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

89 Return to Poetry
See 595a. In Books II and III, as part of his preliminary discussion of the
guardians’ education, Socrates criticized what poets have to say about gods and
heroes. But at 392a-c, when he was about to turn to what they say about human
beings – “that many unjust people are happy and many just ones wretched, that
doing injustice is profitable if it escapes detection, and that justice is another’s
good but one’s own loss” – he stopped himself; for he realized that whether or not
this sort of thing ought to be in a poem turns on the very point in question, namely,
the nature of the relation between justice and happiness. Having settled this matter
in Book IX, Socrates now returns to the poets and their art.
Much has happened in the discussion since the first part of Book III: rulers
have been distinguished from auxiliaries, three distinct parts of the soul
have been identified, the virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and
justice have been defined, forms have been distinguished from particular
things, the form of the good has been identified as the most important object
of knowledge, four varieties of injustice have been analyzed, and three
arguments have been given in support of the claim that a just person will be
happy regardless of what other people think. How might this material
enable Socrates to criticize the poets in ways that were not available to him
back in Book III?
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