plato's republic essay questions

• Literature Notes
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• Book Summary
• About Plato's Republic
• Character List
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• Book I: Section I
• Book I: Section II
• Book I: Section III
• Book I: Section IV
• Book II: Section I
• Book II: Section II
• Book II: Section III
• Book III: Section I
• Book III: Section II
• Book III: Section III
• Book IV: Section I
• Book IV: Section II
• Book IV: Section III
• Book V: Section I
• Book V: Section II
• Book VI: Section I
• Book VI: Section II
• Book VI: Section III
• Book VII: Section I
• Book VII: Section II
• Book VII: Section III
• Book X: Section I
• Book X: Section II
• Book X: Section III
• Character Analysis
• Thrasymachus
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• Plato Biography
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• Plato's Flyting
• When Plato Was a Child
• Leonidas: Portrait of a Spartan
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Study Help Essay Questions

1.  Suppose someone had done you a wrong and you decided to get even by damaging his or her automobile. What would be Socrates' response to this situation in terms of justice and injustice? Discuss this in a graceful and intelligent essay.

2.  Suppose that some members of your community objected to a book being taught in the local high school because some of the characters in the book use profane and lewd language, and the book portrayed violence. At the same time, there is evidence that some people in society do and say the types of things done and said by characters in the book. Should the book be taught? Discuss this in a graceful and intelligent essay, which reflects your reading of the  Republic .

3.  Suppose that someone in your school is teaching Karl Marx's  The Communist Manifesto , and some of the patrons of your school say they want that faculty member dismissed because she must be a communist. Write a graceful and intelligent essay showing what is right or wrong with the argument outlined here.

4.  Suppose that someone objects to a current type of music preferred by citizens your age, and suppose the objector argued that the music should be banned from society because of the harm it might do to your moral convictions. Support  or  refute the objector's argument in a graceful and intelligent essay. Your essay should reflect your reading of Plato's ideas as expressed in the  Republic .

5.  Suppose that someone murders a member of your family with some sort of a sharp-edged weapon; suppose that there are no witnesses to the crime. What sort of evidence might your community adduce to bring the unknown perpetrator to justice? What might that justice entail? Discuss in a graceful and intelligent essay that may reflect some of the ideas presented in the  Republic .

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The Republic

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Is there always a conflict between morality and self-interest? Discuss in connection with chapters one and two of The Republic ?

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Respond using ideas from The Republic to the clam that the purpose of an education system is to create good citizens not free thinkers.

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The Republic Essay Questions

1. Explain the allegory of the cave and the lessons that it is supposed to impart.

2. How do Socrates and the others define justice and injustice? How do they arrive at this definition, and do you think that this is a good definition? Explain.

3. Plato disparages democracy. Do you agree with his criticisms? Explain.

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Plato’s Ethics and Politics in The Republic

Plato’s Republic centers on a simple question: is it always better to be just than unjust? The puzzles in Book One prepare for this question, and Glaucon and Adeimantus make it explicit at the beginning of Book Two. To answer the question, Socrates takes a long way around, sketching an account of a good city on the grounds that a good city would be just and that defining justice as a virtue of a city would help to define justice as a virtue of a human being. Socrates is finally close to answering the question after he characterizes justice as a personal virtue at the end of Book Four, but he is interrupted and challenged to defend some of the more controversial features of the good city he has sketched. In Books Five through Seven, he addresses this challenge, arguing (in effect) that the just city and the just human being as he has sketched them are in fact good and are in principle possible. After this long digression, Socrates in Books Eight and Nine finally delivers three “proofs” that it is always better to be just than unjust. Then, because Socrates wants not only to show that it is always better to be just but also to convince Glaucon and Adeimantus of this point, and because Socrates’ proofs are opposed by the teachings of poets, he bolsters his case in Book Ten by indicting the poets’ claims to represent the truth and by offering a new myth that is consonant with his proofs.

As this overview makes clear, the center of Plato’s Republic is a contribution to ethics: a discussion of what the virtue justice is and why a person should be just. Yet because Socrates links his discussion of personal justice to an account of justice in the city and makes claims about how good and bad cities are arranged, the Republic sustains reflections on political questions, as well. Not that ethics and politics exhaust the concerns of the Republic . The account in Books Five through Seven of how a just city and a just person are in principle possible is an account of how knowledge can rule, which includes discussion of what knowledge and its objects are. Moreover, the indictment of the poets involves a wide-ranging discussion of art. This article, however, focuses on the ethics and politics of Plato’s Republic . For more on what the Republic says about knowledge and its objects, see Plato: middle period metaphysics and epistemology , and for more about the discussion of the poets, see Plato: rhetoric and poetry .

This article attempts to provide a constructive guide to the main issues of ethics and politics in the Republic . Two assumptions shape its organization. First, it assumes that an account of ethics and politics in the Republic requires a preliminary understanding of the question Socrates is facing and the strategy Socrates uses to answer the question. Second, it assumes that politics in the Republic is based upon the moral psychology in the Republic , and thus that the former is more profitably discussed after the latter. With these assumptions in place, the following outline unfolds:

1.1 The Nature of the Question

1.2 rejected strategies, 1.3 the adopted strategy, 2.1 human motivations, 2.2 introducing virtuous motivations, 2.3 perfectly virtuous motivations, 2.4 imperfectly virtuous motivations, 3.1 psychological health, 3.2 pleasure, 4.1 utopianism, 4.2 communism, 4.3 feminism, 4.4 totalitarianism, 5. politics, part two: defective constitutions, 6. conclusions about the ethics and politics of plato’s republic, guide to reading, works cited, other internet resources, related entries, 1. introduction: the question and the strategy.

In Book One, the Republic ’s question first emerges in the figure of Cephalus. After Socrates asks his host what it is like being old (328d–e) and rich (330d)—rather rude, we might think—Cephalus says that the best thing about wealth is that it can save us from being unjust and thus smooth the way for an agreeable afterlife (330d–331b). This is enough to prompt more questions, for Socrates wants to know what justice is. Predictably, Cephalus and then Polemarchus fail to define justice in a way that survives Socratic examination, but they continue to assume that justice is a valuable part of a good human life. Thrasymachus erupts when he has had his fill of this conversation (336a–b), and he challenges the assumption that it is good to be just. On Thrasymachus’ view (see especially 343c–344c), justice is conventionally established by the strong, in order that the weak will serve the interests of the strong. The strong themselves, on this view, are better off disregarding justice and serving their own interests directly.

Socrates sees in this “immoralist” challenge the explicit question of whether one should live a just or unjust life (344d–e), and he tries repeatedly to repel Thrasymachus’ onslaught. (See the entry on Callicles and Thrasymachus .) Eventually, Thrasymachus withdraws sullenly, like Callicles in the Gorgias , but Socrates’ “victory” fails to satisfy Glaucon and Adeimantus. The brothers pick up where Thrasymachus left off, providing reasons why most people think that justice is not intrinsically valuable but worth respecting only if one is not strong enough (or invisible enough) to get away with injustice. They want to be shown that most people are wrong, that justice is worth choosing for its own sake. More than that, Glaucon and Adeimantus want to be shown that justice is worth choosing regardless of the rewards or penalties bestowed on the just by other people and the gods, and they will accept this conclusion only if Socrates can convince them that it is always better to be just. So Socrates must persuade them that the just person who is terrifically unfortunate and scorned lives a better life than the unjust person who is so successful that he is unfairly rewarded as if he were perfectly just (see 360d–361d).

The challenge that Glaucon and Adeimantus present has baffled modern readers who are accustomed to carving up ethics into deontologies that articulate a theory of what is right independent of what is good and consequentialisms that define what is right in terms of what promotes the good (Foster 1937, Mabbott 1937, cf. Prichard 1912 and 1928). The insistence that justice be praised “itself by itself” has suggested to some that Socrates will be offering a deontological account of justice. But the insistence that justice be shown to be beneficial to the just has suggested to others that Socrates will be justifying justice by reference to its consequences.

In fact, both readings are distortions, predicated more on what modern moral philosophers think than on what Plato thinks. Socrates takes the basic challenge to concern how justice relates to the just person’s objective success or happiness (Greek eudaimonia ). In Book One, he argued that justice, as a virtue, makes the soul perform its function well and that a person who lives well is “blessed and happy” (352d–354a, quoting 354a1). At the beginning of Book Two, he retains his focus on the person who aims to be happy. He says, “I think that justice belongs in the best class [of goods], that which should be loved both for its own sake and for the sake of its consequences by anyone who is going to be blessed” (358a1–3). Given this perspective, Socrates has to show that smartly pursuing one’s happiness favors being just (which requires always acting justly) over being unjust (which tolerates temptation to injustice and worse), apart from the consequences that attend to the appearance of being just or unjust. But he does not have to show that being just or acting justly brings about happiness. The function argument in Book One suggests that acting justly is the same as being happy. If Socrates stands by this identity, he can simultaneously show that justice is valuable “itself by itself” and that the just are happier.

But the function argument concludes that justice is both necessary and sufficient for happiness (354a), and this is a considerably stronger thesis than the claim that the just are always happier than the unjust. After the challenge Glaucon and Adeimantus present, Socrates might not be so bold. Even if he successfully maintains that acting justly is identical to being happy, he might think that there are circumstances in which no just person could act justly and thus be happy. This will nonetheless satisfy Glaucon and Adeimantus if the just are better off (that is, closer to happy) than the unjust in these circumstances. (See also Kirwan 1965 and Irwin 1999.)

After the challenge of Glaucon and Adeimantus, Socrates takes off in a strange direction (from 367e). He suggests looking for justice as a virtue of cities before defining justice as a virtue of persons, on the unconvincing grounds that justice in a city is bigger and more apparent than justice in a person (368c–369b), and this leads Socrates to a rambling description of some features of a good city (369b–427c). This may seem puzzling. But Socrates’ indirect approach is not unmotivated. The arguments of Book One and the challenge of Glaucon and Adeimantus rule out several more direct routes.

First, Socrates might have tried to settle quickly on a widely accepted account of what justice is and moved immediately to considering whether that is always in one’s interests. But Book One rules this strategy out by casting doubt on widely accepted accounts of justice. Socrates must say what justice is in order to answer the question put to him, and what he can say is constrained in important ways. Most obviously, he cannot define justice as happiness without begging the question. But he also must give an account of justice that his interlocutors recognize as justice : if his account of justice were to require torturing red-headed children for amusement, he would fail to address the question that Glaucon and Adeimantus are asking.

Moreover, Socrates cannot try to define justice by enumerating the types of action that justice requires or forbids. We might have objected to this strategy for this reason: because action-types can be specified in remarkably various ways and at remarkably different levels of specificity, no list of just or unjust action-types could be comprehensive. But a specific argument in Book One suggests a different reason why Socrates does not employ this strategy. When Cephalus characterizes justice as keeping promises and returning what is owed, Socrates objects by citing a case in which returning what is owed would not be just (331c). This objection potentially has very wide force, as it seems that exceptions could always be found for any action-type that does not include in its description a word like ‘wrong’ or ‘just’. Wrongful killing may always be wrong, but is killing? Just recompense may always be right, but is recompense?

