Republic

Book I

• In the first book of Republic, there is an investigation on the definition of "justice". Here, Polemarchus' argument is that justice is "speaking the truth and repaying what one has borrowed" with giving a reference to the poet Simonides.  However, Socrates gives a counter-example that a weapon shouldn’t be given to an insane person even if it was borrowed. Similarly, treating enemies badly and friends well seem justice, but people often make mistakes about knowing who are their friends and who are their enemies: human can be deceived.
• A just person is good and it is never just to harm anyone.
• Then, Thrasymachus (he is a sophist) gives another definition: "justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger" and "each makes laws to its own advantage". He calls justice the advantage of the established rule in a city and this is actually a relativist interpretation of justice. Instead of an essentialist, an absolute definition, he gives a definition that can be determined depending on the actual power relation (in my opinion). With this definition, even though the content of the laws change, the definition remains constant. For Socrates, he admits it is some kind of advantage, but he is not sure about the advantage "of the stronger". If some law or an order is disadvantageous for a ruler and he is not aware of it, the definition contradicts. The justice of obeying the ruler's order turns into something disadvantageous for the ruler. "What is to the advantage of the stronger is no more just than what is not to his advantage".
• For Thrasymachus, the way a ruler thinks it is good is the same thing with the way that is actually good. A ruler never errs. However, it is not clear for me whether Thrasymachus argues for an "is" or an "ought".
• 341b: ruler in ordinary sense and ruler in precise sense.
• Thrasymachus argues that injustice is stronger, freer, and more masterly than justice on a large scale.
• Each craft (like statecraft) provides and orders for its subject and aims at its advantage. For example, medicine provides health, house-building provides a house, and wage-earning provides a wage. Practicing the craft well requires considering the good of his subject, not one's own. Therefore, wage-earning and one's own advantage is not included in practicing a craft well. Therefore, good people won't be willing to rule for the sake of either money or honour (347b). And now, "the greatest punishment, if one isn't willing to rule, is to be ruled by someone worse than oneself" (347c).
• Justice is virtue and wisdom and injustice is vice and ignorance. If justice is virtue and wisdom, it can easily be shown that it is more powerful than injustice. A state, also, needs justice. Injustice causes civil war, hatred, and fighting among the soldiers of a state. Thus, they have to be just in order to be stronger. Contrary to that, justice brings friendship and a sense of common purpose. Injustice makes something an enemy to itself, it causes dissention (when people start doing unjust things, they are only halfway corrupted, they are not completely unjust).
• Eyes have a function and also there is a virtue of eyes. They are virtuous if they function well. The function of soul is taking care of soul, ruling, deliberating, living, and the like. And justice is a soul's virtue, and injustice its vice; a just person is happy and an unjust one is wretched. Therefore, "injustice is never more profitable than justice".
• A very important transition is that: Putting justice as wisdom-having depends on that a just person wants to outdo just an unjust person, and an unjust person thinks he deserves to outdo both a just person and an unjust person. A good doctor tries to overdue just the bad one, but a bad doctor tries to overdue both the good and the bad. Depending on the similarity, we can say that a good doctor, having wisdom is virtuous.

Book II

• Types of good:
1. Good for its own sake (joy, all the harmless pleasures)
2. Good for its own sake and also for the sake of what comes from it (knowing, seeing and being healthy)
3. Good for the sake of what comes from it (physical training, medical training, medicine itself)

Justice is the second kind.

