The tyrant's soul, and the just life

The democratic man's son, Socrates says, becomes the tyrannical man. Raised in a household of total permissiveness, he loses any sense of which appetites should rule; the worst of them — the appetites that wake us in nightmares — are released. He can no longer order himself. He surrounds himself with flatterers. He cannot trust anyone, because he knows what he himself is willing to do. He lives in fear. The household becomes a small tyranny, then — if the man rises in the city — the city becomes one too.

Socrates makes the case that the tyrant is the most miserable of all human beings in three increasingly elaborate arguments. First, the tyrant's soul is the most disordered: appetite rules; reason, suppressed, can no longer guide. Second, the tyrant cannot enjoy what he has, because the parts of pleasure that depend on stability and self-trust have been destroyed. Third, only the philosopher can really judge the comparison, because only the philosopher has tasted all three kinds of pleasure (those of reason, spirit, and appetite); and the philosopher reports that the pleasures of reason are by far the best. By Plato's count, the just man is exactly 729 times happier than the tyrant.

Beneath the cheerful arithmetic is the real argument. Justice is good in itself — Glaucon's question from Book Two — because justice is the order of a soul, and order is the condition for any happiness at all.

The just life is therefore the happiest. Even if the just person is unrecognized and the tyrant honored, the just person has the better life, because their soul is in better shape. The unjust soul is at war with itself; the just soul is at peace; that is the difference, and it is the deepest thing that can be said. The Republic's central thesis is now defended. One book remains.