So Book One makes it difficult for Socrates to take justice for granted. What is worse, the terms in which Socrates accepts the challenge of Glaucon and Adeimantus make it difficult for him to take happiness for granted. If Socrates were to proceed like a consequentialist, he might offer a full account of happiness and then deliver an account of justice that both meets with general approval and shows how justice brings about happiness. But Socrates does not proceed like that. He does not even do as much as Aristotle does in the Nicomachean Ethics ; he does not suggest some general criteria for what happiness is. He proceeds as if happiness is unsettled. But if justice at least partly constitutes happiness and justice is unsettled, then Socrates is right to proceed as if happiness is unsettled.

In sum, Socrates needs to construct an account of justice and an account of happiness at the same time, and he needs these accounts to entail without assuming the conclusion that the just person is always happier than the unjust.

The difficulty of this task helps to explain why Socrates takes the curious route through the discussion of civic justice and civic happiness. Socrates can assume that a just city is always more successful or happy than an unjust city. The assumption begs no questions, and Glaucon and Adeimantus readily grant it. If Socrates can then explain how a just city is always more successful and happy than an unjust city, by giving an account of civic justice and civic happiness, he will have a model to propose for the relation between personal justice and flourishing.

Socrates’ strategy depends on an analogy between a city and a person. There must be some intelligible relation between what makes a city successful and what makes a person successful. But to answer the Republic ’s question, Socrates does not need any particular account of why the analogy holds, nor does he need the analogy to hold broadly (that is, for a wide range of characteristics). It works even if it only introduces an account of personal justice and happiness that we might not have otherwise entertained.

Although this is all that the city-person analogy needs to do, Socrates seems at times to claim more for it, and one of the abiding puzzles about the Republic concerns the exact nature and grounds for the full analogy that Socrates claims. At times Socrates seems to say that the same account of justice must apply to both persons and cities because the same account of any predicate ‘F’ must apply to all things that are F (e.g., 434d–435a). At other times Socrates seems to say that the same account of justice must apply in both cases because the F-ness of a whole is due to the F-ness of its parts (e.g., 435d–436a). Again, at times Socrates seems to say that these grounds are strong enough to permit a deductive inference: if a city’s F-ness is such-and-such, then a person’s F-ness must be such-and-such (e.g., 441c). At other times, Socrates would prefer to use the F-ness of the city as a heuristic for locating F-ness in persons (e.g., 368e–369a). Plato is surely right to think that there is some interesting and non-accidental relation between the structural features and values of society and the psychological features and values of persons, but there is much controversy about whether this relation really is strong enough to sustain all of the claims that Socrates makes for it in the Republic (Williams 1973, Lear 1992, Smith 1999, Ferrari 2003).

Still, the Republic primarily requires an answer to Glaucon and Adeimantus’ question, and that answer does not depend logically on any strong claims for the analogy between cities and persons. Rather, it depends upon a persuasive account of justice as a personal virtue, and persuasive reasons why one is always happier being just than unjust. So we can turn to these issues before returning to Socrates’ remarks about the successful city.

2. Ethics, Part One: What Justice Is

Socrates seeks to define justice as one of the cardinal human virtues, and he understands the virtues as states of the soul. So his account of what justice is depends upon his account of the human soul.

According to the Republic , every human soul has three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite. (This is a claim about the embodied soul. In Book Ten, Socrates argues that the soul is immortal (608c–611a) and says that the disembodied soul might be simple (611a–612a), though he declines to insist on this (612a) and the Timaeus and Phaedrus apparently disagree on the question.) At first blush, the tripartition can suggest a division into beliefs, emotions, and desires. But Socrates explicitly ascribes beliefs, emotions, and desires to each part of the soul (Moline 1978). In fact, it is not even clear that Plato would recognize psychological attitudes that are supposed to be representational without also being affective and conative, or conative and affective without also being representational. Consequently, ‘belief’ and ‘desire’ in translations or discussions of Plato (including this one) must be handled with care; they should not be understood along Humean lines as motivationally inert representations, on the one hand, and non-cognitive motivators, on the other.

The Republic offers two general reasons for the tripartition. First, Socrates argues that we cannot coherently explain certain cases of psychological conflict unless we suppose that there are at least two parts to the soul. The core of this argument is what we might call the principle of non-opposition: “the same thing will not be willing to do or undergo opposites in the same respect, in relation to the same thing, at the same time” (436b8–9). This is a perfectly general metaphysical principle, comparable to Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction ( Metaphysics G3 1005b19–20). Because of this principle, Socrates insists that one soul cannot be the subject of opposing attitudes unless one of three conditions is met. One soul can be the subject of opposing attitudes if the attitudes oppose each other at different times, even in rapidly alternating succession (as Hobbes explains mental conflict). One soul can also be the subject of opposing attitudes if the attitudes relate to different things, as a desire to drink champagne and a desire to drink a martini might conflict. Last, one soul can be the subject of opposing attitudes if the attitudes oppose in different respects .

Initially, this third condition is obscure. The way Socrates handles putative counter-examples to the principle of non-opposition (at 436c–e) might suggest that when one thing experiences one opposite in one of its parts and another in another, it is not experiencing opposites in different respects (Stalley 1975; Bobonich 2002, 228–31; Lorenz 2006, 23–24). That would entail, apparently, that it is not one thing experiencing opposites at all, but merely a plurality. But Socrates later rewords the principle of non-opposition’s “same respect” condition as a “same part” condition (439b), which explicitly allows one thing to experience one opposite in one of its parts and another in another. The most natural way of relating these two articulations of the principle is to suppose that experiencing one opposite in one part and another in another is just one way to experience opposites in different respects. But however we relate the two articulations to each other, Socrates clearly concludes that one soul can experience simultaneously opposing attitudes in relation to the same thing, but only if different parts of it are the direct subjects of the opposing attitudes.

Socrates employs this general strategy four times. In Book Four, he twice considers conflicting attitudes about what to do. First, he imagines a desire to drink being opposed by a calculated consideration that it would be good not to drink (439a–d). (We might think, anachronistically, of someone about to undergo surgery.) This is supposed to establish a distinction between appetite and reason. Then he considers cases like that of Leontius, who became angry with himself for desiring to ogle corpses (439e–440b). These cases are supposed to establish a distinction between appetite and spirit. In Book Ten, Socrates appeals to the principle of non-opposition when considering the decent man who has recently lost a son and is conflicted about grieving (603e–604b) (cf. Austin 2016) and when considering conflicting attitudes about how things appear to be (602c–603b) (cf. Moss 2008 and Singpurwalla 2011). These show a broad division between reason and an inferior part of the soul (Ganson 2009); it is compatible with a further distinction between two inferior parts, spirit and appetite.

Socrates’ arguments from psychological conflict are well-tailored to explain akrasia (weakness of will) (Penner 1990, Bobonich 1994, Carone 2001). In the Protagoras , Socrates denies that anyone willingly does other than what she believes to be best, but in the Republic , the door is opened for a person to act on an appetitive attitude that conflicts with a rational attitude for what is best. How far the door is open to akrasia awaits further discussion below. For now, there are other more pressing questions about the Republic ’s explanation of psychological conflict.

First, what kinds of parts are reason, spirit, and appetite? Some scholars believe that they are merely conceptual parts, akin to subsets of a set (Shields 2001, Price 2009). They would object to characterizing the parts as subjects of psychological attitudes. But the arguments from conflict treat reason, spirit, and appetite as distinct subjects of psychological states and events, and it seems best to take Socrates’ descriptions at face value unless there is compelling reason not to (Kamtekar 2006). At face value, Socrates offers a more robust conception of parts, wherein each part is like an independent agent.

Indeed, this notion of parts is robust enough to make one wonder why reason, spirit, and appetite are parts at all, as opposed to three independent subjects. But the Republic proceeds as though every embodied human being has just one soul that comprises three parts. No embodied soul is perfectly unified: even the virtuous person, who makes her soul into a unity as much as she can (443c–e), has three parts in her soul. (She must, as we shall see, in order to be just.) But every embodied soul enjoys an unearned unity: every human’s reason, spirit, and appetite constitute a single soul that is the unified source of that human’s life and is a unified locus of responsibility for that human’s thoughts and actions. (It is not as though a person is held responsible for what his reason does but not for what his appetite does.) There are questions about what exactly explains this unearned unity of the soul (see E. Brown 2012).

There are also questions about whether the arguments from conflict establish exactly three parts of the soul (and see Whiting 2012). Some worry that the discussion of Leontius does not warrant the recognition of a third part of the soul (but see Brennan 2012), and some worry that the appetitive part contains such a multitude of attitudes that it must be subject to further conflicts and further partitioning (and see 443e with Kamtekar 2008). Answering these questions requires us to characterize more precisely the kind of opposition that forces partitioning , in accordance with the principle of non-opposition (compare Reeve 1988, 124–31; Irwin 1995, 203–17; Price 1995, 46–48; and Lorenz 2006, 13–52), and to examine more carefully the broader features being attributed to the three parts of the soul (on appetite, e.g., compare Bobonich 2002, Lorenz 2006, and Moss 2008).

Fortunately, the arguments from conflict do not work alone. Indeed, they cannot, as the principle of non-opposition merely establishes a constraint on successful psychological explanations. Appeals to this principle can show where some division must exist, but they do not by themselves characterize the parts so divided. So, already in Book Four’s arguments from conflict, Socrates invokes broader patterns of psychology and appeals to the parts to explain these patterns (cf. 435d–436b).

This appeal to reason, spirit, and appetite to explain broader patterns of human thought and action constitutes the Republic ’s second general strategy to support tripartition. It receives its fullest development in Books Eight and Nine, where Socrates uses his theory of the tripartite soul to explain a variety of psychological constitutions. In the most basic implementation of this strategy, Socrates distinguishes people ruled by reason, those ruled by spirit, and those ruled by appetite (580d–581e, esp. 581c): the first love wisdom and truth, the second love victory and honor, and the third profit and money. This simplistic division, it might be noted in passing, fixes the sides for an ongoing debate about whether it is best to be a philosopher, a politician, or an epicure (see, e.g., Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I 5 and X 6–8). But more important for our purposes here, this basic classification greatly illuminates the division of the soul.

