In this course we study the ancient, Socratic art of blowing up your beliefs as you go, to make sure they're built to last. We spend six weeks studying three Platonic dialogues - "Euthyphro", "Meno", "Republic" Book I - then two weeks pondering a pair of footnotes to Plato: contemporary moral theory and moral psychology. Platonic? Socratic? Socrates was the teacher, but he said he never did. Plato was the student who put words in his teacher's mouth. You'll get a feel for it. We have a book: the new 4th edition of "Reason and Persuasion", by the instructor (and his wife, Belle Waring, the translator.) It contains the Plato you need, plus introductory material and in-depth, chapter-length commentaries. (Don't worry! John Holbo knows better than to read his book to the camera. The videos cover the same material, but the presentation is different.) The book is offered free in PDF form - the whole thing, and individual chapter slices. It is also available in print and other e-editions. See the course content for links and information. The course is suitable for beginning students of Plato and philosophy, but is intended to offer something to more advanced students as well. We seek new, odd angles on old, basic angles. Tricky! The strategy is to make a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary approach. Lots of contemporary connections, to make the weird bits intuitive; plus plenty of ancient color, still bright after all these years. So: arguments and ideas, new possibilities, old stories, fun facts. Plus cartoons. The results can get elaborate (some book chapters and some lesson videos run long.) But each video comes with a brief summary of its contents. The lessons progress. I put them in this order for reasons. But there's no reason you can't skip over and around to find whatever seems most interesting. There are any number of self-contained mini-courses contained in this 8-week course. You are welcome to them. Plato has meant different things to different people. He's got his own ideas, no doubt. (Also, his own Ideas.) But these have, over the centuries, been worn into crossing paths for other feet; been built up into new platforms for projecting other voices. (Plato did it to Socrates, so fair is fair.) So your learning outcome should be: arrival somewhere interesting, in your head, where you haven't been before. I wouldn't presume to dictate more exactly.
Lesson 6 Part 2: Preaching Injustice
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Reason and Persuasion: Thinking Through Three Dialogues By Plato
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National University of Singapore
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Plato's Republic, Book I: Thrasymachus.
We finish up “Republic”, Book I. We have gotten to Thrasymachus, the main attraction. He’s attractive-repulsive, as a person. ‘Justice is the advantage of the stronger!’ In this Lesson I lay out his views. I think it’s best to see him as suspended between a few theoretical possibilities, not really settled on one. But he’s definitely an egoist. But egoism and justice aren’t the same thing, are they? I relate the Thrasymachus material to the rest of “Republic”, in which a refined version of Thrasymachus’ view eventually receives a long, considerate response from Socrates. He builds Utopia to refute Thrasymachus. So the guy must be important.
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John Holbo, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT of PHILOSOPHY
Last lesson I talked mostly about the father and son Cephalus and Polemarchus.
now we're moving on to Thrasymachus, I'm going to deal with
him relatively briefly giving how much text he takes up.
What gives? I think this guy is boring.
I said he was a great villain, and he is.
You've probably noticed that my lectures have a kind
of, make sure you don't miss this interesting thing quality.
Well, no one's going to miss Thrasymachus.
He's obviously interesting.
So I'm sort of leaving that to you to a considerable degree.
Let me put the point another way, in terms of the old man and his son.
Remember how he said the old man and
his son have one advantage over their theories?
They're clearly interesting.
On the other hand, their theories are sort of uninteresting because
it's fairly obvious what's wrong with them, yet that's what's so interesting.
Cephalus and Polemarchus aren't simpletons.
So what gives?
More specifically, what is it that they want that is preventing
them from seeing what is obviously inadequate about what they're saying?
Thrasymachus is the same.
He's more theoretically interesting.
He has a bold, rather unconventional theory.
And he can think a move ahead.
He at least tries to block the most obvious punches.
But quite frankly it's still a mess. He's on to something
interesting, something that can be shaped up into something very interesting.
But he messes it up.
Why does he mess it up? Is he dumb?
I would say the reason is the same as for the old man and his son.
Thrasymachus is trying to hold on to something he wants.
That makes him, not want to see inconvenient things.
