient answer to the question. But these replenishments
of philosophical desire are by no means final. Might not there be a more felicitous way to phrase
the definition? A more thorough explanation? An answer that does not lead to more questions?

59 It will not surprise the reader to learn that I think that there is a certain blindness and passivity in

daimonic philosophical excess that echoes the blindness and passivity of brutish epithumetic pursuits. I hope that the
remainder of this chapter will show that Plato thinks this, too.
60 See Chapter One for a detailed treatment of the moment.

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Some member of the crowd will be dissatisfied with the definition, explanation, or answer that is
on offer, and if he manages, gadfly-like, to discomfit enough of his peers, whole investigations
will be have to reopened from the beginning. Every logos is susceptible to dissatisfaction.
This section will try to determine whether the trophe analogy itself invites such
dissatisfaction. As I outlined in Chapter Three,61 trophe connotes mothers-milk, solid
replenishment, fodder, ephemeral satisfaction, and intellectual rearing; in short, nourishment or
nurture. The guardians receive nourishment according to several senses of the word: daily bread
and the very education that provides the just motive and the proper means to rule. Taken
together, these are the rulers only wage (543c). Socrates says that it is out of gratitude for their
philosophical trophe that the philosophically-minded turn their attention to terrestrial matters of
the cities that reared and nourished them (520b).
When it comes to philosophical satisfaction, however, these connotations can mislead. As
Socrates well knows, the mind is not a container of a certain volume such that it could be
satisfied by the proper amount of the proper substancelogos of a certain length and depth.
Thinking must be something more active than being suckled or provided with fodder. Gaining
wisdom is not the same as being filled, or nurtured, or sung to (in the manner of a child and
trophos perhaps, or animal and master). Perhaps the desire to become full of knowledge as a
passive vessel is filled with costly liquid is maddening precisely because it aims at the wrong
thing and thinks about knowledge wrongly.
The analogy has some surface plausibility, of course, and a certain moral attractiveness.
Platos desire to know in other dialogues is famously, even formulaically, expressed by many
commentators as a (humbly) acknowledged lack. The philosopher in this Aristophanic/Platonic
mode is female to male, an incomplete lover seeking nothing more than the perfectly

61 See 3.3.

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complementary other half to fill her. And in the Republic itself, Socrates often speaks of
ignorancethe converse of wisdomas a kind of unfortunate or culpable emptiness that points
in each instance to the thing each knows he needs. (Or more cynically, as he says in his
descriptions of failing regimes, an empty head is like an empty acropolis, ready to be swarmed
with bad opinions.) Socrates gives the repletion model a fair chance and as always, his
arguments to absurdity nevertheless contain a mustard seed of truth. But in the end, as I will
argue here, knowing, like feasting, is about something more than necessary repletion, though the
pleasures of each encourage a pleonexia that easily goes to extremes.
There are generally two senses of intellectual trophe: Rearing and education (troph te
kai paideia), often rendered in a double formula, like kalos kagathos.62 And second, there is the
more mature act of thinking and discussion: what Socrates and Thrasymachus call a feast of
logoi in Book I. The first corresponds roughly to necessity, the second (roughly) to pleasure. But
one should not forget, as I argued in Chapters Two and Three, that the necessary and the
pleasurable are moveable categories.

4.4 Redundancy and the Good

How you keep on saying the same things, Socrates!
Yes, Callicles, not only the same things, but also about the
same subjects!
Gorgias 490e

Over the course of the Republic, Socrates offers many proofs of the same thesis, that
justice is preferable to injustice in itself and because of its consequences. At 583b, Socrates

62 For example, 412b, 423e, 424a, 445e.

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declares that makes two in a row, and twice the just man has been victorious over the unjust
one.63 Should not one good argument be enough? What function is served by any argument
beyond the good-enough argument?
The question of the sufficiency of any particular logos arises again and again in the
Republic as does the question of the proper measure of philosophy (450a-c). In this section, I
will take up these questions under the ambiguous title of redundancy, and make good on my
promise to treat Socrates digressions in the context of gluttony. Unfortunately, the term carries
some negative connotations, none of which I intend. By redundancy, I mean superfluity,
abundance, excess, not vain repetition of the identical. The root of the word, "unda," (wave) is
obviously appropriate to the dialogue, which proceeds by swells. Beyond the famous three
waves, there are greater and lesser logoi, wave after mounting wave of argument towards the
same thesis, that justice is better than injustice, in itself and for its consequences. Socrates
digressions, overstatements, and then weaker, tentative and even regretful denouments of the
dialogue are best understood as moments of this ebb and flow.
To speak less poetically, an honest logos cannot help but grow and return to itself, since
serious reflection on the flaws of past arguments turns what appeared to be already satisfactory
logoi into mere prologues.64 At one point in his commentary, Strauss wonders why the question
of justice is first posed in terms of its origin and growth.65 Why not ask the question abstractly
(i.e., What is justice?) as Socrates did earlier (at the end of Book I) and does in so many other

63 The context of this Book IX argument echoes the first line of the Republic, in which Socrates evinced

his simultaneous interest in spectacle and prayer (proseuxomenos boulomenos theasasthai). Here, he
simultaneously wrestles and does his religious duty.
The eponym Zeus Savior (str) is related to the root of sophrosune, of course.
64 A prooimion at 357a, which can mean a musical prelude as well.
65 1964, 92

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dialogues? (What is courage, or wisdom, or moderation?) The temporal context is puzzling;

perhaps it is key. When Socrates seemingly blunders into an investigation of the coming-to-be of
justice in the city, he is in fact closing in on a more general truth: that every dialogue is on the
move and finite, in imitation of its developing objects. Every discussion is in time and
susceptible to retrospection. Further, since we are time-bound beings that change even in the
midst of the conversation, our ideas and aims change as our memory, judgment, and desires
change. This temporal treatment of the logical is common throughout the Republic. What we
know now, what is a sufficient logos for this time; what we used to think was sufficient, often
differs from what we now find necessary to argue.66
The ground shifts underfoot as the previously sufficient logos ceases to satisfy, aims and
paths are disrupted and change, and the speakers return to the beginning of the problem again
and again. And the Republic is explicit about this redundancy. Towards the beginning of the
dialogue, Glaucon complains that he has heard many arguments for justice and injustice already:
Ive been talked deaf by Thrasymachus and countless others (358c). His ears are ringing with
previous logoi. According to Socrates metaphor, Thrasymachus is a bathman with a pitcher of
arguments, pouring them into his listeners ears. They are filled to the brim but still dissatisfied:
[After Thrasymachus encomium to injustice], he had it mind to go away, just like
the bathman, after having poured a great shower of speech into our ears all at once.
But those present didnt let him and forced him to stay put and present an argument
for what had been said. (344d)
This moment recalls the opening scene of the Republic, when Socrates stood in Thrasymachus
place, anxious to leave but prepared to stay if necessary and to produce prodigious logoi. Now,
Socrates begs for more logoi, too:

66 Roochnik refers to this phenomenon as the pregnancy of the logos: A logos is set in motion, one which

(because it has been impregnated by Eros) swells; that is, it becomes richer and better able to do justice to the
human soul (2003, 6).

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Thrasymachus, you demonic man, do you toss in such an argument and have it in
mind to go away before teaching us adequately or finding out whether it is so or not?
Or do you suppose you are trying to determine a small matter and not a course of life
on the basis of which each of us would have the most profitable existence? (344d-e).
Thrasymachus will take advantage of the invitation and wear out his listeners with a longer
speech, but he still will not achieve his goal. It is not clear that he has a goal. Listening to
Thrasymachus is like being blinded or deafened. The matters he discusses are too important to
neglect but his arguments do not satisfy or persuade. Obviously great quantities of arguments
about admittedly important matters do not make up for their poor quality. Thrasymachus
aggressive watering and feeding is more than enough argument but still not enough to satisfy the
listener.67
Glaucon finds himself at a loss (apor at 358c7); he is not convinced by the countless
arguments of Thrasymachus and countless others, nor has he heard enough arguments from
Socrates side to convince him, either. Apparently, Socrates own argument on behalf of justice
in the previous pages did not suffice. Ive yet to hear [the argument for justice from] anyone as I
want it (boulomai at 358d1).
If Glaucon is looking for a be-all and end-all argument for justice, Socrates is and is not
his man: What would an intelligent man enjoy talking and hearing about more again and
again? says Socrates, at once raising and dashing the hopes of the attentive listener. Socrates
says that he will never tire of talking about justice; does he mean that there is no final, perfect
argument for it? Justice is one of those topics that angry people like Thrasymachus and
intelligent people like Socrates alike discuss again and again, more and more. So what is the

67 Thrasymachus taunts at at 345b: [How] shall I persuade you? If youre not persuaded by what Ive just

now said, what more shall I do for you? Shall I take the argument and give your soul a forced feeding [eis tn
psuchn pher enth ton logon]? quoting the taunt about the nursemaids method of feeding in Aristophanes
Knights. His aggressive tone here and the consequent talk of sufficient and insufficient feasting (352b-354c) will be
treated in more detail in 5.2.

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difference between the blowhards and philosophers?68 One might suppose that philosophers
want better arguments, arguments that stick. But the fact of redundancy in this dialogue argues
for some kind of indefinite insufficiency even among the best and most well-intentioned talkers.
The Republic itself is long because it is redundant, and the frame points to a higher redundancy
as well: Socrates, the sole narrator of the dialogue, repeats the discussion that has kept him up all
the previous night in the Piraeus.
Redundancy of argument is common among friends for the simple reason that friends
often find themselves preaching to true believers. When is the argument over, when one is
arguing with people who already agree? Socrates finds himself in this strange position in Book II
(367e-368b), when he must respond to like-minded friends of justice who have taken up the
cause of injustice for the sake of argument:
Although I had always been full of wonder at the nature of Glaucon and Adeimantus,
at this time I was particularly delighted. [] Something quite divine must certainly
have happened to you, if you are remaining unpersuaded that injustice is better than
justice when you are able to speak that way on its behalf. Now you truly dont seem
to me to be being persuaded. I infer it from the rest of your character, since, on the
basis of the arguments themselves, I would distrust you. And the more I trust you,
the more Im at a loss as to what I should do.
Glaucon and Adeimantus make eerily persuasive arguments for a thesis they do not hold. What
are their aims? When will they say that the argument is at an end? In such insincere arguments,
as opposed to the violent and sincere combat with Thrasymachus, there is more playfulness,
there are fewer boundaries, and there is much more uncertainty about their present path. As
Socrates says, it would be easier if he did not trust them (if they were a Thrasymachus, or
someone else clearly opposed to Socrates), since the dialogue would then have a distinct shape
and could speak directly to the character of the opposition. But here, the opposition is theoretical.

68 The uncanny similarity between Thrasymachus and Socrates will be treated at length in 5.2.

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There is no sincere and actual person behind the thesis, whose wants, doubts, or desires might be
conclusively addressed. Rather, these objectors are the puppets of Glaucon and Adeimantus, and
there is something strange and bootless about directing the argument to these theoretical
objectors, as to their hands or shadows.
Perhaps, one might object, Glaucon and Adeimantus are simply looking for better and
better arguments for the same thesis. But here again, we have the possibility of indefinite
progress or perpetual quagmire (as Socrates seems to fear). Since the interlocutors already agree,
there will never be a manifestly good enough or best argument, i.e., the argument that leads
to the moment of conversion, accepted refutation, and the end of the logos. The standards of
satisfaction are unclear; the interlocutors may have to make their peace with the logos at some
point, while recognizing that their discussion could go on and on indefinitely.

The proper measure of argument

The interstices of the major arguments in the Republic contain a running commentary by
Socrates and company upon the length and elusive satisfactions of the arguments thus far. Since
the logos is never complete enough,69 because it tends toward redundancy in itself and because
of the nature of philosophical desirebecause, as I will argue in this section, the proper
measure of argument is in doubtSocrates and the rest swing wildly between sure optimism
about what can be and has been proven and sensible trepidation about the next wave of the
logos.70
One could note scores of brief interchanges like the following that bear on the question of
the proper measure of argument. I will discuss only an illustrative few.

69 Again, watch the shape-shifting term hikans.

70 See Lear (1990, 149) on the ever-present undertow of desire.

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First, to return to the start of Book V, the famous refounding of the argument that recalls
the first scene of Republic, Socrates arrest and redirection to debate:71 This time, Polemarchus
cannot stand to let Socrates go when the latter merely mentions the community of women and
children. He wants a better and more extensive account of the management of desire in the city.
Socrates responds, as I noted earlier: You dont know how great a swarm of arguments youre
stirring up with what you are now summoning to the bar. I saw it then and passed by so as not to
cause a lot of trouble (450a-b). Thrasymachus speaks up again, too, recalling to the reader the
concerns of the first book: Do you suppose these men have come here now to look for fools
gold and not to listen to arguments?72 In argument there are prudent moments of neglect in
which one chooses to pass by some admittedly worthy subject for the sake of the coherence of
the whole dialogue, as at 437a, where Socrates warns his listeners not to demand an argument for
the principle of non-contradiction: so we wont be compelled to go through all such objections
and spend a long time assuring ourselves theyre not true, lets assume that this is so and go
ahead, agreed that if it should ever appear otherwise, all our conclusions based on it will be
undone.
But there is an opposing danger, too. Thinkers looking to avoid unnecessary labors
may hasten to the seemingly worthy answer only to find it unsatisfying. Perhaps any number of
long paths, however circuitous and apparently redundant, are to be preferred to the easy but
doubtful conclusion.

71 Treated above in the introduction to the present chapter.

72 The Greek is from chrusochoein, which Bloom overtranslates somewhat. Adam translates and notes: It

was precisely to listen to logoi and not to smelt ore for gold, that we came here. Chrusochoein is a proverbial
expression said of those who neglect their proper duty for some more fascinatingif less profitablepursuit.
Adam discovers the meaning of the proverb in the Athenian citizens dereliction of duty in favor of pursuing gold on
Hymettus (a finally unsuccessful pursuit). The relevant point is this: the gold is actually there but impossible to
attain. Thus, the pursuit of the unattainable (but real and worthy) prevents the accomplishment of ordinary tasks with
attainable rewards.

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Where should Socrates and company draw the line? They have come to listen to
arguments, but in due measure [metrin] (450b). How does one ascertain the due measure of
argument? When is it wise to take up a topic or to pass it by (450b)?73 Glaucon replies: For
intelligent men, Socrates, the proper measure of listening to such arguments is a whole life.74
He may be correct, but is the lifetime the measure of philosophy by default or in some other
way? If Glaucon means simply that philosophers work on certain problems until the day they die,
without completing that work, then in what non-superficial sense is that lifetime a measure of
anything? As Socrates says, how can the incomplete be a measure of anything at all?75 If
Glaucons answer is superficial, at least it is certain. All other measures of philosophy are subject
to debate.
Yet they need these limits now more than ever. Socrates evinces some worry at 450c that
they are now taking on a logos of such immeasurable magnitude that all their conclusions will be
vain:
It is not easy to go through, you happy man. [] Even more than what we went
through before, it admits of many doubts. For, it could be doubted that the things
said are possible; and even if, in the best possible conditions, they could come into
being, that they would be what is best will also be doubted. So that is why theres a
certain hesitation about getting involved in it, for fear that the argument might seem
to be a prayer, my dear comrade (450c-d).
Glaucon, mistaking the true source of Socrates wariness, promises: Your audience wont be
hard-hearted, or distrustful, or ill-willed.
But the problem is not with Socrates (mostly) friendly listeners. Perhaps we should
blame logos itself. Even among friendly interlocutorsperhaps especially among friendly
73 Or see 503b, where the logos tried to sneak by certain difficulties in itself by covering its own face.
74 Contrast Cephalus lackluster love of discussion which does not last a lifetime or even the whole night.

(328d; 331d). See 5.3.

75 See 504c.

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interlocutorscertain discussions grow dangerously complex and vast. Logoi of a certain

magnitude, seriousness, and difficulty have life of their own:
If I believed I knew whereof I speak, it [Glaucons encouragement to speak on]
would be a fine exhortation. To speak knowing the truth, among prudent and dear
men, about what is greatest and dear, is a thing that is safe [asphales] and
encouraging. But to present arguments at a time when one is in doubt and seeking
which is just what I am now doingis a thing both frightening and slippery
[sphaleron] (450d-451a).76
This is perhaps the closest Socrates will come in this ambitious dialogue to the Socratic
profession of a knowledge of ignorance. But whereas in other dialogues, such daimonic restraint
ends the discussion in reverent aporia, here the fear of error and presumption is just one thread in
the ongoing discussion. Socrates knows that he does not know the truth about what is greatest
and dear, that the present dialogue (like every other dialogue) is a matter of presenting
arguments while one is still seeking, and that admirable boldness in such a conversation could
worse than ruin his friends:
Its not because Im afraid of being laughed atthats childishbut because Im
afraid that in slipping from the truth where one least ought to slip, Ill not only fall
myself but also drag my friends down with me. I prostrate myself before Adrasteia,
Glaucon, for what Im going to say. I expect that its a lesser fault to prove to be an
unwilling murderer77 of someone than a deceiver about fine, good, and just things in
laws (451a).
Perhaps we have discovered some small way of measuring argument. When in doubt, perhaps
one should hesitate to make arguments that might harm ones friends. Socrates recognizes that
we risk more in argument than we do in life. If one takes too much into the discussion, one might
(with ones friends) be overwhelmed by unnecessary troubles and neglect attainable if limited
answers. The safety of ones friends is one measure of (at least public) logos.
76 Sphaleria (unsteadiness) is a sign of immoderation. See 3.2-3.3 and 5.1.
77 See 5.1 on unknowing cannibalism and 5.2 on Thrasymachus and Socrates similar brutal gorging in

argument, to the implied harm of their interlocutors.

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But this standard is not exact. If one does not go far enough down the path of the logos,
one might arrive (with ones friends) at a seemingly worthy conclusion that is actually
worthless.78 It is not responsible simply to stop talking. At 368b-c, Socrates explains their
difficulty as they set out to defend justice more thoroughly than in the first book:
Im not capable of [persuading you]; my proof is that when I thought I showed in
what I said to Thrasymachus that justice is better than injustice, you didnt accept it
from me. On the other hand, I cant not help out. For Im afraid it might be impious
to be here when justice is being spoken badly of and give up and not bring help while
I am still breathing and able to make a sound. [] Glaucon and the others begged
me in every way to help out and not to give up the argument, but rather to seek out
what each is and the truth about the benefit of both.
Socrates insists that he will spend his last breath discussing the true, but then, he also knows that
falsehood is so damaging to the soul that a whole life spent in error (and leading friends into
error) might be worse than a life with no intellectual pursuits at all. His friends have no sense yet
of these risks of logos and respond blithely: Never mind about us. As for you, dont weary in
going through your opinion about the things we ask.
It is clear that in Socrates view at least, the pursuit of a logos is not a simple matter of
finding the best argument in itself, apart the desires and present needs of the participants. Rather,
the logos proceeds in time and in response to desire, and according to Socrates, who seems to be
sincere here, with a moral imperative to pursue the truth courageously but not recklesslythat is,
to the harm of oneself and ones friends. Since the dialogue is not a purely objective pursuit of
a fixed telos (and therefore safe to pursue with full certainty of satisfaction) it needs to be
protected from excess in many directions. Among other things, Socrates will have to be careful
not to mislead his interlocutors into dangerously open-ended arguments that might finally
78 This is distinct from Rosens claim that the main purpose of the Republic [is] to show the impossibility

of the full satisfaction of philosophical eros. Rosen rephrases this to mean that the philosopher both desires and
does not desire to rule, or in other words that there is no more unity in the philosophical nature than in the city
(2005, 81). My interest is less in the impossibility of reconciling philosophy and politics (or even the philosophers
dual roles) but rather, in the open-endedness and natural dissatisfactions of philosophical dialogue.

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provoke misology among them. On the other hand, he must not be excessively worried about the
danger to his friends, or the possibility of error, or about the possibility that the logos is in vain.
These are all signs of misology, too, the only incurable disease of the philosophically-minded.79
Similar moments of uncertain philosophical satisfaction arise throughout the dialogue. 1)
At the end of the extraordinary and provocative digression of V-VII, immediately upon Socrates
presentation of his education solution, the exileor possibly, the murderof all citizens over
the age of ten, and Glaucons response (That is by far the quickest and easiest way), Socrates
states their collective satisfaction: Isnt that enough already [] for our arguments about this
[the just] city and the man like it? For surely its plain what sort of man well say he has to be.
Glaucon feels no need to ask another question, no matter how many may occur to us. (What is
the meaning of the exile? Does it imply murder? And what is the equivalent in the soul of the
exile of most of the citys oldest citizens?) Instead Glaucon says merely: In my opinion this
argument has reached its end (telos echein) (541b). Is this an objective end of the logos? Or is
Glaucon simply saying that the objector he invented in Book II would be satisfied by their
digression to the Good? Or is he saying that the preceding logoi have fully satisfied him (in a
way that the logoi of Books I and IIup to the introduction of opsoncould not)?
2) Again, at the beginning of Book IX, Socrates and company finally reach the telos.
Their plan was to discuss the genesis of justice and the forms of degeneration into injustice in the
city and in the soul. Finally they have reached the tyrannic man, the last missing piece. (He is
the one who still remains says Adeimantus, who is keeping track.) But then, suddenly, Socrates
postpones the end of the dialogue: Do you know what I still miss?80 Socrates wants to discuss
79 Young men like Socrates friends are especially susceptible to misology, as Socrates describes it later

(539a-c). Glaucons exasperated claim that he has heard uncountable arguments for and against justice is
particularly worrisome.
80 The word is poth at 571a5, which implies strong emotion: to long for, or to yearn for or

restrospectively, to feel regret or miss.

