Weeks 10–14Plato §Republic, short dialogues of Plato191 min full read
7 concepts24 worked examples28 exercises4 exam-level7 figures
What are you here for?
05 Polis II: Philosophy
Start with this
One question before you read anything. Getting it wrong is the point: it shows you what this section is for.
§05.0 — whose sentence is it
A revision sheet prints one line with no context: justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger. Underneath it says Plato, Republic, and a page number. A study group is about to build an answer on it.
Find(a) Say what is wrong with using the line as printed.
Given
The line appears in Book 1 of the Republic
The speaker is one of the people Socrates is talking to
The reference gives an author, a book and a page
Hint 1/4
Do not ask whether the line is true. Ask who is allowed to be quoted as saying it.
Hint 2/4
Rule: in a , a thesis stated by a character is a target until the text says otherwise.
Hint 3/4
The data again: Book 1, a person Socrates is arguing with, and a reference with a page but no marginal number.
Hint 4/4
It is Thrasymachus, and the rest of the work is an answer to him.
Show solution
We fix the mouth first, because a page number sends a marker to the right words while the attribution decides whether the paragraph says anything true.
Find the mouth
$$\text{Book 1: three answers, all refused}$$
Book 1 runs through Cephalus, Polemarchus and Thrasymachus. The stronger thesis is the third and the most aggressive.
Socrates never asserts a definition of justice in Book 1, so no line there can be quoted as his conclusion.
Rebuild the locator
$$\text{Republic 338c, trans. Grube}$$
The marginal numbers are the same in every modern edition, so they survive a change of printing. A page number does not.
Naming the translator lets a reader check whether your argument depends on one English word.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Thrasymachus, not Plato.}\\&\text{Cite 338c, not a page.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
From the shape of the work: if the stronger thesis were the book's answer, the remaining nine books would have nothing to do. They are spent replying to it.
Before quoting anything from these books, find the speaker's name and write it into the sentence.
Somebody asks you what justice is. You answer in one sentence, and four questions later your answer is gone.
So is the second one you tried. The man asking has told you nothing, has claimed to know nothing, and says this part is the point.
By the end you can take two pages of Plato, say whose argument it is, write it out as numbered premises, name the one premise you would deny, and defend that refusal in a paragraph.
In 60 seconds
One question put to a city that killed the man asking it: how should a person live, and can an argument settle it.
Name the dialogue and the speaker before you argue
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Which dialogue, which page number,}\\&\text{whose mouth, which translator?}\end{aligned}}$$
Before any quotation. Your section reads one of two book lists, and in both of them Socrates is a character rather than the author.
The refutation has five moves and they never change
Every time you reach for , the ring, the ship or the gadfly. State the claim without the picture first.
Three most common mistakes
Writing that Plato says it. Every line in these books is in some character's mouth, Socrates included.
Retelling the conversation in order. Marks go to the premises and to the move you refuse, not to the plot of the talk.
Treating a dead end as a failed lesson. An argument that runs out is a result, and both book lists are built on one.
The weighting on record for this course:
midterm course project 30
final exam 30
regular quizzes and short assignments 30
participation 10
Two official descriptions exist and they do not agree in form:
one prints those four numbers
the catalogue entry names the same four kinds of work and gives no percentages at all
Plan from your own section's syllabus. This cluster runs five weeks, which makes it the one that feeds the project and the final.
How much time do you have?
10 minutes, the night before a reading quiz
Put a quoted passage in the right dialogue and the right mouth, and follow a refutation without losing track of who conceded what.
The 60-second card · Which Plato is on your desk · The refutation engine, and its five moves · Mistake ledger
45 minutes, before a seminar or a presentation
Three arguable positions rather than a summary: what the question actually asks, what the answer costs, and where the argument can be refused without being rude about it.
The 60-second card · Which Plato is on your desk · The refutation engine, and its five moves · Two questions wearing the same word · The city as a soul writ large, and the bill for the analogy · Scaffolding comes off
full read, if you are writing the project or the final essay
The whole craft: placing a passage, reconstructing an argument in premises, handling the famous images, and turning all of it into paragraphs a marker can disagree with.
The opening pages · Which Plato is on your desk · A dialogue is an argument with a cast · The refutation engine, and its five moves · Two questions wearing the same word · The city as a soul writ large, and the bill for the analogy · When a picture does the arguing · Writing about an argument instead of retelling it · Scaffolding comes off · Full exam-style question · Practice set
By the end of this section
Identify which of the two Plato reading lists a passage belongs to, and cite it by dialogue, marginal number and translator rather than by page.
Attribute a claim to the character who makes it, and say what the frame of the dialogue does to a reader's access to the argument.
Reconstruct a Socratic refutation as a thesis plus the admissions that kill it, and say which admission the speaker should have refused.
Distinguish the definition question from the advantage question, and state the challenge that forces a defence of justice for its own sake.
Evaluate an argument that moves between a city and a single person, and name the step where the crossing needs a licence.
Interpret one of the famous images as a piece of argument: what it fixes, what it leaves open, and what it cannot establish.
Write a four-move paragraph that states a thesis, numbers its premises, refuses one of them, and says what the dialogue does next.
Syllabus coverage
covered
CLUSTER IV: POLIS II/PHILOSOPHY — covered
Philosophy taken as a thing done out loud in a city, and written down as a conversation with a cast.
The cluster heading is the same for every section of this course. The major text under it is not, which is why this section is built on what the two options share.
covered
Weeks 10-14 — covered
Five weeks, the longest cluster in the course, carrying the project and running into the final.
Five weeks is room for a quiz, a presentation and a piece of written work, so the craft blocks here are pitched at written argument. Confirm the dates against your own section's schedule.
covered
Republic — covered
Plato
Republic: the refutations of Book 1
Glaucon's challenge
the city and the soul
the sun
the line and the cave
the case against poetry
The programme's weekly schedule on record names Books 1 to 7 and Book 10 for this cluster. The general syllabus line names the book and no chapters, so take the range from your own section.
covered
Some sections, in lieu of reading the Republic, will focus on some short dialogues of Plato, relating to the life and death of Socrates. — covered
Euthyphro
Apology
Crito and Phaedo: the charge
the defence
the refusal to escape and the death
This is a quotation from the general syllabus, not an editorial guess. Everything in this section that belongs to one option only is labelled, so either reading list is served.
off syllabus
Republic Books 8 and 9 — off syllabus
The decline of regimes and the portrait of the tyrant's soul, including the answer to the question Book 2 asked.
The weekly schedule on record jumps from Book 7 to Book 10, so these two are not assigned. Named here because the happiness argument finishes in them: if your section does assign them, that is where the tyrant is.
off syllabus
The Euthyphro dilemma — off syllabus
The modern label for the question about whether the holy is holy because the gods love it.
The label is later philosophy, not Plato's phrase. Marked so you can drop the term if your section has not used it, and keep the argument, which is in the text.
Recall first
No speaker is the author
The tragedy cluster made this a working rule: every line belongs to a speaker, and agreement between a speaker and the play has to be argued.
Plato makes the rule harder and more useful. Here even the character who wins the argument is a character.
Without it, half of what you write becomes a claim about Plato's opinion that no line in the text supports.
The four-move paragraph
The last cluster asked for four moves in this order:
a claim somebody could deny
a short quotation, cited
a reading of the wording in the order it runs
one consequence for the rest of the text
The moves survive. Move three changes shape here, because the wording you are reading is an argument.
This section rebuilds move three as premise reconstruction. The other three moves carry over unaltered.
The city is the unit that the trouble happens in
Tragedy put a ruler, a household and a city on one stage and let them collide.
Both of this cluster's options keep the collision and change the medium: a city on one side, one stubborn person on the other, and an argument instead of a corpse.
It is why this cluster is called Polis II. The subject has not changed, only the instrument.
A translation is a text with an author
Every cluster so far has run on somebody's English. The general syllabus names the required translations and says other editions will not be accepted.
Here it bites harder, because an argument can turn on which English word a translator picked for one Greek term.
Arguments about single words need a flag saying whose word it is. The convention block below gives the wording.
Try it yourself first (1 questions)
1§05.0 — what a dead end means
A seminar handout says that a dialogue which ends without a definition has failed, and suggests skipping those and revising the ones that reach a conclusion. The Euthyphro ends with no definition at all, and the Apology closes by saying that what death is stays unclear to everybody but the god.
Find(a) True or false, with one sentence of reasoning: an unresolved dialogue has nothing examinable in it.
Given
Several Socratic conversations end with the question still open
The speakers usually agree that they have to start again
Hint 1/4
Ask what you know after the conversation that you did not know before it.
Hint 2/4
Rule: a refutation shows that a set of claims cannot all be held together. That is a finding.
Hint 3/4
The data again: several answers were offered, each was examined, and each was withdrawn by the person who offered it.
Hint 4/4
False. Each refused answer is a result, and the refutations are what a quiz can ask about.
Show solution
We list what the conversation produced instead of arguing about standards, because the list is on the page.
List the outputs
Output one: a list of answers now known to be unusable, each with the reason attached.
Output two: the method that did the removing, which works on answers the text never considered.
Say why that is examinable
A quiz can ask which admission destroyed a definition. That has one right answer and it is on the page.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{No definition}\neq\text{no result.}\\&\text{The refutations are the result.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Try the opposite. If open endings were empty, the speakers would have no reason to keep going, and they always give one: the question is too important to drop.
A refuted answer is a result. Carry the reason, not the dead end.
Notation
symbol
reads as
means
watch out
$\text{Rep. 338c}$
Republic, three hundred and thirty eight c
A place in the Republic, given by the number printed in the margin.
The letter narrows it to roughly a fifth of that number's block. Give the letter, not just the number.
$\text{Ap. 38a}$
Apology, thirty eight a
The same system used for a short dialogue, here the Apology.
Apology means defence speech. It is not an apology in the English sense and never was.
$\text{Euthph. 10a}$
Euthyphro, ten a
A place in the Euthyphro. Short dialogues have small numbers.
Editions abbreviate the titles differently. Write the title in full once, then abbreviate.
$\text{Stephanus number}$
The number plus letter printed in the margin of every serious edition of Plato, from a sixteenth century printing.
It marks the margin of the Greek, so it can sit a line or two off in your English.
$\text{trans.}$
translated by
The translator, which your citation needs as much as the title does.
Two translations of one dialogue can differ on the word your argument depends on.
$\text{elenchos}$
elenchos
The examination or cross questioning that refutes a stated thesis.
Written in Latin form. The plural is elenchoi, and most commentaries use the Latin spelling.
$\text{aporia}$
The state of having no way through, reached when every answer has failed.
Not confusion and not ignorance. It is a documented dead end, and it is a result.
$\text{psuch\bar{e}}$
The soul, meaning whatever it is in a person that thinks and wants and rules.
Soul carries a religious sense in English that the Greek does not need. Say what the word is doing in the argument.
$\text{aret\bar{e}}$
Excellence: what a thing has when it does its own work well.
Often translated virtue, which makes it sound moral. Knives and horses have it too.
$\text{kallipolis}$
The fine city, the name given to the city built in argument in the Republic.
It names a city in a conversation. Whether anyone is meant to found it is argued, not settled.
Conventions used here
Which Plato your section is reading
The general syllabus names the Republic as the major text and then leaves an opening:
most sections read Plato, Republic, translated by Grube, Hackett
some sections instead read the short dialogues on the life and death of Socrates, in Last Days of Socrates, Penguin
Your own section's syllabus binds you. Read this section for the machinery both lists share, and take the page ranges from your instructor.
This course runs in dozens of sections. A page that told you which book you had bought would be wrong for a large number of readers.
How to cite Plato
Dialogue, Stephanus number, translator: Republic 514a, trans. Grube. Never a bare page number.
The marginal numbers are the same in every edition, so they let a marker find your passage in a different printing. Page numbers identify your copy and nothing else.
Two students in one section can own two printings of the same translation with different pagination.
Whose argument a speech is
Name the speaker inside your own sentence, every time.
Socrates argues, Glaucon proposes, claim, Euthyphro agrees. In the Republic Socrates is also the narrator, which makes it worse: he reports the others in his own voice, and you still may not promote him to author.
Plato is named three times in these books and never given a line: present in the Apology at 34a and at 38b, absent in the Phaedo at 59b. He is in the room and still says nothing. Everything else is somebody's speech.
Greek words used on this page
Four are worth keeping because the English costs you something:
elenchus, the cross examination that refutes
aporia, the documented dead end
psyche, the soul as the thing that thinks and wants
arete, excellence at a thing's own work
Define each once, then use it. Any other Greek you meet should earn its place the same way.
Virtue and soul drag in associations that the argument does not need, and a marker can see the drag.
Dates here are estimates, and some are only stories
What is on firm ground and what is not:
the trial and execution of Socrates, 399 before the common era, secure
Plato's life, roughly 428 to 348, from later sources
the Republic, usually placed in Plato's middle years, no record of a date
the settings of the dialogues, dramatic dates chosen by Plato, not diary entries
Write the last one as a choice of setting, and hedge the middle two.
A confident wrong date reads worse than a hedged right one, and the hedge is what a marker is checking for.
What this page cannot tell you about your section
Nothing here reports what your instructor wants, which passages will be quizzed, or how your section divides the five weeks.
Where two official documents disagree, both are printed so you can see the disagreement. Anything specific to your section has to come from your section.
A page that guessed would be wrong for most of the people reading it, and wrong in a way that costs them marks.
5.1Which Plato is on your desk
Two reading lists carry one question, and the first job is knowing which list you are holding.
The tragedy cluster left a city that destroys whoever defies it, and this one keeps the city and changes the weapon.
Solvable with what we have
Place a passage in Gilgamesh by a detail only that poem has, such as a flood or a tavern keeper.
Place a passage in the Iliad by a speaker, a formula or an embassy.
Place a passage in a Theban play by an event: a burial ban, a plague, a riddle.
Not solvable yet
Place a Plato passage the same way, because both reading lists have Socrates arguing in Athens about how to live.
Trust a page number, because your section may own a different book from the next section along.
Trust the speaker's name alone, because Socrates appears in every text on both lists.
So the reference gets written the way it was written for the poems. A quiz answer reads: Plato says that justice is the advantage of the stronger, and cites Plato, page 112.
Why it fails
Three faults in one line. The thesis belongs to Thrasymachus, a character the book spends nine more books answering. The page locates one printing and nothing else. And the word Plato hides the only thing that matters here, which is whose mouth the claim came out of.
NoteNote 5.1: two reading lists, one question
Conditions
The general syllabus names the Republic as the major text for this cluster.
The same document adds that some sections, instead of the Republic, read short dialogues about the life and death of Socrates.
It also says other editions or translations will not be accepted, so the printing is not a free choice.
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Republic}\;\;\text{or}\;\;\text{Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo}\\&\text{one question: how should a person live?}\end{aligned}}$$
Whichever list your section bought, the cluster is asking one question: how a person should live, and whether an argument can settle it. The two lists differ in scale rather than in subject. One builds a city to answer the question, the other watches a man die for the way he asked it.
What is actually on each list, and where the two overlap
The Republic, as the schedule on record names it. Books 1 to 7 and Book 10. Book 1 is a Socratic refutation of the familiar kind. Books 2 to 7 build a city and a soul in order to answer a challenge. Book 10 puts poetry on trial and closes with a myth.
The short dialogues, in the order the Penguin volume prints them. Euthyphro, set outside the court as the case begins. The Apology, the defence speech. The Crito, in prison, on whether to escape. The Phaedo, on the last day, on whether death is to be feared.
