Who is glaucon in plato

What are the 3 classes in Plato's Republic? Plato lists three classes in his ideal society. Producers or Workers: The laborers who make the goods and services in the society.

What does cephalus mean? Cephalus is a name, used both for the hero-figure in Greek mythology and carried as a theophoric name by historical persons. The word kephalos is Greek for "head", perhaps used here because Cephalus was the founding "head" of a great family that includes Odysseus.

What is thrasymachus challenge? Thrasymachus, a Sophist, arguing against Socrates in Plato's Republic: You will learn most easily of all if you turn to the most perfect injustice, which makes the one who does injustice most happy, and those who suffer it and who would not be willing to do injustice, most wretched.

How many books are in the Republic? What is the story of Gyges? Gyges of Lydia was a historical king, the founder of the Mermnad dynasty of Lydian kings. Arriving at the palace, he used his new power of invisibility to seduce the queen, and with her help he murdered the king, and became king of Lydia himself.

What is Plato's theory of forms? Republic Plato. Home Literature Notes Republic Glaucon. Character Analysis Glaucon Glaucon, the "owl-eyed" one, is said to be him "who can see in the gathering twilight. The philosopher, by contrast, is most able to do what she wants to do, for she wants to do what is best, and as long as one has agency, there would seem to be a doable best. Should circumstances make a certain apparent best undoable, then it would no longer appear to be best.

But this is not to say that the philosopher is guaranteed to be able to do what she wants. First, Socrates is quite clear that some appetitive attitudes are necessary, and one can well imagine circumstances of extreme deprivation in which the necessary appetitive attitudes for food or drink, say are unsatisfiable. Second, the capacity to do what is best might require engaging in certain kinds of activities in order to maintain itself. So even if the philosopher can satisfy her necessary appetitive attitudes, she might be prevented by unfortunate circumstances from the sorts of regular thought and action that are required to hold onto the capacity to do what is best.

Thus, even if a philosophical soul is most able to do what it wants, and the closest thing to a sure bet for this capacity, it does not retain this ability in every circumstance. Socrates does not need happiness to be the capacity to do what one wants, or the absence of regret, frustration, and fear. He could continue to think, as he thought in Book One, that happiness is virtuous activity a. But if his argument here works, happiness, whatever it is, must require the capacity to do what one wants and be inconsistent with regret, frustration, and fear.

How does the argument apply to unjust people who are not psychologically tyrannical? Anyone who is not a philosopher either has a divided soul or is ruled by spirit or appetite. Division in the soul plainly undercuts the ability to do what one wants.

Can one seek honor or money above all and do what one wants? Although the ability to do what is honorable or make money is not as flexible as the ability to do what is best, it is surely possible, in favorable circumstances, for someone to be consistently able to do what is honorable or money-making.

This will not work if the agent is conflicted about what is honorable or makes money. So he needs to be carefully educated, and he needs limited options. But if he does enjoy adequate education and an orderly social environment, there is no reason to suppose that he could not escape being racked by regret, frustration, or fear. But we should be hesitant about applying these frequently confused and possibly anachronistic concepts to the Republic.

This contrast must not be undersold, for it is plausible to think that the self-sufficiency of the philosopher makes him better off. Appropriately ruled non-philosophers can enjoy the capacity to do what they want only so long as their circumstances are appropriately ruled, and this makes their success far less stable than what the philosophers enjoy.

Things in the world tend to change, and the philosopher is in a much better position to flourish through these changes. Those of us living in imperfect cities, looking to the Republic for a model of how to live cf. Nevertheless, so far as this argument shows, the success or happiness of appropriately ruled non-philosophers is just as real as that of philosophers. Judged exclusively by the capacity to do what one wants and the presence or absence of regret, frustration, and fear, philosophers are not better off than very fortunate non-philosophers.

The non-philosophers have to be so fortunate that they do not even recognize any risk to their good fortune.

Otherwise, they would fear a change in their luck. See also Kenny and Kraut Socrates needs further argument in any case if he wants to convince those of us in imperfect circumstances like Glaucon and Adeimantus to pursue the philosophical life of perfect justice. The first argument tries to show that anyone who wants to satisfy her desires perfectly should cultivate certain kinds of desires rather than others.

We can reject this argument in either of two ways, by taking issue with his analysis of which desires are regularly satisfiable and which are not, or by explaining why a person should not want to satisfy her desires perfectly. The first response calls for a quasi-empirical investigation of a difficult sort, but the second seems easy.

