Letter to Socrates about His Discussion at the House of Cephalus - Essay Example

Mr. Socrates, I’ve been thinking about your discussion at the House of Cephalus for well over a week now. You said it will be next to impossible to plant our city in a territory where it will need no imports. It will not be necessary to import our needs from other countries if we are capable of fulfilling our needs using the talent we have within our own state. You said in the beginning of your talk the minimum state will consist of four or five men, a farmer, a builder, weaver, a shoemaker, and one or two men to provide personal wants. Let’s say the farmer needs tools to till the land. You stated emphatically the farmer will not make his own implements. Perhaps, if the farmer cannot import a man from another country to make his implements, and there is no man within the state to provide farm implements, the farmer may discover through his need for tools, his innate ability to craft the necessary farm implements. Therefore, not only is the farmer able to till the land; he is quite capable of making his own tools. Bearing this example in mind, the same may hold true for the builder, weaver, and shoemaker alike. As for getting what we need from other countries, if we send a set of people to fetch our needs from other countries, how will we know the other countries can provide our needs? Likewise, if our agents, as you say, take of their trade to other countries, we may well be left with our own goods if no one from the other country has need of our goods. Surely, shopkeepers have greater value than placeholders in the open market where they are thought not to be strong enough to be of use in any other occupation as you say. What makes the shopkeeper valuable is his ability to provide for the need of storing goods from various tradesmen until someone is ready to buy the goods prepared. You say hired laborers are hardly worth including in our society, yet it is the hired laborer, who uses physical strength and disregarded intellect, to make goods needed by other people. Moreover, hired laborers are not to be considered of little value because their existence deems them worthy to be counted in the census. Your idea of manner of life in the simple state is one, quite frankly, suggesting the citizens of the state as simple and content with bare necessities. The luxury of a state will not necessarily help us, as you say, discover how justice and injustice take root in society. Surely, if injustice arises in the luxurious state, the injustice did not just begin, but always existed within the man even in his simple way of life. You determine the simple way of life is healthier than a life of luxury, and that war is inevitable because growth of the state will kindle a desire in its citizens to get unlimited wealth by encroaching on the wealth of another. If a man has nothing to compare to his simple life, he may very well consider the simple life of his fellow man a more luxurious life than his own. Therefore, war can happen in the simple state (you relish as healthier) because one might be content with living with only the bare necessities; yet, you alluded to the origins of luxury in our simple state in your discussion at the House of Cephalus when you said in addition to the farmer, weaver, builder, and shoemaker one or two more people might be necessary to provide for personal wants. Certainly, our personal needs will make us want relief from lack. If that relief from lack is in danger of being taken away to enlarge the wealth of another, war threatens to separate us from our personal wants permanently. Is it not better to release the luxury to one who desires our luxury and live, rather than die the death of a dog for, what you say, are a multitude of callings not ministering to any bare necessity? Indeed children might be included in personal wants, per your idea of luxury being the main reason for war, are children to be considered a luxury if they threaten to complicate one’s simple, as you say, manner of life? In your perfect state, those with natural abilities to craft goods to fulfill the needs of others are capable of defending themselves. No man will idle away the time hoping a soldier appear just in time save his property if approached by an enemy set on seizing his wealth. A farmer will not restrain himself from defending his property until he has learned, as it were, the art of war. It is quite a demand on the intellect to muse a farmer will consider defending his property as an art contrary, as you say, to the right use of time. This is not to suggest the idea an army should be forsaken. Certainly, a properly trained army has power to allow the simple life to be relished with little or no interruption from the enemies of wealth. I dare not muse even you, Socrates, will forsake the opportunity to defend your own life as a luxury to be desired. Surely, time to train to defend will not be convenient should the necessity to war were upon you in this very hour. If you fight to protect your property from the enemies of wealth, would you consider yourself incompetent to know the difference to be gentle to your neighbor and dangerous to your enemy? Assured of your negative answer, I also trust you know a citizen can be guardian of his own property without specialized training. Just as you set people to take goods to other countries, who will be set over choosing men to be Guardians? This set shall surely add growth to the state, and thus the people who you must persuade to agree with, as you say, your fiction. You deem it necessary to conjure fiction to sustain the reality of your guardian sect. The ideal guardian, you said, will have a native aptitude for their calling, will be philosophic and possess spirited temper; why then, train them as if they are mere beasts lacking the ability to reason? If guarding the commonwealth is a high calling, reducing the soldier to a meager, or as you say, simple life may set the battle in array against the set of people who assigned themselves apt to design the training and selection of men. If those designing the city lack the natural ability to fashion a perfect city, where may one find of a surety selection of true guardians of the commonwealth is not erroneous? You think justice may be found where the entire community is happy living with bare necessities, and injustice will appear when a man (and eventually the community) desires to own more than the bare necessities. Though you do not seek happiness for a select few, there will be only be a few who will either be satisfied, or resigned to the notion they have no power to affect designing of the city. You, at once, give credence to potential guardians as being fit for training as such; and then, you give no witness they have the will to make good use of their time that you will risk injustice to their happiness to bring justice to your cause of fiction to foster protection for the commonwealth. If the commonwealth is education and nurture, then a simple life mimicking poverty is not likely to produce a happy state of mind for citizens of the state. Music and poetry, you say, are portals assigned to highly-trained guardians who become watchtowers against these arts because here is where lawlessness takes over. Your concern is not finding justice or injustice, but temperance in the heart of citizens of the state. Works Cited Cornford, Francis MacDonald. The Republic of Plato. Oxford University Press 1945. pp 56-66 [II. 369-376]. pp. 102-118 [III. 412b-416]. [IV. 419-421c]. [IV. 421c-427c]. 19 MAY 09 http://www.questia.com/read/12288652 Read More