Abstract
This article critically analyses the concept of ‘partnership’ (koinōnia) in Book II of the Republic (Pl. Resp. 369b–374e), a concept it believes grounds Plato’s political thesis. It attempts to determine the nature of the concept, explore the agential capacities of the partnering agents, identify the original and derivative rational principles that could emerge from it, and argue that these rational principles are also moral principles. Platonic social justice spells out one of the rational and moral principles that emerge from the partnership. In this regard, the paper aims to show, inter alia, the connection between Platonic partnership and social justice and how such connection helps to explain, for instance, the quality of relationship that could exist between the rulers and ruled in Kallipolis. Incidentally, the paper compares Platonic partnership in respect of his defence of justice with Glaucon’s contractarian moral thesis in connection with his pean for injustice.
In Book IV of the Republic, Socrates defines moderation (sōphrosynē) in the polis as a kind of unanimity (homonoia) based on agreement between the naturally worse and the naturally better in the sense of who should rule (Pl. Resp. 431e10–432b1).1 Since, for Socrates, philosophers are those who are naturally better to rule (e.g., Pl. Resp. 489b3–c7), it follows that the agreement is between philosopher-rulers and non-philosophic citizens. Here, moderation is strongly connected with the notion of distributive justice in the sense of sharing of burdens or responsibilities: there is unanimity in the political community if everyone is certain about what each does. This notion of distributive justice is at the core of the Platonic social justice: the view that each person should concentrate on professions in which their natural aptitudes and education or training could enable them function optimally (e.g., Pl. Resp. 370c3–6, 374a4–6). Also in Book V, Socrates makes a case for distributive justice in terms of sharing benefits: what ‘binds the city together’, he tells us, is ‘when, as far as possible, all the citizens rejoice and are pained by the same successes and failures’ (Pl. Resp. 462b3–5). There is political cacophony ‘when some suffer greatly, while others rejoice greatly at the same things happening to the city or its people’; privatisation (idiōsis) of pleasures dissolves the city (Pl. Resp. 462b6–9).
Suppose the pleasure to be shared is economic. In that case, economic polarisation would cause political upheavals. So, the senses of distributive justice in both the Book IV and V passages in respect of the sharing of burdens and benefits have important consequences for understanding Plato’s political thought in the Republic. One such consequence is that if it holds that the ruled supposedly recognise their inferior status to agree that the rulers should govern, and if the ruled make legitimate claims about their share of pleasures and are also willing to share the burdens of the polis, then it implies that they are at least practically rational agents with legitimate claims and expectations; it also implies that Kallipolis is not to occur fortuitously (if it is to occur at all) but requires the agential capacities not only of the philosopher-rulers but also the non-philosophic citizens. There is at least some minimum sense of political consensus in respect of the sharing of benefits and responsibilities among the citizenries. What is the source of this consensus?
The article claims that this political consensus can be traced to the language of ‘partnership’ (koinōnia) in a passage at Pl. Resp. 369b–374e.2 But a defence of this claim is secondary to its main aim, which is to attempt a critical analysis of the concept of partnership in this range of passages in Book II to determine its nature, identify the original and derivative rational principles that could emerge from it and explore the agential capacities of the partnering agents. It will become evident that the two senses of distributive justice in the Books IV and V passages can properly be understood in the light of the notion of partnership in Book II. It argues that the rational principles of the partnership become the bases for sharing burdens and benefits. Consequently, the article posits that there is a strong connection between how Socrates conceives the agential capacities of the founding members of Kallipolis in Book II and the legitimate claims they make in Books IV and V in respect of distributive justice. The article follows the trajectory below.
I begin the discussion with Glaucon’s contractarian thesis in Section 1. The idea is to call attention to a sense of cooperative interaction alternative to Platonic partnership crucial for the Republic’s politics. I shall take the opportunity to account for a difference between the rationality of Glaucon’s contracting agents and Socrates’ partnering agents in Section 2. In Section 3, I focus on the agential capacities of the Platonic partners. Here, I argue that although the Platonic partnership plausibly uses a sense of rationality that is moral, it is a rationality that is akin to David Gauthier’s maximizing conception of rationality, the view that ‘the rational person … seeks the greatest satisfaction of her own interests’.3 Let me clarify that it is not completely out of court that the Platonic partners may aim at maximising their interest like Gauthier’s rational agents. However, our star text (Pl. Resp. 369b–374e) is terse with information to defend this claim. The passage is nevertheless clear that each of the partnering agents aims to undertake an enterprise they think is ‘better for himself (oiomenous hautōi ameinon einai)’ (Pl. Resp. 369c5–7). Hence, for us, the attractive part of Gauthier’s thesis is two-fold. First, Gauthier rightly thinks that ‘morality can be generated as a rational constraint from non-moral premisses of rational choice’.4 I believe Gauthier’s thesis would provide some conceptual guidance to appreciate how the Platonic partnership emerges from a non-moral premise, together with the principles it engenders. The paper argues that these principles are also moral principles.5
Second, Gauthier develops his rationalistic morality as an alternative to ‘universalistic conception of rationality’, the view that in any given collaborative enterprise one is expected to satisfy the interest of all contracting parties and not one’s interest per se.6 The universalistic conception of rationality is connected with what Bloomfield refers to as the ‘social conception of morality’, which ‘begins with the question of how one ought to behave toward others’,7 or what Gauthier similarly refers to as Hume’s ‘affective morality’, i.e. ‘morality based on the sympathetic transmission of feelings from one person to another’.8 The social or affective morality is best captured in the Greek word philia defined, in one sense, as ‘a certain kind of affective bond or love’.9 I shall argue that the rationality and morality associated with affective-philia is only but secondary to the egoistic rationality and morality associated with the partnership and that the relationship between philia and koinonia is not all as straightforward as most think. I shall take moral and rational principles to be ‘the objects of fully voluntary ex ante agreement among rational persons’.10
In Section 4, I discuss three main rational principles that emanate from the partnership. For instance, it is argued that it is a rational requirement of the Platonic partnership that each partner perform their function optimally just so each can individually flourish. This is because each enters the partnership, first and foremost, to secure some advantage and not necessarily to care for the flourishing of others. There is obviously an egoistic thrust to this formulation of rationality. In Section 5, I discuss a key implication of the concept of partnership and its principles with the view to understanding the question of political obligation: why would the ruled obey their rulers? Here, I shall recall attention to the Book IV passage. I argue that it is through our understanding of the partnership that we can sensibly appreciate how the ruled would appreciate the cognitive competences of their rulers and the rulers would consider their citizens as valuable partners. A conclusion follows the discussion.
1 Glaucon’s Contractarian Morality
Within the Platonic corpus, two main dialogues have been noted to shed significant light on, if not the precursors of, contractarian discourse, namely, the Crito (the Laws’ Argument) and Glaucon’s contractarian thesis in Book I of the Republic. Hardly do we find any reference to Socrates’ political constructionist account in Book II as a formidable thesis for contractarian discussion. The paper will benefit our understanding of Plato’s contractarian thesis or something close to it. I discuss Glaucon’s thesis in this subsection as a prefatory note to Plato’s contractarian thesis.
