i . i n t r o d u c t i o n t o t h e p r o b l e m
In the beginning of Book2 of the Republic, Glaucon challenges Socrates to show that it is“better in every way”1to be just than unjust (2, 357b1–2). Socrates responds to the challenge by telling Glaucon, “I want truly to convince you . . . if I can” (2, 357b3). Later in the Republic, however, it appears that those who should be the best qualified to realize that justice is always preferable– the philosophers of the kallipolis – find themselves in a situation in which they do not prefer to be just. Once they have“seen” the Form of the Good, they reach a point where, Socrates tells Glaucon, they are“unwilling to occupy themselves with human affairs” (7, 517c8–9). And yet, occupying themselves with human affairs is precisely what they must do, as their training has always ultimately been aimed at preparing them for their role in the state as leaders:
It is our task as founders, then, to compel the best natures to reach the study we said before is the most important, namely, to make the ascent and see the good. But when they’ve made it and looked sufficiently, we mustn’t allow them to do what they are allowed to do today.
What’s that?
To stay there and refuse to go down again to the prisoners in the cave and share their labors and honors, whether they are of less worth or of greater. (7, 519c8–d7)
Glaucon is disturbed by the sacrifice this appears to require: “Then are we to do them an injustice by making them live a worse life when they could live a better one?” (7, 519d8–9). Socrates’ reply to Glaucon appears actually to confirm Glaucon’s worry:
You are forgetting again that it isn’t the law’s concern to make any one class in the city outstandingly happy but to contrive to spread happiness throughout the city by bringing the citizens into harmony with each other through persuasion or com- pulsion and by making them share with each other the benefits that each class can
confer on the community. The law produces such people in the city, not in order to allow them to turn in whatever direction they want, but to make use of them to bind the city together.
That’s true, I had forgotten. (7, 519e1–520a5; see also 4, 419a1–420c4, 5, 465e4–466c5)
The problem I address in this essay, sometimes called “the happy philosopher problem,”2 is, then, that one of the main arguments of the
Republic was supposed to show that justice is always preferable to injustice, for the agent, whereas doing what is just is not preferable to those who must return to the cave,3 who would be happier shirking their duties and remaining uninvolved with the dirty business of politics. So it appears that, in the case of the returners, Plato provides a counterexample to his claim that justice is invariably preferable to injustice.4
I will attempt to solve this famous problem by trying to become clear, first, about what conditions are required for a solution to count as successful.
i i . c o n d i t i o n s f o r a s a t i s f a c t o r y s o l u t i o n t o t h e p r o b l e m
The problem for the returners seems to be that the prospect of returning to the cave is, to say the least, not an attractive one. Indeed, it is central to their qualifications for political office in Plato’s kallipolis that they regard the life to which they are being compelled to return with utter disdain:
Can you name any life that despises political rule besides that of the true philosopher?
No, by god, I can’t.
But surely it is those who are not lovers of ruling who must rule, for if they don’t, the lovers of it, who are rivals, willfight over it.
Of course.
Then whom will you compel to become guardians of the city, if not those who have the best understanding of what matters for good government and who have other honors than political ones, and a better life as well?
No one. (7, 521b1–11; see also 1, 346e3–347d8)
Ourfirst condition, then, requires suitable recognition of this claim:
(C1) The returners despise the life they are to be compelled into, and have a better life outside the cave.
Their dislike for politics would not create a problem for Plato and his interpreters, were it not for the fact that Plato earlier had Socrates accept
Glaucon’s challenge to defend justice as always preferable to injustice, so let us stipulate Socrates’ response to Glaucon’s challenge as the next condition that a successful solution must meet:
(C2) Being just and acting justly are always preferable to being unjust or acting unjustly.
Let us recall, moreover, what Plato means by“being just and acting justly,” on the basis of which account Glaucon agrees that the challenge he presented to Socrates in Book2 is met:
In truth justice is, it seems, something of this sort. However, it isn’t concerned with someone’s doing his own externally, but with what is inside him, and what is truly himself and his own. One who is just does not allow any part of himself to do the work of another part or allow the various classes within him to meddle with each other. He regulates well what is really his own and rules himself. He puts himself in order, is his own friend, and harmonizes the three parts of himself like three limiting notes on a musical scale – high, low, and middle. He binds together those parts and any others there may be in between, and from having been many things he becomes entirely one, moderate and harmonious. Only then does he act. And when he does anything, whether acquiring wealth, taking care of his body, engaging in politics, or in private contracts– in all of these, he believes that the action is just andfine that preserves this inner harmony and helps achieve it, and calls it so, and regards as wisdom the knowledge that oversees such actions. And he believes that the action that destroys this harmony is unjust, and calls it so, and regards the belief that oversees it as ignorance. (4, 443c9–444a2)
It is clear, then, that what makes acting justly always choiceworthy is that it “preserves this inner harmony and helps achieve it.” It does not follow, however, that acting justly must be preferable for its own sake, but rather, for the sake of what is always preferable for its own sake, namely psychic harmony. In some cases, a just agent may have some grounds for preferring not to do what justice requires; however, the fact that an action creates or preserves psychic harmony will trump any other considerations.