First, we learn about the organizing aims of each of the psychological parts (Cooper 1984, Kahn 1987, Reeve 1988, Moss 2005). In Book Four, reason is characterized by its ability to track what is good for each part and the soul as a whole (441e, 442c). In Book Nine, reason is characterized by its desire for wisdom. These are not bifurcated aims. Socrates argues that people are not satisfied merely with what they take to be good for themselves but want what is in fact good for them (505d). So reason naturally pursues not just what it takes to be good for the whole soul but also the wisdom that ensures that it would get this right. Nor is wisdom’s value merely instrumental to discovering what is good for one. If wisdom is a fundamental constituent of virtue and virtue is a fundamental constituent of what is good for a human being, then wisdom turns out to be a fundamental constituent of what is good for a human being. So it should not be surprising that the part of the soul that tracks and pursues what is good for the whole soul also loves wisdom. Spirit, by contrast, tracks social preeminence and honor. If ‘good’ is the organizing predicate for rational attitudes, ‘honorable’ or ‘fine’ (Greek kalon ) is the organizing predicate for spirited attitudes (Singpurwalla 2013). Finally, appetite seeks material satisfaction for bodily urges, and because money better than anything else provides this, people ruled by appetite often come to love money above all.

The basic division of the world into philosophers, honor-lovers, and money-lovers also illuminates what Socrates means by talking of being ruled by one part of the soul. If one part dominates in you, then aims of that part are your aims. If, for example, you are ruled by spirit, then your reason conceives of your good in terms of what is honorable. Reason has its own aim, to get what is in fact good for the whole soul, but in a soul perfectly ruled by spirit, where there are no genuine psychological conflicts between different parts, reason’s love for truth and wisdom must be limited to that which is also held to be honorable.

Still, Plato’s full psychological theory is much more complicated than the basic division of persons would suggest. First, there are different kinds of appetitive attitudes (558d–559c, 571a–572b): some are necessary for human beings; some are unnecessary but regulable (“lawful”), and some are unnecessary and entirely uncontrollable (“lawless”). So there are in fact five kinds of pure psychological constitutions: aristocratically constituted persons (those ruled by their rational attitudes), timocratically constituted persons (those ruled by their spirited attitudes), oligarchically constituted persons (ruled by necessary appetitive attitudes), democratically constituted persons (ruled by unnecessary appetitive attitudes), and tyrannically constituted persons (ruled by lawless appetitive attitudes). The first three of these constitutions are characteristically ordered toward simple aims (wisdom, honor, and money, respectively), but the last two are not so ordered, because there is no simple aim of the unnecessary appetites, be they lawful or lawless. In effect, the democratic and tyrannical souls treat desire-satisfaction itself and the pleasure associated with it as their end. The democrat treats all desires and pleasures as equally valuable and restricts herself to lawful desires, but the tyrant embraces disordered, lawless desires and has a special passion for the apparently most intense, bodily pleasures (cf. Scott 2000, Johnstone 2013, and Johnstone 2015).

The second complication is that some people are not perfectly ruled by one part of the soul, but are subject to continuing conflicts between, say, attitudes in favor of doing what is honorable and appetitive attitudes in favor of pursuing a shameful tryst. Socrates does not concentrate on these people, nor does he say how common they are. But he does acknowledge their existence (544c–d, cf. 445c). Moreover, the occurrence of akrasia would seem to require their existence. For if I am perfectly ruled by my spirit, then I take my good to be what is honorable, and how could I be akratic? My spirit and my reason are in line, so there will be no overpowering of rational preferences about what is best by spirit. You might suppose that my appetite could overcome my sense of what is honorable, but in that case, it would seem that I am not, after all, perfectly ruled by my spirit. Things might seem different with people ruled by their appetite. Certainly, if I were perfectly ruled by appetite, then I would be susceptible to akrasia of the impetuous sort, acting on appetitive desires without reflectively endorsing them as good. But impetuous akrasia is quite distinct from the standard akrasia in which I endorse φing as best for me and at just that moment intentionally ψ instead, and standard akrasia would seem to be impossible in any soul that is perfectly ruled by any one part of the soul. If you think that competing appetitive attitudes could give rise to a strict case of standard akrasia, you should recall how Socrates would have to explain these cases of psychological conflict in order to avoid multiplying his divisions in the soul.

The general strategy of the Republic ’s psychology—to explain human thought and action by reference to subpersonal homunculi—remains both appealing and problematic (Burnyeat 2006). Moreover, the dialogue is filled with pointed observations and fascinating speculations about human psychology. Some of them pull us up short, as, for example, the Freudian recognition of Oedipal desires that come out only in dreams (571c–d). The full theory is complex, and there remain numerous questions about many of its details.

Fortunately, these questions do not have to be settled here for us to entertain Socrates’ response to Glaucon and Adeimantus’ challenge. Indeed, although his response builds closely on the psychological theory, some broad features of the response could be accepted even by those who reject the tripartite psychology.

In Book Four, Socrates defines each of the cardinal virtues in terms of the complicated psychology he has just sketched. A person is wise just in case her rational attitudes are functioning well, so that her rational part “has in it the knowledge of what is advantageous for each part [of the soul] and for the whole in common of the three parts” (442c5–8). So the unwise person has a faulty conception of what is good for him. A person is courageous just in case her spirited attitudes do not change in the face of pains and pleasures but stay in agreement with what is rationally recognized as fearsome and not (442bc). So the coward will, in the face of prospective pains, fail to bear up to what he rationally believes is not genuinely fearsome, and the rash person will, in the face of prospective pleasures, rush headlong into what he rationally believes to be fearsome. A person is temperate or moderate just in case the different parts of her soul are in agreement. So the intemperate person has appetitive or spirited attitudes in competition with the rational attitudes, appetitive or spirited attitudes other than those the rational attitudes deem to be good. Finally, a person is just just in case all three parts of her soul are functioning as they should (441d12–e2; cf. 443c9–e2). Justice, then, requires the other virtues. So the unjust person fails to be moderate, or fails to be wise, or fails to be courageous.

Actually, the relation among the virtues seems tighter than that, for it seems that the unjust person necessarily fails to be wise, courageous, and temperate (cf. Cooper 1998). You might try to deny this. You might say that a person could be courageous—with spirited attitudes that track perfectly what the rational attitudes say is fearsome and not, in the face of any pleasures and pains—but still be unjust insofar has her rational attitudes are inadequately developed, failing to know what really is fearsome. But Socrates seems to balk at this possibility by contrasting the civically courageous whose spirit preserves law-inculcated beliefs about what is fearsome and not and the genuinely courageous in whom, presumably, spirit preserves knowledge about what is fearsome and not (430a–c). So you might say instead that a person could be moderate—utterly without appetitive attitudes at odds with what his rational attitudes say is good for him—but still be unjust insofar as his rational attitudes are inadequately developed and fail to know what really is good. But this picture of a meek, but moderate soul seems to sell short the requirements of moderation, which are not merely that there be no insurrections in the soul but also that there be agreement that the rational attitudes should rule. This would seem to require that there actually be appetitive attitudes that are in agreement with the rational attitudes’ conception of what is good, which would in turn require that the rational attitudes be sufficiently strong to have a developed conception of what is good. Moreover, it would seem to require that the rational attitudes which endorse ruling be ruling, which would in turn require that the rational attitudes are at least on the path toward determining what really is good for the person. If these considerations are correct, then the unjust are lacking in virtue tout court , whereas the just possess all of the virtues.

After sketching these four virtues in Book Four, Socrates is ready to move from considering what justice is in a person to why a person should be just (444e). But this is premature. Socrates is moving to show that it is always better to have a just soul, but he was asked to show that it is always better to be the person who does just actions. We might doubt that an answer concerning psychological justice is relevant to the question concerning practical justice (Sachs 1963).

It is easy to misstate this objection (Demos 1964, Dahl 1991). The problem is not that the question is about justice as it is ordinarily understood and Socrates is failing to address conventional justice. Neither the question nor the answer is bound to how justice is ordinarily understood, given what happened in Book One. Moreover, the problem is not that Socrates’ answer is relevant only if the class of the psychologically just and the class of the practically just are coextensive. That would require Socrates to show that everyone who acts justly has a just soul, and Socrates quite reasonably shows no inclination for that thesis. (Some people do what is right for the wrong reasons.) He may have to establish some connection between doing just actions and becoming psychologically just if he is to give reasons to those who are not yet psychologically just to do just actions, but an account of habituation would be enough to do this (cf. 443e, 444c–d).

The real problem raised by the objection is this: how can Socrates justify the claim that people with just souls are practically just? First, he must be able to show that the psychologically just refrain from injustice, and second, he must be able to show that the psychologically just do what is required by justice. The first point receives a gesture when Socrates is trying to secure the claim that harmonious functioning of the whole soul really deserves to be called justice (442e–443a), but he offers no real argument. Perhaps the best we can do on his behalf is to insist that the first point is not a thesis for argument but a bold empirical hypothesis. On this view, it is simply an empirical question whether all those who have the motivations to do unjust things happen to have souls that are out of balance, and an army of psychologists would be needed to answer the question.

That might seem bad enough, but the second point does not even receive a gesture. There is no denying the presence of this second requirement on the grounds that justice is a matter of refraining from harm (“negative duties”) and not of helping others (“positive duties”). Socrates does not criticize the Book One suggestion that justice requires helping friends (332a ff.); he and his interlocutors agree that justice requires respect for parents and care for the gods (443a); and they treat the principle that each should do his job (and thereby contribute to the city) as the image of justice (443c). So according to Plato’s Republic justice includes both negative and positive duties.

Before we can consider Socrates’ answer to the question of the Republic , we must have reason to accept that those who have harmonious souls do what is required by justice. Otherwise, we cannot be sure that psychological harmony is justice. Unfortunately, Socrates does not give any explicit attention to this worry at the end of Book Four or in the argument of Books Eight and Nine. But there are other places to look for a solution to this worry. First, we might look to Books Five through Seven. Second, we might look to Books Two and Three.

In Book Four Socrates says that the just person is wise and thus knows what is good for him, but he does not say anything about what knowledge or the good is. In Books Five through Seven he clearly addresses these issues and fills out his account of virtue. He shows, in sum, that one is virtuous if and only if one is a philosopher, for he adds to Book Four’s insistence that virtue requires knowledge the new claim that only philosophers have knowledge (esp. 474b–480a). His account also opens the possibility that knowledge of the good provides the crucial link between psychological justice and just actions.

The philosophers are initially distinguished from non-philosophers because they answer questions like ‘What is beautiful?’ by identifying the imperceptible property (form) of beauty instead of some perceptible property or particulars (474b–480a). Socrates does not name any philosophers who can knowledgeably answer questions like that. In fact, his account of how philosophers would be educated in the ideal city suggests that the ability to give knowledgeable answers requires an enormous amount of (largely mathematical) learning in advance of the questions themselves (521b–540a). How would this mathematical learning and knowledge of forms affect one’s motivations?