Where they overlap in method. Both lists open with a question about a word everyone thinks they understand, justice in one case, holiness in the other. Both refute the first answers offered. Both put the burden on somebody to say what he really means.
Where they overlap in subject. Both ask what a person owes a city and what a city owes a person. The Republic answers by designing one. The Crito answers by having the laws of Athens speak for themselves while their prisoner listens.
Where they genuinely differ. The Republic is one continuous argument, long enough to lose your footing in, and Socrates narrates it himself. The short dialogues are four separate scenes around one trial, and each has its own way of reaching you.
The fork is in the reading list, not in the question. Whichever column your section is in, the band at the bottom is what a quiz or an essay is actually about.
Looks like this, but is not
It looks like a choice between two novels by one author, where picking either gets you the same credit.
A novel would give you a different story. These give you the same problem at two scales, so the transferable part is the method and not the plot. A student who revises only the plot of one list has nothing to say about the other.
Sorting four unlabelled passages into the right list
A revision sheet prints four snippets with the titles stripped off. Say which reading list each one belongs to, and name the detail that settles it.
FindThe list each snippet belongs to, and the detail that fixes it
Given
Snippet one: a man explains that he is in court to prosecute his own father over a dead labourer.
Snippet two: a speaker describes a ring that makes its wearer invisible, and asks what a just man would do with it.
Snippet three: a speaker says the god at Delphi told a friend of his that no one was wiser.
Snippet four: a speaker compares to the sun, which lets the eye see.
Solution
We sort by the concrete furniture of each scene rather than by the theme, because the themes are shared and the furniture is not.
Use the one detail that only one list has
$$\text{prosecuting his father}\Rightarrow\text{Euthyphro}$$
A private prosecution of a father is the setting of the Euthyphro, and it appears nowhere in the Republic.
$$\text{ring of invisibility}\Rightarrow\text{Republic}$$
Glaucon's ring belongs to the challenge in Book 2. It is a thought experiment, not an object in a courtroom.
Watch the two that sound alike
$$\text{Delphi, no one wiser}\Rightarrow\text{Apology}$$
The oracle story is how the Apology explains how Socrates got his reputation and his enemies.
$$\text{the good is like the sun}\Rightarrow\text{Republic}$$
The sun comparison is in the middle books, where the argument needs something to stand above the virtues.
Snippet three is Apology 21a in any edition. That citation works in a book you have never seen, which is the whole point of it.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{1: short dialogues.}\quad\text{2: Republic.}\\&\text{3: short dialogues.}\quad\text{4: Republic.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Count Socrates out of it. Remove his name from all four snippets and each one is still placed, because a father in court, a magic ring, a and a comparison with the sun each sit in one text only.
Four snippets, four decisions, and not one of them needed a page number.
Sort by furniture first. Themes are shared across the cluster, and furniture is what identifies a scene.
Turning the fork into one revisable question
Your section reads one list. A study group has people from both. Build a question that both halves of the room can answer from their own text.
FindA question that both texts answer, and the form the answers take
Given
Group A has the Republic, where a city is built in order to define justice.
Group B has the four short dialogues, where a man is tried, convicted and executed.
Both groups have to write about one thing for the same course.
Solution
We look for a question about the relation between a person and a city, because that is the cluster heading, and both texts are full of it.
Name the shared relation
$$\text{person}\;\leftrightarrow\;\text{city}$$
Both texts run on it. One designs the city so the person can be just; the other asks what the person owes a city that has condemned him.
Put it as one question
Ask: what does this text say a person owes the city, and what does it say the city owes a person?
Group A answers from the three classes and the rule that each part does its own work. Group B answers from the speech of the Laws in the Crito.
Check that both answers are arguable
Each answer can be denied by somebody in the room, which is the test of a usable seminar question.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{What does a person owe the city,}\\&\text{and the city owe a person?}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Against the syllabus itself: the cluster is headed Polis II, so a question about the person and the city is the one the course is asking, not one invented for the group.
When a course forks, look for the question above the fork. That is the question both reading lists share.
Checkpoint
§05.1 — placing a passage in thirty seconds
Thirty seconds. A classmate has half a page in which a speaker argues that nobody would stay just if he could not be caught, and wants to know which text it is from.
Find(a) Pick the detail that would settle it fastest.
Given
The passage has no title and no marginal number
Both reading lists are in the room
Hint 1/4
Do not ask what the passage means. Ask what is in it that is in nothing else.
Hint 2/4
Rule: place by furniture, which sits in one text, not by theme, which is shared.
Hint 3/4
The data again: a speaker claiming nobody stays just when unobserved, no title, no number, both lists available.
Hint 4/4
The ring settles it, and the ring is Glaucon's in Book 2 of the Republic.
Show solution
We hunt for one object rather than weigh the themes, because both lists share the themes.
Eliminate the shared features
Justice, Socrates and long speeches are on both lists, so none of them can separate the two.
Keep the unique object
$$\text{ring}\Rightarrow\text{Republic, Book 2}$$
The ring appears in one passage in the whole cluster, which makes it a decisive test rather than a hint.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Look for the ring.}}$$
Check
By inversion: ask what a passage from the short dialogues would contain that the Republic could not, such as a jury, a prison, an indictment. The test works both ways.
When two texts share a theme, sort them by furniture.
⚠ Citing Plato by page number
Page numbers worked for the poems and the plays, and the margin numbers look like editorial clutter.
wrong$$\text{Plato, p. 112}$$
right$$\text{Republic 338c, trans. Grube}$$
⚠ Writing Plato says when a character said it
The cover of the book has one name on it, and in the Republic Socrates reports everyone else in his own voice.
wrong$$\text{Plato says justice is the advantage of the stronger}$$
right$$\text{Thrasymachus proposes it, and the work replies}$$
⚠ Assuming your section reads the book named in the line
The general syllabus names the Republic first and puts the alternative in a sentence underneath.
wrong$$\text{this course reads the Republic}$$
right$$\text{most sections do; check your own syllabus}$$
5.2A dialogue is an argument with a cast
Every claim in these books arrives in somebody's mouth, inside a frame that decides how much you get to see.
You know which book you are holding, so the next question is who is talking in it and who is reporting them.
RuleRule 5.2: the attribution rule, and what a frame costs
Conditions
Every sentence in both reading lists belongs to a named speaker, Socrates included.
Plato is named three times in these books and never as a speaker: twice in the Apology as one of the men present (34a, 38b), once in the Phaedo as absent (59b). He is in the room and still says nothing.
A dialogue may be reported by a narrator, and the narrator is a speaker too.
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{speaker says }X\;\not\Rightarrow\;\text{Plato claims }X\\&\text{narrator reports }X\;\not\Rightarrow\;X\text{ was said that way}\end{aligned}}$$
Nothing in the text is the author's opinion until you have argued that it is. And when a character reports a conversation, you are reading his selection of it, so his choices are part of your evidence rather than a window you can look through.
The four frames in this cluster, and what each one hides
The Republic: told by Socrates, the next day. He speaks in the first person throughout, so every other speaker reaches you as his report of them. Thrasymachus loses his temper, and we have Socrates' word for it. That is not a reason to disbelieve the report. It is a reason to say report.
The Euthyphro and the Crito: no narrator at all. Straight dialogue, two voices, no one describing the scene. This is the cleanest case for you as a reader, because nothing stands between you and the exchange, and the only thing to track is who concedes what.
The Apology: one continuous speech, no reporter. Socrates addresses the court, so everything is his account of his own life and of his accusers. A defence speech is the least neutral document in the cluster, and it is also the only one delivered under a deadline.
The Phaedo: two layers. Phaedo tells Echecrates, in another town and later, what happened on the last day. So an argument about the soul reaches you through a man who was in the room and who was crying at the end of it.
Why Plato built it this way is argued, not settled. One view: a written argument cannot answer back, so he wrote conversations to keep the answering visible. Another: the frames let him show what arguments cost the people having them. Both are positions you can take, with evidence, and neither is a fact to assert.
Three frames, drawn as layers. The further the conversation sits from the outer edge, the more hands it has passed through before it reaches you.
Looks like this, but is not
It looks like a play, and the tragedy cluster has just taught you how to read one of those.
A play was staged, funded and judged, and its speeches are shaped to be heard in one afternoon. These were written to be read and reread, nobody competed with them, and their scenes stop dead when an argument stops working. The habits carry over; the institution does not.
Rewriting three sentences that say Plato says
Three sentences from a draft essay, each attributing a claim to Plato. Repair each one so that it says something the text can support.
FindThree repaired sentences, and the rule each repair follows
Given
Draft one: Plato believes that justice is each part of the soul doing its own work.
Draft two: Plato tells us that the unexamined life is not worth living.
Draft three: Plato argues that a citizen must never break the law of his city.
Solution
We repair rather than delete, because each draft sentence is pointing at something real in the text and only the attribution is broken.
Find the mouth in each case
$$\text{draft 1}\to\text{Socrates, agreed by Glaucon}$$
The definition is proposed and accepted inside the conversation, so the agreement is part of the evidence.
$$\text{draft 2}\to\text{Socrates, on trial}$$
It is said in the Apology by a man arguing for his life, which is context an essay should keep.
$$\text{draft 3}\to\text{the Laws of Athens}$$
In the Crito the claim is made by the laws, personified and speaking, while Socrates reports and endorses them.
Write each one with the speaker inside the sentence
Repaired one: in Republic 441e Socrates offers, and Glaucon accepts, the account of justice as each part doing its own work.
Repaired two: at Apology 38a Socrates tells the court that a life without examination is not worth living for a human being.
Repaired three: in Crito 50a and after, the Laws of Athens argue it in their own voice, and Socrates lets them.
Notice what the repairs bought
Each repaired sentence now carries a place, a mouth and a claim, so a marker can check it and an opponent can attack it.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Socrates argues.}\quad\text{Glaucon accepts.}\\&\text{The Laws speak.}\quad\text{Plato never speaks.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
From the text's own habits. The Apology names Plato among the men in the room and still gives him nothing to say, so the silence is a decision and not an accident.
Three repairs, one rule, and every sentence got shorter rather than longer.
If a sentence in your draft starts with Plato, the next word is probably wrong. Find the mouth.
What the Phaedo's double frame does to a claim about the death scene
A student writes that the Phaedo proves Socrates was calm at the end. Test the claim against the way the text reaches us.
FindWhat the frame lets the student claim, and what it does not
Given
Phaedo narrates the day to Echecrates, in another town, some time after it.
He names who was in the room, and says who wept and when.
He also reports that Plato was not there, being unwell.
Solution
We test the claim against the frame rather than against our own impression of the scene, because the frame is documented and the impression is not.
Say what the frame supports
A witness in the room reports steadiness, and reports his own tears. A witness who admits crying is not flattering himself.
Say what it cannot support
It cannot support proves. A report told later by a grieving friend is evidence about the report as much as about the man.
And the scene is built: the arguments run for hours and the death takes a paragraph, which is a decision by somebody about proportion.
Rewrite the claim so it survives
The Phaedo presents a Socrates who is steady, and puts the grief in the mouths of the people watching. That is a claim about the text, and it is defensible.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{The text presents steadiness.}\\&\text{Presents, not proves.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Ask what the alternative would look like. If the aim were a record, the arguments would be summarised and the death described in detail. The proportions run the other way.
Count the layers before you use the word proves. Each layer is somebody's choice about what to keep.
Checkpoint
§05.2 — who is reporting this
Thirty seconds. A quiz sentence reads: in the Republic, Thrasymachus shouts at Socrates and then sits back with a smirk. A classmate asks whether this is safe to write.
Find(a) Pick the safest repair.
Given
The Republic is narrated by Socrates in the first person
The description of Thrasymachus comes from that narration
Hint 1/4
Ask not whether the detail is true but whose account of it you have.
Hint 2/4
Rule: a narrator is a speaker, so his description is reported rather than seen.
Hint 3/4
The data again: first person narration by Socrates, a quarrel he is part of, and a description of his opponent's face.
Hint 4/4
Write that Socrates reports it, and the report becomes usable.
Show solution
We repair the verb rather than cut the detail, because the detail is the evidence.
Name what kind of fact you have
You have a fact about the narration, which is exactly the kind of fact a close reading is built from.
Add the one word
$$\text{reports}$$
One verb converts an unsupportable claim into a supportable one, at no cost in length.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Socrates reports it.}}$$
Check
Look for the same move elsewhere. Every description of a speaker's manner in this book comes from the same narrator, so the repair generalises.
One verb separates a claim you can defend from one you cannot.
⚠ Treating the narrator as a camera
First person narration reads like plain reporting, and the narrator is the character we trust most.
wrong$$\text{Thrasymachus smirked}$$
right$$\text{Socrates reports him smirking}$$
⚠ Confusing when a dialogue is set with when it was written
The scenes feel contemporary with their events, and dramatic dates are not printed anywhere.
wrong$$\text{written during the trial}$$
right$$\text{set around it, written years after}$$
5.3The refutation engine, and its five moves
A fixed five move machine that kills a definition using nothing but what its owner already admitted.
You can place a passage and name its speaker, so here is what the speaker with the questions is actually doing to the other one.
MethodMethod 5.3: the elenchus, in five moves
Conditions
The thesis under test has to be the other man's, stated in his own words and owned by him.
Every extra premise has to be accepted by him too, not asserted by Socrates.
The result is negative: it removes an answer, and it does not install one.
Get a claim from the other man, get two more things he will also say, then show that his own three claims cannot stand together. He has to drop one of them. Nothing has been proved, one answer has been removed, and the question is now open again with better equipment.
Why the machine is built this way, and what is still argued about it
Move one has a rule attached: say what you believe. Socrates keeps asking the other man for his own view rather than for a clever answer. That is not politeness. If the thesis is not owned, its refutation costs the owner nothing and teaches him nothing.
Move two is the load bearing move, and it is the one students skip. The admissions do all the work. When you write about a refutation, the sentence that earns marks is the one naming the admission, not the one naming the conclusion.
Move three is usually a fit, not a fact. Socrates rarely says the thesis is false. He shows that it cannot be held together with things the man will not give up. So the man chooses what to lose, and the choice reveals what he really thought.
Move four names a loser, and the loser is a claim. The person is not supposed to be humiliated, though in Book 1 one of them plainly is. Notice when the text lets a refutation turn personal, because that is a readable choice by somebody.
Move five is where the arguing about the method starts. Whether this engine can ever establish a positive answer, or only clear away wrong ones, is a live scholarly dispute. Write it as a dispute. The Republic does move on to build something, and whether the building is still elenchus is exactly what is in question.
The engine on the left, one run of it on the right. The Euthyphro's second definition goes in at the top and comes out withdrawn at the bottom, without Socrates having asserted anything.
Looks like this, but is not
It looks like a courtroom cross examination, which is fair enough given where the Euthyphro is set.
A cross examiner wants a verdict from somebody else and may use any premise the court will accept. Socrates wants the other man's own verdict on his own claim, and may use only premises that man has granted. That restriction is what makes the result binding on him.
move
in the Euthyphro
in Republic Book 1
thesis stated and owned
the holy is what all the gods love
justice is the advantage of the stronger
admissions collected
the gods love it because it is holy
rulers are a kind of craftsman
the set will not hold
the definition makes love the cause
a craft aims at its subject's good
the thesis is dropped
Euthyphro agrees to begin again
Thrasymachus concedes and goes quiet
the question reopens
he leaves in a hurry instead
Glaucon reopens it in Book 2
Read down a column and you have that text's Book 1 in five lines. Read across a row and you have the move, which is what transfers to a passage neither of us has seen.
Laying out the Euthyphro's fork in five lines
Euthyphro has offered his best definition: the holy is what all the gods love. Write the refutation out so that the admission doing the damage is visible.