Rather than trace out the messy mix, which would make a mess, let me just try to give
you the gist of why it goes wrong in the way it does.
Then starting in the next video, I'll just give you the thing you should've said.
The thing that makes sense, that's pretty close to what he does say.
That is, I'm going to skip to the beginning
of Republic book two, one chapter past our
reading and in fact at the end of
book one, Thrasymachus has been smacked around and humiliated.
There's an obvious dramatic irony to this,
as I hope my cartoon conveys. So naturally, Thrasymachus sulks off.
But the two other characters, Glaucon and Adeimantus, take up his argument for him.
They don't like Thrasymachus.
They commend Socrates for slapping him about.
But they can't help but think, though they don't want
this to be true, that the guy has a point.
At least half a point.
The two brothers build a better Thrasymachus.
In the hopes that Socrates really can
defeat even the strongest version, of this villain.
He's like the really giant Bowser that always comes back in
the final boss battle, when you think Mario has defeated him.
And let me just say it, their improved
mecha version of Thrasymachus really is much better.
So maybe we should just skip Thrasymachus himself and
proceed straight to the giant robot version in book two.
Nah.
I think it's still important,
interesting anyway to understand him, the guy, as
well as his theory and what it might be.
What does he want?
Thrasymachus wants to look out for number one, Thrasymachus.
And he wants that to be great.
Theoretically speaking, he is an advocate of egoism.
That is, he think it is rational, hence morally right, in a sense ethically right,
to maximize one's own self-interest.
Now, there is an immediate apparent problem with this.
As GK Chesterton writes, preaching egoism is practicing altruism.
You get it? No?
All right. You know what a cat is, right?
Cats are basically self centered creatures.
As a result, here's something cats don't care about.
Getting non-cats to appreciate how great
it is to be a cat.
So it's sort of funny to see an egoist.
Preaching the virtue of egoism to non-egoists.
Is this not a contradiction?
Actually, no.
But it's a sign that you don't believe what
you're saying, which is maybe not a good sign.
Is this Thrasymachus' mistake?
No. He sees this problem.
He tries to correct it.
In fact, I think he over corrects for it. Hold that thought.
One more bit of ground clearing.
Egoism, is at least two philosophies in one.
It's a normative doctrine. And a descriptive doctrine.
Ethical egoism, tells you that you should behave selfishly.
Psychological egoism says, people do behave selfishly.
If you think about it I think you will
see that the two theories probably fit together nicely.
Someone who thinks that people
in fact are totally selfish is more likely to
think that you, therefore should be selfish, and vice versa.
There are logical and psychological reasons to hold both.
If you hold either.
All the same you could hold one and not the other.
So what Thrasymachus' bag?
One or the other, or both. Sort of both.
But he gets them a bit mixed up. You don't want to do that, so watch out.
Psychologically, he's definitely an egoist in the sense that he's very egotistical.
That is, self-centered, arrogant, conceited.
He is a posturing blowhard.
Hence fun to watch, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
How does he fall? Goes like this, he advances a non
conventional account of justice. Justice he says, is the
advantage of the stronger. What does that mean.
Okay.
Here's the paradigm situation that makes clear, what fighting
for justice is really all about, according to Thrasymachus.
Somebody grabs power and everyone else has to do what he says.
The end. That's justice.
What?
Look, the guy forces them all to do what he says,
and to say that it is just.
Because if they don't say, oh great lord vulture,
you are so just, he cuts off their heads.
The end.
Being a bit crude about it, but it is kind of a crude view.
Justice turns out to be a semantic side effect.
A byproduct, of tyranny plus lies.
This isn't what people teach children, about justice.
Mommy what is justice?
My dear child, justice is a wonderful thing.
Sometimes when a form of tyranny and a lie, love each
other very much they have a baby, and that baby is justice.
But where does the baby justice come from, mommy?
Look, kid.
A giant, horrible bird brings it. And then everyone runs screaming,
alright? It's a horror movie.
It's not suitable for kids.
So, Thrasymachus isn't relying on conventional notions of justice.
Then again, there is something conventional about it.
Cynicism about human nature isn't just for philosophers.
Regular folks are cynical too.
And, this is important, we're also egoists, up to a point.
