7 research outputs found
Degenerate Regimes in Plato's Republic
The essay concerns the negative end of the political argument of the Republic, that injusticeâthe rule of unreasonâis both widespread and undesirable, and that whatever shadows of virtue or order might be found in its midst are corrupt and unstable. This claim is explained in detail in Republic 8 and 9. These passages explain recognizable faults in recognizable regimes in terms of the failure of the rule of reason and the corresponding success of the rule of non-rational forms of motivation. I will first look at degenerate regimes as they appear in a less systematic way in the Ship of State passage in Republic 6 and in the discussion with Thrasymachus in book 1. I then give a general overview of the system of degenerate regimes in book 8 to examine what exactly goes wrong with them and why, and explain how the process of degeneration ought be understood as the progressive decay of the rule of reason. Finally, I argue that a close look at this decay reveals something surprising: that degenerate regimes and characters feature weak versions of virtue, shadow-virtues that are based on appearances and held in place by force. Thus in the end the whole process of degeneration ought be understood as an extended conflict between reason and appetit
Plato on the sovereignty of law
This paper is in part an introduction to Plato's late political philosophy. In the central sections, I look at Plato's Laws and Statesman and ask the question of how law can produce authentic virtue. If law is merely coercive or habituating, but virtue requires rational understanding, there will be a gap between what law can do and what it is supposed to do. I examine the solution to this difficulty proposed in the Laws, the persuasive preludes attached to the laws, and suggest that they produce an inferior, passive mode of rational order that falls short of full virtue
Aristotle on Law and Moral Education
It is widely agreed that Aristotle holds that the best moral education involves habituation in the proper pleasures of virtuous action. But it is rarely acknowledged that Aristotle repeatedly emphasizes the social and political sources of good habits, and strongly suggests that the correct lawâordained education in proper pleasures is very rare or nonâexistent. A careful look at the Nicomachean Ethics along with parallel discussions in the Eudemian Ethics and Politics suggests that Aristotle divided public moral education or lawâordained habituation into two types. One type is a defective form practiced by the Spartans, producing civic courage and similar defective virtueâ like states motivated by external incentives. By contrast Aristotle endorses the lawâordained musical education described in Politics 8. The chapter argues that Aristotle considers the wellâhabituated state of proper pleasures in virtue to be best cultivated by this kind of musical education; and that this explains both his emphasis on good laws and on their scarcity