• Here, I think, Plato talks about what others understand from justice. He says who practices justice do it unwillingly and they lack the power to do injustice. The nature that makes people desire outdoing others and getting more and more is forced by law into the perversion of treating fairness with respect (359c). So they say, a just and an unjust men wearing the ring of Gyges will follow the same path: one is never just willingly but only when compelled to be. These are Glaucon's words: It is better to be unjust and be seem as just, otherwise this person would be whipped and punished; "that's what they say, Socrates, that gods and human provide a better life for unjust people than for just ones". Both Socrates and Glaucon do not defend this position, they just state what others understand from being just. This position puts a similarity between justice and weakness.
• "there is the justice of a single man and also the justice of a whole city. … let's first find out what sort of thing justice is in a city and afterwards look for it in the individual, observing the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger."
• Foundation of a city: because none of us is self-sufficient. Being outside of a community is harder. (Basing on the division of labour, people meet their needs through others' profession.) This is done because people believe that this is better for themselves (this is valid also for exchange).
• The greatest needs: Food, shelter, and clothes.
• A proper place for a settlement is discussed (370d): Neither small nor huge settlement, import/export should be easy, we need farmers, craftsmen, and merchants. "Then we'll need a marketplace and a currency for such exchange." (371b) In the same place, he makes the definition of wage.
• Life-style of the true city in general: "First, then, let’s see what sort of life our citizens will lead when they’ve been provided for in the way we have been describing. They’ll produce bread, wine, clothes, and shoes, won’t they? They’ll build houses, work naked and barefoot in the summer, and wear adequate clothing and shoes in the winter. For food, they’ll knead and cook the flour and meal they’ve made from wheat and barley. They’ll put their honest cakes and loaves on reeds or clean leaves, and, reclining on beds strewn with yew and myrtle, they’ll feast with their children, drink their wine, and, crowned with wreaths, hymn the gods. They’ll enjoy sex with one another but bear no more children than their resources allow, lest they fall into either poverty or war." (372a-b) Then, the city must be enlarged because the healthy one is no longer adequate: musicians, artists, hunters, barbers, doctors, etc. And also the land must be seized. The same is valid also for our neighbours and this causes wars. These are the origins of war according to Plato.
• If there is war, the defence of the city is a necessity. Plato prefers professional army because ordinary citizens are not adequate for soldiery. Warfare is another craft, another profession. "The work of the guardians is most important, it requires most freedom from other things and the greatest skill and devotion. … also require a person whose nature is suited to that way of life." A good guardian has to be high-spirited (spirit brings courage) and gentle (otherwise he attacks to his own people). Although these two characteristics are contrary to each other, combining them is not impossible. Philosophy (learning and wisdom), spirit, speed, and strength must be combined  in the nature of our guardians. The education they will have cover physical training for bodies and music and poetry for the soul. First, we have to choose true stories and remove harmful ones. Then, he criticizes Homer and Hesiod for producing false stories like warring gods and giants. God is only responsible for good things, not bad things because nothing good is harmful (379a-d)
• Eğer bazı belaların tanrıdan geldiği iddia ediliyorsa bunun sebebi de söylenmeli ve cezayı çekenin bundan fayda sağladığı belirtilmeli. "A god isn't the cause of all things but only of good ones."
• On gods: "The best things are leas liable to alteration or change. It is impossible, then, for gods to want to alter themselves. Since they are the most beautiful and best possible, it seems that each always and unconditionally retains his own shape." A god doesn’t lie, doesn’t disguise. These are the deeds done by the false poems of the poets. They have to be refused, especially in education of the young. Thus, our guardians will be "as god-fearing and godlike as human beings can be" (383c).