FindThe contradiction, and the admission Euthyphro could have refused
Given
Euthyphro's definition: the holy is what all the gods love.
An admission he makes willingly: the gods love the holy because it is holy.
A general point he also accepts: a thing that is loved is loved because someone loves it.
Solution
We set it out as numbered claims rather than retelling the exchange, because the fault is a relation between claims and a retelling hides it.
Number the claims
$$(1)\;\text{holy}\;=\;\text{what all gods love}$$
The definition. It makes being loved the thing that holiness consists in.
$$(2)\;\text{gods love it}\;\text{because}\;\text{it is holy}$$
Euthyphro's admission, given at once, because the alternative sounds impious to him.
Show the two will not sit together
$$(1)\Rightarrow\text{being loved makes it holy}$$
If holiness is being loved, then the love is what does the making, so love comes first.
$$(2)\Rightarrow\text{being holy makes it loved}$$
But his admission puts holiness first and the love second, as a response to something already there.
$$\therefore\;\text{the order runs both ways at once}$$
Two opposite directions of explanation for one pair of facts, which is the contradiction and not merely a tension.
Name the escape he did not take
$$\text{refuse }(2)$$
He could have said the gods' love is what makes a thing holy, full stop. That keeps the definition and gives up the idea that holiness is there to be recognised.
He will not say it, because it makes holiness arbitrary. That refusal is the interesting part of the passage.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{The definition and the admission}\\&\text{explain in opposite directions.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
By substitution: put a human case in. A film is not good because people like it, and if it were, there would be nothing for them to like it for. The same structure breaks the same way outside the text.
Two claims and one relation. The whole refutation is three lines long.
A refutation is a relation between claims. Number the claims and the relation becomes visible.
Polemarchus loses a definition twice in two pages
In Book 1 Polemarchus says justice is giving each man what he is owed, which he then spells out as helping friends and harming enemies. Track both refutations.
FindHow each admission destroys the definition, and what each leaves standing
Given
Polemarchus: justice is helping your friends and harming your enemies.
An admission: every skill that is good at guarding a thing is good at stealing it.
A second admission: harming a man makes him worse rather than better.
Solution
We take the two refutations separately because they attack different parts, and a paragraph that merges them loses both.
First run: the guarding admission
$$\text{just man}=\text{good guardian of money}$$
Polemarchus accepts the craft comparison because it flatters the definition: justice becomes a skill.
By the size of the wreckage. If only the craft comparison had failed, Polemarchus could repair his definition. He cannot, because the second run removes the content and not the analogy.
Two admissions, two collapses, and neither one needed a claim from Socrates.
When a definition falls twice, say which part each fall took. That is the difference between a summary and a reading.
Turning any refutation into five numbered lines
You are given a passage in which Socrates refutes somebody, and no help. Produce the five line form, whatever the content is.
FindA procedure that produces the five lines from any such passage
Given
A passage of two or three pages in which one speaker asks and another answers.
A definition somewhere near the start, offered by the answerer.
An agreement near the end that things are not as the answerer thought.
Solution
We build a procedure rather than a summary, because the exam passage will not be one you have seen and the procedure is the only part that travels.
Find the thesis by looking for ownership
Look for the sentence the answerer would repeat if asked what he thinks. Usually it follows a question of the form what is it.
Harvest the admissions
Mark every yes, certainly and of course. Those are the premises, and the text puts them in the answerer's mouth on purpose.
Two or three of them carry the argument. Keep the ones the conclusion actually uses and drop the rest.
State the clash and the choice
$$q\wedge r\Rightarrow\neg p$$
Write the clash in one line. If you cannot, you have collected the wrong admissions and should go back.
Then name which of the three you would give up, and say what giving it up costs. That sentence is your own contribution and it is where the marks are.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{thesis, admissions, clash,}\\&\text{choice, cost of the choice}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Run it on the other text. The procedure just produced the Euthyphro's fork and Book 1's two collapses without being told which book it was in.
The procedure is the examinable skill. The particular definition it kills is the example.
Checkpoint
§05.3 — what a refutation establishes
Thirty seconds. A classmate has written that Socrates proves justice is not helping friends and harming enemies, and wants to know whether proves is the right word.
Find(a) Pick the most accurate description of the result.
Given
Polemarchus offered the definition himself
Both premises used against it were granted by Polemarchus
Hint 1/4
Ask who owns the premises before you ask what was proved.
Hint 2/4
Rule: the elenchus shows a set of claims cannot be held together by the person holding them.
Hint 3/4
The data again: his definition, his craft comparison, his admission that harm makes men worse.
Hint 4/4
The accurate form is that his own admissions will not sit with his definition.
Show solution
We ask where the premises came from before grading the result, because borrowed premises license less.
Locate the premises
Both came from Polemarchus, so the argument is internal to his own commitments.
State the result at the right strength
$$p,q,r\;\text{not jointly holdable}$$
This is what the text delivers, and it is enough to force him to choose.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Inconsistency, not falsity.}}$$
Check
From Book 1's ending. If anything had been proved, Book 2 would not have to restart the question with a new challenge.
Say inconsistency when that is what you have.
⚠ Reporting the conclusion and skipping the admissions
The conclusion is the memorable part and the admissions look like conversational filler.
wrong$$\text{Socrates refutes Polemarchus}$$
right$$\text{the craft comparison he granted refutes him}$$
⚠ Treating a refuted thesis as the text's own view
Strong theses are quotable, and a quotation looks the same whoever said it.
wrong$$\text{the Republic holds that the stronger define justice}$$
right$$\text{Thrasymachus does, for about ten pages}$$
⚠ Thinking the refutation of p establishes not p
In everyday argument knocking something down feels like putting the opposite up.
wrong$$\neg p\;\text{established}$$
right$$p\;\text{unavailable to him, question reopened}$$
5.4Two questions wearing the same word
What is justice and is justice good for me are different questions, and the cluster turns on the second.
The engine clears the ground, and then somebody asks a question that refutation on its own cannot answer.
NoteNote 5.4: the definition question and the advantage question
Conditions
The definition question asks what justice is, and a counterexample is enough to answer it badly.
The advantage question asks whether being just is better for the person who is just, with rewards and reputation stripped out.
A correct answer to one is worth very little as an answer to the other.
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Q1: what is justice?}\\&\text{Q2: is it better to be just, unseen and unrewarded?}\end{aligned}}$$
The first question wants a definition and is answered by saying what the thing is. The second wants a defence and is answered by showing what being just does for the person who has it, once every prize has been taken away. Both reading lists spend most of their length on the second.
How the second question is set up in each reading list
In the Republic, Glaucon builds the trap in three steps. First an account of where justice came from: doing wrong is good for you, suffering it is bad, so people who can do neither reliably agree to rules. On this account justice is a compromise nobody would choose if he were strong enough.
Then he removes the risk of being caught. The ring that makes its wearer invisible is not a claim about magic. It is a device for deleting consequences, so that what remains is the man's own preference. Glaucon predicts that both the just and the unjust man behave the same way once the ring is on.
Then he makes the comparison as unfair as he can. The perfectly just man is given the reputation of a criminal and everything that follows from it. The perfectly unjust man is given the reputation of a saint and every reward. Which life would you take?
Adeimantus closes the exit. He adds that even the people who praise justice praise it for its wages: honour, marriage, offices, and a good afterlife. So a defence that mentions any reward has already conceded the point. Justice has to be shown to be worth having in itself.
In the short dialogues the same question arrives as a life rather than a thought experiment. In the Crito, Socrates is offered escape with no penalty, which is Glaucon's ring in practical form. His answer is that one must never do wrong, not even in return, and he pays for that answer the next day.
Glaucon's comparison, drawn as a table. Two of the four cells are uninteresting; the challenge is the diagonal, because that is the only pairing with reputation taken out of the answer.
Looks like this, but is not
It looks like the ordinary question of whether crime pays, which is answered with statistics about getting caught.
Getting caught is exactly what the ring removes. Once the risk is deleted the question stops being about consequences and becomes a question about what kind of person you would rather be. A student who answers with deterrence has answered a question nobody asked.
kind of good
example
who puts justice here
wanted for itself alone
harmless pleasures
nobody in the conversation
wanted for itself and for what follows
seeing, being healthy, thinking
Socrates, and he has to earn it
wanted only for what follows
medical treatment, earning money
Glaucon reports that most people do
not wanted at all, endured
punishment
Thrasymachus, near enough
The argument of the next books is an attempt to move justice from the third row to the second. Notice that this is a claim about what justice does to the person who has it, not about what other people do in return.
Glaucon's challenge as six numbered claims
Reconstruct the challenge so that a reader can see which claim to attack. Keep it to six lines.
FindThe six claims, and the one that a defence of justice has to refuse
Given
Doing wrong is good for the doer, and suffering wrong is bad for the sufferer.
Most people can do neither reliably, so they agree to rules and call the agreement justice.
A ring that made you invisible would remove every consequence of acting unjustly.
Glaucon says both men would then behave identically.
Solution
We number the claims rather than paraphrase the speech, because the speech is persuasive and the numbering shows where it is weak.
Glaucon presents this as what most people believe, not as his own view. Keep the attribution.
$$(2)\;\text{so the weak agree to rules}$$
Justice arrives as a second best compromise, which makes it something no one would choose if unconstrained.
Add the device and the prediction
$$(3)\;\text{the ring deletes consequences}$$
A thought experiment with one job: separate what a man wants from what he fears.
$$(4)\;\text{both men then act alike}$$
This is the empirical prediction, and it is the claim most students never notice is a claim.
Add the comparison and the demand
$$(5)\;\text{case A versus case B}$$
The just man with the worst reputation against the unjust man with the best, so that only the inner state differs.
$$(6)\;\text{defend justice without naming a reward}$$
Adeimantus adds this, and it rules out every defence that runs through honour, safety or an afterlife.
Name the claim to refuse
$$\text{refuse }(4)$$
A defence has to say that the two men would not act alike, because being just is a condition of the person rather than a habit of caution.
That is why the next books turn to what a soul is. The reply to (4) needs a story about inner parts, not about rules.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Six claims; the prediction in (4)}\\&\text{is the one to attack.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
From what follows in the text. If the challenge were only about definitions, the answer would be a definition. Instead the reply builds a city and a soul, which is what attacking (4) requires.
Six lines, one attack point, and the speech was about eight pages long.
Find the empirical prediction inside a philosophical challenge. It is usually the softest part.
The same challenge in a prison cell, with the ring supplied
In the Crito, escape is arranged, cheap and unlikely to be punished. Show that this is Glaucon's test in practical form, and reconstruct the answer.
FindThe parallel with the ring, and the three steps of the refusal
Given
Crito offers money, willing friends and a safe destination.
The risk to Socrates is small and the risk to his friends is one they accept.
Socrates argues that one must never do wrong, and never do wrong in return.
Solution
We treat the escape as a device rather than as a plot point, because that is what lets the two reading lists be revised together.
Match the device
$$\text{escape}\;\approx\;\text{the ring}$$
Both remove the penalty and leave the man's own preference exposed. One is a fantasy, the other is a bag of money in the corridor.
Reconstruct the refusal
$$(1)\;\text{never do wrong, even in return}$$
Stated at Crito 49b and agreed by Crito, which makes it an admission in the technical sense.
$$(2)\;\text{breaking out wrongs the city}$$
Argued by the Laws in their own voice, on the ground of upbringing, education and a long chance to leave.
$$\therefore\;\text{do not escape}$$
The conclusion needs both premises, and Crito has already granted the first one.
Say what this answers
It answers the advantage question with a life: he prefers the inner state to the extra years, and the text makes him pay for the preference.
It does not answer the definition question. Nothing in the Crito says what justice is.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Crito supplies the ring.}\\&\text{The answer is a refusal, with a price.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Swap the texts. Put Glaucon's question to the man in the cell and the answer is already on the page. Put the cell to Glaucon and he would have to concede that at least one man chose case A.
When two texts share a question, look for the device each uses to strip the rewards away.
Diagnosing an answer that solved the wrong problem
A quiz asks why Glaucon is not satisfied with Book 1. A student answers with a definition of justice. Find the fault.
FindThe mismatch, and the repaired answer
Given
The student's answer: justice is treating people as they deserve, which Book 1 fails to establish.
The question asked what Glaucon wants that Book 1 did not provide.
Glaucon's speech asks for a defence rather than a definition.
Solution
We diagnose rather than rewrite from scratch, because the student's material is usable once it is pointed at the right question.
Name each question
$$\text{asked: why unsatisfied}$$
The question is about the standard Glaucon is applying, which is a standard for defences.
$$\text{answered: what justice is}$$
A definition, which Book 1 indeed fails to reach, but which is not what the challenge demands.
Repair with the student's own material
Glaucon wants justice shown to be better for its owner with all rewards removed, so a definition alone cannot satisfy him even if it is correct.
The definition then becomes useful as the thing whose benefit has to be demonstrated. It is the first half of the job rather than the whole of it.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Definition asked for is not defence.}\\&\text{Glaucon wants the benefit shown.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Test the student's answer against the ring. A correct definition of justice leaves the ring question untouched, which shows the two questions come apart.
Before writing, underline the question's verb. Define and defend want different paragraphs.
Checkpoint
§05.4 — what the ring is for
Thirty seconds. A classmate writes that the ring of invisibility shows justice is only a social convention, and asks whether that is what the passage does.
Find(a) Pick the accurate account of the ring's job.
Given
Glaucon introduces the ring while presenting a view he says is not his own
The comparison that follows removes reputation from both men
Hint 1/4
Ask what changes about the man when the ring goes on, and what does not.
Hint 2/4
Rule: a thought experiment isolates a variable. Name the variable it deletes.
Hint 3/4
The data again: invisibility, no penalty, and a prediction that both men behave the same way.
Hint 4/4
It deletes consequences, which leaves the man's preference on show.
Show solution
We ask what the device does before asking whether Glaucon is right, because only one of the two is a claim.
Separate device from prediction
The ring isolates preference. Glaucon's guess about what the preference will be is a separate, attackable claim.
Keep the attribution
Glaucon presents the convention story as the popular view and then asks to be talked out of it.
Remove the ring. Without it the question collapses into whether crime pays, and the rest of the work would be unnecessary.
Keep a device apart from the prediction somebody makes with it.
⚠ Answering the definition question when asked the advantage question
Both questions are asked with the word justice, and the definition is the one you revised.
wrong$$\text{justice is each getting his due}$$
right$$\text{being just is better for its owner, unrewarded}$$
⚠ Attributing the ring to Thrasymachus
It sounds like his position, and he is the loudest voice in the part of the book everyone remembers.
wrong$$\text{Thrasymachus: the ring of Gyges}$$
right$$\text{Glaucon, Book 2, reporting a view}$$
⚠ Defending justice with its rewards
Rewards are the obvious defence, and most of the praise anyone has heard runs through them.
wrong$$\text{just men are trusted and prosper}$$
right$$\text{that defence was ruled out by Adeimantus}$$
5.5The city as a soul writ large, and the bill for the analogy
The reply to the challenge answers a question about one person by building a whole city first.
The challenge asks what being just does to its owner, so the reply needs an account of what an owner is made of.
RuleRule 5.5: the analogy, and justice as each part doing its own work
Conditions
The city is built in speech to be a good city, and justice is then looked for inside the finished thing.
The analogy is proposed as a method and admitted as one: larger letters are easier to read than small ones.
The three parts of the soul are argued for separately, from cases where a person is at war with himself.
