The Four Virtues in Plato’s Republic
Plato’s ideal city, being larger than the human soul, allows us to see how the four virtues coexist. Having found wisdom, courage, moderation and justice in the city which he and his interlocutors have constructed, he applies the results to the individual soul. All this is problematic, to say the least.
The four virtues listed are actually the main aspects of prudence (phronēsis), but Socrates’ interlocutors are not well-practised in the art of abstraction. For this reason, Socrates creates, with their help, a disastrous city in which three social strata are clearly seen, with a fourth bond between them far less easily seen but easily agreed to. Prudence is not divided into the cardinal virtues, but the original healthy simple city is added to in order to achieve the required four parts which are then applied to the soul.
The following extract considers the relationship between prudence and the four cardinal virtues, and the part played by the tripartite city in making that analysis acceptable to Socrates’ interlocutors.
The four virtues
A more satisfying solution is to accept that prudence and wisdom are indeed different, but not exclusively so. Wisdom and the other three cardinal virtues may be regarded as aspects of prudence. During the setting up of the simple city, prudence is not mentioned, since Socrates wishes to concentrate on the tripartition of the city and the four cardinal virtues. He endeavours to facilitate what is effectively the analysis of prudence into its various aspects by adding specialized classes (auxiliaries and guardians) to the simple city (craftsmen) rather than by dissecting what is already in the simple city (i.e., prudence, into the four cardinal virtues). The timocrats are by this strategem tricked into accepting the tripartition of the soul without too much difficult reasoning.
Extract from Chapter 6, ‘The Digression’, in Ivor Ludlam (2014), Plato’s Republic as a Philosophical Drama on Doing Well, p. 176.
For more details, click here.