Book III

• Telling stories makes the guardians courageous and the stories praising the life in Hades in order not to make them fear of death.
• Only a ruler can use falsehoods for the good of the city. (389b) ???
• Guardians mustn't be money-lovers.
• He condemns imitation and tragedy and comedy which are based on imitation.
• In our city, everyone has only one job.
• In this book, he gives a talk on poetry and music in a technical sense.
• "the right kind of love is by nature the love of order (harmony) and beauty that has been moderated by education in music and poetry." Education in music and poetry "has ended where it ought to end, for it ought to end in the love of the fine and beautiful" (403c).
• "Once you have the means of life, you must practice virtue." (407a) That’s why leisure time leads intellectual activity.
• Evrim ve yapay seçilim üzerine bir fikir nüvesi var (407d)
• Doktorlar küçüklüklerinde hastalık geçirmiş olmalılar ki hastalıkları tanısınlar. Ama bir yargıç, saf ve temiz olmalı. Suçu ve suçluyu okuyarak öğrenmeli.
• Doctors and judges will look after those who are naturally well-endowed in a body and soul. As for the ones whose bodies are naturally unhealthy and whose souls are incurably evil, they let the former die and put the latter to death.
• The effects of (i) physical training without any training in music and poetry, and (ii) training in music and poetry without any physical training. One is savagery, the other is softness. There should be a harmony between them.
• Music and physical training has been given by god for the spirited and wisdom-loving parts of the soul.
• The rulers of the city must be the best of the guardians.
• (Discarding of a belief voluntarily or involuntarily) (412e-413)
• A ruler, like guardians, cannot be deceived. We have to test them in different times in their lives whether they follow the same path we aimed to give them.
• Noble falsehood or noble lie: It is a beneficial lie for the city. The god mixed some gold into those who are adequately equipped to rule, silver in those who are auxiliaries, and iron and bronze in the farmers and other craftsmen. The mixture of metals in the soul should be watched carefully by the rulers and any person should be appointed to the adequate position in the city according to the metal in his soul. We have to make our citizens believe this story.
• The auxiliaries should reside in a camp in the best place in the city, isolated from other people. In order to prevent the guardians behave badly to other citizens and become enemy to them, we have to educate them. Plato thinks education can prevent violent and bad tendencies. "They must have the right education, whatever it is, if they are to have what will most make them gentle to each other and to those they are guarding." (416b)
• "First, none of them should possess any private property beyond what is wholly necessary.
• Second, none of them should have a house or storeroom that isn’t open for all to enter at will.
• Third, whatever sustenance moderate and courageous warrior-athletes require in order to have neither shortfall nor surplus in a given year they’ll receive by taxation on the other citizens as a salary for their guardianship.
• Fourth, they’ll have common messes and live together like soldiers in a camp."
• "If they have private land, houses, and currency themselves, they will be household managers and farmers instead of guardians - hostile masters of the other citizens instead of their allies." (417a) And this gives rise to corruption in a city.

Book IV

• The aim during the foundation of our city is not the happiness of only one group, but the happiness of the whole city. However, the corruption of shoemakers doesn’t do much harm to the city; the corruption of the guardians destroys.
• Poverty and wealth make a craftsman and his products worse -because he becomes more idle and careless than he was, if he is in poverty, he is unable to provide the means of production and thus the quality of the craft decreases. Therefore, our guardians must prevent poverty and wealth from visiting our city.
• Legislation: The greatest, finest, and first of laws are determined by the Delphic Apollo: the establishing of temples, sacrifices, etc. religious matters are organized by laws.
• Our good city is good in four aspects: it is wise, courageous, moderate, and just.
• Wisdom: It has good judgment and good judgment requires some kind of knowledge. The kind of knowledge that is about the city as a whole and the maintenance of good relations, both internally and externally, is guardianship and it is possessed by the rulers we just called complete guardians. These governing or ruling class has the least number in this city.
• Courage: A city owes its being courageous to the part of it that fights and does battle on its behalf. Courage is a kind of preservation and "this power to preserve through everything the correct and law-inculcated belief about what is to be feared and what isn't is what I call courage". And this belief comes with education.
• Moderation: Moderation is a kind of consonance and harmony, unlike the previous ones. It is "a kind of order, the mastery of certain kinds of pleasures and desires" (430e). "Self-control" is the key-term and whenever the better part in the soul controls the worse part, we call it self-control. The reverse is called "self-defeated". It is the same for a city. If the ruling wise/the superior few controls the pleasures and desires of the inferior many, it is called self-control. Moderation is located in both the ruler and the ruled, therefore it is a kind of harmony between them.
  • Richard Sennett, "Karakter Aşınması" kitabının 149. sayfasında şöyle yazar: "Ölmeden kısa süre önce yapılan bir röportajında Michel Foucault, kendisiyle mülakat yapan kişiye şu soruyu yöneltmişti: İnsan nasıl 'kendini yönetir'? 'İnsan kendisinin hem özne hem de nesne olduğu eylemlerde; hem eylemin yapıldığı alan hem de gerçekleştirildiği araç olduğu eylemlerde bulunarak nasıl 'kendini yönetir'? (M. Foucault, Résumé des Cours, 1970-1982, s.123)'"
  • Her ne kadar artık ruhun bir bölümünün bir diğer bölümünü yönetmesi ya da genel olarak ruhun Platon'un belirttiği gibi 3 bölümden oluştuğu tezi kabul görmese de bu soru Platon tarafından da çok açık ve şüphe götürmez biçimde Devlet'te (431) sorulmuştur: "Yet isn’t the expression “self-control” ridiculous? The stronger self that does the controlling is the same as the weaker self that gets controlled, so that only one person is referred to in all such expressions. … Nonetheless, the expression is apparently trying to indicate that, in the soul of that very person, there is a better part and a worse one and that, whenever the naturally better part is in control of the worse, this is expressed by saying that the person is self-controlled or master of himself. At any rate, one praises someone by calling him self-controlled. But when, on the other hand, the smaller and better part is overpowered by the larger, because of bad upbringing or bad company, this is called being self-defeated or licentious and is a reproach."
  • Note: "The Greek term is sôphrosunê. It has a very wide meaning: self-control, good sense, reasonableness, temperance, and (in some contexts) chastity. Someone who keeps his head under pressure or temptation possesses sôphrosunê."
• Justice: In a city, "everyone must practice one of the occupations in the city for which he is naturally best suited" (433a). Doing one's own work is justice. "Meddling and exchange between these three classes, …, is the greatest harm that can happen to the city …" (434b) and this kind of meddling and exchange is injustice to the city. Therefore, each class must do its own work in the city.
• If each of the three parts in an individual's soul does their own function, we can call the individual as "just", like a city. They are equivalent in respect to justice, but differ in respect to size. These three parts in the soul of an individual are (i) the love of learning, (ii) spiritedness, and (iii) the love of money. OR, (i) rational part, (ii) spirited part, and (iii) irrational appetitive part. Rational part and spirited part together control appetitive part. Appetitive part isn't fitted to rule. Injustice "must be a kind of civil war between the three parts, a meddling and doing of another's work …" (444b). "To produce justice is to establish the parts of the soul in a natural relation of control, one by another. To produce injustice is to establish a relation of ruling and being ruled contrary to nature." (444d)
• Virtue seems to be a kind of health, fine condition, and well-being of the soul, while vice is disease, shameful condition, and weakness.
• Five forms of constitution refers to five forms of soul. One of them refers to virtue and four refer to vices. The virtuous one is the one we've been describing: kingship or aristocracy (depending on the number of the ruling people).

