I. The Good in View

Among the instances of apparent illiberality in Plato's Republic, one stands out as especially curious. Long before making a forced return to the cave,¹

and irrespective of the kinds of compulsion operative in such a homecoming,² the philosopher-king has been compelled to apprehend the Good (Rep. VII.519c5–d2, 540a3–7).³ Why should compulsion be necessary or appropriate in this situation? Schooled intensively through the decades for an eventual grasping of the Good, beginning already with precognitive training in music and art calculated to equip the guardian with a natural affinity toward the good and beautiful (Rep. III.401d3–402a4), the fully mature guardian might be expected to leap toward the Good when it is first opportune. For the Good is, according Plato, the greatest thing to be learned (megiston mathêma; Rep. VI.504e4–5, 505a2), and is such that without its knowledge any benefits accruing from the virtues will be missed (Rep. VI.505a4–b1, 505e6–11, 506a2–6). That Plato should suggest a need for force for its ultimate attainment seems odd and unmotivated. Surely one would expect, on the contrary, that a guardian on the threshold of apprehending the Good would complete his studies with alacrity and delight, first for whatever intellectual satisfaction his doing so may offer him, but then also because he can expect thereby to reap whatever ancillary benefits a grasp of the Good may beget.

Indeed, the peculiarity of compulsion in this connection may seem more than misplaced: it may raise a deeper question about the character of egoism involved in Plato's Republic. On the one hand, if the Good in question is also good for the guardians, then one might well expect them to seek it of their own accord. On the other hand, if the Good to be apprehended is completely impersonal, then it becomes a challenge to understand why, according to Plato, “Every soul pursues the Good and does everything it does for its sake” (Rep. VI.505e1–2). Given the generality of this declaration, if the Good postulated has no individual motivational allure, no standing appeal to an agent's broadly self-regarding interests, it will be falsified many times over in our daily actions. Assuming even a moderate form of egoism, no one, not even the most attentive Goodness zealot, will proceed forever mindful of the Good as such unless it is also good for the agent. For even if we are prepared to allow that intentional agents always act, in some suitable sense, in their own interests as they understand them to be, we will have no grounds to ascribe to them a motivational structure according to which they are forever mindful of an impersonal good. On the contrary, we might expect a consistent egoist to exhibit indifference to a hypothesized impersonal good. If they are egoists, then the guardians on the verge of grasping goodness should thus either require no compulsion or be compelled against their own interest. That is, if it is their own good they think they are about to discover, then we may expect them to seek it freely; if it is not their own good, then it is difficult to appreciate the form of egoism compatible with their compulsion.

In either case, it is unclear why, if it is something impersonal, the Good should be the sort of thing which is in fact everywhere and always sought. It is as if having contended in a hedonistic framework that everyone always and in every case seeks pleasure, Plato nonetheless proceeded to argue that those best placed to experience it in its finest form would need a nudge to pursue it at its pinnacle when it is freely available for the taking. If the explanation is to be that the pleasure in view is not, or need not be, the pleasure of the agent about to act, then in the same framework there is little reason to suppose that everyone pursues it. While an egoistic hedonist may be expected to maximize her own pleasure, she should not be expected to maximize pleasure as such, that is, regardless of its subject. Plato's attitude toward the good of the guardians in the Republic, mutatis mutandis, is similarly perplexing.

It is important when pursuing this issue to be aware that it is distinct from, though continuous with, a broader and more widely discussed issue concerning compulsion in the Republic. Plato has been famously pilloried for his totalitarian inclinations;⁴

and he has been called to account for what seems a blatant contradiction in holding both that everyone has a self-interested reason to be just and that the guardians must return to the cave for the sake of justice when they would surely prefer, and would be right to prefer, the more serene and detached life of philosophical contemplation (Rep. VI.500d4; VII.519e4, 520a8, 520e2, 521b7, 539e3, 540b5). In reacting to these charges, scholars have variously condemned Plato as the enemy of the open society and defended him as misunderstood by his detractors.⁵ Few, however, have asked the prior question of why the philosophers in near possession of the Good would not leap to embrace it intellectually.⁶ It may be that an answer to the prior question will point toward a fertile approach to the issue more widely pursued.

