The Desire (Not) to Rule. Platonic Thymos and the Philosopher's Motivation to Rule in the Republic

Abstract

The problem of what motivates the philosophers in Plato's Republic to consent to return to the cave (by compulsion) has received a lot of scholarly attention in the past century. This is a big problem in the text because, on the one hand, justice, which is supposed to bring more happiness compared to injustice, requires that the best element of the city and soul (the philosophers and reason, respectively) rules the inferior elements; on the other, Socrates unremittingly emphasizes that the philosophers don’t desire to rule and that said reluctance is a necessary condition for the philosophers to be the best rulers possible. This problem, usually called “the return to the cave problem”, is really important, for not only does the existence of Kallipolis need the philosophers to rule, but because this creates an apparent contradiction in the text: to be happy, one must be a philosopher, for that leads to justice; but being a just philosopher means that you need to rule, which is something the philosopher despises, implying that the philosopher would be happier by being unjust and not ruling. This leaves the reader with the impression that maybe Plato's defense of justice fails. Some commentators have tried to solve this issue by claiming that, within the tripartite psychology of the Republic, a desire to rule can be found in the philosophers' reason. The hypothesis of this thesis is that, once we read the text closely, it becomes apparent that this current dominant interpretation cannot be correct; rather, the text points in the direction of spirit (thymos) being the source of motivation for the philosopher’s descent.