Book V

• Both male and female citizens can be our guardians because guardianship doesn’t require a necessary division between them. The natures of men and women are different but this is not an obstacle in front of their being guardians. “We’ll continue to believe that our guardians and their wives must have the same way of life.” (454d) With respect to guardianship, their natures are in the same way –except to the extent that one is weaker and the other stronger (456a). Female guardians have to carry the same duties with male ones.
• He proposes that all women and children are to belong in common to all the men. Actually, although he talks about just having the women and children common, men are also common in a different perspective. A woman is not allowed to live with a man privately and no parent will know his own offspring or any child his parent. Many people argue this is a kind of communism. No, it is not. The class society still exists and this form of living is just peculiar to the guardians. This is just a community in an ancient city. Why does Plato suggest this form of living just for guardians? Guardians are able to do that because they are well-educated, wise, and spirited. Other classes in society are ignorant. Maybe this is the reason why Plato doesn’t suggest this form to whole city. Maybe he sees “communism” impossible because of this.
• On artificial selection: 459a and controlled population growth: 459e. Rulers should organize births.
• The greatest good for a city is binding the citizens together. When all the citizens rejoice and are pained by the same success and failures, this sharing of pleasures and pains bind the city together (462b).
• The city with the best government shares the pain and pleasure of even a single one of its citizens. (462d)
• Citizens in other cities generally call their rulers “despot”, in democracies they call “rulers”. In our city, citizens call their rulers “preservers” and “auxiliaries”. The rulers in other cities call people “slaves”. And they call other rulers “co-rulers”, in our city “co-guardians”.
• A critique of private property: Having children, women, houses, etc. common makes reaction to pain or pleasure in any one of a city’s part common. It makes pain and pleasure common which is the greatest good for a city. (464a-b) Against individualism: 464d
• Enslavement: Greeks’ enslavement by Greeks is not just. Greek race is special and determinant for them. He advocates that Greek cities should “turn against the barbarians and keep their hands off one another.”
• War and civil war: 470b. Non-Greek is called “barbarian”.
• They have divided theory and practice in their understanding: 472e
• Unity of politics and philosophy: Philosopher king: “Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils, Glaucon, nor, I think, will the human race.”
• “And who are the true philosophers? Those who love the sight of truth.” (475e)
• Knowledge and opinion (episteme and doxa): “Someone opines neither what is nor what is not… Then opinion is neither ignorance nor knowledge… Then, opinion is darker than knowledge but clearer than ignorance. Then it lies between them. “What about the ones who in each case study the things themselves that are always the same in every respect? Won’t we say that they know and don’t opine?” (479e) (i) people love and embrace the things that knowledge is set over, (ii) people love and embrace the things that opinion is set over. (ii) say and loved beautiful sounds and colours and the like but wouldn’t allow the beautiful itself to be anything. (i) who in each case embrace the thing itself, we must call them philosophers, not lovers of opinion. (480)

