“The Republic” by Plato is a philosophical dialogue that explores the nature of justice, morality, and the ideal state. The dialogue takes the form of a conversation between Socrates and several other characters, including Glaucon, Adeimantus, and Thrasymachus, as they discuss the nature of justice and the characteristics of the ideal society.
In the opening of the dialogue, Socrates is challenged by Thrasymachus, who argues that justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger. Socrates engages Thrasymachus in a debate, ultimately refuting his argument and asserting that justice is inherently good and beneficial for individuals and society as a whole.
Socrates then proceeds to develop his own conception of justice, arguing that it involves each individual fulfilling their proper role within society and performing their duties to the best of their ability. He explores the idea of the tripartite soul, which consists of reason, spirit, and desire, and argues that justice involves harmonizing these three elements within the individual.
Socrates goes on to describe his vision of the ideal state, which is governed by philosopher-kings who possess wisdom, courage, and self-discipline. He argues that the state should be organized according to a strict hierarchical structure, with the philosopher-kings at the top, followed by warriors and producers, each performing their designated roles in society.
The dialogue explores various aspects of the ideal state, including education, censorship, and the role of women. Socrates argues that the state should prioritize the education of its citizens, focusing on cultivating virtue and wisdom rather than material wealth or power. He also advocates for censorship of literature and art that promote harmful values or ideas.
Socrates discusses the role of women in the ideal state, arguing that they should be afforded the same opportunities for education and advancement as men. He advocates for a system of common property and communal living, in which citizens share resources and live a simple, frugal lifestyle.
The dialogue concludes with a discussion of the nature of the philosopher-kings and the challenges of implementing the ideal state in practice. Socrates acknowledges that his vision of the ideal society may be difficult to achieve in reality, but he argues that it represents the highest aspiration for human civilization.
Overall, “The Republic” is a profound philosophical work that explores fundamental questions about the nature of justice, morality, and the ideal society. Through engaging dialogues and thought-provoking arguments, Plato presents a compelling vision of a just and harmonious society governed by reason and wisdom.
Plato’s Republic is the first great work of Western political philosophy, and has retained its grip on the imagination of political thinkers for over 2K years.
As age sharpened his awareness of the barriers to good government, he tells us in this open letter, he came eventually to understand that no form of government in any existing state was satisfactory, and was driven to declare that there would be no end to the general wretchedness until philosophers, who see justice in all its complexity, were given political power, or until existing rulers learned true philosophy.
Attempts made during the 4th century to unite the Greek world in “panhellenic” resistance against Persia went hand in hand with the nostalgic claim that that world had once possessed a sense of its common good, a century earlier, when it had repelled the Persian invader. But if it had ever possessed such a sense, its behavior belied this now. The common good was rather an ideal for each civic community to espouse within its own boundaries. Indeed, it was by looking to this ideal that the Greeks maintained resistance to the Persian king on a conceptual level even as some of them struck deals with his agents. Throughout the Persian empire, they told themselves, there lived only one free man, its king, whose subjects were his slaves; but Greek cities — those that were not themselves in the hands of tyrants — were self-governing republics, no matter whether oligarchic or democratic, however closely held the privileges of the ruling classes, however restricted their roster of full citizens. For whether political freedom belonged to few or to many, it belonged also to the republic itself.
Everywhere struggle would typically begin as a division within the elite: between those who would and those who would not strike political bargains with the populace.
Whereas Athenians of all social ranks could engage in a full range of commercial, agricultural and other activities likely to produce wealth, the small and tight-knit group of full Spartan citizens lived off the agricultural surplus produced by a large body of public serfs, and were expected to hold themselves aloof from money-making pursuits.
Sparta was nothing without the lengthy, rigorous and uniform education towards virtue that it imposed on the Spartiate youth, with the aim of producing well-disciplined men and indeed women of honor, bearers of an austere and martial culture that smothered internal faction and gave the place its reputation for eunomia, law and order.
And if the king was no enlightened monarch but an arbitrary despot whose will was law?
The school seems to have maintained an uneasy rivalry with the group of students and companions that Plato attracted to his home near a public park just outside Athens, named after an obscure local divinity, Academus.
Their political rhetoric is a matter of knowing how to keep things hidden from citizens whom the truth would only harm; their art of disputation, the coping-stone of their education, aims to tell things as they are. All this, of course, from the pen of a consummate master of the art of words. Plato is taking his stand, not against eloquence as such, but against its contemporary place in politics and in the education of those who took part in politics.
Look rather towards its restriction of political power to a tiny elite, consider their status as moral paragons and saviors, their centralized control of the moral and cultural as well as economic life of the society, their eugenic techniques, their resort to censorship and to outright deception in order to preserve order and promote good behavior, and you may think you are reading a prescient charter for fascism.