Glaucon, for the sake of argument, famously sings a paean for injustice. From Pl. Resp. 358e1–359c8, he argues that the facts of nature and human experience weigh in heavily against any claim that justice is good in itself. It is natural for humans to pursue their personal interests; and that in that pursuit humans find it profitable to inflict rather than suffer harm. But they soon discover that they are likely to suffer harm from someone else should they inflict harm on others. So, an agreement is reached to avoid both – neither to inflict nor to suffer harm. Consequently, laws are made to guarantee this compromise, calling ‘lawful’ or ‘right’ what is laid down by law. Glaucon is convinced that justice lies between what is desirable, namely, doing wrong with impunity, and suffering wrong and being unable to obtain redress. In this intermediate position, as a compromise, justice is not something which is good in itself; justice has no automatic appeal and would not have been voluntarily practised if sanctions were not attached to wrongdoing. This unappealing nature of justice is readily seen if the just and unjust are given absolute freedom to operate. Give Gyges’ Ring – a power to be invisible at will – to both the just and the unjust and we shall catch the just pursuing his selfish interest no less than the unjust (Pl. Resp. 359c9–360d6). For Glaucon, therefore, there are no ‘self- standing or ultimate normative reasons for action grounded in morality’.11 Instead, and to borrow and expression of Gauthier, there can only be ‘morals by agreement’.12 But Glaucon’s type of agreement proceeds from human weakness. As Gauthier puts it, in Glaucon’s view ‘a person has reason to agree to constraints of justice only because of her weakness, manifested in her inability to take net advantage of others. The truly strong would reject not only compliance but cooperation itself …’13
Indeed, Glaucon’s contractarian thesis does not offer a justification of the polis, that is, he is not concerned with the question of political obligation: why should I obey the state? His thesis is rather concerned with the motivation for moral obligation and action: why should I be just? And he plays the devil’s advocate to answer that justice is a compromise for our convenience. Now, a Glauconian approach to justifying or understanding interpersonal relationships and socio-political arrangements results in two key issues that are of significant interest to us. First, Glaucon’s view limits the domain of law and justice. For instance, law is not concerned with only settling disputes. It could, for instance, be a codification of, as well as what safeguards and consolidates, agreed principles of cooperation or collaborative enterprise among non-conflicting agents, like cooperate entities, who aim to achieve some expected outcomes (e.g., maximising profit).
This last point is what attracts Gauthier to Glaucon’s contractarian thesis. Gauthier engages substantively with Glaucon’s pean for injustice in Chapter 10 of his Morals by Agreement and shares some interesting views that will help us to strike the distinction between Glaucon’s and Plato’s respective positions in our next subsection. Gauthier discusses Glaucon’s contractarian account as an appealing thesis, because it spells out a sense of rationality and morality centred on the pursuit of interest which is similar to (but also challenges) his own thesis. I begin by pointing out Gauthier’s criticism of Glaucon’s thesis. Gauthier is sceptical of the contractarian morality that underscores Glaucon’s thesis. In Gauthier’s view, morality may be associated with human weakness, but to think, as Glaucon does, that ‘morality reflects only human weakness and insufficiency subverts its role in making possible society as ‘a cooperative venture for mutual advantage’.’14 Gauthier further thinks that if for Glaucon morality is a matter of agreement for convenience between the weak and strong, then prior to such agreement nothing is either just or unjust between these two contracting parties.15 Hence, Glaucon’s contractors are pre-social and pre-moral, and ‘it is from the standpoint of this pre-social, pre-moral being that morality appears a necessary evil’.16 Gauthier is motivated by his belief that ‘moral principles are introduced as objects of fully voluntary ex ante agreement among rational persons’.17 He thinks that the pre-social, pre-moral person lacks the capacity for justice to form any such agreement.
There are so many important ways Gauthier is persuasive. But let us look at his following claim. Gauthier thinks that ‘Glaucon portrays justice as a conventional, social imposition on nature. He speaks of persons as doing and suffering injustice prior to accepting the constrains that constitute justice’.18 To be fair to Gauthier, we get confirmation from Hobbes that persons in the state of nature (pre-communal, pre-social entity) stand outside moral constraints prior to accepting justice and its constraints.19 However, Gauthier is mistaken to conceive Glaucon’s contracting parties as such. The ‘prior’ does not necessarily translate as pre-communal or pre-moral. Glaucon never had a pre-social, pre-moral person in mind; his regal example, King Gyges, shows that he speaks about ethical relationship between persons who live in organised political communities (Pl. Resp. 359c–360b). Glaucon’s main point is that in our everyday experiences even persons who tout themselves as inherently and consistently just are likely to – and they do – abuse social arrangements (like contracts and promise) for their own advantage if the abuse can be done with impunity. Justice constrains such abuse. Thus, for most people maximisation of interests overrides consideration of quality relationships they may have with others; people are willing to share burdens but are far less committed to, for instance, fair distribution of benefits. Thrasymachus’ elaborate distinction between the disposition of the just and unjust from Pl Resp. 343b–344c bears this out. Thrasymachus states that a just man always gets less than an unjust one: ‘in their contracts (sumbolaiois) with one another, you’ll never find, when the partnership (koinōnēsēi) ends, that a just partner has got more than an unjust one, but less’ (Pl Resp. 343d). Hence, it is fair to say that Glaucon’s stronger party, like the Thrasymachean unjust, has the capacity for justice, only that he does not consider it as an attractive virtue, because adherence to it does not conduce to the maximisation of his interest.20 It could also be that the stronger party subscribes to a notion of justice, only that they find attractive the Thrasymachean conception of justice. Moreover, the stronger party also has the capacity to form social relationships, like friendship, only that their motivation for such relationship is to take advantage of others. At best, they can only have Aristotle’s type of utility friendship, wherein friendship obtains in virtue of the benefits each aims to gain, a kind of friendship Aristotle rejects.21
The second point demanding our attention emerges from a consideration of the cognitive abilities of Glaucon’s contracting parties. If, for instance, Glaucon’s stronger person could recognise that a particular behaviour or course of action on their part could generate punishable consequence or outcome for them, then they have the capacity for self-evaluation in respect of inferentially recognising and responding to that behaviour or action. Apparently, the capacity for self-evaluation is distinct from, say, the instinctive capacity to satisfy some biological need, like quenching one’s thirst or eating when hungry (Plato’s tripartite soul makes this point clear). The corollary is that the capacity to vouch for a peaceful coexistence, even if it is for our convenience, is a manifestation of the mediation of our rational powers.22 Consequently, the fact that Glaucon’s stronger contracting party could recognise and respond to some states of affair pertaining to their relationship with others further support our rejection of Gauthier’s conception of Glaucon’s contractors as pre-social, pre-communal and pre-moral. Otherwise, if it is true that the contractors are pre-social and pre-moral, it will follow that they are pre-rational. I explain this.
Let me reiterate that Gauthier does an excellent job in understanding Glaucon’s contractarian morality, especially when he thinks that ‘Glaucon plays an illustrative and representative role’ on discourse about contractarian morality.23 But, as already mentioned, Gauthier misses the point that Glaucon speaks about contractual relationships between individuals in organised societies and not a pre-communal, pre-moral person. The pre-moral claim seeks to warrant that the questionable moral disposition of the unjust cannot be a rational choice; that it could result from some other psychological capacities for acting, such as acting impulsively.24 But I am far from convinced that Glaucon’s stronger person’s questionable moral disposition is not their choice, especially when they have the capacity for justice and social relationships. If, for instance, the tyrant, as Socrates tells Thrasymachus, could be mistaken about what can maximise his interest, it only means that they are mistaken in inferentially recognising facts appropriate to generating their desired outcome; they are mistaken in their practical judgment, which is also a manifestation of rational powers. Therefore, in denying the pre-moral, pre-social claim, we are right to maintain that Glaucon’s stronger, like Thrasymachus’ unjust, aims to maximise their interest in all endeavours, which includes taking advantage of their partners, and this objectionable ethical disposition is their preferred choice of relating with others. It does not follow in any way that the unjust lacks the capacity for morality. The bone of contention between Thrasymachus and Socrates is never about the capacity for rationality and justice but what these two concepts entail.
