Plato
The Republic
“Tell us about the bad communities!”
he alternatives to the ideal polis were about to be discussed after Part 5, when Glaucon interrupted to ask Socrates more about the roles of women and the family.
This part starts with a useful summary of the correct type of state: then Socrates moves on to describe the four wrong types. There are thus five types of society (and so five types of individual: remember one of the original assumptions was that a polis = big individual).
Unjust Societies
- TIMARCHY or TIMOCRACY (e.g. Sparta and Crete) - and the timocratic individual. Motivated by desire for time (honour).
- OLIGARCHY - and the oligarchic individual. Motivated by desire for money or material gain.
- DEMOCRACY - and the democratic man. Confused by "freedom" and a slave to desires of every kind - ultimately doesn't know what he wants.
- TYRANNY The "terminal disease" of the polis. The tyrant and tyrannical man are taken over by an all-consuming master-lust. The tyrant is supremely miserable.
Plato shows how the ideal polis - rule of the best (true meaning of ARISTOCRACY) degenerates through these stages into tyranny.
Plato says the pleasures of philosophy are superior to those of ambitious money-makers. In individual and polis, the higher part of the soul (reason) must rule the lower (desires) - then the pleasures will be the proper ones: presumably orderliness and moderation. The image of the many-headed monster shows that reason is the part that makes us human, and that thus it does "pay" to be just - otherwise we are indistinguishable from beasts.
Maybe our polis will never exist, except as a concept ![[Next Page?]](next.gif)