One effect can be found by interpreting the form of the good that the philosopher comes to grasp, since this should shape the philosopher’s rational conception of what is good for her. The form of the good is a shadowy presence in the Republic , lurking behind the images of the Sun, Line, and Cave. But it is clear enough that Socrates takes goodness to be unity (Hitchcock 1985). He explicitly emphasizes that a virtuous person makes himself a unity (443c–e) and insists that a city is made good by being made a unity (462a–b). The assumption that goodness is unity also explains why mathematics is so important to the ascent to the good (through mathematics an account of the one over the many is learned) (cf. Burnyeat 2000), why the good is superior to other forms (the good is the unity or coherence of them, and not another alongside them), why the other forms are good (by being part of the unified or coherent order), and why goodness secures the intelligibility of the other forms (they are fully known teleologically). (It also comports with the evidence concerning Plato’s lecture on the good (e.g., Aristoxenus, Elementa Harmonica II 1; cf. Aristotle Eudemian Ethics 1218a20 and Metaphysics 988a8–16 and b10–15.) So the philosophers, by grasping the form of the good, will recognize goodness in themselves as the unity in their souls. They will see that the harmony or coherence of their psychological attitudes makes them good, that each of their attitudes is good insofar as it is part of a coherent set, and that their actions are good insofar as they sustain the unity in their souls (cf. 443e).

But there are other ways in which mathematical learning and knowledge of forms might affect one’s motivations. Socrates suggests one way when he says that a philosopher will aspire to imitate the harmony among the forms (500b–d). Some scholars have understood Socrates to be saying that philosophers will desire to reproduce this order by cultivating more order and virtue in the world, as Diotima suggests in the Symposium (Irwin 1995, 298–317; cf. Waterlow 1972–1973, Cooper 1977, Kraut 1991). On this reading, knowledge of the forms motivates just actions that help other people, which helps to solve the standing worry about the relation between psychological justice and practical justice.

Unfortunately, it is far from obvious that this is what Socrates means. He does not actually say in the Republic that knowledge of the forms freely motivates beneficence. In fact, he says eight times that the philosophers in the ideal city will have to be compelled to rule and do their part in sustaining the perfectly just city (473d4, 500d4, 519e4, 520a8, 520e2, 521b7, 539e3, 540b5). It is possible to understand this compulsion as the constraint of justice: the philosophers rule because justice demands that they rule. But Socrates himself suggests a different way of characterizing the compulsion. He suggests that the compulsion comes from a law that requires those who are educated to be philosophers to rule. Moreover, this characterization better fits Socrates’ insistence that the philosophers are the best rulers because they prefer not to rule even while they are ruling (520e–521b, with 519c and 540b). For on this account, the philosophers’ justice alone does not motivate them to rule; rather, their justice motivates them to obey the law, which justly compels them to rule (E. Brown 2000).

There is another reason to worry about explaining just actions by the motivating power of knowledge. If the philosophers are motivated to do what is just by their knowledge of the forms, then there would seem to be an enormous gap between philosophers and non-philosophers. In addition to the epistemic gap—the philosophers have knowledge and the non-philosophers do not—we have a motivational gap: the philosophers’ knowledge gives them motivations to do what is required by justice, and the non-philosophers are not similarly motivated. This gap suggests some rather unpalatable conclusions about the character of non-philosophers’ lives even in the ideal city, and it also sits poorly with Socrates’ evident desire to take the philosophers’ justice as a paradigm that can be usefully approximated by non-philosophers (472c–d).

Socrates’ long discussion in Books Two and Three of how to educate the guardians for the ideal city offers a different approach (E. Brown 2004, Singpurwalla 2006; cf. Gill 1985, Kamtekar 1998, and Scott 1999). This education is most often noted for its carefully censored “reading list;” the young guardians-to-be will not be exposed to inappropriate images of gods and human beings. Less often noted is how optimistic Socrates is about the results of a sufficiently careful education. A well-trained guardian will “praise fine things, be pleased by them, receive them into his soul, and, being nurtured by them, become fine and good,” and each will “rightly object to what is shameful, hating it while he’s still young and unable to grasp the reason” (401e4–402a2; cf. 441e). Note that Socrates has the young guardians not only responding to good things as honorable (with spirited attitudes), but also becoming fine and good. Moreover, Socrates is confident that the spirited guardians are stably good: when he is describing the possibility of civic courage in Book Four, he suggests that proper education can stain the spirited part of the soul with the right dispositions so deeply that they will be preserved “through everything” (429b8, 429c8, 430b2–3).

This optimism suggests that the motivations to do what is right are acquired early in moral education, built into a soul that might become, eventually, perfectly just. And this in turn suggests one reason why Socrates might have skipped the question of why the psychologically just can be relied upon to do what is right. Socrates might assume that anyone who is psychologically just must have been raised well, and that anyone who has been raised well will do what is right. So understood, early childhood education, and not knowledge of the forms, links psychological justice and just action.

Of course, there are questions about how far Socrates could extend this optimism about imperfect virtue among non-philosophers. Perhaps honor-loving members of the auxiliary class have psychological harmony secured by their consistent attachment to what they have learned is honorable, but what about the members of the producing class? Can their attachment to the satisfaction of bodily desires be educated in such a way that they enjoy, in optimal social circumstances, a well-ordered soul? Do they even receive a primary education in the ideal city? These questions will be considered more fully below (and see Wilberding 2012 and Wilburn 2014).

Open questions aside, it should be clear that there are two general ways of linking psychological justice to just action: one that depends upon the motivational power of knowledge in particular and the other that depends upon the early training of a wide range of attitudes in the young. If one of these ways works, then Socrates is entitled to argue that it is always better to be just than unjust by showing why it is always better to have a harmonious soul.

3. Ethics, Part Two: Why a Person should be Just

It is possible to find in the Republic as many as five separate arguments for the claim that it is better to be just than unjust, without regard to how other people and gods perceive us. The first appeals to an analogy between psychological health and physical health in Book Four (445a–b). The second, third, and fourth are what Socrates calls his three “proofs” in Books Eight and Nine (543c–580c, esp. 576b–580c; 580c–583a; 583b–588a). And the fifth is the image of the human soul consisting of a little human being (reason), a lion (spirit), and a many-headed beast (appetite) (588b ff.). Yet the first of these is interrupted and said in Book Eight to be continuous with the first “proof” of Books Eight and Nine (543c), and the last of them seems to be offered as a closing exhortation. This whittling leaves us with the three arguments that Socrates labels his “proofs” (580c9, cf. 583b), the first discussing psychological health and disease at length and the second and third concerning pleasure.

Already in Book Four, Glaucon is ready to declare that unjust souls are ruined and in turmoil. But Socrates presses for a fuller reckoning. When he finally resumes in Book Eight where he had left off in Book Four, Socrates offers a long account of four defective psychological types. The list is not exhaustive (544cd, cf. 445c), but it captures the four imperfect kinds of pure psychological constitutions: pure rule by spirited attitudes, pure rule by necessary appetitive attitudes, pure rule by unnecessary but regulable appetitive attitudes, and pure rule by lawless appetitive attitudes. At the end of this long discussion, Socrates will again ask which sort of person lives the best life: the aristocratic soul of Books Six and Seven, or one of the other souls of Books Eight and Nine?

We might expect Socrates and Glaucon to argue carefully by elimination, showing the just life to be better than every sort of unjust life. But they do not. Instead, they quickly contrast the tyrannical soul with the aristocratic soul, the most unjust with the most just. This might seem to pick up on Glaucon’s original demand (in Book Two) to see how the perfectly just—who is most unfortunate but still just—is better than the perfectly unjust—who is unjust but still esteemed. But it does not even do that, since Socrates is very far from portraying the best soul in the least favorable circumstances and the worst soul in the most favorable circumstances. Nevertheless, Socrates’ limited comparison in Book Nine might provide the resources to explain why it is better to be the unluckiest philosopher than the luckiest tyrant and why it is better to be just than to be unjust in any way whatsoever, for it might provide general lessons that apply to these other comparisons.

Socrates and Glaucon characterize the person ruled by his lawless attitudes as enslaved, as least able to do what it wants, as full of disorder and regret, as poor and unsatisfiable, and as fearful (577c–578a). These characterizations fit in a logical order. The tyrant is enslaved because he is ruled by an utterly unlimited appetite, which prompts in him appetitive desire whenever any chance object of appetite presents itself to his consideration. Given this condition, he experiences appetitive desires that he cannot satisfy, either because they are too difficult for him to satisfy or because satisfying them would prevent satisfying other of his desires. His experience of unsatisfied desires must make him wish that he could satisfy them and feel poor and unsatisfiable because he cannot. Worse, because his unsatisfied appetitive desires continue to press for satisfaction over time, they make him aware of his past inability to to do what he wants, which prompts regret, and of his likely future inability to do what he wants, which makes him fearful. The result is a miserable existence, and the misery is rooted in unlimited attitudes that demand more satisfaction than a person can achieve. In a nutshell, the tyrant lacks the capacity to do what he wants to do.

The philosopher, by contrast, is most able to do what she wants to do, for she wants to do what is best, and as long as one has agency, there would seem to be a doable best. (Should circumstances make a certain apparent best undoable, then it would no longer appear to be best.) But this is not to say that the philosopher is guaranteed to be able to do what she wants. First, Socrates is quite clear that some appetitive attitudes are necessary, and one can well imagine circumstances of extreme deprivation in which the necessary appetitive attitudes (for food or drink, say) are unsatisfiable. Second, the capacity to do what is best might require engaging in certain kinds of activities in order to maintain itself. So even if the philosopher can satisfy her necessary appetitive attitudes, she might be prevented by unfortunate circumstances from the sorts of regular thought and action that are required to hold onto the capacity to do what is best. Thus, even if a philosophical soul is most able to do what it wants, and the closest thing to a sure bet for this capacity, it does not retain this ability in every circumstance.

This comparison between the tyrannical soul and the philosophical soul does all the work that Socrates needs if the capacity to do what one wants correlates closely with human success or happiness and if the lessons about the tyrant’s incapacity generalize to the other defective psychological constitutions.

Socrates does not need happiness to be the capacity to do what one wants, or the absence of regret, frustration, and fear. He could continue to think, as he thought in Book One, that happiness is virtuous activity (354a). But if his argument here works, happiness, whatever it is, must require the capacity to do what one wants and be inconsistent with regret, frustration, and fear.

How does the argument apply to unjust people who are not psychologically tyrannical? Anyone who is not a philosopher either has a divided soul or is ruled by spirit or appetite. Division in the soul plainly undercuts the ability to do what one wants. Can one seek honor or money above all and do what one wants? Although the ability to do what is honorable or make money is not as flexible as the ability to do what is best, it is surely possible, in favorable circumstances, for someone to be consistently able to do what is honorable or money-making. This will not work if the agent is conflicted about what is honorable or makes money. So he needs to be carefully educated, and he needs limited options. But if he does enjoy adequate education and an orderly social environment, there is no reason to suppose that he could not escape being racked by regret, frustration, or fear. This explains how the members of the lower classes in Socrates’ ideal city—who are probably not best identified as the timocrats and oligarchs of Book Eight (Wilberding 2009 and Jeon 2014)—can have a kind of capacity to do what they want, even though they are slavishly dependent upon the rulers’ work (cf. 590c–d).