2 The Contrast between Plato and Glaucon
At this point, our biting point for introducing Plato’s partnership is that, as shall be argued, it is based on rational choice aimed at seeking some advantage. Plato gets even with Gauthier and Glaucon that the pursuit of interest underscores cooperative engagements. In this subsection, I draw attention to distinctions between the position of Plato and Glaucon on the exercise of rationality or reason in pursuit of interest. Plato does not reject the claim that it is natural for humans to pursue their personal interests per se.25 What he finds objectionable, I think, is that one uses the pursuit of interest grounded on human antagonism as a reasonable justification for interpersonal relationship and socio-political arrangements. For Plato, to take advantage of people is repugnant. This is a leitmotif in Socratic/Platonic ethics. For instance, in the Gorgias, Socrates tells Callicles that a person who wants to be happy and blessed must evidently pursue and practice moderation; one must flee away from indiscipline to make sure that they direct all their own affairs and those of their polis to the end that justice and self-control will be present in one who is to be blessed (Pl. Gorg. 507d9–e). For,
the immoderate could not be dear to another man or to a god because he cannot be a partner (koinonein gar adunatos), and where there’s no partnership (koinonia) there’s no friendship (philia). Yes, Callicles, wise men claim that partnership and friendship, orderliness, self-control, and justice hold together heaven and earth, and gods and men, and that is why they call this universe a world order … and not an undisciplined world-disorder (Pl. Gorg. 507e1–50ba).
We need to reiterate here that it is not that the pursuit of personal interest cannot guarantee the formation and sustenance of partnerships; the issue is when the motive for forming such cooperation is about taking advantage of others as mentioned above. The just is genuinely committed to a fair sharing of burdens and benefits.
A further point is about what Plato has to say about motivation for action. Plato thinks that the unjust person must constantly need external agents to navigate through life because they fail to develop their rational capacity to establish and foster sane relationship with others. Plato thinks that the submission of our reason questions our capacity for self-determination and the power to make independent decisions and choices, including our capacity to form partnership or live harmoniously with others. Concretely, it is a surrender of what should be authoritative and ruling in each of us. Plato’s position on the submission of our reason to an external agent is evident in this passage:
T1 Why do you think that the condition of a manual worker is despised? Or is it for any other reason than that, when the best part is naturally weak in someone, it can’t rule the beasts within him but can only serve and learn to flatter them?
Probably so.
Therefore, to ensure that someone like that is ruled by something like what rules the best person, we say that he ought to be the slave of that person who has a divine ruler within himself. It isn’t to harm the slave that we say he must be ruled, which Thrasymachus thought to be true of all subjects, but because it is better for everyone to be ruled by the divine reason, preferably within himself and his own, otherwise imposed from without, so that as far as possible all will be alike and friends, governed by the same thing.
Yes, that’s right.
This clearly is the aim of the law, which is the ally of everyone. (Pl. Resp. 590c9–591a).
This passage is at the last section of Book 9 where we have left behind the just city analogy whose construction required the existence of manual workers. Nevertheless, it is a passage that is particularly convenient and crucial for deliberations on the view that everyone has the mental constitution or deliberative capacity to pursue rational ends, for instance, the capacity to live morally excellent life. For Plato everyone potentially has the capacity for both theoretical (basically, reflections on our beliefs) and practical reasoning (essentially, reflections on our actions, intentions, and motivations) in so far as every human does indeed have reason. Thus, in this sense at least everyone can be ruled by the divine in himself. Plato’s argument for this claim is that everyone possesses a tripartite soul – made up of the appetitive, the spirited, and reason or philosophic parts – within themselves, and can, therefore, exercise some degree of reason. Here, the rule of reason relates to our individual autonomy, and consequently, a capacity for evaluating and reflecting on our beliefs in search for appropriate principles to make informed choices and decisions.
This is because the quality of human flourishing largely supervenes upon the quality of the beliefs and principles which inform our choices and decisions. In this regard, personal autonomy is closely aligned with the thesis that ‘the person is a law unto himself’.26 Thus, Plato could reasonably expect everyone to live a morally excellent life because he thinks that everyone has reason – and reason, when properly fostered, can guarantee moral excellence. It follows that since everyone has the reason in them, everyone has the potential to live the morally excellent life (Pl. Resp. 443c8–e). However, where the individual fails to cultivate his rational part or reason, i.e., where reason has been allowed to atrophy, and where the failure leads to punishable consequences for the individual or the society or both, there must be an external compelling agent to set the said individual on an ethical trajectory. Here, one is reminded of why Socrates appealed to the Laws in the Crito to convince Crito to abandon his escape logos.
Now, premature submission of our reason to an external agent, like the law, at the early formulation of agreement sounds perniciously problematic to Plato; for it indicates not only the failure of reason but also that it positively counts against the chances of developing our own reason correctly. We need only suppose that some circumstances, e.g., debilitating illness or accident, could permit that a reasonable thing to do would be to submit to an external agent or that an external agent must forcefully intervene to restore peace and order. Otherwise, we are capable of being in control of our lives because nature equips us with reasoning capacity to do so. Clearly, Plato does not think that Glaucon’s or Thrasymachus’ contracting parties can form any meaningful partnership not because they lack rational capacity – they do have it – but that they fail to cultivate that capacity for virtue. Therefore, if the tripartite soul can be attributed to everyone, then it is wrong to say that Glaucon’s contracting parties lack rational capacity. What is right is that the exercise of that rational capacity cannot guarantee them any meaningful partnership because it is motivated solely by motive of personal gain, which requires taking advantage of others.
Our subsequent task is to demonstrate how Platonic partnership is associated with the seeking of some advantage in light of rational consideration, which is different from Glaucon’s. In exploring the Platonic partnership, I am concerned with individual rational agency. But some conceptual clarity is needed. I focus on the relationship between rational agency and practical reasoning and how such mode of reasoning underpins the Platonic partnership. We have already remarked, in agreement with Raz, that (1) reasoning manifests our rational powers. Plato shares this view: the rational part of the soul, when properly nurtured, directs us to make beneficial choices to bear beneficial consequences. Two further senses of being rational and acting reasonably, together with their normative conditions, deserve our attention. (2) In general terms, to be rational or to exercise reason can mean one’s cognitive disposition to be receptive of proper reasons or employ correct forms of inference to achieve a particular effect, such as acting in a way to attaining an intentional goal. This is evident in reason’s capacity to reflect, calculate and engage in other mental activities (e.g., Pl. Resp. 441b1–c2). (3) Being rational for Plato is also (and in a very restricted sense) to act under the authority of the part of our soul that aims for what is true and good.
So, there is a way in which for Plato acting rationally or employing reason in this sense imports not just the normativity involved in thinking correctly in making valid inferences but also normativity involved in grasping what is genuinely good, where good is understood to be a natural property and indeed the cause of the being of all other things (e.g., Pl. Resp. 585e5–586b4; 509b).27 A major difference between (2) and (3), on the one hand, is that in the generic sense of being reasonable people may judge correctly or agree on correct outcomes without necessarily having full grasp of the metaphysical entities or normative principles which ground these judgements and outcomes. For instance, in our Book IV passage (Pl. Resp. 489b3–c7), Socrates takes it for granted that the ruled are reasonable enough to appreciate political establishment and its demands: the knowledgeable must rule. On the other hand, individuals may be said to be reasonable, in the very restricted sense, if they have full grasp of these metaphysical entities, i.e., the Good and the Forms. Now, senses (1)-(3) are evident in the Republic: (1) and (2) are peculiar to the non-philosophic craftsmen, who lack the requisite aptitude to grasp what is genuinely good, but who, nonetheless, can be said to exercise some rationality to attain legitimate outcomes; (3) is peculiar to the philosophers. Therefore, whenever I speak about the partnering agents being rational or reasonable agents, I have in mind sense (1) and (2), since that reasoning capacity can be predicated to all the partnering agents, i.e., philosophers and non-philosophers alike.
