The Perils of Uglytown by Berger Harry;

Author:Berger, Harry;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2015-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

8. Four Virtues in the Republic: (2) Courage, The Well-Born Lye

When Socrates introduces the discussion of courage, he proposes looking into both what it is and where “it’s situated in the city” (429a). Glaucon has no problem with the where. He easily assents to the proposition that to find courage in the city we should not look “to any part other than the one that defends it and takes the field on its behalf.” And he agrees with Socrates that for this determination it would not be decisive “whether the other men in it [the city] are cowardly or courageous” (429b).

What is essential “for men who are to be fighters”—over and above strength, skill, and loyalty—is that they “be fearless in the face of death and choose death in battles above defeat and slavery” (386b–c). This is a simple formula consistent with the genesis of the guardian polis in Book 2: The guardians are first introduced when Socrates proclaims that an army will have to be trained to supply the demands of a city dedicated to pleasure and motivated by pleonexia to expand beyond its boundaries (373a ff.).

The second definition gives Glaucon more trouble. It deals with what the guardians must be told to fear, and what sort of effect it should have: A city is courageous when its guardian part has “a power that through everything will preserve the opinion about which things are terrible [deinōn]—that they are the same ones and of the same sort as those the lawgiver transmitted in the education” (429b–c).

Glaucon doesn’t fully understand this and wants it again. Socrates replies that by andreia he means a kind of sōtēria. Sōtēria is preservation, or conservation, or safe-keeping, or deliverance. When Glaucon asks what kind of sōtēria, Socrates replies that courage is the sōtēria “of the opinion produced by law through education about what—and what sort of thing—is terrible [deinos]. And by preserving through everything I meant preserving that opinion and not casting it out in pains and pleasures and desires and fears [phobois]” (429c–d).

Socrates offers to explain this by an analogy, “if you wish” (ei boulei), and when Glaucon does wish (Alla boulomai) he describes what dyers do “when they wish [boulēthōsi] to dye wool purple” (ibid.). They select white wool and prepare it in advance by a process that ensures the dye will be colorfast. Things not so prepared don’t retain the dye and—Glaucon supplies the adjectives—become “washed out and ridiculous” (429e). Socrates then blends terms from the analogy into the second definition. He explains that education “in music and gymnastic” in effect blanches the guardian souls and prepares them to receive the laws (= purple dye) in such a way “that their opinion about what’s terrible and about everything else would be colorfast because they had gotten the proper nature and rearing” (429d–30a).

Glaucon now understands. He distinguishes this kind of “right opinion” from that which “comes to be without education” (in beasts and slaves) and is “something other than courage.” He accepts this

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