Republic is arguably Plato’s greatest work and is widely acknowledged as the cornerstone of Western philosophy and political science. Presented in the form of a dialogue between Socrates, various Athenians and foreigners, Republic is an enquiry into the notion of a perfect community and the ideal individual within it. During the conversation other questions are raised: what is goodness?; what is reality?; what is knowledge? Republic also addresses the purpose of education and the role of both women and men as guardians of the people. With remarkable lucidity and deft use of allegory, Plato arrives at a depiction of a state bound by harmony and governed by the ideal ruler, the philosopher king.
The Conversation
Set in the house of Polemarchus in Piraeus, a city-port connected to Athens by the Long Walls, Republic is narrated by Socrates the day after the conversation depicted in it took place. The cast of characters used by Plato to express his ideas are:
- Socrates – the protagonist
- Cephalus – an elderly arms manufacturer
- Thrasymachus – a Chalcedonian sophist
- Glaucon – son of Ariston
- Adeimantus – son of Ariston
- Polemarchus – son of Cephalus
- Cleitophon – son of Aristonymus
- Charmantides – a Paeanian
- Lysias – son of Cephalus
- Euthydemus – son of Cephalus
- Niceratus – son of Nicias
Definition of Justice
According to Socrates, justice ultimately becomes the action of doing what one does best according to one’s class within society. A just society is one in which the organisation of the state mirrors the organisation of the tripartite soul. The three classes in the state each correspond to a part of the soul: the guardians correspond to the rational part of the soul, the auxiliaries correspond to the spirited part of the soul, and the working-class corresponds to the desiring part of the soul. The guardians must be wise, the auxiliaries must be courageous , and all three must exhibit moderation.
Theory of Universals
Republic contains Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in which he seeks to illuminate his distinctive views on reality and our knowledge of it.
In the Allegory of the Cave Plato asks the reader to image a group of captives who have been imprisoned in a cave their entire lives. The only thing they have ever seen is the shadows cast by their captors on the wall of the cave and that is all they talk about. One of the captives is eventually freed so that he might walk about the cave and he discovers that the shadows they have seen are not real. Finally, the captive is freed from the cave altogether and, after first being nearly blinded by the light of the sun, is able to explore the outside world. The captive seeks to re-enter the cave to explain all he has learned to his fellow prisoners but they refuse to listen to him, believing him to be mad.
Plato used the cave to represent the realm of becoming, the visible world of people’s everyday experiences where everything is imperfect and changing. The captives represent ordinary people who live in a world of conjecture and illusion, while the freed captive is able to attain the most accurate view of reality possible within the constantly changing world of perception and experience.
The world outside of the cave represents the realm of being, the intelligible world of truth that is populated by perfect, unchanging knowledge.
The Dialectic Forms of Government
Much of the conversation recorded in Republic is a discussion about the form of the ideal state. The conversation includes a discussion about four forms of state that cannot sustain themselves long-term: timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny.
A timocracy is a government ruled by people who love honour and are selected on the basis of the level of honour they are viewed as having in society. Since honour is often bound up with notions of wealth and power, such a government would lead to the valuing of materialism above all things.
This love of materialism would create a confusion between economic status and honour which is responsible for the emergence of oligarchy. In such a society a divide exists between the rich and the poor, thus creating an environment for criminals and beggars to emerge.
As this divide grows, so do tensions between social classes. From the conflicts arising out of such tensions, democracy replaces the oligarchy preceding it. The poor overthrow the inexperienced oligarchs and soon grant liberties and freedoms to citizens. However, with too much freedom, the people become drunk, and tyranny takes over.
The excessive freedoms granted to the citizens of a democracy ultimately leads to a tyranny, the furthest regressed type of government. Tensions between the dominating class and the capitalists causes the commoners to seek out protection of their democratic liberties. They invest all their power in their democratic demagogue, who, in turn, becomes corrupted by the power and becomes a tyrant.
Ironically, the ideal state outlined by Socrates closely resembles a tyranny, but they are on opposite ends of the spectrum. This is because the philosopher king who rules the ideal state is not self-centered but is dedicated to the good of the state.
Republic by Plato (translated by Robin Waterfield)
ISBN 978-0199535767, Oxford Paperbacks, 2007, pp 560, £6.99
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