3 Platonic Partnership
I believe we now have a comprehensive background to explore the Platonic partnership. I do so in Sections 3 and 4. Here, in Section 3, I introduce the Platonic partnership and consider some of its salient features for exploration in the subsequent sections. Just like Glaucon, Platonic partnership emerges from human weakness: our insufficiency. But for Plato, the weakness rather engenders a sense of morality and socio-political relationship that is not a necessary evil but rather what the partnering agents really want. To explore this claim, I now introduce the Platonic partnership as it is outlined in Book II. In their constructionist account of the polis, Socrates and Glaucon have the following exchange:
T2 I think a city comes to be because none of us is self-sufficient (ouk autarkēs), but we all need many things. Do you think that a city is founded on any other principle?
No.
And because people need many things, and because one person calls on a second out of one need and on a third out of a different need, many people gather in a single place to live together as partners (koinōnous) and helpers (boēthous). And such a settlement is called a city. Isn’t that so?
It is.
And if they share things with one another, giving and taking, they do so because each believes that this is better for himself (oiomenous hautōi ameinon einai)? (Pl. Resp. 369b6–c6).
It is a fact of nature that we are not self-sufficient. Mutual needs and difference of aptitude are the corresponding ethical foundational principles that result in the coming to be of the polis. Hence, the solution to the problem of human insufficiency manifests in the founding of a polis that fundamentally serves as an arena for the satisfaction of needs. Immediately, the aim of the polis, upon its inception, then, is both instrumental and teleological, i.e., improving the good of its members. It is crucial for us that in Socrates’ view if members of community ‘share things with one another, giving and taking, they do so because each believes that this is better for himself (oiomenous hautōi ameinon einai)’ (Pl. Resp. 369c5–7). Here, we see that Plato is founding a political system based on addressing human weakness, but it is a weakness that will later create duties for the partnering agents rather than put them outside the conditions of justice (contra Glaucon). Moreover, the same weakness will engender a sense of morality, but this morality does not subvert the role in making possible society as ‘a cooperative venture for mutual advantage’.28
Now, the expression ‘better for himself’ introduces into the discussion a conception of individual rational agency and practical reasoning in respect of the pursuit of interest: each partner aims, first and foremost, to deal with their individual natural human predicament and to make up for individual lack of self-sufficiency. Practical reasoning – and reasoning general – is a manifestation of our rational powers, since it involves questions pertaining to what is to be done or what is the best course of action in a given situation. Accordingly, much of what I shall say about the Platonic partnership, in connection with rational agency, centres on the expression better for himself. This expression invites a consideration of the egoistic morality that potentially emerges from the rationality of the partners and helpers. Egoistic morality is construed here as the obligation a partnering agent owes to himself – here his survival – and the rational choice he makes to cooperate with others by way of fulfilling this obligation.29 As we shall see in Section 4, this rational choice consists in agreeing to and abiding by the principles that govern the partnership.
3.1 Agential Capacities of Plato’s Partners
In this subsection, I give attention to the agential capacities of the Platonic contracting parties. Now, if the polis is the result of partnership, then Socrates is required to show the agential capacities of the partnering agents. Unfortunately, he does not explicitly put up a defence for this claim; he impliedly takes for granted that each of the partnering agents possesses rational deliberative capacity and collaborative spirit; that each of the partners considers the partnership as a cooperative act that rightly conduces to their personal interest. Some scholars may claim that we need not worry about the absence of such defence because Socrates only presented his political thesis only as ‘a thought experiment’ to defend justice writ large, and so he does not deserve criticism if he excluded some features that would occur in reality to focus on others in his constructionist account.30
This sounds plausible. But it is because of this neglect of the founding members’ agential capacities that motivate some scholars to think that the non-philosophers are not significant members of Kallipolis. Thus, a traditional and still popular interpretation of the Republic politics holds that all but the philosophers are slaves precisely because they lack knowledge of the Good. Karl Popper popularised this argument in his The Open Society and its Enemies, first published in 1946.31 Vlastos has argued prior that the non-philosophers are slaves to the philosophers for similar reason. Thus, for scholars like Vlastos and Popper, it is unacceptable to assert that the non-philosophers have the capacity to form contracts, since a contract requires consent and consent presupposes the exercise of some significant rationality.32 Vlastos and Popper argue that for Plato only philosophers have the capacity for justice because they possess knowledge of the Good. This is a mistaken view, to say the least. The partnership in Book II is apparently prior to the categorisation of the members of the polis into philosophers and non-philosophers. What is clear is that the philosophers and non-philosophers become succeeding generation of the initial contractors, even though the principles of the partnership continue to define their relation.33 Therefore, by exploring the agential capacities of the founding members, we come to terms with how we can conceive the positive position the non-philosophers occupy in Kallipolis.
That said, despite the absence of Socrates’ explicit defence of the agential capacity of the partnering agent in the Book II passage, I believe that we can track this by paying close attention to the expression better for himself. What does the better consist of? I propose the following as possible readings of the expression. The first a point is an agreement between Plato and Gauthier. Unlike Glaucon’s contracting parties, Plato’s founding members perhaps qualify as pre-communal persons. But so long as each of them can value the relative merit of a particular course of action, it does not follow that they are pre-rational. Here, their rationality may be said to consist in recognising and responding to certain course of action which conduces to their flourishing. Hence, we can grant that if each realises that partnering with each other promotes their individual flourishing, it implies that each of them is a rational deliberative agent in respect of employing correct forms of inference to achieve a particular effect, i.e., dealing with the problem of insufficiency. Therefore, the partnership is a directed and purposeful act, i.e., something thought to yield some positive outcome. Linguistically, ‘better’ (ameinon) is a comparative term that indicates how each agent assesses the relative merit of available options. Thus, each partner rationalises that cooperating with others to benefit from the survival security a communal life could afford is better for them than, say, a solitary life. If this holds, then we can appreciate that while we cannot say with certainty that Plato’s partnering agents aim to maximise their interests as Glaucon’s and Gauthier’s agents do, we do know that they aim to satisfy some personal interest.
Second, the expression also plausibly suggests that each of the members engages in an internal dialogue prior to forming the partnership and comes to the bargaining table with some reasoned considerations and expectations. Hence, it is plausible that members of the partnership are individuals who are aware of their sense of self-worth, at least in respect of their deliberative capacity to identify what is advantageous, i.e., partnering with others for mutual benefit. Third, and relatedly, each member is also aware of the other as a being who is equally engaged in reasoning out the same human predicament and has something worthwhile to contribute to the partnership. In this light, even though it may sound anachronistic, it is not out of court to ascribe some kind of ‘equality’ to the Platonic partnering agents at least in respect of how all of them consider what can be conduce to their individual wellbeing or flourishing. Let me hasten to add that I am not here establishing a kind of equality between the philosophers and non-philosophers. My point is akin to what Rawls may consider as the rational considerations of contracting parties at the ‘original position’, even though the partners in Plato’s original position are aware of their interests and selves.
Given the first and second reading of better for himself, one might be tempted to suppose, as Sheffield does, that the partnership is defined by affective morality, traced to the language of affective sense of philia in which ‘nurture’ and ‘sharing’ have been embedded.34 I do not reject the supposition that an affective or social morality might define interpersonal relationships as the polis develops. In fact, Socrates neatly describes the lives of the members in the first polis to include that ‘they’ll feast with their children, drink their wine, crowned with wreaths, and hymn the gods’ (Pl. Resp. 372a3–c3). Being crowned with wreaths suggests some public standard for positive recognition. Social concepts like admiration and appreciation are developed, so is friendship. Nevertheless, I do claim that affective morality is secondary to the egoistic morality that initially characterises the partnership. Socrates never mentions that the polis comes into being out of the affection people have for each other.35 Instead, he says that ‘it is our needs (hēmetera kreia), it seems, that create it’ (Pl. Resp. 369c8–9). We may be right to claim that for Socrates the relationships of mutual interdependence and benefit in fact constitute philia in this instance. When in the later Books Socrates says that the rulers in Kallipolis call their citizens ‘providers of upkeep and wages’ and the citizens, in turn, call their rulers ‘preservers’, which is an instance of philia – in contrast to the slavery status of the ruled in other poleis (Pl. Resp. 463a3–b12) – the relationship is materially defined, i.e., it is centred on the exchange of material needs.
