Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast
Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast
23 - Plato’s Republic 7: Socratic Family Values
This episode covers book 5 of Plato’s Republic.
What do you do when the private family causes too much corruption? Nationalize it! Create a giant family monopoly that includes every citizen in one giant clan. In this episode, Socrates explains his most normal proposal—that women should have jobs—and his most shocking, which involves a state eugenics program disguised as a religious festival.
This chapter makes some people think Plato’s a feminist and other’s say he’s a fascist. Either way, it shows us that values like family loyalty, political unity, gender equality, and meritocracy do not always fit well together.
Credits:
Adeimantus: Rebecca Amzallag
Glaucon: Zachary Amzallag
Polemarchus: Elliott Chambers
Thrasymachus: Paul Sagar
Ancient music: Michael Levy
Intro theme: Clayton Tapp
Outro: David Zikovitz
Today, gender equality in the city and speech and why Socrates things would be better if you didn't call your mom. I'm Clif Mark. And this is good in theory. Plato's Republic is back. Sorry, this took so long. But it turns out these scripted episodes take a hell of a lot of work more than I foresaw when I started this project, and I'm doing them as fast as I can. But we're gonna get back to the public I'm gonna try to get through in the next couple of months. Thanks for sticking with us. We are up to book five of Republic. And book five is wild because it has the most common sense intuitive political proposal in the book, which is jobs for women. But it also has some of the weirdest and most extreme, like he state eugenics program concealed as a religious festival, and taking all newborn infants away from their parents to be raised by the state. And these policies make this chapter the center of all sorts of debates about whether Plato is a feminist and whether Plato is a fascist, and I'm not going to talk much about either of those things. Because if you want good gender politics, then there are a lot of better places to go than Plato. And if you're scared of fascism, then a politically ambiguous fictional dialogue from 2000 years ago, should not be anywhere near the top of your naughty list. Instead, I'm going to focus on what Socrates is bonkers sounding policies can teach us about the deeper conflicts between values like family loyalty, political unity, gender equality, and meritocracy. Socrates already dropped a hint that he had something other than the traditional patriarchal family in mind for the city in speech. Last episode, he told adamant is that the citizens of the city would think that wives and children are best when shared among friends. And then he immediately went on to other topics, and he explained the definitions of different virtues and the political structure of the city. And he was about to move on to talking about other kinds of regimes, when adamant is slams on the brakes, and demands that Socrates explain what he meant.
Polemarchus:Why don't you say something? Are we just going to let that go?
Adeimantus:No way.
Socrates:And what is it exactly that you don't want to let go? Socrates?
Adeimantus:Do you really think you can just casually say, wives and children will be shared in common? And then leave it at that?
Socrates:Are you saying that I'm wrong?
Adeimantus:I'm saying you need to explain yourself.
Glaucon:I second the motion.
Thrasymachus:Consider it unanimous. Socrates. Come on. I just finished explaining the city. And you won't want to take us right back to the very beginning. You think we came here to see the end of the rainbow Socrates? What's the listen to a discussion or discussion, but a discussion of reasonable length?
Glaucon:You let us worry what length is reasonable? Socrates, you worry about answering our question. How will the guardians share women and children in common?
Socrates:I don't think you guys understand what a swarm of objections you're stirring up. People are gonna say that this is a bad idea. And that's impossible. And who knows what else? And please don't think that I'm afraid of embarrassing myself. The truth is that I'm not sure that I have the answers here. And I'm afraid that if I see something wrong, I'm going to lead you guys astray.
Glaucon:Don't worry, Socrates, we promise not to blame you for accidentally misleading us. So just relax and say what you have to say.
Socrates:Well, we spent a long time talking about the men and how to live and be educated to be the perfect guardians. But it's time we talked about the women.
Glaucon:Yes, we're listening.