The question of why guardians should be compelled to view the Good is, in any case, already a large and complex one. We make some progress in approaching it by focusing primarily on three of its dimensions. First, what kind and degree of compulsion is envisaged? That is, are the guardians compelled against their express will to the contrary? Are they prodded and cajoled to confront the Good when they would prefer to do no such thing? Is the necessitation categorical or merely hypothetical? Second, why should the guardians require compulsion of any kind? If Plato has a good reason for thinking that they might need a nudge, what does this tell us about his understanding of their (as yet incompletely formed) moral psychologies? Finally, and most importantly, who is the agent of necessitation? Is there indeed an agent of necessitation, as charges of illiberalism presuppose, or is Plato thinking more broadly of what we might term nomic necessitation, that is, the sort of necessitation we experience in the laws of nature or logic?⁷

These three lines of investigation lead us respectively into determinations of (i) the kind of compulsion envisaged, (ii) the subjective character of the compelled, and (iii) the agent of compulsion involved. With respect to these aspects of our problem, we may now state our thesis: the guardians are pushed toward goodness first by an antecedent desire to attain their own good, but because they are incompletely integrated before actually attaining it, they will likely lose their course before doing so, because of the Good's being occluded from view by the fracturing opacity of their own desire. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to regard them as self-compelled. It is, rather, the Good itself that is the agent of their necessitation—if we may speak appropriately of agency in this connection. Better, perhaps, is the suggestion that the question of agency has a false presupposition. The agent of compulsion is not to be identified, since the necessities to be observed are largely agentless. This last point will have the most immediate and important corollary for our appreciation of the political presuppositions of the Republic: in this respect, at least, there is not even a whiff of illiberalism in Plato's conception of compulsion. We will thus note in closing a trio of corollaries carrying suggestive consequences for the broader issues of political compulsion in the Republic. In the most general terms, the citizens of Kallipolis are forced to do what they do primarily by the goodness of Justice rather than by the edicts of a tyrant.

II. Learning to Be Good

While still quite young, guardians in training, having been identified for their uncommon keenness and promising physical prowess, need to receive training in music and poetry. The benefits of this training, as Plato presents them, are primarily affective. Training in music and poetry permeates the soul, structuring it in precognitive ways with a sense of beauty and symmetry, so that when reason develops, the guardians will find a natural kinship with the orderly symmetries of rationality:

Aesthetic education thus equips the eventual guardian with entrenched dispositions and preference structures: he will gravitate toward beauty, including the beauty of reason, because it will feel natural and unforced for him to do so at the appropriate time.

Further along in this course of early education, the guardian will undergo physical training, though mainly with an emphasis on the development of the soul in its spirited aspect (thumoeides) (Rep. III.410c5–e4). Indeed, the purpose of combining physical training with music is precisely to effect psychic balance and integration between the wisdom-loving, more philosophical dimension of the soul and the more spirited dimension. Plato is even prepared to say, with evident earnestness, that gymnastic training is not in fact undertaken on behalf of the body, except incidentally and insofar as physical fitness begets psychic harmony (Rep. III.411e3–412a6). In these ways, the early training of the guardians has a unified pedagogical goal: the best of the young in Kallipolis are to be psychically habituated so as to develop well-integrated and moderate dispositions, neither too soft in the pursuit of learning or love of music nor too hard, harsh, or savage from inordinate physical exertion (Rep. III.410d1–411a2). As W. K. C. Guthrie rightly notes,⁹

the outcome in view accords with the Periclean praise for the attainments of Athenian culture: “we love beauty with parsimony, as we love wisdom without being soft” (philokaloumen te gar met' euteleias kai philosophoumen aneu malakias; Thucydides II.40.1).

As their education moves to its advanced phase, the guardians, whose numbers ever diminish by repeated cullings of those less suited to the task (Rep. II.375e9–11; III.412b3–d1; VI.503a2–b1; VII.535a3–5, 536b5, 537b1–d7), transition into serious study of mathematics, through both the study of specialized branches of mathematics and attention to interrelations and common principles, and finally into five years of dialectic. The purpose of this final study of dialectic, undertaken only by those already equipped to shun the self-directed eristic of the young, is precisely to equip guardians for their ultimate goal (telos, Rep. VII.540b6), a direct focus on the Form of the Good (apoblepsai, Rep. VII.540a8).

The process leading to this moment has lasted some fifty years, through early training, ten years of advanced study, five years of dialectic, and a final fifteen years gaining statecraft in the city by discharging its lower offices (Rep. VII.540a2–c2). Everything has been in preparation for this moment of attainment. Along the way, those insufficiently keen, or lacking in the right forms of zeal and steadfastness, have fallen by the wayside. Those who remain are the most capable, best educated, fully equipped, and endlessly energetic of all the state's citizens. They are men and women of hard-won superiority and boundless enthusiasm. It is therefore striking that at this moment Plato would find the need to make recourse to the language of compulsion twice over, both for their approach to the Good and then their eventual return to the cave. Thus, modal language occurs just when the guardians are to approach the Good, when only the best and most persevering among them have been selected for the privilege (Rep. VII.540a4–c2). Similar language is used earlier in the Republic as well, when Socrates reports that those establishing the city must compel (anagkasai) those with the very best natures to approach the study that has been agreed to be the greatest, namely, the apprehension of the Form of the Good (Rep. VII.519c7–10).