In essence, each of the partnering agents (a) can at least recognise what he needs, (b) what he can provide, (c) what each of the other agents can provide, and (d) can communicate this to each of the other agents involved to make obvious the benefits of the cooperation to all. This spells out clearly that the rationality of all contracting parties is characteristic of practical reasoning, and its normative force seems to lie in reasoning correctly in achieving an intended outcome or end, such as satisfying natural needs in this instance. Now, while the possible readings of better for himself plausibly define the rational agential capacities of the partnering agents, they also have important consequence for understanding the rationality associated with the partnership. Socrates extends an invitation: ‘Come, then, let us create a city from the beginning, in our theory. Its real creator, it seems, will be our needs’ (369c7–9).36 Socrates immediately mentions food, shelter, and clothing. Given the priority Socrates gives to basic needs, the expression better for himself once more suggests that the partnership is initially grounded on a non-objectionable sense of egoism: each member seeks to satisfy some natural need. For instance, the need to eat is naturally hardwired disposition; we negatively alter our immunity or physiology if we fail to heed to this natural requirement. In fact, each wants to satisfy more than one what he cannot satisfy himself. That is why the partnerships are not merely pairs: each needs to connect with plurality of others, each of whom can satisfy one of the needs he cannot satisfy for himself. In this way each person in the first polis (city of pigs) relates to every other citizen. Only later that we do have cases in which, for instance, the plough-maker satisfies the need of the farmer but not also the need of the baker and so is only indirectly connected in partnership with the baker. So, currency is introduced to make the benefits and liabilities transferable.
That said, it deserves mention that the natural requirement to satisfy our needs may not necessarily be a rational requirement. For we need not be moved by reason to eat whenever we are hungry; it is usually impulsive. But it is reasonable that we engage in acts, such as cooperating with others that could guarantee how we can access the needs we cannot provide for ourselves. Wallace explains rational requirement: ‘When we say that a given consideration is a reason for A to x, we are apparently suggesting that it is a requirement of reason that A be moved to do x’.37 We also assume that A will be moved to do x because A is a rational deliberative agent who can decide and act upon his decisions.38 The requirement to be reasonable is often couched within the context of choice making (think of the akratic agent). If so, one might reasonably wonder what kind of choices are available to the Platonic partners. Answering this takes us back to passage T2. It seems nature presents two mutually exclusive and exhaustive options. Nature moves us to provide all our needs but also limits us in terms of all the required capacities to fulfil those needs. Nature creates a dependency culture: it is either one relies on one’s own effort and perish for lacking some needs or one cooperates with others to fulfil those needs. One cannot simultaneously have both. Consequently, by choosing to rely on each other, the Platonic agent believes that it is more reasonable to join resources with others to fulfill these needs than to rely solely on their own effort. Therefore, each of the Platonic partners considers the partnership as a reasonable thing to do. It is reasonable because it is a worthier choice to deal with human insufficiency. So, when later in Book V Socrates proposes that it is vital that ‘all the citizens rejoice and are pained by the same successes and failures’ (462b3–5), he invites us to think conceptually of the polis as cooperative venture for mutual advantage.
Here, we need to stress the individuality in the rational choice of appropriate means to deal with insufficiency. The existential threat posed by human insufficiency is felt individually. Therefore, the solution to this problem is individually conceived and pursued: it is primarily based on personal interest. That is, Plato thinks of individual pursuits as foundational to, as well as coinciding harmoniously with, communal life. That said, our reading of Pl. Resp. 369c5–7 should clarify that Socrates’ conception of personal interest is different from Glaucon’s notion of self-interest associated with human antagonism; it also differs significantly from Thrasymachus’, which involves the stronger taking undue advantage of the weaker with impunity (Pl. Resp. 338c). Therefore, a plausible inference from the expression better for himself is that the rationality associated with the Platonic partnership relates to the rationality associated with the so-called ‘Greek eudaemonistic axiom’, according to which ‘rational agents act only if it is in their best interest, or for the sake of their own happiness’.39 We might call this ‘egoistic rationality’. The egoistic rationality also accords well with Gauthier’s maximizing rationality. But our appeal to Gauthier needs cautioning. Given his maximizing rationality, Gauthier argues that agents form cooperative interaction as a form of bargain with the view to competing for the expected outcome of the said cooperation. Gauthier’s classic example of this type of cooperation is the (free) market, which ‘exemplifies an ideal of interaction among persons who, taking no interests, need only follow the dictates of their own individual interests to participate effectively in a venture for mutual advantage’.40 Plato’s partnering agents, however, do not have this competitive spirit, at least given his view about competition. Against Thrasymachus, Socrates argues that competition is for the unjust (Pl. Resp. 349b); just people are like craftsmen who, instead of competing, try to attain standards of excellence appropriate to their crafts (Pl. Resp. 350b–c). Given Plato’s admission that there are differences in natural aptitudes, which includes differences in strength, he would have endorsed Glauconian-Thrasymachean view if he had been an advocate of competition among the partners. Therefore, an attractive component of Gauthier’s thesis for us is his insistence that rational choices can be made based on agreed principles of cooperation. This component, as we have seen is fundamental to Plato’s formulation of the partnership between rational agents in the Book II passage.
4 Partnership and Rational Principles
The Book IV and V passages we considered in the introduction invite considerations of the rational and moral expectations of persons, qua rational agents, who are aware of their individual preferences as well as their contributions to the commonwealth and expect benefits in return. As was indicated, the passages testify to the notion of distributive justice in respect of the sharing of benefits and liabilities. How can the citizens be pained by unjust distribution of resources if there is no prior agreement about sharing benefits and burdens? There surely must be some grounding before such claims could be made. The motivation here is that any form of agreement, like partnership, defines the criteria for legitimate claims and just actions. The agreement consists in the following basic fact: when a partnering agent considers that a particular course of action could potentially generate expected better outcome (Pl. Resp. 369c5–7). This observation returns us to defend our initial claim that Socrates’ position on political consensus in the Book IV and V passages should be read in connection with the Book II passages.
Socrates considers the following as the greatest threat to the stability of the polis: ‘Meddling and exchange between these three classes … is the greatest harm that can happen to the city and would rightly be called the worst thing someone could do to it’ (Pl. Resp. 434a–c). I suppose that he is here reiterating one of the main principles that result from the partnership: the social justice. As a follow up to T1, the crucial passage in Book II asks:
T3 (A) Must each of them contribute his own work for the common use of all (hapasi koinon katatithenai)? (B) For example, will a farmer provide food for everyone, spending quadruple the time and labour to provide food to be shared by them all? Or will he not bother about that, producing one quarter the food in one quarter the time, and spending the other three quarters, one in building a house, one in the production of clothes, and one in making shoes, not troubling to associate with the others, but minding his own business on his own? (Pl. Resp. 369e2–370a4).41
First, Socrates asks question (A) to solicit for an answer that serves as the initial agreement between rational persons. He seems to be speaking to individuals who are disposed to uphold principles of cooperation. Now, if each of them is willing to contribute their own work for the common use of all, then it means that each partner finds initially acceptable what each other brings to the bargaining table. And if each agrees to this initial principle, it confirms that each has the rational capacity to appreciate what constitutes a just arrangement, even though they may lack a full grasp of what justice is. It follows further that one is just so long as one abides by the initial agreement. That is, if what is agreeable constitutes justice, a breach of which invites condemnation, then each of the partners’ ‘primary obligation to justice is founded on self-interest; where this interest is lacking justice has no place.’42 If this is right, then it is my conviction that Gauthier and Plato gets even on how morality characterising contractual agreements emerge: it is generated as a rational constraint from non-moral premisses of rational choice; the non-moral premise here is human weakness, our insufficiency. That said, the first rational and moral principle could roughly be stated below:
P1 It is reasonable that each partner be willing to socialise their talent for the common use of all.