Socrates:Which brings me to the subject of dogs, dogs, watch dogs. Do female watchdogs spend their whole lives inside making puppies? Or do they also go outside to hunt and watch the flock with the males? Do you know they do everything that male dogs do, Socrates They're weaker, but they still do it. And since they do the same jobs, I guess they're trained in the same way, of course. So if it's the same with humans, men and women should have the same kinds of jobs and education to
Glaucon:Yes, that follows.
Socrates:What's wrong Lacan? Do you think it would be ridiculous if men and women did all the same things? If wrinkled old ladies started coming down to the gym and wrestling naked next to the men? Ah ha.
Glaucon:Okay, that would look pretty funny, at least from the way we see things now.
Socrates:So in a lot of things, if we start teaching women gymnastic and poetry, and how to fight and ride horses, the comedian's are going to joke about it. But remember, the rest of Greece used to laugh at Crete and Sparta for exercising naked at the gym. And now we all do it. So let's try to ignore the Joker's and savor laughs for things that are actually bad for us, not just anything that's different, or new.
Glaucon:Absolutely, Socrates, in that case, tell us? Is this plan really feasible? Are women really capable of the same activities as men?
Socrates:The strongest objection that I can think of is that we're contradicting ourselves, the person who disagrees with us, they might say that we have to admit that men and women have different natures. And, of course they do. But we've also said that everyone should get the one job that their nature suits them for. And therefore, since we're saying that men and women have different natures, but should have the same kinds of jobs, they would say we're contradicting ourselves.
Glaucon:Yes, they probably will accuse us of contradicting ourselves. But are we?
Socrates:It may look like a clock on, but I think we might be able to avoid it. This is just the first wave of objections. And I think you know that whether you fall into a pool or into the middle of the sea, there's only one thing to do swim. Exactly. And the way I would answer this objection is to admit that men and women, obviously have their differences. But I would ask whether these differences are relevant on the job, after all, bald men and men with hair are different, but that doesn't have any effect on whether they'd make a good cobbler.
Glaucon:Of course it doesn't.
Socrates:And yes, it's true that men, men, women, and women have babies, does that difference, really have anything to do with their skill as guardians?
Glaucon:I can't see how it would.
Socrates:Right. There are women who are musical women who are warlike, and women who were cut out to be doctors, it seems like women can be suited to any job that men do. And the only difference is that they're a bit worse at it. True.
Glaucon:But even if men are better at everything, on average, there are still individual women who are better than individual men at all kinds of things.
Socrates:Of course, cloud Khan. And that's why we don't give particular jobs to people because they're a man or a woman. It depends on their individual nature. There's going to be some women who are naturally suited to be guardians. And these ones should be educated with the men, they should live with them, and they should share the same duties as the men. Absolutely. And if this seems unnatural to people, that's only because the way we do things now is unnatural.
Glaucon:You're right, Socrates, it looks like having female guardians is actually feasible.
Socrates:Is it for the best?
Glaucon:Of course it is. We should have the best women leading our city, just like we have the best men.
Socrates:So would you agree that we've swum our way through the first wave of criticism?
Glaucon:Yes, we did. And it wasn't a small wave either.
Socrates:You won't say that when you see the next one.
Glaucon:Go on, then let me see it.
