Plato's and Cicero's Republic

1/ Compare and contrast Socrates in Plato's Republic with Marcus in Cicero's Laws on what knowledge is needed in order to live the best kind of life and to govern well, and on why this knowledge is needed?


According to Book II of Plato's Republic, Socrates says that education is what needed to train all the citizens and the guardians in a city so that they will be good and just, and the knowledge that is acquired through this education is: wisdom, courage, moderation and justice. In Cicero's Laws, Marcus says that justice or laws and the aim at goodness are what needed in order to live the best kind of life and to govern well. He believes that justice can be found in nature and everyone should possess justice, not just the rulers:


I want it to be understood that what I call 'justice' comes from nature, but that the corruption brought by bad habits is so great that it extinguishes, so to speak, the sparks given by nature and allows the corresponding vices to spring up and flourish... For those who have been endowed by nature with reason have also been endowed with right reason, and hence, with laws, which is right reason in commanding and forbidding; but if with law, then with justice too. But reason has been bestowed on everybody; therefore the same applies to justice (The Laws, Book I, 33-34, 108)

In contrast to Socrates' ideas that justice is what everyone should do his or her own job and not to meddle with others' jobs. Marcus focuses on law and believes that in order for everyone to have happiness; however, law must be established with the government who regulates and enforces the law:

And why is it that, if a law can make what is unjust just, it cannot turn evil into good? but in fact we can distinguish a good law from a bad one solely by the criterion of nature. And not only justice and injustice are different by nature, but all things without exception that are honourable and dishonourable (The Laws, Book I, 44-45, 112)


Marcus also says that law is to keep people to aim towards goodness, and that goodness and law have the same characteristic; that is they are things for the sake of themselves, and not for the sake of other things. And goodness is the ultimate good because if something is not perfectly good then it is not ultimately good; to be ultimately good, first of all, it must be perfectly good:

To bring this whole discourse of mine to an end - the conclusion is obvious from what has been said, namely that one should strive after justice and every moral virtue for their own sake. All good men love what is fair in itself and what is right in itself. It is not in character for a good man to make the mistake of loving what is not intrinsically loveable; therefore, what is right should be sought and cultivated for itself. If this applies to justice, then the other virtues, too, should be cultivated for themselves. What about generosity? Is it free or for profit? When a person is open-handed without reward, it's free; when he's looking for a profit, it's an investment. There is no doubt that a person who is called generosity and open-handed has duty in mind, not gain. So likewise justice looks for no prize and price; it is sought for itself, and is at once the cause and meaning of all the virtue. (The Laws, Book I, 48-49, 114)

To define the ultimate good, Marcus says:

There is no doubt that, as the law should correct wickedness and promote goodness, a code of conduct may be derived from it. That is why wisdom is the mother of all good things; the love of her gives us the word 'philosophy' from the Greek. Of all the gifts which the immortal gods have bestowed on human life none is richer or more abundant or more desirable. In addition to everything else, she alone taught us this most difficult lesson, namely to know ourselves - a precept of such power and significance that is was ascribed, not to any mortal, but to the god of Delphi (The Law, Book I, 58-59, 118)

Thus, ultimate good is wisdom that helps men to live a righteous life, a justice life, including the recognition of gods and the worship of the gods:

And when the same mind examines the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the nature of things, and perceives where those things have come from and to where they will return, when and how they are due to die, what part of them is mortal and perishable, and what is divine and everlasting; and when it almost apprehends the very god who governs and rules them, and realizes that it itself is not a resident in some particular to locality surrounded by manmade walls, but a citizen of the whole world as though it were a single city; then in the majesty of these surroundings, in this contemplation and comprehension of nature, great God! How well it will know itself, as the Pythian Apollo commanded, how it will disdain, despise, and count as nothing those things that are commonly deemed so precious! (The Laws, Book I, 60, 119)

Socrates' education is to make human beings good and to aim their actions towards the searching for goodness which is also virtue and wisdom; however, Marcus' justice and law is the education that makes human beings not only good for themselves and not only to act towards virtuously and to seek wisdom, but also to recognize gods as the supreme power of all things in the world and to worship gods and to obey gods because natural law comes from divine law. In Plato's Republic, Socrates mentions only about who a philosopher is and what a philosopher does, but not about the relation between the wisdom that a philosopher seeks with the law that is a part of practicing wisdom and a part of divine law. Rather, the rulers of a city-state who have acquired the knowledge and the virtues of a philosopher will govern better their city-state, and that's all without describing what kind of law they will practice. Socrates says:

Then the philosopher, by consorting with what is ordered and divine and despite all the slanders around that say otherwise, himself becomes as divine and ordered as a human being can. That's absolutely true. And if he should come to be compelled to put what he sees there into people's characters, whether into a single person or into a populace, instead of shaping only his own, do you think that he will be a poor craftsman of moderation, justice, and whole of popular virtue? He least at all. And when the majority realize that what we are saying about the philosopher is true, will they be harsh with him or mistrust us when we say that the city will never find happiness until its outline is sketched by painters who use the divine model? (Republic, book 6, 500c-e, 174)

The difference is that the philosophers whose Socrates talks about are the guardians who rule the city, and who are well educated, but they do not rule the citizens by any knid of religious law, and they are the ones who are just but there are no concerns whether they will create law:

We hesitated to say the things we've now dared to say anyway. So let's now also dare to say that those who are to be made our guardian in the most exact sense of the term must be philosophers. (Republic, book 6, 503b, 176)

While the philosophers whose Marcus talks about are those who govern the city and create a kind of law that is called religious law which requires the citizens to respect and to follow. Some religious laws that are practiced along with justic which is the natural law. Marcus says:

I note, then, according to the opinion of the best authorities law was not thought up by the intelligence of human beings, nor is it some kind of resolution passsed by communities, but rather and eternal force which rules the world by the wisdom of its commands and prohibitions. In their judgment, that original and final law is the intelligence God, who ordains or forbids everything by reason. Hence that law which the gods have given to the human race is rightly praised, for it represents the reason and intelligence of a wise man directed to issuing commands and prohibitions. (The Laws, Book II, 8-9, 124)

And:

They shall approach the gods in purity; they shall adopt a spirit of holiness; they shall set aside wealth. God himself will punish whoever does otherwise. No one shall have gods of his own, whether new or foreign, unless they have been officially brought in. In private, they shall worship those gods whose worship has been handed down it its proper form by their forefathers... They shall worship as gods those who have always been considered divine and those whose services have secured them a place in heaven - Hercules, Liber, Aesculapius, Castor, Pollux, Quirius - and also those qualities on whose account human beings are allowed to ascend to heaven - Good sense, Moral Excellence, Devotion, Good faith. In their honor there shall be shrines, but none in honor of vices.... (The Laws, Book II, 19-20, 128-129)



2/ Does either character think that anyone has attained the knowledge he says is necessary for living well?

As I already explained at the beginning of the answer for the first question, both Socrates and Marcus think that the knowledge of wisdom and virtue is necessary for seeking the ultimate good because the ultimate good is not the physical good but the spiritual good which is the combination of wisdom and virtue. Let's compare some of the statements that Marcus says and some of the statements that Socrates says in relation to the ultimate good. Marcus:

Furthermore, if goodness is sought for its advantages, not for itself, then there will be one virtue only; and that will most properly be called selfishness. For where each person measures his actions totally by his own advantage, to that extent he totally falls short of being a good man... Finally, if goodness is pursued for the sake of other things, there must be something better than goodness. So is it money or high office or beauty or health? Such things, even when present, are not significant; and how long they are going to remain present is quite unknowable...

Quintus: In what direction, may I ask? For, as far as your talk is concerned, I would gladly run on with you.

Marcus: Towards the ultimate good, which is the standard and goal of every action...

Quintus: ...But there is no doubt about it: the highest good is either to live according to nature (i.e. to enjoy a life of moderation governed by moral excellence) or to follow nature and live, so to speak, by her law (i.e. as far as possible to omit nothing in order to achieve what nature requires, which means the same as this: to live, as it were, by the code of moral excellence.) Hence I'm inclined to think that this question [about ends] can never be decided - certainly not in our present discussion, if we are to complete what we set out to do. (The Laws, Book II, 49-57, 14-7)

For Socrates, the ultimate good is also the virtue and not only knowledge:

Socrates: And isn't this also clear? In the case of just and beautiful things, many people are content with what are believed to be so, even if they aren't really so, and they act, acquire, and form their own beliefs on that basis. Nobody is satisfied to acquire things that are merely believed to be good; however, but everyone wants the things that really are good and disdains mere belief here.

