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 6: Man and Beast
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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
Where were we?
Oh yeah, the Ring of Gyges, what was the point?
Egoism.
If you had a ring of invisibility,
you would turn unjust, that's psychological egoism confirmed.
And you should turn unjust.
Being unjust, so long as you get away with it is rational.
It's sure better than the alternative, if the alternative
is being the just guy everyone wrongly thinks is unjust.
Conclusion,
Socrates is wrong. Justice is not inherently desirable.
Only desirable for its good effect.
If the good effects happened to attach to un, injustice instead, go with that.
Maybe when I said that, you stiffened your spine and said, but right is
right, let justice be done, though the heavens fall on my head in particular.
No one ever said, being a hero was easy.
Being just means being prepared to make the greatest sacrifice, for justice.
I will stand with Socrates, for justice. And Socrates loses again.
Thanks to you, you big dope.
Because he says justice is to our personal advantage.
Always.
I keep repeating that.
Not everyone's advantage overall.
If I nobly give up mine, I'm supposed to be better of.
Justice, even if it gets me tortured and killed,
is supposed to be the guaranteed safe bet, for me.
Socrates is doomed, right?
But let's first back up. Is this whole setup a practical problem?
I mean, if Socrates loses and word gets out,
is that, like, the end of the world or something?
No, it's not a practical problem.
Well, here's why, maybe it isn't a practical problem.
Here's a word i didn't use in the last few
videos, and probably a few of you are wondering why not.
Prisoner's dilemma. Look it up on Wikipedia.
It's a game theory concept.
But I think it's seeped into the public
culture enough that lots of people are familiar.
I'll be brief, The Game of Wrong I sketched out
in the last two videos, is a prisoner's dilemma type setup.
Doesn't have anything inherently to do with being
imprisoned, that's just the classic case people discuss.
It's a structure of payouts, the interesting thing
is the rational strategy isn't clearly the winning strategy.
But how can that be? Let re, me remind you of the payout scheme
for our game of Wrong.
I'll make it a two person game, that's traditional.
I'm going to substitute a hit for do wrong, because
I think that makes it a bit more vivid.
I don't want anyone getting lost in the philosophical of what is wrong, really.
Oh, and remember, kids, it's fun to hit people,
but it's not as good as being hit as bad.
That's a premise.
First best option,
I hit you, you don't hit me.
Second best, I don't hit you, you don't hit me.
Third best, worst really, I hit you, you hit me.
Fourth best, I don't hit you, you hit me.
The paradox of the prisoner's dilemma is this.
If you and I are both perfectly rational
and perfectly self-interested, and if we have to
decide our game strategy in ignorance, of what the
other player will do, we're going to get option three.
You can think about why that's true.
Which is quite a bad option. By contrast, if we are what Percennius
would call idiots, fools, with faith in justice naives, we'll get option two.
Which is quite a good option. Is this really a paradox?
It's not a contradiction.
It's just kind of funny, that extra rationality could
make everyone worse off than they might have been.
What does it take to solve this problem?
Do we need a philosopher to prove justice is always to our advantage?
No.
All we need, as I mentioned before, is iterated play.
You and I are going to meet again. And a method to detect cheaters.
That is, hitters.
This is a very long winded way of making a very
simple point.
If you're going to get in trouble later for hitting now, you'll think twice.
So now we have our answer.
It doesn't really matter if Socrates is wrong about justice,
because we don't need philosophers to keep us on the level.
We just need some combination of the police, plus gossip.
Basically everyone is forced to wear a low-grade visibility ring in the
sense that if they misbehave, word tends to get out, and then they
get whacked with the stick.
In my book, I quote from an ancient Greek author, Hesiod.
Story of an older brother, who parted some wisdom to
a younger brother, who is apparently contemplating a life of crime.
Older brother tells younger brother the story of a powerful
hawk, who grabs a little bird that cries for its life.
The hawk says, shut up. The end.
The moral
of the story, oh wait, I forgot to finish the story.
The older brother then tells the younger
brother, little brother, you ain't no hawk.
Get a job.
Telling someone not to be a criminal just because you'll get caught is cynical.
Because it amounts to telling people to be criminals if they won't be caught.
Glaucon and Adeimantus complain about this sort of thing.
Hesiod is famous for being a moralist. But look, he's totally
amoral, but it works.
You see it as also famous for being, practical.
Is the solution perfect?
Police plus gossip, to keep everyone in line?
Now it's far from perfect.
But it works. So are we done?
Here's a concern about how there might be more, to this problem.
Maybe we'll need Socrates's help after all.
Here's a quote from Machiavelli, his book The Prince,
a chapter entitled How Princes Should Keep Faith.
It's kind of a old-fashioned translation, but I like those.
Quote, everyone understands how praiseworthy it is in a Prince
to keep faith, and to live uprightly and not craftily.
Nevertheless, we see from what has taken place in our own days that Princes
who have set little store by their word, but have known how to overreach men
by their cunning, have accomplished great things.
And in the end, got the better of those who trusted to honest dealings.