The characterization of appropriately ruled non-philosophers as slavish might suggest a special concern for the “heteronomous” character of their capacity to do what they want and a special valorization of the philosophers’ “autonomous” capacity. But we should be hesitant about applying these frequently confused and possibly anachronistic concepts to the Republic . Plato would probably prefer to think in terms of self-sufficiency (369b), and for the purposes of Socrates’ argument here, it is enough to contrast the way a producer’s capacity is deeply dependent upon social surroundings and the way a philosopher’s capacity is relatively free from this dependence, once it has been cultivated.

This contrast must not be undersold, for it is plausible to think that the self-sufficiency of the philosopher makes him better off. Appropriately ruled non-philosophers can enjoy the capacity to do what they want only so long as their circumstances are appropriately ruled, and this makes their success far less stable than what the philosophers enjoy. Things in the world tend to change, and the philosopher is in a much better position to flourish through these changes. Those of us living in imperfect cities, looking to the Republic for a model of how to live (cf. 592b), need to emulate the philosopher in order to pursue stable, reliable success or happiness.

Nevertheless, so far as this argument shows, the success or happiness of appropriately ruled non-philosophers is just as real as that of philosophers. Judged exclusively by the capacity to do what one wants and the presence or absence of regret, frustration, and fear, philosophers are not better off than very fortunate non-philosophers. (The non-philosophers have to be so fortunate that they do not even recognize any risk to their good fortune. Otherwise, they would fear a change in their luck.) The philosopher’s success is more secure than the non-philosopher’s, but if it is also better as success than the non-philosopher’s, Socrates’ first argument does not show that it is. (See also Kenny 1969 and Kraut 1992.)

Socrates needs further argument in any case if he wants to convince those of us in imperfect circumstances (like Glaucon and Adeimantus) to pursue the philosophical life of perfect justice. The first argument tries to show that anyone who wants to satisfy her desires perfectly should cultivate certain kinds of desires rather than others. We can reject this argument in either of two ways, by taking issue with his analysis of which desires are regularly satisfiable and which are not, or by explaining why a person should not want to satisfy her desires perfectly. The first response calls for a quasi-empirical investigation of a difficult sort, but the second seems easy. We can just argue that a good human life must be subject to regret and loss. Of course, it is not enough to say that the human condition is in fact marked by regret and loss. There is no inconsistency in maintaining that one should aim at a secure life in order to live the best possible human life while also realizing that the best possible human life will be marked by insecurity. In fact, one might even think that the proper experience of fragility requires attachment to security as one’s end. Instead, to reject Socrates’ argument, we must show that it is wrong to aim at a life that is free of regret and loss: we must show that the pursuit of security leads one to reject certain desires that one should not reject. In this way, we move beyond a discussion of which desires are satisfiable, and we tackle the question about the value of what is desired and the value of the desiring itself. To address this possible objection, Socrates needs to give us a different argument.

This explains why Socrates does not stop after offering his first “proof.” Many readers are puzzled about why he offers two more. After all, the geometer does not need to offer multiple proofs of his theorem. What might seem worse, the additional proofs concern pleasure, and thereby introduce—seemingly at the eleventh hour—a heap of new considerations for the ethics of the Republic . But as the considerations at the end of the previous section show, these pleasure proofs are crucial.

Plato merely dramatizes these considerations. Socrates has offered not merely to demonstrate that it is always better to be just than unjust but to persuade Glaucon and Adeimantus (but especially Glaucon: see, e.g., 327a, 357a–b, 368c) of this claim. Insofar as Glaucon shows sympathy for spirited attitudes (372d with the discussion in section 4.1 below, and cf. 548d), his attachment to these attitudes could survive the realization that they are far from perfectly satisfiable. He may say, “I can see the point of perfectly satisfiable attitudes, but those attitudes (and their objects) are not as good as my less-than-perfectly satisfiable attitudes (and their objects).” Glaucon needs to be shown that the rewards of carrying insecure attitudes do not make up for the insecurity.

The additional proofs serve a second purpose, as well. At the end of Book Five, Socrates says that faculties (at least psychological faculties) are distinguished by their results (their rate of success) and by their objects (what they concern) (477c–d). So far, he has discussed only the success-rates of various kinds of psychological attitudes. He needs to discuss the objects of various kinds of psychological attitudes in order to complete his account. If we did not have the discussion of the second proof, in particular, we would have an incomplete picture of the Republic ’s moral psychology.

The two arguments that Socrates proceeds to make are frustratingly difficult (see Gosling and Taylor 1982, Nussbaum 1986, Russell 2005, Moss 2006, Warren 2014, Shaw 2016). They are very quick, and though they concern “pleasures,” Socrates never says exactly what pleasure is. (At one point (585d11), the now-standard translation of the Republic by Grube and Reeve suggests that “being filled with what is appropriate to our nature is pleasure,” but it is better to read less into the Greek by rendering the clause “being filled with what is appropriate to our nature is pleasant.”) The first argument suggests that pleasures might be activities of a certain kind, but the remarkably abstract second argument does not provide any special support to that suggestion. Even if a convincing account of how Plato wants us to conceive of pleasure in the Republic is wanting, however, we can get a grasp on the form of the two “pleasure proofs.”

The first is an appeal to authority, in four easy steps. First, Socrates suggests that just as each part of the soul has its own characteristic desires and pleasures, so persons have characteristic desires and pleasures depending upon which part of their soul rules them. The characteristic pleasure of philosophers is learning. The characteristic pleasure of honor-lovers is being honored. The characteristic pleasure of money-lovers is making money. Next, Socrates suggests that each of these three different kinds of person would say that her own pleasure is best. So, third, to decide which pleasure really is best, we need to determine which sort of person’s judgment is best, and Socrates suggests that whoever has the most reason, experience, and argument is the best judge. Finally, Socrates argues that the philosopher is better than the honor-lover and the money-lover in reason, experience, and argument.

It is sometimes thought that the philosopher cannot be better off in experience, for the philosopher has never lived as an adult who is fully committed to the pleasures of the money-lover. But this point does not disable Socrates’ argument. The philosopher does not have exactly the experience that the money-lover has, but the philosopher has far more experience of the money-lover’s pleasures than the money-lover has of the philosopher’s pleasures. The comparative judgment is enough to secure Socrates’ conclusion: because the philosopher is a better judge than the others, the philosopher’s judgment has a better claim on the truth.

But this first proof does not explain why the distinction in pleasures is made; the appeal to the philosopher’s authority as a judge gives no account of the philosopher’s reasons for her judgment. Moreover, the first pleasure proof does not say that the philosopher’s pleasures are vastly superior to those of the money-lover and the honor-lover. So Glaucon—or anyone else tempted to avoid the mathematical studies of Book Seven—might think that the superiority of the philosopher’s psychological justice is slight, and given the disrepute heaped on the philosophers (487a ff.), Glaucon or anyone else might decide that the less-than-perfectly just life is better overall. Socrates needs to show that the philosopher’s activities are vastly better than the non-philosopher’s activities in order to answer the challenge originally put forth in Book Two by Glaucon and Adeimantus. So it is for very good reason that Socrates proceeds to offer a second pleasure proof that he promises to be the “greatest and most decisive overthrow” for the unjust (583b6–7).

Socrates’ final argument moves in three broad steps. The first establishes that pleasure and pain are not exhaustive contradictories but opposites, separated by a calm middle that is neither pain nor pleasure. This may sometimes seem false. The removal of pain can seem to be pleasant, and the removal of a pleasure can seem to be painful. But Socrates argues that these appearances are deceptive. He distinguishes between pleasures that fill a lack and thereby replace a pain (these are not genuine pleasures) and those that do not fill a lack and thereby replace a pain (these are genuine pleasures). The second step in the argument is to establish that most bodily pleasures—and the most intense of these—fill a painful lack and are not genuine pleasures. Finally, Socrates argues that the philosopher’s pleasures do not fill a painful lack and are genuine pleasures. Contra the epicure’s assumption, the philosopher’s pleasures are more substantial than pleasures of the flesh.

The pleasure proofs tempt some readers to suppose that Socrates must have a hedonistic conception of happiness. After all, he claims to have shown that the just person is happier than the unjust (580a–c), and he says that his pleasure arguments are proofs of the same claim (580c–d, 583b). But these arguments can work just as the first proof works: Socrates can suppose that happiness, whatever it is, is marked by pleasure (just as it is marked by the absence of regret, frustration, and fear). This is not to say that one should take pleasure to be one’s goal any more than it is to say that one should pursue fearlessness as one’s goal. Pleasure is a misleading guide (see 581c–d and 603c), and there are many false, self-undermining routes to pleasure (and fearlessness).

Socrates’ indirect approach concerning happiness (cf. section 1.2 above) makes sense if he thinks that justice (being just, acting justly) is happiness (being happy, living well) (354a). Anyone inclined to doubt that one should always be just would be inclined to doubt that justice is happiness. So Socrates has to appeal to characteristics of happiness that do not, in his view, capture what happiness is, in the hope that the skeptics might agree that happiness correlates with the absence of regret, frustration, and fear and the presence of pleasure. That would be enough for the proofs.

Even at the end of his three “proofs,” Socrates knows that he cannot yet have fully persuaded Glaucon and Adeimantus that it is always better to be just than unjust. Their beliefs and desires have been stained too deeply by a world filled with mistakes, especially by the misleading tales of the poets. To turn Glaucon and Adeimantus more fully toward virtue, Socrates needs to undercut their respect for the poets, and he needs to begin to stain their souls anew. But Socrates’ theoretical arguments on behalf of justice are finished. The work that remains to be done—especially the sketch of a soul at the end of Book Nine and the myth of an afterlife in Book Ten—should deepen without transforming our appreciation for the psychological ethics of the Republic .

4. Politics, Part One: The Ideal Constitution

Just as Socrates develops an account of a virtuous, successful human being and contrasts it with several defective characters, he also develops an account of a virtuous, successful city and contrasts it with several defective constitutions. So the Republic contributes to political philosophy in two main ways. I will take them up in turn, starting with four disputed features of Socrates’ good city: its utopianism, communism, feminism, and totalitarianism.

To sketch a good city, Socrates does not take a currently or previously extant city as his model and offer adjustments (see 422e, and cf. Statesman 293e). He insists on starting from scratch, reasoning from the causes that would bring a city into being (369a–b). This makes his picture of a good city an ideal, a utopia.

The Republic ’s utopianism has attracted many imitators, but also many critics. The critics typically claim that Plato’s political ideal rests on an unrealistic picture of human beings. The ideal city is conceivable, but humans are psychologically unable to create and sustain such a city. According to this charge, then, Plato’s ideal constitution is a nowhere-utopia (ou-topia = “no place”). But if ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, then a constitution that cannot exist is not one that ought to exist. So, the objection goes, Plato’s ideal constitution fails to be an ideal-utopia (eu-topia = “good place”).