Adeimantus: That's right.

Socrates: Every soul pursues the good and does whatever it does for it sake. It divines that the good is something but it is perplexed and cannot adequately grasp what it is or acquire the sort of stable beliefs it has about other things, and so it misses the benefit, if any, that even those other things may give. Will we allow the best people in the city, to whom we entrust everything, to be so in the dark about something of this kind of this importance?....

Adeimantus: Necessarily. But, Socrates, you must also tell us whether you consider the good to be knowledge or pleasure or something else together.....

Socrates: What? Haven't you noticed that opinions without knowledge are shameful and ugly things? The best of them are blind - or do you think that those who express as true opinion without understanding are any different from blind people who happen to travel the right road?...

Adeimantus: It does seem that way.

Socrates: So that what gives truth to the things know and the power to know the knower is the form of the good. And thought it is the cause of knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge. Both knowledge and truth are beautiful things, but the good is other and more beautiful than they. In the visible realm, light and sight are rightly considered sunlike, but it is wrong to think that they are the sun, so here it is right to think of knowledge and truth as godlike but wrong to think that either of them is the good - for the good is yet more prized... (Republic, book 6, 505d-509a, 179-182)

In book 7 of Plato's Republic, Socrates again confirms that a life of a philosopher is what all the guardians should learn to possess, and that a philosopher is the best guardian while the guardians who are not philosophers are just regular guardians who cannot best govern their city-state:

It isn't possible, for we'll be giving just orders to just people. Each of them will certainly go to rule as to something compulsory, however, which is exactly the opposite of what's done by those whose now rule in each city. This is how it is. If you can find a way of life that's better than ruling for the prospective rulers, your well-governed city will become a possibility, for only in it will the truly rich rule - not those who are rich in gold but those who are rich in the wealth that the happy must have, namely, a good and rational life...

Adeimantus: That's very true.

Socrates: Can you name any life that despises political rule besides that of the true philosophers?

Socrates: But surely it is those who are not lovers of ruling who must rule, for if they don't, the lovers of it, who are rivals, will fight over it.

Adeimantus: Of course.

Socrates: Then who will you compel to become the guardians of the city, if not those who have the best understanding of what matters for good government and who have other honors than political ones and a better life as well?
Adeimantus: No one. (Plato's Republic, book 7, 520e-521c, 192-193)

In conclusion, both Socrates and Marcus think that seeking wisdom, virtue is the life of a philosopher, and that it should be the ultimate good that the rulers aim to in order to live the best kind of life and to govern well.


Rerfercences

Cicero. The Republic and the Laws. Trans. Niall Rudd. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 1998.

Plato. Republic. Trans. G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992.

Leibniz's Rejection of Voluntarism

Unlike Descartes who takes a belief in God through his subjective thinking that God is a perfect and that God as a perfect divine being has influenced Descartes' mind and caused him to have a perfect idea of God, Leibniz takes his belief in God more in the things in the universe and around himself as well as in the Sacred Scripture to prove for the perfect of God as he said in the following paragraph in Discourse of Metaphysics:

For I am far removed from the opinion of those who maintain that there are no rules of goodness and perfection in the nature of things or in the ideas of God has of them and who say that the works of God are good solely for the formal reason that God has made them. For if this were so, God, knowing that he is their author, would not have had to consider them afterwards and find them good, as is testified by the Sacred Scripture - which seem to have used such anthropomorphic expressions only to make us understand that the excellent of God's works can be recognized by considering them in themselves even when we do not reflect them to their cause. This is all the more true, since it is by considering his works that we can discover the creator. (185)

Thus, we see that by looking at things in the universe that God created, from inanimate beings to human beings, Leibniz can discover that their creator is God. In paragraph 3, Leibniz again confirms his confidence in God by saying that the opinion of "those who believed that God might have made things better" Is contrary to the Sacred Scripture "which assures us of the goodness of God's work." And he continues to say:

For, if their view were sufficient, then since the series of imperfections descends to infinity, God's works would always have been good in comparison with those less perfect, no matter how he created them, but something is hardly praiseworthy if it can be praised only in this way. I also believe that a great many passages from Sacred Scripture and the holy fathers will be found favoring my opinion, but scarcely any will be found favoring the opinion of these moderns, an opinion which is, in my judgment, unknown to all antiquity and which is based only on the inadequate knowledge we have of the general harmony of the universe and of the hidden reasons for God's conduct (185)