III. Kinds of Compulsion

If it is the founders of the city who compel the guardians to gaze upon the Good, then the kind of compulsion involved is external rather than internal. That is, the guardians will not be acting of their own volition, relying on their subjectively accessible motives and reasons, but will instead be directed from without, by the commands of their educational taskmasters. Further, although Plato does not say so expressly in these contexts, the bare fact of their being compelled suggests that the guardians require compulsion, that they would somehow rather not complete and perfect their studies, that they might prefer ignorance and indolence to the labor of learning. That would again be odd, since the iterated process of selection through the years should have left us with only the most eager, the zealous lovers of learning who, one expects, will relish the opportunity to complete their advanced studies as soon as it becomes possible for them to do so.

Perhaps the explanation for this oddity is near at hand. In allied contexts, when describing the ascent from the cave to the light of the sun, whose analogue in the noetic realm is the form of the Good (Rep. VI.507a1–5), Plato makes similar use of the language of compulsion. In that connection, the prisoners of the cave must be forced because the steps to learning are difficult and painful (Rep. VII.515c6–8). Most notably, he says that the prisoners ascending from the cave are pained twice over, first when they are dazzled by looking up to the light source never before encountered (Rep. VII.515c4–d1) and then again when they leave the cave altogether for the land of light (Rep. VII.515e1–4). Ultimately, however, they grow accustomed to the light and can gaze upon the sun and study it (Rep. VII.516b4–7). In this picture, compulsion is required because of the painful disorientation of bright light when first experienced. The suggestion would then carry over that compulsion is needed to assist the guardian with the intellectual sting of first knowing what is made intelligible by the Good before proceeding to the blinding apprehension of the Good itself.

To the extent that such a picture is appropriate to early stages of intellectual development, it fails to comport with Plato's depiction of the guardians nearing the end of their course of study. These are described as well-conditioned adults, steadfast and unwavering in their love of learning, and unlikely to shrink from even the greatest of intellectual challenges (Rep. VI.485c–487a, 503e2–504a3). It is for just these traits that they are selected to be advanced to the final apprehension of the Good. It is thus difficult to understand why they should find painful or disdain what they have been perfectly acculturated to appreciate.

We make some progress if we reflect upon the kinds of compulsion Plato may have in view in these and like circumstances. In the abstract, one may distinguish between internal and external compulsion and then again along a normative dimension, between those forms of compulsion that are broadly proper and those that are in one way or another improper, perhaps because of their being coercive, exploitative, or demeaning. While all these contrasts are scaled and matters of degree, it is nonetheless possible to provide clear and relatively neutral examples of each kind of compulsion:

• External and proper (EP): legitimate forms of paternalism, for instance, when a parent forcibly prevents a child from entering the flow of oncoming traffic; external logical or nomic necessitation, as when one proposition is entailed by others; causal necessitation generally; legal necessitation, on the assumption that civic laws are just.
• External and improper (EI): unprovoked physical violence, including rape and assault; extortion; blackmail; threatened violence; bullying; forced compliance with unjust laws.
• Internal and improper (II): pathological compulsion; unwanted perversion; pathologically self-destructive behavior, including eating disorders, self-mutilation, and other forms of undesired but unavoidable self-abnegation.
• Internal and proper (IP): internalized nomic necessitation, as the drawing of an inference or, so to speak, as being forced by logical relations to endorse a proposition, given the acceptance of a set of premises; assenting to appearances as appearances; instances of doxastic involuntarism, as when one comes to believe p in the face of overwhelming evidence for p; and, perhaps, in a realist framework such as Plato's, recognizing the Good as good when grasping it in an unmediated way.

It will be unhelpful at this stage of the inquiry to raise difficulties about what constitutes the internal as opposed to the external, by wondering, for instance, whether the nomic necessitation between two sets of electrical impulses in the brain qualifies as internal or external. The notion of internality here deployed is meant to track psychological forms of necessitation and will thus extend as far as the psychological realm extends, however far that may be. Similarly, it will not serve the purposes of inquiry to note, as is true, that there will be disputes regarding whether certain forms of external compulsion are proper or improper. For these four categories of compulsion are intended to leave open most interesting material questions concerning forms of political compulsion. If capitalism is the best of all possible politico-economic systems, then if the working class is economically compelled to produce surplus profit for those who hold the means of production, that will be altogether proper and unobjectionable. If, however, capitalism is vile and wicked, then the forced enslavement of the proletariat by the rich will be both indefensible and wholly improper. What matters at present is not how all forms of coercion are to be sorted, but rather that there be a framework into which they may be sorted. In the present context, our question is precisely how Plato's various appeals to compulsion slot themselves into this framework.