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epithumia just one more time before they finish. His interruption recalls Polemarchus erotic
interruption at the start of Book V, right at the expected denouement of the dialogue (the forms
of injustice). The logos so far has discussed desire often but, in Socrates retrospective judgment,
not sufficiently: In my opinion we havent adequately distinguished the kinds and numbers of
the desires. And with this lacking, the investigation we are making [in particular, of tyranny] will
be less clear (571a-b).
No one would deny the good of clarity and thoroughness in argument but there is a
question about how clear and how thorough any one argument can be, especially arguments
about the soul and its final objects. Plato puts the question to the reader in Adeimantus bluff
presumption: Isnt it still a fine time to do so? In fact, it must be nearly dawn at the start of
Book IX; they have been through four regimes alreadythey have only one regime left to cover.
Do they truly have time for this last-minute expansion of the logos?81
And even if they do, will this final attempt at a thorough clarification of the desires
finally satisfy them? No, Socrates will say, in the next page, as he retrospectively admits yet
another moment of pleonexia: Well now, we have been led out of the way and said too much
about this (572b). Finally, as I argued in Chapter Two, even this last stab at the distinction
between necessary and unnecessary desires is unsatisfactory.
3) At the beginning of Book X, when the dialogue should be over (justice has been
proved superior to injustice at least three times in the pages immediately preceding, and Glaucon
is satisfied with the result, and poetically, 592b would have made an elegant caesura, Socrates
starts the discussion again on a topic that has not been sufficiently covered yet: poetry. And with
poetry comes yet another treatment of desire, Socrates ever-retreating quarry. Finally, at 601c,

81 See Roochnik (2003) on the extraordinary length of the sections on tyranny.

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in the closing moments of the dialogue, we hear the common and now telling refrain again:
Well, then, lets not leave it half-said, but lets see it adequately.
4) One famous and central example of uncertain philosophical satisfaction remains to be
discussed: the shorter and longer roads of Books IV and VI. The question Socrates and company
face (Does the soul have three parts?) is hardly a slight question:82
I know well, Glaucon, that in my opinion, well never get a precise [akribs] grasp
of it on the basis of procedures such as were now using in the argument. There is
another longer [makroteron] and further [plein] road leading to it. But perhaps we
can do it in a way worthy of whats been said and considered before. (435c-d).
Socrates promises a good enough answer here, given the inferior procedures he admits they are
now using, that is, an answer sufficient for present circumstances and not worse than what was
said earlier.
Plenty of ink has been spilled over what precisely is the matter with their procedure in
Book IV and whatpreciselythe longer road entails.83 But I am interested simply in the fact
that Socrates thinks of logoi in time and as variously difficult approaches to the same telos. A
better proof of the same thesis is ahead, Socrates implies, but is not appropriate or necessary
now. However, the good enough proof that they will now attempt will be worthy of what has
come before. In other words, whatever logos we make now, it is with an eye toward the past and

82 Glaucon agrees, echoing Adeimantus in Book II: Perhaps, Socrates, the saying that fine things are hard

is true.
83 If I were to enter into this debate, I would begin with Socrates ironic statement that the shorter road is

deficient in precision (504b) even though it is actually excessively arithmetically precise, and that the longer and
bigger/further/greater/higher road (the plein of pleonexia is wonderfully, frustratingly elastic, applying to number,
size, degree, and place) that will actually loop through the heavens into the highest and most imprecise regions
beyond being and then down into the pits of Hades (all by means of images and muthoi) before it returns to the
soul and its justice is somehow more precise.
In fact, the shorter road is too precise to capture the whole truth about the soul, and the longer road is
richly suggestive of the truth about the soul in its journey through life, but it is obviously imprecise. The short road
seeks the truth about the soul as it is by itself with the precise tools of arithmos and under the clarifying rule of the
principle of non-contradiction, while the long road considers the soul in relation to the rest of the physical and
intellectual cosmos as its pilgrim student and observer.

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the future: As we pursue the present logos, we recognize its provisional, momentary status.
Whatever argument is appropriate to the moment will admittedly be overturned by a better logos
later. Every logos is a prologue. Yet these inferior preludes to better logoi are not worthless.
The puzzling fact remains: Roads of various length, precision, and difficulty nevertheless
are meant to arrive at the same end. If the shorter or longer argument is unsatisfying to Socrates
or Glaucon, it is not because the end is unachieved.
Glaucon, as it happens, chooses the shorter road: Mustnt we be content with that? It
would be good enough for me [at] present. Well, then, says Socrates, it will quite satisfy me
too. Here satisfaction in argument appears to be a subjective matter. At any given point, the
good enough answer for me (or for Glaucon, or for Thrasymachus) becomes the good enough
answer for the dialogue. If the answer turns out to be unsatisfactory in the long run, it could be
that Glaucon has changed, or come to discover that he really wants something other than he
wanted before. Self-knowledge and apparently more objective knowledge (about the nature of
justice, which should be the same everywhere) are related.84
Why isnt the Glaucon of this moment curious about the higher road? Socrates limns the
future discussion rather seductively, I think; why not pursue the highest, fullest, and most
extensive treatment of the topic right away? I cannot explain Glaucons contentment with the
inferior but worthy logos here, but Socrates contentment is not difficult to understand.
According to the principle of argument discussed above, that logos is appropriate and sufficient
to the moment that takes into account the present audience. Socrates is content with the present
method because Glaucon is content with it. If Socrates is going to drag Glaucon up the steep
upward path, he will have to help Glaucon to recognize himself why the present path is not
finally satisfactory.
84 See Socrates full comment at 504b: And so, you see, the statements made at that time were, as it looks

to me, deficient in precision. If they were satisfactory to you, only you can tell.

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But whatever their precise reasons for contenting themselves with a logos that is goodenough for the present, consider their remarkable philosophical stance: It seems that they all
accept that the same thesis needs to be proved again and again. Two different roads, one longer
and one shorter, lead to the same telos (that is, the conclusion that justice is good itself and for its
benefits). These temporary logoi are explicitly better and better (or at least longer and longer)
proofs of the same thesis. Socrates and Glaucon are satisfied at this moment with the goodenough-for-the-moment proof of something they a) already are disposed to believe and b) hope
to prove again later.
Socrates multiple logoi, all aiming at the same telos, but differing according to the
subjective requirements of each moment in time are the opposite of scientific or logical
progress, which aims to move from step to step and hardly ever looks back. When Plato crafts
the dialogue in this way, he is acknowledging something frightening to the progress-minded:
thinkings natural redundancy.85 Fine things are hard, perhaps harder than the progress-minded
will admit. To speak poetically, this increasingly rich theoretical redundancy is a way of moving
while staying still, looking back to what was proved before, and looking to prove it again with a
better (and longer) speeches.
When the moment finally arrives for the interlocutors to take the higher, longer road
(504b), they discuss their past satisfaction with the argument:
We were, I believe, saying that in order to get the finest possible look at these
things another and longer road around would be required, and to the man who took it
they would become evident, but that proofs on a level with what had been said up to
then could be tacked on (prosapsai). And you all said that that would suffice. And
so, you see, the statements made at that time were, as it looks to me, deficient in
precision. If they were satisfactory to you, only you can tell.
They were [satisfactory] to me, within measure, Glaucon replies. And it looks as
though they were for the others too.
85 See Kants version of this necessary progress in the Groundwork.

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Socrates reply, quoted earlier, is devastating: My friend, [] a measure in such things, which
in any way falls short of that which is, is no measure at all. For nothing incomplete is the
measure of anything. This is Socrates at his bleakest and most falsely encouraging. If Glaucon
understood the remark, he would perhaps simply get up and leave, like Cephalus, in silence.
Instead, Socrates pronouncement spurs Glaucon forward (as Socrates knew it might) to give up
the shorter path and to embark on a longer, presumably finer path that will wend through the
highest conceivable principles all the way to the telos they have already albeit incompletely
proven.

The Good, again

Socrates comment at the beginning of the unforeseen Book II, that it appears that Book I
is merely a proem and not a complete (albeit aporetic) dialogue in itself, together with Glaucons
subsequent refounding of the argument, provides the pattern for all the moments of retrospective
disappointment to follow. Again, at 532d, the five studies turn out to be a mere prelude to the
song itself which is the mysterious practice of dialectic which aims at the even more
mysterious Good. Again and again, all apparently final logoi appear merely to introduce the
themes that then must be captured in other extended logoi that really will be final, we hope.
The unveiling of the greatest study in Book VII (or rather, the unveiling of the
introduction to this highest study) dramatizes the problem of the incompleteness of logos and
raises questions about the value of incomplete but ever-increasing logoi. Finally, it brings the
fact of dialogical redundancy, in particular, into full view. Glaucon appears to have no idea what
Socrates is bringing onto the scene in Book VI but is curious enough now not to allow Socrates
merely to mention the longer road and the greatest study through which it winds: As to what
you mean by the greatest study and what it concerns, do you think that anyone is going to let you

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go without asking what it is? (504e). Once again, we are back at the beginning of the dialogue,
arresting Socrates for purposes of discussion.
After mentioning the longer road, and criticizing the shorter road (which led through
the tripartite arguments of Book IV), Socrates chides his listeners for their satisfaction with
previous insufficient logoi, as good as commanding his listeners to detain him and to require a
better logos:86
Nothing incomplete is the measure of anything. But certain men are sometimes of
the opinion that this question has already been adequately disposed of and that there
is no need to seek further.
Glaucon replies, with matching disdain: Easygoingness, [hrathumian] causes quite a throng of
men to have this experience. Socrates continues:
Its an experience a guardian of a city and of laws hardly needs. [] Well, then, my
comrade, such a man must go the longer way around and labor no less at study than
at gymnastic, or else, as we were just saying, hell never come to the end of the
greatest and most fitting study.
Glaucon takes the bait: So these arent the greatest, but there is something yet greater than
justice and all the other things we went through? Socrates replies:
There is both something greater [] and also even for these very virtues it wont do
to look at a sketch, as we did a while ago, but their most perfect elaboration must not
be stinted. Or isnt it ridiculous to make every effort so that other things of little
worth be as precise and pure as can be, while not deeming the greatest things worth
the greatest precision?
It is no wonder then, that Glaucon arrests Socrates here and demands to be led along the longer
path. Socrates has managed to pique Glaucons curiosity to the point of mock-arrest and the
suspense is keen for the reader at this point, too.

86 I quote the passage (504b-e) at length, to give the proper context.

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Where will this longer road lead? Here we are faced with one of the greatest surprises in
the dialogue, I think. This highest peak of the Republic, the great secret revealed only to a few
and only by analogy, is nothing new. Actually, Socrates reminds Glaucon, they have discussed
the Good many times before:
Its not a few times already that you have heard it; but now you are either not
thinking or have it in mind to get hold of me again and cause me trouble. I suppose
its rather the latter, since you have many times heard that the idea of the good is the
greatest study and that its by availing oneself of it along with just things and the rest
that they become useful and beneficial. And now you know pretty certainly that Im
going to say this and, besides this, that we dont have sufficient knowledge of it.
(504e-505a)
The most final, most complete, most necessary object in the search for justice is a redundancy,
but it might as well be a new secret teaching for all the intrigue that leads up to its unveiling.
The initiation-talk, like the talk of the mysteries of Eros in the Symposium, ends in an old
familiar topic. Glaucons eager, ignorant expectation of something that he in fact has heard
discussed many times before is the dramatic unfolding of his statement in Book II, that he has
heard many arguments before (about justice), but never to his satisfaction.87
Glaucon has forgotten this all-important topic (that they have reached or at least
mentioned many times before in many previous dialogues), but his muscle memory of the climb
always leads him to ask for opsonsomething more, something beyond, whatever the cost to
temperance, wherever it will lead.
Socrates and Glaucons present discussion of the oft discussed and still insufficiently
known Good will not be final either. They will continue to approach the Good endlessly, I think,
perhaps because it is the kind of telos that is also an arch: That is, it is the sort of thing that

87 I doubt that Glaucon is merely causing trouble here (although this moment recalls Socrates perturbation

in Book II over Glaucons insincere argument for injustice). Rather, I think that Glaucon truly has forgotten the
most important things for the moment, even though he has heard them many times before. I take Socrates other
alternative, that Glaucon simply isnt thinking and needs to be reminded of the most important things.

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gives birth to many logoi without being itself subject to an encompassing logos. In this dialogue,
as in all those previous discussions, the Good is mentioned but not explained. Rather, Socrates
offers yet another prologue to it: the discussion of the sun, the child of the Good. (506e).
The father-logos, the first cause, and the final source of being and order is absent from
the dialogue.88 Not even the lengthy Republic is sufficient to grasp this telos in itself. Readers
who trust Socrates insistence here that such a principle can be known but only by the
philosophers of the kallipolis (not by the relatively poorly prepared Glaucon and company) still
must admit that there is an amazing procrastination of the telos89 at the center of this
monumental dialogue. The most important thing, the thing that is most necessary and beneficial
to know and most worthy of precise knowledge, is least spoken.
This is a terribly frustrating moment for many readers, some of whom are sufficiently
provoked to pursue minute speculative studies of the accounts of Platos lectures, in which he
surely must have presented his theory of the Good or the One entire, as if he had really just left
out the full account of the Good that another (perhaps private) logos would reveal.
Is it not possible, however, that Plato teaches something essential about the Good by
having Socrates put it off for another day? Path after path leads to it, and one cannot help but talk
about it often, whether briefly and directly or at length in insufficient analogies, but although the
Good is the most in-itself of all independent realities, it does not like to be talked about in itself;
rather, insofar as it is a cause of order and a cause of being, it likes to be talked about as an
principle and causethat is, along with the things it causes. It wants to be talked about most of
all as the source of offspring.

88 As many, many commentators note. See especially Baracchi and Brann.

89 The discussion of the Good is put off for another day, in as many words. 506e: Another time youll pay

us whats due on the fathers narrative.

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For this reason, it may be deeply correct (and not merely a dodge) to talk about the Good
in the image of its child, the sun (506e). The Good begets a multiplicity of images that reflect
its being.90 None of these is as perfect as the Good itself, but it is helpful to our understanding to
see the Good as a fathera cause of something else. There may be an infinite inaccessible logos
of the Good in itself, by itself, but we are not utterly mistaken to look at it in its offspring
(egkonos 506e2 and tous tokous at 507a). According to the common metaphor upon which
Socrates and Glaucon quip, the interest to be paid or received on a certain amount of money is
called the offspring of the capital. We can derive gain from the Good (by considering what
proceeds from it) without managing to tap its full capital.
Glaucon (who should know better by now)91 blithely tells Socrates, In the name of Zeus,
youre not going to withdraw when you are, as it were, at the end. It will satisfy us even if you go
through the good just as you went through justice, moderation, and the rest (506d). When it
becomes clear that Socrates will offer only the interest on the main account, he still speaks as
though it were reasonable to expect a full, final, and satisfying account of the Goodperhaps
they will get to it tomorrow: Another time youll pay us whats due on the fathers narrative
(506e). Socrates rueful response to Glaucons pleonexia is ironic and touching, I think: I could
wish that I were able to pay and you were able to receive it in itself, and not just the interest, as is
the case now. In fact, it is the case always and everywhere that although human beings long to
be able to speak the whole truth about the whole and to comprehend such an account should it

90 And it begets in proportion with itself, literally, by making an analogy (analogon), as Howland notes

(2004, 122).
91 It appears that Socrates gave Glaucon too much credit when he remarked that now you know pretty

certainly [what I am about to say] (505a).

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ever be offered to them, they must reconcile themselves to the frustration of both aims. By this
much, human logos falls short of human desire.92
One can see that redundancy with relation to the highest principle will be assuredand
that the Good is the cause of that redundancy, or let us say, multiplicity. There will be no final,
full, complete logos of the Good (made by human beings, anyway); but there is nothing so worth
talking about. Therefore logoi about the Good and leading to it and back from it will multiply
and fill the earth.
This inaccessibility of the father-logos is perhaps just as well, since what little they can
say about the Good is already too much, and goes too far. When Socrates concludes that
intelligibility, existence, and being are in things because of the Good, although the good isnt
being but is still beyond being, exceeding it in dignity and power, Glaucon responds
(ridiculously, in Socrates estimation): Apollo, what a demonic excess [daimonias
huperbols] (509b).93 But Glaucon wants more excessive speech (in this he truly does appear
ridiculous).
[You] are responsible for compelling me to tell my opinions about it, says
Socrates.
Glaucon responds, And dont under any circumstances stop, [] at least until you
have gone through the likeness with the sun, if you are leaving anything out.
Socrates answers, But of course, [] I am leaving out a throng of things.
Glaucon has not yet seen the light about the necessarily endless redundancy and incompleteness
of logos and responds naively, as if their conversation simply needed filling up with all the

92 Knowledge (or even sound opinion) about the Good is out of the range of our present thrust not just

now but always (506e).

93 Insofar as Socrates daimon is described as a voice of restraint in thinking and speaking, Glaucons

daimonic excess is clearly a ridiculous oxymoron.

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requisite logical items: [Well,] dont leave even the slightest thing aside. Glaucon cannot see
how ridiculous his desire truly is, and his obliviousness to his own state of soul parallels his
perpetual forgetfulness of the Good.94

Tyranny and pleonexia of logos

It appears to be the lot of the philosophers to go beyond bounds in their pursuits. Are
philosophers therefore unjust? Thus far, it seems that their pleonexia stands in an uncertain
relationship to justice, the sub-title topic of the Republic. Insofar as there appears to be a kind of
rational pleonexia at work in the Republic as a whole, whether in Glaucons forgetful
overeagerness for the whole truth, or somehow in Socrates encouragement of his listeners
philosophical appetites, or in the philosophers insatiable desire, some commentators argue that
the Republic presents a picture of philosophical injustice (whether for censure or admiration).
Some have argued explicitly that the Republic contains an unjust attempt to achieve justice and
further, that there may not be any way out of this contradiction. Philosophy, according to this
reading, is beautiful and best, but also naturally unjust. Since thinking seems to involve a natural
transgression of boundaries (of tradition, of received opinion, of categories, and so on) as well as
a claim to universal and final authority, as well as a certain discomfiting insatiability, philosophy
sometimes looks like nothing other than tyranny.95

94 As in the Charmides, where Socrates investigation of virtue begins with an investigation of a young

mans character, the soul of the interlocutor is as much on display as the most abstract topic of the dialogue. See
Pichanick, 2005.
Glaucons overabundance of energy is perhaps related to his only partial awareness of his mortality, as I
have mentioned earlier. See Lear (2001, 109): Life is lived under conditions of tension. For the mind to discharge
all its tension, to achieve a completely unpressured state, is precisely what it is for it to die.
95 See Strauss, Roochnik, and Bloom on the uncomfortable likeness between philosophers and tyrants. In

particular, see Rosen on the Socratic tyranny (2005, 81).

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The moments of pleonexia that were discussed immediately above have motivated some
of the richest digressions in the Platonic literature (Books V-VII in particular). Overreaching and
superfluity may be philosophys most appropriate modes. Nevertheless, for those who cannot
accept that this overreaching is finally just another kind of tyranny (albeit a noble kind), it is an
urgent matter either to distinguish between the pleonexia of thinking and sheer tyranny or to look
for some philosophical or practical curb of pleonexia in thinking.
Perhaps we should look for the fine line between superfluous (and therefore elegant,
dignified, opson-like) and undignified, or unhealthy arguments. It is good to want more and
better discussions, but how much is too much? Is it possible to be excessively given to dialogue?
It is probably not excessive for Socrates and company to talk about important things like love
and justice all through the night, but would it be excessive to stay up four times a week talking?
Two times a week? There does not seem to be a natural limit, except perhaps physical health.
But even this limit is moveable. Is it better to be like Aristotle, wakeful even to the point of
sleep-deprivation, or like Socrates, standing barefoot in the elements, or like any short-lived
novelist shackled to his desk, as health deteriorates and the chapters mount up in inverse
proportion, than to be healthy and ignorant? Some prizes are so much more worthwhile than
good health that even this reasonable limit gives way.96 Nor is there a clear standard by which
one might gauge a reasonable amount of discussionsurely justice cannot ever be exhausted
by any discussion?
And the problem is deeper still. I have discussed the problems that bedevil any honest
logos. What about the dishonest logos? By this I do not mean sophistry, but rather a sort of
philosophical escapism that thrusts away vague and warranted feelings of dissatisfaction by

96 Socrates tends to link the philosophical life with an unhealthy body: as the ships pilot in Book VI, who

is rather deaf and likewise somewhat short-sighted (488b), or Theages, whose ill health prevents him from taking
up any other career than philosophy (496c).

