MARK MOESsense of shame, for example, at 405a6, 405b1, 405b6, and 405d4. At 410b1– 3
Socrates appeals to Glaucon’s self-conception as someone who is already well
educated when he says that the mousikov~ will make no use of iatrikhÛv that is not
absolutely necessary.
- Even if Plato’s Socrates (or Plato) endorsed the radical political policies
of book 5, he would not necessarily endorse that they be implemented and re-
quired by law. The feminist policies aired by the Athenian Stranger in the Laws
do not clinch the matter of Plato’s view on this, for their status is also unclear.
Clay points out that the status of the utopian proposals in the Republic and Laws
is connected, in his “Reading the Republic,” 29 and n24. Also see Clay on the
way “the closure of positions taken by the speakers within the dialogue is chal-
lenged by a dialogue that refuses to conclude,” 21– 24. Myles Burnyeat, in an
emotional discussion of Leo Strauss’s view of the Republic, writes that Strauss’s
“crowning insult to the critical intellect” is his insinuation that “ the just city is
against nature because the equality of the sexes and absolute communism is
against nature.” Burnyeat says this insinuation is completely opposed to “what
Plato wrote and Aristotle criticized.” See Burnyeat, “Sphinx Without a Secret,”
in Plato: Critical Assessments, vol. 1, ed. Nicholas D. Smith (New York and Lon-
don: Routledge, 1998), 341– 43. Burnyeat has also argued that Plato presents
his “best city in speech” as a practical political teaching in “The Practicability
of Plato’s Ideally Just City,” in On Justice, ed. K. Boudouris (Athens: Helle ̄nike ̄
Philosophike ̄ Hetaireia, 1989), 94– 105. Burnyeat, to my mind, not only wrongly
assumes that Aristotle’s cursory allusions to Plato must always be taken as good
evidence for Plato’s authorial intentions in the dialogues, but reads the Republic
in such a way as to miss frequent indications in the text that practical realiza-
tion is not Socrates’ concern. There is also a need to interpret the signifi cance
of the Athenian Stranger’s repeated indications in the Laws (for example, 739c,
740a, 773b) that radical communism is contrary to human nature. - So the vicious person is unable to take his own prejudices or confl icts of
interest into account and to compensate for them in his judgments. - In Thrasymachus we see an example of a man who has become totally
incapable of granting that anyone might be truly virtuous, and has come to be-
lieve that human goodness lies in manipulative and coercive power alone. He is
unable to benefi t from Socrates’ refutations of his views, even though Socrates
treats him as a friend (see 498c– d). In the moral scheme of Thomas Aquinas
there are two virtues that perfect the will, justice and friendship (Summa theo-
logica 1– 2.ae.57.1). - There seems to be a critical backward reference here to the earlier pro-
posal to censor out of the literary education of guardians any depictions of un-
just deeds and characters. If episthvmh is of Forms, then knowledge of injustice
must involve awareness of various Forms of both virtue and vice. Compare the
reference to “forms of vice” in 445c and throughout the tale of the decline of
the polities in books 8– 9. Note also the depictions of vice and folly in the Myth
of Er. Compare Socrates’ remarks at 402c. The Republic and the other dialogues
are in great part examinations of forms of virtue and vice. - See the mention of the Myth of Er in note 56 below.