The examples provided for each category are by design fairly heterogeneous, in part to highlight the highly generic character of the divisions themselves. Even so, among them, the last kind of compulsion mentioned (IP) is likely to require amplification, especially since, I shall suggest, it is the dominant (though not the only) form of compulsion relevant to the guardians' ascent to the Good. Fortunately, the phenomena appealed to in (IP) should be readily available phenomenologically.

First, whatever the evidentiary character of qualitative experience, normally, when I taste something salty, it seems to taste salty to me. When something seems to taste salty to me, I further seem compelled to assent to that very seeming, namely, that what I am tasting seems salty to me. In general, my will is impotent in the face of immediately experienced qualia. If later I learn that the salty flavor was brought about not by salt but by a clever salt substitute, this will not alter the initial seeming; on the contrary, what makes the salt substitute clever is precisely that it induced a salt sensation in me. In general, if something seems φ to me, then barring abnormal circumstances induced by Müller-Lyer style illusions of various kinds, I feel compelled to assent to the appearance of its seeming φ. If the compulsion here is not absolute or exceptionless, it is a kind of compulsion nonetheless.

Moving over to cases involving the drawing of logical inferences, the general phenomenology remains unaltered.¹⁰

When confronted with a simple disjunctive syllogism, nearly everyone feels compelled to draw the correct inference. If we agree that either A or B is true, but then deem B to be false, we conclude what? We conclude A. We do not, and in some sense cannot, in this circumstance, refrain from assenting to A. Some might wish to insist that the compulsion in this case is in one way or another hypothetical, that if we wish to be rational, or if we wish to abide by the rules of classical logic, then we must draw A as the correct inference. In general, this seems dubious, but again for present purposes, let it be so. For then, too, there will be internal compulsion—hypothetical, we may now allow, but compulsion nonetheless. In cases of drawing logical inferences, especially rudimentary and simple ones, there is a palpable form of inner necessitation. Since the necessitation is wholly proper, we may regard (IP) compulsions as both familiar and unproblematic. In these sorts of cases, no one is to blame for compelling us to do anything since, first, there is no one compelling us to do anything, and, second, the laws of logic are not blameworthy for being what they are. The propriety of internal compulsion in such cases thus derives from an externally obtaining nomic necessity, and not from the edict of some political authority. What makes it proper that a student provide six as the answer to the question of what twice three equals is precisely that two times three is six. A teacher who insists on correcting the student who provides five as the answer to this question is not therefore a despot.

IV. Platonic Compulsions

If we accept this broad taxonomy, we may ask in its terms what sorts of compulsions Plato recognizes in the Republic. Once we have shown that he accepts them all, we can further ask which sort of compulsion is relevant to the guardian about to grasp the Good.

That Plato recognizes external forms of compulsion both proper (EP) and improper (EI) is uncontroversial. That is, at any rate, Plato recognizes what he regards as instances of (EP) and (EI), even if we may choose to dispute his contentions. In any event, such compulsion is uncontroversial, and sadly widespread. Here are some instances of (EI):

• And if what has been said appears boorish, Socrates, do not think of me as having said it, but rather those who praise injustice over justice. They will say these sorts of things: the just person will be whipped, stretched on the rack, restrained, have his eyes burnt out, and when in the end he has suffered every evil and has been hung out upon a stick, he shall discover that one should not seek to be just but to seem so (Rep. II.361e2–362a2).
• Once civil war has come about they [the new leaders] … turn the constitution towards money making and the acquisition of land and houses, silver and gold, while the others [the old leaders] … lead souls towards virtue and the old established ways. Fighting and struggling with one another, they agree upon a middle way, distributing houses and land to be held in private, while enslaving those they previously protected as free men and friends, turning them into serfs and household servants, and then occupy themselves with the war while guarding themselves against those they have enslaved (Rep. VIII.547b2–c4).