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launching the discussion into new, bigger, and better arguments that purport to answer the
questions more fully, but in fact neglect and dodge the problems of previous arguments. Of this
we have a confessed example at the close of Book I, where Socrates admits that he should have
inquired about the nature of justice, what it is, before attempting to argue about its worth and
benefits. Unfortunately, his self-proclaimed gluttonous appetite for logoi led him to abandon the
most needful and difficult logos for a taste of all the other diversionary logoi that landed in his
lap [354a-c]. The insatiable appetite for logoi can have a lazy, passive aspect: Those who pursue
logoi without pause, without retrospection (or introspection) are in fact unable to say no to any
topic whatever that occurs to them. In the meantime, the most needful and difficult arguments
are neglected. This is a kind of willed forgetfulness in argument, the pursuit of gold, as
Thrasymachus said, rather than the achievement of ones present rational duty, with all its
difficulty. It might be a way of avoiding the most troublesome questions that we fear may be
unsolvable even in their most basic forms.
Conversely, philosophical pleonexia may be symptomatic of a another all-too-human
disease, the fear of achieving the end of the pursuit. According to the common pun throughout
the Republic, to achieve the telos of the argument is to die (to reach the teleut of life).97 It may
be that Glaucon and company, young as they are, cannot be content to head home to bed or
happily to pass over the threshold like Cephalus without another word. Instead, they
procrastinate the telos (the Good or the grave, or whatever it might be) in a mistaken attempt to
live more freely. Although they clearly desire to know, some part of them fears that knowledge
might mean the end of thinking.98
97 As Bloom notes.
98 This speculation is not as outlandish as it may seem. Consider the bemused commentary on Hegels

Logic, for example, that wonders: Once God has thought through every stage of the Logic, then what? Does God
return to the beginning and think it all through again? Is such a thinker happy without new thoughts to think? A
similar objection meets Aristotles divine thinking which thinks of thinking. Or Socrates having the beautiful and

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The following chapter will attempt to show how the same answer might be arrived at
repeatedly in a way that preserves the freedom and activity that Glaucon and Socrates love
without capitulating to logos-killing despair or complacency. In short, I will attempt to indicate
Platos version of energeia in thinking, a way of moving and being still at the same time that
would not strike Glaucon as so very terrible if he could grasp it.

possessing it forever. Completion and finality, the ends of development and the admitted goals of desire are
nonetheless to be procrastinated in favor of apparent freedom and change, out of love of becoming, out of fear of
redundancy. In this way, perhaps the philosopher becomes precisely tyrannical: always wanting more while
preventing his own satisfaction.

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CHAPTER FIVE

PHILOSOPHICAL SOPHROSUNE AND THE ALTERNATIVES

The problem of gluttony speaks directly to a central question (if not the central question)
of the Republic: Does justice make us happy? Insofar as Socrates has redefined justice over the
course of the dialogue to mean being philosophical, and insofar as being philosophical
appears to be an unstable pursuit, troubled by its own peculiar pleonexia for all and best, final
and full satisfaction, and the absolute pleasures of logos, and insofar as being philosophical
can lead to its own peculiar version of blindness and passivity, it is clear that philosophical
sophrosuneshould such a virtue existwould be essential for happiness. If philosophers are
going to be happy (and they are the only people who can potentially be so), they must be able to
avoid or to recover from the excesses of the philosophical life and to reconcile themselves with
the necessary incompleteness of mortal philosophy. In other words, philosophers must learn how
to avoid or to recover from tyrannical appetites on all sides.
As I will argue in this final chapter, absent the safeguard of philosophical sophrosune, the
slope of human appetites falls steeply, quickly, and continually away from a state of peace and
stability into epithumiai of every kind. To put this point more provocatively, I think that Plato
does not believe that there is a stable middle ground between philosophical sophrosune and the
worst behaviors of human beings; human beings who want to be happy must always be at work
continuing to choose the best life possible from among many othersand that will require a

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certain distance and skepticism, even regarding the apparently best life of the philosopher. Any
life less philosophically moderate is not worth livingindeed such a life is to be feared.1
This final chapter completes the appetite analogy. Chapters Two and Three discussed
ordinary appetites and ordinary moderation and argued that these apparently humble topics in
fact lead swiftly to their philosophical counterparts, philosophical appetites and philosophical
moderation. The previous chapter discussed the former, and argued that the most splendid
evocations of these in the middle books of the Republic nevertheless raise questions about the
trustworthiness of such appetites and their satisfactions. This final chapter, then, treats the
unfinished portion of the analogy: the need for philosophical sophrosune. What is this
sophrosune, and why is it necessary for happiness?
This chapter, like the previous one, deals with human beings in extreme states. From the
striking and somber statues of the philosopher-kings in Books V-VII, we plunge, with Plato, into
1 How can this stark judgment be reconciled with Socrates statement in Book VI that it is impossible that

a multitude be philosophic (494a)? Only tragically. There is a small window for happiness in the cosmos of the
Republic; anyone who wants to be happy at all must feed his philosophical desiresbut not too much, or in a way
that leads to tyrannic melancholy, mania, and drunkenness, and by way of these, to the perpetual dissatisfactions of
misology and dissolution. On this point, contrast Reeve (1988), who permits a happiness belonging to each rank,
according to the best aims of money-makers and men of honor.
Kass argues similarly, on behalf of Aristotle: What about the natural virtue of people who are eventempered and decent from birth without intense and self-conscious habituation (without true virtue)? All are
agreed that the various moral qualities are in a sense bestowed by nature [phusei ps], says Aristotle. We are just,
and capable of temperance, and brave, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth (Nic. Ethics
VI, xiii [trans. Rackham, Loeb ed.]). In Socrates view (in this dialogue, at least), natural temperament and good
birth are worth almost nothing. We are each born to decline from our parents way of life (Rep. VIII-X), and unless
we actively labor to reverse that motion, and are pulled or pull ourselves up the steep upward way and down again
(Rep. VI-VII) through rigorous and self-conscious enculturation from youth onwards, we can count on becoming
more and more immoderate as we are determined by our company and circumstances. In the final myth, the
naturally decent fellow (by ethos, not by self-conscious choice) becomes the worst tyrant as soon as the opportunity
arises (619c-d; See 5.3, 5.5). Even Aristotle, who puts more stock in natural virtue than Plato appears to, notes that
natural endowments become dangerous without prudence: just as a man of powerful frame who has lost his sight
meets with heavy falls when he moves about, because he cannot see, so it also happens in the moral sphere.
My aim in this final chapter is to show that the good non-philosopher or the no-longer good
philosopher are as subject to swift and terrible decline as any other human beings. True moderation is
philosophical moderation, the only possible protection against the ever-present dangers of forgetfulness and
pleonexia that stalk the finite human being.
See also Roochniks extended argument that from the perspective of eternity, human beings ultimately
face one of only two kinds of lives: philosophy or tyranny (2003, 125).

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the increasing decline of human types and appetites in Books VIII-IX. The Republic reaches the
most grotesque expressions of pleonexia in the muthoi of Book X, where tyrants, drunks,
cannibals, shape-changers, animals, and gluttons, along with a few better types are paraded
before us, as before Er and Socrates interlocutors. This final chapter takes its form from Plato.
He chooses to end his work with a parade of characters, (and a specific charge to look for one
character in particular),2 not with arguments. So do I. The passing panoply of heroes and antiheroes, moderate or gluttonous, quiet or noisy, graceful or grotesque, hint at the elusive virtue of
philosophical sophrosune or our dire need for it.
Although the chapters thus far have treated the Republics discussions of appetite and
sophrosune roughly in order, this final chapter will attempt to draw together the beginning and
the end of the dialogue. Section 5.1 provides an introduction and treats the tyrant, as described in
Books VIII-X, as the perfect glutton. The following section (5.2) treats the intellectual gluttony
and incipient tyranny of Thrasymachus and Socrates in Book I. Section 5.3 compares Cephalus
in Book I and the unnamed glutton in Book Xs final myth. Section 5.4 contrasts the moderate
Odysseus in the final myth with these preceding characters. The final section (5.5) treats Er as an
observer and a poetic figure of moderate philosophical desire.
As we view all these characters, we ask the following questions: What choices should or
can we make, given the natural pleonexia of all desires? Are our appetites (for food, drink, sex,
money, honor, or wisdom) our doom? What do intellectual gluttony and moderation have to do
with the ordinary gluttony that plagues the extreme characters we meet in the final books? And
finally, if all appetites, including the highest appetites for the highest things are subject to
gluttony, why prefer one dangerous hankering to another?

2 618c.

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5.1 The perfect glutton

The tyrant is the perfect glutton: a drunkard, a cannibal, and a stay-at-home gourmand.

Drunkenness
We already have some sense of the philosophical import of drunkenness.3 The unsteady
drunk is a manifestly passive being. Always headed for a fall, he lacks the self-conscious
intelligence or will to prevent it.4 Filled with wine until he overflows, he keeps on pouring.
Deluded and full of mania, he imagines and expects and cheerfully hopes for the satisfaction of
his most hubristic and outrageous desires, but when he sees through the fog for a moment, his
perpetual disappointment and regret drive him into torpid melancholysuch is the state of his
confused and self-frustrating pleonexia.
In several extended passages that close the Republic, Socrates examines the genesis and
future of the tyrant, who shares the drunkards turn of mind.5 Above all, the tyrant is a passive
creature. The desires that come to define him are passed down from his father and cultivated and
nurtured by others; his clever friends (actually, subtle tyrant-makers), like careful farmers or
bee-keepers or bird-hatchers, produce those desires in him, contriving to implant [empoiesai]
some love in hima great winged droneto be the leader of the idle [argon] desires that insist
on all available resources being distributed to them (572e).6 The passivity of the lazy desires

3 See 3.2: Drunkards, gluttons, and sleepwalkers.

4 An object of curiosity or fun in the sight of shameless observers who watch him stumbling about or

stretched out on the ground, he is unable to see or judge himself.

5 Phronma at 573c1.
6 See 2.1, on the laziest (a-ergon) of the human functions. See also 2.4 on gain for the sake of gain.

The proto-tyrants grandfathers philokerdeia is not outwardly on show (since he indulges in no visible gluttony),
but his obsession with gain is, as I argued in Chapter Two, a perfect expression of pleonexia. The misers grandson
simply unleashes publicly and with panache the unnecessary appetites that ruled his grandfather and father. (Though
they claimed that their love of money was necessary, not unnecessary, the distinction between two is almost useless,

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is summed up in the figure of the big impotent drone, 7 whose wings suggest Eros high aims and
potency. In fact, however, the erotic tyrant is the last in the line of declining generations; it is the
tyrants fate not to be a father: to die at the hands of the mob or, according to Socrates image, to
destroy his fatherhood by eating up his own progeny.8
The lazy desires that swarm the impotent drone, like the tyrants own friends and his rich
neighbors, are already overflowing [gemousai] with incense, myrrh, crowns, wines and all the
pleasures with which such societies are rife. But surplus fullness in this case means direst
neediness: Growing great and fostering it [auxousai te kai trephousai], they plant the sting of
longing in it (573a); Dont many terrible and very needy desires sprout up beside it every day
and night? (573d).
The strange simultaneity of fullness and emptiness9 is mirrored in the financial facts of
the tyrannical life: Tyrants are infamous wastrels who use up their substance, lose their estates,
and plunge themselves into debtall the while carousing as if all the riches of the world were
rightfully theirs: Then when all this gives out, wont the crowd of intense desires hatched in the
nest necessarily cry out; and wont these men, driven as it were by the stings of the other desires
but especially by love itself, which guides all the others as though they were its armed guards,
rage and consider who has anything they can take away by deceit and force? (573e). The
tyrants fury, like his sense of security and fullness and power, is deceived. Like the increasingly

as I have argued in previous chapters, esp. 2.3.) The tyrants father hated oligarchic stinginess (pheidlias at 572c8)
and imagined that he would accomplish the opposite by his (moderately) wild expenditures, but in fact, by the
measure of pleonexia, he is his fathers son, and the tyrant is akin to him, too. Every generation is proto-tyrannical;
the full and public development of such a state is simply a matter of time and opportunity.
7 Kphna at 573a2)
8 See the following section and 5.3 and contrast super-generative activity of the Good and its tokos, the sun,

discussed in 4.5.
9 Which arose first in the dialogue under the terms surplus and necessity; see 1.1. See also Socrates

playful suggestion that failed philosopher is full of forgetfullness, discussed in 4.2.

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feverish city in Book II that looks to cut off a piece of the neighbors property out of
necessity, the tyrant is confused about what is necessary for his satisfaction.10 We observers of
his tragic career know that that little bit more will still not satisfy him, but the tyrant does not.
He misjudges his friends and neighbors satisfaction and fullness, too. His chosen
drinking companions are full (572c) of the desires they try to implant in the young tyrant.
Their evident vitality of soul does not derive from their substance, however, but from their
pointed longing for substance; they have big personalities like the tyrants and they are just as
needy. Perhaps the proto-tyrants father had a sense of this chink in their charisma; although he
plung[ed] himself into every insolence and assum[ed] the form of these men, (572c) he still
tried to keep his distance, maintaining the appearance of moderation: He becomes the perfect
mean between his austere family life and the debauchery of his friends, enjoying each in
measure, as he suppose[s] (572d). Clearly, like the self-declared mean, Cephalus, all these
proto-tyrannical types (or the ones that will not yet admit their tyranny openly) are deceiving
themselves. Their moderation is a velleity, not a fact; none are safe from stumbling further
down the line.11
The declining democratic man and his tyrannical son overestimate their own power, as
well. They think that they can control their circumstances, their neighbors, and their drinking
companions, but their suppositions are comically, maniacally outsized: the man who is mad and
deranged undertakes and expects to be able to rule not only over human beings but gods, too.
(573b-c) Like the drunks, gluttons, and sleepwalkers discussed in a previous chapter,12 the
declining tyrant hopes and attempts to do things that are not in his power to do, and his

10 See 1.2.
11 I will discuss the special role of hope [elpis] in the proto-tyrannical soul in 5.3.
12 See 3.2.

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intoxicated approximations or dream-inspired attempts at these hubristic goals will finally lead to
his shame and overthrow.
Socrates complaint about this drunken, melancholic, and erotic way of life is not borne
out of some unnatural despite of the human being.13 On the contrary, what distresses him most of
all isas alwaysthe blithe forfeiture of human nature that must occur in order to pursue
feasts, revels, parties, courtesans, and everything else of the sort that belongs to those in whom
the tyrant love dwells and pilots all the elements of the soul (573d). Ruled by the drone,
tyrannic eros, the tyrants will is erased, and his intellect is befuddled by false grand notions of
freedom from necessity.14

Cannibalism and Bloodthirstiness

The tyrant is the Republics foremost cannibal, too. What started as a taste of honey for
the democratic man15 becomes a taste for blood in the tyrant. The envious and pleonectic prototyrant16 begins by squeezing the rich (564e); when they run out of honey, he takes them to court
and squeezes out their lifeblood (565e). If we are what we eat, then the tyrant that devours his
own kind is the most perfect self-destroyer. All pleonectic desires confuse, frustrate, and destroy

13 As Nussbaum and others have claimed.

14 Necessarily, Plato has Adeimantus respond. Compare the state of the democratic city, which gets

more drunk than it should on the freedom it loves best of all (562d). I treat the the tyrants apparent freedom from
necessity below.
15 When a young man, reared as we were just saying without education and stingily, taste the drones

honey his internal regime is changing from an oligarchic to a democratic one (559d-e).
16 To avoid confusion: In this section, I refer to the both the democratic man and the developing tyrant as

proto-tyrants, since their pleonexia grows along a continuum.

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the person who serves them so slavishly, but the extreme gluttony of tyranny reaches a poetic
perfection in the anthropophagic tyrant.17
Why cannibalism? What does that grotesque extreme of gluttony show us about the
tyrant?18 Greek mythological interest in cannibalism traditionally centers on 1) the unwitting
eating of human flesh and 2) the kinship of the eater and eaten. In the stories of Tantalus and
Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes, and Lykaon (which tale Socrates adduces at 565d), fathers
knowingly serve or unknowingly feast upon their own progeny.19
The matter of kinship is key.20 The tyrant comes to be with a single act of cannibalism:
tasting a single morsel of human innards mixed up with those of other sacrificial victims
(565d). In most versions of the story to which Socrates alludes, Lykaon sacrifices his grandson
and serves him to the childs father, Zeus. For his dual act of impiety toward the human being
(his own kin) and toward the divine father whom he deceives, Lykaon becomes outwardly what
his name and action already suggesta wolf (lykos).21 Lykaon is punished for treating the

17 See Kass (1999), 97-98: Man is, by his inborn nature, der grosse Fresserthe great devourer and

gluttonwho stuffs his face and gorges his belly with the widest variety of fodder. Possessed of indeterminate and
potentially unlimited appetites, willing and able to appropriate and homogenize nearly anything in the formed world
for his own use and satisfaction, man stands in the world not only as its most appreciative beholder but also as its
potential tyrant. The tyrants cannibalism is the most extreme expression of this tendency of human nature.
18 One dislikes to treat such a grotesque matter airily, but the details must be discussed in order to see why

Socrates uses this example.

19 Cronos, on the other hand, knowingly devours his own kin. As I mentioned earlier, Socrates argues for

the censorship of this story (378a). Polyphemus also goes unmentioned in the Republic.
20 See Kass (1999, 101-114) on another important aspect of anthropophagythe inversion of hospitality.

Polyphemus cannibalism, for example, is an outrage against the laws of host and guest. Similarly, Atreus invites
Thyestes back from exile (for adultery with Atreus wife, another crime against hospitality), but the feast is a
grotesque punishment, not a true act of friendly reconciliation and hospitality. Socrates does not make much of this
particular aspect of cannibalism in the Republic (the relation between host and stranger). He is more interested, I
think, in the question of kinship and what it means to destroy ones own tokos, or offspring.
21 See Gantz (1996, 725-729). Cephalus exit to attend the sacrifices and his presence over the entire

dialogue as an absent pater (328b8) links him poetically with Lykaon. (On the importance of his paternity, see
Baracchi [2001] and Steinberger [1996], along with Bloom [1991].) See also Thrasymachus comparison of the

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human being as mere trophe; it is not clear whether or not he means to horrify Zeus with this
taboo meal.22 That he is able to disregard his own fatherly and protective role with regard to the
sacrificed child is inhumane enough to merit his punishment.
This unmeasured mixture recalls the dangerously unmixed draughts of wine that
intoxicate the freedom-loving democratic city (562d). Perhaps the forbidden food is mixed with
appropriate meats in order to deceive the eater; perhaps it is a sign of the dangerous confusion
that arises when pleasures and desires are not subjected to measure. In any case, Socrates claims
that a single taste of human entrails (splagchnou) is enough to bring about a necessary change
in the nature of the eater. The taster or the server of such a mixture cannot tell the difference
between the human and the animal (kin and not kin) on his plate and is punished accordingly.
Socrates inverts the tale of Lykaon slightly, to equate the wolf and the cannibal. Just as a
single taste of honey was enough to turn the oligarchic soul into a democratic one, so a single
taste of human flesh and blood turns the leader to a tyrant:
Isnt it the same for the leader of a people who, taking over a particularly obedient
mob, does not hold back from shedding the blood of his tribe but unjustly brings
charges against a manwhich is exactly what they usually doand, bringing him
before the court, murders him, and, doing away with a mans life, tastes of kindred
blood with unholy tongue and mouth [] isnt it also necessarily fated, I say, that
after this such a man either be slain by his enemies or be tyrant and turn from a
human being into a wolf? (565d-566a).
Lykaons metaphorphosis to a wolf is both an expression of his ruthless (i.e., careless)
violence and a sort of mitigation of the violation at the same time; it is natural for a wolf to treat

happy tyrant to the wolfish shepherd/head-sheep, who rears his flock in order to eat them later (343b) and his own
brutal anthropophagic attitude in argument (336b). See also 416a. (Just before the first passage [343b],
Thrasymachus ironically accuses Socrates of being unable to recognize the sheep and the shepherd; obviously, if
there is a difference, then the eating of one by the other is not cannibalism, but if the ruler looks after his own people
as his own kin, then his violence towards them would a kind of perversion.) See also the metaphorphoses of the
unjust into savage beasts in the final myth (620d).
22 Although he is perhaps punishing Zeus for seducing his daughter, Kallisto, according to some versions

of the tale.

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the human as mere trophe: animals have no taboos; everything that instinct and their digestive
tracts allow is equally acceptable. (Indeed, among certain animals, when instinct fails to restrain
eating, dominant males sometimes devour their own young.) But it is inconceivable and
grotesque that a human being should so think and act against his own form and kind.
Devouring ones kinones own offspringis the closest one can come to laying waste
to oneself. By this paradoxical act, the tyrannical glutton destroys his future in the attempt to
nourish and preserve his being (for a few more moments). It is utter irrationality; by few other
acts do human beings so fully forfeit their intelligence and agency. Lykaons metamorphosis
reveals the inner truth about the tyrant: Beneath his rich and showy exterior, he is as brutish and
irrational as a wolf. The human being and the human differences that mean so little to him finally
disappear in him.
One might read this outrageous act as the final culmination of the meat-eating
introduced into the first city.23 According to this line of interpretation, although the tyrants
bloodthirst is utilitarian at first (the necessary gain of his neighbors property by the quickest
and most efficient methods), the murder of his fellow citizens becomes pleasurable, too.
Although Socrates does not say so explicitly, one can imagine that the exercise of this apparently
absolute freedom might provide a perverse sense of satisfaction. Once the tyrant has his first
taste of blood (and has lived to tell the tale), perhaps his bloodthirst becomes more perverse as
the killing itself becomes a thing to be savored.
Yet the tyrants cannibalism is not quite a case of desire for opson gone wild. Even
though he began his journey to cannibalism with a taste of sweet honeyof opsonand pursued
finer and finer luxuries to the point of obsession, he ends as a voracious but undiscerning brute.