P1 only restates the partnership. It claims that if each decides to submit their work for the common use of all, then each does so within the spirit of ‘a reciprocal network of giving and receiving’.43 It boosts our conception of egoistic rationality: none of the partnering agents contributes his work to benefit the other without a legitimate expectation that others contribute same. P1 spells out clearly the principle of ‘each person doing their own’, which defines the social justice. Moreover, it shows us how Plato conceives a kind of contractual agreement in defence of his notion of social justice. The farmer could spend some time building a house for himself and the builder could spend some time ploughing a field, but it is better for each if the builder builds for both, and the farmer grows for both since then each person does what they do best, and each person receives something made by the person best at making that thing. It is very important which goods are being shared and how they fit with the needs and skill set possessed by the co-operators.
Second, the set of questions in (B) solicits an answer that defines how each available talent can be fashioned in a way that yields best outcomes. Socrates is here speaking about attaining efficiency: each should concentrate on what their natural aptitude and training would enable them to do optimally. This proposition supports the claim that the social justice is itself one of the defining rational principles of the partnership. Accordingly, I submit the following as another crucial principle that emerge from the partnership:
P2 It is reasonable that each partner perfect their talents to yield better outcomes. We can call this the principle of optimum functionality.
Principle (2) spells out the social justice. As we can see, the social justice seeks to acknowledge the worth of each person and consequently sanctions intersubjective cooperation and positive mutual interdependence. Now, when Glaucon rejects the city for pigs, Socrates is guided by principles P1 and P2 to create the position of guardianship. Consider the following passage:
T4 Then the city must be further enlarged, and not just by a small number, either, but by a whole army, which will do battle with the invaders in defence of the city’s substantial wealth …. Why aren’t
the citizens themselves adequate for that purpose? They won’t be, if the agreement you and the rest made when we were founding the city was a good one, for surely, we agreed, if you remember, that it’s impossible for a single person to practice many crafts or profession well (
καλῶς ). (Pl. Resp. 373e8–374a; see also 373b2–c5).
Thus, in justifying guardianship, Socrates still works with the assumption that the members of the city he is founding are individuals with the same natural needs but differing capacities, interests, and concerns who are willing to socialise their talents. It is apparent that the cooperation applies to guardianship: an addition to the needs of the partnering agents is the need to be ruled and to be ruled well, and it is reasonable that someone with the requisite aptitude and competence to rule well is allowed to become a partner. Thus, the exclusion of some members from warfare is a logical and reasonable one: it simply follows from P1 and P2. But, as said in a moment ago, I take principle P1 to be the original reasonable thing to do and P2 to be a derivative principle, even though Socrates speaks more of the latter than the former. To clarify, principle P1 is necessary and P2 is contingent. That is, it is necessary that we form partnership to deal with our natural human predicament. But it is not necessary (albeit reasonable) that we perfect our talents to optimum functional levels before we attend to our pressing natural needs.
Our expectation that others function optimally to attain efficiency in what they do is contingent on our wish to get the best outcome from them, as we depend on them for things, we cannot produce ourselves. Think about how disappointed we become when people we rely on for some service betray us. Therefore, it is reasonable that we also perfect our talent just so those others can derive the best outcome from our profession. The following passage further clarifies P2:
T5 Well … don’t you think that warfare is a profession?
Of course.
Then should we be more concerned about cobbling than about warfare?
Not at all.
But we prevented a cobbler from trying to be a farmer, weaver, or builder at the same time and said that he must remain a cobbler to produce fine work. And each of the others, too, was to work all his life at a single trade for which he had a natural aptitude and keep away from all the others, so as not to miss the right moment to practice his own work well (eu). (Pl. Resp. 374b).
The expressions kalōs and eu are used synonymously to mean the same thing, namely, that it is not just doing something but doing it efficiently and optimally that is what matters (see Cri. 48b4–8).44 Socrates does not want dilettantish farmers, rulers, carpenters, and all other professionals in his polis. Rawls uses the orchestra to explain a similar cooperative interaction. Rawls indulges us to ‘consider a group of musicians everyone of whom could have trained himself to play equally well as the others any instrument in the orchestra, but who each have by a kind of [explicit] agreement set out to perfect their skills on the one they have chosen so as to realize the powers of all in their joint performances’.45 Gauthier, commenting on Rawls’ analogy, appreciates that the first important strand of Rawls’ analogy is that ‘each person, unable to realize all human excellences in her own person, profits directly from, although not opposed to, her own. Each is enriched by the complementarity of realisations quite apart from the specific activities made possible’.46 It is evident that Gauthier and Rawls are espousing a view that has ancestry in Plato.
In any case, passages T3–T5 support our claim that it is a rational requirement that each of the partners abide by rational principles P1 and P2. This is equal to saying that it is moral (in our restricted sense) that each abide by these principles. The principle is moral insofar as it is rational. Therefore, the individual acts well in Kallipolis so long as he abides by the principles of the partnership. The partnership fundamentally creates rational and not altruistic expectations. Each partner is more concerned about how each one would accept to comply with P1 and P2 than how every interest is to be satisfied. Once again, since it is not up to individuals who are concentrating on their individual professions to ensure compliance to these rational and moral principles, we expect the law or government to be the enforcer of the principles of the law. In contrast to Glaucon’s thesis, law in this sense becomes something each of the Platonic partners desires and not something imposed on them. For, it functions in Kallipolis as the codification of, as well as what safeguards and consolidates, agreed principles of cooperation or collaborative enterprise among non-conflicting agents, here the partners, who aim to achieve some expected outcomes.
We now move on to consider the last principle. The third principle directly derives from the second; it specifies the quality of the social justice. Socrates’ warfare example still helps to unravel this principle:
T6 Now, isn’t it of the greatest importance that warfare be practiced well? And is fighting a war so easy that a farmer or a cobbler or any other craftsman can be a soldier at the same time? Though no one can become so much as a skilful player of checkers or dice if he considers it only as a sideline and doesn’t practice it from childhood. Or can someone pick up a shield or any other weapon or tool of war and immediately perform adequately in an infantry battle or any other kind? No other tool makes anyone who picks it up a craftsman or champion unless he has acquired the requisite knowledge (
τὴν ἐπιστήµῃν ) and has had sufficient practice. If tools could make anyone who picked them up an expert, they’d be valuable indeed. Then to the degree that the work of the guardians is most important, it requires most freedom from other things and the greatest skill and devotion (τέχνης τε καὶ ἐπιµελείας µεγίστης δεόµενον ) (Pl. Resp. 374b5–e3).
The first important strand of thought in passages T4–T5 is that time explains why people must concentrate on what their natural aptitudes could enable them to function optimally. The suggestion is that the more one spends time on any given profession, the greater the dexterity in the acquisition of the relevant knowledge and the quality of performance of the said craft or profession. But the luxury of time itself does not establish the grounds for authority or expertise. There is a possibility that one can have the luxury of time but still fail to be efficient or act efficiently. The second condition is, therefore, crucial: one must acquire the necessary knowledge and skill set associated with one’s profession. The idea is that every profession, including guardianship, has its own epistemic demands such that one can claim expert knowledge about such a profession if and only if one has acquired the relevant knowledge in the said profession. Apparently, the third principle is a specification of the second principle:
P3 It is reasonable that each partner spend quality time and the greatest devotion (in the form of training and education) on a single profession just so each can acquire the required knowledge and sufficient training to function optimally. That is, attaining efficient outcomes depends on the quality of natural aptitude, training, and education.
