# Nitpick about Plato's Republic **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 12, 2015, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864 "2015-03-12T22:05:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/21 "2015-03-13T17:39:42Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And Socrates was a man who loved to annoy **everybody.** BEFORE explaining his idea for philosopher-kings, Socrates himself told his listeners that he feared to tell them his ideas, lest they laugh at him. Socrates knew as well as anyone how silly and farfetched the idea was going to sound. Even in Socrates’ time, “philosophers” didn’t command any more automatic respect than they do today. If I asked most people to picture a professor of philosophy, most would probably envision a scatterbrained nerd who understood advanced concepts but wouldn’t remember to brush his teeth or change his socks. Well, it was NO different 2,000 years ago. If you’ve ever read or seen Aristophanes’ play\*\*\* The Clouds, \*\*\* you know Socrates was widely seen as both a fool (the kind of guy who spends years studying whether the sound of a fly comes from its mouth or its ass) AND a threat (young people take Socrates’ high-sounding principles and use them to “prove” that Athens’ laws needn’t be obeyed). ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/22 "2015-03-13T19:49:06Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And BTW, I also agree with Russell’s assessment in this regard: > > This is more debatable, but an interesting speculation: “Rigid” (i.e. politically authoritarian) states can and do achieve quite a bit of progress in scientific research. The Soviet Union, for example, or modern China (or for that matter pre-1914 Imperial Germany) had/have very respectable scientific establishments, despite being nondemocratic states. One could even argue that scientific research in the United States is _held back_ by the fact that we’re a liberal democracy that has to take into account large numbers of our populace who don’t believe in things like global warming, the benefits of GMO crops, evolution by natural selection, heritable influences on cognitive and behavioural traits, and so forth. (Of course research into these topics continues nonetheless, but maybe it would be faster if we had a government capable of ignoring creationists or GMO hysterics.\_ ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/23 "2015-03-13T21:35:19Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > “Rigid” (i.e. politically authoritarian) states can and do achieve quite a bit of progress in scientific research. The Soviet Union, for example, or modern China (or for that matter pre-1914 Imperial Germany) had/have very respectable scientific establishments, despite being nondemocratic states. But Plato was writing at a time when no state funded scientific research because the practical utility of science was not understood (it did not even begin to be understood, anywhere in the world, until the Italian Renaissance). Science could only happen privately and unofficially. E.g., it could happen in the cities of Ionia, so long as philosophers/protoscientists were left free to speculate. But it would not have happened at all in the Republic, since the city’s philosopher-rulers jealously monopolize all intellectual speculations and, being Platonists, would have no interest in the natural sciences whatsoever. As for the modern examples, an overbearing state taking an interest in scientific research can be a source of funding but also a source of trouble; see [Lysenkoism](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lysenkoism). ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/24 "2015-03-13T22:39:16Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Yes, but, as Bertrand Russell writes in _A History of Western Philosophy,_ “Although the rulers are to be philosophers, there are to be no innovations: a philosopher is to be, for all time, a man who understands and agrees with Plato.” I can’t see a man like Socrates lasting long in that environment, even if he happens to agree with Plato on every point. As I’ve said before, Russell’s _History_ is the worst such book ever written by a major figure, and is not to be trusted. It’s embarrassingly bad. ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/25 "2015-03-13T22:40:25Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > Bertrand Russell made many contributions to mathematical logic. As a historian of philosophy he is utterly useless. i guess you will never accept this, Brain Glutton, but there you have it. There are many ways to read The Republic. I urge you to read the thing on its own, carefully, and with the aid of real scholars of classical Greek philosophy. That’s all I have to say. Thank you. Didn’t see your post at first. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/26 "2015-03-13T22:45:23Z")
> [@Subterraneanus](#): > > As I’ve said before, Russell’s _History_ is the worst such book ever written by a major figure, and is not to be trusted. It’s embarrassingly bad. It is **much** better than Solomon & Higgins’ [_A Short History of Philosophy,_](http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Philosophy-Robert-Solomon/dp/0195101960) which I was recommended in another thread as better than Russell’s, and am reading now. ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/27 "2015-03-13T22:45:33Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I have read the thing on its own. I see no reason to disagree with Russell’s assessment. Then you didn’t understand it, and I say this as a philosopher who greatly dislikes Platonism. Here’s a good recent book on _Republic_ by the guy who revised Grube’s translation (and a former prof of mine at Reed College). There are others, but this is as good a place to start as any. ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/28 "2015-03-13T22:46:34Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > It is **much** better than Solomon & Higgins’ [_A Short History of Philosophy,_](http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Philosophy-Robert-Solomon/dp/0195101960) which I was recommended in another thread as better than Russell’s, and am reading now. No it isn’t, and that’s not saying much in this case. ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/29 "2015-03-13T22:51:06Z")
Oops, forgot to include the link: > **[Philosopher-Kings](https://hackettpublishing.com/philosophy/philosopher-kings)** > > "Philosopher-Kings broke new ground on its first appearance by delivering to an audience accustomed to looking for flaws in Plato's thinking an interpretation of the Republic that celebrates the coherence of Plato's argument as it ramifies through... ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/30 "2015-03-13T23:02:21Z")