23 Treated in 1.2. He will stick at no terrible murder, or food, or deed. Rather, love lives like a tyrant

within him in all anarchy and lawlessness; and, being a monarch, will lead the man whom it controls, as though he
were a city, to every kind of daring that will produce wherewithal for it and noisy crowd around it (574e-574a).

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Wolves do not know opson and tables and couches and multiple courses and all the other things
that go with feasting. They simply eat. So does the tyrant. Even if he originally aimed to be a sort
of diabolical sophisticate who takes sublime pleasures in the rarest and most forbidden tastes (as
a character in Huysmans or Baudelaire, for example) he cannot remain such a subtle connoisseur.
As the tyrant indulges more and more in those extreme desires and the dizzying freedom from
law and form that they invite, he stumbles from a human being (who takes pleasure in and
appreciates distinctions, even perverse ones) into an animal. The intentional and constant
obliteration of distinctions, such that nothing remains beyond reach actually dulls the
experience of debauchery and hastens the end point of the rakes progress. When the tyrant
pursues all desires and satisfactions, shaking his head at all distinctions (561c), the excitement of
the taboo, the rare, and the distinctively best disappear forever. Where all food is the same and to
be eaten whenever, wherever, or in whatever manner the tyrant wants, the pleasures of feasting
are extinguishedhis furious epithumia becomes a blunt and unrefined appetite.
The tyrant is brought up short like the oblivious and doomed eaters of human flesh in the
Greek myths; the feasting by which he thought to satisfy and please himself actually destroys his
substance, his form, and his future. Yet those onlookers24 of tyrannical feasts who have not yet
achieved total tyranny themselves still cannot help thinking that its taboo and omnivorous
pursuits must be sublimely satisfying.

The stay-at-home gourmand

The human being unlucky enough to be provided with the opportunity to become a tyrant
glutton is the unhappiest man in an unhappy city. In a city of big appetites, his is the biggest and

24 Such as Glaucon, whose conflicted love of opson has given rise to the lengthy argument.

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the most extreme.25 But in fact, he is not free to pursue any of the things he wants. The tyrant
tries to do in daylight what others only dream about, but it is his ironic destiny to be housebound, dreaming of thingseven the ordinary daily actions of ordinary citizensthat he will
never be able to do: He, whose soul is so gourmand26 alone of the men in the city cant go
anywhere abroad or see all the things the other free men desire to see, but lives like a woman,
shut up in his house for the most part, envying any of the other citizens who travel abroad and
see anything good. (579b-c). The tyrant is imprisoned in his city and in his home, already
suffering punishment for his tyrannical suppression of his citizens even before he is officially
overthrown or put to death.
For all his grand postures, the tyrant is actually the opposite of a hero like Odysseus, who
travels everywhere and sees all sorts of good things (and bad things) and whose experiences will
guide his choices later in the journey. In this respect, the tyrant is unlike Socrates, too, who
travels back and forth from city to port to see whatever is new and good. The tyrant is like the
philosophers of the middle books in some respects, who are periodically being dragged up or
down, away from the Good they love, and back up to it again when they seem to have forgotten
their desire for it. Above all, the house-bound tyrant resembles Cephalus, who makes much of
the fact that he must wait for good things to come to him.27
In fact, the tyrant is secretly the opposite of his showy persona in many other ways as
well:

25 He has the biggest and most extreme tyrant within his own soul (575c).
26 Lichnos, as in Socrates confession of gluttony at end of Book I. For a full treatment of this moment, see

the next section, 5.2.

27 Cephalus says that he would like Socrates to come to the house more often, but he has no power to make

that so (328c-d). If Polemarchus had not happened to catch sight of him on the road, Socrates would not have come
at all.

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Therefore, the real tyrant is, even if he doesnt seem so to someone,28 in truth the
real slave to the greatest fawning and slavery, and a flatterer of the most worthless
men; and with his desires getting no kind of satisfaction [apopimplas], he shows that
he is most in need [pleistn endeestatos] of the most things and poor in truth, if one
knows how to look at a soul as a whole. Throughout his entire life his [he] is full
[gemn] of fear, overflowing [plrs] with convulsions and pains. []
[The longer he rules, the more he becomes] envious, faithless, unjust, friendless,
impious, and a host and nurse for all vice;29 and, thanks to all this, unlucky in the
extreme. (579d-e)
Once again, the tyrant lacks basic knowledge of his predicament. He takes himself to be
free, powerful, great, a Rabelesian eater, a Cassanova of mortal women and goddesses, and a
swashbuckling world-traveler like Odysseus, but from his passive development and trophe to his
present state of house-bound dependence and longing, to his inevitable downfall, he is the most
unfree human being one could imagine. His exaggerated sense of himself is punctured at times
by periods of regret, melancholy, and fear, but this wild alternation does not amount to stable or
accurate self-knowledge.
Just as the tyrant misjudges himself and his friends, so the public misjudges and admires
the tyrant, perhaps even more than they admired the democratic man before him (561e), because
along with freedom and colorfully eclectic appetites, the tyrant shows off his apparent power to
achieve all of these aims to the utmost. The tyrants display of extreme wealth, power, and his
vivid public lifestyle can look like the achievements of intelligence and virtue.
Indeed, Plato draws attention to a certain limited similarity between a tyranny and a
philosophical kingship with Socrates and Glaucons suggestive overstatements:
What is the relation between a city under a tyranny and the one under a kingship
[basileuomenn] such as we first described?

28 To Glaucon.
29 On the notion of a trophos pass kakias, see 4.3.

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Everything is the opposite [pan tounantion]. The one was the best, the other the
worst.
I wont ask you which you mean. Its plain [dlon]. (576d)
This puzzling interchange treats rather too lightly the very difficult matter that incited the
logos to this point; surely the difference between tyranny and kingship is not plain at all, surely
not everything is opposite between them, and it would be worthwhile to ask a few questions,
especially since the apparent happiness of the unjust tyrant is the very same problem that
Glaucon took up so eagerly in Book II (and the topic that gets him back into the conversation just
lines before at 576b).
In fact, Socrates goes on to say almost immediately that it is difficult to tell whether the
biggest man in town is the best or the worst. There is always a danger that one might be
overwhelmed by the sight of the exalted tyrant and his fine company and judge poorly.30 In
order to judge correctly about the true nature of his rule and the happiness or unhappiness that he
brings to the general populace, one must go in and view the city as a whole, and, creeping down
into every corner and looking, only then declare our opinion (576d-e).
Glaucon does not understand, however, and contradicts himself: 1) What you suggest is
right. (I.e., judgment about regimes can be tricky if one is overwhelmed and does not creep
down and look.) At the same time, 2) And its plain to everyone [dlon panti] that there is no
city more wretched than one under a tyranny and none happier [eudaimonestera] than one under
a kingship. Apparently, judgment is quick and easy. Glaucons satisfaction here is surprising,
perhaps, as is his eager statement of the converse (that the city under a kingship is the happiest in
the world).

30We faced just such a problem in 4.4, in the overwhelming presence of the exalted philosopher-kings.

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In fact, tyrants look happy and it is not at all plain to everyone that they are not; indeed
it was not plain to Glaucon at the start of the dialogue that tyranny was an unhappy state, no
matter how many arguments he had heard already in support of the happiness of the just life. In
order to judge the true happiness of the tyrant, we have to learn correct judgment: That man
should be deemed fit to judge them who is able with his thought to creep into a mans disposition
and see through ita man who is not like a child looking from outside and overwhelmed by the
tyrannic pomp set up as a faade for those outside, but who rather sees through it adequately
(577a). The child at the parade watches the great men march by but he does not know yet how to
get inside their souls and see the dissatisfactions and irrationalityeven the maniathat they
and their handlers keep well hidden beneath the tragic gear. The young and the small, who see
these great characters only in passing and never from the inside out, mistake greatness
(largeness) as an appropriate measure of happiness.31
In truth, however, the greatest tyrant does least what he wants to do and lives as a slave:
the soul that is under a tyranny will least do what it wantsspeaking of the soul as a whole.
Always forcibly drawn by a gadfly, it will be full of confusion and regret (577e).32 And the
tyrannic soul is necessarily always poverty-ridden and insatiable (578a). The tyrannic soul is
more full of fear, complaining, sighing, lamenting, suffering than any other soul. His fullness
is a kind of endless emptiness. Yet how could we see this inner truth, except by walking in his
shoes, hearing of his grotesque struggles, and even looking at the world through the tyrants
eyes?
If we take our time and look carefully, we will see that the tyrant gets the worst
penalty, even before he dies. Those who will not rule (their passions) pay the price of being
31 See 4.3 on the philosophers as trephomenoi, children still in the care of nurses because they cannot yet

feed or make decisions for themselves.

32 See 5.3.

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ruled by others who are worse: The tyrant is ruled by Chance, which puts the things the tyrant
loves within reach. Chance is a worse tyrant even than Eros, since it is by definition a principle
of irrationality, or meaninglessness. The tyrants bondage to Chance is an especially bitter
slavery; most wretched of all human beings is the man who is tyrannic and doesnt live out a
private life [iditn bion] but has bad luck and by some misfortune is given the occasion
[ekporisth] to become a tyrant (578c).33
Again, Glaucon is too quick to agree: I conjecture on the basis of what was said before,
that what you say is true. Socrates responds that it is not enough simply to have a correct
judgment. One must, further, consider it thoroughly and be able to make the same good judgment
again later: in an argument such as this, one must not just suppose [oiesthai] such things but
must consider them quite well [skopein]. For, you know, the consideration [skepsis] is about the
greatest thing, a good life and a bad one (578c). Glaucon made an eloquent puppet argument in
the beginning of the dialogue for the happiness of the tyrant, but his underlying agreement with
Socrates continues to be problematic. Socrates wants him to consider the difference a bit more
carefully and not to exaggerate the manifest truth of the conclusion (that the tyrant, unlike the
good leader, is an unhappy man). Socrates wants to make sure that Glaucon considers the
question seriously (again, from the beginning), not as a rhetorical34 matter but as a matter of lifeand-death.35
What does any of this have to do with philosophical moderation? Philosophers can look
like tyrants. They chance on certain topics of discussion with certain people they chance to meet.

33 Odysseus choice of the life of a private man [iditou at 620c] in the myth of Er is a choice against

tyranny, I argue below (5.3).

34 Despite the Socrates playful metaphor of the three throws (583b).
35 With repercussions after death as well; careful skepsis now will serve as preparation for that other life

when, born again, they meet with such arguments about the happiness or unhappiness of the unjust man (498c).

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They are susceptible to hubristic, grand notions and melancholic disappointments. Even in their
attempts to distinguish themselves from tyrants and gluttons, they go to contradictory
extremes.36 But perhaps the true philosopher is freer than the tyrant as Socrates describes him in
Books VIII-IX. The worst tyrants appear to have reached the incurable stage, but the philosopher
may be free enough and self-conscious enough to avoid perpetual tyranny. If there is any way of
preserving the philosopher from that fate, we would do well to seek it out.

5.2 Socrates and Thrasymachus

When Plato pairs Socrates and Thrasymachus in Book I as guest and host at a banquet of
logoi, he allows a certain dismaying likeness between gluttons, tyrants, and philosophers (whose
lives and aims, we hope, are finally distinct).37
Both are capable of approaching the logos as voracious beasts. Socrates describes
Thrasymachus aggressive brutishness as he hunches over, nearly growling at the company, like
a wolf ready to pounce on the juicy argument: He is a wild beast (thrion at 336b), a terrifying
spectacle of violent pleonexia. Unable to restrain himself, he must be restrained by whoever is
sitting beside him. He desires to seize upon the logos (antilambanesthai) and to tear his listeners
or their speeches to pieces (diarpasmenos).38 And note his brutish violence, as well, when his
36 Youve poured forth a prodigious [amchanon; immense, extraordinary, irresistible, and also

without resource, or at a loss, immeasurable, or inconceivable.] calculation of the difference between the
two menthe just and the unjustin pleasure and pain, Glaucon tells Socrates when he has finally proven that the
philosopher king is 729 times happier than the tyrant. [And] wont his victory in grace, beauty, and virtue of life be
greater to a prodigious degree? Socrates asks. To a prodigious degree, indeed, by Zeus, Glaucon concludes.
(587e-588a).
37 See 2.5 for a discussion of their difference of opinion on the topic of pleonexia.
38 Compare 539b, where Socrates warns against becoming a beast in argument by indulging in it too much

too early in life: I suppose you arent aware that when lads get their first taste (guesthai) of [arguments], they
misuse them, as though it were play, always using them to contradict; and imitating those men by whom they are
refuted, they themselves refute others, like puppies enjoying pulling and tearing with argument at those who happen
to be near (539c-d)

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time finally comes for serving up the feast: Shall I give your soul a forced feeding? he asks
Socrates at 345b.39 This line is probably a reference to Aristophanes Knights (716), where the
context is the bad trophe of a bad nursemaid, who stuffs the child against his will.40 According to
the extended and grotesque analogy in that play, to argue is to chop up, cook, and devour your
interlocutor in a hundred bloody fashions.41
Socrates does not come off much better in his interchange with Thrasymachus; indeed, he
describes himself as Thrasymachus indistinguishable double in Book I. Socrates admits that he,
too, is a glutton (lichnoi at 354b) who grabs at whatever logos happens to be in front of him and
tears it to pieces (harpazontes, in the same line, the same word used to describe Thrasymachus).
Socrates evident pleonexia here at the start of the dialogue is proof of his later statement that
surely some terrible, savage, and lawless form of desires is in every man, even in some of us
who seem to be ever so measured (572b). Socrates initially wanted to see the argument laid out
in an orderly and measured fashion. But his gluttonous desire for too much too quickly trips him
up and robs him of his prize. By the end of Book I, he admits that he is neither wiser nor better
satisfied than when they first began. His eagerness for the whole truth about justice prevented his
coming to understand the most important thing about itwhat it is in itself. And insofar as he
resembles the pleonectic Thrasymachus, Socrates (and/or Plato) suggests an unsettling likeness
between philosophers and tyrants.42

39 eis tn psuchn phern enth ton logon

40 I treat this aspect of the line in 4.3, along with Thrasymachus wetnurse insult.
41 Thrasymachus resembles the worst practitioners of philosophy, too, who burst in like drunken revelers,

abusing one another and indulging a taste for quarrelling, and who always make their arguments about persons,
doing what is least seemly in philosophy. Like Alcibiades in the Symposium, such men bring disrepute on true
philosophers, whom they resemble and with whom they are always sparring.
42 This is similar to Socrates problem in the Protagoras, when he is mistaken for a sophist by the

doorman. See also Rosen (2005, 57), who considers Socrates as a pleonekts (when he disallows Thrasymachus
attempt at a long speech). The relation between philosophy and tyranny is thoroughly discussed in the literature; I do

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Obviously, we want to be able to say that Thrasymachus fury is essentially different than
Socrates eagerness; the former hungers for the satisfaction of thumos, perhaps, the latter for the
satisfaction of some higher-level epithumia. For Thrasymachus, thumos is thumos; a dialogue is
as good as a wrestling match for his purposes. Thrasymachus can hate logos and still love
dialogue simply because it offers an occasion for competition with others. Socrates epithumia,
however, is not indifferent to logos; his eagerness (we hope) is not for victory but for the
satisfaction of intellectual appetite.
But they look the same from the outside. We cannot tell from his outward appearance
whether or not Socrates pursues dialogue for the sake of boosting his thumos, just as
Thrasymachus (who himself wants to win a good reputation) accuses (336c; 337a-338b).
Perhaps Socrates offers no positive statements of his own (which could be refuted) and tears to
pieces the positive statements he has so cleverly elicited from his interlocutors because he loves
to win. How can we know for certain what proportion of Socrates gluttony is thumotic and what
part is epithumetic?
Perhaps there is a hint of an answer in his moment of confession at the conclusion of
feast in Book I. Although Socrates has officially won the argument, he confesses:
I have not had a fine banquet. I am just like the gluttons [lichnoi] who grab at
whatever is set before them to get a taste of it, before they have in proper measure
enjoyed what went before. Before finding out what we were considering at first
what the just isI let go of that and pursued the consideration of whether it is vice
and lack of learning, or wisdom and virtue. And later, when in its turn an argument
that injustice is more profitable than justice fell in my way, I could not restrain
myself from leaving the other one and going after this one, so that now as a result of
the discussion I know nothing. So long as I do not know what the just is, I shall
hardly know whether it is a virtue or not and whether the one who has it is unhappy
or happy.

not intend to take up this topic as a whole and from the start. Rather, I am interested in one specific trait that the
tyrant and philosopher share: a tendency to gluttony.

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Socrates admits his striking likeness to Thrasymachus: He too could not restrain himself in the
argument, he too grabbed whatever he could, he too is an intellectual glutton. But the likeness
ends there. Thrasymachus and Socrates behave similarly in the heat of debate, but it is what
happens next that makes all the difference. Socrates admits his act of gluttony (in a confession
Thrasymachus would never stoop to make). He admits that the logos has come to nothing, and
that he has lost a chance at a fine or beautiful feast, and that it is his own fault.43 As Odysseus
in the final myth,44 Socrates somehow recovers from his previous missteps, recollects himself,
and thereby distinguishes himself from the tyrannical Thrasymachus, until his next moment of
rational temptation, perhaps.

5.3 Cephalus and the unnamed glutton

As I suggested in an earlier chapter, Cephalus is a pseudo-sophron:45 apparently quiet
and peaceful but headed for pain and frustration; moderate by passive katharsis, not laborious
synopsis and judgment; an escapee from lower appetites, not their master; deceived about his
present state and unable to explain why it is better than the life he used to live; lacking a
thoughtful sense of the future; unaware that he has not in fact reached the highest and best state
possible for a human being and might still be changing, even in old age, or headed for an
unforeseen metamorphosis before the end.46
43 Unlike the newly-made tyrant glutton of the final myth, who beats his breast and blames chance,

demons, and anything rather than himself for his ruinous choice (619c). Thrasymachus, too, blames Socrates and
the logos, not himself, for his failure to succeed in the argument.
44 620c; see 5.4.
45 See 3.4.
46 I find that where Cephalus speech is not dismissed as the voice of ancestral piety that must be

superceded by philosophical debate (as Bloom, especially) it is routinely overestimated in the scholarly literature as
the voice of true moderation. Consider Reeve, especially: Cephalus is an attractive character, portrayed with
delicacy and respect. He may not know what justice is, but his experience of life has given him a kind of wisdom

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To this complexly happy and unhappy man, Socrates addresses the first question of the
dialogue: What is it like to stand at the threshold of old age? (epi graos oud 328e, my
paraphrase). Like the wealthy but soon to be ruined Priam, said to be rather more bluntly at the
threshold of Hades at several points in the Iliad,47 Cephalus stands before the reader as a special
figure of uncertain happiness. Even at this late date in life, one should not count him as securely
happy, whatever he claims.48
In one of the few moments in the dialogue in which we are granted access to Socrates
inner thoughts, we learn that Cephalus extreme old age surprises Socrates, who has not seen him
for a long time: He seemed very old to me, says Socrates to the unknown listener to his
account of the previous night (328b-c).49 Socrates sympathy for the aged and somehow doomed
Cephalus is discernable even while he mockingly interrogates him. The old mans very fallibility
and weakness and his unsought role as an archetype of human limitation (like Lear or Oedipus,

that Plato by no means despises (1988, 6). And [Cephalus] is already of good character and disposed to virtue.
That is why Plato has him depart before he can be examined. . He continues with a qualification: Even for Plato,
however, Cephalus will not count as completely virtuous: for complete virtue philosophical knowledge is required
(1988, 7).
Reeve has his finger on the point when he says that Plato presents Cephalus as a sort of living
counterexample to Socrates claim that virtue must include knowledge, but neither Plato nor Socrates think that
Cephalus is virtuous or moderate. To be sure, Cephalus praise of quiet peace and moderation introduces Socrates
theme and is more sympathetic than Thrasymachus insincere and violent praise of injustice (Cephalus is not an utter
prater). But he is deeply self-deceived, and the inadequacy of his version of virtue is thematic even to the end of the
dialogue, as I argue. Steinberger (1996) is one of the few to get Cephalus right, I think.
47 See Il. 22.60; 24.486. Homer applies this description as well to the conversely unhappy/happy

Amphiaraus, (Od. 15.246), husband of the deceitful Eriphyle, who stands at the threshold and expects doom, but is
spared by the gods from suffering both old age or (according to some non-Homeric sources) any death at all in the
assault on Thebes.
48 We know, in fact, that he will lose his children to the political violence that is about to sweep through

Athens, and I will argue here that his destiny is philosophically bleak as well.
49 Socrates surprise at Thrasymachus blush (350d) is another such moment that draws us out to wonder

about the frame of the entire dialogue and whether Socrates private thoughts differ from his public arguments that
he recounts. In the moment with Cephalus, at least, he says that he spoke just what was on his mind.

