Study Questions for Republic, Book IX

1. This Book starts with a description of a dictatorial or tyrannical personality. Why does Plato think that such a person would violate conventional moral rules? (571a-576b)

2. At 580c he concludes that such a person would actually be the “most wretched.” What reasoning leads him to this conclusion (and thus makes up his “first proof”)?

3. What are the different enjoyments corresponding to the three different components of the mind or soul?

4. Explain how each component can yield a distinct type of person.

5. Which kind of pleasures does each type think is best?

6. Who is correct and why?

7. Try to sum up these points into the “second proof.”

8. (Now for the “third proof.”) How does Socrates use claims about the way people’s perceptions (of pleasure/pain, up/down, etc.) are influenced by their experience to draw a distinction between true and false pleasures?

9. What are “the best and truest pleasures”? (586e)

10. At 588b Socrates returns to the challenge raised way back in Books I and II, that injustice is best, if you can get away with it. He answers first with an image. What model of the mind does this image suggest?

11. What do you think of the rationale for slavery offered at 590d?

12. How does Socrates understanding of justice as psychic harmony lead him to believe that just people will follow the conventional moral rules?

13. Do you think Plato has succeeded in answering his challengers? Has he shown that it is to our advantage to be just, even if we could get away with being unjust?