The Republic by Plato - 5 - The Wiser Minority
Book Six
Quote
"And is it clear to you that this is a property of your community, where the desires of the common majority are controlled by the desires and the intelligence of the minority of better men?"
Notes
Now that they've set up their community, they return to the question of morality, since they thought that it might be easier to find morality in a community first.
Socrates lands on one of the basic ideas they established for the community early on, that in their community everyone sticks with their one job that they do well. Perhaps that is what morality is, he says, doing one's own job, the one you're best equipped for, since that allows all the other good qualities of the community to come out. When each of the three classes in the community perform their function, and stay in their lane, that is morality.
They are satisfied with that definition when it comes to the community, and so they move to how that applies to the individual. Socrates proposes that an individual has the same three classes within himself — gold, silver, and copper/iron. The mind itself has different parts. One part is controlled by desire, the other by passion (or emotions), and the other by rationality.
And so, similar to the community, the wise part of the mind should rule over the other parts. Desire, if left in charge, is too prone to greed and over-indulgence otherwise. It needs to be reigned in.
The definition for morality applies to the individual in a similar way then. When all the parts of your mind are in their proper place, doing their proper job, that is morality. And immorality is when these parts of the mind are in conflict or when one part which is not suited to be in charge is allowed to be in charge.
This still leaves open the question about whether morality or immorality is more rewarding or leaves one better off. They decide to come back to this question later.
Key Takeaways
Was the community they were setting up only a metaphor for the individual? As they were putting together what the community would look like so much of it came across as restrictive and totalitarian. But perhaps that description was ultimately more about how you should order or "rule" yourself. And not necessarily a prescription for how society should be run.
Is Plato's aim in this book to describe the best structure of a society? Or is it to discover what is morality and why morality is better for you than immorality? Maybe that will become more clear as the book continues.