¹ For discussions of the analogy between health and virtue in the Republic, see Kenny, A.J. 'Mental health in Plato's Republic', Proceedings of the British Academy55 (1969), 229–53,Google Scholar reprinted in The Anatomy of the Soul(Oxford, 1973), 1–27;Stalley, R.F., 'Mental health and individual responsibility in Plato's Republic', J. Value Inquiry, 15 (1981), 109–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The following works will be referred to by the author's last name only:Cornford, F.M., Plato's Cosmology(London, 1937);Google ScholarMackenzie, M.M., Plato on Punishment(Berkeley, 1981);Google ScholarPrice, A.W., Mental Conflict(London, 1995);Google ScholarSaunders, T.J., Plato's Penal Code(Oxford, 1991);Google ScholarTaylor, A.E., A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus(Oxford, 1928);Google ScholarTracy, T.J., Physiological Theory and the Doctrine of the Mean in Plato and Aristotle(The Hague, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² See, e.g., Crito47d–e;Charmides156e–157e;Gorgias477b–480e, 504b–505b;Phaedrus270b–c;Timaeus87b–89d; and the passages from the Lawscited in note 4 below.Google Scholar

³ This doctrine is mentioned briefly at Republic445a. The best known account is in the Gorgiaswhere Socrates argues that punishment benefits the unjust by curing them of their wickedness, and that the judge stands to the unjust person in the same relation that the doctor stands to the one who is sick. The unjust man who avoids punishment is therefore like the sick man who avoids treatment (476a–481a).Google Scholar

⁴ The most important passages are 854c–855a, 862e–863c, 934c. See also 735e, 843d, 941d, 957e. There have been two book–length treatments of Plato on punishment in recent years. Saunders argues that Plato has a quasi–medical view of punishment; Mackenzie lays more emphasis on the idea of education.An Introduction to Plato's Laws(Oxford, 1983), 137–50,Google Scholar sees the Lawsas implying that punishment serves a variety of purposes.

⁵ The nearest Plato comes in these dialogues to explaining how punishment works is in the Gorgias504a–b, which implies that punishment restrains the desires.Google Scholar

⁶ See Tracy, 77–156. Taylor argues that the Timaeusrepresents not Plato's own views so much as those of a fifth century Pythagorean who was also a medical man. Cornford insists that the views of the Timaeusare Plato's own but also notes the influence of medical writers of the Italian school (see especially 332ff.).Google Scholar

⁷ This is evidenced by the fact that there is an extended summary of 69e–87a in the so–called Menon papyrus and by Galen's commentary on the dialogue.Google Scholar

⁸ See Saunders, 171; Tracy, 133.Google Scholar

⁹ There is no precise equivalent in Greek for the English word 'responsible'. But Greek legal practice did, of course, recognise the distinction between voluntary and involuntary offences. Plato himself stresses that each of us is responsible for the way in which he or she chooses to live. Thus, in the Myth of Er the souls who are about to return to earth are told: 'A demon will not select you but you will choose a demon.... Virtue is without a master; as he honours or dishonours her, each will have more or less of her. The blame belongs to him who chooses; god is blameless () (Republic 617d–e, A. Bloom [trans.], New York, 1968). See also Timaeus41e–42e with Taylor, 610–14.Google Scholar

¹⁰ In the Laws,860e–862c, the Athenian stranger argues that his doctrine that injustice is involuntary does not require him to abandon the conventional distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts. One who harms another involuntarily and against his will has not committed an injustice and does not merit punishment though he may need to give compensation (862a–c).Google Scholar

¹¹ Flew, A.G.N., Crime or Disease?(London, 1973), 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² The important point is of course that in punishing another person we seek to cause them pain or unpleasantness. Medical treatment may be painful or unpleasant but these are sideeffects which the doctor tries, so far as possible to avoid. The comparison between the doctor and the judge in the Gorgiasignores this point (with presumably intentional irony). See Saunders, 166.Google Scholar

