At the antipodes of Plato's account of virtue stand the just and the tyrannical souls. The former, of course, is ruled by reason endowed with wisdom; and the latter is ruled by a kind of erōs, which we will call erotic passion. The point of the contrast is to have a better understanding of the just soul. First, however, we need an understanding of the tyrannical. The tyrannical soul is the last in a declining series, from the philosophical through the timocratic, oligarchic, and democratic souls. At last, the tyrannical soul is the culmination of pathology in the appetitive part of the soul, the epithumētikon. To explain the various maladies arising in the appetitive part, Socrates introduces a generous variety of new kinds of appetites. In Book 8, he says the appetitive part has both necessary and unnecessary appetites (558d-559b). Using these notions, he explains the oligarchic and the democratic souls. In Book 9, Socrates introduces two more refinements in order to explain the tyrannical soul. First are the outlaw appetites, a subdivision of the unnecessary appetites (571b-d). Second is the erotic passion, itself a particularly intense sort of erōs (572e-573a). As there is a degradation in the kinds of civic rule, from oligarchy through democracy to tyranny, so there is a degradation in the forms of psychic rule associated with these various types of appetites. To understand the rule of erotic passion, we need to begin with the distinction between necessary and unnecessary appetites.

“I understand that less than I understand the Good of Plato,” says a slave in comedy. The slave's understanding of the Good would not have been much helped by attending Plato's own public lecture on the subject: the majority of the audience “came in the expectation of acquiring some of those things that conventionally count as human goods, such as health, wealth, strength, and in general some wonderful happiness; but when the discussion turned out to be on the mathematical sciences - numbers, geometry, astronomy - and the conclusion to be that good is one, this struck them as utterly paradoxical; whereupon some came to despise the business, and others started to make complaints.” Nevertheless, in one respect at least, it is actually quite easy to grasp what Plato has to say about the Good.

If for the moment we confine our attention to Forms of artifacts, it is easy to understand and accept the Republic's claim that the Good has the privileged position of being what accounts for the existence and intelligibility of Forms, much as the Sun has the privileged position of being what accounts for the growth and visibility of plants (508b-e, 509b). For the claim will then be that everything about an ideal artifact is teleologically explicable. The ideal wheel is circular, and it has its axle in its center. These things are so because that is the best way for a wheel to be: a buckled wheel, or for that matter a circular wheel with its axle off-center, would give a bumpy ride. And the Good accounts in this way for every aspect of the ideal wheel: if, for example, we ask about the color of the ideal wheel, then the only answer is that it has no particular color; and that is because there is no one color that is the best one for a wheel to have.

On the face of it, Aristotle's view of politics seems quite different from Confucius'. Aristotle defines the polis and the citizen and analyzes them according to a teleological understanding of nature. Confucius lacks not only explicit definitions but also any explicit theories about nature and teleology. Aristotle sharply distinguishes the political rule of statesmen from the household rule of fathers. Confucius assimilates political rule into household rule; political government is simply the father–son relationship writ large. Aristotle offers an analysis of different regimes, an ideal constitution, and the best constitution in actuality. Confucius never offers a theoretical analysis of possible or actual constitutions and concentrates, for the most part, on the benevolent rule of a sage-king. They also differ with respect to the role that laws should play in the governance of a state and the role that the masses could and should play in deliberating on affairs of the state. Aristotle favors the use of laws and praises a regime in which the masses participate in public deliberations; Confucius is skeptical about both the rule of law and the masses' role in political deliberations. Aristotle claims that virtue is achieved only by the few. But Confucius articulates a life of virtue accessible to all or most.

Yet, there are similarities. Confucius and Aristotle agree that people must play different roles and functions in a state. Both men maintain that the aim of government is to make people virtuous. They agree that virtuous men make the best rulers.

WHY PHILOSOPHERS ARE EQUIPPED TO RULE

In his blueprint for an ideal society, the Socrates of Plato's Republic emphasizes three especially daring political proposals: first, inclusion of women in the guardian class, on fully equal terms with men; second, abolition of the family for this same elite class; and third, that philosophers should be kings. He speaks of these as three “waves” (5.457b-d, 472a, 473c-d), with the final proposal, that of philosopherkings, heralded as the third and biggest wave within the “triple wave” (trikumia, 5.472a).

Quite how destabilizing these proposals are meant to sound can be appreciated only when we realize that Socrates is referring here not just to stormy waves but to a veritable tsunami of change. Not only have tsunamis been a familiar feature of Mediterranean history in both ancient and modern times, but eyewitness accounts of tsunamis - including the massive one in the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004 - again and again describe a sequence of three waves, an indication that it is this specific phenomenon that Plato is calling to mind. When Socrates speaks of a third and final wave as liable to “drown us in a deluge [katakluzein] of mockery and unbelievability” (5.473c), his reference is, if I am not mistaken, to a philosophical tsunami, a veritable cataclysm of incredulity that threatens to wash away his entire political agenda.

