Finding Moderation in Plato’s Republic

ABSTRACT

This article examines Plato’s understanding of moderation. I begin with a brief discussion of Plato’s Charmides, the dialogue in which Socrates asks, “What is moderation?” in order to frame a detailed treatment of key passages in Plato’s Republic where we find a definitive answer. I show the progress of the Republic to be an intentional development on Plato’s part, moving readers from a conventional understanding of moderation as mastery to a more compelling ideal: moderation as a harmony of the city and of the soul. Bringing moderation out from under the shadow of justice illuminates the dialogue’s otherwise perplexing presentation of the relationship between these two virtues and helps us to see both the role moderation plays in Plato’s thought, and what his vision might contribute to our own understanding of the virtue.

KEYWORDS:

• moderation
• Plato
• Charmides
• Republic

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This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Several elements of this article are drawn from my dissertation, Rabinowitz, “Harmony of City and Soul.”

2. Quoted in Schmid, Plato’s Charmides, 20. There is a growing recognition that we need to think more about the virtue of moderation and recover an understanding of it for our time, as seen, for example, in recent works such as: Aurelian Craiutu, A Virtue for Courageous Minds, and Faces of Moderation; Harry Clor, On Moderation; and Paul Carrese, Democracy in Moderation.

3. North, Sophrosyne, 151.

4. Bourgault, “Prolegomena,” 123. Recent interest in moderation follows a period of neglect (Craiutu, A Virtue for Courageous Minds, 16). Notable exceptions include: Helen North, Sophrosyne; John Wilson, Politics of Moderation; Bourgault, “Prolegomena”; and Melissa Lane, “Virtue as the Love of Knowledge.” There have also been a number of recent treatments of moderation focused on the Charmides: Thomas Schmid, Plato’s Charmides; Paul Stern, “Tyranny and Self-Knowledge”; Thomas Tuozzo, Plato’s Charmides; Voula Tsouna, Plato’s Charmides; and David Lawrence Levine, Profound Ignorance, as well as a new translation and commentary on Charmides by Christopher Moore and Christopher C. Raymond. Finally, there is a growing body of research that turns to Plato as a resource for the study of sustainability and ecological sustainability in particular. See, for example, Melissa Lane, Eco-Republic; and Susan Erck, “Ecological Sustainability of Plato’s Republic.”

5. Bourgault, “Prolegomena,” 123.

6. For a treatment of moderation that, while very insightful, gives short shrift to Plato, see, for example, Clor, On Moderation.

7. I provide an analysis of Aristotle’s treatment of this virtue in “Sōphrosunē’s Scope.” Cf. Moore, “Questioning Aristotle’s Radical Account.”

8. Craiutu, A Virtue for Courageous Minds, chap. 1.

9. North, “A Period of Opposition.”

10. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 3.82.4.

11. Shagan, Rule of Moderation, 49.

12. For a perceptive analysis of Critias’s immoderation, see Stern, “Tyranny and Self-Knowledge.”

13. Levin, “Critias,” 241.

14. In How Philosophy Became Socratic, Lampert argues that the dramatic date of the Charmides is just weeks before the Republic’s, making the former “the unexpected introduction” to the latter (11 and 241). Although I find his argument persuasive, the connection I draw between the two dialogues is primarily thematic. Schmid in his thoughtful treatment of the Charmides devotes an Appendix to the Republic, but ultimately believes “the intellectual worlds of the two dialogues are very different.” See Schmid, Plato’s Charmides, 159–64.

15. See Lysias, Against Eratosthenes, 1–23. In Balot’s words, “Whether oligarch or democrat, everyone agreed that the Thirty, driven by greed for power and wealth, had committed serious crimes against their fellow citizens” (Greed and Injustice, 220). On the relationship between the oligarchic revolutions and greed, see ibid., 219–24.

16. Xenophon. Hellenica, 2.3.16. See Danzig, “The Use and Abuse of Critias,” 522–23.

17. In Greed and Injustice, Balot notes that “Plato’s representation of Thrasymachus’s views, along with the expansion of his position by Glaucon and Adeimantus, focuses attention on greed and injustice as the central moral problems he wants to address” (236).

18. Although I do take the notion of harmony to be integral to Plato’s understanding of moderation, I put “definitive” in quotation marks to acknowledge the provisional nature of any conclusion drawn from a Platonic dialogue, the richness of which invites manifold interpretations and aims more to inspire reflection and questioning than to settle the reader into any fixed position.