To consider the objection, we first need to distinguish two apparently ideal cities that Socrates describes. The first, simple city is sketched very briefly, and is rejected by Glaucon as a “city of pigs” though Socrates calls it “the healthy city” (369b–372e). It contains no provision for war, and no distinction among classes. The second, initially called by Socrates a “fevered city” and a “city of luxuries” (372e) but later purified of its luxuries (see especially 399e) and characterized as a beautiful city (“Kallipolis,” 527c2), includes three classes, two that guard the city and its constitution (ruling and auxiliary guardians) and one that produces what the city needs. (At 543c–d, Glaucon suggests that one might find a third city, as well, by distinguishing between the three-class city whose rulers are not explicitly philosophers and the three-class city whose rulers are, but a three-class city whose rulers are not philosophers cannot be an ideal city, according to Socrates (473b–e). It is better to see Books Five through Seven as clarifications of the same three-class city first developed without full explicitness in Books Two through Four (cf. 497c–d, 499c–d).)

The charge of “utopianism” would apply well to the first city Socrates describes. This city resembles a basic economic model since Socrates uses it in theorizing how a set of people could efficiently satisfy their necessary appetitive desires (Schofield 1993). At the center of his model is a principle of specialization: each person should perform just the task to which he is best suited. But Socrates’ model makes no provision for reason’s rule, and he later insists that no one can have orderly appetitive attitudes unless they are ruled by reason (esp. 590c–d; cf. 586a–b). So the first city cannot exist, by the lights of the Republic ’s account of human nature (Barney 2001). It is a nowhere-utopia, and thus not an ideal-utopia.

This is not to say that the first city is a mistake. Socrates introduces the first city not as a free-standing ideal but as the beginning of his account of the ideal, and his way of starting highlights two features that make the eventual ideal an ideal. One is the principle of specialization. With it Socrates sketches how people might harmoniously satisfy their appetitive attitudes. If reason could secure a society of such people, then they would be happy, and reason does secure a society of such people in the third class of the ideal city. (So the model turns out to be a picture of the producers in Kallipolis.) But the principle can also explain how a single person could flourish, for a version of it explains the optimal satisfaction of all psychological attitudes (442d–444a with 432b–434c). Indeed, this principle is central to the first “proof” for the superiority of the just life. The second feature crucial to Socrates’ ideal enters when Glaucon insists that the first city is fit for pigs and not human beings. He objects that it lacks couches, tables, relishes, and the other things required for a symposium, which is the cornerstone of civilized human life as he understands it (Burnyeat 1999). Glaucon is not calling for satisfaction of unnecessary appetitive attitudes, for the relishes he insists on are later recognized to be among the objects of necessary appetitive attitudes (559b). Rather, he is expressing spirited indignation, motivated by a sense of what is honorable and fitting for a human being. He insists that there is more to a good human life than the satisfaction of appetitive attitudes. This begins to turn Glaucon away from appetitive considerations against being just. It also completes the first city’s introduction of the two kinds of arguments for the superiority of the just life, by appealing, as the pleasure proofs do, to the intrinsic value of different kinds of psychological satisfaction.

Does the “utopianism” objection apply to the second city, with its philosopher-rulers, auxiliary guardians, and producers? Some readers would have Plato welcome the charge. As they understand the Republic , Socrates sketches the second city not as an ideal for us to strive for but as a warning against political utopianism or as an unimportant analogue to the good person. There are a couple of passages to support this approach. At 472b–473b, Socrates says that the point of his ideal is to allow us to judge actual cities and persons based on how well they approximate it. And at 592a–b, he says that the ideal city can serve as a model ( paradeigma ) were it ever to come into existence or not. But these passages have to be squared with the many in which Socrates insists that the ideal city could in fact come into existence (just a few: 450c–d, 456bc, 473c, 499b–d, 502a–c, 540d–e). His considered view is that although the ideal city is meaningful to us even if it does not exist, it could exist. Of course, realizing the ideal city is highly unlikely. The widespread disrepute of philosophy and the corruptibility of the philosophical nature conspire to make it extremely difficult for philosophers to gain power and for rulers to become philosophers (487a–502c). Nevertheless, according to what Socrates explicitly says, the ideal city is supposed to be realizable. The Laws imagines an impossible ideal, in which all the citizens are fully virtuous and share everything (739a–740 with Plato: on utopia ), but the Republic is more practical than that (Burnyeat 1992; cf. Griswold 1999 and Marshall 2008). So if Plato does not intend for us to think of the Republic ’s ideal city as a serious goal worth striving for, something other than Socrates’ explicit professions must reveal this to us. I consider this possibility in section 6 below.

But if Socrates would not welcome the “utopianism” charge, does he successfully avoid it? This is not clear. It is difficult to show that the ideal city is inconsistent with human nature as the Republic understands it. Socrates supposes that almost all of its citizens—not quite all (415d–e)—have to reach their fullest psychological potential, but it is not clear that anyone has to do more than this.

Nevertheless, we might make the “utopianism” charge stick by showing that the Republic is wrong about human nature. This version of the criticism is sometimes advanced in very sweeping terms: Plato’s psychology is “too optimistic” about human beings because it underplays self-interest, say. In these general terms, the criticism is false. Socrates builds his theory on acute awareness of how dangerous and selfish appetitive attitudes are, and indeed of how self-centered the pursuit of wisdom is, as well. In fact, it might be easier to argue in sweeping terms that the Republic ’s ideal city is too pessimistic about what most people are capable of, since it consigns most human beings to lives as slaves (433c–d, cf. 469b–471c) or as citizens who are slavishly dependent upon others’ ruling (590c–d). Still, more specific criticisms of Plato’s psychology may well be tenable, and these might even show that the Republic is too optimistic about the possibility of its ideal city.

Such criticism should be distinguished from a weaker complaint about the Republic ’s “utopianism.” One might concede to the Republic its psychology, concede the possibility of the ideal city, and nevertheless insist that the ideal city is so unlikely to come about as to be merely fanciful. A hard-nosed political scientist might have this sort of response. But this sounds like nothing more than opposition to political theory proposing ideals that are difficult to achieve, and it is not clear what supports this opposition. It is not as though political theorizing must propose ideas ready for implementation in order to propose ideas relevant to implementation. The Republic ’s ideal can affect us very generally: we can consider the unity and harmony fundamental to it, and consider whether our own cities and souls should be allowed to fall short in unity and harmony where they do. But it can also work in more specific terms: we should be able to recognize and promote the strategies and policies crucial to the Republic ’s ideal, including careful moral education societally and habitual regulation of appetitive desire personally, or the equal opportunity for work societally and the development of multiple kinds of psychological attitudes personally.

So the Republic ’s ideal city might be objectionably nowhere-utopian, but the point is far from obvious. Of course, even if it is not nowhere-utopian, it might fail to be attractively ideal-utopian. We need to turn to other features of the second city that have led readers to praise and blame it.

One of the most striking features of the ideal city is its abolition of private families and sharp limitation on private property in the two guardian classes. Starting with Aristotle ( Politics II 1–5), this communism in the Republic ’s ideal city has been the target of confusion and criticism (see Nussbaum 1980, Stalley 1991, Mayhew 1997). On the one hand, Aristotle (at Politics 1264a11–22) and others have expressed uncertainty about the extent of communism in the ideal city. On the other, they have argued that communism of any extent has no place in an ideal political community.

There should be no confusion about private property. When Socrates describes the living situation of the guardian classes in the ideal city (415d–417b), he is clear that private property will be sharply limited, and when he discusses the kinds of regulations the rulers need to have in place for the whole city (421c ff.), he is clear that the producers will have enough private property to make the regulation of wealth and poverty a concern. But confusion about the scope of communal living arrangements is possible, due to the casual way in which Socrates introduces this controversial proposal. The abolition of private families enters as an afterthought. Socrates says that there is no need to list everything that the rulers will do, for if they are well educated, they will see what is necessary, including the fact that “marriage, the having of wives, and the procreation of children must be governed as far as possible by the old proverb: friends possess everything in common” (423e6–424a2). It is not immediately clear whether this governance should extend over the whole city or just the guardian classes. Still, when he is pressed to defend the communal arrangements (449c ff.), Socrates focuses on the guardian classes (see, e.g., 461e and 464b), and it seems most reasonable to suppose that the communism about families extends just as far as the communism about property does, on the grounds that only the best people can live as friends with such things in common (cf. Laws 739c–740b).

To what extent the communism of the ideal city is problematic is a more complicated question. The critics claim that communism is either undesirable or impossible. The charge of impossibility essentially extends one of Plato’s insights: while Plato believes that most people are incapable of living without private property and private families, the critics argue that all people are incapable of living without private property. This criticism fails if there is clear evidence of people who live communally. But the critic can fall back on the charge of undesirability. Here the critic needs to identify what is lost by giving up on private property and private families, and the critic needs to show that this is more valuable than any unity and extended sense of family the communal arrangements offer. It is not clear how this debate should go. Plato’s position on this question is a stubbornly persistent ideal, despite the equally stubborn persistence of criticism.

Socrates ties the abolition of private families among the guardian classes to another radical proposal, that in the ideal city the education for and job of ruling should be open to girls and women. The exact relation between the proposals is contestable (Okin 1977). Is Socrates proposing the abolition of families in order to free up women to do the work of ruling? Or is Socrates putting the women to work since they will not have the job of family-caregiver anymore? But perhaps neither is prior to the other. Each of the proposals can be supported independently, and their dovetailing effects can be claimed as a happy convergence.

Many readers have seen in Plato’s Republic a rare exception in western philosophy’s long history of sexist denigration of women, and some have even decided that Plato’s willingness to open up the best education and the highest jobs to women shows a kind of feminism (Wender 1973). Other readers disagree (Annas 1976, Buchan 1999). They point to Plato’s indifference to the needs of actual women in his own city, to Socrates’ frequent, disparaging remarks about women and “womanish” attitudes, and to the illiberal reasons Socrates offers for educating and empowering women.

The broad claim that Plato or the Republic is feminist cannot be sustained, and the label ‘feminist’ is an especially contested one, but still, there are two features of the Republic ’s ideal city that can be reasonably called feminist. First, Socrates suggests that the distinction between male and female is as relevant as the distinction between having long hair and having short hair for the purposes of deciding who should be active guardians: men and women, just like the long-haired and the short-haired, are by nature the same for the assignment of education and jobs (454b–456b). This suggestion seems to express the plausibly feminist point that one’s sex is generally irrelevant to one’s qualifications for education or employment.