Through the above paragraph, I see that Leibniz doesn't believe in modern opinions that are unknown to all antiquity or to all the known facts about God that were told earlier in the Sacred Scripture, the Bible. Leibniz believed in the stories of the Bible about many things that God had said to the ancestors of the people on earth, had taught them his righteous gospel and had used reasoning when talking to these ancestors. I know that Leibniz believes that God is a fair and righteous being because God has shown that he was against inequality among the groups of the people on earth. Thus, Leibniz believes that God is a reasoning super being who love all the creatures that he created including humankind and whose perfection no one can compare with. To prove that God is a perfect divine being, Leibniz rejects Descartes' idea of God's voluntarism and claims that,

For to believe that God does something without having any reason for his will -- is an opinion that conforms to little to his glory. Let us assume, for example, that God chooses between A and B and that he takes A withoug having any reason to prefer it to B. I say that this action of God is at the very least praiseworthy; for all praise must be based on some reason, and by hypothesis there is none here. Instead I hold that God does nothing for which he does not deserve to be glorified. (186)

What he means by the above paragraph is that God has a reason or a will to do things, and that since God was perfect and has done perfect things, he did not do those things by arbitrary actions but with care and reasoning and a good will. Thus, Leibniz says that we, as human beings, should follow God's way and do things with care and reasoning as well as putting our wills in our actions. Leibniz says, "that the love of God requires our complete satisfaction and acquiescence with respect to what he has done without our being quietists as a result." (186) Leibniz also says, "And I believe that it is difficult to love God well when we are not disposed to will what God wills, when we might have the power to change it." (186) What Leibniz means is that since God loves us, he always wants to do things that are good and perfect for us, and everything that God does, he plans it or have a will to do it in the best way he can. Thus, I see that Leibniz doesn't believe in arbitration, but rather in will and intention. Leibniz says,

For, although the outcome might perhaps demonstrate that God did not wish our good will to have effect at present, it does not follow that he did not wish us to act as we have. On the contrary, since he is the best of all masters, he never demands more than the right intention, and it is for him to know the proper hour and place for letting designs succeed. (186)

Leibniz' key claims are:

1) On divine perfection, and that God does everything in the most desirable way:

We must also know what a perfection is. A fairly sure test for being a perfection is that forms or natures that are not capable of a highest degree are not perfections, as for example, the nature of number or figure. For the greatest of all numbers (or even the number of all numbers), as well as the greatest of all figures, imply a contradiction, but the greatest knowledge and omnipotence do not involve any impossibility. (184)

2) Leibniz is against those who claims that there is no goodness in God's works, or that the rules of goodness and beauty are arbitrary:

I confess that the contrary opinion seems to me extremely dangerous and very near to the opinion of the recent innovators who hold that the beauty of the universe and the goodness we attribute to the works of God are but the chimeras of those who conceive of God in terms of themselves. Thus, in saying that things are not good by virtue of any rule of goodness but solely by virtue of the will of God, it seems to me that we unknowingly destroy all of God's love and all his glory. (184)

3) Leibniz is against those who believe that God might have made things better:

Nor can I approve of the opinion of some moderns who maintain boldly that what God has made is not of the highest perfection and that he could have done much better. For it seems to me that the consequences of this opinion are wholly contrary to the glory of God. As a lesser evil is relatively good, so a lesser good is relatively evil. And to act with less perfection than one could have is to act imperfectly. (184)

4) What rules of the perfection of divine conduct consist in, and that the simplicity of the ways is in balance with the richness of the effects:

We can therefore say that one who acts perfectly is similar to an excellent geometer who can find the best constructions for a problem; or to a good architect who makes use of his location and the funds set aside for a building in the most advantageous manner.... That is why we mustn't doubt that the happiness of minds is the principal aim of God and that he puts this into practice to the the extent that general harmony permits it. (186)

5) God does nothing which is not orderly and it is not even possible to imagine events that are not regular:

The volitions or acts of God are commonly divided into ordinary and extraordinary. But it is good to consider that God does nothing which is not orderly. Thus, what passes for extraordinary is extraordinary only with some particular order established among creatures; for everything is in conformity with respect to the universal order. This is true to such as extent that not only does nothing completely irregular occur in the world, but we would not even be able to imagine such a thing. (187)

