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and no one takes part any longer in the dialogue except Glaucon and Adimantus, although at a more advanced period all are once more represented as present and summoned to the scene of action. Thrasymachus only stirs on one single occasion more, and then quite appeased and pacified, as it were as it were to shew that all enmity with the sophists is at an end. Even the method is completely changed-Socrates no longer comes forward with questions in the character of a man who is ignorant, and only looking for greater ignorance in the service of the god, but as one who has already found what he seeks, he advances onwards, bearing along with him in strict connection the insights he has acquired. Nay, even in point of style, it is only the immediately succeeding speeches of the two brothers, as constituting the transition, that bear any resemblance to what has gone before, no dialogic embellishment or attractive irony is hereafter to gain the prize, but solid strictness of argument alone. The whole store of the youthful virtuoso glitters here once for all in the introduction, and is then extinguished for ever, in order to make it as well as possible understood, that all that is beautiful and pleasing of this kind occupies a place in the province of philosophy only in preparatory investigations, the object of which is more to stimulate and excite than to advance and come to satisfactory conclusions; and that when a connected exposition of the results of philosophical investigations is to be given, such embellishment would contribute more to distract the mind than assist the perfect comprehension of the subject. And in these preparatory arguments some points are established to which it may be useful shortly to call attention, as they prove of importance in the

sequel, without being here made particularly prominent. The first is that in the comparison of the different arts that exercise any authority, the profit thence arising is entirely separated from the proper object of the exercise of the art, and aptitude in the acquisition of profit is rather set up as a particular art which one and the same man possesses in conjunction with others. This yields a conclusion, the first we have, upon what was said in the earlier dialogues, and especially the Gorgias and the Sophist, of the art of counterfeit in all its manifold ramifications. For every art may become a counterfeit art when it comes to be treated only as a way and a means calculated for the acquisition of gain. And we have also from this a further result, which is made the basis of many of the subsequent propositions, that every art, especially such as exercise authority, the higher it rises and the more purely it is practised must be so much the more free from all admixture of desire for profit. The second point is that position, so very easily, and we may even say, notwithstanding many circumstances at that time favourable to the case, too easily granted by the interlocutors, that those who are most adapted for governing do yet only engage in it because there is a punishment for refusing, which is, even if there be no other, that instead of governing themselves they are governed by others worse. Meanwhile we should not consider as a fault in Plato the facility with which this position, so important as regards his Republic, here passes for true in its general form, since the particular way in which it is afterwards brought into application justifies itself by an extremely brilliant illustration. In the third place, further, it is to be observed that Socrates'

last discussion with Thrasymachus begins to take a turn, representing justice not only as something existing between two persons separate from one another, but also as something internal, and so likewise injustice as something causing discord and distraction when it inhabits different parts of one and the same whole. And it is by this consideration that the way is prepared for the form and method in which the question of justice is treated of in what follows.

The description of this form and method, and the preparations for the line of proceeding resolved upon, occupy the second part of the work, comprising the second and third, and the beginning of the fourth book. And the continuation thus proceeds.

On Socrates expressing his regret that the notion of justice has not been yet discovered, Glaucon subjoins a fresh set of arguments in favour of Thrasymachus, as conceiving him to have given up his cause too soon, inasmuch as it has by no means been yet proved that justice is more advantageous than injustice. For, that only the appearance of justice has been shown to be useful. But that in order to put justice to the proper test, it is necessary rather to conceive the just man bearing all the appearance of injustice, while to the unjust man, on the other hand, concealment must be conceded, and he must be furnished with all the appearance of justice. And after Glaucon has estimated injustice in this manner, Adimantus also comes forward and further states, that it is imperative upon the praise of justice to say nothing of the friendship of the gods, and that nothing partaking of the nature of a reward should come under consideration, but, that the only question is, what effect they each have on man in and for

themselves. If then, by this postulate, Plato does as it were supersede himself, and declare the demonstrations in the Gorgias and Phædon insufficient in what relates to this point, a purely ethical ground is now for the first time gained thereby, and the same Socrates undertakes the more subtle and laborious problem, and lays down his plan of proceeding, which is to be, first to search for justice in the state, where it must be in larger characters, and, consequently, more visible to the eye, and then to return to the individual mind, in order to see whether and how far it is the same in the one as in the other. And this plan is executed exactly in the same manner and in the same order as is here projected in the next third main division of the work, while this second part describes the Republic itself with a view to that, its origin and the way in which men are educated in it and for it.

And here it is remarkable, first of all, how Socrates makes the state originate in the necessities, the basis of which is the original difference of men, since all are not equally adapted by nature for every thing which life requires, and consequently cannot, by practice, be equally accustomed to every thing, without, however, hinting even by a single word how they who are thus to compensate their mutual deficiencies, are to be found. But, though he looks upon a state as the work of necessity, his opinion certainly was not that it must originate from a random search or accidental meeting of individuals, but the general Hellenic hypothesis is the basis of his theory, that every united body, however small its compass*, produces such

* Schleiermacher adds-and the German reader cannot be sufficiently reminded that in Greek Stadt and Staat (urbs and civitas) the city and the state political, are one and the same.

a perfective compensation of natures, and that necessity is only set up as representing the social nature of man, and the business of the state consists in converting local proximity among men into a regular condition of mutal aid and support, in order thus to keep men in a peculiar manner united in a fixed proportion. And even this on the other side, is not without a definite reference to the mind, in so far as not only here but elsewhere also in Plato it is represented as a compound, and that of such a nature that it is impossible human life should exist if any one of the component parts be wanting. We feel at once that more doubt attaches to that hypothesis which supposes that attention to war and defence, with which the whole organisation of the Platonic state is most closely connected, arises only from an endeavour after prosperity-an endeavour, of which Socrates himself particularly disapproves, declaring the only properly healthy society to be that most simply constituted union which confines itself to the production of the most indispensable necessaries. But according to this, so long as the state is in the enjoyment of that health, no other species of legislation could consistently appear in it, except just that which Socrates at the end of this part passes over as insignificant, that, namely, regarding barter and affairs of contract. Now, then, if we apply this theory to the organisation of a well-ordered condition in the mind itself, all the virtues would thus rest upon a morbid state. Perhaps, however, the praise bestowed upon an entirely undeveloped social state as being the only one consistent with real health, is not to be taken so seriously as it has been echoed by many in modern times. For, although at the urgent demand of the others Socrates particularly names sensual enjoyments,

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