Principles P2 and P3 are dependent on principle P1. Thus, we cannot intelligibly speak about the polis’ social justice and epistemic requirements if we treat them as independent of the partnership. That said, it deserves emphasis that the partners agree to P3 as a formidable principle to generate better outcomes. However, they need not be able to offer a full account of the justice, qua metaphysical entity, underlying this principle before they can be considered as rational (see above).
Moreover, we have seen that the just polis Plato envisions is not to occur fortuitously: its structures and foundations are directly thought out, planned, deliberated upon and produced by the partnering agents while pursuing their individual endeavours. This means that a political construction or development, like founding a polis, ‘is a creative act, essentially involving, as it must, the activity of the human intellect in the production of … ideas of effective strategies, methods and systems’.47 Gyekye is also right that ‘Ideas are products of individuals, that is, individual intellects. For this reason, the creative activity, if it is to succeed, requires that free rein be given to the exercise by the individual human beings of their initiative, capacity, and ingenuity’.48 Liberals frequently accuse Plato of suppressing individual creative potential, and often use participation in politics as their standard of assessment. However, from the alternative thesis I have advanced here, even though the non-philosophic citizens are excluded from politics, there is a sensible way to understand the positive relationship that exist between the rulers and the ruled: they are crucial partners and not slaves tout court. It is not out of benevolence that Plato conceives the political position of the non-philosophers in these favourable terms; it is the logical consequence of the partnership and its principles.
5 Political Obligation and Rationality
In this section, we reflect on passage Pl. Resp. 431e10–432b1 concerned with distributive justice of sharing burdens. First, our discussion puts us in a better position to appreciate that the partnership in the Book II passages provides grounds for political legitimacy. If the non-philosophers accept that the philosopher-rulers rule, they do so because of the partnership. Similarly, if a philosopher-ruler positively recognises the profession of, say, the doctor or farmer, it is precisely because of his awareness of the principles of partnership. In any case, there is a positive recognition fundamental to the relationship between the rulers and the ruled. Let us remind ourselves that this positive recognition between the rulers and the ruled comes directly from the partnership, which was occasioned by the predecessors of the philosophers and non-philosophers.
The implication I seek to draw is to further explore this recognition. To do this, I return to Socrates’ claim about moderation in the Book IV passage we cited in the introduction. I restate it:
T7 … moderation spreads throughout the whole. It makes the weakest, the strongest, and those in between – whether regarding reason, physical strength, numbers, wealth, or anything else – all sing the same song together. And this unanimity (homonoia), this agreement between the naturally worse and the naturally better as to which of the two is to rule both in the city and in each one, is rightly called moderation (Pl. Resp. 431e10–432a).
As mentioned above, this passage is about distributive justice in respect of sharing burdens. It provides a plausible answer to the question about who should rule. If the citizens would obey their rulers, it means they accept that their philosopher-rulers meet rational principle (3): the epistemic requirement. Now, concerning T7, Piechowiak rightly notes that ‘Plato’s account of moderation in the state stresses not the pure control of rulers over the ruled but a rational order based on unanimity (
However, I take issue with Piechowiak’s explanation. He explains that the moderation ‘presupposes that the ruled rationally recognise their inferiority in the state, which requires that they have sound judgement in matters of the state, which is the property of the rulers. This makes the account of the state slightly inconsistent, for if the ruled had sound judgement, considerable humility would also be required from them, which Plato does not mention at all’.50 I take issue with Piechowiak for the following reason. We should not pretend to lose sight that Plato sometimes uses derogatory expressions to describe the non-philosophic citizens. We can admit that the ruled may be cognitively inferior to the rulers, but they are not cognitively inept. For we have seen that each class, qua rational partnering agent, has a distinctive mode of excellence regarding their role in the partnership. This claim exposes a further consideration. When Socrates says that there is moderation in the city because the ruler
and the ruled share the same belief about who should govern, one common reading is that the philosophers will come to believe in this through rational considerations: Socrates thinks he will be giving just orders to just people (Pl. Resp. 520e1–3). But the rest of the citizens will accept that they should be ruled because of other ‘uncritical’ considerations, like their believing the myth of the metals (the Noble Lie), wherein they are conditioned to believe that their rulers are cleverer people (Pl. Resp. 415b–c). I do not intend to slight this reading. Nevertheless, a more promising reading is that since Socrates does not found the polis on a mythical grounds and only appeals to the myth (even with doubts about its acceptability, Pl. Resp. 415d1–3), as one of the many ways to foster social harmony, we should prioritise the fact that the non-philosophic citizens exercise reason (given P1–P3) in accepting who should rule over their acceptance of their position because of the myth. In other words, the governed sees their philosopher-rulers as those fit to satisfy rational principle (3). Likewise, on textual and logical grounds, it is a reasonable to say that the rulers are also aware that the ruled can be efficient in their respective professions.
For the ruler cannot spontaneously be a ruler, a doctor, and a farmer and excel in each of them equally; such occurrence defies rational principles P1–P3. Rational principles P2 and P3 indicate clearly that the realisability of Kallipolis (if it is a possibility) depends on the cooperative interaction between the epistemic or cognitive competences of both the rulers and the ruled. How else would social harmony (homonoia) in line with T7 be achieved if the ruled did not develop their reason such that they can appreciate the partnership? There must be political consensus based on rationality for Kallipolis to thrive, and this rationality generates directly from the notion of partnership and its corresponding principles as argued we have considered in Book. The uncompromising critic could still maintain the superior-inferior relation. But if Plato has a positive way of referring to them, it is more sensible to account for his positive political thesis by using those expressions. But we may even ask: is there even a problem when one thinks that his political leaders are the best because they are knowledgeable? How we wish our political leaders are knowledgeable about politics to care about us! So, we can excuse the inferior-superior complexities. To concede, the citizens do not necessarily have to exercise ‘sound judgement’ the same way as the philosopher-rulers to appreciate that their rulers are the best. But they must, at least, be aware of what goes on in the polis. Note that Socrates says that he will try to persuade the rulers and the soldiers and then the rest of the citizenry to believe the autochthony (Pl. Resp. 414d). If the citizens can be persuaded, then it suggests that they at least have the rational capacity to accept or reject something based on its persuasive forcefulness.
6 Conclusion
In this article an attempt has been made to give critical attention to the notion of partnership in Book II of the Republic and spell out its rational principles. The focus was also on the implications of this notion of partnership for understanding the relationship between the rulers and the ruled. It has been shown that the partnership results as a solution to the problem of human insufficiency; that the social justice also emerges as one of the principles of the partnership. Scholars who neglect the partnership in Plato’s political engineering tend to impute erroneous idea to him, and we have hopefully corrected these misrepresented or misinterpreted ideas. Two of those erroneous ideas are as follows. First, it has been urged in this paper that the relationship between the rulers and the ruled is defined by the partnership and its associated principles. Consequently, the view that the citizens are slaves to the rulers has been rejected both on textual and logical grounds. Second, the paper is sceptical about the view that the relationship between the citizens is mainly defined by philia. Philia is a plausible candidate, but it comes into the limelight after the pursuit of individual interest has occasioned the coming into being of polis. It has been shown that the pursuit of individual interest is not an objectionable rational and moral enterprise. To be moral is to comply with those rational principles that emerge as the objects of agreement members of the community, qua rational persons, agree to abide by. Considering these moral principles, it is fair to assert that Plato recognizes that the non-philosophers can have good values and can lead worthwhile lives. It has hopefully been shown that it is in the light of this consideration that we can intelligibly speak about the senses of distributive justice in Book IV (Pl. Resp. 431e10–432a) and V (Pl. Resp. 462b3–9) in respect of the sharing of burdens and benefits. It is the partnership that creates lawful and legitimate claims, such as getting quantifiable amount of whatever good is being distributed depending on one’s contribution to the making of that good.51
Unless otherwise indicated, translations from Plato’s works, including the Republic, are from J.M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson (eds.), Plato: Complete Works (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997). The Greek text is from J. Burnet, ed., Oxford Classical Texts: Platonis Opera, vol. 4 (Oxford: University Press, 1978). I sometimes modify the translations without comment.