We can just argue that a good human life must be subject to regret and loss. Of course, it is not enough to say that the human condition is in fact marked by regret and loss. There is no inconsistency in maintaining that one should aim at a secure life in order to live the best possible human life while also realizing that the best possible human life will be marked by insecurity.

In this way, we move beyond a discussion of which desires are satisfiable, and we tackle the question about the value of what is desired and the value of the desiring itself. To address this possible objection, Socrates needs to give us a different argument. After all, the geometer does not need to offer multiple proofs of his theorem. What might seem worse, the additional proofs concern pleasure, and thereby introduce—seemingly at the eleventh hour—a heap of new considerations for the ethics of the Republic.

But as the considerations at the end of the previous section show, these pleasure proofs are crucial. Plato merely dramatizes these considerations. Socrates has offered not merely to demonstrate that it is always better to be just than unjust but to persuade Glaucon and Adeimantus but especially Glaucon: see, e. Insofar as Glaucon shows sympathy for spirited attitudes d with the discussion in section 4.

The additional proofs serve a second purpose, as well. At the end of Book Five, Socrates says that faculties at least psychological faculties are distinguished by their results their rate of success and by their objects what they concern c—d. So far, he has discussed only the success-rates of various kinds of psychological attitudes.

He needs to discuss the objects of various kinds of psychological attitudes in order to complete his account. The two arguments that Socrates proceeds to make are frustratingly difficult see Gosling and Taylor , Nussbaum , Russell , Moss , Warren , Shaw The first is an appeal to authority, in four easy steps. First, Socrates suggests that just as each part of the soul has its own characteristic desires and pleasures, so persons have characteristic desires and pleasures depending upon which part of their soul rules them.

The characteristic pleasure of philosophers is learning. The characteristic pleasure of honor-lovers is being honored. The characteristic pleasure of money-lovers is making money. Next, Socrates suggests that each of these three different kinds of person would say that her own pleasure is best. Finally, Socrates argues that the philosopher is better than the honor-lover and the money-lover in reason, experience, and argument.

It is sometimes thought that the philosopher cannot be better off in experience, for the philosopher has never lived as an adult who is fully committed to the pleasures of the money-lover. The first establishes that pleasure and pain are not exhaustive contradictories but opposites, separated by a calm middle that is neither pain nor pleasure. This may sometimes seem false. The removal of pain can seem to be pleasant, and the removal of a pleasure can seem to be painful.

But Socrates argues that these appearances are deceptive. He distinguishes between pleasures that fill a lack and thereby replace a pain these are not genuine pleasures and those that do not fill a lack and thereby replace a pain these are genuine pleasures.

The second step in the argument is to establish that most bodily pleasures—and the most intense of these—fill a painful lack and are not genuine pleasures. The pleasure proofs tempt some readers to suppose that Socrates must have a hedonistic conception of happiness. After all, he claims to have shown that the just person is happier than the unjust a—c , and he says that his pleasure arguments are proofs of the same claim c—d, b.

But these arguments can work just as the first proof works: Socrates can suppose that happiness, whatever it is, is marked by pleasure just as it is marked by the absence of regret, frustration, and fear. Pleasure is a misleading guide see c—d and c , and there are many false, self-undermining routes to pleasure and fearlessness. Anyone inclined to doubt that one should always be just would be inclined to doubt that justice is happiness.

So Socrates has to appeal to characteristics of happiness that do not, in his view, capture what happiness is, in the hope that the skeptics might agree that happiness correlates with the absence of regret, frustration, and fear and the presence of pleasure.

That would be enough for the proofs. Their beliefs and desires have been stained too deeply by a world filled with mistakes, especially by the misleading tales of the poets.

To turn Glaucon and Adeimantus more fully toward virtue, Socrates needs to undercut their respect for the poets, and he needs to begin to stain their souls anew.

The work that remains to be done—especially the sketch of a soul at the end of Book Nine and the myth of an afterlife in Book Ten—should deepen without transforming our appreciation for the psychological ethics of the Republic. Just as Socrates develops an account of a virtuous, successful human being and contrasts it with several defective characters, he also develops an account of a virtuous, successful city and contrasts it with several defective constitutions.

So the Republic contributes to political philosophy in two main ways. To sketch a good city, Socrates does not take a currently or previously extant city as his model and offer adjustments see e, and cf. Statesman e. He insists on starting from scratch, reasoning from the causes that would bring a city into being a—b.

This makes his picture of a good city an ideal, a utopia. The ideal city is conceivable, but humans are psychologically unable to create and sustain such a city. To consider the objection, we first need to distinguish two apparently ideal cities that Socrates describes.

