Plato’s The Republic Overview

 

 

         The Republic is an ancient Greek dialogue by the philosopher, Plato, about Socrates’ discourses about justice, ethics, and creating an ideal society.

 

Book 1 Main Ideas:

Socrates asks for a definition of justice and is met with three responses:

1. To give each what is owed to them.

2. To give to each what is appropriate to them.

3. Whatever is advantageous to the strongest.

Socrates then attempts to refute each definition. For the first definition, Socrates gives an example of returning a weapon to a madman. While a knife may be what was owed to them before they lost their sanity, returning it to them may cause them to harm someone. For the second definition, if doing good to one’s friends is appropriate and acting the reverse to one’s enemies is harmful, but harming someone tends to make one unjust, then harming one’s enemies will lead to justice creating injustice. Furthermore, our friends are not necessarily the most virtuous nor are our enemies completely evil. Therefore, this definition of justice will lead to injustice. As for the third definition, if the strong make a mistake regarding what is advantageous to themselves then it cannot be just as it would bring the reverse effect. However, a rebuttal is given to Socrates for the third definition by claiming that insofar as the stronger make mistakes, they are not in that regard the stronger. Socrates then rebuts this rebuttal by giving an analogy of a craftsman. Just as the craftsman’s duty is the good of the object, such is the case over the ruler over the ruled and not the other way around. Then another rebuttal is given by Socrates’ interlocutor that it is wiser to be unjust than just. Socrates tackles this claim head on with three claims:

1. The just man is wise and good, and the unjust man is ignorant and bad.

2. Injustice cannot be a virtue as it is contrary to wisdom. For example, a mathematician is not in competition with other mathematicians.

3. Virtue is excellence at a thing’s function and the just person lives a happier life than the unjust person, since he performs the various functions of the human soul well. Therefore, justice is a virtue of the soul.

 

Book 2 Main Ideas:

         An alternative definition of justice is presented to Socrates. This definition is based on social contract theory. Everyone would prefer to get away with harm to others without suffering it themselves, but since they cannot, they agree not to do harm to others so as not to suffer it themselves. Therefore, those who practice justice do so unwillingly and out of fear of punishment. Therefore, the life of the unpunished unjust man is better than that of the just man who is punished due to having the reputation of being just. Therefore, justice is utilitarian/consequentialist as it leads to the greater number of good and leads to good consequences rather than being good in itself.

         Socrates attempts to prove that justice is a good itself rather than being a tool for one’s reputation. He attempts to do this by creating an ideal state from the ground up that will continue until Book 4. This is because, if there are two types of justices, a political justice and an individual justice, since the city is bigger than an individual man then perhaps it is easier to first look for justice at the political level and later inquire as to whether there is any analogous virtue to be found in the individual. A good city is one where there are luxuries in demand and this will create jobs such as merchants and poets. There must also be a warrior caste to protect the country. These educated warriors are known as the guardians and they should be virtuous people as well as physically fit. The education of the guardians is vital as it shapes the type of person they will become as adults. When they are taught the stories of the gods of Olympus, these stories are to be abrogated and edited such that the gods are presented as morally good. Furthermore, the education of the guardians is more important than the rest of society as the guardians will be involved in political life as well while the mercantile and farmer castes will be specialized in their own vocations.

 

Book 3 Main Ideas:

         In the guardians’ education they must be taught to be heroes that must never fear death. Then he discusses the relationship between a boy and a man and how this should be part of a boy’s education but this love should be a pure love rather than sexual. There should also be a balance between poetry and physical education to prevent the guardians from becoming too fragile or brutish. Good art can lead people to follow reason. From the guardians a ruler must be selected. The characteristics of the ruler include being older, strong, wise, and wholly unwilling to do anything other than what is advantageous to the city. The young guardians are to be watched and tested and must be loyal to the city. In order for the castes to persist the children must be taught a myth to indoctrinate them. The myth of metals portrays each human as having a precious metal in them: those naturally suited to be rulers have gold, those suited to be guardians have silver, and those suited for farming and the other crafts have bronze. However, it is possible for a bronze person to birth a golden child. Finally, the guardians are to be provided housing and must not hold any private property or cash or pay any taxes. This is because if the ruler is to own private property then they will attempt to want more and abuse their power.

 

Book 4 Main Ideas:

         In order to maintain tranquility and an equilibrium in the city, there should not be any poverty nor too much wealth and the population should not be too big or too small. In fact, there should not be any money. The city should be unified and without conflict in the same way the soul should be. The soul has 3 parts just as the city does: Reason, appetite, and spirit for the soul and rulers, auxiliaries, and producing classes in the city. While the ruler may become unhappy due to lack of ownership of property, as long as the whole of the city is happy then there will be peace. Wisdom is found in the city’s ruler, courage is found in its military (also known as the auxiliaries), and justice is found when everyone in their caste fulfills their duty. Citywide justice has been established now it is time to define it on an individual basis. It is when each part of the soul is in unity and a just soul is a healthy soul.