Book VI

• In this part, he talks about a philosopher's characteristics: abandons bodily pleasures and is concerned with the pleasures of the soul, he is moderate, not a money-lover, has no fear of death and other things, has a good memory, is measured and graceful, quick to learn, and a friend and relative of truth. The people who spend too much time with philosophy become weird and they seem useless to the society. However, this is not their fault. The fault belongs to the people who are unable to employ these philosophers to the jobs beneficial to the society.
• The reason why the majority of the philosophers are bad: Sophists.
• Bir hayvanın davranışlarını inceleyip hayvanın hoşuna giden şeylere iyi, gitmeyenlere kötü demek: iyi ile zorunluluk arasındaki öz ayrılığını görememek, iyi ile güzeli tabiat zorunluluklarıyla karıştırmak demektir. That makes an is/ought fallacy.
• Can we explain the reality of the beautiful itself to the majority? No. "Then the majority cannot be philosophic." (494)
• A passive stand, keeping his hands clean by being outside of politics and not intervening state affairs don’t seem bad for a philosopher, but it isn't good at the same time. He dies without achieving a good state. Here, Plato criticizes philosopher's passivism.
• "Nonetheless, we were compelled by the truth to say that no city, constitution, or individual man will ever become perfect until either some chance event compels those few philosophers who aren’t vicious (the ones who are now called useless) to take charge of a city, whether they want to or not, and compels the city to obey them, or until a god inspires the present rulers and kings or their offspring with a true erotic love for true philosophy." (499b)
• If we tell the majority who is true philosopher and why we need him, they won't be enemy to him anymore. Our guardians in the most exact sense of the term must be philosophers. They are lovers of their city, they must spend much effort on both physical and mental training otherwise they will never reach the most important subject. (There is something more important than all the virtues that were mentioned before) "The form (the idea) of the good is the most important thing to learn about …" and justice and all other values are beneficial only if they drive people to the good.
• The majority believe that pleasure is the good, while the more sophisticated believe that it is knowledge. It seems the word "good" explains everything to us but no one knows what does it mean exactly. Our guardians have to know what is good actually means.
• "And we say that the many beautiful things and the rest are visible but not intelligible, while the forms (ideas) are intelligible but not visible." (507b)
• The sense of seeing is more complicated than the other senses because another ingredient is needed in the relation between sight and visible things: light. Good is like the sun. Good is needed in order to complete the relation between understanding and intelligible things. "So that what gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is the form of the good." (508e)
• In any case, there are two kinds of thing, visible and intelligible.
• (Taken from http://patrick.maher1.net/317/lectures/plato1.pdf):

• Knowledge: Uses intellect and is about intelligible things (things grasped with the mind, not the sense organs).
  • Understanding (noesis): Reaches the unhypothetical first principle of everything by dialectic. Deduces conclusions about the forms from this principle. (The principle is “the good,” i.e., everything is the way it is because that is the best way for it to be.)
  • Thought (dianoia): Uses hypotheses of which no account is given, like the geometers do. Also uses visible things (e.g., diagrams) as images of the intelligible things being investigated (e.g., straight lines, circles).
• Opinion: Uses sense organs (eyes, etc.) and is about perceptible things.
  • Belief (pistis): Is about originals of those images, e.g., animals, plants.
  • Imagination (eikasia): Is about images, e.g., shadows, reflections.