The second plausibly feminist commitment in the Republic involves the abolition of private families. The feminist import of this may be obscured by the way in which Socrates and his interlocutors talk of “women and children shared in common.” In fact, Socrates’ companions might well have been forgiven if this way of talking had called to mind pictures of orgiastic free love in the guardians’ camp, for that, after all, is how Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae plays the proposal of “sharing women and children” for laughs. But as Socrates clarifies what he means, both free love and male possessiveness turn out to be beside the point. (The talk of “sharing women and children” reflects the male perspective of the men having the conversation but not the content of the proposal.) Then Socrates’ proposal can seem especially striking. Plato is clearly aware that an account of how the polis should be arranged must give special attention to how families are arranged. Relatedly, he is clearly aware that an account of the ideal citizens must explain how sexual desire, a paradigmatic appetitive attitude, should fit into the good human life. Only very recently, with feminist interventions, have sexual desire and its consequences come to seem crucial to political theory, and we might think that Plato’s awareness of these as topics of political philosophy shows at least proto-feminist concern. All the more might this awareness seem feminist when we relate it back to the first plausibly feminist commitment, for Plato wants the economy of desire and reproduction to be organized in such a way that women are free for education and employment alongside men, in the guardian classes, at any rate.

Three of the objections to calling the Republic feminist say more about the contest over the label ‘feminist’ than they do about Plato. First, some have said that feminism requires a concern for women’s rights and have then argued that Plato is not a feminist on the grounds that he shows no interests in women’s rights. This particular argument is not quite to the point, for it says nothing about Plato’s view of women per se . He is not interested in women’s rights just to the extent that he is not interested in anyone’s rights. Second, some have said that feminism requires attention to what actual women want. Since Plato shows no interest in what actual women want, he would seem on this view of feminism to be anti-feminist. But the limitations of this criticism are apparent as soon as we realize that Plato shows no interest in what actual men want. Plato focuses instead on what women (and men) should want, what they would want if they were in the best possible psychological condition. Actual women (and actual men), as we might put Plato’s point, are subject to false consciousness. Third, some have insisted that feminism requires attention to and concern for the particular interests and needs of women as distinct from the particular interests and needs of men. Since Plato does not admit of particular women’s interests and needs, he would not, in this view, be a feminist (except insofar as he accidentally promoted any supposed particular interests by, say, proposing the abolition of the private family). Again, however, this objection turns on what we understand by ‘feminism’ more than on what Socrates is saying in the Republic . There should be no doubt that there are conceptions of feminism according to which the Republic is anti-feminist. But this does not undercut the point that the Republic advances a couple of plausibly feminist concerns.

Better ground for doubting Plato’s apparent feminist commitments lies in the reasons that Socrates gives for them: Socrates consistently emphasizes concern for the welfare of the whole city, but not for women themselves (esp. 456c ff.). But Socrates’ emphasis in Book Five on the happiness of the city as a whole rather than the happiness of the rulers (and cf. 465e–466c) might have more to do with his worries about convincing his interlocutors that ideal rulers do not flourish by exploiting the ruled. Thus, his emphasis need not be taken to represent a lack of concern for the women’s interests. After all, what greater concern could Socrates show for the women than to insist that they be fully educated and allowed to hold the highest offices? Socrates goes on to argue that the philosopher-rulers of the city, including the female philosopher-rulers, are as happy as human beings can be.

The best reason for doubting Plato’s feminism is provided by those disparaging remarks about women. We might try to distinguish between Plato’s rather harsh view of the women around him and his more optimistic view of women as they would be in more favorable circumstances (Vlastos 1989). It is also possible to distinguish between the traditional sexist tropes as they feature in Plato’s drama and the rejection of sexism in Plato’s ideas. But it is not clear that these distinctions will remove all of the tension, especially when Socrates and Glaucon are saying that men are stronger or better than women in just about every endeavor (455c).

Final judgment on this question is difficult (see also Saxonhouse 1976, Levin 1996, E. Brown 2002). The disparaging remarks have to be taken one-by-one, as it is doubtful that all can be understood in exactly the same way. Moreover, it is of the utmost importance to determine whether each remark says something about the way all women are by nature or essentially. If Plato thinks that women are essentially worse than men, then Socrates’ claim that men and women have the same nature for education and employment is puzzling. But if the disparagements do not express any considered views about the nature of women, then we might be able to conclude that Plato is deeply prejudiced against women and yet committed to some plausibly feminist principles.

Some of the most heated discussions of the politics of Plato’s Republic have surrounded the charge of totalitarianism famously advanced by Karl Popper ([1945] 1971). Like the other “isms” we have been considering, totalitarianism applies to the Republic only conditionally, depending on the definition of ‘totalitarianism’ offered. But it is worth thinking through the various ways in which this charge might be made, to clarify the way the philosopher-rulers wield political authority over the rest of the city (see Bambrough 1967, Taylor 1986, L. Brown 1998, and Ackrill 1997).

Critics of Plato’s Republic have characterized the aims of Kallipolis’ rulers as totalitarian. Socrates is quite explicit that the good at which the rulers aim is the unity of the city (462a–b). Is this an inherently totalitarian and objectionable aim?

The problem, Popper and others have charged, is that the rulers aim at the organic unity of the city as a whole, regardless of the individual interests of the citizens. But this would be surprising, if true. After all, the Republic provides a picture not just of a happy city but also of a happy individual person, and in Book One, Socrates argues that the ruler’s task is to benefit the ruled. So how could the rulers of Kallipolis utterly disregard the good of the citizens?

Some readers answer Popper by staking out a diametrically opposed position (Vlastos 1977). They maintain that Plato conceives of the city’s good as nothing more than the aggregate good of all the citizens. On this view, citizens need to contribute to the city’s happiness only because they need to contribute to the happiness of other citizens if they are to achieve their own maximal happiness. Any totalitarian control of the citizens is paternalistic. Yet this view, too, seems at odds with much of the Republic . When Socrates says that the happiest city is a maximally unified city (462a–b), or when he insists that all the citizens need to be bound together (519e–520a), he seems to be invoking a conception of the city’s good that is not reducible to the aggregate good of the citizens.

So a mixed interpretation seems to be called for (Morrison 2001; cf. Kamtekar 2001, Meyer 2004, and Brennan 2004). In the Republic , the good of the city and the good of the individual are independently specifiable, and the citizens’ own maximal good coincides with the maximal good of the city. Since Plato believes that this coincidence is realized only through propagandistic means in the ideal city, the propaganda is paternalistically targeted at the citizens’ own good but not exclusively at the citizens’ own good. On this view, if the citizens do not see themselves as parts of the city serving the city, neither the city nor they will be maximally happy.

This does not leave Kallipolis’ aims beyond reproach, for one might well be skeptical of the good of unity, of Plato’s assumption that individuals reap their own maximal good when the city is most unified, or of the Republic ’s claims about how this unity (and these individual goods) might be achieved. But it is not obvious that the rulers of Kallipolis have inherently totalitarian and objectionable aims (cf. Kamtekar 2004).

Kallipolis has more clearly totalitarian features. First, totalitarian regimes concentrate political power in one bloc and offer the ruled no alternative. The ideal city of Plato’s Republic is plainly totalitarian in this respect.

But the concentration of political power in Kallipolis differs in at least two ways from the concentration in actual totalitarian states. First, Socrates insists that in the ideal city, all the citizens will agree about who should rule. This agreement is the city’s moderation (430d–432a), caused by the city’s justice (433b, cf. 351d). Socrates also suggests some ways of explaining how the non-philosophers will agree that the philosophers should rule. First, he offers a way of persuading those who lack knowledge that only the philosophers have knowledge (476d–480a), which in effect offers a way of explaining to the non-philosophers that only the philosophers have the knowledge required to rule. Second, he suggests that the non-philosophers will be struck by the philosophers’ obvious virtue (500d–502a). (Their virtue would be especially striking to the producers, since the philosophers do without private property, which the producers love so much.) Finally, he suggests that in Kallipolis, the producers will be grateful to the guardian classes for keeping the city safe and orderly, wherein they can achieve their good, as they see it, by optimally satisfying their necessary appetitive attitudes (463a–b).

The second way in which Kallipolis’ concentration of political power is special that it does not concentrate anything good for the rulers. Socrates is clear that the philosophers despise political power (519c, 540a), and they rule not to reap rewards but for the sake of the ruled (cf. 341c–343a), because their justice obligates them to obey the law that commands them to rule (see section 2.3 above). In fact, the rulers of Kallipolis benefit the ruled as best they can, helping them realize the best life they are capable of. These benefits must include some primary education for the producer class (see 414d), to make good on the commitment to promote especially talented children born among the producers (415c, 423d) and to enable the producers to recognize the virtue in the philosophers. But the benefits extend to peace and order: the producers do not have to face warfare.

A second totalitarian feature of Kallipolis is the control that the rulers exert over daily life. There is nothing especially totalitarian about the rule of law pervasive in Kallipolis (see esp. 415d–e, and cf. the laws that apply to the rulers, such as the marriage law and the law commanding philosophers to rule) (Meyer 2006 and Hitz 2009). But the rulers control mass culture in the ideal city, and they advance a “noble lie” to convince citizens of their unequal standing and deep tie to the city (414b–415d). This propagandistic control plainly represents a totalitarian concern, and it should make us skeptical about the value of the consent given to the rulers of Kallipolis.

It is one thing to identify totalitarian features of Kallipolis and another thing to say why they are wrong. Three very different objections suggest themselves. First, we might reject the idea of an objectively knowable human good, and thus reject the idea that political power should be in the hands of those who know the human good. Here we should distinguish between Plato’s picture of the human good and the very idea of an objective human good, for even if we want to dissent from Plato’s view, we might still accept the very idea. At least, it does not seem implausible to suppose that some general psychological capacities are objectively good for their possessors (while others are objectively bad), and at that point, we can ask whether political power should be used to foster the good capacities and to restrain or prevent the bad ones. Given that state-sponsored education cannot but address the psychological capacities of the pupils, only very austere political systems could be supported by a thorough-going skepticism about the human good.

Second, we might accept the idea of an objectively knowable human good, but be wary of concentrating extensive political power in the hands of a few knowers. We might reject Plato’s apparent optimism about the trustworthiness of philosopher-rulers and insist on greater checks upon political power, to minimize the risks of abuse. If this is our objection, then we might wonder what checks are optimal.

Finally, we might reject Plato’s scheme on the grounds that political self-determination and free expression are themselves more valuable than Plato recognizes. This sort of response is perhaps the most interesting, but it is by no means easy. For it is difficult to assess the intrinsic value of self-determination and free expression, apart from skepticism about the knowledge or power of those who would limit self-determination or free expression. Moreover, it is difficult to balance these values against the concerns that motivate Plato. Where does the power over massive cultural forces lie when it is not under political control? And to what extent can we live well when our culture is not shaped by people thoughtfully dedicated to living a good human life? These are not questions that can be easily shrugged off, even if we cannot embrace Kallipolis as their answer.