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{rulers}:\text{auxiliaries}:\text{producers}\;\;\leftrightarrow\;\;\text{reason}:\text{spirit}:\text{appetite}\\&\text{justice}=\text{each part does its own work}\end{aligned}}$$
A city has three jobs and three groups doing them, and a person has three sources of motion inside him. Justice in either one is the arrangement where each part does the work that belongs to it and does not take over another part's job. Injustice is not a crime on this account. It is a part out of place.
The construction, step by step, with the price of each step marked
Start from need, not from virtue. A city exists because nobody feeds, houses and clothes himself well. Division of labour follows, on the ground that a man does one job better than four. Notice how much later work rests on this cheerful early claim.
Defence produces a second group, and the second group is the problem. Guards have to be fierce to outsiders and gentle to their own, which is a strange combination, so their upbringing becomes the longest part of the construction. Education is introduced here as engineering, not as enrichment.
The four excellences land in different places. Wisdom sits with the rulers, courage with the , moderation in the agreement of all three about who rules. Justice is what is left when those three are in place: each group doing its own work.
Then the argument turns inward and has to earn the turn. The three parts of the soul are not read off the city. They are argued for from conflict: a thirsty man who refuses the drink has something pulling and something holding back, and one thing cannot do both at once.
The bill. Two steps are doing heavy lifting and both are attackable. One: that a city and a person can be just in the same sense of the word. Two: that the parts found in the soul match the groups found in the city rather than being fitted to them. Say which one you are attacking.
The analogy as a table of correspondences. The arrows are the claim, not the decoration: the argument needs the crossing to hold, and the crossing is what a critic attacks first.
Looks like this, but is not
It looks like the old metaphor of the body politic, where a king is the head and the workers are the hands.
That metaphor decorates a claim you already believed. This one carries weight: a conclusion reached about the city is transferred to the person, and the transfer is the reply to Glaucon. A decoration can be dropped without loss, and this cannot.
in the city
in the soul
its own work
excellence when it does it
rulers
reason
decide what is good for the whole
wisdom
auxiliaries
spirit
hold to what reason decided
courage
producers and traders
supply and want
moderation, shared with the others
all three together
all three together
stay in place
justice
Read the last row carefully. Justice is not a fourth job done by a fourth part. It is the condition of the other three, which is why the answer to Glaucon has to be about arrangement rather than about behaviour.
The thirsty man who will not drink, as an argument in four lines
The three parts of the soul are not assumed. Reconstruct the argument that gets from an everyday case to a division inside a person.
FindThe conclusion, and the premise a critic would go after
Given
A thirsty man is offered a drink and refuses it.
One and the same thing cannot both pull towards a thing and hold back from it, in the same respect, at the same time.
Something in him pulls towards the drink, and something holds him back.
Solution
We start from the refusal case rather than from the city, because the argument for the parts has to stand on its own or the analogy has nothing to attach to.
This is the load bearing premise, and it is stated as a general principle about anything, not about souls.
Apply it to the case
$$\text{pull towards}\;\wedge\;\text{hold back}$$
Both are present in one man at one moment, which is the observation the argument runs on.
$$\therefore\;\text{at least two parts}$$
The principle forbids one thing from doing both, so the two pulls must belong to different things in him.
Get the third part
$$\text{anger at oneself}\Rightarrow\text{a third}$$
A man furious with himself for wanting something is not simply reasoning and not simply craving, so a third source is proposed.
Name the weak point
$$\text{same respect, same time}$$
The principle needs those qualifications, and a critic asks whether wanting a drink and judging it unsafe are the same respect at all.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Conflict}\Rightarrow\text{parts.}\\&\text{Attack the same respect clause.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Try to do without the parts. Describe the refusal as one thing with two features and the argument stalls, which shows the principle is doing the work and not the example.
One everyday case, one general principle, and a three part soul out the other end.
A famous doctrine usually rests on one small general principle. Find it and you have found the argument.
Writing out the crossing, so a critic can see where to stand
Set out the move from the just city to the just person as an argument with premises, and mark the step that needs a licence.
FindThe argument in four lines, and the licence the crossing needs
Given
A city is just when each of its three groups does its own work.
A person has three parts that answer to the three groups.
The same word, justice, is being used of both.
Solution
We write it as an argument rather than as an illustration, because only an argument has a step you can refuse.
Put the premises down plainly
$$(1)\;\text{city just}\Leftrightarrow\text{each group in place}$$
Established inside the construction, so it is available without further argument.
$$(2)\;\text{soul has three parts}$$
Established separately from the conflict cases, which is why the order of the books matters.
Here is the licence. Without a premise like this the argument does not move from the city to the person at all.
$$\therefore\;\text{person just}\Leftrightarrow\text{each part in place}$$
The conclusion the whole reply to Glaucon needs, and it inherits every weakness of premise three.
Say how a defender and a critic each use it
A defender says the city was built out of people, so structure in the large came from structure in the small.
A critic says the parts were described so as to match the groups, which makes the correspondence a design decision rather than a discovery.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{The crossing is premise (3).}\\&\text{Everything else waits on it.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Delete premise three. The two halves of the book then stand side by side with nothing joining them, which is exactly what a reader who rejects the analogy reports.
Any argument that changes subject has a premise licensing the change. Find it and you have your paragraph.
The Laws of Athens argue their own case, and one premise is soft
In the Crito the laws speak for themselves. Reconstruct their argument and test the premise that does the most work.
FindThe argument in three lines, and the premise to attack
Given
The Laws claim they gave Socrates birth, upbringing and education.
They claim he stayed for seventy years, free to leave with his property at any time.
They claim that staying under those conditions counts as an agreement to obey.
Solution
We attack the agreement premise rather than the debt premise, because a debt could be repaid in other coin while an agreement is either there or it is not.
Set out the case
$$(1)\;\text{benefits received}$$
Presented as parental, which loads the word owe with a family sense the argument then uses.
$$(2)\;\text{staying}=\text{agreeing}$$
The move that turns a life into a contract, and the one everything else hangs on.
$$\therefore\;\text{escape breaks an agreement}$$
And breaking an agreement is doing wrong, which Crito has already granted is never permitted.
Test premise two
Ask whether a person who never had a real alternative can be said to have agreed by staying. Leaving meant leaving language, friends and citizenship.
Then ask what the Laws would say back: he left on campaign and returned, and he had a court, a vote and a voice while he was there.
Notice the voice
The strongest argument for obedience in the cluster is put in the mouth of the party with the interest. Say so in your paragraph; it is a reading, not a complaint.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Attack: staying is not agreeing.}\\&\text{The Laws have a reply ready.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
From inside the text. Socrates asks Crito to answer the Laws and Crito cannot, which marks the argument as the text's strongest and not as its most obvious.
When a text lets an institution speak, ask what the ventriloquism buys the argument.
Checkpoint
§05.5 — where the analogy needs paying for
Thirty seconds. A classmate says the three parts of the soul are obviously copied from the three classes of the city, so the whole argument is circular, and asks whether that is fair.
Find(a) Pick the sharpest statement of the real difficulty.
Given
The parts are argued for from cases of inner conflict
The classes are built from the division of labour
Hint 1/4
Ask which of the two lists is supported by an argument you could state on its own.
Hint 2/4
Rule: an analogy in an argument needs a premise that licenses the transfer.
Hint 3/4
The data again: parts argued from conflict, classes built from the division of labour, one word used of both.
Hint 4/4
The parts stand on their own argument, so the attackable step is the crossing.
Show solution
We settle the circularity charge first because it is cheapest, and what survives is the objection worth writing.
Check for the circle
The conflict argument never mentions a city, so the second list is not derived from the first.
This premise is unargued in the text, which makes it the place a critic should stand.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Attack the crossing, not the circle.}}$$
Check
Reorder the books. The conflict argument would still work if the city had never been built, which is what independence means.
Settle the cheap objection first. What survives it is where you stand.
⚠ Reading the city as a proposal to be founded
It is described in enormous practical detail, and detail reads like intention.
wrong$$\text{Plato's plan for a state}$$
right$$\text{a city built in speech, to answer a question}$$
⚠ Using the analogy without naming the crossing
The correspondence is so tidy that it feels like an observation rather than a claim.
wrong$$\text{so the soul has three parts too}$$
right$$\text{the parts are argued for separately}$$
⚠ Calling moderation the virtue of the lowest group only
Each of the other three excellences is parked in one place, so the pattern suggests a fourth.
wrong$$\text{moderation}=\text{virtue of the producers}$$
right$$\text{agreement of all three about who rules}$$
5.6When a picture does the arguing
The famous images fix the shape of a claim, and not one of them can show that the claim is true.
The city and the soul were built with arguments, and the most quoted passages in the cluster are not arguments at all.
RuleRule 5.6: the three question test for an image
Conditions
An image earns its place when the claim it carries can be stated without it, and is harder to state that way.
An image maps parts onto parts, so the mapping has to be named item by item.
An image never establishes that the things it pictures exist.
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{1. what is the claim, in plain words?}\\&\text{2. what maps onto what?}\\&\text{3. what can it not show?}\end{aligned}}$$
Ask the three questions in that order every time. If you cannot answer the first one, you have not got an argument yet, only a picture you admire. If you cannot answer the second, your reader cannot follow the picture. And the third question is where most essays are lost, because a striking image feels like evidence.
The test run on the cave, and then on an image aimed the other way
The claim, in plain words. Education is not a matter of putting sight into blind eyes. The capacity is already there and pointed the wrong way, so teaching is turning the whole person around, and the turning is painful and slow.
The mapping, item by item. Shadows on a wall answer to the images most people live among. The fire answers to a source of light that is not the highest one. The road out answers to the discipline that drags somebody up it. The sun answers to whatever it is that makes knowing possible at all.
What the picture cannot show. It cannot show that there is anything outside the cave. A reader who already denies that has watched the whole film and lost nothing. The existence question is argued in other passages, and the cave assumes the answer.
The return is the part that connects to this cluster. The one who goes back down cannot see in the dark, is laughed at, and is in danger from people who prefer the shadows. Written after a city executed a man for asking questions, that is not a neutral detail.
Images argue against Socrates too, which shows the form is neutral. In the Phaedo one friend offers a tuned instrument: the harmony needs the strings, so the soul may need the body. Another offers a weaver who outlasts many cloaks and still dies. Both are objections, and both get answered with argument.
The ascent as four steps, each harder than the one below it, with the cave mouth between the second and the third. The dashed line at the bottom is the return, which is the step the story spends its ending on.
Looks like this, but is not
It looks like the diagram in a textbook, put there to make a hard page friendlier.
A textbook diagram repeats what the words said. These do something no sentence in the text does: they fix a direction. Turning rather than filling, stinging rather than soothing, climbing rather than being told. Take the picture away and the direction has to be argued from scratch.
The cave, through the three question test
An essay quotes the cave and concludes that the passage proves knowledge of a higher reality. Run the test and rewrite the conclusion.
FindThe claim, the mapping and the limit, then a defensible conclusion
Given
Prisoners see shadows cast by things carried in front of a fire.
One is released, dragged up a hard road, and eventually looks at the sun.
He goes back down, cannot see, and is mocked and threatened.
Solution
We run the test in order rather than starting from the famous conclusion, because the order is what stops us borrowing authority from the picture.
Question one: the claim without the picture
Education turns a capacity that is already present, so teaching is reorientation and not transmission.
Stated that way it is arguable, which is precisely what the quotation on its own was not.
Question two: the mapping
$$\text{shadows}\to\text{images}$$
The lowest state, where what is taken for the world is a product of something unseen.
$$\text{fire}\to\text{a light, not the light}$$
A middle source, which is why the ascent has two stages inside the cave and two outside.
$$\text{sun}\to\text{what makes knowing possible}$$
The mapping stops here deliberately. The text does not say the sun is a god, and neither should you.
Question three: the limit
The picture cannot show that anything is outside. It describes the shape of a change of mind, and assumes there is something to change towards.
Rewrite the conclusion
The cave sets out what learning would have to be like if there were such objects, and it makes the return journey as dangerous as the climb.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{It pictures a turning, not a proof.}\\&\text{The return is the sharp end.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Look for the argument elsewhere. The case for those objects is made in passages of argument, which would be redundant if the picture had settled it.
Three questions, four mappings, and one conclusion that a marker cannot reject on sight.
Quote an image only after you have written the claim without it. Then the quotation illustrates rather than substitutes.
The gadfly, and what a defendant is doing with it
At Apology 30e Socrates compares himself to a stinging fly and the city to a large well bred horse. Run the test, and then say what the image is for in a courtroom.
FindThe claim, the mapping, the limit, and the rhetorical job
Given
The city is compared to a large horse, sluggish because of its size.
Socrates is compared to a fly that stings it awake.
He is making this comparison while on trial for harming the city.
Solution
We add a fourth question here because the setting is a court, and an image used in a defence speech is doing work on an audience as well as in an argument.
Claim and mapping
Claim: the questioning is a benefit to the city, not an injury, and an unwelcome benefit at that.
$$\text{sting}\to\text{cross examination}$$
Small, irritating, and aimed at an animal too big to notice it any other way.
The limit
The image cannot show that the stinging does the city any good. A horse owner may reasonably prefer the fly gone.
The job in the room
It reframes the charge: if he is a fly, then killing him is the city rolling over to sleep, which is a threat dressed as a compliment.
Notice the risk he is running. A jury that resents being called sluggish has just been given a reason to convict.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Claim: the stinging benefits.}\\&\text{The image cannot prove it does.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
From the outcome. The vote went against him, which does not refute the claim but does show that the image persuaded nobody who mattered.
In a speech, ask what an image does to the listener as well as what it does to the argument.
An image used against Socrates, and why that matters
In the Phaedo a friend compares the soul to the tuning of an instrument. Show that the objection has the same form as the arguments Socrates makes with images, and see what follows.
FindWhat the image fixes, what it leaves open, and what its existence proves about the form
Given
The comparison: the soul is to the body what a tuning is to a lyre.
A tuning is fine and invisible, and it does not survive the smashing of the instrument.
The objection is offered by a friend who wants to be convinced.
Solution
We treat the objection with the same test rather than defending Socrates, because the point is about the form of argument and not about who wins.
It lets fine and invisible be true of the soul while immortal is false, which is the exact gap the earlier argument had left.
What it leaves open
Whether the soul is that kind of thing at all. The comparison is a possibility, offered as one.
What its existence shows
Images in these books are not a private device of the winning side. They are how everybody in the room argues, and they cut both ways.
Which is why the three question test is a reading tool rather than a complaint. It applies to the objections as much as to the cave.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{The form is neutral.}\\&\text{Test every image, whoever brings it.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
From what happens next in the text. Socrates does not dismiss the comparison; he answers it with argument, which is how you know the text took it seriously.
If a device only ever helps one side in your essay, you are probably not reading the other side.
Checkpoint
§05.6 — the limit of a famous picture
Thirty seconds. A draft paragraph says the cave shows that most people are ignorant of true reality. A classmate asks which word in that sentence is doing too much work.
Find(a) Pick the word to change, and be ready to say why.
Given
The cave describes an ascent from shadows to the sun
The existence of the things outside is argued in other passages
Hint 1/4
Ask what kind of thing a picture can do to a claim, and what it cannot.
Hint 2/4
Rule: an image fixes structure and never establishes existence.
Hint 3/4
The data again: an ascent from shadows to the sun, and a separate argument elsewhere for the things outside.
Hint 4/4
Change shows, because the picture presupposes what the sentence claims it proves.
Show solution
We hunt the word that claims evidence, not the merely loose ones, because only that one voids the sentence.
Sort the candidates
Most, ignorant and reality are all arguable choices of wording. Shows is a claim about evidence.