Some instances of (EP) might include:

• If someone says that god—who is good—is the cause of evils, it will be necessary to fight against (diamacheteon) this in every way, lest he say such things in his own city (if, that is, it is to be well governed), or lest anyone hear them, whether young or old, and whether he is offering such stories in verse or in prose. If someone were to say such things they would be neither pious, nor beneficial to us, nor indeed even internally consistent with themselves (Rep. II.380b6–c3).
• “Doesn't it seem mean and slavish to strip the corpse [of a fallen soldier]?” … “So shall we permit our soldiers to be corpse-strippers or to deny those who wish to collect their dead?” “No, by god, we must certainly not permit such things” (Rep. II.369d6–e6).
• “Moreover, it occurs to me, now that the study of calculation has been mentioned, how very refined and multiply useful it is in relation to what we wish to accomplish—provided that one pursues it for the sake of discovery and not for retail sales!” “How so?” he asked. “This, which we were just now mentioning [viz. the study of calculation] draws the soul sharply upward and makes it reason about the numbers themselves, never permitting anyone to reason with it by putting forward as instances visible or tangible bodies as numbered” (Rep. VII.525c9–d8).

The first example of (EP) will strike many modern readers as objectionable; and perhaps it is so. It is selected, however, precisely because it represents a kind of external compulsion that Plato would regard as proper. The remaining cases, by contrast, will likely find little resistance. In any event, what matters in the present context is only that Plato is content—as we are generally content—to suppose that external compulsion is at least sometimes proper. That Plato should recognize such cases is hardly problematic, since in some form or another they are relatively familiar to all of us.

The last example is striking in that it involves agentless external compulsion. It is clearly, in Plato's contention, the study of calculation (mathêma peri tous logismous) which makes the soul reason, which compels (anagkazei) the soul to trade in numbers alone. The contrast Plato has in mind in this passage is between numbers understood as abstract entities, on the one hand, and numbered groups of visible or tangible items, on the other. The study of calculation requires one to appreciate that 5,250 is divisible by 25 without remainder, not merely that this pile of 5,250 marbles can be separated into 210 piles of 25 each. This is the sort of study, Plato comments, that “forces (prosanagkazon) the soul to make use of understanding, by itself, to approach the truth itself” (Rep. VII.526b1–2; cf. Phaedo 104d2; Sophist 229b9). Here, it seems, in some measure the external compulsion is mirrored within and has been internalized as a kind of orienting necessitation. That is, the study of calculation drives the soul in an upward direction because numbers, as they are in themselves, have certain natures—but only when the study is undertaken by a properly oriented subject will the soul, in fact, direct its gaze toward the abstract.¹¹

Moving to cases of more narrowly internal necessitation, examples become more complex, but no less abundant in the Republic. Though they are clearly internal, some cases might be regarded as difficult to classify normatively. Cephalus, for example, reports gratitude at having been released from the many “mad masters” of sexual tyranny in his old age (Rep. I.329d1), when he reports approvingly a remark of Sophocles:

• I was once present when the poet Sophocles was asked by someone, “Sophocles, how are you holding up in your erotic affairs? Can you still have sex with a woman?” He responded, “Silence, my man. I am entirely delighted to have escaped all that, like a slave who has run off from a raging and savage master.” What he said seemed right to me then, and no less so now. For in old age there comes about a great peace and freedom from all such things, when the appetites stop their straining and release us (Rep. I.329b7–c9).

While Sophocles is plainly referring to a kind of internal compulsion, the question of whether sexual desire is proper or improper to one time of life or another might require further consideration.

Other cases are easier to classify. Plato frequently distinguishes between necessary and unnecessary desires, where those that are necessary are proper, while those that are not necessary tend not to be so (Rep. II.373a–d; V.458d; VII.537c; VIII.558d–559c).

One clear instance of improper internal compulsion involves the psychological struggle suffered by Leontius when he struggled unsuccessfully to repress an unwelcome, perhaps sexually tinged,¹²

desire:

• Leontius, son of Aglaion, was coming up from Piraeus underneath the North Wall when he saw some corpses lying about the state executioner. He at the same time desired to see them and was repulsed and turned himself away. For a time he struggled and covered his eyes, until he was overcome by desire and pulled his eyes wide open, running towards the corpses, saying, “Look for yourselves, you vile wretches. Take your fill of the lovely sight!” (Rep. IV.439e7–440a3).

Finally, we may consider some instances of internal proper compulsion (IP):

• Lest we discuss these matters in the dark, do you want first to define those desires which are necessary and those which are not? … Those are necessary which we cannot turn away from, as well as those which benefit us by their satisfaction. For it is necessary in each case that these be acceded to by our nature (phuse(i))…. It is accordingly right that in these cases we use the term “necessary” (to anagkaion) (Rep. VIII.558d7–e3).
• In the intelligible realm, the Form of the Good is the final thing to be seen, and it is seen only with difficulty; but once it is seen, it must be concluded (sullogistea) that it is in all ways the cause (aitia) of all that is right and beautiful (Rep. VII.517b8–c2).¹³

  The verbal adjective sullogistea is typical of Plato's more impersonal style of speaking of compulsion. A verbal adjective of this form is impersonal in the sense that it means “it is to be inferred” or “one must infer.” Translators often, quite appropriately, find it natural to render such constructions in a personal manner, e.g., “we must infer.” Cf. Aristotle, Top. 161a2; EN 1101a34.