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for example) and whose road is the road nearly every human being must travel,50 deserves a kind
of respect that transcends judgment of behavior.51 But judge him we must, if we want to
understand the Republic, since, as I will argue here, the dialogue begins and ends with his
counterexample.
Cephalus, like the tyrant, is housebound. He cannot easily make his way up to Athens
(rhadis poreuesthai at 328c8), he tells Socrates, but must wait at home for others to come to
him. Yet he is on a journey all the same, according to Socrates, along the road that runs from
birth to old age and on to Hades. Thus, the dialogue that considers all the many possible roads
that the human being can travel, begins with a discussion of the one road (through old age) that
most of us must travel (poreuesthai at 328e2). Socrates wonders if this path is rough and hard
(like the ascent of the student from out of the depths of the cave, or of the unjust under the earth
[515e; 619e] ) or easy and smooth (like the path of the happy pilgrims who sojourn though the
heavens in the final myth [619e]).
Cephalus answer to this question is complex. Although he appears to share the nightterrors of most other men, who worry about the price they will have to pay for the excesses of
youth, he is mostly full of hope about his future. If Cephalus has a guiding spirit on his road, it
is sweet, good Elpis, whom Pindar so charmingly calls the nurse of old age (331a). The
just and holy man
Sweet hope accompanies
Fostering [atalloisa] his heart, a nurse of his old age [grotrophos]

50 Except Menelaus, for example, or perhaps Amphiaraus, or Achilles, or those who come to untimely

death in childhood (615c).

51 Compare Nussbaum in this context: the peculiar beauty of human excellence just is its vulnerability

(1986, 2).

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Hope [elpis] which most of all pilots

The ever-turning [polustrophon] opinion of mortals [thntn].52
In his over-fondness for Pindars sweet nurse, Cephalus seems to want to return to his
babyhood. If only he could achieve an adequate katharsis of his past (by means of repeated
sacrifices), he thinks, then Elpis will be his trophos forevermore, always at his side, feeding and
rearing him up like a little child [atalloisa], always curbing and guiding his otherwise wideranging [polustrophon] opinions. How very wonderfully well he says that! Cephalus exclaims.
He cannot believe how perfectly Pindar has anticipated his own deepest desire.
But the hope Pindar praises in this wonderful fragment is the most insubstantial and
misguided of human emotions.53 Cephalus hope for the struggle to be over, to be purified
forever, such that he can cease to act and think for himself, is terribly dangerous. What if
Cephalus has not actually arrived at the true up (584d) when he hands the reins of his life?54
What if katharsis is insufficient for true moderation? What if virtue is more than being cut off
from ones past? Cephalus prides himself on achieving a better notion of justice and moderation
than his sorry peers,55 but what if there is a still better opinion about justice or how to live than
the one he presently holds? What if he falls as far short of the truth as his friends fall short of his
relative sophrosune? What if he is not really moderate or just?
Cephalus is not willing to stay and think carefully about any of these questions; instead,
he bets his future on the advantages of money, by which he purchases the items he offers to the

52 331a5-9. Unfortunately, the text from which Cephalus takes this quote is unknown. For more on trophe,

see 3.3 and 4.3-4.4.

53 According to Hesiod. See Pandora. See also Hesiods warning about the dangerous spirit of idle

expectation, by which the man whose riches are all in his head builds and enjoys an imaginary wagon without
actually measuring or procuring the hundreds of beams that will be required for the work (WD, 455).
54 See 3.5.
55 Who complain that they are now not even alive (329a). Cephalus liminal position between life and

death is ironic in the context of his criticisms.

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gods in repayment of his debts (331b).56 Cephalus is so taken with the idea of achieving peace of
mind that he forgets the necessity of continuing contemplative labor. As I argued in the previous
chapter, education ought to grow the child up from a passive trephomenos into an active,
contemplative adult. One ought not to hope about ones future happiness, as if it were entirely in
the hands of the gods,57 but to make decisions and plan and scheme within the limits given by
the divine, which has hidden our livelihood (in the words of Hesiod) for our own good.58
If Elpis is Cephalus long-sought nurse, then Sophocles is his mentor and hero, a eukolos
after his own heart. Cephalus uses the same word to describe himself that Aristophanes applies to
Sophocles in the Frogs (line 82): ho d' eukolos men enthad' eukolos d' ekei. while [Sophocles], /
Gentleman always, is a gentleman still.59 Once a well-contented well-mannered fellow, always

56 The parallels between this passage and Socrates discussion of the Good and its tokos, the Sun in Book

VI are striking, and deserve more attention than I can spend here. See 330c, for example, on the love of the moneymakers for their children. Socrates failure pay his debtors with a logos of the Good is also relevant here.
57 Blooms remark that Cephalus remembers the divine while the rest of the interlocutors seem to forget it

argues against the utter carelessness I attribute to him (Int. Essay, 314). One might supplement this train of thought
with a discussion of Cephalus apparent awareness of time, as well (331d). (Knowing that it is already time for the
sacrifices, he cannot join in with Socrates forgetful interlocutors in a dialogue that will last all night.) This
awareness of the divine and the shortness of life, however, do not produce wisdom in Cephalus, or a even a desire to
dedicate himself all the more to understanding what the gods require.
58 Socrates focuses on labor, specifically, in his interrogation of Cephalus when he asks whether Cephalus

worked for his wealth or just inherited it (330a).

The question of inheritance is thematic, as well. We may sense already at the start of the dialogue that
something has gone wrong in the relationship between Cephalus and his sons; he hopes to leave not less but a little
more than he himself inherited (330b) to his sons, an apparently moderate attitude that one might expect to hear
from a man who calls himself a sort of mean between his father and this grandfather. Socrates agrees that
Cephalus does not appear to be overly fond of money, but implies that insofar as Cephalus has had to work at
making money (to make up for his fathers wastrel ways; we know that he runs a shield-factory, in fact), his real
offspring is the money he made, not the children to whom he will hand over that money when he dies. Socrates
seems to be baiting Cephalus to praise Plouton above all. (Socrates is punning, perhaps, on the common notion that
Pluto, the ruler of Hades, is the richest man. Another bit of wordplay (discussed in 4.4) makes him a blind ruler
(amblutos).
59 Frogs, 371, (tr. Webb). The main event of Aristophanes play (the judgment after death of certain great

and famous menEuripides and Sophoclesin Hades) provides a poetic background for the Republics final
judgment, too. Insofar as Cephalus takes himself to be another Sophocles, he puts himself on stage to be judged as
well. (I argue that this judgment takes place, poetically, in the Republics final scenes.)

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such, hopes Cephalus.60 If he can just achieve a certain level of decency, he will always remain
decent. But the Myth of Er disproves that false sense of security. Cephalus and Socrates both
appear to face death with good hope.61 But the moderation that Socrates desires is the opposite
of Cephalus pseudo-moderation. The latters hope for a happy future is unfounded, I will argue,
since his apparent virtue will crumble into pleonexia as soon as his circumstances change and the
possibility of vice arise again.
Everything Cephalus enjoys now seems to have come rather naturally, not by great study
or labor. Cephalus improved slightly on the inheritance he received from his father and fell
somewhat short of his grandfathers original endowment, but this slight decline over the
generations does not seem to bother him especially. And his intellectual development seems to
have been as natural and smooth as his financial development. As he grew older, he says to the
sympathetic Socrates, the tastes and pleasures of logos naturally grew to fill the place of bodily
hungers.62 Time itself has apparently transformed him from a libertine to a philosopher. Bloom
argues that Glaucon ought to become philosophical in a similar way: His desires for food, drink,
and sex should be turned to logos and sophia and their better satisfactions. But Cephalus final
failure to switch higher satisfactions for lower ones, as if appetite could easily be filled by either
feasting or thinking, depending upon the circumstances of life, should warn Glaucon, his tutors,

60 See Annas (1981, 18). I disagree about Platos apparently malicious touches (1981, 19), but I do agree

that we are being presented with a limited and complacent man. Nevertheless, it is possible to pity him. And
Annas puts her finger on the problem with her comment (1981, 21): justice is not perceived as something difficult,
which might involve effort, and which you might not be sure you had achieved. [] Once complacency [such as
Cephalus] is shaken, it leaves a void to be filled by scepticism.
61 Reeve (1988, 6), commenting on the likeness between Socrates (Apology 41c) and Cephalus in Book I.

Cephalus true feelings about death are a contentious point in the literature, however. For someone so full of
contentment and good hope, considering all the proper sacrifices he has made and the peaceful character he claims
to have, he is still troubled by dreams. (On this point, see Bloom: For a man like Cephalus, life is always split
between sinning and repenting (Int. Essay, 313). See also Roochnik, Dorter, and Rosen.
62 As the pleasures of the body fade with age, tosouton auxontai hai peri tous logous epithumiai te kai

hdonai (328d).

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and every reader of the Republic that philosophers are not made by a process of (perhaps
unwilling) katharsis of all desires but one. True philosophy is not what is left over when all the
other more vivid appetites of soul are swept away; it is not the consolation prize of old age.
Cephalus talks like a philosopher about his rather easily achieved love of logos, but his
actions disprove his words. He does not actually stay for the discussion, nor does he return for
more logos once his sacrifice is over. He may think that he has successfully graduated from the
pleasures of youth to the pleasures of wise old age, but in fact, he is self-deceived. His character
is not moderate enoughnot stable, integrated, harmonious, steady, or indeed philosophical
enoughto withstand a change of fortune.63 Socrates uses a moment in the myth of Er to prove
just that.
At 331d, Cephalus comes to the end of journey with Socrates and company. He hands
down the logos. He turns to his divine duties (its already time for me to look after the
sacrifices). And he steps over the threshold. In other words, Plato has the aged Cephalus die on
stage.64 Like Priam, or Amphiarus, who also stand at the threshold, both delivered from the pains
of old age to enjoy their immediate dispatch, Cephalus too will meet his doom.
Where does Cephalus go when he steps over the threshold of Hades? On my speculative
reading, he goes to Hades. His thousand year journey between death and the choice of life is

63 Cephalus is wreathed as a victor, but his race is not yet over; like the clever unjust men who run well

from the lower end of the course but not from the upper, thinking that they are done before they are really done,
and underestimating the energy and intelligence they will need to turn the corner finish the race, he may end up
ridiculous and uncrowned (613b-c). See also the discussion in 5.4 of the philosophers who start out so well in
the myth of Er, taking the smooth upper way through the heavens that will lead them finally to stumble and fail at
the end of their 1,000 race.
64 Although Brann (2004) mentions Cephalus eerie ghostliness in his Hades-like home (as she mentions,

there is extra-dialogical evidence that he has died many years before the probable dramatic date of the Republic; see
also Nails 2004), she does not comment on the symbolism of Cephalus final exit.
Other commentators have offered plausible but not persuasive explanations of Cephalus exit. Perhaps he
means: Im hungry. Its time for dinner. After all, sacrifice means supper soon after; but if that is so, why does he
not offer dinner to his guests as well, who spend the entire night in his home? Where is Cephalus throughout the
dialogue? What is he doing that prevents him from providing dinner to his guests?

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concurrent with the lengthy Republic, and Socrates has him return (poetically) as the prototyrannical glutton in the final myth of Book X (619b).
By means of this poetic return,65 Socrates encourages us to think about what might
become of the very elderly Cephalus (or any other decent but unthinking person) if he were to be
granted another chance to do whatever he truly desires. Although Cephalus purports to be
disgusted by the impotent pleonexia of his friends, who miss their youthful pursuits of wine,
women, and feasting, Cephalus turns out to be uncannily like the unnamed tyrant glutton of the
myth of Er, who was rather a decent old man until the worst chance that can befall a man
occurred to him, and he was suddenly presented with a new opportunity for tyranny and all his
old desires.
It is the unhappy fate of the decent soul in Ers story to seize the first life he happens
upon without hesitation. It escapes his notice until it is too late that this life includes cannibalism,
indeed, the eating of his own childrenthe worst expression of gluttony, and the farthest one can
fall from the dignity and decency of the moderate human being:66
The man who had drawn the first lot came forward and immediately [euthus] chose
[helesthai] the greatest tyranny, and due to folly [aphrosuns] and gluttony
[laimargias],67 chose [helesthai; Socrates repeats the verb] without having
considered everything adequately [ou panta hikans anaskepamenon] and it escaped
his notice [lathein enousan; it slipped his mind, as if he had forgotten it (lanthan)]
that eating his own children and other evils were fated to be part of that life.

65 For another poetic return, see 615a6, where Socrates tells Glaucon that to go through the many things

would take a long time [polou chronou], Glaucon. But the sum [kephalaion] was this.
66 To preview the argument to come: consider the difference between Odysseus and the tyrant in this

respect, as well. The former risks his own life for the preservation of his son, Telemachus before the plow (Od.
XXIV) while the latter seeks to preserve himself through the destruction of his progenywhether knowingly or
unknowingly.
67 Margos suggests gluttonous madness and lai is an intensive prefix, but there may be a pun in Socrates

term, as well, that would suggest idleness of the gullet (a-ergia of the laimos).

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When he considered it at his leisure, he beat his breast and lamented [oduresthai] the
choice, not abiding by the spokesmans forewarning [The blame belongs to him
who chooses; god is blameless].
For he didnt blame himself for the evils, but chance, demons, and anything rather
than himself. He was one of those who had come from heaven, having lived in an
orderly regime in his former life, participating in virtue by habit, without philosophy.
(619b-d)
The decent man, accustomed (and confined) to decent behavior is as susceptible to pleonexia as
any other human being. Trusting, like Cephalus, in his solid character,68 he skips ahead and falls
hard, plunging into the very worst deeds of gluttony through the gluttonous desires that suddenly
rise in him from their former dormancy. Cephalus seems to be a slow and steady soul, and his
superficial conclusion that desire is a mad master, is at least true, but underneath it all, as
Socrates reveals in the final myth, Cephalus remains an unacknowledged glutton. Without the
slow labor and discipline of philosophy, his hearts most secret and repressed desires, the ones he
cannot stop talking about, although he has supposedly outgrown them, go unconsidered as
potential dangers and grow great by being ignored.
The final argument against Cephalus is that a passively attained lack of desire means
tyranny in the blink of an eye, if desire should return (by chance, as it often does) or if a certain
irresistible object should roll by. Self-satisfaction, avoidance of contradiction, and hope rather
than rational effort all mean susceptibility to tyrannical gluttony in our choice of life. And that
danger is as likely for the intellectual as for the ordinary glutton, as I will argue in the next
section.
Cephalus takes his leave of life as the tyrant chooses his: without considering everything
adequately [hikans]. As I have noted before, hikans is a slippery word in itself and

68 Tropos at 329d; ethos at 619d.

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considering everything adequately is impossible for the mortal being.69 Our time is limited;
perhaps Cephalus divined the truth when he sensed that was already time to go away. But even
so, our pity for Cephalus and for every human being that must travel the same path should be
mixed with a sense of urgency; we and Cephalus ought to use the limited time we have to
develop true sophrosunethe ability to remain ourselves, no matter what temptations arise, such
that we can call ourselves happy when we die and afterwards.70
The newly-made tyrant in the myth of Er stands out among so many proper names (Er,
Ardiaeus, Orpheus, Thamyras, Ajax, Agamemnon, Atalanta, Epeius, Thersites, and Odysseus)
for his very anonymity. Like the unnamed shepherd ancestor of Gyges71 and the unnamed giant
he finds buried underground (359c-360b), the unnamed tyrant (the reborn Cephalus, perhaps)
finds that unrestrained appetite dilutes identity and deforms the person, such that he is hardly
recognizable.
Cephalus crosses the threshold with little more than a head and a name; he certainly is not
experienced in the labors of philosophy or any practice of self-critique. (He is pleased to find that
old age is moderately epiponon [329d].)72 He comes to the decision about how to live with

69 Roochnik (2003) notes this impossibility in the final myth: The fact that the number of possible human

lives far exceeds the number of souls who can choose them suggests that the true extent of human possibility cannot
be known by human beings.
70 Halliwell comments: We have already seen at 619b-c how, in fact, terrible ethical retrogression is

possible for souls; and if, as is said there, just as many souls recently rewarded for their previous existence fell
nonetheless into fatal choices of their next life, then grave doubt is cast over the efficacy for any particular souls of
the whole cycle of reincarnations. Even the philosophical soul will have in each incarnation to start afresh the
process of recollection and learning, and so, it seems, will be unable to carry over knowledge and goodness
previously attained.
If we take all the details of the myth seriously, we may infer that for many souls, perhaps the majority, the
cycle of reincarnation will be long and far from evenly progressive in some cases, even, unending (1988, 22).
71 Socrates, like many commentators, forgets sometimes that the finder of the ring is not Gyges himself but

some other unnamed, as it were, invisible forebear of Gyges.

72The LSJ lists ominous as another meaning of the term.

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nothing but an unthinking habit of decent behavior, a sort of homogenous safe opinion about
what he ought to love and enjoy. The truly moderate desire he lacks would be quite otherwise, as
I will argue in the next section: a polutropos inclination to several different ends and a perpetual
turning towards the better among these. Through such a practice of polutropos steadiness, a
person might preserve his identity and name as he self-consciously and intentionally chooses the
life he wants from among many others that he has considered.
There is one final stylistic detail worth mentioning that demonstrates, I think, Platos
particular sympathy and pity for Cephalus in his tragic aphrosun, and Cephalus central role in
the dialogue: Socrates ambiguous hello [chair at 328d] (which the word order would suggest
is directed to Cephalus, who has just warmly greeted73 Socrates as he walks into the house, but
whose object, it is revealed shortly is actually the logos [dialegomenos]) is echoed by Socrates
similarly ambiguous farewell in the last line of the dialogue (eu prattmen 621d). Between the
hello and farewell of human life, there are only so many days for the pursuit of only so many
necessarily imperfect while redundant logoi and there are only so many moments within that
span for periagog, should we discover that we have begun to decline. This hello and farewell to
the mortal human being and his mortal logos sums up the whole human story and presents most
vividly the boundaries that matter most in the discussion of rational pleonexia. Which logoi will
we pursue in that short time? Lacking absolute knowledge, how will we measure out the logoi
we decide to pursue? What is philosophical sophrosune for souls that live a day (psuchai
ephmeroi [617d])? Perhaps Cephalus story provides the proper context for Glaucons remark
that for intelligent men, the proper measure of philosophy is a lifetime.74

73 The word is spazeto at 328c5. Contrast Odysseus delight at finding his life of choice (hasmenn at

620d2).
74 See 4.5.

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We are now prepared, incidentally, to address the matter of the non-arrival of dinner.
Cephalus son, Polemarchus promises the meal at 328a, but that is the last we ever hear of it. It
may not be in Polemarchus power to make good on his promise, since Cephalus still appears to
hold the purse-strings in the household,75 yet it is remarkable that no one in the dialogue makes
even a peremptory gesture toward preparations for such a meal or gives any orders regarding it.
(In the Symposium, by contrast, several characters play the host and there is much discussion
within the dialogue about what is to be served and when and how, and which servants are to be
present or absent.) Polemarchus inherits his fathers logos explicitly. The matter of his
inheritance has been emphasized from the start, by Cephalus himself, by Socrates, and by
Polemarchus, too. Why is it not Polermarchus inherited duty now to provide dinner? Cephalus
obvious weakness, the decline of his powers, his inability to do what he wants to do, the
uncertainty about his whereabouts (indeed, the uncertainty about whether or not he is still living
or already dead), and his simultaneous inability to pass on power, riches, and responsibility to his
sonall of this is the final poetic context in which the non-arrival of dinner may be explained.
Quite simply, dinner does not arrive because there is no self-conscious, harmonious, observant,
graceful, measured, active sphrn to serve it.

5.4 Odysseus as a figure of philosophical sophrosune

Odysseus has been standing in the dock from the start of the dialogue. By means of
misquotation, quotation out of context, exaggerated praise, and both subtle and dramatic
emulation of the eponymous epic, Plato has put the elusive character of Odysseus before the
readers for our judgment. Is he a glutton? A sphrn? A sophon?76 If he does have some peculiar

75 As Rosen notes (2005, 26).

76 390a. See 3.1.

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wisdom that other characters in the dialogue lack, what might that be? The final two sections
treat the last third of the Myth of Er with particular attention to Odysseus as a figure of moderate
philosophical desire and Er as a similarly moderate observer.
Against this line of reading, Halliwell argues: As Er witnesses the spectacle of choice,
he feels pity, amusement and amazement (620a1-2), but there is little or nothing for him (or us)
to admire or emulate (1988, 22). But Halliwell overlooks one instructive exception to this bleak
picture of perpetual human fallibility: the quiet choice of Odysseus to remain a man and not to
capitulate to the desires that would deform or distract him. Such an oversight is easy, since, as
Socrates said earlier, the truly moderate and just man is hard to dramatize. He does no murder or
grotesque deed; he simply minds his business and chooses to live an apparently unremarkable
life. But as I will argue here, Odysseus in the final myth deserves our attention, since he is in fact
the Republics foremost figure of philosophical sophrosune. If the dialogue has a final teaching
it is somewhere in Odysseus choice and Ers contemplation of it.77
In Chapter Three, I argued that Socrates censorship of Odysseus, the wisest of men,
centers our attention on the mistreated hero all the more, and primes us to judge him correctly at
the end. One can glimpse Socrates own underlying fascination with Odysseus elusive inner
nature from his double quotation of the moment in the Odyssey (XX.18-30) where the hero of
moderation rolls like a sausage before the fire as he chooses the moderate course despite his
inner turmoil. Socrates wants his interlocutors to look deep into Odysseus very guts, to creep
down into his soul, to understand how a moderate man speaks to his desires and restrains

77 In contrast, Rosen (2005) discounts the instructive role of myth of Er almost entirely (as does Annas

[1993]), in particular because Odysseus is not an obvious figure of philosophical desire.