We think it's rational and
right to pursue our self interest, somewhat.
So egoism finds its way into conventional conceptions of morality and justice.
Up to a point.
There's a little Thrasymachus in all of us.
Everyone thinks egoism is half true.
No one thinks egoism is totally true. No one?
Alright. We'll leave psychopaths out.
And even then it's still too strong. Consider this.
Mostly, when people say that greed is good, or selfishness is
a virtue or the pursuit of economic self interest produces efficiency.
They believe, or at least they would like to believe, that egoism along some
axis is instrumentally good because it makes everyone better off in the long run.
They're preaching altruism by
preaching the practice of egoism. But not Thrasymachus.
He's a little bit unusual in that he doesn't pretend that there's
some larger view according to which the little guy is made better off.
Rising tide raises all boats.
Tyranny is good for the economy because it drives up demand for weapons.
And then that boosts the healthcare sector.
None of that.
Tyranny is good for the tyrant.
Period. To repeat.
Thrasymachus says that in, justice is the advantage of the stronger.
And to repeat.
This is rather an unconventional thing to say.
But not totally. Now, what goes wrong?
Turns out there's sort of a trick ideal real distinction.
Thrasymachus needs to draw, under pressure, from Socrates.
You should watch that.
But, really, the problem is this: Thrasymachus is lying.
[COUGH] Excuse me. He's lying.
When the tyrant, says justice is doing what he says, he's lying.
There's a thing called justice.
But this ain't it.
He can chop off my head for saying it, but that won't change the truth.
Which us brings to, Thrasymachus is lying to himself.
Oh what a tangled web we weave.
His enthusiasm for tyranny, is causing him to lie Even to
himself about what justice really is. Let me try to put it a different way.
Thrasymachus isn't proposing a theory of justice.
He doesn't have one of those. He's got a theory of injustice.
Well why doesn't he have a theory of justice if he believes in it?
Because it's boring and useless and stupid.
I hope you're writing this down, kids.
Why is justice boring and useless and stupid?
One.
Justice is politically and socially non-explanatory.
Studying justice doesn't help you understand
how things work around the place.
Because they don't work justly.
Life isn't fair, kid.
Thus, if you want to understand life, study not fair.
Study injustice. Two, justice is personally undesirable.
Practicing justice, is no way to get ahead in business or anywhere else.
It's a risky, thankless pain.
By contrast, injustice is interesting, useful, and
smart, which brings us to the flip sides.
To one and two, three.
Injustice is politically explanatory.
Most of what happens in politics, society, and life
happens because someone is taking unfair advantage of someone else.
This is the norm, not the exception.
Four, injustice is personally desirable.
Pursuing injustice gets you what you want.
This is complicated, because two and four are more like rules of thumb.
You should think about that, but really this is complicated because of five.
Make sure to call it justice when you pursuing injustice, and call what the just
people are doing, unjust for good measure. And
now notice that trying to write down one to four while doing what five
says, produces weird, unclear results.
Remember my grinch joke from last lesson. The sophist
got a wonderful, awful idea. That's a classic joke.
It's a classic villain moment.
The villain thinks that evil is good. That's what villains do.
But if you only want what is evil because you think
that evil is good, then you want what is good, yeah?
Well, you see the point.
At least you feel something funny happening.
You need to preserve a sense in which good is good, so that saying
that bad is good is praise.
But then it turns out that your praise is a lie.
In the same way, you need to preserve a sense that justice is desirable.
Just in order to understand why the tyrant would
want, or need to bother to lie about it.
Confused.
I hope the next video will make it clearer but at least you get this much.
Thrasymachus is engaged in deceptive double-talk regarding justice.
This in itself may be fine by his likes.
Indeed, I think we are seeing Matinicus make a point of lying.
He's trying not to appear too honest,
guy has a reputation for ruthlessness to maintain.
If you are morally prepared to slaughter any number of innocence in order to set
yourself up as a tyrant.
Why draw the line at a recreational fib,
in the context of a harmless philosophical debate.
But self deception is a more serious matter.
When all that matters to you is you, fooling yourself is a costly mistake.
That's over-correction on the don't be too honest front.
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