Some commentators have already acknowledged the relevance of the notion of koinōnia at Pl. Resp. 369b–370b in Plato’s political thought. See for instance F.C.C. Sheffield, ‘Moral Motivation in Plato’s Republic? Philia and the Return to the Cave’, in V. Caston (ed.) Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Volume 59, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 79–132; G. Cantu, ‘Individual and Polis in Plato’s Republic’, Polis 28 (2011): pp. 90–107. The concept has however not been given the critical analysis it deserves.
D. Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: University Press, 1987), p. 7.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 4.
I shall refrain from discussing the question as to whether ethics is the same as morality, the worry of G.E.M. Anscombe, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, Philosophy 33 (1958): pp. 1–16.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 7.
P. Bloomfield, Morality and Self-Interest (Cary: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2007), p. 3.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 7.
Sheffield, ‘Moral Motivation in Plato’s Republic?’, pp. 84–85. This is not to say, however, that philia is reducible to the sympathetic transmission of feelings. In fact, for Aristotle, political friendship (politikē philia) instantiates as a kind of relationship wherein egoistic claims of benefits determine socio-political interactions or relationships between members of a political community (Arist. Eth. Nic. 8.3. 1156a6–21; cf. 8.3. 1156B6–30).
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 9.
R. Crisp, Sacrifice Regained: Morality and Self-Interest in British Moral Philosophy from Hobbes to Bentham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 3.
The expression ‘morals by agreement’ is the title of Gauthier’s work used in this paper.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 307.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 309.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 309.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 310.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 9.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 309.
Gauthier argues that ‘morality is misrepresented in Glaucon’s tale and its seeming confirmation in the arguments of Hobbes and Hume’. Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 309.
Gauthier acknowledges MacIntyre’s possible objection to his conception of Glaucon’s contracting party as a natural man. A.C. MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed. (Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group, 1998), p. 18. MacIntyre says something to the following effect. Glaucon’s moral vocabularies for describing his contracting parties are elaborate socially constructed terminologies which postdate pre-social, pre-moral man, thereby supporting our view that Glaucon does not have the pre-social and pre-moral man in mind. In fact, Glaucon is not interested in the origin of man but with his motivation and principles for action.
Arist. Eth. Nic. 8.3.1156a6–21.
Within the context of Glaucon’s consequentialist contractarian thesis, therefore, we can follow Raz (though in a different context) to aver that Glaucon’s stronger person possesses rational capacity to recognise and respond to facts about some states of affair, i.e., recognise that peaceful coexistence is more beneficial than being violent. Reasoning in this regard is a demonstration of our rational powers: it is the ability to recognise and respond to facts or reasons appropriate for some course of action. Joseph Raz, ‘Reason, Rationality, and Normativity’, in From Normativity to Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 85–87.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 310.
Even within the light of Plato’s tripartite soul, it is a mistake to think that one in whom the appetitive part is the strongest cannot be rational; they have reason only that it is harnessed by either the spirited part or appetitive part or both to serve their desires. Socrates admits in Book IX that there are three lives corresponding markedly with three pleasures: money making, honour-loving, and philosophising. Each of these lives considers their pursuit as generating the best pleasure; the money-maker has reason but cares less about philosophising (Pl. Resp. 581d–e).
For issues surrounding the notion of egoism, see J. Annas and P. Bloomfield (eds.), ‘Virtue Ethics and the Charge of Egoism’, in The Morality and Self-Interest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 127.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 343.
I thank James Warren for this point.
Cf. Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 309.
Cf. my understanding of the pursuit of self-interest here to that of J. Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 78.
This position is recently defended by S. Diaco, ‘Socrates’ First City: Pleonexia and the Thought Experiment’, Apeiron 54 (2021): pp. 473–491.
K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies. Vol.1, The Spell of Plato (5th edition). (London: Routledge, 1995).
Vlastos argues that ‘The fully enlightened aristocrats [the philosophers] are a small minority of the whole population …. All the rest are in some degree douloi in Plato’s sense of the word: they lack logos; they do not know the Good and cannot know their own good or the good of the state; their only chance of doing the good is to obey implicitly the commands of their superiors’. G. Vlastos, ‘Slavery in Plato’s Thought’, The Philosophical Review 50 (1941), pp. 290–91. For a rejection of this argument in both the Republic and the Laws, see R. Kraut, ‘Ordinary Virtue from Phaedo in the Laws’, in C. Bobonich (ed.). Plato’s Laws: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 51–70; M. Piechowiak, Plato’s Conception of Justice and the Question of Human Dignity (Berlin: Peter Lang GmbH, 2019); L. Prauscello, Performing Citizenship in Plato’s Laws (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Another important remark is the possible tensions that exist between Plato’s soul-polis analogies. For instance, according to the soul-polis analogies, the money-makers represent appetition. And Plato refers to the appetitive part as ‘a natural slave’, the most godless and polluted, and the ‘rebellious’, and ‘the rebellious part is by nature suited to be a slave’ (Pl. Resp. 444b). However, Plato does not attribute such negative references to the citizens. A decisive passage is in Book V where Socrates compares Kallipolis to other poleis and concludes that his rulers call their citizens ‘providers of upkeep and wages’, and the citizens, in turn, call their rulers ‘preservers and auxiliaries’. These positive co-referencing expressions, couched within the language of partnership, contrast with what rulers in other cities call their citizens: ‘slaves’ (Pl. Resp. 463a3–b12). In Book V, Plato says that Kallipolis is a Greek polis, and because of this, the citizens will indeed ‘be good and civilised’ (Resp. 470e). Hence, the soul-polis analogy fails to establish an appropriate comparison between the appetitive part and the producing class. For an extended discussion, see R.W. Hall, ‘Plato and Personhood’, The Personalist Forum 8 (1992): pp. 88–100.
Sheffield, ‘Moral Motivation in Plato’s Republic?’, pp. 84–85.
See also R.C. Cross and A.D. Woozley, Plato’s Republic: A Philosophical Commentary (London: Macmillan, 1964), p. 79.
Translated by Paul Shorey (ed.), The Republic: Books 1–5 (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1937).
R.J. Wallace, ‘Three Conceptions of Rational Agency’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 2 (1999), p. 219.
Wallace, ‘Three Conceptions of Rational Agency’, p. 219.
Sheffield, ‘Moral Motivation in Plato’s Republic?’, p. 79.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 13.
Cf. Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 334.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 308.
Sheffield, ‘Moral Motivation in Plato’s Republic?’, p. 91.
Kalōs, eu and aretē are cognate evaluative terms. See e.g., MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, p. 7.
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020), p. 524; Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 336.
Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 336.
K. Gyekye, Philosophy, Culture and Vision (Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 1997), p. 42.
Gyekye, Philosophy, Culture and Vision, p. 42.
Piechowiak, Plato’s Conception of Justice, p. 90.
Piechowiak, Plato’s Conception of Justice, p. 90.
This article initially appeared as a chapter in my PhD thesis carried out at the University of Hradec Kralove, Czechia. It has since been highly modified and received valuable comments from James Warren, Carol Atack, Helen van Noorden, Frisbee Sheffield, and Jaroslav Daneš. Aspects of the paper were also presented at Girton Fellows’ Seminar Series (University of Cambridge) and received valuable inputs. I also acknowledge the contributions from the participants, especially Jonathan Beere, at the “Plato on the Nature and Value of Political Community, 2023” conference, held at the University of Ghana, Legon Accra. Lastly, I thank the Editor and the reviewers for their very engaging remarks.