It contains no provision for war, and no distinction among classes. At c—d, Glaucon suggests that one might find a third city, as well, by distinguishing between the three-class city whose rulers are not explicitly philosophers and the three-class city whose rulers are, but a three-class city whose rulers are not philosophers cannot be an ideal city, according to Socrates b—e. It is better to see Books Five through Seven as clarifications of the same three-class city first developed without full explicitness in Books Two through Four cf.

This city resembles a basic economic model since Socrates uses it in theorizing how a set of people could efficiently satisfy their necessary appetitive desires Schofield At the center of his model is a principle of specialization: each person should perform just the task to which he is best suited. It is a nowhere-utopia, and thus not an ideal-utopia. This is not to say that the first city is a mistake. Socrates introduces the first city not as a free-standing ideal but as the beginning of his account of the ideal, and his way of starting highlights two features that make the eventual ideal an ideal.

One is the principle of specialization. With it Socrates sketches how people might harmoniously satisfy their appetitive attitudes. If reason could secure a society of such people, then they would be happy, and reason does secure a society of such people in the third class of the ideal city. So the model turns out to be a picture of the producers in Kallipolis.

But the principle can also explain how a single person could flourish, for a version of it explains the optimal satisfaction of all psychological attitudes d—a with b—c. He objects that it lacks couches, tables, relishes, and the other things required for a symposium, which is the cornerstone of civilized human life as he understands it Burnyeat Glaucon is not calling for satisfaction of unnecessary appetitive attitudes, for the relishes he insists on are later recognized to be among the objects of necessary appetitive attitudes b.

Rather, he is expressing spirited indignation, motivated by a sense of what is honorable and fitting for a human being. He insists that there is more to a good human life than the satisfaction of appetitive attitudes. This begins to turn Glaucon away from appetitive considerations against being just. Some readers would have Plato welcome the charge. As they understand the Republic , Socrates sketches the second city not as an ideal for us to strive for but as a warning against political utopianism or as an unimportant analogue to the good person.

There are a couple of passages to support this approach. At b—b, Socrates says that the point of his ideal is to allow us to judge actual cities and persons based on how well they approximate it. And at a—b, he says that the ideal city can serve as a model paradeigma were it ever to come into existence or not.

But these passages have to be squared with the many in which Socrates insists that the ideal city could in fact come into existence just a few: c—d, bc, c, b—d, a—c, d—e. His considered view is that although the ideal city is meaningful to us even if it does not exist, it could exist. Of course, realizing the ideal city is highly unlikely. The widespread disrepute of philosophy and the corruptibility of the philosophical nature conspire to make it extremely difficult for philosophers to gain power and for rulers to become philosophers a—c.

Nevertheless, according to what Socrates explicitly says, the ideal city is supposed to be realizable. The Laws imagines an impossible ideal, in which all the citizens are fully virtuous and share everything a— with Plato: on utopia , but the Republic is more practical than that Burnyeat ; cf.

Griswold and Marshall I consider this possibility in section 6 below. This is not clear. It is difficult to show that the ideal city is inconsistent with human nature as the Republic understands it. Socrates supposes that almost all of its citizens—not quite all d—e —have to reach their fullest psychological potential, but it is not clear that anyone has to do more than this.

In these general terms, the criticism is false. Socrates builds his theory on acute awareness of how dangerous and selfish appetitive attitudes are, and indeed of how self-centered the pursuit of wisdom is, as well. A hard-nosed political scientist might have this sort of response. But this sounds like nothing more than opposition to political theory proposing ideals that are difficult to achieve, and it is not clear what supports this opposition.

It is not as though political theorizing must propose ideas ready for implementation in order to propose ideas relevant to implementation. Of course, even if it is not nowhere-utopian, it might fail to be attractively ideal-utopian. We need to turn to other features of the second city that have led readers to praise and blame it.

One of the most striking features of the ideal city is its abolition of private families and sharp limitation on private property in the two guardian classes.

On the one hand, Aristotle at Politics a11—22 and others have expressed uncertainty about the extent of communism in the ideal city. On the other, they have argued that communism of any extent has no place in an ideal political community. There should be no confusion about private property. When Socrates describes the living situation of the guardian classes in the ideal city d—b , he is clear that private property will be sharply limited, and when he discusses the kinds of regulations the rulers need to have in place for the whole city c ff.

But confusion about the scope of communal living arrangements is possible, due to the casual way in which Socrates introduces this controversial proposal. The abolition of private families enters as an afterthought. It is not immediately clear whether this governance should extend over the whole city or just the guardian classes. Still, when he is pressed to defend the communal arrangements c ff. Laws c—b. To what extent the communism of the ideal city is problematic is a more complicated question.

