From the Beginning to Plato

FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO 371
What of the other virtues? The Republic originates the once famous doctrine
of the four cardinal virtues in distinguishing three others that are also realized
within both city and citizen. Within the soul, wisdom is primarily the quality of a
reason that has firmly grasped theoretical and practical truth, courage of a spirit
that holds fast to reason’s guidance in the face of fear, and temperance of all the
parts united in friendship and harmony (442b9–d1). A just soul must have these
three virtues if it has the tripartite structure that Socrates describes. Even a
quartet of virtues raises an old question. In earlier dialogues of Plato, such as the
Protagoras, Socrates taught the unity of the virtues: to have one virtue is to have
all virtues. That doctrine simplifies the defence of virtue, which can then be
single; but can it survive the partition of the soul? The Republic is inexplicit, and
interpreters disagree (cf. [11.5], 329–30, n. 26, [n.6], ch. 14). One ground for
supposing that it cannot is the new possibility of akrasia. The Protagoras argued
that to be wise is to be temperate, so that one cannot know that one ought to be
resisting a pleasure to which one succumbs (352a8–357e8); but now appetite is
permitted to defy reason, may one not have the wisdom to know that one should
not drink even though one lacks the temperance or self-control to abstain? Such
could have been true of the necrophilic Leontius when he rebuked his eyes for
feasting on corpses even as he rushed forward for a closer gaze (Republic IV.
439e7–440a3). This view may be right, but it is not required. If we may
distinguish a wise reason from a wise person, we may say that a person as a
whole only possesses wisdom—or, equivalently, wisdom only possesses a person
as a whole—if his reason exercises effective rule (cf. 442c5–8; Laws III.689a1–
c1). Thus we may suppose that a wise person must also be brave and temperate.
Among the questions that this leaves open is whether the brave and temperate
must also be wise. If they must, then the virtues may indeed entail each other,
but with the implication that only fully trained guardians can have any of them.
Yet it cannot be Plato’s intention that his Utopia should leave the great majority
of its inhabitants in a vicious and therefore unhappy state. He needs to give
wisdom a reach beyond the reason of the wise. He achieves this by anticipating a
distinction that Aristotle was to make between two modes of ‘possessing’
reason, one displayed in reasoning, the other in listening to reasoning
(Nicomachean Ethics I.7.1098a3–5). It is best to possess one’s own
understanding, and one can then safely enjoy freedom; otherwise, if one has the
luck to live within Plato’s Utopia, one may find the same governance through the
subordination of one’s reason, either for a time or for a lifetime, to the
understanding of another (Republic IX.590c8–591a3). How is this governance to
be effective when spirit or appetite is dominant? It is the art of the guardians to
give the auxiliaries such a role that they can indulge their spiritedness, and the
artisans such a role that they can indulge their appetitiveness, without acting
unwisely or unreasonably. Auxiliaries are only contingently brave, and artisans
only contingently temperate, in that they need guardians to contrive for them
recurrent situations in which they can simultaneously serve spirit or appetite and
observe reason. Within their souls, reason is not corrupt, for it would not