Plato Notes

Book I:
Pg 21.
343b

Justice/Injustice

Injustice rules the just

“The just man everywhere has less than the unjust man.” The unjust man has no morals, no limits.

Juvenal
“What I want-I take- let my will take the place of reasoned argument.”

Justice: virtue, prudent, good, knowledge, wise, happy
- the soul’s virture is to purse the good
Injustice: vice, thoughtless, bad, lack of knowledge, ignorant, wretched


Book II:
Pg. 35

City→follow justice→Must be led by guardians

The Guardians:
- Swift
- Strong
- Philosophical king
Speech=Logic/Reason

Most important subjects for the young:
o Gym for the body
o Music for the soul

Censorship is good, because you can’t have kids believing gods are not perfect. We want the guardians to emulate the gods, so we do not want them to emulate something that is not good.
377c
378d
379d
382d→”we’ll not let the teachers use them for the education of the young, if our guardians are going to be go-revering and divine insofar as a human can possibly be.”

Book III
Pg93

Guardians: Gold
Auxliaries/Soldiers: Silver
Farmers/Merchants: Bronze and Iron

If a “gold” has a “bronze” or “iron” child or vice-versa, they must be separated, so as not to contaminate the “gold.”
Keep the metals separate.

Hitler used this idea of “gold”→ as being better than others.

P95 416d→Stalin used this idea of sharing→”Communism”

BookIV
p.97

p.106, 428a
Nature not nurture.
Guardians→Gold→Wisdom→smallest %

You cannot make a gold out of someone who was once bronze. Even if you have converted to Catholisicm, even if you only had a jewsih grandparent, you are still a Jew (Hitler ideal)

428c
Auxiliaries/Soldiers→Silver→Courage

429e-430a
“Don’t think we devised all that for any other purpose than that—persuaded by us—they should receive their laws from us in the finest possible way like a dye, so that their opinion about what is terrible and about everything else would be colorfast because they had the proper nature and rearing, and their dye could not be washed out by those lyes so terribly effective at scouring, pleasure—more terribly effective for this many than any Chalestrean soda and alkali;”

Farmers/Merchants→Bronze/Iron→Moderation.

With these three working together, you have a “Just City.”

Encouraging segregation

p.119
Thinks that all three things are found in everyone’s soul.
439d
“So we won’t be irrational…” to “…replenishments and pleasures.”

Three-part soul:
- Calculating (Reason)→Gold→Super ego, taught to you
- Loves, Hungers, Thirsts ([irrational] Desire)→Silver→ID
- Spirit→Bronze/Iron→ego, who you are

p.121
Have harmony of the three components in both the soul and in the Just City.

Book VII
p.193
allegory of the cave