I ought to note here that although the figure of Odysseus in the final myth would be more accurately
described as Odysseus soul, I have chosen to speak of him as Odysseus for the sake of convenience.

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them.78 Filled with passionate and mixed desires and on the very point of going out into the night
to satisfy them, feverishly roasting in his own epithumetically-charged thumos, Homers
Odysseus looks as though he will give in to his wide-ranging pleonexia, but he endures his
suffering and restrains himself and remains moderate.
The philosophical sophron is no insipid ascetic either. The famously moderate Socrates,
who shows such interest in Leontius and Thrasymachus and Odysseus and Glaucon and all the
rest that he keeps recounting their stories once more and again once more, is himself a character
to whom terrible and various possibilities of life have presented themselves, perhaps temptingly.
By the actively moderate choice in favor of a truly eudaimonic life while rejecting the falsely
eudaimonic lives that he keeps recalling, a sophron such as Socrates restrains his power in such a
way as to retain it. Odysseus in the myth of Er proceeds with this same firmness of intention and
deliberate quietness and might:
And by chance Odysseus soul had drawn the last lot of all and went to choose; from
memory of its former labors [protern ponn], it had recovered [lelphkuian] from
love of honor; it went around for a long time [periiousan chronon polun] looking for
[ztein] the life of a private man [iditou, like Cephalus and a few of Hades
incurables (615d)] who minds his own business [apragmonos; the opposite of the
panourgos, the perfectly unjust fellow who attempts to do all, to drink all, to eat all,
to seduce all]; and with effort [mogis; with toil] it found one lying somewhere
[keimenon pou; as Gyges ancestors lucky find], neglected [paremelmenon;
carelessly] by the others. It said when it saw this life that it would have done the
same [ta auta an epraxen] even if it had drawn the first lot, and was delighted
[hasmenn] to choose it (620c-d).
Again, Halliwell comments that although philosophia emerges in the Glaucus image,
pages before, What will prove surprising, however, is the lack of any conspicuous instances of
such philosophy in the subsequent vision of Er (1988, 165). It is true that as far as we know,
there is no life labeled Philosophical or Student at the Academy to be found among those

78Indeed, in this favorite quote of Socrates (Od. XX), Odysseus is nothing but his guts (a gastr at XX.25),

a stuffed stomach, as I have mentioned before.

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scattered on the field before the souls in the myth of Er, nor do we see any character named
True Philosopher in the final myth, but in fact, Odysseus active, self-conscious, skeptical,
memory-informed, chastened, discerning, careful, slow choice of the life of a private man who
minds his own business (iditou apragmonos) is more revelatory of the moderate (i.e. true)
philosopher than any final more conspicuously philosophical figure might be. Furthermore (as
I will discuss shortly), Socrates does mention philosophers in the final myth, but what he says
about them is so counterintuitive that it is no wonder that commentators tend to discount it.
When Socrates tried earlier in the dialogue to capture the philosopher in his conspicuous
glory in the middle books, his description succeeded in producing only monumental and passive
sculptures, imitations in cold stone of living, self-conscious human philosophers (andrianatoi,
not true andres). In the myth of Er, by contrast, Socrates hides his truly philosophical soul and its
true livelihood in amidst all the others, and leaves it for his listeners and readers to pick him out.
Fortunately, he gives us many hints about the potentially philosophical choice of
Odysseus. Odysseus may not be choosing the life of the philosopher explicitly, but he fulfills the
description Socrates offers of the correct philosophical attitude towards choosing a life:
1) Odysseus displays all four of the cardinal virtues as Socrates has described them
earlier in the dialogue: a) wisdom (i.e. excellent deliberative judgment, such as only a few in the
city enjoy [428a-429a]; Odysseus is the only soul in the final myth that knows precisely what life
he wants and what precisely he must do to achieve it), b) moderation (He restrains his desire to
pounce on whatever attractive life presents itself and has a broad view of all the possibilities of
life and appears to compare them harmoniously with one another and against a standard of the
better life that he has in mind), c) justice (Odysseus chooses the apragmonos life, the opposite
of the unjust life, keeping to himself [433a-c]), and d) courage (Odysseus is not dismayed by his
terrible misfortunethe fact that he must choose last of all the soulsand staunchly preserves
and clings to his correct opinion about what he must do [429c-d]).
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2) Odysseus takes a long time to choose his life. Unlike Socrates and Thrasymachus in
Book I, who pounce on whatever comes by, Odysseus considers the possibilities of life at a
distance, skeptically and in a leisurely fashion. Like other souls who came from the earth,
because they themselves had labored and had seen the labors of others, werent in a rush to make
their choices, he takes advantage of the long pause between one life and another, stands free of
his past and future and the body and knowing that this is a middle place, appropriate for choice
and decision, not the receipt of blessed rewards (not the Isles of the Blessed), he looks around
everywhere and considers well.
Odysseus shows a certain balanced sense of the seriousness of his choice, as well.
Although he observes everything more carefully than almost anyone else in Hades, there is a
certain lightness about him even in his earnestness. Cephalus, the proto-tyrant, is precisely the
opposite; although he looks at nothing carefully, and purports to be delighted with his current
state of soul, he betrays an underlying terror about the seriousness of his situation and one might
argue that there is a certain obsessive quality in his dedication to repeated sacrifices, as if he does
not know how many the gods require. (Cephalus has just finished a sacrifice when Socrates
arrives, and the former, still wreathed for the ritual, allows himself only a few moments of
contemplative leisure before he heads back to offer yet another sacrifice.) One can see how
slowness and thoroughness like that of Odysseus, could certainly become pleonectic in its own
way, but Odysseus is an excellent image of philosophical sophrosune in this respect, too: He
wanders for a long time, but then he comes home.79

79 Socrates and Glaucons similar nostos is not recounted in the Republic, but it seems that Socrates

releases them all from their long discussion with his final eu prattmen. Some commentary worries that Plato or
Socrates do not allow Glaucon a final response in the dialogue (by which we could ascertain that he is finally
convinced, or that this logos is finally satisfactory to him) but I have argued that such a distinct telos to the
dialogue would be false. Rather, Socrates sends all of us on our way in the last line, wishing us a good thousand year
journey and a safe homegoing without telling us exactly how to get there or where he himself is headed. The fact
that he recounts the tale to another unknown listener the next day proves that he has escaped Cephalus house and
the long discussion. See also 4.1.

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3) Some commentators complain that Odysseus, the gifted political man and spirited
warrior of the Iliad, makes an unlikely image of philosophy, but Socrates tells us that Odysseus
made his choice of life having recovered from his mistaken love of honor.80 In Book VIII,
Socrates pointed to the love of honor over love of virtue as the first slip in the long decline of
human regimes that ends in gluttonous tyranny. All of the other human beings in the Myth of Er
slip further down that slope into less and less flourishing lives. But Odysseus little periaoge
from the pleasures of thumos (which he developed over the course of the unsought labors
recounted in the Iliad) to the pleasures of the private human being qua human being (as
Odysseus the farmer- king on Ithaka) sets him apart from all the others and puts him on the path
to re-attain an aristocratic regime in his soul after the first missteps into timocracy.
Odysseus resembles the one philosophically-minded soul that Socrates imagines might
spring up and be preserved among otherwise corrupt company:
Will anyone argue that there is no chance that children of kings, or of men who hold
power, could be born philosophers by their natures? [] And if such men came into
being, can anyone say that its quite necessary that they be corrupted? That its hard
to save them [sthnai], we too admit. But that in all of time no one of all of them
could ever be saved [sthei], is there anyone who would argue that? (502a-b).
Odysseus has certainly erred in his time, and worst of all, as the first lines of the Odyssey
recount, he failed to save his company from their rash and fatal gluttony,81 but his most
remarkable virtue (according to the proem) is his persistence in saving himself despite his errors
and winning a nostos. To paraphrase the third line of the Odyssey, he sees the cities and minds
of many men, just as Odysseus in the myth of Er wanders from one tempting life to another,
observing and discarding those regimes and lives that fall short of his ideal. His greatest
achievement in that epic is to regain or retain his identity as Odysseus even after all the
80The Odyssey describes a similar recovery from public to private life.
81Although he tried (I.6). See also 3.1.

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temptations along the way toward brutish gluttony in the Thrinakian episode (the eating the cattle
of Helios) or immortal trophe in the Ogygian (under Calypsos eternal trophe). If anyone in all
of time could be saved, would not Odysseus be a likely candidate?
4) Odysseus appears to share the philosophers good memory,82 foresight, and his ability
to judge present matters with an eye on more universal standards: From all this he will be able
to draw a conclusion and choosein looking off toward the nature of the soulbetween the
worse and the better life, calling worse the one that leads it toward becoming more unjust and
better the one that leads it to becoming juster (618d). Odysseus already has in mind which life is
best, long before he sees an instance of it on the field. Does he look off to the nature of the
soul when he makes his choice? Perhaps his sights are not so lofty as Socrates final description
suggests, but on the other hand, the life he chooses is just the sort Socrates calls better. The
private life may lead to justiceat least it is open to justicebut it is not already the best life
or the perfectly just life or the life of the philosopher in the Isles of the Blessed. Such lives are
not open to human beings, but human beings can choose lives that lead upwards towards the
better and away from the worse.
5) Odysseus careful choice of life makes him happy (620d2). Like the steady souls of
Books II-III, Odysseus can stand content even in the midst of misfortune. (He draws the last lot.)
Chance does not rule his choices or determine his state of soul. Yet he is not entirely unaffected
by the contingent: Socrates airy remark that the life Odysseus sought was lying around
somewhere gives due credit to the role of chance even in the careful thinkers life. The
spokesman of the final myth speaks to just this point: Let the one who begins not be careless
about his choice. Let not the one who is last be disheartened (619a). Odysseus, we are told, is

82 He remembers his former labors and who he he was before he started to decline. In this matter, he is

like Er and unlike Glaucon, who cannot remember what the philosopher is, for all his desire to be philosophical. See
4.2.

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not disheartened by the limited possibilities available for mortal human beings. (Perhaps he
knows that the availability of too many choices in life is dangerous.) Instead, he is delighted
with the life he has chosen,83 even though it is not extremely blissful or complete or perfect.
6) When Odysseus seeks to discover a near-instance of the type of life he knows is best,
he exhibits a unique steadiness among all the other souls in Hades. He alone, among all the
metamorphosing men, stands against the universal decline that surrounds him. Other souls flee
the human (as Ajax: pheugousan anthrpon genesthai [620b2]) and seek to become animals out
of their hatred for human kind and human life (as Agamemnon: echthra de kai tautn tou
anthrpinou genous dia ta path [620b4-5]). The unnamed tyrant, too, chooses against an
ordinary human in favor of becoming (finally) a wolf.
Odysseus is happy to remain a human being, even an apparently ordinary one. Unlike the
unsteady comic character Socrates criticized in Book III who seeks a mighty change in
himself,84 Odysseus seeks [ztein] to stay the same. His earlier labors (whether in Hades or
before) taught him not to seek the pleasures of conspicuous power and fame such that he is able
to a careful choice in the moment of decision. The other soulshaters of the human state in
generalgive themselves over to great and substantial changes in their being in a careless
instant. Their spur of the moment metamorphoses are reactions to their immediate troubles, not
true reformations of character, and in these hasty choices, they may go from the frying pan into
the fire. Odysseus having (already) recovered seeks a bion andros (620c6), to remain a human
being, not to try to escape the troubles that belong to human life by becoming a swan, a
nightingale, a lion, an ape, or another more savage beast.

83 See Od. XXIV.545 for Odysseus similar moment of quiet joy in the last lines of the epic.
84 388e. See 3.2.

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Socrates describes Odysseus quiet search in much the same terms that he used earlier to
describe the philosophers choice of the private life when he finds himself in a city that cannot
use philosophy or is opposed to it. Odysseus amidst the mad metamorphoses of the final myth is
like the philosopher who has fallen in with wild beasts and is neither willing to join them in
doing injustice nor sufficient as one man to resist all the savage animals (496d). Odysseus
observes all the choices made before his turn comes up, and taking all this into calculation, he
too keeps quiet and
minds his own business [ta autou prattn]as a man in a storm, when dust and rain
are blown about by the wind, stands aside under a little wall. Seeing others filled full
of lawlessness [horn tous allous katapimplamenous], he is content [agapa] if
somehow he himself can live his life here pure [katharos] of injustice and unholy
deeds, and take his leave from it graciously and cheerfully with fair hope. (496d-e)
Socrates is clearly alluding to the absent Cephalus final speech as he sums up his own idea of
the ideal departure from life. Odysseus fair hope about his return to life might rest on his
laborious, careful discrimination and choice, whereas Cephalus hopes in hope itself and the
chance that his present state of passively achieved katharsis will somehow protect him from
having to anguish over any further choices in the future.
7) Odysseus choice reveals a philosophical steadiness that goes beyond mere stability
and hints at a kind of persistence in being that Socrates exaggeratedly applied to the philosopher
in Book V, who is always [aei] in imitation of the things he ponders which are eternally.85
When Odysseus chooses the life of a private man (bion andros iditou apragmonos, at 620c5-6),
he is poetically and potentially choosing the life of Odysseus again, choosing to continue to be
what he always was (inasmuch as that is possible for the imperfect human being). In other words,
as I have suggested before, Odysseus is that elusive and difficult-to-dramatize prudent and quiet
character, which is always nearly equal to itself (604b).
85 485b. See 4.2.

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Odysseus mysteriously shabby choice of the apragmonos life is puzzling to many

readers. Like many souls in the myth itself, we might carelessly underestimate the worth of the
life that Odysseus chooses; unable to see anything great in it ourselves, we may be tempted to
read Odysseus choice as mild comedy: Apparently the great man wants to take it easy the next
time around.
Furthermore, Odysseus choice of the bion apragmonos might seem to argue against my
thesis. I have argued from the beginning that sophrosune is active86 and that philosophers
become passive gluttons when they cease to act.87 How can Odysseus chosen life be
philosophical and moderate according to the terms of my argument if it is apragmn?
In fact, apragmosune, the love of a quiet life, of leisure and freedom from politics or
business is truly philosophical in the sense that I have been developing throughout the thesis:
Such a life is free of great deeds and accomplishments, perhaps, but it is not apraktos (idle,
passive, ineffectual, unprofitable). The private philosopher may avoid public deeds, but he is
hard at work in his soul, with its own inner energeia.88 The rest of this section will attempt to
clarify this all important distinction.
Odysseus choice of an apragmonos life, after his former political and martial labors
[ponn], is not a sheer metabole from one opposite state to another. Odysseus does not appear to
choose an idle passive life, but rather a less thumotically corrupted one.

86 In 3.1-3.5, especially.
87 In 4.3-4.4, especially.
88 To offer an anticipatory example: Some philosophers set their hopes on accomplishing deeds, producing

irrefutable proofs (that God exists, that the soul is immortal, that justice is preferable to injusticeor that such
theses cannot be proven) that proceed in Euclidian fashion from sure foundations via secure progress to a state of
greater and greater cumulative understanding. And there are other philosophers whose task is much less glamorous,
who are content to be at work always choosing the best life from the beginning, constantly preserving and
recollecting their best opinions without necessarily accomplishing final achievements in human knowledge. The
former aim at certain philosophical erga, the latter aim at a certain philosophical energeia, or way of life.

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Socrates has primed us to expect a certain pattern of reversal among the various souls,
most of whom choose their new lives according to the habituation [suntheian] of their former
lives (620a), i.e., like the fickle and unsteady characters they have always been, who reject their
previous lives on a whim and rue the change soon after. But Odysseus does not reject or flee his
previous life (as all the other souls in the myth), to exchange an active life for the life of the
passive eukolos.
On the contrary, when he remembers his former labors (proteron ponon), Odysseus is
remembering his identifying trait, for which Socrates praises him: Beneath his polutropos self is
endurance.89 His name, oduss-eus implies a staunch face to adversity.90 It is his character not to
flee labors and sufferings, but to define himself in relation to them.91 He goes to Hades just as
Socrates hopes we all will, adamantly holding to this opinion so that he wont be daunted by
wealth and such evils there, and rush into tyrannies and other such deeds (619a). By keeping to
89Tetlamen, as Telemachus claims for himself and his father (Od. III.209).
90 See Od. XIX.
91 One might bring Heracles into this picture as well, as does Brann (2004). Heracles various sides call up

Odysseian and Socratean characteristics, too. Heracles is a comic giant, a gross eater, a girl chaser who fights with
Rabelaisian gusto. (Praeger 1967, 230). But he is famous also for his self-conscious endurance in the face of
suffering and endlessly difficult labors:
When Greek thought became more mature, Heracles too began to think; on a metope sculpted on the
temple at Olympia about 460 B.C., he appears chin on hand after his first victory, as if he were worried about the
remaining tasks. His consciousness of their danger and his physical weariness have an added merit to his challenge;
each labour became for this new Heracles both a victory over himself and over his adversaries. [] From the middle
of the 5th century B.C., the immortality of the hero was less a consequence of his sporting feats than of the moral
courage he had shown in never refusing, whatever the cost, the battles that the salvation of mankind required of him.
[] Once this supreme reward (of the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides, i.e., immortality) was no
longer the prize of physical energy and matchless exploits but of a sustained effort towards moral perfection,
Heracles ceased to be a purely fabulous figure and became a valuable example to simple human beings; he became a
model that they should strive to imitate as well as a proof that their sufferings courageously borne would win them
immortality (1967, 231).
Heracles death by burning alive on his own funeral pyre poetically links him to Er, who nearly suffers the
same fate. Heracles is also a monster-subduer; He cuts off the renascent and innumerable heads of hydra of Lerna,
triple-bodied monster Geryon, brings back Cerberus from Hades, and find the boundaries of cosmos. Like the
nameless tyrant in the myth of Er: he slaughters his own children in a moment of madness. Further, in his
innumerable labors, the redundancy of his efforts, and the receding goal of immortality while he labors, Heracles is
like a figure of intellectual labor, as well.

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his adamant purpose, even through the instructive sufferings of Hades itself, Odysseus stays
what he was: a man.
But will Odysseus truly get a life without labors, like the animal lives chosen by Ajax and
Agamemnon or the metris epiponon life of Cephalus, or the fully aponos lives of the idle,
degenerate sons of Books VIII-IX, or the housebound tyrant himself? Perhaps, for a time. But, as
Odysseus knows well, the life of the private man is open to unanticipated labors. The story of
Telemachus before the plow (adduced, as it happens in Hades by Agamenon to Anphinedon [Od.
24.115-119]) tells how this very thing happened to Odysseus. And by the end of the Odyssey
(Books 23-24), with the homecoming, house-cleaning, and story-telling complete, Odysseus is
still not done with his labors.92
Should Odysseus be called on again to leave his apragmonos life and serve in the
political realm, he will not avoid the fate of Glaucus, to be somewhat scarred and disfigured by
living in an imperfect world with his imperfect desires. Thumos might be required of him, his
love of honor will be stoked by flatterers and rewarded; Odysseus will probably change and
decline (he cannot always be equal to himself) but he knows what he aims to be and can
recover himself.
We hope that there are such moments in the flow of life for us, too, when we can stand
back from the life we have chosen and judge whether it is still the one we love. These selfreflective moments are moments for action in the soul, too, when we can restore and work on our
souls somewhat, to hammer away at what is less ourselves and to soothe and restrain our lower
desires.93 If we make a habit of a certain distance from ourselves, and develop a certain degree of
self-conscious reflection, we may find many moments for tending to the unavoidable

92 Od. 24.543.
93 See 3.2-3.3

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disfigurement of the soul when it acts and loves and labors. A thoughtful revolution back to the
good and back to oneself is not impossible to imagine.
The unnamed gluttonous tyrant chooses infamous deeds; the famous Odysseus chooses
obscurity, the private life that is the choice of philosophers, like Socrates, whose cities will not
use them, and of the potentially tyrannical who want to reverse their decline, and know that they
would do better to fight their inner hydras in private than to be granted public roles and public
funds with which to ruin themselves and their cities.
But the private life is open to all these opportunities; like the democratic marketplace in
which it thrives, it is the perfect place to begin to be a philosopher. Further, the private life is the
appropriate choice for men who are still waiting for the challenges to appear that are worthy of
their talents. Such sophrons, even more than Aristotles great-souled men, are introspective;
although they seem quiet now, they are ready for the next labor.
8) Odysseus is not a philosophical glutton; he does not reject the ordinary life of a private
man in the deluded hope that perhaps he is about to discover the the life of eternal philosophical
blessedness. In this moderate choice of the better possible life rather than the best impossible
one, he avoids tyrannical excess on either side, as if he had heard Socrates final warning to
Glaucon, always to choose the life between such extremes and flee the excesses in either
direction in this life, so far as is possible, and in all of the next life (619a). In this way, and not
through more strenuous idealism and finicky procrastination of any telos that comprehends
anything less that all and best, the human being becomes happiest.
Socrates will argue explicitly against the philosophically gluttonous life in the final myth.
Philosophers who go to extremes (that is, philosophers who lose their truly philosophical sense
of the fragility and incompleteness of the philosophical and cease to be moderate) will ruin their
philosophical natures:

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And, it may be said, not the least number of those who were caught in such
circumstances [choosing terrible tyrannies] came from heaven, because they were
unpracticed in labors [ponn agumnastous]. But most of those who came from the
earth, because they themselves had labored and had seen the labors of others, werent
in a rush [ex epidroms] to make their choices []
However, if a man, when he comes to the life here, always [aei] philosophizes in a
healthy way [hugis philosophoi] and the lot for his choice does not fall out among
the last, its likely, on the basis of what is reported from there, that he will not only
be happy here but also that he will journey from this world to the other and back
again, not by the underground, rough road but by the smooth one, through the
heavens. (619d)
As Roochnik (2003) notes in his commentary on the passage above, it may come as a bit
of a surprise to readers who work out the details of the souls journeys to discover that the ones
who always philosophize in a healthy way take the smooth, heavenly path that leads to
gluttonous mistakes. How could the pursuit of philosophy lead us so astray? Virtue by custom
without the continued and skeptical labor of contemplation is not a sufficient guide to the
continued good life. That applies to the philosophers blessed lot, too.
The complacently comfortable philosopher, who sails smoothly through the heavens
without laboring on the earth (that is, without facing limits and difficulties that would make him
aware of himself and his soul) loses his ability to choose and think for himself in the face of
changing circumstances. Even after all his previous hard work, he is no better when it comes to
choosing the good life than anyone else. His healthy and perpetual [aei] pursuit of the
smooth heavenly path comes with its own dangersdangers that are closely related to
philosophys rewards.
Perhaps philosophers cannot avoid these periods of dangerous and blessed forgetfulness.
But as much as possible, the happy philosopher who finds that he has reached a patch of smooth
sailing should not try not to forget his need for sophrosune. The only philosophers who will be
able to preserve themselves will have to make labors for themselves even in the midst of their
bliss and not lose their awareness while they travel above that they are also mortal and must go
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below. In other words, the happiest and wisest philosophers must be forced to leave their
apparently perfect satisfactions to attend to their mortality.94 They must drag themselves or be
dragged into the cave at appropriate intervals.
By his choice of the private and moderately philosophical life, Odysseus accomplishes
not the least of things, in Glaucons words. Socrates notes that the virtuous private life stands
somewhere in the middle: the privately philosophical man accomplishes deeds that are not the
greatest either, if he didnt chance upon a suitable regime. For in a suitable one he himself will
grow more and save the common things along with the private. This middle life is neither the
very best that could be imagined, in which your sophrosune will save the world, nor is it the
leastin which your lack of sophrosune will doom you to unhappiness.
Furthermore, when Odysseus chooses the private life over the life of great deeds, he is
practicing the wisdom he gained from his last descent to Hades (recounted in Od. XI) by
observing the sufferings and labors of the souls there: In other words, Odysseus chooses the life
Achilles would choose now, if only he could choose again. Having recovered somewhat from
the excesses of thumos and the frustrated and pleonectic desire for perfect and blessed
immortality which motived them, Achilles imagines that he could be content now to be a mere
laborer on the soil, living a quiet, moderate life like the one Odysseus chooses.95 Socrates
censored this wisdom of Achilles when it first arose in Book III, but here at the end of the
Republic, he allows Odysseus to enact and support it, such that this wisdom about death and
limitation becomes a sort of final teaching of the entire dialogue.