¹³ See, for example, Gorgias 419a.where Socrates argues that someone who avoids punishment is like the sick person who, 'in spite of suffering from serious illnesses contrives not to pay the penalty to the doctors for his bodily transgressions () and avoids treatment from fear, like a child who avoids cautery and surgery because they are painful'. This passage ignores the key point that those who punish set out to cause pain, while pain is normally only an unwanted side–effect of medical treatment. However it also brings out Plato's tendency to look on illness as a fault which is in some sense the responsibility of the sick person.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Passages where corporal punishment is prescribed for slaves include 845a, b; 854d; 881c. 882a–c; 914b–c. But citizens can, it seems, be chastised physically for some (mostly trivial) offences; see 784d, 845c, 881d, 917c–d.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Of course any kind of punishment could be seen as affecting the body indirectly. It could, for example, be argued that fines, and most other kinds of punishment, frustrate our desires and that in the Timaeusthe desiring element in the soul is located in the stomach (70d–e). The possession of a body may thus be a necessary condition of having desires. But to say this is still not to give physiology any distinctive role in the explanation of punishment. We have not advanced beyond the idea, implicit in the Gorgiasand the Republic,that punishment by restraining the desires may help to create order in the soul.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Translation from Bury, R.G., Platovol. XII, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1926).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Trans. Bury.Google Scholar

¹⁸ In the Republic(404a; 406b) Socrates criticises the elaborate regimens advocated by contemporary medicine on the grounds that those who follow them are liable to become ill if they change their lifestyle in any way. This does not, however, imply that every change of regimen causes illness. See also Laws646c.Google Scholar

¹⁹ In a slightly different context Saunders cites Timaeus86b for the doctrine that pain is a disease of the soul (175, n. 107), but this appears to be a misreading. Timaeus argues that excessive pleasures and pains are diseases because they overwhelm the reason. This does not imply that pain in itself is a disease. One would suppose that where pain is appropriate it can be seen as healthy.Google Scholar

²⁰ Translation from Bury, R.G., Platovol. IX, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, a nd London, 1929). Cornford's translation of this passage blurs the key point by translating as ' a n affection which violently disturbs the normal state' and, as ' t h e sudden restoration of the normal state'.Google Scholar

²¹ Translation from Fowler, H.N., Platovol. VIII, Loeb Classical Library, (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1925).Google Scholar

²² One could perhaps go farther than this. Plato's doctrine is that a sudden disruption of the body's natural state is painful. There is nothing to suggest that the disruption of an unnatural state which has become ingrained must be painful. Indeed one could argue the reverse. Plato holds that the sudden restoration of the body to its natural state is pleasant. This is the case even when we have become accustomed to the previous unnatural state and thus have been feeling no pain. If one were to apply this in a literal way to the criminal (whose state is in Plato's view unnatural) it might seem that he too should find the experience of being jolted into a new way of life pleasant.Google Scholar

²³ It is also worth nothing that the doctrine of Timaeus64c–d is explicitly limited to bodily pains (see 6 4 a l – 3 ).The pains of punishment as conceived in the Lawsare not in general physical.Google Scholar

²⁴ Price, p. 86, rightly comments that these 'seem to be two aspects of folly rather than two species'.Google Scholar

²⁵ The translations of this passage and the one that follows are from Cornford.Google Scholar

²⁶ P. 346.

²⁷ Of course, the same could be said about the parents and teachers. Their errors too must result from their bad upbringing. The logic of Timaeus' position would appear to be that no one should be blamed. Taylor sees this as evidence that Timaeus expresses, not Plato's own views, but those we would expect of an Italian or Sicilian medical man (611–14).Google Scholar

²⁸ Translation adapted from Cornford.Google Scholar

²⁹ Christopher Bobonich, 'Akrasia and Agency in Plato's Laws and Republic', Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie76 (1994),3–36, argues that, although the Republicand the Lawsboth recognise the possibility of akrasia,there is a important difference between these dialogues in the way in which the phenomenon is understood. The Republictreats the parts of the soul as distinct agents, whereas the Laws,in Bobonich's view, abandons the idea of parts of the soul and explains akrasiain terms of the activity of a single agent. While I am dubious about the suggestion that Plato has abandoned the doctrine of the tripartite soul. Bobonich is certainly right to claim that the model of the parts as agents is less prominent in the Laws.It is also absent from the Timaeus,although this dialogue certainly recognizes distinct parts of the soul.Google Scholar