Replace it
$$\text{shows}\to\text{sets out}$$
Two words, and the sentence becomes defensible without losing anything you wanted to say.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Shows is the word to change.}}$$
Check
Give the sentence to a reader who denies the whole framework. With shows he has to reject the sentence; with sets out he can accept it and still disagree.
Watch the verbs that claim evidence: shows, proves, establishes.
⚠ Quoting an image as evidence
The images are the most vivid writing in the cluster, and vividness reads as force.
wrong$$\text{the cave proves it}$$
right$$\text{the cave pictures it; the proof is elsewhere}$$
⚠ Turning the sun into a god
The passage is solemn and the word good is capitalised in some translations.
wrong$$\text{the sun}=\text{God}$$
right$$\text{the sun}=\text{what makes knowing possible}$$
5.7Writing about an argument instead of retelling it
Four moves: name the thesis, number the premises, refuse one, and say what the text does next.
You can read these books now, and the rest of the cluster is graded on what you can write about them.
MethodMethod 5.7: the four move argument paragraph
Conditions
Move one names a thesis and whose it is, in one sentence, and it has to be something somebody in the text could deny.
Move two numbers the premises in the order the text gives them, in your own words, with one citation.
Move three refuses exactly one premise and says what the refusal costs.
Move four says what the text does next, which is where the reading shows.
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{thesis}\rightarrow\text{numbered premises}\\&\rightarrow\text{one refusal}\rightarrow\text{what the text does next}\end{aligned}}$$
Say what is being claimed and by whom. Lay out the reasons as a short numbered list. Pick one reason and refuse it, with a price attached. Then show what the text does after that point, because that is the part a reader who has only skimmed cannot fake.
What each move looks like on the page, and the four ways the paragraph dies
Move one is one sentence and it names a mouth. Thrasymachus claims that justice is whatever serves the interest of whoever is in charge. That sentence tells a marker which passage you are in and that you know it is not the book's own view.
Move two is a list, not a narrative. Three numbered premises are usually enough, in the order the text supplies them, and one citation covers the lot. Nothing here is your opinion, and nothing here is a retelling of who said what to whom.
Move three is the only place your own judgement appears. Refuse one premise, then say what the refusal costs you. A refusal with no cost is a preference, and a marker can tell the difference from across the room.
Move four proves you read past the passage. Say what the text does after this argument: a restart, a new speaker, a device, a myth. This is the move students drop when they run out of words, and it is the cheapest one to keep.
The four deaths. Retelling the conversation in order. Quoting instead of reconstructing. Writing your own position paper with the text as decoration. And importing a modern term without flagging it, which turns a reading into an anachronism.
The paragraph and the argument, side by side. The premises on the left are the text's; the only thing on this diagram that belongs to you is the refusal arrow.
Looks like this, but is not
It looks like the four move paragraph from the tragedy cluster, which you have already practised.
Three of the four moves are the same. Move three is not: there you read the wording in the order it ran, and here you rebuild an argument and refuse a step. A paragraph that reads Plato's wording closely and never numbers a premise will feel careful and score badly.
A full paragraph on the case against poetry, which is also the end of this course
Book 10 argues that imitative poetry has no place in the city. Write the four move paragraph, and notice what it does to everything you read in the earlier clusters.
FindThe paragraph, in four moves, with the refusal named
Given
A painter paints a bed; a carpenter makes one; the carpenter works to what a bed is.
So the painter's bed is at a third remove, counting the thing itself, the maker's copy and the .
Poetry is said to work the same way, and in addition to feed the part of us that grief and anger live in.
The exclusion is announced with an invitation: let poetry's defenders argue her case in prose.
Solution
We take the imitation premise as the target rather than the psychological one, because the psychological claim is empirical and the imitation claim is the load bearing philosophical step.
Move one: the thesis and the mouth
Socrates argues in Book 10 that imitative poetry should be kept out of the city, and Glaucon agrees without much resistance.
Move two: the premises, numbered
$$(1)\;\text{imitation copies an appearance}$$
The painter does not need to know how a bed is made, so his skill is compatible with total ignorance of beds.
$$(2)\;\text{poets imitate virtue the same way}$$
They produce convincing speech about courage and justice without being able to answer questions about either.
$$(3)\;\text{it waters the part that should be ruled}$$
We enjoy grief at the theatre that we would be ashamed of at home, and the enjoyment strengthens the part that grieves.
Move three: the refusal, with a price
$$\text{refuse }(2)$$
The painter analogy assumes poetry works by copying appearances of virtue. A tragedy does not copy a just man; it constructs a situation in which no available action is clean.
The price: the third premise still stands, so I have to grant that the theatre trains feeling and argue that the training is worth having.
Move four: what the text does next
It does not close the case. It invites poetry's defenders to argue in prose, and then ends the book with a myth, which is a story used to do philosophical work.
That ending is worth a sentence in your paragraph: the book expels the poets and then tells a tale.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Refuse premise (2):}\\&\text{tragedy constructs, it does not copy.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Against the earlier clusters. The Theban plays put a ruler in a position where every option is wrong, and no appearance of virtue is being copied there. The counterexample comes from your own reading list.
One paragraph, three premises, one refusal, and it answers the eight weeks of poems and plays behind it.
The strongest objection to a text on your list is usually another text on your list.
A weak paragraph, diagnosed and repaired without new reading
A draft paragraph on the Crito is fluent, accurate and scores poorly. Diagnose it with the four moves and repair it using only what it already contains.
FindWhich moves are missing, and the repaired paragraph in outline
Given
The draft opens by saying that the Crito is about whether Socrates should escape from prison.
It then narrates Crito's arrival, his arguments and Socrates' replies in order.
It ends by saying that Socrates chooses to obey the law, which shows his integrity.
Solution
We repair rather than rewrite, because the draft contains all the material and is failing on shape alone.
Audit against the four moves
$$\text{move 1: missing}$$
Naming the topic is not naming a thesis. No sentence in the draft could be denied by anybody.
$$\text{move 2: replaced by narrative}$$
Arguments in order of arrival is a plot summary. Premises in order of dependence is an argument.
$$\text{moves 3 and 4: absent}$$
Integrity is praise, not a refusal, and the draft never says what happens after the argument.
Repair with the same material
Move one: the Laws claim that Socrates has agreed to obey them by living under them for seventy years.
Move two: benefits received, freedom to leave, staying counts as agreement, therefore escape breaks an agreement.
Move three: refuse that staying is agreeing, and pay for it by conceding that he did have a court and a vote.
Move four: Socrates asks Crito to answer the Laws and Crito cannot, so the text ends the argument by silencing the friend rather than by proving the point.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Same material, four moves.}\\&\text{Nothing new had to be read.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Measure the length. The repaired outline is shorter than the draft, which is the usual sign that a narrative has been replaced by an argument.
If your paragraph has no sentence anybody could deny, you have written a summary in argument's clothing.
Checkpoint
§05.7 — which move is missing
Thirty seconds. A classmate's paragraph names Thrasymachus, lists three premises with a citation, and ends by saying that the argument is unconvincing. She asks what is missing.
Find(a) Pick what the paragraph still needs.
Given
Move one is present and names the speaker
Move two is present and numbered
The paragraph ends with a verdict
Hint 1/4
Ask what turns a verdict into an argument rather than a reaction.
Hint 2/4
Rule: an objection has an address. Name the premise and pay the price.
Hint 3/4
The data again: speaker named, three premises numbered and cited, verdict given, nothing else.
Hint 4/4
It needs move three: one refused premise, with what the refusal costs.
Show solution
We look for the missing step rather than rewrite, because only the joint between premises and verdict is absent.
Locate the gap
Between the premise list and the verdict there is no step that connects them, so the verdict floats.
Fill it in one sentence
$$\text{refuse }(n)\;+\;\text{cost}$$
Naming a number and a price is enough. The rest of the paragraph already supports it.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Move three: one refusal, with its cost.}}$$
Check
Delete the verdict instead. The paragraph then reads as a competent summary, which shows the verdict was the only thing claiming to be an argument.
A verdict with no address is not an objection.
⚠ Narrating the conversation in the order it happened
The text is a conversation, so the order of speaking feels like the order of reasons.
wrong$$\text{first Crito says, then Socrates replies}$$
right$$\text{premises in order of dependence}$$
⚠ Refusing a premise without paying for it
Refusing feels like the strong move, and the cost feels like a weakness to hide.
wrong$$\text{premise (2) is obviously false}$$
right$$\text{deny (2), and grant what that leaves standing}$$
⚠ Importing a modern term with no flag
The modern word is shorter and the marker will recognise it.
wrong$$\text{Socrates' social contract theory}$$
right$$\text{an agreement argument, in a later sense of contract}$$
Placing a Plato passage in sixty seconds
Any time you are handed lines with no reference, which is most quizzes and every hand out.
Look for furniture, not for theme.
A father in court, a magic ring, a prison, a jury, a bed made by a carpenter, a sun. Each of those sits in one text only.
Check the cast list.
Glaucon, Adeimantus, Polemarchus and Thrasymachus belong to the Republic. Crito, Euthyphro, Simmias and Cebes belong to the short dialogues. Socrates belongs to both.
Decide whether anyone is narrating.
First person reporting of other people's speeches means the Republic or the Phaedo. Bare exchange with no reporter means the Euthyphro or the Crito.
Rebuild the reference and say what it licenses.
Dialogue, Stephanus number, translator. A placed passage licenses claims about that text. An unplaced one licenses nothing, however good your reading of it is.
Where it goes wrong
Identifying from a theme both reading lists share, which fixes nothing.
Trusting a page number from a printing the marker may not own.
Assuming that because Socrates is speaking the passage must be the Apology.
Writing a refutation out in five lines
Whenever a passage has one speaker asking and another answering, which covers most of the passages in both reading lists.
Find the thesis by finding the owner.
Look for the sentence the answerer would repeat if asked what he thinks. It usually follows a question of the form what is it.
Mark every agreement.
Each yes, certainly and of course is a premise, and it is in the answerer's mouth on purpose. Two or three of them carry the whole argument.
State the clash in one line.
Write that these admissions and that thesis cannot be held together. If you cannot write it, you have collected the wrong admissions.
Name the escape and its cost.
Say which claim you would drop and what dropping it gives up. This is the sentence that is yours, and it is the one that earns marks.
Where it goes wrong
Reporting the conclusion and leaving the admissions out, which is the common failure.
Treating the refuted thesis as the text's own view.
Reading the refutation of a thesis as a proof of its opposite.
The four move argument paragraph
Every short written answer, every presentation point, and every body paragraph of the project.
Name the thesis and the mouth.
One sentence, and it has to be deniable. If nobody in the text could argue with your opening sentence, it is a topic and not a thesis.
Number the premises in the text's order.
Three is usually enough, in your own words, with one citation covering them. No narrative, no quotation blocks.
Refuse exactly one, and pay.
Say which premise you deny and what you have to grant as a result. A refusal with no cost reads as a preference.
Say what the text does next.
A restart, a new speaker, a device, a myth. This is the move that shows you read past the passage, and it is one sentence long.
Where it goes wrong
Retelling the conversation in the order it happened.
Using a quotation where a reconstruction was wanted.
Writing your own position paper with the text as decoration.
Importing a modern term without a flag, which turns a reading into an anachronism.
A paragraph that retells the Euthyphro
Here is the paragraph that most first drafts produce. Everything in it is true.
FindWhat the paragraph delivers, and what it does not
GivenA question about what the Euthyphro achieves
Solution
We write the weaker paragraph out in full, because its fault is invisible in summary.
The draft, in outline
Socrates meets Euthyphro outside the court. Euthyphro is prosecuting his father. Socrates asks what holiness is.
Euthyphro gives several answers. Socrates refutes each one. At the end Euthyphro remembers an appointment and leaves.
What a marker sees
Accurate, orderly, and containing no sentence that anybody could disagree with. It shows the text was read and not that it was used.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{True, orderly, and undeniable.}}$$
Check
Look for the deniable sentence. There is none, which is the definition of a summary.
A paragraph that argues about the Euthyphro
The same reading, the same length, pointed at a claim instead of at the sequence of events.
FindThe four moves, in outline
GivenThe same question about what the Euthyphro achieves
Solution
We keep the same reading and the same length and change only the target, so nothing can be put down to extra work.
Thesis and premises
Euthyphro's best definition is that holiness is what all the gods love, and he also grants that they love it because it is holy.
Those two run in opposite directions of explanation, so one has to go, and the dialogue stops there.
Refusal and what follows
He could have dropped the second and kept the definition, at the price of making holiness arbitrary, and his refusal to pay that price is the real finding.
The dialogue then ends without a definition and with Euthyphro leaving in a hurry, which is the text declining to tidy up after itself.
Try to disagree. A reader can deny that the refusal is the finding, which means the paragraph has made a claim.
Both paragraphs prove the text was read. Only the second contains a sentence that a reader could argue with, and that sentence is what the marks are for.
How to tell them apart
Underline every sentence in your paragraph that somebody could deny. If nothing is underlined, you have written a summary.
Answering why Socrates refuses to escapeexam format
The question asks for an explanation, so the answer belongs entirely to the text.
FindWhat a complete answer contains
GivenA prompt beginning with why does Socrates refuse
Solution
We reconstruct and stop, because the prompt asks why and a verdict here answers a question nobody put.
Reconstruct only
One must never do wrong, not even in return, which Crito grants. Escaping would wrong the city. Therefore he stays.
Add the Laws' grounds: upbringing, education, and seventy years of staying when leaving was permitted.
Stop before judging
Your own view of the agreement premise is out of scope here, and including it costs you space you needed for the reconstruction.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Reconstruction, no verdict.}}$$
Check
By attribution. Every sentence in the answer can be traced to a speaker in the text, which is what an explanation question wants.
Answering whether the refusal is justifiedexam format
The question asks for an evaluation, so half the answer has to be yours and the other half still has to be the text's.
FindWhat a complete answer contains
GivenA prompt beginning with is Socrates right to refuse
Solution
We cut the reconstruction to two sentences, because an evaluation prompt asks for a position.
Reconstruct briefly, then take a side
Two sentences of reconstruction are enough here, because the marks are downstream of them.
Then refuse a premise: staying is not agreeing when leaving means losing language, friends and standing.
Pay for the refusal
Grant what the Laws have on their side: he did leave on campaign and return, and he did have a vote and a court while he stayed.
Then say what your refusal leaves standing, which is that he still may not do wrong in return, so a different argument would be needed to justify escape.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Verdict, addressed and paid for.}}$$
Check
Ask whose sentence each one is. In a good evaluation answer the mix is deliberate and you can say which is which.
Why and whether look like the same question about the same passage, and they have different right answers: one is entirely the text's, the other is half yours.
How to tell them apart
Underline the question's verb before writing. Explain, reconstruct and account for want no verdict; assess, evaluate and is he right want one, with a price attached.
Scaffolding comes off
The common skeleton
Move one: name the thesis and whose mouth it is in, in one deniable sentence.
Move two: number the premises in the order the text supplies them, with one citation.
Move three: refuse exactly one premise, and say what the refusal costs you.
Move four: say what the text does immediately after the argument.
1 · fully worked
Thrasymachus at full strength, and the premise that gives way
All four moves, with every reason written out. If your section reads the short dialogues, run the same four moves on Euthyphro's definition; the parallel run is in the refutation block above.
FindThe four move paragraph, with the refusal named and paid for
Given
In every city the ruling element makes the laws.
It makes them in its own interest, as any ruler would.
What the laws require is what the ruled are told is just.
Solution
We take the strongest version rather than the crude slogan, because a paragraph that beats the crude version has beaten nothing that the text says.