In the Republic Socrates and his interlocutors consider the question of how one should live (352d). As befits a work of philosophy, the question is answered by Socrates by means of arguments that are intended to be compelling because of their logical and rational qualities. The characters in the dialogue demonstrate a great interest in the question, and in the arguments brought to bear, because they perceive that what is said about it will matter for, and may well determine, how they live their own lives (621c). How is the student of the Republic to react to Socrates' arguments? Students of the Republic are free to examine Socrates' arguments without feeling that those arguments may have any impact on how they will live their lives. That is an option opened up by the autonomy of reading and bolstered by the disciplinary practice of academic philosophy, which requires indeed the examination of the arguments but not the implementation of the results of that examination in one's own life. By long practice, it has been found possible, and often intellectually advantageous, to keep life and the study of life separate.

In this chapter I argue that Plato's purpose as a philosophical writer was not merely to present compelling arguments about how one should live, but to present them in such a way that the reader would be most likely to be compelled by them to choose to live in a particular way. This is not an entirely original idea; the urgency of Plato's writing has been evident to many of his readers for a long time. But at a time when writing and reading have many multifarious purposes and disciplinary habits are entrenched, it is worth examining anew Plato's practice as a philosophical writer.

The project of this chapter is in outline simple. I first argue (section I) that somehow or other Socrates, and what I shall broadly call the “Socratic conception of philosophy,” are fundamental to Plato's political thinking in all periods of his writing (however these are to be defined), and I try to explain both why that should be so and what the consequences are for our understanding of Plato's political thought. I then (section II) go on to discuss the relationship of this Socrates - the one who, as I shall propose, stands constantly behind Plato as he reflects politically - to Callipolis, the second city of the Republic (second, that is, after Socrates' “city of pigs,” as Glaucon calls it). To put it in a more punchy way, in this second section of the chapter I ask about the precise relationship between Socrates, the main speaker throughout the Republic, and the philosopher-rulers of the second city he is made by the author to construct.

But first, a couple of preliminaries.

The old, simplistic, late twentieth-century account of Plato’s political philosophy is now, in my view, dead and buried: the sort of account that has him starting out (in the Republic) with the ideal of rule by philosophers, then (in Politicus and Laws) rethinking that ideal and becoming a constitutionalist, even if, as he rethinks, he still looks back wistfully to the earlier dream. Closer readings have in my view demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that this account radically misinterprets all three dialogues (i.e., Republic, Politicus, and Laws); it will no doubt persist among the wider public for a time, but it will and should be replaced eventually by a more nuanced story of Plato’s political thought and its evolution.

Aristotelians and Confucians stress virtue and the necessity of training to cultivate virtue. Aristotelians describe virtue as a disposition to achieve a mean between extremes, a middle path between an excess and a defect in the possibilities of action and emotion. Something like this idea is evident in Confucian traditions. Confucians, however, emphasize the idea of harmony. Aristotelians have something like the idea of harmony in virtue's effects on one's internal and external relations, but it remains underemphasized. My aim in this chapter is to show that the Aristotelian mean and Confucian harmony (and the principle of that harmony, the zhong or crux) are not only comparable but complementary.

What Confucian term – if any – corresponds to Aristotle's “mean” (meson)? The most natural correlate might seem to be “zhong.” Legge's time-honored 1893 translation of the Zhongyong renders it The Doctrine of the Mean. And it does seem as if a mean or middle is the target of actions and desires in the Zhongyong. Wing-Tsit Chan explains the term “Zhongyong” by saying that it “literally” means “ ‘centrality and universality’, [and] has been translated as moderation, the mean, mean-in-action, normality, universal moral order, etc.” Chan continues: “According to Cheng Hsuan (127–200, Confucian Commentator), yong means the ordinary and Zhongyong means using the mean as the ordinary way. According to Zhu Xi (1130–1200, Confucian commentator), it means neither one-sided nor extreme but the ordinary principle of the mean” (Chan Wing-tsit, A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy, 98–99, my parentheses).

Plato's argument against poetry in Republic 10 is perplexing. He condemns not all poetry, but only “however much of it is imitative [hosē mimētikē]” (595a). A metaphysical charge against certain works of poetry - that they are forms of imitation, “at a third remove from the truth” - is thus used to justify an ethical charge: that these works cripple our thought and corrupt our souls. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear how to understand the connection between the two charges. We can see how they are related in a loose way: imitators are concerned with images far removed from the truth about what they represent (596a-598b); many people are too foolish to distinguish imitation from reality and thus accept ignorant imitators as experts and guides (598c-602b); imitation appeals to and thereby strengthens an inferior part of the soul unconcerned with truth (602c ff.); worst of all, the charms of imitation can seduce even those who generally know better (605c-607a). But when we try to make Book 10's argument more precise, trouble ensues. Plato certainly never spells out the connection between the metaphysics of imitation and the charge of ethical harm. Moreover, he seems in the end (603c ff.) to abandon metaphysical considerations and give a straightforward argument against tragedy and the works of Homer based on their content - they represent people behaving immoderately - and psychological effect: as audience we weep and wail and behave as immoderately as the characters, and this undermines the order of our souls. This argument makes no mention of imitation or ignorance or removes from truth; what, then, is the relevance of the metaphysical charge, to which Plato devotes so much discussion?