In these sorts of cases, we move with an inward necessity, uncoerced and uncompelled by any external agent, constrained only by the lineaments of our psychology in the face of logical and other nomic necessity.

The last example is in many ways the most significant for our present inquiry. Plato uses the modal language of compulsion in characterizing the guardian's immediate cognitive reaction to the Good. It is plain that he is not thinking of any compulsion enforced by an external agent, but rather of a spontaneous and unavoidable reaction to the nature of Goodness itself. Once the guardian apprehends the Good, he cannot but appreciate how the Good bestows its benefits. The picture, whether optimistic or not, seems a direct cognitive analogue to the cases of qualitative experience already discussed. Plato assumes that just as one cannot but acknowledge that salty-tasting food tastes salty while it is being tasted, so the Good cannot but seem good and beneficial when it is being seen. If the verbs of intellectual perception are thought to be misleading here (horaô; Rep. VII.517c1), then that is only due to a substantive disagreement with Plato about the character of our cognitive experience. When we apprehend the Good, we see that it has various features, and by an internal compulsion governed by the external features of the Good itself, we move immediately to their acknowledgment. The closest analogue, though imperfect, is the drawing of an inference required by an independently given entailment relation.

In any event, we find Plato recognizing and commenting upon forms of compulsion across the full spectrum we have identified. Indeed, the examples selected could be easily multiplied, even while remaining within the confines of the Republic. Some of these compulsions are political and some apolitical; some are psychological and others physical. Some are improper, suspect, or abhorrent, often because they are imposed by an external agent on an unwilling and weaker subject; others are utterly unobjectionable, flowing from our own nature or from an agentless brute nomic necessity. Accordingly, some compulsions admit of assessments of blameworthiness or praise, while others are categorically unsuited to such assessments. A despot torturing a subject is blameworthy; gravity's work in forcing a smaller mass to a larger one does not even in principle admit of such appraisal. It follows that talk of compulsion by itself does nothing to cast aspersions on Plato's political motivations and machinations. In the case of the guardians and the Good, then, the case for criticism or commendation remains open until the character of compulsion is determined.

V. On the Verge of the Good

Plato speaks of forcing the guardians to confront the Good in two passages in the Republic. Somewhat surprisingly, the forms of compulsion are distinct.

In the first passage, it is plain that the founders of Kallipolis, whoever they may be, play an active role in motivating the guardians:

If we approach this passage in terms of our initial three questions (posed near the end of Section I), we may state briefly with respect to the third that the agent of compulsion is external. Less clear are answers to the first two, concerning the subjective state of the guardians and the character of the compulsion involved.

The second passage is still less firm on these points.

As translated, the passage leaves open the question of internal versus external compulsion. A perfectly acceptable alternative would decide the issue in favor of external compulsion: “… and one must compel them to throw open …”¹⁴

On this rendering, presumably the one who leads (akteon) is the same as the one who compels, namely, the founders of Kallipolis. If we were to think of the passage in terms of this approach, again our first two questions would remain open: the kind of compulsion in question would be left largely unspecified, as would be the subjective state of the guardians under compulsion. It seems that only after resolving these issues as far as possible does it become fruitful to pose the posterior question of whether the compulsion is proper or not.

To approach the prior question of agency, we may review these passages in tandem, with greater care. As we have seen in our first passage, it is plain both that the compulsion in question is external and that it is implemented by the founders of Kallipolis. We should, of course, expect some imperfection on the part of even advanced guardians who have yet to see the Good.¹⁵

In particular, we might reasonably expect them to be imperfectly harmonized in the three parts of their souls, with the result that the spirited part (thumoeides) might, even at this late stage in their development, preempt the prerogatives of reason by being as yet imperfectly subordinated to it.¹⁶ Thus, it would be reasonable to expect the need for direction, including mild compulsion even at this late stage.

This, however, does not explain the full oddness of the situation. For in the second passage, in the same sentence, and within one modality of compulsion, we find the guardians compelled to apprehend the Good and, after having done so, compelled to order themselves and their city according to its terms. That is, the compulsion, such as it is, straddles the apprehension of the Good, before and after. Indeed, the compulsion associated with our first passage does not let up after apprehension either. Socrates comments, continuing his same line of thought:

In both passages, we find compulsion unbroken by what should be the final integration of the philosophical soul, whose educational coping stone is precisely the apprehension of the Good.