³⁰ It is not clear precisely what view is taken in the Timaeusof akrasia.The phrasing of 86c–e suggests that what is called akrasiais in fact a case of the soul's judgement being thrown into disorder by pleasure. If this is taken in conjunction with the account of the disordered state of the soul in childhood (42e–44d) it would point to the conclusion that the soul under the influence of pleasure and pain is incapable of forming any clear or consistent conception of the good. It may be significant that the discussion in the Lawsof what we would call questions of responsibility gives no separate place to incontinence with respect to pleasure. Pleasures overcome the soul by deceitful persuasion (πειοῖ) whereas anger overcomes it by an irrational force (λογστῳ βᾳ) (863b). The laws on homicide and wounding accordingly distinguish between involuntary injuries, voluntary ones and those done through anger. Those done in anger are seen as coming between the voluntary and the involuntary. The implication seems to be that whereas anger may forcibly overcome a fundamentally sound judgement, pleasures and pains work rather by distorting the judgement through deceitful persuasion. But it is not clear how this relates to passages elsewhere in the Lawswhich seem to imply that there can be a conflict between judgement and appetite.Google Scholar

³¹ Mackenzie, p. 177. Price, p. 85, points out that according to Timaeus our bodies are structured so as to prevent the appetites getting the upper hand.'... those who framed us could predict our "intemperance" over food and drink.... By setting appetite at such a distance from reason... and by providing a lower belly to hold excess intake... they did what they could to reduce the mental and physical effects. Strictly the intemperance is of the soul and not of the body...'Google Scholar

³² Taylor,626–8, cited by Saunders, 170, suggests that in medicine Plato always favoured regimen rather than other remedies such as the use of drugs. To defend this position he has to maintain that the attack on regimen in the Republicis not seriously intended. In fact Plato's position is reasonably consistent. He certainly believed that the proper way to health was by healthy living, but he was clearly hostile to elaborate forms of medical treatment, particularly the use of the kind of regimen that forces one to make bodily health one's main preoccupation. See L. Edelstein, 'The relation of ancient philosophy to medicine', Bulletin of the History of Medicine 26 (1952), 299–316, who argues that Greek philosophers and medical men were in conflict with each other because they were ultimately committed to incompatible conceptions of the good life.Google Scholar

³³ Translation adapted from Cornford.Google Scholar

³⁴ Taylor (p. 266), commenting on Timaeus42e3–4 where the Creator refers to the possibility that human souls may 'become the cause of evil to themselves', suggests that 'Timaeus is specially thinking of the harm a man may do to his own bodily health by neglect, ignorance of the laws of physiology, vice, and the like'. The concern with bodily health is not, in fact, so clear as Taylor suggests, but he is right in claiming that, according to the doctrine of this passage, we seem to be responsible for bodily as well as mental ills.Google Scholar

³⁵ See, e.g., 631b–632d, 726–734d.Google Scholar

³⁶ Another suggestion would be that the experience of pain helps to weaken the desires of the lower soul, but, as we have seen, it is difficult to see any trace of such a view in either the Timaeusor the Laws.In these writings, at least, Plato seems to believe that the judge is no better equipped than the doctor to act directly upon the desires.Google Scholar

³⁷ 631d–632c. Other passages which suggest that the legislator, in establishing a penal code, is educating the citizens include 857c–859c and 957c–958a.Google Scholar

³⁸ Punishment is often associated in Greek thought generally and in Plato's work with the notion of νουτησις, admonition.Google Scholar

³⁹ See, e.g., Philosophical Explanations(Oxford, 1981), 370–4;Google ScholarJean Hampton, 'The moral education theory of punishment', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 13 (1984), 208–38Google Scholar.xsat p. 226. For a more detailed discussion of the relevance of these ideas to Plato's Lawssee R.F.Stalley

⁴⁰ At 718b the Athenian argues that the legislator must combine persuasion with force in the shape of punishment. He illustrates this with the example of a law of marriage in which the function of punishment is clearly seen as deterrent. It motivates people to obey the law by making disobedience appear less attractive (72Id).

⁴¹ This goes a long way towards explaining what at first sight seems to be the very callous attitude to the sick displayed in RepublicIII, 403c–412a, where the discussion of 'gymnastic' education turns into an attack on medicine. The fundamental point there is that if we live in a healthy way we should not need elaborate medical treatment.