Book IX

Socrates describes the lawless appetites that emerge in sleep and explains how the democratic man's son becomes a tyrannical man.

The tyrannical man, ruled by insatiable desire, exploits everyone around him, turns to crime, and ultimately becomes the most miserable of men.

Socrates poses the question of the tyrant's happiness and proclaims the first proof: the just man is happiest, the tyrant most miserable.

The tyrant is compared to a slave owner isolated in the wilderness, a captive to his own passions and living in constant fear.

The second proof argues that the philosopher, guided by reason, is the only one who can truly judge which life is most pleasant.

The third proof distinguishes true pleasure from the mere absence of pain, arguing that pleasures of the soul are real while bodily pleasures are illusory shadows.

The tyrant's pleasure is a mere shadow of a shadow, and the numerical interval separating his happiness from the king's is calculated as 729.

To illustrate justice, Socrates creates an image of the soul as a composite creature: a multi-headed beast, a lion, and a man.

Using the soul-image, Socrates argues that virtue subjects the inner beast to the inner man, which is the goal of law and education.

The wise man will live according to the pattern of the ideal city, which exists in heaven, regardless of whether it exists on earth.

A commentary on Book IX notes Plato's moderate account of pleasure, which distinguishes rational pleasures as superior to the illusory pleasures of sense.

A commentary explains the number 729 as a formula Plato invents to express the immeasurable distance between the king's and tyrant's happiness.

A commentary explains the mathematical origin of 729 and the shift toward the ideal "pattern in heaven" as a rule for individual life.