What might be added to this picture derives primarily from our second passage. Here Socrates says that of necessity, or as a matter of compulsion, the guardians in waiting throw open the shining eye of their soul (anagkasteon anaklinantas tên tês puchês augên; Rep. VII.540a5). The language is poetic, but perfectly intelligible—and it does not portray anyone as prising open the intellectual eyes of the guardians in waiting. Instead, Plato conveys what he thinks is to transpire if the Good is to be apprehended. Since the guardians in waiting wish to see the Good, and since their doing so benefits them, along with others, the necessitation here is plausibly taken as hypothetical, whether internal or external, whether, indeed, it is agentive or wholly impersonal.

If we allow that the compulsion is hypothetical, predicated perhaps upon a standing desire of the agent compelled, then we already undermine much of the persistent contention that the Republic is illiberal in its frequent use of the idioms of force. More formally, if we believe that practical rationality involves the implementation of desires by means of instrumental reasoning, then we will often find ourselves—as we in fact do—experiencing some form of hypothetical necessitation: if I wish to grow a garden filled with rose standards, then I must sow and tend the appropriate plant types. If the planted roses suffer chlorosis, then it will be necessary to adjust their light, soil acidity, or drainage. The necessities here are both nomic and hypothetical: nomic because the processes of photosynthesis are given by the structure of the natural world and are not subject to my will, and hypothetical because the need to attend to these natural laws is predicated upon an antecedent desire for some outcome that involves them. In the same way, if a guardian in waiting wishes to apprehend the Good, then given the education required for this outcome, it will be necessary for him to adhere to various prescriptions.

Returning, then, to the first passage, it becomes plausible again to think of the compulsion as hypothetical: if the guardians-to-be are to see the Good, then it falls to the founders of Kallipolis to direct and guide them. If one friend tells another that she must stop drinking so much if she wishes to be happy, then she has not compelled her to do anything, in any interesting sense of the term. If the admonished friend internalizes the advice, then it becomes her own hypothetical imperative. Further, on the assumption that the tippler wishes to be happy, and would indeed benefit from being so, then here too there is no interesting question of compulsion. Indeed, the general hypothetical necessitation in question can be nothing other than the friendly formulation of a nomic necessitation which, if true, holds independently of its being voiced.

We would do well to return in this connection to our earlier illustration of (IP), internal proper compulsion. We noted, though we did not stress, that Plato maintains that though the Good is the last thing apprehended in the guardians' education, “once it is seen, it must be concluded that it is in all ways the cause of all that is right and beautiful” (ophtheisa de sullogistea einai hôs ara pasi pantôn hautê te kai kalôn aitia; Rep. VII.517c1–2). One may or may not regard the conclusion claimed to be extravagant or unwarranted. What matters in the present context, however, is the kind of compulsion envisaged. Plato has in view that once the Good is grasped, its status as a preeminent cause (aitia) must be accepted. This consequence does not follow from the Form of the Good's being grasped; for it would obtain, if true, whether or not the Good had been grasped. Moreover, it is not, and more strongly could not be, imposed as a consequence by some external human agent. Rather, it follows, if at all, from the nature of the Good alone. The modality involved thus could hardly be improper. On the contrary, the consequence follows by dint of nomic necessity. Consequently, questions of illicit force simply do not arise.¹⁷

Looked at from this perspective, we find not even an appearance of inconsistency between Plato's various allusions to compulsion in our approach to the Good and his striking assertion that everyone always seeks the Good (Rep. VI.505e1–2). If we in fact seek the Good, then external compulsion in this respect is otiose. Even so, hypothetical necessitation from without may be welcome, and may even be indispensable, or nearly so. In Plato's approach, however, any such necessitation will be grounded in antecedently given nomic necessities. Learning the Good is, he suggests, like learning logic. A teacher will appropriately tell a pupil that in order to derive a valid inference in a system of natural deduction, for example, a rule of conditionalization must be discharged before the proof is complete. This obligation is not due to the arbitrary imposition of the teacher's whim; nor is it due to a merely hypothetical contingent desire on the part of the student. It is, rather, a function of the entailment relation with which the student is hoping to familiarize himself. To the degree that this is a form of compulsion, questions of propriety simply do not arise. Nothing in Plato's Republic, at least on the side of a philosopher's approach to the Good, suggests any stronger form of compulsion.