The critics claim that communism is either undesirable or impossible. This criticism fails if there is clear evidence of people who live communally.

But the critic can fall back on the charge of undesirability. Here the critic needs to identify what is lost by giving up on private property and private families, and the critic needs to show that this is more valuable than any unity and extended sense of family the communal arrangements offer. It is not clear how this debate should go. Socrates ties the abolition of private families among the guardian classes to another radical proposal, that in the ideal city the education for and job of ruling should be open to girls and women.

The exact relation between the proposals is contestable Okin Is Socrates proposing the abolition of families in order to free up women to do the work of ruling? Or is Socrates putting the women to work since they will not have the job of family-caregiver anymore? But perhaps neither is prior to the other. Each of the proposals can be supported independently, and their dovetailing effects can be claimed as a happy convergence.

Other readers disagree Annas , Buchan First, Socrates suggests that the distinction between male and female is as relevant as the distinction between having long hair and having short hair for the purposes of deciding who should be active guardians: men and women, just like the long-haired and the short-haired, are by nature the same for the assignment of education and jobs b—b. The second plausibly feminist commitment in the Republic involves the abolition of private families.

But as Socrates clarifies what he means, both free love and male possessiveness turn out to be beside the point. Plato is clearly aware that an account of how the polis should be arranged must give special attention to how families are arranged.

Relatedly, he is clearly aware that an account of the ideal citizens must explain how sexual desire, a paradigmatic appetitive attitude, should fit into the good human life. All the more might this awareness seem feminist when we relate it back to the first plausibly feminist commitment, for Plato wants the economy of desire and reproduction to be organized in such a way that women are free for education and employment alongside men, in the guardian classes, at any rate.

Second, some have said that feminism requires attention to what actual women want. Since Plato shows no interest in what actual women want, he would seem on this view of feminism to be anti-feminist. But the limitations of this criticism are apparent as soon as we realize that Plato shows no interest in what actual men want.

Plato focuses instead on what women and men should want, what they would want if they were in the best possible psychological condition. Third, some have insisted that feminism requires attention to and concern for the particular interests and needs of women as distinct from the particular interests and needs of men. There should be no doubt that there are conceptions of feminism according to which the Republic is anti-feminist. But this does not undercut the point that the Republic advances a couple of plausibly feminist concerns.

After all, what greater concern could Socrates show for the women than to insist that they be fully educated and allowed to hold the highest offices? Socrates goes on to argue that the philosopher-rulers of the city, including the female philosopher-rulers, are as happy as human beings can be.

But it is not clear that these distinctions will remove all of the tension, especially when Socrates and Glaucon are saying that men are stronger or better than women in just about every endeavor c. Final judgment on this question is difficult see also Saxonhouse , Levin , E. The disparaging remarks have to be taken one-by-one, as it is doubtful that all can be understood in exactly the same way. Moreover, it is of the utmost importance to determine whether each remark says something about the way all women are by nature or essentially.

But if the disparagements do not express any considered views about the nature of women, then we might be able to conclude that Plato is deeply prejudiced against women and yet committed to some plausibly feminist principles.

But it is worth thinking through the various ways in which this charge might be made, to clarify the way the philosopher-rulers wield political authority over the rest of the city see Bambrough , Taylor , L.

Brown , and Ackrill Socrates is quite explicit that the good at which the rulers aim is the unity of the city a—b. Is this an inherently totalitarian and objectionable aim? The problem, Popper and others have charged, is that the rulers aim at the organic unity of the city as a whole, regardless of the individual interests of the citizens. But this would be surprising, if true. So how could the rulers of Kallipolis utterly disregard the good of the citizens? Some readers answer Popper by staking out a diametrically opposed position Vlastos Any totalitarian control of the citizens is paternalistic.

Yet this view, too, seems at odds with much of the Republic. So a mixed interpretation seems to be called for Morrison ; cf. Kamtekar , Meyer , and Brennan On this view, if the citizens do not see themselves as parts of the city serving the city, neither the city nor they will be maximally happy.

But it is not obvious that the rulers of Kallipolis have inherently totalitarian and objectionable aims cf. The perfectly unjust life, he argues, is more pleasant than the perfectly just life. In making this claim, he draws two detailed portraits of the just and unjust man. The completely unjust man, who indulges all his urges, is honored and rewarded with wealth.

The completely just man, on the other hand, is scorned and wretched. With several ideas of justice already discredited, why does Plato further complicate the problem before Socrates has the chance to outline his own ideas about justice? SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Important Quotes Explained.