 

Book 5 Main Ideas:

         The guardian class is to share wives and children. Furthermore, they should receive the same education and training, their human reproduction ought to be regulated by the state and all offspring should be ignorant of their actual biological parents. Males and females will be made husband and wife at these festivals for roughly the duration of sexual intercourse. The pairings will be determined by the best man mating with the best woman. Children should be taken to war as well to watch so they can learn for the future. Socrates claims that the model of the just city cannot come into being until philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers. Philosophers are the only ones who recognize and find pleasure in what is behind the multiplicity of appearances i.e. forms. Forms are eternal, unchanging, universal absolute ideas. Anything red we see is only red because it participates in the Form of the Red; anything square is only square because it participates in the Form of the Square.

 

Book 6 Main Ideas:

         Since the philosopher-king loves truth, his soul is just, and therefore, he should rule the city. The king of the city is analogous to the captain of a ship. The one person with the right nature who is educated in the right way and comes to grasp the forms. The most important thing philosophers should study is the Form of the Good. The Form of the Good renders the objects of knowledge knowable to the human soul. 

 

Book 7 Main Ideas:

         Socrates presents the famous Allegory of the Cave. Plato imagines a group of people who have lived their entire lives as prisoners who are chained to the wall of a cave such that they are unable to see the outside world behind them. However, a constant flame lights up various moving objects outside which produces a shadow on the wall of the cave visible to the prisoners. These prisoners, through having no other experience of reality, believe these shadows to be the real things. Plato then goes on to explain how the philosopher is akin to a prisoner who is freed from the cave. The prisoner is initially blinded by the light, but when he adjusts to the brightness he sees the fire and the statues and how they caused the images witnessed inside the cave. He sees that the fire and statues in the cave were just copies of the real objects. This is analogous to the Forms. What we see from day to day are merely appearances, reflections of the Forms. The philosopher, however, will not be deceived by the shadows and will hence be able to see the 'real' world, the world above that of appearances; the philosopher will gain knowledge of things in themselves. It then becomes the philosopher’s responsibility to reenter the cave to educate those in the material world. Since the philosopher recognizes what is truly good only he is fit to rule society according to Plato. The philosopher-king must also learn poetry, mathematics, astronomy, dialectics, and politics.

 

Book 8 Main Ideas:

         Plato categorized governments into five types which are aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. What leads to corruption in a society is the mistakes of the leader which will cause conflict between castes. The most just type of government according to Socrates is the aristocracy or kingship. The first to deviate from this is the timocracy such as Sparta. A timocracy in the time of the ancient Greeks focused on honor and power rather than wisdom and justice and therefore, will become militaristic. This happens when a person of the wrong caste joins the governing class. When the society focuses on wealth instead of honor it becomes an oligarchy where the ruling caste becomes wealthy and everyone else is poor. However, the oligarchs are not wasteful when gaining capital. Due to the disparity in wealth, there are class struggles and the poor majority takeover and establish a democracy (the next step would be communism for Marx). The ruling parties in a democracy do not have the proper knowledge of the philosopher-king and thus all citizens are labeled as equal and people pursue all sorts of bodily desires excessively and thus the soul is not in equilibrium. This person then becomes the tyrant. Socrates points out that when freedom is taken to such an extreme it produces its opposite, slavery. The tyrant, hungry for power, becomes corrupt and abusive and trusts no one including family.

 

Book 9 Main Ideas:

         A tyrant is one who is unable to balance their soul and reason with their desires. They follow lust and are incapable of friendship. They are the most unhappy people as their soul has been corrupted. Therefore, the more just the person, the happier they will be. The one who pursues wisdom and uses their reason will be the happiest. Relief from pain and bodily pleasures are merely a relief from pain but are not true pleasures. The only true pleasure comes from understanding since the objects it pursues are permanent i.e. forms. Ruling should be left to philosophers, who are the most just and therefore least susceptible to corruption. An aristocrat might lose power and wealth, and his son might try too hard to be successful in order to compensate. If a timocrat fails in court or against powerful people, his son might try to get rich to protect himself and thus become an oligarch. The oligarch’s child, spoiled with money and not taught to save might give in to too many wants and become democratic and thus value freedom most. But this democratic person struggles between being too controlling and too disciplined, ending up somewhere in between, liking both good and bad things. The tyrant faces the same temptations as the democrat but lacks discipline, so he gives in to his wild desires, using force and trickery to get what he wants.

 

Book 10 Main Ideas:

         Socrates discusses poetry and its problems as an imitative art which should not exist in his perfect society. For example, imagine a couch, there is the form of the couch, the particular couch, and a painting of a couch.  The products of imitation are far removed from the true couch.  Poets, like painters, are imitators who produce imitations without knowledge of the truth. The imitative arts cause the parts of the soul to be at war with each other and this leads to injustice and thus corrupts the people and society. Then Socrates discusses the soul and its immortality. Furthermore, the gods love justice and reward it and punish injustice. He presents the Myth of Er to illustrate this in terms of the punishments and rewards that follow death. The souls of the dead are able to choose their next lives and then they are reincarnated. In the soul’s next life people who were bad will choose souls of animals while a philosopher will be rewarded.