プラトン『国家』篇における<悪人>論 : <不正な生の選択>をめぐる一考察

In Republic VIII and IX, Plato explains how four types of unjust persons -the timocratic, oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical persons-come to be A young person becomes, say, timocratic, when his reason is nourished by his father, while his spirit and appetite by his mother and others, so that he himself "hands over rule" in his soul to spirit (550a-b) This is how Plato elucidates the emergence of unjust persons on both the passive and active sides (cf 553a-e, 558c-561b) On the passive side, he stresses the cultural influences of a society under which the youth grows up On the active side, the youth is said to commit himself to this process, which clearly exemplifies "the choice of lives" theme of the Republic How then does Plato account for the mechanism of the unjust persons' choice of lives? Terence Irwin[Plato's Ethics, 1995] asked what is the agent that "hands over" rule to one or another part of the soul Assuming (1) that the choice of life consists in deliberately deciding to follow the longer-term aims of one or another of the non-rational parts, and (2) that this kind of deliberation and decision belongs only to the rational part, Irwin answered that the agent of the choice of life (of "handing over" iule) is the rational part Although most scholars agree with Irwin, I think that his interpretation is not persuasive in the way it makes light of the passive side of the choice of unjust lives In this paper I first take up Plato's theory of early education in Books II and III, to shed light on this passive side-the internalization of cultural/social norms(doxai or tupoi) Next, I turn to Books VIII and IX to discuss why Plato is interested in the active side, in spite of the emphasis he places on the passive side In so doing, I show that Plato characterizes a youth's choice of an unjust life as his entrusting himself to cultural/social norms Finally, referring to Books IV and IX, I argue that the agent of "handing over" is the whole soul, not one or another part of it, which does not care for itself or how to live The youth chooses his unjust life in such a way that he entrusts himself to cultural/social norms without deliberating as to whether they are really good for him This is how Plato directs our attention to the fact that the many bound in the Cave are not aware of their own situation and need to begin to care for the soul, since they themselves are responsible for their unjust and unhappy lives, by choosing their lives