Be it known then, that there are two ways of
contending, one in accordance with the laws, the other by force.
The first of which is proper to men, the second to beasts.
But since the first method is often ineffectual,
it becomes necessary to resort to the second.
A Prince should therefore
understand how to use well both the man and the beast.
And this lesson has been covertly taught by
the ancient writers, who related how Achilles and many
other of those old Princes were given over to
be brought up and trained by Chiron the Centaur.
Since the only meaning of their having for instructor one who
was half man and half beast is, that it is necessary
for a Prince to know how to use both natures,
and that the one without the other has no stability.
But since a Prince should know how to use
the beast's nature wisely, he ought of beasts to choose
both the lion and the fox; for the lion cannot
guard himself from the toils, nor the fox from wolves.
He must therefore be a fox
to discern toils, and a lion to drive off wolves.
To rely wholly on the lion is unwise and for
this reason, a prudent prince neither can nor ought to keep
his word when to keep it is hurtful to him
and the causes which led him to pledge it are removed.
If all men were good, this would not be good advice.
But since they are dishonest and do not keep faith
with you, you in return, need not keep faith with them.
Kind of a long passage to read you, but it's great.
I think it's fair to say that everyone understands what he's
saying here, well, everything except the bid he says everyone understands.
Namely, how praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep faith.
Also, if you're going to write a chapter titled How Princes Should
Keep Faith, maybe the thesis statement of the chapter should not be,
princes should not keep faith, pro tip. Also, in what sense is it proper to
men, to live in a way that men can't live, because other men don't live that way?
We've kind of been over all this already. I'm repeating myself.
What are we getting here from Machiavelli?
It's a mix of psychological and moral egoism.
At the level of state craft,
it's Percennius philosophy with a bit of elementary prudence added in.
What does Makiaveli know that Percennius doesn't?
Basically that in order to fake being a faithful, honorable, etc, etc
ruler, you actually have to be faithful, honorable, a lot of the time.
Seriously, think about it.
Percennius sounds like he thinks, the way to get a good reputation is to cut off
people's heads if they don't call you just.
That's likely to be a short term governing strategy.
And even in the short term, it's a pretty unsophisticated public relation strategy.
But here's the thing.
Suppose everyone thinks like this.
Machiavelli tells his reader, the Prince, that the
vulgar are very gullible and easy to fool.
I have another idea, how about not, or at least not
so much.
This alleged secret wisdom of centaurs, admitting a couple of you out there
hadn't heard of the guy and heard to look up Chiron on Wikipedia.
That's c h i r o n, not c h a r o n.
Charon with an a is the buy with a boat who takes your obol when you are dead.
See lesson 4.
Chiron with an i, what I am saying, you have read Harry Potter.
You know,
what a centaur is.
You even know they sometimes get work as teachers.
Beyond that, the cynical part of what
Machiavelli is saying, is not hard to grasp.
Speaking in Machiavelli's olden days idiom, every lout of a
peasant knows what a fox is, and what a wolf is.
It isn't that hard to imagine a fox-wolf,
or a wolf-lion-fox, or mix them how you like.
The idea
that it's shrewd to cheat, but only so long as you don't get caught.
The idea that the results of picking a fight with a weakling may
differ from the effects of picking a fight with someone stronger than you.
This is not some kind of super secret arcane wisdom.
Since these thoughts are so easy to grasp and so plausible.
Let's ask the obvious follow up.
What if everyone thinks this way, to the point where they really feel this way.
Suppose everyone believes, intellectually and also feels,
at the level of emotion and practical
impulse, that justice is a tool you use only when it is to your advantage.
You might say like we have been saying,
well then justice is just a tool, like
a sturdy no-nonsense hammer, screwdriver, or allen wrench.
That suggests a metaphor.
We can build society like a bookshelf, from IKEA, it's not that nice.
Nobody ever built utopia out of particle board, but it's okay.
No, that's wrong. Justice is now, in our minds, a lie.
A tool of deceit. Every just act by you is in
your mind a cost. An investment in mere appearance.
Like the man said, the secret of success is sincerity.
Once you can fake that, you've got it made.
Same goes for justice, and virtue.
If everyone thinks this way, and feels
this way, the system will predictably breakdown.
Gossip and the police won't be enough to stop accelerating social disorder.
If everyone
stops thinking and feeling, that there's
anything good inherently about justice in itself.
As opposed to it being a good trick to play on the
neighbors for a while to get them to let down their guard.
I can quote some social science to this effect, but the conceptual point will do.
Police, who don't care about justice won't police.
Gossiping about how horrible people are, if everyone
thinks being horrible is smart, will lose its sting.
Here's a thought.
There could be a kind of cheat-detection arms race
to stave off this disaster, like my visibility ring.
If everyone were insanely good at detecting
cheating, I mean really good, then that
would maybe hold the system together even if everyone wanted to cheat all the time.
But who am I kidding?
It's like Socrates said, those who are good
at blocking punches are good at throwing punches.
Anyone insanely good at detecting cheating is probably
also insanely good at cheating.
I don't know. Maybe we should just all take drugs.
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