Lia’s Reviews > Plato's Invisible Cities: Discourse and Power in the Republic > Status Update

If 'justice’ is indeed a metonym for a discursive formation...arguments for the happiness of the just are not only improbable but a priori insufficient as well. At the same time, only an empirical happiness would have silenced angry Thrasymachus, who did not represent the Sophists, in this respect at least, but the actual, suspicious, power-hungry politician...

The demarcating discursive formation is not specifically Platonic; Plato did not invent it nor did he simply try to argue for or against it. Rather, he had to operate within that structure since it was part of that discourse in which he learned to speak, to think, to philosophize.

in none of the so-called Socratic dialogues is the question ‘what is justice'’ explicitly asked. This is no coincidence, for justice is not really a Socratic question but a peculiarly Platonic one. Socrates exemplifies the impossible combination between the rational and the political in the deteriorating, corrupt city.

In the Critias, speaking about ancient Atlantis, Critias distinguishes between 'true happy life (alethinon pros eudaimonian bion)’ and what is mistakenly considered happiness due to external beauty and to wealth (Crit. 121a–c).

Socrates leaves no doubt that he is dealing with a harmonious structure and with the very contours of man which the tyrant debases toward the bestial and monstrous, and the noble man elevates toward the divine.

If the guardians are happy, they are happy despite the fact that they enjoy none of the pleasures available to a wealthy, powerful citizen; they are happy, Socrates will later show, because they are closer to the gods and further away from beasts than most other humans.

If 'justice’ is indeed a metonym for a discursive formation...arguments for the happiness of the just are not only improbable but a priori insufficient as well. At the same time, only an empirical happiness would have silenced angry Thrasymachus, who did not represent the Sophists, in this respect at least, but the actual, suspicious, power-hungry politician...

Plato or his contemporaries could say that the tyrant is a beast or that the philosopher is divine, but they were probably less free to articulate explicitly the distinction between the two types of happiness in relation to man’s demarcation.

Plato or his contemporaries could say that the tyrant is a beast or that the philosopher is divine, but they were probably less free to articulate explicitly the distinction between the two types of happiness in relation to man’s demarcation.

The happy man...is one who fits happily into the demarcating formation, secure on one side from the beasts, and welcome on the side of the gods.