94 As long as they draw breath, as Socrates said, they must remind themselves that their present path does

not actually lead at last toward that place which is for the one who reaches it a haven from the road, as it were, and
an end of his journey, as Glaucon hopes about the practice of dialectic (532d-e).
95 Contrast Bloom on the significance of Achilles absence from the final myth: Achilles no longer exists,

alive or dead, in the new poetry of the new Socratic world. (Int. Essay, 436). See Od. XI.486-503.

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5.5 Er/os as observer

Ten books from the start of their dialogue and sometime towards the dawn of the next
day, Socrates promises not to tell yet another long-winded tale.96 Once upon a time, Er died,
Socrates begins.97 One cannot imagine a shorter tale. But, of course, there is much more to this
story of Everyman,98 the strange details of which would not have been saved (621b) had not Er
been mysteriously preserved himself. The first sign of Ers strange persistence in being (perhaps
his greatest strength) is his non-decaying corpse: on the tenth day, when the corpses, already
decayed [d diephtharmenn], were picked up, he was picked up in a good state of preservation
[hugis] (614b).99 Socrates play on various images of preservation, wholeness, and health (the
various senses of ss) throughout the myth and his emphasis on certain consequential acts of
gluttony and sophrosune at the end of Ers story suggest that sophrosune has an ultimate function
in human life.

96 Apologon at 614b2. See Blooms note (471, n. 13). His wordplay on Alcimou/Alcinous (at 614b) recalls

Odysseus famous pause in Odyssey XI (the mid-point of the descent to Hades in the four-book tale of Alcinous),
where Odysseus agrees to put off sleep and be compelled to stay with the quasi-divine Phaiakians if the benefits of
such a delay are great enough and so long as he is not made to tell his stories twice [Od. XII.452-453] (in the
redundant fashion of a dialogue or the epic in which the episode occurs). These Homeric references tie the end of the
Republic to its first line, as well, where Socrates begins his very long account of the previous nights discussion with
I went down; katebn, the word with which Odysseus begins his account to Penelope of his descent to Hades
(XXIII.252). Socrates describes a logos that goes through the night; Odysseus logos is so long that Athena delays
the dawn. Yet both infamously long accounts still leave out the most significant things.
Heracles, the famous sufferer and doer of inordinate labors that never seem to be quite finished is the last
character Odysseus meets in Hades before he hurries back from the dead.
The night is still long, immeasurably long. No need yet to clear the hall for sleep: wherefore, continue
these marvelous histories. I would listen until the full dawn, says Alcinous to Odysseus. (Od. XI; Lawrence, 162.)
Odysseus claims in the Book XII passage to abhor to repeat a tale that he has already told the day before.
As many commentators note, Socrates does just that when he repeats the logoi of the dialogue on the very next day
to an unknown listener.
97 Hs pote (en polem) teleutsas. Er is a warrior, like Odysseus, but like the latter, he attains a certain

wisdom about finitude that looks more prophetic or philosophic than one might expect from a merely thumotic man.
98 See Howland (2004, 155).
99 The same word is used to describe the healthy perpetual exercise of philosophy critiqued in the

previous section of the chapter.

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Indeed, Er is a figure of potentially moderate philosophy, like Odysseus and Socrates.

Some commentators raise the same objection against Ers suitability as a figure of specifically
philosophical desire that was earlier raised against Odysseus: He is a strong man and a warrior,
but not a conspicuously contemplative man. Bloom, for example, emphasizes Ers explicitly
thumotic nature: if one were to translate the root words of the name, the [first] sentence would
read a story of a man not strong of mind, but strong (471, n. 13).100
But just as Odysseus is said to have recovered from the life according to thumos, so
also, we are told that the strong man, Er, has a higher calling. His souls pilgrimage from the
heights of heaven to the depths of Hades before death allows him another chance in life to be
wiser than he otherwise would have been.101 His strange and unanticipated vocation is to be a
messenger to human beings of certain ultimate realities, like the sophron in the metaxu (3.2),
who brings messages down from the gods to men and prayers from men to gods.102 Like the
sight-lovers (philotheamones) of the truth in Book V or Socrates and his fellow theoroi of the
various regimes in the Republic, Ers work is to listen and to look at everything in the place,103
from this mysterious skopos-point.
What does Er observe? The two analogous realities of the vast cosmos and the innermost
soul. He hears the harmony of the spheres that spin around their eternal central axis, and the
speeches, cries, and exclamations of good and bad souls as they make their harmonious or
disharmonious choices of life. In particular, Er views the polutropos but steady Odysseus, who

100 See also Rosen (2005).

101 He will be twice-dying, like Odysseus (disthanees at Od. XII.22). In light of his visionary

pilgrimage, perhaps hell not even look to health, nor give precedence to being strong, healthy, or fair unless hes
also going to become moderate as a result of them.
102See 3.2.
103614d. See 4.1.

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turns from one life to another, observing all the possibilities until he finds the life most like the
one he has always had, that will keep him as steady as possible and far as possible, a one rather
than a hydra of aims, interests, and appetites.
Socrates prefigured Odysseus dual nature in passing when he offered the image of a
strangely steady but ever-turning (and returning) soul early in Book IV: Perhaps, he suggests,
souls are one and many in the same way that tops (strobiloi at 436d) simultaneously stand still
and move: tops as wholes stand still and move at the same time when a peg [to kentron]is fixed
[pxantes]104 in the same place [en t aut] and they spin [peripherntai], as does anything else
that goes around in a circle on the same spot. [] Wed say that they have in them both a
straight and a circumference [phaimen an echein auta euthu te kai peripheres en autois].105
Socrates describes Odysseus quiet search for the best life in similar terms: He went
around [periiousan 620c6] looking for the life he wanted; having chosen it, he says that he
would have done the same [ta auta an epraxen at 620d1] no matter what the circumstances.
And Socrates uses the same terms again to describe the whorls of the cosmos, which go
around, [peripheresthai at 617a7] but never fly off of the central axis that depends from the
adamantine [adamantos] spindle of Ananke.106 Er, we are told, makes a days journey to the very
center [to meson] of this bright column that stretches straight through heaven and earth [dia
pantos tou ouranou kai gs tetamenon phs euthu at 616b4-5], binding all the spinning spheres

104 From pgnumi, to make fast, to become solid. Socrates may have a similar word in mind: pn (a

spool wound with thread).

105 And with respect to the straight they stand still since they dont lean in any directionwhile with

respect to the circumference they move in a circle; and when the straight inclines to the right, the left, forward, or
backward at the same time that its spinning, then in now way does it stand still (436e).
106 Thus, Socrates begins and ends the Republics main argument with ananke, an alpha and omega term

like kosmos and hen. The dialogue begins with the necessities of food and drink in the most necessitous city,
[anankaiotat at 369d11] and ends at the spindle of Ananke. Moderation has its role in both realms, and as a
proportionate measure of the two against one another.

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together in a secure whole, like the undergirders of triremes, holding the entire revolution
together (616b), around which the heavenly spheres all turn in harmony in some mysterious
fashion that cannot quite be pictured.107
Ers vision is equally of the highest principles of the cosmos that can be apprehended by
sightall the orderly and harmonious motions of the heavens, including the sun, the image of
the Goodand of the soul that observes these realities and longs to know them better. Ers
vision is a vision, finally, of the philosopher and the philosophers objects, the finally invisible
soul and the finally invisible archai of the vast cosmos, and insofar as he stands at the mental
skopos-point from which one can turn the mind from the highest things to the human things, and
wonder about the harmony between the two, Er is also a moderate philosopher who contemplates
moderation.
The harmonious cosmos and the moderate soul that imitates it are fixed and yet they
move108 as they stretch out vertically and horizontally toward all and best, human being and the
being that surpasses the human.109 Sophrosune stretches through the whole soul, like the column
that stretches through heaven and earth to the outer reaches of each. Like adamantine, the center
holds the moving whole together securely, such that the soul can turn in every direction and be a
many without sacrificing its unity and upright posture. The sophron must be fixed at his core:
He must go to Hades adamantly [adamantins] holding to this opinion so that he wont be
daunted by wealth and such evils there, and rush into tyrannies and other such deeds by which he

107 See Brann 2004, and my note on the invisible harmonies of soul in 3.3. Those who return from the

heavens after one thousand years of viewing these heavenly sights still cannot express it to their satisfaction, since
they are is inconceivable in their beauty (amchanous at 615a4).
108 They are poikilos and yet they are also somehow pure; even the column of pure light that binds the

cosmos together is itself strangely multicolored like a rainbow but somehow purer (katharteron at 616b5).
109 Howland notes the dual objects of Ers observation: the myth encourages us to compare the circular

motion of the cosmos as a whole with the movement of each soul as it passes through the continuous cycle of
reincarnation (2004, 155), but he does not bring in the likeness of the strobilos.

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would work many irreparable evils, and himself undergo still greater suffering (619a).110 The
sophron is a harmonious one, securely upright, held together steadily around a mysterious central
axis, a certain secure notion of the order of world and the fact of the hierarchy among beings,111
while he is also aware of all the possibilities and full of wonder about the many ways in which
other human beings choose how to live. The central, secure belief (in the fact of better and
worse and the necessity of judgment) reaches towards extremities [ta akra at 616c1, to apply
the analogy] that cannot be imagined, never mind directly comprehended, even by the person
who holds this firm belief.
Philosophy must be steadily polutropos precisely because its vision is not direct or
absolute. In other words, the incomplete philosopher is always dealing in analogies, judging the
relative worth of substances and activities whose final essences he is not capable to grasp
directly. Any intellectual practice less observant and polutropos, or less secure in its inner axis is
philosophical gluttony: the desire to throw oneself into one of the many arguments or
conclusions or images that occur as if any one of those could be final, so as not to be troubled by
the necessity to make more judgments later. Yet we all must make more judgments later and the
most important of these is the choice of the better life among those that are possible.
This judgmental imperative may strike many readers of Plato as absolutist and elitist,
but it arises out of philosophys weakness. If philosophy could prove its worth absolutely and for
all time (or if philosophers thought that such a proof were possible), they would not always be
comparing the philosophical life to all the other possible aims of human beings. Why does
Socrates seem to harp endlessly on the difference between philosophy and medicine or poetry or
shoe-making (and so on and on)? Because philosophers must always judge and compare and

110 See Howland (2004, 160).

111 Like the Divided Line.

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critique their own aims or else be tyrants, who follow their desires beyond bounds and without
bothering to understand them. For human beings, there is no access to any argument that would
prove beyond doubt the goodness of the philosophical life. It is only in proportion with other
lives, substances, and activities that we can begin to justify this better life.
The tyrant or the tyrannical philosopher is a housebound polutrophomenos, a passive
omnivore who looks to be changed and defined and satisfied and nourished by whatever chances
his way. But the true philosopher is an active polutropos, able to turn his attention up and down,
from one as-yet-unchosen possibility to another. He can ascend and descend in search of the
thing he desires and he can check his eventual choice against all the others, if it starts to go
wrong. When he stumbles, as he expects he might at some point or another, he can recover. The
tyrant, on the other hand, has many hankerings but can only turn one way; in Hades, the worst,
incurable tyrant can never choose a new path again. As he approaches the upper road to freedom
and choice, the mouth roars and he remains: When one tyrant-admirer in the myth of Er asks
Where is Ardiaeus the Great?, as if such a famous man could not possibly be without a prize of
some sort in the afterlife, another one of the souls who is wiser (as Odysseus) for his trials and
labors replies, He hasnt come. Nor will he come here. Ardaeius must envy the sort of
redundancy that so frustrates eager young philosophers (and perhaps some readers of the
Republic, who long for be-all and end-all arguments from Socrates). The worst tyrant longs for
but can never have a blessed return and a chance to start again from the beginning:
For this, too, of course, was one of the terrible sights [theamatn] we saw
[etheasametha]. When we were near the mouth [stomiou] about to go up and had
suffered everything else, we suddenly saw him and others. Just about all of them
were tyrants, but there were also some private men [iditai, like Cephalus], of those
who had committed great faults. They supposed they were ready to go up
[oiomenous d anabsesthai] but the mouth did not admit them; it roared when one
of those whose badness is incurable or who had not paid a sufficient penalty
attempted to go up. [] They had experienced many fears of all kinds [] but more
extreme [huperballein] than any was the fear that each man experienced lest the
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sound come as he went up; and when it was silent, each went up with the greatest
delight [hasmenestata]. (615d-616a)

Pater and the metaphysical stakes

Paters criticism of Plato, with which I began this thesis, centers on the relationship
between motion and stability that I have emphasized in this final chapter. As I have noted
earlier, Socrates many repeated forms of men in the first moments of Book I might be read as
an attempt against Heraclitus panta chorei kai ouden menei (everything journeys forward and
nothing stays.). But the enduring being that Plato and Socrates desire is not achieved by
ignoring or attempting to escape the flow, as Pater and his company suspect.112 Pater describes
the tension between these two principles as Ionian and Dorian: Athenians are people of the
coast who have the roaming thoughts of sailors,113 ever ready to float away anywhither amid
their walls of wood.114 Sparta, on the other hand, has resources for that discipline and order
which constitute the other ingredient in a true Hellenism, the saving Dorian soul in it. The only
way to return home safe is to wander in argument, and the only way to wander safely is
perpetually to return home.115 Pater is right to recognize these two elements of the Greek tropos.
But Pater is wrong in his final judgment of Plato: Everywhere [Plato] displays himself
as an advocate of the immutable. The Republic is a proposal to establish it indefectibly in a very
precisely regulated, a very exclusive community, which shall be a refuge for elect souls from an

112 Change, [Plato] protests, through the power of a true philosophy, shall not be the law of our being.

(PP 13).
113 To go beyond limits, as Brann points out in her discussion of the setting of the dialogue in the Piraeus

(2003).
114 Plato and Platonism, 13-14.
115 See also my footnote in 3.2.

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ill-made world,116 says Pater, who understands the metaphysical stakes but somehow misses the
point. Perhaps he takes too seriously Socrates suggestion in the Theatetus that we must choose
one party or other in this battle between flux and stable being.117
Plato (or at least Socrates) truly is an indefatigable advocate for the persistence of the
human being as a human being and for the preservation of his best ideas without corruption, but
his notion of stability in being is not rooted in the concept of immutability, per se. Rather, Plato
(and Socrates) is interested in the good life, the active persistence in being of the living creature
that vies with flux and multiplicity and gains from that battle.
Pater, who clearly cares about the Republics metaphysical teaching, unfortunately does
not notice that Plato (and Socrates) talk about the necessity of decay and decline more than they
discuss the Good and the eternal realms beyond being. To take an example: Socrates promises
that the marriage number will fail and that the regimes will decline from virtue to vice, but these
unfortunate facts of flux are limitations on the human being out of which something better than
static acceptance of the good is to be had.118 We who cannot escape change must choose and
choose again, arresting the decline of our being and remaining equal to ourselves only as much
as possible, and only insofar as we continue to be aware of our susceptibility to change now and
in the future. The Platonic aim for human beings (Pater ought to realize) is not final and total
escape from flux in static eternal being, but rather the energeia of sophrosune, Platos own
version of being-at-work-staying-the-same.
The sophron imitates the cosmos, harmoniously moving and still at the same time, in his
observation and active harmony of all and best, with a sense of slow urgency and a self-

116 Plato and Platonism, 12.

117 181a
118 These are perhaps opportunities for finite transcendence, as Hyland has it (1995).

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conscious awareness of the importance of the choice of life and the sense that such a choice will
have to be made every day.

Er/os
Ers consideration of the choice-worthy life must include real interest in every passing
thing (one would have to see what is appealing about the tyrants life and the shepherds and the
philosophers) but in the Platonic scheme, seeing and imagining and desiring are not the same as
seizing. There is difference between the do-all and the see-all. The fact that moderate appetite
stands firm amidst desirable objects means that the desirous philosopher can still think freely,
that is, at a distance and without being drawn inexorably to any particular end before it is fitting
to do so.
Socrates ends the story of Ers contemplative vision, and the entire dialogue with an
instance of sophrosune along these lines.
From there, without turning around,119 they went under Necessitys throne. And
having come out through it, when the others had also come through, all made their
way through terrible stifling heat to the plain of Lethe. For it was barren of trees and
all that naturally grows on earth. (620e-621a).
This passage recalls Book IVs discussion of thirst simpliciter. According to that earlier
argument, the choice of drink is entirely determined by the surroundings of the drinker. If if it is
hot, then one desires a cold drink. And if there is a rivers worth of water available, the drinker
will drink it dry. The plain of Lethe is the opposite of the heavenly plain of Aletheia in the
Phaedrus; the former is hot and perhaps sterile, and it offers plenteous but dangerous drink. The
latter is lush, and the trophe there seems to be entirely safe and satisfying.

119 Since there are only so many opportunities for periagoge in life.

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Socrates continues: Then they made their camp, for evening was coming on, by the river
of Carelessness whose water no vessel can contain. One might compare Adeimantus
description of the punishments in store for the unjust: [the gods] bury the unholy and unjust in
mud in Hades and compel them to carry water in a sieve (363d). Lethe means forgetfulness, that
is, the inability to hold on to the objects of intellectual desire, once they have been attained. The
sieve-like quality of desire and its satisfactions produces another kind of forgetfulness, too:
carelessness about measure, that is, immoderation.120
Now it was necessary for all to drink a certain measure of the water, but those who were
not saved by prudence drank more than the measure. As he drank, each forgot everything.
(621a-b).121 This is not, as some readers might have it, Platos parting jab at over-indulgence.
His intention is more urgent than that. Why do the gluttons of the final myth drink so much?
Because they do not realize that they are leaky vessels, whose desires cannot be satisfied for all
time, nor do they realize that such indulgence will make them forget more and more about the
ultimate realities that Er and Odysseus will not forget, because of their mysterious sophrosune. In
other words, they lack wisdom about their mortal limitations.
Er reports later that he himself was prevented from drinking the water. What prevents
Er? Socrates does not say. The mysterious, invisible working of moderation, which is a
restraining, harmonizing, quiet voice, measuring and steering the soul is as laughable and
irritating to the careless observer as it is necessary to the sophron. What the final myth leaves in
lovely ellipsis, we should try to discover for ourselves.