Clif Mark:This little section of dialogue is one of those places where the differences in context between when the book was written and when this podcast was written, really stand out. Because to my 21st century years, the idea that women should have the same education and jobs as men is probably the most intuitive common sense political proposal in the entire Republic. But ancient Athens, it would have landed differently. Athens wa sexist, even for the ancien world. The women there didn' get much education, the couldn't own property. The lived with the children in separate part of the house fro the men, and they mostly wer not supposed to go out i public. One of the bi stereotypes was that women ha in Greek butterfly brain. Thi meant that they were weak impulsive, couldn't reall control their appetites an emotions. All around. Women wer thought to have bad leadershi skills. So the idea That the will be educated with the boy in order to become guardian like the boys. That would hav been pretty out there at th time. And even though it seems obvious to most of us, I want to take a minute to explain how the argument works. because it illustrates a conflict between the notion of meritocracy and traditional gender roles or really, any group differences. Socrates in the boys are trying to build a city where every individual gets the one job that their natural talents best suit them for, because that's how they can best serve the city. So they ignore all the traditional gender identities built up over time. And they just ask one question, can you do the job? Can you operate this forklift? And if so, you're hired. We don't need to hear what's between your legs. In a way that sounds great and liberating, and maybe even a little bit feminist. There are a lot of articles asking whether Plato was a feminist. But then Socrates comes in and says that women are worse at everything. And what are we supposed to do with that? Well, one thing we can do is pump the brakes on the Socrates is a feminist interpretation, which is sketchy and anachronistic. But I also think that it points out something about meritocracy. For a lot of people, meritocracy is an important value, and it's a gala terian. And it's a way to fight against hierarchies and group differences. In in a way, meritocracy does cut against traditional gender distinctions because it just wants to find skills and talent wherever it can. But it also doesn't care about group equality in itself. Saying that women should have equality of opportunity is entirely compatible with the belief that they're inferior at most jobs, which is what Socrates says. And that just means if you're a committed feminist and you want group equality, then you're probably going to need more ideological tools, then straight up meritocracy. On the other hand, if you're committed sexist, but also believe in meritocracy, then you should still give every individual woman a fair chance. Now, the second point I want to pick up about this section of dialogue is a point about comedy. When Socrates starts talking about women doing the same things as men, he's playing it for laughs. He talks about wrestling grannies and stuff like that. He's making a general point about comedy, but there's also a specific reference that I want to explain. Back in the apology series, I mentioned a playwright called Aristophanes. He's the guy who wrote a play making fun of Socrates. Well, Aristophanes also wrote a comedy, where the women of Athens get up in disguise, sneak into the assembly and take over politics. And they pass a bunch of laws that it turns out, are very similar to the laws that Socrates recommends in the Republic. They have a similar policy on property and on sex. But the difference is that Aristophanes is a comedian, and he's clean purely for laughs. The whole reason for bringing women into public life on the stage is so everyone in Athens, women included could laugh at their ridiculous fish out of water high jinks. So even though Aristophanes is imagining women in power, everyone's laughing at them. So it kind of ideologically reinforces the status quo. Socrates is making a low key, digga Aristophanes, but he's also making a general point about comedy. He's saying that people base with a life hat on whatever beliefs and prejudices they happen to have at the time. So no matter what changes you introduce, people are going to laugh at you. Even if those changes make a lot of sense like new gyms or women at work. Comedy just always has this reactionary potential. Socrates takes a different approach. He'll say ridiculous things, and he'll take the laughs. But he's also interested in the question. He doesn't use humor to shut down the conversation. He keeps it going. It's like he's saying, What if we made women equal? Funny, right? But seriously, what if we made women equal? So in my opinion, Socrates isn't a pill. He's not saying don't laugh at anything. He's saying that you shouldn't let the Joker's make you feel foolish or ashamed. He's seeing that the real fools are people who dismiss good ideas, because they seem ridiculous or funny at first. that bit of dialogue we just heard represents the first wave of objections. Now, we're going to move on to the second
Socrates:glaucon if what we just said about women is true, that implies some other laws that are going to cause an even bigger wave of objections
Glaucon:such as
Socrates:well, if women are going to be guardians, then they can't go live alone with one man like they do now. No, they'll have to be wives to all the men in common. And the children that are born, they'll belong to everyone instead of just to individual sets of parents. In fact, in our city, nobody will even know who their parents or children really are.
Glaucon:Wow, Socrates, you weren't kidding about the second wave. I think people are going to say that this is a bad idea and completely unfeasible. Really,
Socrates:I can see why people would doubt that it's feasible. But surely everyone would agree that sharing wives and children will be better,
Glaucon:Socrates, no, you'll have to prove both
Socrates:fine. But let's start by thinking about how things should be and how great it'll be. And then we can come back and talk about whether or not it's actually feasible.