> [@Subterraneanus](#): > > As I’ve said before, Russell’s _History_ is the worst such book ever written by a major figure, and is not to be trusted. It’s embarrassingly bad. Some Dopers keep telling me that, but no one ever says why. I do not know of a single historical or biographical fact that Russell got wrong. The only faults I can see in his book are faults of omission (how could he have left out Kierkegaard?!). Can you link some source that lays out Russell’s errors? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/31 "2015-03-13T23:06:38Z")
> [@Subterraneanus](#): > > Oops, forgot to include the link: > > [Philosopher-Kings](http://www.hackettpublishing.com/philosophy/philosopher-kings) Does that book answer, or raise, the question of how someone like Socrates would fare as a citizen of the Republic? ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/32 "2015-03-13T23:20:16Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Does that book answer, or raise, the question of how someone like Socrates would fare as a citizen of the Republic? Not directly, but it is a _great_ help in understanding Plato’s arguments. It’s fairly obvious that Socrates the _man_—not the _character_ in the middle and late dialogues, who espouses _Plato’s_ arguments—would have attracted negative attention from the rulers and guardians of Plato’s republic. But this is a fairly trivial issue, and doesn’t address the substantive defects of _Republic_, perhaps chief of which is that, as David Sachs argues, it equivocates in its usage of the term _justice_: Plato begins with a conventional conception of justice, only to conclude that justice is something quite different—harmony of the three faculties of the soul—without showing that the two conceptions of justice are bi-conditionally related. [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2183101?sid=21105639785681&uid=2&uid=4](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2183101?sid=21105639785681&uid=2&uid=4) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/33 "2015-03-13T23:24:02Z")
> [@Subterraneanus](#): > > [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2183101?sid=21105639785681&uid=2&uid=4](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2183101?sid=21105639785681&uid=2&uid=4) Dammit! Paywall! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/34 "2015-03-13T23:27:26Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Dammit! Paywall! :mad: Yeah, I know. It’s worth it to track down that paper though. Raphael Demos wrote a response to it a year later: [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2183665?sid=21105639785681&uid=2&uid=4](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2183665?sid=21105639785681&uid=2&uid=4) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/35 "2015-03-13T23:35:14Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Some Dopers keep telling me that, but no one ever says why. I do not know of a single historical or biographical fact that Russell got wrong. The only faults I can see in his book are faults of omission (how could he have left out Kierkegaard?!). > > Can you link some source that lays out Russell’s errors? I tried googling “errors in bertrand russell history of western philosophy”. [This](http://www.academia.edu/1466683/On_Bertrand_Russell_as_a_Historian_of_Philosophy) is the first hit I got, and is mostly favorable. ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/36 "2015-03-14T15:56:04Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I tried googling “errors in bertrand russell history of western philosophy”. [This](http://www.academia.edu/1466683/On_Bertrand_Russell_as_a_Historian_of_Philosophy) is the first hit I got, and is mostly favorable. Russell wrote the book quickly in order to capitalize on his relative fame and make money. Many lay people have read the book, but professional philosophers tend to shun it as virtually worthless. First, Russell simply doesn’t understand much of what he’s writing about. Much of the book involves no real exegesis, only cursory summaries that are often wildly inaccurate and lacking in detail. His discussion of Nietzsche amounts to little more than an _ad hominem abusive_. I doubt he actually read him. Second, he interprets the entire history of Western philosophy according to how its principal ideas—poorly understood—approximate his own logicism/new logic epistemology. This makes for a tendentious and uninformative account of those ideas. This is all the more ironic given the failure of his own logicist project. Third, much of the book—especially the discussions of the ancients and medieval philosophy—are less discussions of philosophy than they are clumsy sketches of the cultural contexts within which these thinkers developed their ideas. Russell was utterly incapable of teaching anyone anything about, for example, the pre-Socratics. I could go on, but I want to enjoy this cup of coffee. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2015, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/37 "2015-03-17T20:30:43Z")
> [@Subterraneanus](#): > > Russell wrote the book quickly in order to capitalize on his relative fame and make money. Yes – as Gottlieb writes: > [@](#): > > It was in the mid-1930s, when he was in his early sixties, that Russell conceived the project of producing a history of philosophy. At the time he was writing a great deal of journalism, in addition to books and essays, in order to support his family, and had enjoyed considerable success with Freedom and Organisation: 1814-1914, a book about Europe and America that combined political and intellectual history. He proposed a similar book on philosophy to his American publisher, Warder Norton, and a contract for it was signed in 1937. As it turned out, he wrote a different book (Power: A New Social Analysis) for Norton instead, and the project was temporarily shelved. It revived in 1940, two years after Russell had moved to the United States to lecture in Chicago and Los Angeles, when he suddenly found himself unemployed because the City College of New York revoked its offer of an appointment. The loss of the job in NewY ork—he was to have taught logic and the philosophy of science and mathematics—was the result of a famously scandalous miscarriage of justice, in which city authorities bowed to churchmen and social conservatives who disapproved of Russell’s writings about sex. Not only was Russell deprived of a job, he also found that American newspapers and magazines would not publish his articles. He therefore jumped at an offer from Albert Barnes, a pharmaceutical tycoon and art-collector, to join his Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Russell’s duties were to offer a course of lectures for the general public on the history of philosophy. Two years later, in the summer of 1942, Russell signed a contract with the American publisher Simon & Schuster to produce a book on the history of western philosophy. About two-thirds of the manuscript consisted of the lectures given at the Barnes Foundation between January 1941and December 1942, and the rest was completed—at great speed—by September 1943. AsRussell later noted in his autobiography, “The History of Western Philosophy began by accident and proved the main source of my income for many years.” But, that reflects not badly on Russell and not at all on the book’s content. > [@Subterraneanus](#): > > Many lay people have read the book, but professional philosophers tend to shun it as virtually worthless. Cite for that, please? > [@Subterraneanus](#): > > First, Russell simply doesn’t understand much of what he’s writing about. I find that **very** difficult to believe. > [@Subterraneanus](#): > > Much of the book involves no real exegesis, only cursory summaries that are often wildly inaccurate and lacking in detail. His discussion of Nietzsche amounts to little more than an _ad hominem abusive_. I doubt he actually read him. From what little I have read of Nietzsche and a great deal I have read about him, Russell was entirely fair to him and understood him as well as anyone could. > [@Subterraneanus](#): > > Second, he interprets the entire history of Western philosophy according to how its principal ideas—poorly understood—approximate his own logicism/new logic epistemology. This makes for a tendentious and uninformative account of those ideas. This is all the more ironic given the failure of his own logicist project. How did it fail? > [@Subterraneanus](#): > > Third, much of the book—especially the discussions of the ancients and medieval philosophy—are less discussions of philosophy than they are clumsy sketches of the cultural contexts within which these thinkers developed their ideas. Russell was utterly incapable of teaching anyone anything about, for example, the pre-Socratics. He taught me a **lot** about them, I never understood the Orphic connection before. For the rest, the book was, of course, written for a lay audience, and the stated purpose of the book was to contextualize everything in and connect everything to political and social developments. As Gottlieb writes: > [@](#): > > In his review of the first edition of Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, Isaiah Berlin, a distinguished historian of ideas, made a prediction that has turned out to be strikingly false. Russell’s book, Berlin wrote in 1947, will mainly be read “for the light it casts upon the views of its author.” Now that it has had more than sixty years in print, and probably over two million readers, it is safe to say that almost nobody reads this very long book in order to find out about Bertrand Russell. People read it to find out about philosophy. Already in 1950, the Swedish Academy singled out the History when it awarded Russell the Nobel Prize for literature, noting in its award statement that he had been “so eminently successful in keeping alive the interest ingeneral philosophy”. > > \ > > Russell ends his own History with an account of “The Philosophy of Logical Analysis”, the philosophical school of which he was more or less the founder. From the viewpoint of the early21st century, it now seems odd of Russell not to have mentioned Wittgenstein or Heidegger. Their main works had been published long before Russell wrote, and they are now regarded (at least by their many respective admirers, who are not always the same people) as two of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. I would guess that in 100 years’ time these two omissions will still be noticed as somewhat eccentric—in other words, that people will still be reading this book. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2015, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/38 "2015-03-17T20:33:52Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I did like the allegory of the cave… But Plato was almost certainly mistaken in thinking he (or Socrates) ever had left the cave. There is indeed a world more real than the world of our sense-perceptions – but it is not the world of the forms, and one can come to know it better only through science, not through philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2015, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/39 "2015-03-17T21:35:12Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But Plato was almost certainly mistaken in thinking he (or Socrates) ever had left the cave. There is indeed a world more real than the world of our sense-perceptions – but it is not the world of the forms, and one can come to know it better only through science, not through philosophy. I actually quite agree. We’ve done remarkably well exploring the cave, as it is – developing tools like microscopes to examine the cavern walls in astonishing detail. The philosophic method (most often) lacks a verification method. If I conclude, from first principles, that all is “oneness,” but you conclude that “it is all based on duality,” how can we figure out which is correct (assuming they can’t both be…) For everything you can point to that indicates “pairness,” I can point to something else that suggests “oneness.” Still, the analogy of the cave is a good thought-experiment regarding thought itself. Sherlock Holmes said that an educated person could deduce an Atlantic or a Niagara from a single drop of water: I think that’s actually incorrect, but it is a valid way of thinking about knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2015, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/40 "2015-03-17T21:49:53Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But Plato was almost certainly mistaken in thinking he (or Socrates) ever had left the cave. There is indeed a world more real than the world of our sense-perceptions – but it is not the world of the forms, and one can come to know it better only through science, not through philosophy. I don’t know, it seems pretty plausible to me that the character Socrates is in that passage describing his own experience metaphorically–his own experience of understanding something, enjoying that understanding, trying to communicate it to others, and being punished for it. It’s hard to see how he could be wrong about what he himself experienced. His experience may not seem to you to have the significance it seemed to have to him, I suppose. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864.md?page=3)