19. In Philosophers in the Republic, 169–72, Weiss provides thoughtful observations on many of the surprising results of this understanding of moderation which appears to equate it to justice.

20. Unless otherwise noted, all parenthetical references are to Allan Bloom’s translation of Plato’s Republic.

21. Lorch in “Choice of Lives” helpfully draws attention to these contrasting definitions and offers and alternative explanation for the relationship between them and between moderation and justice.

22. Weiss, Philosophers in the Republic, 169–170. For an alternate interpretation of Socrates’ aim in Book IV, see ibid., chap. 5.

23. In an intriguing treatment that shares elements with my account, Wilson explores moderation as the understated contender to justice throughout the dialogue. As he puts it in Politics of Moderation: “the movement of the Republic is a movement from justice to moderation” (xxv–xxvi).

24. Interpretations of Cephalus differ widely. Reeve, in Philosopher-Kings, finds him “an attractive character,” whose “life is not very different in character from Socrates’” (6). Annas in Introduction to Plato’s Republic, thinks Plato has contempt for Cephalus (18). Nussbaum in Fragility of Goodness thinks Cephalus attaches more importance to appetite than he realizes, though is still relieved to be freed from the “problem” of erotic desire (138). Strauss, in City and Man, 66, and Bloom in The Republic of Plato, 313, think he was “once very erotic.” I agree with Rosen, who in Plato’s Republic, describes Cephalus as a “temperate hedonist” (27), and with Bourgault, who in “Eros, Viagra, and the Good Life,” emphasizes that Cephalus’s “moderation is not genuine; his sophrosyne is merely accidental” (17). See also Bourgault, “Prolegomena,” 129.

25. Cf. Lange, “Prolegomenon on Moderation,” 20.

26. For a detailed analysis, see Dustin and Schaeffer, “Looks Matter,” 449–73.

27. The word Glaucon uses is pleonexia, a common antonym for moderation. See Balot, Greed and Injustice; and Frank, “Wages of War.”

28. See Gorgias 492a ff.; Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 3.82.4; and North “A Period of Opposition.”

29. Stauffer, Plato’s Introduction to the Question of Justice, 127.

30. Annas, Introduction to Plato’s Republic, 69.

31. Rosen in Plato’s Republic notes that in his account “Glaucon describes acts of intemperance,” and that Adeimantus “explicitly links temperance with justice” (67).

32. As Weiss in Philosophers in the Republic, 187, puts it, “Moderation’s advantage over justice is that it can be defended as something desirable in itself for oneself—in the sense that it is good for one to be healthy or fit in both body and soul.”

33. For an extended discussion of the Republic’s theology, see McPherran, “Gods and Piety of Plato’s Republic.”

34. The god/gods here depicted are indifferent to humanity. See Bloom, The Republic of Plato, 352; Rabieh, Plato and the Virtue of Courage, 114.

35. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II–II Q141 A1 ad.3.

36. Cf. Lake’s analysis of these passages in “Plato’s Homer as a Guide for Moderation,” which focuses on Plato’s use of Homer.

37. Homer, Iliad 1.221–52, trans. Fagles.

38. See Annas, Introduction to Plato’s Republic, 116.

39. Contrast Bolotin, “Critique of Homer,” 89. Bolotin thinks Socrates tacitly encourages blind obedience. Whether or not blind obedience is salutary in the city ruled by philosophers, I think our attention is drawn to its problematic character in ordinary cities. See also Bourgault, “Prolegomena,” 130–31.

40. Consider the Unjust Speech of Aristophanes’ Clouds (1080 ff.), who counsels young Pheidippides, if caught committing adultery, to simply refer the cuckold to the gods. If even Zeus was overcome by love and women, how could mere mortals resist?

41. This point is also recognized by Lange in “Prolegomenon on Moderation,” 88.

42. Bloom, The Republic of Plato, 354 ff., observes that spiritedness is the common thread running through Socrates’ critique of Achilles as well.

43. Homer, Odyssey 20.25, trans. Fagles.

44. Benardete, Socrates’ Second Sailing, 68–69; Ferrari, “The Three Part Soul,” 170; Lange, “Prolegomenon on Moderation,” 120.

45. This observation keeps one from viewing Book IV’s expansive definition of moderation as a “distortion,” as does Weiss in Philosophers in the Republic.