Book VII

• Cave metaphor
• The idea of good: "it produces both light and its source in the visible realm, and that in the intelligible realm it controls and provides truth and understanding, so that anyone who is to act sensibly in private or public must see it." (417c)
• The virtue of reason is different from other virtues of soul. Although other virtues of soul are akin to the virtues of body, the virtue of reason seems to belong above all to something more divine.
• Neither uneducated people nor educated  are suitable for governing the city. The former are unable -they don’t have a goal in governing the city- and the latter don’t want to govern and think they have been living the life they desire. As the founders of the city, we have to direct the educated and wise people to the most important good.
• The law's concern: "You are forgetting again that it isn’t the law’s concern to make any one class in the city outstandingly happy but to contrive to spread happiness throughout the city by bringing the citizens into harmony with each other through persuasion or compulsion and by making them share with each other the benefits that each class can confer on the community. The law produces such people in the city, not in order to allow them to turn in whatever direction they want, but to make use of them to bind the city together." (519e)
• Only a true philosopher who abstains himself from and despises governing. Other people uses their position for their own interests and this causes a civil war. Therefore, only philosophers who know how to rule for a good city and who abstain themselves form governing should rule in order to avoid fights in a city.
• True philosophy is turning a soul from a day that is a kind of night to the true day. (521c)
• The subject that should be given to our philosophers to be true philosophers is neither physical training nor music and poetry. First, it is arithmetic what is shared by every craft and science in the base.
• "Düşünmeyi gerektirmeyen nesneler, insanda aynı zamanda iki karşıt duyuş uyandırmayan nesnelerdir." Düşünmenin tetiklenmesini farkla ilişkilendiriyor. Biri diğerinden daha büyük olan bir şeyi gördüğümüzde büyüklük üzerine düşünürüz. Kavrananla görünen de böylece  ayrılır. Göz, büyük ile küçüğü aynı anda görür ancak zihin büyük ile küçüğü birbirinden ayırarak kavrar.

Book VIII

• Our city that is governed by kingship is the right one and if it is right, the others are faulty ones. There are four other types. Each form of city (there are five) can be characterized by fiver forms of individual soul (the analogy between the city and the individual).Plato, here, uses aristocracy and kingship almost in the same meaning. The others are timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. Timocracy emerges from aristocracy. In 546a, Plato quotes that "It is hard for a city composed in this way to change, but everything that comes into being must decay". By saying that, Plato approves the cycle of governments.
• Oligarchy is “the constitution based on a property assessment, in which the rich rule, and the poor man has no share in ruling”. (550d)
• Money-making and virtue are opposed to each other. In an oligarchy, people value money-making more and virtue less. From timocracy to oligarchy, victory-loving and honour-loving men become lovers of making money. In an oligarchy, the rulers are the citizens having wealth above some sort of certain amount of money.
• Dissention among the rich and the poor is a defect and a danger for the city. The rich abstain themselves from arming the people in order not to be overthrown. The same view can be seen in Machiavelli too.
• In 552b, Plato criticizes the inequality in wealth. Such an inequality in oligarchy causes beggars, thieves, pickpockets, temple-robbers. >> “the presence of such people is the result of lack of education, bad rearing, and a bad constitutional arrangement” (552e)
• In a journey, if the rich and the poor of the same city are put on the same ship, the end is obvious. Democracy is established if the poor has the victory over the rich in this debate –or civil war. It is established, “whether by force of arms or because those on the opposing side are frightened into exile” (557a). In a democratic government, everyone seems free and they share the state affairs. “And many people would probably judge it to be so, as women and children do when they see nothing multicoloured.” Plato refers democracy is a disorder: there is no requirement to rule even if you are capable of it. The man of democracy argues that all pleasures are equal and must be valued equally instead of the requirement to pursue the good and fine desires.
• Wealth is the reason that causes the establishment and destruction of oligarchy. Wealth is also the most important value for oligarchy. Freedom is the same thing for democracy. Freedom as a good for democracy is the value that destroys it. Democracy and the equality that is brought by it –equality in society, losing respect to the elders, loss of hierarchy- causes corruption. Here, he argues for both paternal and class society in 562e-563a. The equality of the father and the son, and of the resident alien and the citizen corrupts society and destroys it. (Calling this as “paternal” makes the situation simpler. The case it more complex than this. True society requires respect and competence.) He is also against the equality of men-women, master-slave. I think this is not a natural inequality according to him, but just a kind of social inequality that he argues for. For Plato, in a democracy, the freedom is so exaggerated that even putting the citizens under the least degree of pressure, they become angry and cannot endure it (563d). They avoid any master at all. This is the “fine and impetuous origin from which tyranny seems to me to evolve” (563e). “Excessive action in one direction usually sets up a reaction in the opposite direction” and democracy is turned into slavery. “Extreme freedom can’t be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city.” (564a)
• The leaders (class of idlers), the rich, and the people: The leaders collect money from the rich and share this wealth with the people. The leaders egg the people on against the rich. Then the rich tends to oligarchy. The people finds a leader to fight against the rich in the name of the people. A tyrant arises from this leadership. (in detail 564d-566) The tyrant fights the rich and requests bodyguards from the people in order to save his reign –he says he is fighting in the name of the people.
• From 566d to 567d, he gives some characteristics of a tyrant which is similar to the current politics.
• The poets appraising the tyrants have no place in our city.
• In order to provide monetary resources, a tyrant puts heavy taxes on his citizens which displeases them. It seems the end of a tyrant comes with the economic burdens on the shoulders of the people. However, the tyrant is more powerful than the people now and it is not easy as expected to overthrow him. (Frankenstein)
• The cycle of government in Plato (cited from M. Ali Ağaoğulları): Patriarchy (mentioned only in Nomoi) → Monarchy or Aristocracy (depends on the number of the rulers) (the rule of the wise people and the love of knowledge) → Timocracy (love of honor) → Oligarchy (love of money) → Democracy (excess of freedom) → Tyranny (excessive action from one direction usually sets up a reaction in the opposite direction) → (the type of government after tyranny is not clearly stated by Plato, but we can assume Monarchy or Aristocracy comes after Tyranny)