Certainly, Socrates does not hesitate to attribute wisdom and courage to Callipolis as a whole even though the virtues in question are restricted to small classes within the populace — much as each Greek republic called itself a free and self-governing community no matter how restricted its citizen-roll or governing class.
Reservations come to a focus at one of the work’s central and most disconcerting ideas: that a society should be governed by those who show least eagerness for the task. They frown upon excessive ambition, or sigh for an earlier age when the socially eminent engaged in public life from a sense of their station and its duties.
The philosopher, even the philosopher who becomes king, does not look to society as the realm in which to exercise his freedom and realize his virtue, but looks rather to the life of the mind for his liberation; nor does he define himself by his social station or the values of citizenship, but by his individual search for wisdom. For a work that is, in truth, no ancestor of liberalism, the Republic lays an unusual emphasis on the individual; however, it regards individuality not as a possession that confers rights on all and gives society its defining basis, but as an achievement of the few — an achievement in which society can play, at best, only a supporting role.
Human beings were driven to accept legal limits on their urge to take advantage of each other because they judged the unfettered satisfaction of that urge not worth the distress of finding themselves at the receiving end of the conduct to which it prompted others also — a result that only the strongest could entirely avoid.
The philosopher-king is like a ship’s captain or helmsman, who recognizes that to steer the ship of state one must have knowledge of the stars, the seasons, the winds. It is not enough, as politician in a democracy believe, merely to persuade the shipowner — the populace — to let one take the tiller in hand. A port of destination has no importance in this analogy and is not mentioned. When a demagogic sailors take control, their aim is not to set a new course but to feast on the ship’s stores and turn the voyage into a carousal. Society is simply a ship at sea, not a ship headed for a particular port. What the true helmsman will do that these sailors will not is use his knowledge of navigation to avoid storms and shoals — to keep the ship afloat. His political goals are limited to security, stability, social harmony.
The analysis derives from the Republic’s theory of the tripartite soul, according to which each person is characterized by a rational or wisdom-loving element; a desiring, material, or profit-loving element; and an ambitious or honor-loving element. Only in the truly virtuous person, however, are these elements properly balanced.
Callipolis is a just city because each of its 3 elements — philosopher-kings, warriors and producers — is performing the task to which it is best suited, and each stands in the appropriate relation to the others.
“Doing one’s own,” when it comes to the individual, is more than doing one’s part for the community; it is to conduct the business of oneself. Individuality is an achievement, and only the philosopher has the talent to achieve it, for only he provides each element in his make-up with what is best for it. All others may be a part of the just community, but cannot themselves, as individuals, be just.
The tyrannically inclined man who succeeds in becoming an actual tyrant is the unhappiest wretch of all, and can fulfill no part of his inner being.
Unlike the philosopher, each of the lesser types of person can see only as far as a horizon set by society. The timocrat seeks honor, the oligarch money, the democrat freedom and equality, the tyrannical man an exploitative self-indulgence.
About dialectic Plato is deliberately cagey. It is or involves philosophic disputation, as befits its etymological connection with the Greek word for “conversation”; it takes a global, unifying view of its topic; it aims to discover the definitions of things, and thereby the unchanging principles of all that exists — the “forms” — arriving finally at an understanding of the ultimate principle, the form of the good. But we are not told how it achieves this feat, and scholars dispute whether dialectical activity is some kind of meta-mathematics, or whether it quite transcends the ground that mathematics has prepared.
A full 10 years’ preparation in mathematics is required because only long exposure to the rational order of its objects, in combination with dialectic, can succeed in transmitting to the soul of the sympathetic learner a similarly rational order and proportion.
The more the pleasures of the body fade, the greater become one’s desire and taste for conversation.
They say they miss the things they used to enjoy when they were young, and they recall their sexual exploits, their drinking, their feasting, and everything connected with those pleasure. They get upset, as if they’d suffered some great loss — as if then they had led a wonderful life, whereas now they’re not alive at all.
Old age is altogether a time of great peace and freedom from that sort of thing. “When our appetites fade, and loosen their grip on us, then what happens is exactly what Sophocles was talking about. It is a final release from a bunch of insane masters.”
You’ve never struck me as being particularly fond of money. And that’s generally the attitude of those who haven’t made it themselves. Compared with most people, self-made men are doubly fond of their money. Those who have made a fortune are devoted to their money in the first place because it is their own creation — just as poets love their poems, or fathers love their children — and in the second place for what they can do with it, just like anyone else. This makes them very poor company, since they can see no value in anything except money.
If you want to avoid defrauding people, or lying to them, however reluctantly, or going to the world below in a state of terror after failing to pay what you owe — whether sacrifices to a god, or money to a man — then the possession of money contributes in no small measure to this end.
- What about justice, then? When you say it’s useful in peacetime, what is it useful for? What does it produce?
- Contracts, Socrates.
- And by contracts do you mean partnerships, or something else?
- I mean partnerships.