While this account of“being just and acting justly” may be compatible with other accounts in various applications (as Plato has Socrates note explicitly at 442d10–443a10), it is this account of “being just and acting justly” that must be applied in relation to the justice of the return to the cave:
(C3) “Being just” = being in a condition of psychic harmony, and “acting justly” = acting in such a way as to create or preserve psychic harmony;“being unjust” = being in a condition of psychic disharmony, and“acting unjustly” = acting in such a way as to prevent or destroy psychic harmony.
Now, Plato sees no requirement to“return to the cave” for those who were not educated by the state (7, 520a9–c3; see also 6, 496a10–e2), so there is no fully general requirement that those who study philosophy must always or everywhere toil in the labors of ruling“in the caves” of wherever they may happen to live. However, those raised and educated in the kallipolis are required to return to the cave, and the mandate that they return to the cave is one that is just (see7, 520e1: “We will be giving just orders to just people”). Let us separate these into separate two conditions. First:
(C4) It is just (= creates or preserves psychic harmony) to require the returners to return to the cave.
At this point, there are some questions we should want answered. First, we should ask for whom the requirement is just: Is the justice of the command to be associated with the creation or preservation of psychic harmony in those giving the command, in those being commanded, or both? Now, perhaps there are cases in which we might imagine that A could justly command B to do something, but it would not be just for B to do what is commanded, but I think there are good reasons to set this particular worry aside here.5At the origin of the state, those issuing the command will be the original law-givers of the kallipolis– and these, we may infer from Socrates’ persistent use of thefirst-person plural throughout this passage, include at least Socrates and Glaucon. It may well be that they would promote justice in their souls by making such a command, but I do not think we need to insist that Socrates or Glaucon here are claiming or implying that they have already fully achieved psychic harmony. Once the state has been created, subsequent generations of returners will be given the command by their elders, who will themselves be just people. More likely Plato’s intent was for us to see that the justice of the command would apply to the returners themselves, whether at the origin of the state, or in later generations. It seems plain that Plato’s whole point is that, as just people, they cannot refuse to do as they are commanded. In other words, because
(C5) The returners are just people (= are psychically harmonious),
they cannot refuse to return to the cave. But why can they not refuse? As I said above, it is not that ruling as such is a requirement of people like the returners, for justice does not require people like them to rule in unjust cities or in any in which they did not have the same debts as those they bear in the kallipolis. But in the kallipolis, because of the way in which the city has supported and educated them (see the explanation given at520a6–c6),
(C6) It is just (= it will sustain their psychic harmony)6for the returners to return to the cave, and would be unjust for them not to return.
It follows fromC2 and C6 that returning to the cave is actually preferable for the returners, all things considered. Were failing to return to the cave actually preferable, all things considered, then the problem of the returners could have no solution– for it would simply be true that the injustice of failing to return would thereby be proven to be preferable to the justice of returning, and Plato would have provided a counterexample to his defense of justice. Hence, we may now add this as a condition for our solution:
(C7) It is preferable for the returners to return to the cave.
Now, as Plato makes Socrates and Glaucon say quite explicitly, the prefer- ability of the returners’ returning to the cave is not at all grounded in conceiving of ruling itself as something good. Whatever it is that makes returning preferable, for the returners, nonetheless– because preferability had all along been stipulated to be measurable only in terms of conducive- ness to eudaimonia (“happiness”; see Rep. i. 354c3) – it must be that the returners will be happier, as a result of returning to the cave, than they would be if they refused to return.
(C8) Those returning to the cave will be happier as a result, and would be less happy if they refused to return.
ButC7 and C8 seem inconsistent with C1. Any solution to the problem of the returners, then, will need to explain how these three conditions are actually all consistent.
In addition, the conception and defense of justice Plato has already had Socrates provide makes it clear why returning is preferable (in terms of happiness) for the returners.
(C9) Those returning to the cave will do so because they are just (= psychically harmonious) and because they will be acting justly (= preserving their psychic harmony), and conversely, were those returning to the cave to fail to do so, they would not be just (= psychically harmonious) and would be acting unjustly (= failing to preserve their psychic harmony).
So already we can now clearly identify one of the most difficult problems associated with the returners: On the one hand, Plato makes it plain that we should regard returning to the cave, for those compelled to do so, as something just. Hence, for them to refuse would be unjust. In the account of psychic justice given in Book4, injustice must be the result of psychic imbalance, but it is anything but clear how refusing to return to the cave
would indicate an imbalance in the abdicators’ souls – for plainly their preference for intellectual over political pursuits could not plausibly be characterized as the product of an overthrow of reason’s rule by spirit or appetite.7 In the remainder of this essay, I shall call this the “psychic disharmony problem.”