Book IX

• Zorunlu istekler - zorunlu olmayan istekler : necessary pleasures and desires – unnecessary pleasure and desires
• The reason that erotic love (Eros) has long been called a tyrant: a man becomes tyrannical in the precise sense of the term when either his nature or his way of life or both of them together make him drunk, filled with erotic desire, and mad.
• People who are not able to supress the bad part in themselves do bad things. If the number of people like this increases in a city, they make the worst of the tyrants leader.
• A tyrant never finds true freedom and true friendship.
• The worst is the most unhappy >> Tyranny; The best is the happiest >> Philosopher kingdom
• Like a tyrant, the city and the people under him are also unhappy.
• However, a person having tyrannical character is not the most unhappy. The most unhappy is the tyrant, the man having tyrannical character –or tyrant-spirited- and ruling a city according to this. This tyrant is the most unhappy because there is no one guarding him and there are many chains binding him. He lives like in a prison in his palace.
• The first proof: Kingship > timocracy > oligarchy > democracy > tyranny
•  The soul of each individual is divided into three parts, in just the way that a city is. There are three pleasures corresponding to the three parts of the soul: 1. Learns, 2. Gets angry, 3. Appetitive part. It corresponds to the three primary kinds of people: 1. Philosophic, 2. Victory-loving, 3. Profit-loving.
• A good judgment involves experience, reason, and argument. When we consider all of these, the second proof: Wisdom > honour > profit. A philosopher has more experience on victory and profit more than other people.
• Güzel söz: “İnsanın ne zevk, ne acı, ne sevinç, ne üzüntü duyduğu bir hal de vardır...” (583c)
• It is not possible to say that the absence of pain is pleasure and the absence of pleasure is pain (584a). This kind of thought arises from ignorance. People (inexperienced in what is really and truly up, down, and in the middle) unaware of white think grey and black are opposites.
• Truth-appearance/being-becoming distinction: “And which kinds partake more of pure being? Kinds of filling up such as filling up with bread or drink or delicacies or food in general? Or the kind of filling up that is with true belief, knowledge, understanding, and, in sum, with all of virtue? Judge it this way: That which is related to what is always the same, immortal, and true, is itself of that kind, and comes to be in something of that kind—this is more, don’t you think, than that which is related to what is never the same and mortal, is itself of that kind, and comes to be in something of that kind?” >> If less in truth, then less in being.
• Reason and philosophy can lead other desires in us and establish the harmony among them. This is the happiness which should be pursued.
• Kol emeği ile zihin emeği arasında bir hiyerarşi kuruyor ve kol emeğiyle iş gören kişileri hor görme sebebini, tanrısal yanları yerine hayvansal yanlarını işletmeleri olarak belirtiyor. Bu kişilerin yapabileceği en doğru şey, içinde tanrısal yanı baş olmuş kişinin peşinden gitmek, onun yönetiminde yaşamaktır. (590c-d) Kanunların yaptıkları da budur: Toplumun bütün teklerine yol göstermektir – “The aim of the law which is the ally of everyone (590e).
• Bir kişi yakalanmadan yolsuzluk yapsa da bu onun daha kötü biri olmasını önlemez. Ceza ise onun için faydalıdır. Ceza ile içindeki hayvan yumuşar, siner.
• Aklını kullanan kişi, para kazanmada da devlet işlerinde de (şan, şeref kazanmada) ölçülüdür.
• İdeal şehir: “there is a model of it in heaven” (592b)