Move one: the thesis, in one deniable sentence
Thrasymachus claims at Republic 338c that justice is nothing but the advantage of whoever holds power, which is deniable and is denied for the rest of the work.
Move two: the premises, numbered
$$(1)\;\text{rulers legislate}$$
Uncontroversial, and it is doing more work than it looks: it makes justice a product rather than a standard.
$$(2)\;\text{they legislate in their own interest}$$
Presented as obvious about every regime, so the thesis is offered as a description of politics and not as a recommendation.
$$(3)\;\text{just}=\text{obeying those laws}$$
The bridge premise. Without it the first two give you a fact about legislation and nothing at all about justice.
Move three: refuse one, and pay
$$\text{refuse }(2)\;\text{as stated}$$
Rulers make mistakes about their own interest, so the laws sometimes command what harms them. Then obeying is not the advantage of the stronger, and the thesis splits in two.
The price: Thrasymachus can repair this by talking about the ruler in the precise sense, who does not err. The repair costs him the claim that he was describing actual cities.
Move four: what the text does next
Socrates changes ground and argues from crafts: a doctor aims at the patient's good, so a ruler in the precise sense aims at the subject's good.
And then Book 1 ends without a definition anyway, which is what makes Glaucon restart the whole question in Book 2.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Refuse (2): rulers err.}\\&\text{The repair costs him the real cities.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
From the text's own sequence. If the error point had not landed, Thrasymachus would have no reason to retreat to the precise sense of ruler, and he does retreat.
Four moves, three premises, one refusal, and about a hundred and twenty words.
A thesis that has to be repaired mid argument has already told you where it is weak. Quote the repair.
2 · you write the reasoning
Easier passage, same four moves, and the reasoning column is now blank. This is the refutation of Polemarchus, which you have already seen worked out, so the only new work is saying why each move is legitimate. Write your reasons, then open them.
Move one, the thesis: Polemarchus holds that justice is helping your friends and harming your enemies, which he offers as an improvement on giving each man what he is owed.
reasoning
Because it is deniable and it is his. He restates it when challenged, which is the test of ownership, and a reader can reject it without calling him confused.
Move two, the premises: he grants that justice is a kind of skill, that a skill good at guarding is good at stealing, and that harming a man makes him worse.
reasoning
Because those three are the ones the conclusion uses. Everything else in the exchange is agreement about examples, and a premise list that includes the examples buries the argument.
Move three, the refusal: the skill premise is the one to deny, since being good at protecting something need not make you good at taking it.
reasoning
Because the guarding and stealing point is an analogy about skills in general, and a critic can say that protective skill and predatory skill come apart in exactly the cases that matter.
Move four, what the text does next: the second refutation arrives anyway and removes the harming clause, so the definition falls even with the skill premise rescued.
reasoning
Because it shows the refusal does not save him, which is the difference between a reading and a debating point. The second run attacks the content rather than the analogy.
3 · find the buried error
Harder, and now across both reading lists. Below is a student paragraph in four steps. It is well written, correctly cited in places, and two of its steps contain mistakes of the kind this section has been warning about. Find both.
Step 1. Claim: both of this cluster's reading lists ask whether being just is good for the person who is just, and both make the question sharp by removing the usual rewards.
Step 2. Evidence from the Republic: Thrasymachus sharpens it with the ring of invisibility, asking what anyone would do if he could not be caught, and predicting that the just man would behave exactly like the unjust one (Republic 359d).
Step 3. Evidence from the short dialogues: escape is arranged and safe, so the Crito supplies the same conditions in practice, and Socrates answers that one must never do wrong, not even in return (Crito 49b).
Step 4. Consequence: the jury found him guilty of impiety and sentenced him to death in the same breath, so the Apology shows a city with no interest at all in the question, which is why the Republic has to build a different city to ask it in.
the two buried errors (2)
⚠ step 2
The ring belongs to Glaucon in Book 2, not to Thrasymachus. Thrasymachus has already conceded and gone quiet by then.
The ring sounds like his thesis put into a story, and he is the loudest voice in the part of the book everyone remembers. Glaucon is also presenting a view he says is not his own, which makes him easy to forget.
right
Write that Glaucon sharpens it in Book 2 while reporting the popular view, and that this is a restart of the question rather than a continuation of the quarrel.
⚠ step 4
There were two separate votes. The court first decided guilt, then Socrates proposed a , and only then did a second vote set the sentence.
In the English of a modern courtroom a verdict and a sentence arrive together, and the phrase found guilty and sentenced reads as one event. The dialogue's second speech is where the provocation happens, so collapsing the two votes deletes the part that matters most.
right
Write that he was convicted, that he then proposed a penalty of his own, and that the death sentence followed a second vote. Then the city looks less indifferent and more provoked.
4 · the bare problem
§05.7 — four moves, no scaffolding
No worked example this time and no reasoning column. Take whichever of the two arguments below belongs to your reading list, and produce the four move paragraph in about a hundred and fifty words.
Find
(a) Write move one: the thesis in one deniable sentence, with the mouth named.
(b) Write move two: three numbered premises in the text's order, with one citation.
(c) Write move three: refuse one premise and state what the refusal costs you.
(d) Write move four: say what the text does immediately after the argument.
Given
If your section reads the Republic: the claim that a city goes well only when those who know what is good are the ones in charge, which arrives with the image and the compulsion of the philosophers.
If your section reads the short dialogues: the claim in the Apology that Socrates is wiser than others only in knowing that he does not know, which arrives with the story of the oracle and the questioning of the experts.
In both cases the text follows the argument with something other than a proof, so move four has something to report.
Hint 1/4
Do not start writing prose. Write the three premises as a list first, and the paragraph will assemble itself around them.
Hint 2/4
Rule: the premise to refuse is the one that changes subject, usually from knowing to ruling, or from questioning to being wise.
Hint 3/4
The data again: for the Republic, knowledge of the good plus the ship of state plus the compulsion to go back down. For the short dialogues, the oracle plus the questioning plus the enemies made.
Hint 4/4
Refuse the transfer premise, and report that the text answers with an image in one case and with a life in the other.
Show solution
We build both versions from the same four moves, because the lists share the shape and only the transfer premise changes.
Find the transfer in each
$$\text{knowing the good}\to\text{fit to rule}$$
In the Republic the transfer is from knowledge to authority, and nothing in the ascent was about persuading a city.
In the Apology the transfer is from an absence of false belief to a kind of wisdom, which a critic can call a redefinition rather than a discovery.
Pay for the refusal
Granting that ignorance disqualifies is the price in the first case. Granting that false confidence is worse than empty confidence is the price in the second.
Report what follows
An image and a compulsion in the first case. A life and a trial in the second. Neither text finishes with a proof, and saying so is move four.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Both refuse a transfer premise.}\\&\text{Neither text ends in a proof.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Swap the refusals. Refuse the knowledge premise instead and both paragraphs collapse into denying that anyone knows anything, which neither text gives you grounds for.
The transfer premise is where an argument changes subject, and it is where your paragraph should stand.
Full exam-style question
Exam conditions: the rule of those who know, in one paragraphexam format
Forty minutes, one paragraph of about two hundred words, closed book. The prompt: assess the argument that only those who know what is good should rule. Here is the answer, built with the four moves.
FindA paragraph that reconstructs, refuses one premise, pays for it, and reports what follows
Given
A city is well governed only if the people in charge know what is good for it.
That knowledge is reached only through the long ascent described in the middle books.
Those who have made the ascent do not want to come back down and rule.
The ship of state image explains why a crew would reject such a person as useless.
Solution
We attack the transfer from knowledge to authority rather than the claim that knowledge exists, because the second would need a whole essay and the first can be done in two sentences.
Move one, and do not waste a word on it
Socrates argues at Republic 473c that cities have no rest from their troubles until those who know what is good hold power, and Glaucon warns him at once that people will attack him for saying it.
Move two, the premises, in the text's order
$$(1)\;\text{good rule needs knowledge of the good}$$
Established earlier by the analogy of crafts: navigation needs a navigator, and government is treated as the same kind of business.
$$(2)\;\text{only the ascent gives that knowledge}$$
The cave and the long curriculum do this work, and they make the qualification rare and expensive.
$$(3)\;\text{therefore only the ascended should rule}$$
The conclusion, and it needs the unstated premise that the knowledge in question is the knowledge government requires.
Move three, the refusal and its price
$$\text{refuse the transfer}$$
Nothing in the ascent is training in getting a city to accept a decision, and the text admits as much when it has to compel the philosophers to govern.
The price: I still have to grant that rulers ignorant of the good are worse, so the argument survives as a necessary condition and fails as a sufficient one.
Move four, what the text does next
It supplies the ship of state, where the crew calls the only man who understands the sea a useless stargazer. The image concedes the political problem rather than solving it.
And then it introduces compulsion: the ones who see are sent back down, which is the cave's return journey turned into a duty.
From the text's own machinery. If knowledge were sufficient for rule, no compulsion would be needed and the ship image would have no point. Both exist, so the text itself marks the gap this paragraph stands in.
Two hundred words, one refusal, and nothing in it that a marker cannot check.
Turning a claim from sufficient into necessary is the cheapest strong move in philosophical writing. Learn it once and use it everywhere.
Practice
A · concept 4 questions
1§05.2 — narration and authorship
A study guide states the following as a reading rule for this cluster. Somebody in your group is about to write it into an essay introduction.
Find(a) True or false, with one sentence of reasoning: because Socrates narrates the Republic, the claims he makes in it can be attributed to Plato.
Given
The Republic is narrated throughout by Socrates in the first person
The claim under test is about what may be attributed to Plato
Hint 1/4
Ask what a narrator is, in the same way you asked what a chorus was last cluster.
Hint 2/4
Rule: a speaker is a speaker, and a narrator is a speaker with extra duties.
Hint 3/4
The data again: first person narration by a character, in a cluster where the author is named three times and is never given a line.
Hint 4/4
False. Narration is a role inside the text, and authorship is outside it.
Show solution
We split narrator from author first, because the whole question turns on which one is being claimed.
Separate the two roles
As participant he makes claims. As narrator he chooses what to report. Neither role is authorship.
Say what is left available
You may argue that the work is built to make his case persuasive, using its structure as evidence. That is a stronger claim than attribution and it is defensible.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Narrator is a role, not an author.}}$$
Check
From the other list. The Apology puts Plato in the room at 34a and again at 38b and still gives him no line, so he is present and silent rather than merely missing.
Narration tells you whose selection you have, not whose view.
2§05.4 — answering the question that was asked
An exam prompt reads: is it better for a person to be just, even if nobody ever knows it? Four candidate opening sentences are below. Only one of them is answering that question.
Find(a) Pick the opening that answers the prompt.
Given
The prompt asks about advantage, not about definition
Adeimantus has ruled out defences that run through rewards
Hint 1/4
Underline the prompt's verb, then test each option by asking which question it answers.
Hint 2/4
Rule: the advantage question needs a benefit that is available with no audience.
Hint 3/4
The data again: the question asks about the just person unobserved, and reward based defences are ruled out.
Hint 4/4
The first option is the only one whose benefit does not need a witness.
Show solution
We test each opening against the ring before the prompt, because the ring removes two options at once.
Test by the witness
Ask of each benefit whether it still exists with nobody watching. Trust and reputation fail the test at once.
Check against the condition
A definition passes the witness test and fails the prompt, because a definition is not a benefit.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{A benefit that needs no witness.}}$$
Check
Put the ring on each candidate answer and three of them stop saying anything.
When a prompt carries a condition, test the condition first.
3§05.6 — images and rigour
A classmate has decided to write the whole project without mentioning the cave, the sun, the ring or the ship, on the ground that images are decoration and a rigorous answer does without them.
Find(a) True or false, with one sentence of reasoning: a rigorous answer should avoid the famous images altogether.
Given
The images carry claims that the texts argue for elsewhere
Some of the images in the cluster are objections rather than doctrines
Hint 1/4
Ask what would be lost from your paragraph if the image were deleted and nothing replaced it.
Hint 2/4
Rule: an image fixes structure and direction, and never establishes existence.
Hint 3/4
The data again: the images carry claims argued elsewhere, and some of them are objections.
Hint 4/4
False. Use them, and state the claim in plain words first.
Show solution
We price the policy rather than judge it, because the error it avoids is real.
Name the error being avoided
Treating a picture as a proof. Real, common and worth avoiding.
Name the cost of avoidance
Two of the objections in the Phaedo are images, so a blanket ban deletes the other side of the argument.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Order, not avoidance.}}$$
Check
Apply the ban to the objections. A project that cannot discuss the tuned instrument has lost the strongest challenge in the dialogue.
A rule that deletes half your evidence is not rigour.
4§05.1 — what the syllabus line commits every section to
A revision group from four different sections is pooling notes. One of them says that since the general syllabus names the Republic as the major text, everyone in the room is reading it.
Find(a) True or false, with one sentence of reasoning: every section of this course reads the Republic.
Given
The general syllabus names the Republic as the major text for this cluster
The same document adds a sentence about sections that read short dialogues instead
Hint 1/4
Do not argue from the heading. Ask what the sentence under the heading says.
Hint 2/4
Rule: read the whole entry, including the clause that starts with some sections.
Hint 3/4
The data again: a named major text, and an explicit sentence about sections that read short dialogues in its place.
Hint 4/4
False, and the document itself is what makes it false.
Show solution
We read the clause after the heading, because the clause is where the sections part company.
Read both sentences
The heading fixes the theme for everyone. The clause leaves the text open for some.
Draw the practical conclusion
Shared revision has to happen at the level of the question and the method, which is why this section is built that way.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Theme shared, text not.}}$$
Check
From the book list, which names two Plato volumes and marks one as the alternative to the other.
Read a syllabus line to its last clause.
B · computation 6 questions
1§05.1 — repairing four references
Four references from a draft bibliography and footnote set. Each one is broken in a different way. Repair all four into the form this cluster uses.
Find
(a) Repair each reference, and name the fault in each.
(b) Say which of the four is closest to acceptable, and what it still lacks.
Given
Reference one: Plato, p. 84.
Reference two: Socrates, Apology, page 12 of the Penguin.
Reference three: Republic, Book 7, the cave.
Reference four: Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, trans. Tredennick, 2003.
Hint 1/4
Do not repair anything yet. First write down the three parts a reference in this cluster needs.
Hint 2/4
Rule: dialogue, Stephanus number, translator. A page number locates a printing and nothing else.
Hint 3/4
The data again: an author with a page, an author named as the speaker, a book and a scene with no number, and a whole volume with no location.
Hint 4/4
All four are missing a Stephanus number, and two of them are also missing or misnaming a person.
Show solution
We run the three slot form as a checklist, because it names the fault as well as fixing it.
Three slots. Run each reference against them and the fault names itself.
Catch the attribution error
Reference two puts a character in the author slot, which is the same mistake as writing Plato says, wearing a different hat.
Rank them honestly
Reference three is closest because a marker could find the passage, which is the function of the whole apparatus.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Three slots: dialogue, number, translator.}\\&\text{Reference three is closest.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Lend your copy to somebody with a different printing. Only the repaired forms survive the swap.
Dialogue, number, translator. A reference somebody else can follow has done its job.
2§05.2 — putting five claims in the right mouth
Five claims from a mixed revision sheet. For each one, name the speaker, and say whether the text goes on to attack it, endorse it or leave it standing.
Find
(a) Give the speaker for each claim.
(b) Say for each whether the text attacks it, endorses it, or leaves it open.
Given
Claim one: justice is the advantage of the stronger.
Claim two: the gods love the holy because it is holy.
Claim three: nobody would stay just if he could become invisible.