Descartes also has some ideas that are like Leibniz's rejection of voluntarism because Descartes asserts that the mind is free while the body is controlled by natural laws. Thus, the free mind can do whatever the will wants to do; in other words, the will controls the mind or instructs the mind to plan things, to use reasoning in order to achieve what the will wishes. The minds, according to Descartes can transcend the body, and be a slave for the will. Similarly, Leibniz thinks that God uses his will to know what God wants and then uses his mind to plan things, to reason and to create a perfect world in which we are living our lives. In Meditation 4, Descartes discusses that human minds are the possessions of free wills like God, and it is more important that we are most free when we are making choices according to the knowledge provided by the understanding. Thus, according to Descartes, we become freer, more like God, as we acquire more knowledge. Indeed, if we had God's knowledge, we would never have to worry about making a wrong choice, that is sinning. And as we acquire knowledge, we become more and more independent of our bodies. The similarity between Leibniz and Descartes is that they both believe in the power of the mind and the will as the headquarter that controls the mind. They both believe that reasoning, and making choice allow us to be more like God because God uses his will and his intelligent mind to create a perfect universe. One difference between Leibniz and Descartes is Leibniz's account of the nature of individual substances or monads:

Monads are psychological entities which are hierarchically organized. Extension is, on Leibniz's account, relative to our perception and not a fundamental attribute of real things. Leibniz's reason for claiming that monads must be conceived of as rather like souls is that extension is inconsistent with simplicity and unity. Anything which is extended, which takes up space, must have parts; and since monads are simples - atoms - they cannot be extended. Thus, extension, one of Descartes' two sorts of substances is banished from Leibniz's universe. (Scott-Kakures 159)

Leibniz's rejection of voluntarism causes him to explain the notion of individual substance which is called a monad which is mentioned in the above paragraph. In his Discourse on Metaphysics, Leibniz claims the following sentences about the individual substance:

And since actions and passions properly belong to individual substances, it will be necessary to explain what such an individual substance is. It is indeed true that when several predicates are attributed to a single subject and this subject is attributed to no other, it is called an individual substance... Not it is evident that all true predication has some basis in the nature of things and that, when a proportion is not an identity, that is, when the predicate is not explicitly contained in the subject, it must be contained in it virtually... Thus, the subject term must always contain the predicate term, so that one who understands perfectly the notion of the subject would also know that the predicate belongs to it. (188)

Each individual substance is in harmony, pre-established by God, with other individual substances so that each individual will fit into an arrangement with every other individual substance:

Now, first of all, it is very evident that created substances depend upon God, who preserves them continually by a kind of emanation, just as we produce our thoughts... Nevertheless, it is very true that the perceptions or expressions of all substances mutually correspond in such a way that each one, carefully following certain reasons or laws it has observed, coincides with others doing the same... And God alone is the cause of this correspondence of their phenomena and makes that which is particular to one of them public to all of them; otherwise, there would be no inerconnection. (192)

Finally, for the question: Is leibniz's view of God's nature more or less problematic than Descartes? I would answer that his view is more problematic than Descartes' view because he doesn't account on the mind-body problem as Descartes does for his mind-body interaction (the mind appears to act upon the body and the body upon the mind), and for Leibniz, all substances are to be understood as mental sustances; there are, as a matter of fact, no extended substances. Leibniz' account on the mind-body is the following: it is crucial to see that this is no longer the mind-body problem, as it is traditionally conceived. For example, the will acts upon the body in such a way as to raise the arm. For Leibniz, a priori reason which constitutes the raise of the arm is to be found in the state of the soul:

... as long as we recognize that all contingent propositions have reasons to be one way rather than another or else (what comes to the same thing) that they have a priori proofs of their truth which render them certain and which show that the connection between subject and predicate of these propositions has its basis in the nature of both. (191-192)

Leibniz later develops ways of reasoning such necessary and sufficient conditions and other important concepts related to individual substances, and of course, his views of the soul, the mind, of freedom and the will of God construct more systematic concepts than Descartes' views regarding these matters.



Works Cited

Leibniz, G. W. "Discourse on Metaphysics". Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources. Eds Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998. 184-207.

Scott-Kakures at al. Eds. History of Philosophy. New York: HaperCollins Publishers, 1993.