Book X

• Generalization and conceptualization: “we customarily hypothesize a single form in connection with each of the many things to which we apply the same name.” (596a) “But there are only two forms of such furniture, one of the bed and one of the table.” ~ Sedir ideası ve masa ideası
• There are three kinds of beds: (1) The first is in nature a bed and god makes it, (2) the second is the work of a carpenter, (3) and the third is the one the painter makes –painter is also called an imitator in this chapter.
• “Homer, if you’re not third from the truth about virtue, the sort of craftsman of images that we defined an imitator to be, but if you’re even second and capable of knowing what ways of life make people better in private or in public, then tell us which cities are better governed because of you, as Sparta is because of Lycurgus, and as many others—big and small—are because of many other men? What city gives you credit for being a good lawgiver who benefited it, as Italy and Sicily do to Charondas, and as we do to Solon? Who gives such credit to you?” Buradan anlaşıldığı kadarıyla Platon için bilmek, zorunlu olarak yapmayı, doğru olanı bilmek, doğru olanı yapmayı gerektiriyor. Bilgi-eylem özdeşliği.
• Fallacy - argumentum ad populum örneği için 600d: “if Homer had been able to benefit people and make them more virtuous, his companions would have allowed either him or Hesiod to wander around as rhapsodes?”
• 606b’de katharsis ile ilişkilendirdiğim bir kısım var.
• “Şiirle felsefenin bozuşması yeni bir şey değildir.”
• “Haven’t you realized that our soul is immortal and never destroyed?” (608d)
• “The bad is what destroys and corrupts, and the good is what preserves and benefits.” This phrase in 608e, and then 609a connotate Spinoza.
• Beden ve ruh farklı varoluşa sahiptirler: 610b. “Bir şeyi ne kendine özgü ne de kendine yabancı hiçbir kötülük ölrüremezse, hep var kalacak demektir, hep var kalmak da ölmezlik değil midir?” (611a) Demek ki ruh ölmezmiş. Ruh ölümsüzdür ve ölümsüz olan şeylerin sayısı ne artar ne de azalır.
• “Justice itself is the best thing for the soul itself...” (512b)
• We have to choose the mean and avoid extremes: This is the way that a human being becomes happiest. (619a)
• It seems the description of after-life is also a noble-lie for Plato. He says we can be saved only if we believe in this life that is after-life (621b).

Extras

• http://factmyth.com/platos-five-regimes/

Notes

• Justice in ancient Greek is "dikaios". Its meaning is not as wide as justice. In fact it means "right" or "correct".
• The Greek word "eironeia", unlike its usual translation "irony", is correctly applied only to someone who intends to deceive.
• Outdoing (pleonektein) is an important notion in the Republic. It means to go beyond in action or performance. This is understood as the cause of injustice because one who wants to outdo others is led to trying to get what others have.

Bibliography

Plato. (1997c). Republic. In Plato, Complete Works (pp. 971-1223). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.