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Chapter Five: The Guardians' Education in Courage
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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spiritedness and the problem of the guardians Socrates’ account of political courage emerges as he elaborates how courage should be inculcated in the city’s future guardians. His elaboration of the guardians’ education emerges by way of his critique and reform of the traditional Homeric teachings about the gods, Hades, and heroes. A fundamental part of this task is taming the guardians’ spirited natures, since spiritedness is a potentially savage quality (375b9–10).1 We have already seen some evidence that explains why he treats spiritedness in this way. Political courage, into which spiritedness is supposed to be transformed, means following the city’s teaching about what is and is not truly terrible (429c–30c); that is, it means obeying the city’s laws. But spirited men are often angry or proud, and angry or proud men often act impulsively and irrationally. This does not comport well with obedience. Achilles, the great warrior of Homer’s Iliad, is a perfect example of how anger can lead to civil disobedience and political disaster. Indeed, the Iliad is in large part the story of the consequences of Achilles’ refusal to help the Greeks fight the Trojans because he is angry at having been deprived of his war prize, the girl Briseis . His departure from the battle costs the Greeks dearly. Moreover, Achilles petulantly refuses to return to the battle even after Agamemnon o=ers not only to return Briseis but also to shower Achilles with many other gifts. Clearly, the lesson is that anger in the city’s soldiers can spell disaster for the city. But Socrates goes even further than we might have expected. When he begins to deThe Guardians’ Education in Courage chapter five scribe the education reforms in Books III and IV, rather than harness spiritedness in order to make the guardians “willing to be courageous” in a noble fashion , as we suggested was possible in the previous chapter, Socrates appears to try to extirpate it entirely from their souls. Although, as we will see, this does not turn out to be what happens, the uniqueness of the city under construction suggests why such drastic measures might be needed. The guardians of the city in speech must, after all, be obedient in a peculiar way, for they will not be guardians of any ordinary regime. Indeed, it is far from clear how significant their “guarding” function is; Socrates does not provide details of their military training.2 What makes their role unique is that the city turns out to require philosopher-kings as its rulers (474c, 500e–501a). Socrates is cultivating guardians who are to obey philosopher-kings, but this is not likely to be easy for spirited men. In the first place, spirited men are proud men who love honor and victory. To what extent can such men respect philosophers, who prefer quiet thinking instead of winning honor from others (496b–e, 549c–50a) and who think of ruling not as a great activity but as a duty they must fulfill (see 519c, 520b–21b)? Second, even if the guardians do come to respect philosophers, will they be content to adhere to a law that reserves rule to philosophers? Or will they not demand to share in rule themselves? If the tendency of spirited men is to make such a demand, it must be controlled in the guardians for the regime to succeed. After all, most guardians cannot hope to share in rule; those who do not become philosophers, or guardians in the precise sense (503b), must be satisfied with their roles. But can the spirited men Socrates says the city needs to defend it be satisfied with this? For spirited men to accept subordination to the rule of the wise would seem to require that they become wise themselves. While Socrates indicates that the reformed education they will receive will indeed be a more rational education than the traditional one provided (377e–78c, 379a, 386c), his ultimate distinction between the vast majority of guardians and those who can become rulers suggests that even the reformed education does not cultivate genuine wisdom. Socrates thus appears to be in the awkward position of having to devise an education that teaches courage by at the same time using and moderating spiritedness. We will see, however, that there is a deeper reason for Socrates to try to moderate the guardians’ spiritedness, which reason stems from the proposition that philosophers are not merely to rule the city in...