Taking these passages together, then, there seems to be nothing approaching an improper external compulsion in the approach to the Good. If there is an external compulsion at all, it is hypothetical; and if it is hypothetical, then it is predicated upon the good of the agent. More importantly, the agent of compulsion, if it is even appropriate to speak of nomic necessitation as compulsion, is the Good itself. In Plato's view, the Good is given, not invented; and as it is given, various consequences of its nature are to be grasped by the astute and the eager. If they are given instruction in the form of hypothetical imperatives, then the guardians are more likely to be grateful for the guidance than to be irritated by an imagined infringement on a liberty they lack.

VI. Looking Out from the Good

We have concentrated our efforts almost exclusively on understanding why in the Republic the guardians might be subjected to force in their approach to the Good. Initially, Plato's suggestion that the guardians make a forced march to the visage of the Good seems odd, at variance with his general contention that we desire the Good and act always for its sake, and completely discordant with his rich psychological portrait of those groomed to grasp the Good, those who are by nature keen to know, who have been granted an education meticulous in its preparation for the ultimate target of grasping the greatest thing to be learned (the megiston mathêma; Rep. VI.504e4–5, 505a2), the Form of the Good. We have made some progress toward appreciating the forms of compulsion that may be implicated in this education, first by noting that merely asking why compulsion is necessary or appropriate poses far too blunt a question. A more refined question first differentiates between kinds of compulsion and then seeks to determine which, if any, is in play. When we appreciate that Plato recognizes a full range of compulsions, some external and some internal, some proper and some improper, we may reintroduce our question in a more nuanced and productive form.

We learn when dividing the question thus that there is nothing odd or untoward about Plato's repeated suggestion that those guiding the guardians toward the Good will be appropriately described as subjecting them to compulsion. The compulsions so far have been neither improper nor illiberal. They are, rather, rooted in the nomic necessities of Goodness itself.

When we move away from the Good, to the far more vexed and demanding question, more frequently pursued, concerning the guardians' forced return to the cave, we may now do so with a greater appreciation of the complexity that awaits. In this sense, the current discussion is primarily propaideutic. Accordingly, it is appropriate to derive various corollaries from the present study for that larger task. These corollaries are three.

First, an unduly blunt question posed on the approach to the Good will equally prove an unduly blunt question when pursued in the context of the philosopher's return to the cave. There is plenty of evidence of compulsion in the Republic. Although many good scholars have already responded to intemperate charges of illiberalism, still more needs to be done by way of parsing the kinds of necessitation operative in Plato's governance structures. In particular, given Plato's recognition of internal compulsion as a correlate to external nomic necessitation, it will behoove Plato's detractors and defenders alike to ask afresh whether a given instance of compulsion is merely a reflection of an antecedent entailment.

Second, when Plato says, as he undoubtedly does say, that guardians should be forced to rule even though their inclinations lie elsewhere, he need not be charged with forcing them to act against their own interests. Others, of course, have realized this as well.¹⁸

What seems worth further exploration is the character of the prescriptions in question. If Plato has limited himself to hypothetical forms of external compulsion in the approach to the Good, then the same may be in view, and for the same reasons, in the directives advanced for the philosophers whose educations have been completed by their apprehension of the Good, the first, unhypothetical principle of all (Rep. VI.510b4–9). In any event, just as there was no contradiction between Plato's holding that the guardians approaching the Good face compulsion and his insisting that we all, in every instance, act for the sake of the Good, so there need be no contradiction in his maintaining both that the guardians have it in their interest to be just and that there is a compulsion, even against their express inclination, that they return to govern once they have completed their course of education. If the compulsion is given by nomic necessitation, then it cannot be an infringement on their liberty.

Finally, when we attend to the sources of necessitation in Plato's depiction of the philosopher's approach to the Good, we appreciate how, in the Republic, there is a very real sense in which the compulsion of paramount importance to Plato is agentless. It is akin to the necessitation given by logic and mathematics: the Form of the Good impinges on our awareness no less than the way, according to Kurt Gödel, the objects of mathematics impose their natures and relations upon the attentive mind: “Despite their remoteness from sense experience, we do have also something like a perception of the objects of set theory, as is seen from the fact that the axioms force themselves on us as being true.”¹⁹

Upon seeing the Form of the Good, it “must be concluded (sullogistea) that it is in all ways the cause of all that is right and beautiful” (Rep. VII.517b7–c1; cf. Rep. VII.525c9–d8, 526b1–2; X.611b9–11). Although the modality in view is metaphysical rather than mathematical, Plato's Platonism proves to be no less platonistic than Gödel's Platonism: in neither case is there escape from the modality of the object apprehended.