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

82 The Tyrannical Soul
See 572b-576b. Recall that, in the story Socrates tells of how a tyrant comes to
power in the city, the troubles begin with a struggle between the idle drones and
the conservative money-makers, which leads to the people choosing a champion
from the drones to defend them from the perceived threat of oligarchic
conservatism. Socrates thinks something like this can happen in the soul of a
person raised in the liberty of a democratic household. Here the struggle is
between the various desires of the appetitive part. The young man’s prodigal
friends are continually pulling him towards the unnecessary pleasures. This
prompts his father, who doesn’t approve of favoring one set of pleasures over
another, to do what he can to pull him back towards a concern for the necessary
pleasures. (One imagines him pausing in mid-sentence, vaguely aware that he is
lecturing his son in the very words of his oligarchic father: about settling down,
getting a job, investing his money, avoiding unmixed wine, and so on.) But the
friends win out, for they “contrive to implant a powerful passion in him as the
popular leader of those idle and profligate appetites – a sort-of great, winged
drone.” In other words, one of the lawless desires – for drugs perhaps, or sex, or
power – is unleashed from the confines of his dream life, and takes root at the
center of his concerns. It grows into such a longing that it takes control of his
soul, and a kind of madness sets in. Nothing that stands in the way of its
gratification is tolerated. Like the tyrant, who purges the city of whomever dares
to question his rule, the tyrannical desire crushes or locks away any old beliefs or
desires that rise up to question the prudence or decency of its demands. And so it
goes, from bad to worse, until the person finds himself no longer able to fund his
lifestyle. With a lawless desire on the throne of his soul, he thinks nothing of
turning to purse snatching, temple robbing, or the slave trade. If he is crafty, then
the field of politics offers further opportunities, as do the law courts. And if he is
spirited as well as crafty, and it is power over others that he craves, then, of
course, there is organized crime, the highest form of which is tyranny.
How similar, psychologically, are political tyrants and drug addicts?