The Intelligent Troglodyte’s Guide to Plato’s Republic, 2016a

2 Being Old
See 328b-329d. Cephalus, a native of the Greek city of Syracuse and a
manufacturer of shields, immigrated to Athens nearly thirty years before the
present conversation at the invitation of the influential Athenian politician
Pericles. (We know this from the text of a speech his son Lysias makes before the
Athenian assembly in 403 BCE.) He is wealthy, and although not recognized as a
citizen of Athens, he has over the years been a prominent financial contributor to
the city, funding dramatic performances for religious festivals and giving to the
many emergency levies occasioned by the war. Socrates asks him what it is like to
be old. He replies that, in his case, old age has brought “peace and freedom” from
the appetites of the flesh – from the longings for the pleasures of “sex, drinking
parties, feasts, and the other things that go along with them.” Being old “is only
moderately onerous,” he says, for the person who is “orderly and contented.”
What is it to be orderly and contented?
Is being orderly and contented possible for a young person who feels keenly
the appetites of the flesh?
Can a person be orderly and contented whose brain has significantly
deteriorated through one of the progressive dementias not uncommon
among the elderly?
What is the relation between desires and happiness? Do desires contribute to
happiness, do they get in the way, or do they do both?
Are Cephalus and the poet Sophocles right that freedom from sexual desire
is desirable?
Can a very old person be happy, human physical limitations being what they
are? In what might the happiness of such a person consist?
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