Cause of War – Plato’s Republic: Part 9 (372c to 376c)

 

At this point, Glaucon interrupts and takes over the imagining of the city. Until this point, it was his brother, Adeimantus, building the city with Socrates. The city up to this point is quite plain, in that there is no luxury in it. This is why Glaucon steps in. He is not satisfied with a life that is so plain. So they start adding in comforts and fashion and entertainment. The city grows larger. But this necessitates more land and resources, so the city is compelled to take some land from its neighbours, leading to war and armies capable of winning battles.

 

 

At this point, Socrates stops to reflect on this predicament, saying: “And let’s not say whether war works evil or good, but only this much, that we have in its turn found the origin of war – in those things whose presence in cities most of all produces evils both private and public (373e)”. This is an interesting and insightful comment for many reasons. First, the obvious –  Socrates is making the claim that wars are caused by the need for a people to obtain more land for growing food and extracting resources to maintain their wealth. Now, there may be other reasons for war, but it is worth noting that America has military presences in Middle Eastern countries in order, at least in part, to ensure access to the resources in the ground, such as oil, which allows it and other nations to have such a high standard of living.

 

Second, Socrates does not want to say whether war is evil or good. This seems weird, particularly to us moderns, who tend to see war as working evil, not good. So by saying this, he is leaving open the possibility that he thinks war works good. Why muddy the waters like this by mentioning it, why not just make his point without referencing the debate about whether war is good or bad? Was there a fierce debate during his life and he needed to make note of it in order to quell the partisans of each side? Or is he just waiting to comment on this later?

 

In any case, the third noteworthy thing about his comment is the fact that he links the private and public realms. That is, not being satisfied with a simple life, but always wanting more, leads to ill health for both private individuals and the body politic. When Socrates brought up the idea of comparing the larger letters (city) with the smaller letters (person) in order to help see justice in the latter, he qualified their quest by stating he wasn’t sure if you could make the comparison, but only “if, of course, they do happen to be the same (368d)”. By suggesting, now, that the same thing (i.e. wanting too much) causes problems in both city and man, he is starting to move towards a situation in which he can say justice is the same in both. This comment foreshadows his definition of justice. Injustice is being at war with yourself or others because you do not have a well-ordered regime.

 

Now, Socrates does some pretty tricky footwork in the next few pages, expanding on the theme of war. First, he goes into much greater detail about soldiers than he had about any other occupation, after arguing that soldiering is an occupation and not something that citizens can do on the side (i.e. citizen militias are not enough). What warrants this focus on soldiering, other than that it moves the argument to where he wants it?

 

The focus on soldiering leads him to discuss the particular nature of soldiers, as they have to be fitted to their occupation just as others had to be fitted to theirs. A soldier needs to be friendly to fellow-citizens, but fierce to foreign enemies, much as a good dog is friendly to those it knows and barks at those it doesn’t, according to Socrates. If a dog is friendly to those it knows and is unfriendly to those it is ignorant of, then it is knowledge that makes the difference between friend and foe. It knows one and doesn’t know the other.

 

So a soldier, by Socrates’ analogy, has to use knowledge to do his duty well. Thus, according to Socrates, soldiers have to be philosophers. What?!? We’ve gone from a discussion of building a bit of luxury into a city to needing our soldiers to be philosophers in a few pages. Even if it had taken a lot of pages, isn’t it weird to think of your soldiers as philosophers? Either he doesn’t mean what we mean when we say ‘soldier,’ or he doesn’t mean what we mean when we say ‘philosopher’. Or, he’s making an extraordinary claim.

 

Now, before we leave this topic, I should also note that there is another characteristic of soldiers that sets them apart from others and makes them like dogs, according to Socrates. They are ‘spirited’. I think it would be fair to use the word ‘feisty’ to give the modern reader a better idea of what ‘spirited’ means.