Claim four: a citizen who has lived under the laws for seventy years has agreed to obey them.
Claim five: the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
Hint 1/4
Take the speakers first and the verdicts second. Mixing the two jobs is what produces wrong attributions.
Hint 2/4
Rule: a claim stated early by a person Socrates is questioning is usually a target.
Hint 3/4
The data again: five claims, from both reading lists, one of them made by an institution rather than a person.
Hint 4/4
Thrasymachus, Euthyphro, Glaucon reporting a popular view, the Laws of Athens, and Socrates on trial.
Show solution
We place each speaker from the furniture, not the doctrine, because two of these claims fit either list.
Assign the speakers
Two from Book 1 and Book 2, one from the Euthyphro, one from the Crito, one from the Apology. The furniture places each of them.
Assign the verdicts carefully
Attacked is not the same as refuted, and endorsed is not the same as proved. Use the weaker word when the text gives you only that.
Handle the institution
The Laws argue, and Socrates reports himself as persuaded. So there are two acts here and a good answer names both.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Four people and one institution.}\\&\text{Verdicts: attack, self harm, answer, endorse, open.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Count the endorsements. Only one of the five is endorsed inside the text, which is a useful reminder of how little these books assert directly.
Name the mouth before the verdict, and use the weaker verdict.
3§05.3 — finding the admission that does the damage
A short exchange, paraphrased. A speaker says that courage is standing your ground. Socrates asks whether a soldier who retreats in order to win later is a coward, and the speaker says no. Socrates asks whether courage is a kind of knowing what is worth risking, and the speaker agrees.
Find
(a) Write the clash in one line.
(b) Say which of the three claims you would give up, and what giving it up costs.
Given
Thesis: courage is standing your ground.
Admission one: a soldier who retreats for a good reason is not a coward.
Admission two: courage involves knowing what is worth risking.
Hint 1/4
Do not judge the thesis yet. Ask what the two admissions together allow that the thesis forbids.
Hint 2/4
Rule: write the clash as thesis plus admissions cannot all be true.
Hint 3/4
The data again: courage as standing firm, a justified retreat that is not cowardly, and courage as knowing what is worth risking.
Hint 4/4
The admissions allow a courageous retreat, and the thesis rules it out.
Show solution
We locate the clash before choosing what to drop, because the choice is only forced once the clash is written.
The two cannot both hold, so the thesis and the first admission are already in trouble before the second arrives.
Choose, and price the choice
Keeping the thesis means calling a sensible retreat cowardly, which nobody will accept. So the thesis goes.
Price: courage moves inside, and any behavioural test for it becomes unreliable. That is a real loss and you should say so.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Drop the thesis.}\\&\text{Price: no behavioural test.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Check the shape. The same three line structure just handled holiness, justice and courage, which is what a procedure is for.
The procedure needs a thesis with an owner, not a familiar passage.
4§05.5 — the licence for a second crossing
An argument in the middle of the construction says that because the auxiliaries of the city are courageous when they hold to what the rulers decided, a person is courageous when the spirited part holds to what reason decided.
Find
(a) Write the argument in three lines, with the crossing premise explicit.
(b) Give one reason a critic might refuse the crossing in this particular case.
Given
In the city, courage belongs to the group that holds the line.
In the person, courage is said to belong to the spirited part.
The two claims are joined by the analogy between city and soul.
Hint 1/4
Do not argue about courage. Ask what has to be true for a fact about a group to become a fact about a part of a person.
Hint 2/4
Rule: any argument that changes subject contains a premise licensing the change. Write it down as a premise.
Hint 3/4
The data again: courage located in a group in the city, courage located in a part of the soul, and an analogy joining them.
Hint 4/4
The crossing premise is that the same word names the same structure in both, and a critic can ask why a part of a person is like a class of people at all.
Show solution
We write the unstated premise out before objecting, because an objection to an unwritten premise reads as a complaint.
Write the premise nobody states
$$\text{groups}\leftrightarrow\text{parts}$$
Once written as a premise it becomes attackable, which is the whole purpose of writing it.
Build the objection from a disanalogy
Look for something true of one side and false of the other: training, pay, numbers, replacement of members.
Then say what the disanalogy threatens. Here it threatens the mechanism rather than the label, which is the more interesting objection.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Premise (2) is the licence. Attack the mechanism.}}$$
Check
Run the same drill on wisdom. The crossing premise appears again, which shows it is structural rather than local to courage.
The unstated premise is the one worth writing down.
5§05.6 — the ship of state through the test
The ship image runs roughly like this: a strong but deaf and short sighted shipowner, a crew who fight over the helm, none of whom has studied navigation, and a real navigator whom the crew call a useless stargazer.
Find
(a) Answer the three questions of the image test for this image.
(b) Say what the image concedes, as well as what it claims.
Given
The shipowner is strong, deaf and short sighted.
The crew quarrel over the helm and flatter the owner for it.
The one who studies the sea and the weather is dismissed as useless.
Hint 1/4
Start by naming who each figure stands for, then ask what claim the arrangement makes.
Hint 2/4
Rule: the three questions are the plain claim, the item by item mapping, and the limit.
Hint 3/4
The data again: a powerful and impaired owner, a quarrelling crew, and an expert nobody wants.
Hint 4/4
The claim is that political skill is a real expertise which democratic competition cannot select for, and the concession is that the expert is genuinely unpopular.
Show solution
We map the four figures before stating the claim, because the mapping makes the claim almost write itself.
Map before claiming
Four figures, four correspondences. A mapping done properly makes the claim almost write itself.
Find the limit
The image assumes navigation is a real body of knowledge and that politics resembles it. Both are the points in dispute.
Read the concession
The navigator is called useless by people who are not stupid, which is the text admitting that the case is hard to sell.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Claim: rule is a skill.}\\&\text{Concession: the skilled look useless.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
Against the cave. The returning prisoner is also mocked, so the two images make the same concession twice and it is therefore deliberate.
An image that admits its own difficulty is arguing, not decorating.
6§05.7 — turning narrative into premises
A draft sentence reads: first Socrates asks Euthyphro what holiness is, and Euthyphro says it is prosecuting wrongdoers, and then Socrates points out that this is an example rather than a definition, and Euthyphro tries again.
Find
(a) Rewrite the content as move two, that is as numbered premises.
(b) Say what was lost and what was gained in the rewrite.
Given
The draft reports the order of speaking.
The exchange contains a thesis, an objection and a retreat.
The paragraph is supposed to argue about what the dialogue achieves.
Hint 1/4
Ask what the exchange establishes, not what happened in it. The order of speaking is rarely the order of reasons.
Hint 2/4
Rule: premises go in order of dependence, and an objection about form becomes a premise about what a definition must do.
Hint 3/4
The data again: a definition by example, an objection that examples are not definitions, and a second attempt.
Hint 4/4
Premise one: a definition has to cover every case. Premise two: prosecuting wrongdoers is one case. Therefore it is not a definition.
Show solution
We number the premises instead of quoting, because a quotation would only show that the exchange happened.
Extract the standard being applied
Socrates' objection is not about holiness at all. It is about what a definition has to do, and that is premise one.
Be honest about the loss
The drama does carry information, such as how quickly Euthyphro concedes. Keep it in a clause rather than in a sentence.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Order of dependence, not order of speaking.}}$$
Check
Compare the lengths. The premise version is shorter and says more, which is the standard signature of the conversion.
Order of dependence, not order of speaking.
C · exam level 4 questions
1§05.3 — which admission did the damage
Near the start of Book 1 an old man says that justice is telling the truth and paying back what you have taken. Socrates asks whether you should hand a weapon back to a friend who has lost his mind, and nobody in the room says yes.
Find(a) Pick the statement that describes what the case establishes.
Given
Thesis: justice is telling the truth and returning what you owe.
The case: a friend who has gone mad asks for his weapon back.
Everyone present agrees that returning it would be wrong.
Hint 1/4
Ask what part of the thesis the example touches, and what part it leaves alone.
Hint 2/4
Rule: a counterexample refutes by showing the proposed account gets one case wrong.
Hint 3/4
The data again: truth and repayment as the definition, a mad friend and his weapon, and unanimous agreement that you do not hand it over.
Hint 4/4
It refutes the repayment half, by producing a case where repaying is the wrong thing to do.
Show solution
We aim the case at one half of the definition, because the weapon example touches only repayment.
Aim the case
The weapon case is about returning property, so the repayment half is what takes the hit.
State it without overreach
$$\text{sometimes wrong}\Rightarrow\text{not the definition}$$
Sometimes is enough for a definition, which has to hold in every case to hold at all.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{One case sinks the repayment half.}}$$
Check
From what happens next. Polemarchus does not defend repayment; he replaces it with friends and enemies, which shows where the damage landed.
One counterexample sinks a definition and establishes nothing more.
2§05.4 — meeting the harder condition
Adeimantus adds a condition to his brother's challenge: a defence of justice may not mention any reward, from other people or from the gods. Four candidate defences are below.
Find(a) Pick the only defence that meets the condition.
Given
The condition: no rewards may appear in the defence, human or divine.
The question remains whether being just is better for the just person.
Reputation has already been stripped out by the earlier comparison.
Hint 1/4
Test each option by asking whether it still says anything when nobody, and nothing, is watching.
Hint 2/4
Rule: a defence that survives the condition has to locate the benefit inside the person.
Hint 3/4
The data again: no human rewards, no divine rewards, no reputation, and the question is about the just person's own good.
Hint 4/4
Only the internal answer survives, and it is the one the rest of the work is built to support.
Show solution
We apply the no reward condition first, because it removes three options in one pass.
Apply the condition
Gods, communities and punishment are all consequences, and consequences are exactly what has been ruled out.
Count the cost of the survivor
It needs internal parts that can be in conflict, so the defence commits you to the psychology that the middle books supply.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Internal conflict is the only reward free harm.}}$$
Check
Look at what the work actually does next. It builds a soul with parts, which is the machinery this answer requires and no other answer needs.
A defence that survives a condition commits you to machinery.
3§05.5 — the strongest objection to the analogy
A seminar is asked for the strongest objection to the city and soul analogy. Four objections are on the board and only one of them cannot be answered from inside the text.
Find(a) Pick the objection that is hardest to answer.
Given
The parts of the soul are argued for from cases of inner conflict.
The classes of the city are built from the division of labour.
The analogy is used for each of the four excellences in turn.
Hint 1/4
For each objection, try to write the text's reply in one sentence. The one you cannot write is the answer.
Hint 2/4
Rule: the strongest objection attacks the mechanism of the correspondence, not its tidiness.
Hint 3/4
The data again: parts argued from conflict, classes from the division of labour, and the analogy reused for every excellence.
Hint 4/4
The training objection is the one with no ready reply, because it points at a real disanalogy.
Show solution
We write the easy replies first, because an objection answered in one sentence is weak by that fact.
Write the easy replies
Circularity: the conflict argument never mentions a city. Category error: no soul is attributed to a city. Number: it is derived, not chosen.
See why the fourth is harder
Education is central to the city's construction and has no clear counterpart inside a single soul, so the correspondence limps exactly where the text invests most.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Attack the mechanism: training.}}$$
Check
Try to supply the missing reply. Any attempt has to describe educating a part of a soul, which the text never does.
Rank objections by whether the text can answer them.
4§05.7 — an argument assessed in six hundred words
An examination question of the kind this cluster sets. Choose the argument that belongs to your reading list and assess it. Six hundred words, closed book, one citation is enough.
Find
(a) Reconstruct the argument in numbered premises, in the text's order.
(b) Refuse one premise and state precisely what the refusal costs you.
(c) Say what the text does immediately after the argument, and what that tells you.
Given
If you read the Republic: the argument that only those who know what is good should hold power.
If you read the short dialogues: the Laws' argument in the Crito that Socrates has agreed to obey them.
Assess means reconstruct, then refuse something, then pay for the refusal.
Hint 1/4
Write the premise list before any prose. If the list has more than four items you have included narrative.
Hint 2/4
Rule: assess wants a verdict with an address. Name the premise number you deny.
Hint 3/4
The data again: an argument from your own reading list, a required refusal, and a required report of what follows in the text.
Hint 4/4
Three premises, one refusal with its price, and one sentence on what the text does next. That is the whole answer.
Show solution
Answer
A complete answer contains four things and can be checked for them:
a thesis sentence naming the speaker, which somebody could deny
three or four numbered premises in the text's order, with one citation
one refused premise, with what granting the rest still commits you to
one sentence on what the text does next, which for both options is something other than a proof
The commonest failure is an essay with all four present but the refusal unpriced, which reads as a preference rather than an objection.
D · interleaved 4 questions
1§05.1 — three passages, three first moves
Three unlabelled passages from this term's reading. For each one, say what the correct first move is, and do not answer the passage's question.
Find
(a) Name the first move for each passage, in one line each.
(b) Say what would go wrong if you used move one on passage three.
Given
Passage one: a warrior is described with the same three word phrase that described him two hundred lines earlier.
Passage two: a ruler announces a penalty in public and the group on stage says nothing.
Passage three: a speaker gets somebody to agree to two claims and then shows they cannot both stand with his definition.
Hint 1/4
Do not start reading for meaning. Ask what kind of text each passage is, and what that kind rewards.
Hint 2/4
Rule: repeated fixed phrasing points at composition, a public announcement points at what the wording commits the speaker to, and a chain of agreements points at premises.
Hint 3/4
The data again: a repeated three word phrase, a penalty announced to a silent group, and a pair of admissions used against a definition.
Hint 4/4
Passage one: ask what the repetition is doing. Passage two: ask what the announcement commits him to later. Passage three: number the premises.
Show solution
We name the kind from one surface feature, because the feature shows in the first line and the content does not.
Identify the kind from one feature
Fixed repeated phrasing belongs to the epic cluster. A public penalty with a silent group on stage belongs to tragedy. A chain of admissions belongs here.
Match the habit to the kind
Each cluster taught one first move, and all three still work. What changed is only which one to reach for.
Price the mismatch
The wrong habit does not produce nonsense. It produces a careful answer to a question nobody asked, which is worse because it is hard to notice.
Swap the habits deliberately. Number the premises of the epic passage and you get a list of nothing, which shows the habits are not interchangeable.
In a mixed paper the first decision is which habit to use.
2§05.4 — an older king, and the same question
The course opened with an epic whose first tablets have a city complaining about its own king, who takes what he wants because nobody can stop him. A study group wants to use this to illuminate the challenge in Book 2.
Find(a) Pick what the group has to establish before the comparison earns its place.
Given
In the epic, the king's power makes him effectively unaccountable at the start.
In Book 2, a device is used to make an ordinary man unaccountable.
The two texts are separated by many centuries and by genre.
Hint 1/4
Ask what a comparison between two texts has to establish to be a reading rather than a coincidence.
Hint 2/4
Rule: a comparison earns its place when the same function is at work in both, not when the same object appears in both.
Hint 3/4
The data again: an unaccountable king treated as a complaint, and an unaccountable man produced by a thought experiment.
Hint 4/4
Show that the epic treats impunity as a problem, and the two texts are then addressing one question in two ways.
Show solution
We clear away what the comparison does not need first, because three options fail on necessity, not truth.
Reject the false requirements
Influence and matched audiences are historical claims, and neither is needed for a comparison of function.
State the real one
Both texts have to be treating unchecked power as a question. Then their different answers become informative.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Same function, not same furniture.}}$$
Check
Try the comparison without the licence. If the epic simply admired the king, the pairing would be a coincidence of subject matter.
A comparison needs a shared question, not a shared world.