Confucius and Aristotle agree that friendship is central to the ethical life. Aristotle says that friendship is a virtue or involves virtue. Confucius says that the right kinds of friendship lead one to virtue. Both believe that genuine friends exhibit certain virtues and help each other to cultivate them. They agree that friendship is pleasant as well as useful, though friendships based solely on pleasure or utility are deficient. Aristotle and Confucius concur that cultivation and expression of virtue is the main point of friendship and its service to human life.

The differences between Aristotelian and Confucian friendship flow from their metaphysics. As I have shown in earlier chapters, Aristotle's explicit metaphysics has no counterpart in original Confucianism. I will show how Aristotle's metaphysics leads him to divide friendship into three types and to order them hierarchically toward a focal sense that is most final, complete, and self-sufficient. Confucius makes no explicit distinction between kinds of friendship, though we can find examples in Confucius' Analects that fall roughly under the three Aristotelian types. This is not merely a failure to be explicit but is a symptom of metaphysical leanings that shape his own views about human beings and their relationships, knowledge, and actions.

Commentators agree that Confucius is more concerned with practice than theory, but they disagree about whether theorizing would be a useful supplement, an innocuous addition, or a serious detraction from the Confucian way.

Melodrama is difficult to avoid when discussing the impact of Aristotle upon Western thought and practice and Confucius upon Asian thought and practice. Chinese culture is the single stem from which most East Asian cultures branch, and Master Kong is a taproot of these branches. Western cultures owe much to the Greek and Latin civilizations that styled Aristotle as the “master of those who know.” Each thinker's prescription for life has influenced his traditions for millennia. Even in their rejection of the ancient masters, modern movements in both cultures have been shaped by their rejection, right down to their interpretation of the sciences and society. When I speak of “remastering” in this connection, I mean both to recommend that moral study return to a focus on these masters and that we try to recapture their sense that morality is above all a craft with demands and rewards of the utmost consequence for human life. Moral mastery is what both these estimable masters exact. Without it, we wander in the childhood of morality despite all our clever theories.

My project is a close comparison of the ethics of Aristotle and Confucius, with attention to their views of the cosmos, the self, and human relationships. Dialogue between Asian and European cultures is so important, and Aristotle and Confucius are so pivotal to these cultures, that I hope this study will not be the last. It does, however, seem to be the first monograph-length study of these two figures.

A full picture of the human soul emerges only gradually from the Republic. In Book 4 we come first upon a conventional enough distinction between calculation and desire, which under pressure from the correspondence between the microcosm of the just individual and the macrocosm of the just society, with its three different classes, is complicated by the addition of a third element, the element of “high spirit” (thumos). At this stage the three elements in the soul are distinguished principally by their functions: calculation calculates, desire desires, spirit gets spirited. If the text is pressed to assign them an object or goal as well as an activity, the indications would be that calculation is concerned with the good (i.e., with the best course of action); desire is concerned with pleasure; while spirit reacts to perceived slights or wrongs.

When we revisit these three elements in Books 8 and 9, however, they have taken on a different look. In Book 4 they seemed most like faculties; now they seem more like drives. The desiring element is specified as the drive toward material satisfaction; spirit as the drive to win and to amount to something; calculation as the drive to discover truth. They have not shed their characteristic functions, but these have found a new context; and the biggest change is to the calculative element. Previously, it had been unclear whether this element even had a goal of its own or was merely a supervisor that placed limits on the interests of the other elements in the interest of the individual as a whole. Now it is assigned an object of desire all its own, and that object is not the good, whether the good of the individual or the good tout court, but wisdom. Wisdom is a good, of course, arguably the highest good.

Prefatory remarks (1.1–14.3)

Preliminaries I: the target of the Timaeus

1It seems to me to be glaringly clear to all who are not utterly blind to serious literature that the aim of the Platonic Timaeus5 is firmly fixed upon the whole of physical inquiry, and involves the study of the All, dealing with this from beginning to end. Indeed, the Pythagorean Timaeus' own work has the title On Nature in the Pythagorean10 manner. This was, in the sillographer's words, [the point] ‘from which Plato began when he undertook to do Timaeus-writing’. We used this work as an introduction to our commentary, so that we should be able to know which of the claims of Plato's Timaeus15 are the same, which are additional, and which are actually in disagreement with the other man's – and make a point of searching for the reason for the disagreement. This whole dialogue, throughout its entire length, has physical inquiry as its aim, examining the same matters simultaneously in images and in paradigms, in wholes and in parts.20 It has been filled throughout with all the finest rules of physical theory, tackling simples for the sake of complexes, parts for the sake of wholes, and images for the sake of their originals, leaving none of the originative causes of nature outside the scope of the inquiry.