46. Vlastos, “Justice and Happiness,” 137.

47. On the importance of musical education for producing moderation, see Bourgault “Prolegomena,” 135–37. On the unique capacities of music, see Matheisen, “Harmonia and Ethos in Ancient Greek Music,” 264–65. For the relation between music and politics, see Moreau, “Musical Mimesis and Political Ethos,” whose treatment of moderation’s Phrygian mode as a “passionate harmonia” (208) supports this article’s argument that Socratic moderation is not ascetic.

48. Bloom, The Republic of Plato, 360. On habituation as a “facet of the art of legislation” in Plato’s thought, see Cusher, “How Does Law Rule.”

49. Weiss, Philosophers in the Republic, 181.

50. Wilson, Politics of Moderation, 40.

51. Contrast Weiss, Philosophers in the Republic, 186. Cf. Lange, “Prolegomenon on Moderation,” 97 note 45.

52. Rosen, Plato’s Republic, 107.

53. In “Choice of Lives,” Lorch views moderation as a harmony as Glaucon’s understanding of the virtue, not Socrates’. He argues that “the definition of moderation as a harmonious condition of the soul is derived two separate times in Book IV,” and that “[o]n each occasion Glaucon is responsible for the definition” (238). But here we see that far from introducing the notion of a harmony, Glaucon isn’t even sure what it means.

54. Craiutu, A Virtue for Courageous Minds, provides a helpful summary of the connection between political moderation and harmony in Cicero’s thought.

55. Bourgault, “Prolegomena,” 131.

56. See Reeve, Philosopher-Kings, 142: reason “is not an enlightened despot governing through force majeure.” Cf. Bourgault, “Prolegomena,” 127; and Parry, “Unhappy Tyrant,” 404 ff.

57. As Weiss puts it in Philosophers in the Republic, 178: “What reason could Socrates have for proposing that they bypass moderation and proceed directly to justice other than that he knows full well that once he defines moderation, precious little will be left for justice?” See also Rosen, Plato’s Republic, 160; Lane, “Virtue as the Love of Knowledge,” 52. Shorey in The Unity of Plato’s Thought describes moderation as “the precondition and obverse aspect of Justice” (16); Lane in Eco-Republic on the relationship between moderation and justice emphasizes the importance of restraint for both virtues (113–16), (whereas I think Socrates emphasizes the ideal of harmony over restraint). Julia Annas in her Introduction to Plato’s Republic acknowledges that justice appears redundant, “requir[ing] no new range of actions other than what is required by the other virtues. … However,” Annas insists, “it would be wrong to think of justice too negatively in this way. For the other three virtues on their own would not be virtues of a whole” (119). Annas here overlooks Socrates’ stress upon moderation as a virtue of the whole.

58. Cicero, De Officis, 1.9.28. He goes on to say that Plato’s philosophers, who do no positive wrong, “fall into the opposite injustice; for hampered by their pursuit of learning they leave to their fate those whom they ought to defend.” Socrates exercises his own version of negative justice in relation to the Thirty, refusing to obey their order that he bring the innocent Leon of Salamis to his death, which is further evidence that Socratic moderation does not demand blind obedience. While Socrates falls short of trying to save Leon, what certain conceptions of justice might demand, he at least does no harm. Even this much takes courage as such disobedience could have gotten him killed. Narrowly escaping the oligarchy, Socrates is killed in the end by Athens’s democracy, but only after living to a ripe old age by leading a primarily private life. As he says in the Apology: “[T]here is no human being who will preserve his life if he genuinely opposes either you or any other multitude and prevents many unjust and unlawful things from happening in the city. Rather, if someone who really fights for the just is going to preserve himself even for a short time, it is necessary for him to lead a private rather than a public life” (31e–32a, in West and West, trans., Four Texts on Socrates).

59. Vlastos in “Justice and Happiness,” 115–16, explains the strangeness of defining justice as Socrates has by showing that this definition connects to a common understanding of justice as refraining from pleonexia. This is true, but I believe the dramatic unfolding of the dialogue suggests the primacy of forming a moderate soul, thereby obtaining this negative form of justice by default.

60. See, for example, Stauffer, Plato’s Introduction to the Question of Justice, 118–20 and chap. 3, esp. 122 and 129; Bloom, The Republic of Plato, 374; Weiss, Philosophers in the Republic, 180–184; and Singpurwalla, “Plato’s Defense of Justice.”

61. For a helpful discussion of this difference, see Lorch, “Choice of Lives,” 237 ff.