3§05.5 — the opening cluster's claim, reused
The first cluster left a claim on the table: what we call culture is made, and the making costs something. If your section read Freud there it arrived as renunciation. A student wants to read the Republic's construction through that claim.
Find(a) Pick the step that makes this a reading rather than a slogan.
Given
The opening cluster's claim: culture is built, and the building has a price.
The Republic's city is built in speech, with an education designed for it.
The student wants to say that both texts describe civilisation as costly.
Hint 1/4
Ask what a comparison adds beyond restating that both texts think civilisation is expensive.
Hint 2/4
Rule: specify the currency. A cost claim is only informative once you say what is spent.
Hint 3/4
The data again: a general claim that culture costs, a city built with a designed education, and a student who wants to link them.
Hint 4/4
Name the currency in each text, then compare: the two answers are different and that difference is the reading.
Show solution
We name each currency before comparing, because the shared slogan fits almost anything.
Specify each currency
One text spends desire, the other spends freedom of occupation and of reading. Naming them makes the claims comparable.
Look for the interesting difference
One locates the cost inside the person, the other distributes it across classes, and that is a real disagreement about where civilisation hurts.
Answer $$\boxed{\text{Name the currency, then compare.}}$$
Check
Remove the currencies. The sentence both texts say civilisation is costly survives, and it is compatible with almost anything, which is why it earns nothing.
Agreement is where a comparison starts. Name what each text spends.
4§05.7 — the case against poetry, tested on your own reading list
Book 10 argues that poets imitate appearances of virtue without knowing anything about it, in the way a painter paints a bed without knowing how one is made. You have spent eight weeks on the poems and plays this argument is about.
Find(a) Pick the counterexample that bites hardest on the imitation premise.
Given
The imitation premise: poetry copies appearances of virtue.
You have read an epic of honour and rage, and at least one tragedy of a ruler destroyed by his own edict.
A counterexample has to attack the imitation premise rather than the conclusion.
Hint 1/4
Do not defend poetry in general. Ask what the imitation premise says poetry is doing, and find a case where it does something else.
Hint 2/4
Rule: a counterexample has to show the premise false, not the conclusion unpleasant.
Hint 3/4
The data again: poetry as copying appearances of virtue, an epic of honour and rage, and a tragedy in which a ruler's own law destroys him.
Hint 4/4
The construction case is the one: a tragedy that builds a dilemma is not copying an appearance of anything.
Show solution
We read the premise narrowly first, because a broad reading lets any poem count.
Read the premise narrowly
It claims poetry reproduces appearances of virtue. So a counterexample needs poetry doing something structurally different.
Find the case
A dilemma is constructed rather than copied, and a constructed dilemma is a kind of thought experiment, which is what philosophers do too.
Concede the rest
The psychological premise about feeling is untouched, so the argument is damaged rather than defeated, and saying so is what makes the answer strong.
Answer $$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Tragedy constructs, it does not copy.}\\&\text{The feeling complaint survives.}\end{aligned}}$$
Check
From the text's own invitation. Book 10 asks poetry's defenders to argue her case in prose, which is exactly what this counterexample does.
Attack the premise that does the work, then say what still stands.
Mistake ledger (19 entries)
⚠ Citing Plato by page number
Page numbers worked for the poems and the plays, and the margin numbers look like editorial clutter.
wrong$$\text{Plato, p. 112}$$
right$$\text{Republic 338c, trans. Grube}$$
⚠ Writing Plato says when a character said it
The cover of the book has one name on it, and in the Republic Socrates reports everyone else in his own voice.
wrong$$\text{Plato says justice is the advantage of the stronger}$$
right$$\text{Thrasymachus proposes it, and the work replies}$$
⚠ Assuming your section reads the book named in the line
The general syllabus names the Republic first and puts the alternative in a sentence underneath.
wrong$$\text{this course reads the Republic}$$
right$$\text{most sections do; check your own syllabus}$$
⚠ Treating the narrator as a camera
First person narration reads like plain reporting, and the narrator is the character we trust most.
wrong$$\text{Thrasymachus smirked}$$
right$$\text{Socrates reports him smirking}$$
⚠ Confusing when a dialogue is set with when it was written
The scenes feel contemporary with their events, and dramatic dates are not printed anywhere.
wrong$$\text{written during the trial}$$
right$$\text{set around it, written years after}$$
⚠ Reporting the conclusion and skipping the admissions
The conclusion is the memorable part and the admissions look like conversational filler.
wrong$$\text{Socrates refutes Polemarchus}$$
right$$\text{the craft comparison he granted refutes him}$$
⚠ Treating a refuted thesis as the text's own view
Strong theses are quotable, and a quotation looks the same whoever said it.
wrong$$\text{the Republic holds that the stronger define justice}$$
right$$\text{Thrasymachus does, for about ten pages}$$
⚠ Thinking the refutation of p establishes not p
In everyday argument knocking something down feels like putting the opposite up.
wrong$$\neg p\;\text{established}$$
right$$p\;\text{unavailable to him, question reopened}$$
⚠ Answering the definition question when asked the advantage question
Both questions are asked with the word justice, and the definition is the one you revised.
wrong$$\text{justice is each getting his due}$$
right$$\text{being just is better for its owner, unrewarded}$$
⚠ Attributing the ring to Thrasymachus
It sounds like his position, and he is the loudest voice in the part of the book everyone remembers.
wrong$$\text{Thrasymachus: the ring of Gyges}$$
right$$\text{Glaucon, Book 2, reporting a view}$$
⚠ Defending justice with its rewards
Rewards are the obvious defence, and most of the praise anyone has heard runs through them.
wrong$$\text{just men are trusted and prosper}$$
right$$\text{that defence was ruled out by Adeimantus}$$
⚠ Reading the city as a proposal to be founded
It is described in enormous practical detail, and detail reads like intention.
wrong$$\text{Plato's plan for a state}$$
right$$\text{a city built in speech, to answer a question}$$
⚠ Using the analogy without naming the crossing
The correspondence is so tidy that it feels like an observation rather than a claim.
wrong$$\text{so the soul has three parts too}$$
right$$\text{the parts are argued for separately}$$
⚠ Calling moderation the virtue of the lowest group only
Each of the other three excellences is parked in one place, so the pattern suggests a fourth.
wrong$$\text{moderation}=\text{virtue of the producers}$$
right$$\text{agreement of all three about who rules}$$
⚠ Quoting an image as evidence
The images are the most vivid writing in the cluster, and vividness reads as force.
wrong$$\text{the cave proves it}$$
right$$\text{the cave pictures it; the proof is elsewhere}$$
⚠ Turning the sun into a god
The passage is solemn and the word good is capitalised in some translations.
wrong$$\text{the sun}=\text{God}$$
right$$\text{the sun}=\text{what makes knowing possible}$$
⚠ Narrating the conversation in the order it happened
The text is a conversation, so the order of speaking feels like the order of reasons.
wrong$$\text{first Crito says, then Socrates replies}$$
right$$\text{premises in order of dependence}$$
⚠ Refusing a premise without paying for it
Refusing feels like the strong move, and the cost feels like a weakness to hide.
wrong$$\text{premise (2) is obviously false}$$
right$$\text{deny (2), and grant what that leaves standing}$$
⚠ Importing a modern term with no flag
The modern word is shorter and the marker will recognise it.
wrong$$\text{Socrates' social contract theory}$$
right$$\text{an agreement argument, in a later sense of contract}$$
Formula card
Two reading lists, one question
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Republic}\;\;\text{or}\;\;\text{Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo}\\&\text{one question: how should a person live?}\end{aligned}}$$
Holds for every section, because the general syllabus permits both lists.
The attribution rule
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{speaker says }X\;\not\Rightarrow\;\text{Plato claims }X\\&\text{narrator reports }X\;\not\Rightarrow\;X\text{ was said that way}\end{aligned}}$$
Applies to every sentence in both reading lists, Socrates included.
The thesis and every premise must belong to the person being questioned.
The two questions
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{Q1: what is justice?}\\&\text{Q2: is it better to be just, unseen and unrewarded?}\end{aligned}}$$
A correct answer to one counts for very little as an answer to the other.
The analogy, and justice as each part doing its own work
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{rulers}:\text{auxiliaries}:\text{producers}\;\;\leftrightarrow\;\;\text{reason}:\text{spirit}:\text{appetite}\\&\text{justice}=\text{each part does its own work}\end{aligned}}$$
The crossing from city to person is a premise, and it is unargued in the text.
The three question test for an image
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{1. what is the claim, in plain words?}\\&\text{2. what maps onto what?}\\&\text{3. what can it not show?}\end{aligned}}$$
Works on images offered as objections as well as on the famous ones.
The four move argument paragraph
$$\boxed{\begin{aligned}&\text{thesis}\rightarrow\text{numbered premises}\\&\rightarrow\text{one refusal}\rightarrow\text{what the text does next}\end{aligned}}$$
Move three needs a price attached, or it reads as a preference.
Check yourself
Close the book and write, in this order and from memory:
the two reading lists, and the one question they share
the three parts of a citation in this cluster
the five moves of a refutation, and which move students skip
the two questions that wear the word justice, and which one Book 2 asks
the three classes, the three parts, and the premise that joins them
the three questions you ask of any image
the four moves of the paragraph, and which one carries your own judgement
Then mark what you left out. That is what to reread, and nothing else is.
Place an unlabelled Plato passage in the right reading list from one detail, and write a citation that works in a printing you have never seen?
c-which-plato
Take three sentences beginning with Plato and repair each one so it names a mouth, without losing anything you wanted to say?
c-dialogue-form
Write any refutation out as a thesis, two admissions and a clash, and name the admission the speaker should have refused?
c-elenchus
State Glaucon's challenge in six lines, say what the ring deletes, and explain why a defence mentioning rewards has already lost?
c-justice-challenge
Write the city and soul argument with the crossing premise explicit, and give one objection that attacks the mechanism rather than the tidiness?
c-city-soul
Run the three question test on an image you have not seen before, including one offered as an objection?
c-images
Produce a four move paragraph in about a hundred and fifty words, with the refusal priced and the text's next move reported?
c-writing-arguments
Glossary (25 terms)
dialoguediyalog
A written conversation with named speakers, a setting and an argument that can lose. Both reading lists in this cluster are made of these, and none of them contains a sentence in the author's own voice.
elenchus
The cross examination that refutes a stated thesis using premises the person questioned has granted himself. Five moves: thesis, admissions, clash, withdrawal, and the question asked again.
aporia
The state of having no way through, reached when every proposed answer has been withdrawn. A result rather than a failure, because the answers removed stay removed.
muhatap
The person Socrates is questioning. Since every premise in a refutation has to be his, naming him is part of naming the argument.
Stephanus number
The number and letter printed in the margin of a serious edition of Plato, from a sixteenth century printing. The same in every modern edition, which is why it replaces a page number in a citation.
psycheruh
The soul: whatever it is in a person that thinks, wants and rules. In the Republic it is argued to have three parts, and in the Phaedo its survival is the question.
areteerdem
Excellence at a thing's own work. Usually translated virtue, which makes it sound moral, though a knife and a horse have it too.
The three part soul of the Republic: reason, the spirited part and appetite. Argued for from cases where a person pulls two ways at once, and not read off the three classes of the city.
The spirited part of the soul: the source of anger, indignation and shame. In the analogy it answers to the auxiliaries, and its job is to hold to what reason has decided.
appetitearzu
The part of the soul that wants food, drink and money. In the analogy it answers to the producers and traders, and its own work is supplying and wanting.
koruyucular
The class in the city of speech that is educated to rule and to defend. Their upbringing takes up more of the construction than any other topic in it.
auxiliaries
The part of the guardian class that enforces rather than decides. Courage is located here, and the excellence consists in holding to what the rulers have decided.
kallipolis
The fine city: the name given to the city built in argument in the Republic. Whether anyone is meant to found it is disputed, so write about it as a city built in speech.
A useful story the rulers of the city of speech tell about where the citizens came from. It is worth noticing that a city founded to be just needs one.
filozof kral
The claim that a city goes well only when power is held by those who know what is good. It arrives with an image of a ship and with the admission that such people have to be compelled to govern.
idealar
What a thing is, as opposed to the many things that are it. The middle books treat knowledge as knowledge of these, and the arguments for them are separate from the images that illustrate them.
the Goodiyi
What the sun stands for in the comparison: whatever makes knowing possible and makes the objects of knowledge knowable. The text declines to define it and offers the comparison instead.
diyalektik
The discipline at the top of the curriculum in the city of speech, which proceeds by question and answer rather than by calculation. The adult form of the engine used on Euthyphro.
imitationtaklit
Making a likeness of an appearance rather than the thing itself. The premise that carries the case against poetry in Book 10, and the premise a defender of poetry should attack.
Gyges'in yüzüğü
Glaucon's thought experiment: a ring that makes its wearer invisible, introduced to delete the consequences of acting unjustly so that a man's own preference is left on show.
ship of state
The image of a strong but impaired shipowner, a quarrelling crew and a navigator dismissed as a useless stargazer. It claims that governing is a skill and concedes that the skilled look useless.
the cavemağara
The four stage ascent from shadows to the sun, used to claim that education turns a capacity rather than installing one. It cannot show that there is anything outside, and it ends with a dangerous return.
the LawsYasalar
In the Crito, the laws of Athens personified and given a speech of their own. The strongest argument for obedience in the cluster is put in the mouth of the party with the interest.
Delphic oracleDelfi kehaneti
The reply that nobody was wiser than Socrates, which the Apology presents as the start of the questioning and therefore of the enmity.
counter penalty
The alternative sentence a convicted defendant proposed in an Athenian court. The Apology has a conviction, then this proposal, then a second vote, and collapsing the three is a common mistake.
What comes next
That is the last cluster, so what comes next is your own writing: the project and the final. Two things transfer out of this section:
the four move paragraph, which works on any argument in any of the four clusters
the habit of naming the mouth, which is the difference between a claim a marker can check and one he cannot
Sources
kitapPlato, Republic, translated by G. M. A. Grube, revised by C. D. C. Reeve, Hackett Publishing, 1992 The set volume for the sections that read the Republic. It prints the Stephanus numbers in the margin, which is why this section cites by those rather than by page: the numbers are the same in every modern edition and the pages are not. The general syllabus states that other editions or translations will not be accepted, so check the translator on the cover against your own section's list before you buy anything second hand.
kitapPlato, The Last Days of Socrates, translated by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant, Penguin Classics, 2003 The set volume for the sections that read the short dialogues instead: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo, in that order. The book list gives it as the alternative to the Republic with the instruction to check with your professor, which is the clearest signal in the whole document that the choice belongs to the section and not to the programme.
ders malzemesiThe General Syllabus binding every section of this course, 2025 to 2026 Sets the four thematic clusters and their week ranges, names the required translations, and states that other editions will not be accepted. For this cluster it names the Republic as the major text and then adds, in its own words, that some sections in lieu of reading the Republic will focus on some short dialogues of Plato relating to the life and death of Socrates. That sentence is the reason nothing in this section says what your section reads.
ders malzemesiThe programme's own weekly schedule for this term Names Books 1 to 7 and Book 10 of the Republic across the five weeks of this cluster. That is narrower than the general line, which names the book and no chapters at all, and it is also a second official source rather than a correction of the first. Where two official documents differ, the binding one is your own section's syllabus.
sabitThe catalogue entry for the course, with its description and its list of assessed work Supplies the description quoted at the top of this cluster and lists a course project, a comprehensive final examination, reading quizzes and class participation, with no percentages against any of them. The weighting on record gives four numbers for those same four items. Both documents are official and they differ in form, which is why this section prints both and sends you to your own syllabus for the numbers.