Glaucon:Sure,
Socrates:go ahead. Okay, we've picked the best women, and they're going to be with the men in the communal houses, and in the dining halls and in the gymnasia. And with all that time together, it's pretty certain they'll wind up having sex, don't you think?
Glaucon:Well, it's not a mathematical certainty, but it is a sexual certainty. Right?
Socrates:And so the question is, how should we arrange sex and marriage in our city? Are we just going to let them hook up at random? Or should we arrange the most sacred possible marriages?
Glaucon:What do you mean by sacred?
Socrates:I mean, useful?
Glaucon:Ah, okay. Well, what do you mean by useful? clock on
Socrates:your house, you have lots of beautiful hunting dogs and birds? How do you choose which ones to breed?
Glaucon:Well, even with purebreds, some are still better than others, I pick out the very best specimens and breed only them, and only when they're in their prime. If I wasn't careful about this, I'd have much more stock. I suppose
Socrates:it's the same for horses and other animals, of course, and for humans, it must be then, instead of just letting our guardians meet randomly, the rulers of our city should calculate how many children they need to replace the population. And then arrange it so the best specimens of men can father as many of those children as possible.
Glaucon:Great idea, Socrates. But what about all the ones who get left out?
Socrates:Well, our rulers are going to have to be good liars, because we're going to create a big public marriage festival, with hymns and poems and priests to bless it. And then at the center of it all, I see a sacred lottery that we'll use to pick who gets to participate in the marriage ritual. Now, obviously, we can't leave this kind of thing to chance. So the rulers will rigged the lotteries, so the best will breed? And then the others. Hopefully, we'll just blame bad luck. What do you think?
Glaucon:Okay, and what happens when the babies are born?
Socrates:First, we'll take the ones that come from inferior parents are have other birth defects, and we'll get rid of them, then we'll take the good ones to a special nursing pen that's in a separate part of the city.
Glaucon:And what about the mothers
Socrates:will come to the pin for feeding when their breasts are full, but they won't be able to stay long. And we'll have to do everything we can to make sure they don't recognize their own babies will have specialized nannies and nurses to deal with all the work and broken nights and so on. If you're worried about that.
Glaucon:Sounds like motherhood is going to be pretty easy for the guardians, as it should be.
Socrates:These women have more important things to do. In our city, any child born outside one of these sanction marriages is going to be considered an unholy illegal bastard. So the guardians, they'll have to be very careful about sex when they're younger. But once they're past reproductive age, they can have sex with whoever they want, except, obviously their own parents or children,
Glaucon:right, obviously, but with public nurseries and everything, how will they know who their parents are? or children?
Socrates:Good question. In our city, all the adults who take part in the marriage ritual, they'll be considered mothers and fathers to all the children that are born 10 months after, and vice versa. In the children, they'll be brothers and sisters to anyone else who was born when their parents were producing children. So the whole city will be like one big family. And that's what I meant when I said that in our city, wives and children will be in common.
Glaucon:Ah, okay, Socrates. I understand the system. But we're all still wondering Why do you think this is a good idea? How does all this help the city? unity? glaucon.
Socrates:Unity? We agree that the worst thing for a city is anything that divides it right? Of course, well, we want our city to be so united, that they all use the words mine and not mine about the same things. We want them to all take pleasure in pain in the same things. What do you mean, when one citizen is happy, the whole city should rejoice. When one citizen gets hurt, the whole city should feel pain. Think of how when one person hurts his finger, the whole individual feels the pain. That's how I want our city to be in the opposite of that is when some citizens are happy about something, and others are upset about the same thing. That is a sure sign that the city is divided.
Glaucon:But that's totally normal.
Socrates:It happens all the time. Of course it does. Because the cities that now exist are divided. The rulers are divided against their subjects, like masters against slaves. And even the ruling classes are usually divided up into different families, aren't they?
Glaucon:fairpoint. But our city will be different because the guardians are like one giant family.
Socrates:Yes, because they hold their women and children in common.