Moreover, we can now see clearly what I regard as the other great puzzle of the problem, for Plato gives us many reasons for thinking that those who are to return to the cave have to be compelled8to do so, and so must fail on their own to recognize that it is preferable for them to rule. It makes no sense to speak so often of compulsion if those being compelled are already independently fully motivated to do what they are compelled to do.9So, some explanation of this is also required:
(C10) Those compelled (or persuaded) to return to the cave must be compelled (or persuaded) to do so, and would not be inclined to return to the cave without the compulsion or persuasion.
FromC10, it plainly follows that those compelled to return to the cave are not immediately aware of, or immediately motivated by, the reasons why it is preferable for them to return to the cave– until these reasons are given to them (see“eroumen” at 520a9).10This, again, is a most puzzling feature of the problem: How could Plato’s philosophers miss this? In the remainder of this essay, I shall call this the“epistemic fault problem.”11I think, in brief, that the so-called“happy philosopher problem” is simply the conjunction of the psychic disharmony problem and the epistemic fault problem; solve both of these problems, and one will have solved the “happy philosopher problem” once and for all.
i i i . a b r i e f s u r v e y o f s o l u t i o n s p r o p o s e d Perhaps the easiest way to remove a problem is simply to eliminate or modify one of the conditions that create the problem. In my view, every one of the solutions scholars have proposed uses some version of this strategy– and the authors of such solutions might well complain that I have simply begged the question against their solutions already, by listing as conditions of adequacy for a successful solution one or more claims that their solution rejects. But I suppose it is already plain from what I have said so far that all of the conditions(C1 through C10) that I have given above are evident in the text we are seeking to understand, and therefore that any interpretation that denies Plato’s commitment to these claims is the worse for that denial. At the very least, then, the fact that an interpretation makes such a denial
creates some awkwardness – some degree of implausibility – for that interpretation. In the end, some degree of such awkwardness and implau- sibility may be inevitable– it is possible that Plato’s own attention to what we come to regard as a problem in his text was less than perfect, or that Plato’s position was not as well worked-out (or consistent) as we would like it to be. I will eventually contend, however, that no such awkwardness or implausibility is required in an adequate interpretation of this issue. For now, I intend merely to sketch how the interpretations that have been offered on this problem do create the kind of awkwardness and implausi- bility I am talking about.
Perhaps the most popular and influential accounts of the problem have sought to resolve it by denyingC8, which stipulates that the returners must actually be happier as a result of returning. There have been several versions of this sort of approach, but all of them share the feature of insisting that the young philosophers’ exposure to the Form of the Good has created a change to their motivation such that they are now ready to value justice or goodness in a way that is independent of their own happiness.12 It is certainly awkward for this sort of interpretation that– even after having supposedly abandoned the tight linkage between justice and happiness for the philos- ophers– Plato manages to reaffirm this exact linkage again at the very end of the Republic, by having Socrates assert clearly that“This is the way that a human being becomes happiest (eudaimonestatos)” (10, 619a7–b1; see also 9, 580b5–c4). At any rate, supposing the philosophers to abandon their eudaimonistic egoism this seems to me no solution at all to our problem, for if Plato really does concede that– however well motivated by a knowl- edge of the Good itself– the philosophers of the kallipolis really would be personally better off or happier refusing to rule than in ruling, then he has condemned his defense of justice to the dustbin (and with it, our appreci- ation for how Plato had seemed to answer what has sometimes been called the“ultimate question” of ethics: “Why should I be moral?”), for in fact, it would appear, were these interpretations correct, that there is actually no assurance that the requirements of justice (or morality), if accepted, will lead to the best possible life, measured in the happiness of the moral agent.
Now, most of the critics of the approaches that require the returners to shift away from egoism have labored to provide reasons for defending the very claim the other scholars have denied– again, C8, according to which the returners will actually be better off (in terms of happiness) because they rule. Quite a number of accounts of how this is supposed to work have been offered, and I will here provide just a sampling of interpretations of this sort. It has been suggested, for example, that the philosophers’ erōs will make
them realize that they cannot be truly fulfilled without leaving behind images of the good and beauty they love, in the form of just political institutions.13 Others have insisted that life in the kallipolis itself is so rewarding to the returners that they would scarcely neglect their duties to the state that provides them with such benefits – especially when such benefits are only possible if, indeed, philosophers rule the state.14Still others
have supposed that the returners can only achieve their goal of compre- hending the good by returning to the cave.15Yet others have argued that a life of pure contemplation would be humanly impossible for abdicators anyway, because of the requirements of their humanity, with its tripartite psychology and various needs.16One recent argument makes a very plau-