120 See also Gorgias (493b-494b).

121 See Introduction.

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Er or Eros as his name suggests, can be an careful observer122 without being a

panurgos, moved by what he sees but not compelled to partake every dangerous satisfaction.
Ers tale describes the calm interest (behind love, we might say) that stands at a remove from all
the cosmos with deep interest in its minutest events. None of us will have Ers experience; desire
is not finally perfectly escapable, even for a moment.123 But moderation allows the rest of us the
next best thing. Even desire for the distantly apprehended but most beloved best can be
considered at leisure, in proportion to all the other desires and possibilities of human life. This
momentary respite from gluttony is not actually true objectivity about the proper objects of
desire, but it is a taste at least of the freedom and peace that Cephalus hopes for, but cannot
achieve in his passive way.
At 621b, Socrates finally concludes the lengthy myth: And when they had gone to sleep
and it was midnight, there came thunder and an earthquake; and they were suddenly carried from
there, each in a different way, up to their birth, shooting like stars. The apocalyptic earthquake
recalls Gyges ancestors earthquake in Book II. In both stories, the light of day reveals all the
deeds and choices of the previously hidden beingthe giant is finally revealed.124
Like Odysseus, perhaps, Er is reborn as himself: However, in what way and how he
came into his body, he did not know; but, all of a sudden, he recovered his sight and saw that it
was morning and he was lying on the pyre. Perhaps there is a final teaching here, as well.
When Er reawakens on his own pyre at dawn, he remembers the soul and the heavens, that he
will die, that each human life is both too short for absolute knowledge and too long to remember
all of our better thoughts and intentions, and that despite those troubles he must continue to
122 Hyland argues this point beautifully (1995).
123 As Lear argues (1990), such a radical evaluation is not possible.
124 And just as the souls shoot up to their births, so the giants tyranny is reborn in Gyges, as he fits the

ring to his finger.

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choose the right path. Nothing is lost while one can still think and reflect on these realities. This
is the danger and the promise of philosophy. It is an endless activity, because it allows so many
returns, but it carries its own limited satisfactions, too, inasmuch as sophrosune is salvation of
self-possession.
Having seen this dual vision, Er told what he saw in the other world. (614b). Unlike
the philosophers, who, unless they are dragged back down to govern would be frozen forever at
this ultimate skopos-point, and unlike those ultimately unsteady souls who return from their
travels in the heavens full of tales of wonder but without wisdom about the good life, Er is forced
back into life, such that he can be a messager of ultimate sophrosune. Two duties belong to the
philosophical sophron: both the quiet contemplation of the dual cosmoi and the later logos
(whether an apologon, or an analogon, or a muthos, or a muthologos).
Although Odysseus wanders in silence in the myth of Er as he considers everything and
chooses a life, we can be sure that the private life ahead of him will be full of stories and
speeches, too, about how he went down to Hades and came back to tell the tale. When Ers soul
returns to his body lying on the pyre, he tells his story to his surprised friends. Insofar as his
story includes an argument against the two kinds of tyranny that arise either from neglecting
philosophy altogether or giving oneself so excessively to the visions of the heavens that one
forgets the soul and its activity altogether, it is the story of a true philosophical sophron and an
image, at least, of something like mortal wisdom.
The stakes are not Ers alone, since his story could save us, if we were persuaded by it,
and we shall make a good crossing of the river of Lethe and not defile our soul (621b-c). In
other words, the tellers of such tales are the true stres125 of the city and soul. Halliwell pours
some cold water on Socrates positive charge, however: How is an individual soul,

125 As the most precise guardians (503b) of the best opinions of the city.

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transmigrating every thousand years into a new body, ever to progress towards justice in its
earthly existence, if each of its series of reincarnations is discrete, and if the series as a whole
does not allow of a cumulative acquisition of experience?
But of course this paradox applies not just to life after death, but to daily life, too.126
Every day is like a thousand-year journey; whatever knowledge we acquire in a day, we forget
by the time we awake the next morning. And over a life-time, can we truly say we have gained
cumulative wisdom about the whole? Each human being is a leaky sieve, an insecure container
of pleasures and knowledge. In human life, as in Adeimantus and Socrates visions of the
afterlife, it is the human lot to carry water in cracked pots, to be full of forgetfulness, to be
always in a middle state of intermediate satisfaction, being filled and being emptied at the same
time. What can the human being learn from a lifetime of such labors? Is his understanding in any
way cumulative?
Socrates first question in the dialogue treats precisely this problem. When he asks
Cephalus what it is like to be old, Socrates is also asking Do you know more as you get older?
And if there is no greater wisdom in old age, if knowledge is always fleeing away or leaking out
of us, what is the value of the pursuit of wisdom? What is the purpose of philosophy, which
seems only to learn a little with great effort while even this little is always leaving us?127 We
need an apology for this mortal philosophy that cannot help but be excessive, redundant,
partial, and fleeting: Why try to philosophize, if we can know so little and want so much?

126 Halliwell finds serious problems with reading the myth this way: We might, for instance, as 618c-d

gives us some prompting to do, treat the pre-natal status of the souls choices as allegorical of choices internal go
the course of a life. But to extrapolate that interpretation consistently would lead us to regard the whole picture of
the souls existence between lives as symbolic of things inside life itself. The consequence of that would be to
explain away, or at the very least to take all substance from, the very immortality of the soul. (1988, 21-22) For the
other side of the argument, see Sinaiko (1998). Annas and Rosen find so many problems with the final myth that the
former is appalled and the latter is dismissive.
127 See 4.2.

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I argue that the Republic as a whole and the myth of Er in particular provide just such an
apology for mortal philosophy. Granted the limitations of such philosophy, indeed, because of
those limitations, we must philosophize. We must philosophize because the only other alternative
to philosophyand self-critical philosophyis tyranny, plain and simple, as soon as the gods
arrange the unlucky circumstances.

The necessity of mortal philosophy

It is impossible that anyone who has read thus far can not have wondered at one point or
another, to whom, after all, is this thesis addressed? Do we really need to warn most people away
from the dangerous extremes of philosophical desire? Is there not a pressing need, rather, to
encourage the Menos and the Phaedruses among us to thirst and hunger for knowledge? Where
are all these proto-tyrannical philosophers, whose Rabelaisian desires for the whole of
knowledge threaten to destroy the earth and tyrannize humanity?
They are everywhere. They are the our men of divertissement, of a hundred pleasures and
one great, looming source of shame and frustrated desire. They are our men of pleonetic thumos
(and eventually, epithumia), like Glaucon and Leontius, who might be turned to philosophy but
instead risk misology, becoming haters of the intellectual culture in which they nonetheless take
part. It is not hard to see why our present culture, which enjoys nearly universal literacy and
access to oceans of facts and innumerable texts from every corner of the globe nonetheless
ceases to pursue high aims; we are informed to the point of nauseated repletion yet feel ourselves
falling shorter and shorter of any secure conclusions about any of it. We know well that our
intellectual satisfaction will be passing and imperfect, even after all our effort. What is the point
of pursuing the highest, at great cost and with great labor, when it keeps receding from our
grasp? Better to turn our desires to small but apparently more attainable goals: the perfect steak,

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the perfect kitchen, the perfect blog. If we are disappointed in these smaller matters, we are
injured less than in the dashing of our titanic hopes in pursuit of answers about those things that
we know matter more than anything else.
Divertissment of this kind is a passing phase, however, because it is efficient. As we
move from one small pleasure to another, we truly will forget those tiresome and soul-wearying
higher aims altogether and become, as Socrates warned, blunted, blind, deaf, and stupid;
immoderation makes the soul decline. Our frustrations will increase, as we actually expect to be
satisfied by our low pursuits and continually are not. And if in the future we are so terribly
unlucky as to be presented with the funds, the power, and the opportunity to live more
tyrannically in all these petty ways, we will trade in the last of our nous for endless, hopeless
mania.
Should the intellectual culture continue to decline in this way, there will be no spoudaioi
left to (over-)encourage young Phaedrus and Meno. Divertissement and misology will have done
their destructive best. Rather, before we can begin to attend to the already apathetic, we need
arguments to persuade philosopher-manqus to leave their games and entertainments in order to
pursue what they know will be incomplete satisfactions of philosophy. More than anything else,
before we embark on this or that scheme of cultural enrichment or educational reform, we need
an apology for philosophy in its incompleteness, an argument for the necessity and
indispensability of philosophy despite its perpetual dissatisfactions.128
Socrates offers such an apology for mortal philosophy in the Republic, most explicitly in
the final myth, where he argues, poetically, that the only alternative to philosophy is tyranny,
sooner or later. If his conclusion seems unduly bleak, it should not be surprising. Socrates

128 Gadamer: Reply to Nicholas P. White, 260: We must take seriously the fact that sophia, complete

knowledge of itsthe thingsrelations with all other things is only for gods. And yet, despite this, not all our
discourse is empty talk.

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promises the decline of the human being, even from his best state, in his discussion of the failure
of the mysterious marriage number in Book VI:
A city so composed is hard to be moved. But, since for everything that has come into
being there is decay, not even a composition such as this will remain for all time; it
will be dissolved. And this will be its dissolution: bearing and barrenness of soul and
bodies come not only to plants in the earth but to animals on the earth when
revolutions complete for each the bearing round of circles; for ones with short lives,
the journey is short; for those whose lives are the opposite, the journey is the
opposite. Although they are wise, the men you educated as leaders of the city will
nonetheless fail to hit on the prosperous birth and barrenness of your kind with
calculation aided by sensation, but it will pass them by, and they will at some time
beget children when they should not. (546a-546b)
In the difficult passage that follows, we need not pin down the mathematics in order to see the
general sense: Human beings will always make mistakes that lead to excess.129 It is not the lot of
human being to master chance always and everywhere (whether by arithmos or simply good
intentions). Rather, human beings must make the best of the chances they have and use both
intellect and will to turn their misfortunes to gain and to preserve themselves as much as possible
through these periods of decline.130
Much commentary on this passage places the blame for the philosophers error entirely
on irrational epithumia (or eros) which tends to make a fool of arithmos. According to these
readings, our best plans to have small families with only the right spouses are overturned by a
moment of passionate lust, for example. Socrates may well have such mistakes in mind, but he

129 Yet the number of souls in existence, whether in one part of their underground journey or another, is

always the same (611a). Speaking hypothetically, as tyrants are held back eternally (when the mouth roars), the
number of souls available for reincarnation will actually decrease. Overpopulation is an interesting problem in that
context.
130 The purpose of the marriage number is put in terms of necessary preservation, such that the city can
remain what it is: that they may most nearly preserve the same number of men, taking into consideration wars,
diseases, and everything else of the sort; and thus our city will, within the limits of the possible, become neither big
nor little. (460a). What is the parallel of the marriage number in the soul? Socrates says elsewhere that the just man
is equal to himself as much as possible.

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indicates a deeper source of decline, as well, with his strange reference to barrenness of soul.
The soul has seasons, too. There are fallow and fertile periods in thinking as well as in
conceiving; calculation all by itself forgets this fact, assuming that all thinking is a progessive
advance from day to day. But philosophy is an energeia, not a forward motion or increase. By
philosophy (as opposed to calculated progress), the soul deepens into the same belief and
preserves its stability and distinctness, as it attempts to remember from day to day what it is
always in danger of losing as the seasons of soul pass.
The philosophers that lack this fundamental wisdom about the fragile, finite human
being, and fail to recognize that human beings are truly creatures of a day and subject to
substantial change even in their deepest desires and best intentions, cannot truly be considered
wise. Such wisdom miscarries and brings about swift decline and dissolution precisely because
it does not see what it happening to it. The best guard against decline must be a realization that
the philosopher can decline, that it is possible, even probable that he will at some point fall short
of himself.
The failure of the marriage number is tragic, in the strict sense: It is a small
miscalculation, that, when made at a certain time, in a certain place, and complicated by certain
desires brings ruin. Human beings are always human and they will always make these sorts of
mistakes. This is not the fault of the body alone.131 Nor should we look for a fault in epithumia
itself. Rather, the fault is more frustratingly small: We cannot have total sophia because we make
mistakes, and small mistakes made by beings with bodies and desires in time and space call
down an ocean of complications that awaken pleonexia and lead to the decline of human beings,
cultures, and cities.132
131 The Glaucus tale proves that. (See 4.3.)
132 As the Copernican Revolution; the discovery of a centuries old mistake, which had been endued with

beauty, meaning, over the many hundreds of years that it went undiscovered turned a culture upside-down, brought

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The failure of the marriage number proves once more that the philosophers of the middle
books are not securely wise; they lack the means to recover, as Odysseus and Er and Socrates,
from their errors. Because their wisdom ignores human wisdom, it cannot prevent its own
decline into less and less promising states for philosophy, until it reaches democracy, the brink of
tyranny. But as luck would have it, a democracy is the very best place to go shopping for a new
way of life (557d).133 Decline is inevitable, but there are certain places for choice, where one
might with effort climb up rather than slide down.
Some commentators are morally disappointed or aesthetically disgusted by Book Xs
descent into the torments of Hades, as if the gory punishments there somehow implied that the
earlier arguments for justice were insufficient in themselves, and indeed, as if fear alone has
motivating power for (truly) just action or pursuit of the good. But this is just the point. The final
scenes of the Republic strip away the skin, the pretenses that being relatively good without
thinking about it is secure, satisfactory, just as good as chasing difficult and incomplete truth.
But this is not so. Socrates wants to show that there is no secure middle ground between the
pursuit of philosophy and the worst behaviors of human beingswe are either dragged (and drag
ourselves) up the steep upward slope or we slide down to the bottom, like wool over a carding
brush.
If anyone doubts about our own cultures present need for this tale, one has only to
glance at the voyeuristic and violent entertainments we have chosen as our unremarkable and
usual fare. The erosion of the barrier between tyrannic imagining and doing is increased daily as
we readers, surfers, and watchers indulge our Leontian appetites and gape through a hundred
little cameras at the weak, the dead, dying, the stumbling, the drunken, and other erotically

everything into question (whether it should have or not), gave birth to a new culture, new aspirations, new definition
of human being, divine, and so on.
133 See Roochnik (2003).

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servile beings as items to be viewed and manipulated at our pleasure rather than as they actually
are: human lives that could instruct us in our own choice of life. All the things that Glaucon is
ashamed to think of and that trouble our dreams, have now bubbled up into action and
conversation in the most public venues, not least in the entertainments and discussions of the
intellectual class.
Ours is a tyrant culture (many admit this readily, though they do not realize the extent of
that self-accusation), and we are being tyrannized by our appetites, which are blossoming into
banal decadence that our increasing standards of living and general wealth have purchased.
Should the moment arrive when Chance offers us the opportunity to do in the open air what we
only joke and fantasize about now, what will preserve us from becoming the perfectly manic,
and perfectly enslaved monsters of Book X? Moderating philosophy is necessary for mortal
human beings. The whole risk for human beings rests on it.
One detail of Socrates final speech in the Republic might still bother the reader: Socrates
says that each of us must be a seeker and student of that study by which he might be able to
learn and find out who will give him the capacity and the knowledge to distinguish the good and
the bad life, and so everywhere and always to choose the better from among those that are
possible (618c). This might seem to be an unnecessarily complicated charge to philosophical
action, and what is worse, a rather undignified advertisement for Socratesthe only one who can
show us how to live.134 But as one considers the parade of influential human beings, whose
names conjure up lives of luxury, power, foolishness, virtue, and so on, one begins to realize our
very great need to learn how to judge those passing characters without being enviously or
appetitively drawn to their vices or complacently dismissive of their virtues if they should
happen to pass by in shabby gear.

134 Roochnik suspects such a move in the Lysis.

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We are always admiring, envying, imitating, and judging fellow human beings; we shape
ourselves after the people we see. Why do these great or terrible men do what they do? What is
their inner truth? What does it mean to imitate their deeds or take up their ideas? We must
consider closely and at leisure the characters that pass before us and become our imaginative
lodestarsOdysseus, Er, and Socrates, too, and compare them with one another, and with their
doubles, opposites, and anti-typeswith Ardaeius and Gyges ancestor and Thrasymachus and
Glaucon and Adeimantus and Cephalus, and with some inner notion what of the perfectly good
life might look like. The study of justice and injustice proceeds by such comparisons and
analogies.
Socrates (and Plato) knows well that the human beings decide to live the way they do in
emulation or rejection of other human beings, famous, infamous, and intriguingly unknown.135
For this reason, perhaps, the dialogues tend to be titled with proper names (Phaedrus, and
Meno, and Lysis, and Laches, and so on) not concepts (On Rhetoric, and On
Recollection, and On Friendship and On Courage and so on).
There are a few exceptions, of course, among them the Symposium and the Republic.
Both of these latter dialogues parade a panoply of characters before us for our judgment and
admiration. Which character, if any, is sphron? Plato asks. Which one is sophon? The
whole risk for human beings may be in finding the characters from whom we can learn the most
important thingsfrom whom we can learn what we ought to study in order to choose the best
possible life. In the Republic, Plato puts all these lives before us, such that we, too can choose.136

135 Aristotle offers his phronimos man in the Nic. Ethics in this spirit.
136 See Howland (2004, 160) for a beautiful expression of this.

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And it is necessary for all human beings to find their mentors and choose their lives.137 It
is necessary to be able to say that some things are better than other things, while admitting that
our view of the ultimate standard by which one could judge such matters is imperfectly seen by
human beings: This requires constant comparison, constant going up and coming down, since
judgments about the best life can made only when all possible lives are constantly being
presented and adjudicated.138
If we do not philosophize in this moderate way, we will become incurable tyrants. In this
limited sense, the Republic offers a positive teaching: think, consider, be moderate, and avoid
tyranny. When Plato, the poet behind the scenes, enjoins us to pursue what we know cannot be
fully comprehended, the effect is not falsely tragic. He is not promoting incurable philosophical
gluttony. Rather the Republic argues in calm tones for limited transcendence, the satisfaction of
todays questions (as much as possible) with an eye on the maddening desires (of both body and
soul) that could prevent even this small success in knowing.
For all the ironies I have pointed out on the way (the exaggerations of Kallipolis, the
sterility of the philosopher-kings intellectual lives, the frequently preposterous appetite
analogy), Plato is serious, I think, when he has Socrates present the sophron as the happiest

137 Contra Reeve: Not everyone can, or should, lead the examined life (contrast Apology 38a5-6). But

everyone can benefit by their rulers leading such a lifea state of affairs which the Kallipolis is designed to
achieve (1988, 7).
138 See Howland, on the endlessnessnot hopelessnessof philosophers pursuits:

While non-imagistic speech runs the risk of conveying a false sense of clarity, precision, and finality,
Socrates philosophic images underscore the ceaseless character of the philosophic quest and emphasize the
importance of dialogue. [] Because the philosopher cannot step outside of his own vision and compare his
perceptions with that which truly is, he cannot know with certainty that his judgment is no longer distorted by his
initial habituation to the shadows. This does not mean that education, of the improvement of vision is impossible; on
the contrary, simply to recognize that one now sees in a relatively better light than before is to acknowledge that
education has in fact taken place. [] The philosopher can never be sure that his quest for wisdom has reached an
end. The philosopher must always be prepared to check whether he is seeing things in the best light. (2004, 146147)
Howland goes on to suggest that this is accomplished by engaging in philosophic dialoguein which we
make use of many eyes and perspectives. See 4.4.

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thinker. His analogical description of sophrosune in thinking is moving, unexpected, and it

answers a question that sounds quietly but insistently in the background of our reading of the
entire dialogue: Why would we labor through so many irritatingly fallible and redundant and
sometimes contradictory arguments unless our purposesand Platoswere serious?
True philosophy seeks understanding of the whole, including its failures and ironies. It is
not enough simply to point out the contradictions between the philosophers inspired hopes and
the reality of the human condition; that gap is well-documented, bewailed, and appreciated by
the tragic and comic poets. Rather, philosophers seek an analogy that takes up the whole, an
admittedly incomplete measure of the complete that admits the similarity and the difference
between the high and low and holds the whole together in some way. The best of such analogies
would explain the reasonable desire of human beings to escape paltry things and to be released
into great matters only and also their self-conscious understanding that such release is not
possible.
The moderation of the philosopher is finally a metaphysical response to one and many.139
When we speak about Platos view of physical reality, the desires, or ordinary life, for
example, we are facing the deepest and perhaps most insoluble mysteries of one and many, being
whole and being part, wanting all and wanting only the best. Perhaps it is better to put our hands
before our face and to pursue this unspeakable whole as if it were just a matter of politics, or
aesthetics, or ethics, or indeed, just metaphysics. Perhaps it is better not to stare at the sun, at
being, and what is behind it. For these too-bright first principles, the Republic offers euphemisms
and shadow pictures, restrained gestures toward an unattainable end. For this reason, in its
139 As I mentioned in the introduction to this thesis, I am dissatisfied with certain readings of Plato that

discount the metaphysical altogether: While I tend to agree with commentary that minimizes the importance of
codifying the Forms, one cannot deny that the Republic is all about being. There is a very a good reason we keep
returning to the forms and trying to square them with ordinary human experience (or vice versa, depending on our
penchantto show why the body is not so paltry a matter as Socrates seems to suggest, and so on). This harmony of
high and low that we desire is metaphysical moderation.

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spoken and unspoken themes, the dialogue towers like a colossus, terrifying in aspect but framed
in Homeric tenderness (and Hesiodic brusqueness) towards the mortal as it restrains, calms,
quiets, and covers the titanic desires of its author, its interlocutors, and perhaps its readers. For
all the other things that the polutropos Republic is, it is also a monument of restraint.

325

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