Glaucon:And that fits in with all the stuff we said earlier about the guardians having no property and living in common.
Socrates:Exactly glaucon. In most cities, every man just grabs whatever property he can. And he drags it back to his own house, where he lives with his own wife and his own kids, and enjoys his own private pains and pleasures and everything else that comes with that kind of life. But in our city, everyone has everything in common. So they'll have the same pains and pleasures, too. And if the guardians aren't divided, there's not much chance the rest of the city will be divided either. Is there?
Glaucon:No, there isn't.
Socrates:You know, avoiding civil strife is so important that I'm almost embarrassed to mention all the other problems that will also get rid of like Why? Well, where do I start the constant hassle of earning a living, borrowing money and defaulting to try to support your family? If you're poor, or having to go flatter the rich? Are guardians won't have any of that, because they'll get everything they need from the city, and will be honored for the job they
Glaucon:do. It sounds pretty sweet to me.
Socrates:Me too. glaucon. Do you remember a little while ago when somebody was saying that the guardians would be unhappy if we didn't let them go around taking other citizens property?
Adeimantus:Come on?
Glaucon:I remember.
Socrates:Well, it turns out the guardians are pretty happy, aren't they?
Adeimantus:I get it.
Socrates:Absolutely. Then, do we agree that the Guardian should stick to the life we plan for them? And that everything we said about women and men and how we'll raise the children is for the best? And doesn't conflict with nature in any way?
Glaucon:I agree, Socrates. It all sounds great. But now you have to prove to us that this whole plan is actually feasible.
Socrates:Oh, then I guess it's obvious to you how they'll wage war.
Glaucon:How will they?
Socrates:Well, when it comes to war, I think the men and women will go to battle together and they'll bring the kids with them to watch. It'll be like an apprenticeship, they'll keep them on horses so they can get away if anything goes wrong. And we'll honor the people who distinguish themselves in battle and those who don't will be demoted to farmer.
Clif Mark:This section of dialogue is such a massive escalation that it still makes me laugh. Socrates goes from saying women should have jobs straight to therefore we need to completely control reproduction disguised as a religious festival and take all the babies away from their parents, which is a huge step up, and I think should go without saying would be a world historical atrocity, if any state tried it in real life. In fact, even when states have tried just a little bit of eugenics or a little bit of stealing children from their parents for state education, it's generally been a horrifying fiasco. But ideas that make sense in theory, but would be horrifying in practice is kind of Socrates his whole style. So we'll leave it to other people to worry about how dangerous he is. And I'm going to focus on the way his very counterintuitive proposals make a weird kind of sense. So why does Socrates want to destroy the family? His first reason has to do with women at work. And the notion that the nuclear family is oppressive to women and therefore must be destroyed or seriously reformed for women to be free. That's a major feminist idea. But Socrates, his problem isn't that the family is oppressive. The Guardians don't have much personal freedom anyway. It's that mothers raising their own children is a misallocation of Human Resources. If you've got what it takes to be a guardian, that's what you should be doing. one man, one job, and that goes for women too. So even in the ideal city and speech, which stretches the bounds of possibility, women still cannot have it all. When career and family come into conflict, Socrates has a pretty straightforward answer. Ditch the family. Still, the conflict with meritocracy isn't the main problem that Socrates has with the family. His biggest beef is that it interferes with political unity, Civil Division, conflict, sauces, those are the great political evils that Socrates is designing his whole city to avoid in Division happens because people care about their own private business more than they care about the public good. And that's why he makes guardians live in camps without any private property, private housing, or even private dinners. And what is more likely to make people forget the lofty aim of the common good than the fate of their own children, their own parents and spouse? Personally, I find this conflict between family and the common good, more interesting than the conflict between private property in the common good, because helping your family isn't just a private interest. It's also an ethical imperative. And what I mean by that is that we're supposed to be loyal to our families, we're supposed to help them it's part of being a good person. And it was for the Greeks as well. So there's this big conflict between these two ethical imperatives, to help the family and to help the city. And I want to explain three approaches to dealing with it. The first is just to suck up the pain, also known as the tragic approach. The conflict between family and city was a major theme of Greek tragedy, you got a lot of situations where characters were forced to make really tough choices. Agamemnon, he burns his daughter to help the war effort against Troy, and then Tiffany buries her brother against the Kings orders. In both cases, disaster ensues, Agamemnon has a really tough time for 10 years at war, and then comes home to get murdered by his wife and her lover. And Tiffany winds up getting buried alive, and her boyfriend and mom both killed themselves. Still, it's not like they had any good choices open to them. Most Greeks just took this to be a part of the tragic nature of human life. Family and city are both important. And we have real obligations to both. And when those obligations come into conflict, that's just bad luck. And it's our fate to suffer. The second approach to conflicting ethical imperatives is to eliminate the conflict by just choosing one value and completely canceling the other one, even if it means taking away everyone's newborn babies. And of course, that's what Socrates picks, because he's all about being consistent and pursuing arguments to they're very uncomfortable, logical conclusions. He's saying, if you believe in the public good, like you probably say you do. If you really want to do what's best for everyone, then family loyalty isn't ethical at all. It's selfish. It's greedy, it divides the city. Unless, of course, somehow it can be made to serve the city. Because Strictly speaking, Socrates doesn't want to destroy the family. He wants to nationalize it. He wants to eliminate all private families, and expand it to have just one giant public family that includes all citizens. Now, as wild and ridiculous as this is, as actual policy, I still find this argument refreshing because it's really clear about the conflict between the different values in at least tries to be consistent. The third and most cowardly approach to ethical conflicts, which I think is mostly what we do, is to pretend that they don't exist. This is what we're doing when we tell ourselves that all of our different values fit together perfectly. So we never have to make any tough choices. For example, politicians still talk a lot about unity, and the common good, where I'm from one of the big slogans for all the pandemic policies is we're in this together. So they're appealing to this idea of political unity and solidarity. But they're also constantly praising hard working families and promising to help them give them a break, protect them from danger, and do everything they can to help parents Obtain the very best for their children. But I've never heard a politician acknowledge a conflict between the two. I've never heard one say, screw your spoiled kids. This is more important than that. Just like I've never heard a politician admit that they would put the good of their own children ahead of the public good. If they aren't willing to say either of those things, Socrates would say that they're talking out of both sides of their mouths. And of course, it's not just politicians. I also like to think that doing the right thing by my family is not going to interfere with my doing the right thing overall. But that's not always going to be true automatically. And that's what I like about Socrates is Family Policy. It's shocking. But because it's shocking, it reminds us that there are real trade offs between our different values. And it reminds us of what it would take to actually become fully consistent. And that is pretty much all I want to say about the first two waves of objections that came in response to the ideas of female guardians, in one big public family. Before Socrates and glaucon, go on to the third wave, there's a little bit of a digression. At the end of the last bit of dialogue, cloud, Khan was pressing Socrates to show him that this wonderful city that they've been talking about, is actually possible to create. And then Socrates veers off on a tangent about how the city in speech would wage war. Now, this part of the book, it distracts me from the main line of argument, but just to let you know what's in it. Socrates says war is for the whole family. Men and women fight together, and they bring the kids along so they can learn. Good soldiers will be honored on the field and horny glaucon adds the creepy detail that men who distinguished themselves in combat can kiss anyone they want for the duration of campaign, and they're not allowed to refuse. They also decide that their soldiers should avoid taking slaves, laying waste to the land, burning crops, looting bodies and stuff like that. Overall, Socrates is advocating for a more humane foreign policy. So if you're interested in Plato and IR, this is a good section to look at. But as I said, it's a bit of a tangent. It's Socrates trying to avoid the plausibility question that glaucon keeps pressing him on. And the reason he's stalling is because the next wave of objections is the biggest of all, and it comes in response to Plato's most famous political idea, which is to make philosophers into kings.