The best human life is ruled by knowledge and especially knowledge of what goodness is and of what is good for human beings. So, too, is the best city. For Plato, philosophers make the ideal rulers for two main reasons. First, they know what is good. Second, they do not want to rule (esp. 520e–521b). The problem with existing cities is correspondingly twofold. They are ruled by people who are ignorant of what is good, and they suffer from strife among citizens all of whom want to rule. These flaws are connected: the ignorant are marked by their desire for the wrong objects, such as honor and money, and this desire is what leads them to seek political power. All existing regimes, whether ruled by one, a few, or many, show these defects. So in the Republic Socrates does not distinguish between good and bad forms of these three kinds of regime, as the Stranger does in the Plato’s Statesman (301a–303b, cf. Aristotle, Politics III 7).

Nonetheless, Socrates has much to say in Books Eight and Nine about the individual character of various defective regimes. He organizes his account to emphasize appetite’s corrupting power, showing how each defective regime can, through the corruption of the rulers’ appetites, devolve into a still worse one (Hitz 2010, Johnstone 2011). In the timocracy, for example, nothing checks the rulers from taking money to be a badge of honor and feeding their appetites, which grow in private until they cannot be hidden anymore. The account is thus deeply informed by psychology. It does not purport to be an account of what has happened (despite Aristotle’s treatment of it in Politics V 12), any more than Books Two through Seven purport to give an historical account of an ideal city’s genesis. It is not, for all that, ahistorical, for Plato’s concerns about corruption are clearly informed by his experiences and his understanding of history. The account, psychologically and historically informed, does not offer any hint of psychological or historical determinism. Socrates does not identify the transitions from one defective regime to the next as inevitable, and he explicitly allows for transitions other than the ones he highlights. This is just one story one could tell about defective regimes. But this particular story is valuable as a morality tale: it highlights the defective regimes’ vulnerability to the corruption of the rulers’ appetites.

The political psychology of Books Eight and Nine raises a host of questions, especially about the city-soul analogy (see section 1.3 above). Is the account of political change dependent upon the account of psychological change, or vice versa? Or if this is a case of mutual interdependence, exactly what accounts for the various dependencies? It seems difficult to give just one answer to these questions that will explain all of the claims in these books, and the full, complex theory that must underlie all of the claims is by no means clear.

But those questions should not obscure the political critiques that Socrates offers. First, he criticizes the oligarchs of Athens and Sparta. His list of five regimes departs from the usual list of rule by one, rule by a few, and rule by many (cf. 338d) because he distinguishes among three different regimes in which only a few rule. He contrasts the ideal city, in which the wise rule, and two would-be aristocracies, the timocracy in which the militaristically “virtuous” rule and the oligarchy in which the rich rule. Socrates argues that these are not genuine aristocracies, because neither timocracy nor oligarchy manages to check the greed that introduces injustice and strife into cities. This highlights the deficiencies of the Spartan oligarchy, with its narrow attention to valor (cf. Laws , esp. Books One and Two), and of the Athenian oligarchs, many of whom pursued their own material interests narrowly, however much they eyed Sparta as a model. So the Republic distances Plato from oligarchic parties of his time and place.

Second, Socrates criticizes the Athenian democracy, as Adeimantus remarks (563d). Many readers think that Socrates goes over the top in his description, but the central message is not so easy to dismiss. Socrates argues that without some publicly entrenched standards for evaluation guiding the city, chaos and strife are unavoidable. Even the timocracy and oligarchy, for all their flaws, have public standards for value. But democracy honors all pursuits equally, which opens the city to conflict and disorder.

Some readers find a silver lining in this critique. They note that the democracy’s tolerance extends to philosophers (cf. 561c–d), allowing such things as the conversation that Socrates, Glaucon, and the others are having (557d). But the Republic also records considerable skepticism about democratic tolerance of philosophers (487a–499a, cf. 517a), and does not say that only a democracy could tolerate philosophers.

Still, some readers have tried to bring the Republic ’s judgment of democracy into line with the Statesman , where the Stranger ranks democracy above oligarchy. I doubt that Socrates explicit ranking in the Republic should count for less than some imagined implicit ranking, but we might still wonder what to make of the apparent contrast between the Republic and Statesman . Perhaps the difference is insignificant, since both democracies and oligarchies are beset by the same essential strife between the rich (oligarchs) and poor (democrats) (422e–423a). Perhaps, too, the Republic and Statesman appear to disagree only because Plato has different criteria in view. Or perhaps he just changed his mind. The ideal city of the Laws , which Plato probably wrote shortly after the Statesman , accords a greater political role for unwise citizens than the Republic does (see Plato: on utopia ).

The Republic is a sprawling work with dazzling details and an enormously wide-ranging influence. But what, in the end, does the work say to us, insofar as we are trying to live well or help our society live well, and what does it say to us, insofar as we are trying to understand how to think about how to live well?

In ethics, the Republic ’s main practical lesson is that one should, if one can, pursue wisdom and that if one cannot, one should follow the wisest guides one can find. This lesson is familiar from Plato’s Socratic dialogues: the philosophical life is best, and if one lacks knowledge, one should prefer to learn from an expert. But the Republic characterizes philosophy differently. First, it goes much further than the Socratic dialogues in respecting the power of passions and desires. Wisdom still requires being able to survive Socratic examination (534b–c), but it also explicitly requires careful and extensive habituation of spirited and appetitive attitudes (485a–486b, 519a8–b1), sublimation of psychological energy from spirited and appetitive desires to philosophical desire (cf. 485d), and continued attention to and maintenance of the desires that arise from the non-calculating parts of one’s soul (571d–572b, 589a–b, cf. 416e–417b). Second, as opposed to the Socrates of the Socratic dialogues, who avows ignorance and is content with the belief that the world is well-ordered, the Socrates of the Republic insists that wisdom requires understanding how the world is, which involves apprehending the basic mathematical and teleological structure of things. Third, although the Socrates of the Socratic dialogues practices philosophy instead of living an ordinarily engaged political life, he insists that his life is closer to what the political art demands than the ordinarily engaged life is. According to the Republic , by contrast, the philosopher prefers to be entirely apart from politics, especially in ordinary circumstances (496c–e, 592a, cf. 520a–b).

One facet of this advice that deserves emphasizing is the importance it places on the influence of others. Plato plainly believes that one’s living well depends upon one’s fellows and the larger culture. This is most obvious in the case of those who cannot pursue wisdom for themselves. They will live as well as those who lead them allow. But even those who can pursue wisdom must first be raised well and must later meet with tolerance, which philosophers do not often receive.

The ethical theory the Republic offers is best characterized as eudaimonist, according to which a person should act for the sake of his or her own success or happiness ( eudaimonia ). Socrates does not argue for this as opposed to other approaches to ethics. Rather, he simply assumes that a person’s success gives him or her conclusive reasons to act, and he argues that success requires acting virtuously. This eudaimonism is widely thought to be an egoistic kind of consequentialism: one should act so as to bring about states of affairs in which one is happy or successful. But there is no reason to suppose that the Republic rejects the identity of eudaimonia and good activity ( eu prattein , eupragia ) which Socrates often assumes in Plato’s Socratic dialogues ( Charmides 171e–172a, Crito 48b, Euthydemus 278e–282d, Gorgias 507c). If the Republic takes this identity seriously, as the function argument of Book One does (354a), it says that virtuous activity is good not because it brings about success, but because it is success. This is also the explicit view of Aristotle and the Stoics, who had considered Plato’s work carefully.

Metaethically, the Republic presupposes that there are objective facts concerning how one should live. Much of its account of these facts sounds naturalist. After all, Socrates uses the careful study of human psychology to reveal how our souls function well or ill, and he grounds the account of what a person should do in his understanding of good psychological functioning. Socrates’ particular deployment of this general strategy suggests that good actions are those that sustain the virtuous soul (443e) and that the virtuous soul is the one with a maximally unified set of commitments (443d–e, cf. 534b–c). Whether this is plausible depends upon what careful study of human psychology in fact shows. It depends in particular on whether, as a matter of fact, the actions that we would pre-theoretically deem good sustain a coherent set of psychological commitments and those that we would pre-theoretically deem bad are inconsistent with a coherent set of psychological commitments. Ethical naturalism such as this still awaits support from psychology, but it has not been falsified, either.

Although this naturalist reading of the Republic is not anachronistic—Aristotle and the Stoics develop related naturalist approaches, and Plato had naturalist contemporaries in a hedonist tradition—Plato himself would not be content to ground his account of good actions on empirical facts of human psychology. On his view, actions are good because of their relation to good agents, and agents are good because of their relation to goodness itself. But goodness itself, the Good, transcends the natural world; it is a supernatural property. This commits Plato to a non-naturalist version of ethical realism, which modernity’s creeping tide of naturalism threatens to wash away. But non-naturalism in ethics will retain some appeal insofar as the other ways of trying to explain our experiences of the moral life fail to answer the serious objections they face.

The take-home lessons of the Republic ’s politics are subject to special controversy. In the sections above, I take what Socrates says about the ideal and defective cities at face value, but many readers believe that this is a mistake. Some think that Plato does not intend the Republic as a serious contribution to political thought, because its political musings are projections to clarify psychological claims crucial to the ethical theory that Plato does seriously intend (Annas 1999, Annas 2000). Others think that Plato intends political lessons strikingly different from what is suggested by the face value of Socrates’ words.

One can concede that the Republic ’s politics are a reflection of its moral psychology without thinking that they are merely that. In antiquity, starting with Aristotle, Plato’s Republic was recognized as part of a large genre of politically serious works, many of them inspired by Sparta (Menn 2005), and Socrates’ explicit claims about the ideal and defective constitutions were taken seriously as political proposals.

Moreover, one can concede that the Republic calls into question many of its political proposals without thinking that Plato means to cancel them or suggest other, radically different political advice (cf. Clay 1988). It is striking that Socrates is ready to show that it is better to be just than unjust before he has even said that the just and wise person must be a philosopher and that the just city must be ruled by philosophers (444e–445a). It is also striking that Adeimantus enthusiastically endorses the idea of “holding the women and children in common” (424a) and then later asks Socrates to explain it (449c–450a). And it is striking that Socrates recognizes that Greeks would ridicule his proposal that women take up the arts of war (452a). But Plato might signal for his readers to examine and re-examine what Socrates says without thereby suggesting that he himself finds fault with what Socrates says.

But still some readers, especially Leo Strauss (see Strauss 1964) and his followers (e.g., Bloom 1968 and Bloom 1977), want to distance the Republic ’s take-home political message from Kallipolis. They typically appeal to three considerations that are supposed to indicate Plato’s awareness that the political ideal is impossible or ruinous. First, they note that the philosophers have to be compelled to rule the ideal city. But this involves no impossibility. The founders of the ideal city would have to make a law compelling those educated as philosophers to rule (cf. section 2.3 above), but founders could make such a law. If philosophers have to be compelled to sustain the maximally happy city, one might wonder why anyone would found such a city. But one might wonder why anyone was inspired to compose the Oresteia , as well. People sometimes do remarkable things. Second, Straussian readers appeal to the ideal city’s predicted demise, and they assert that the rulers’ eventual inability to calculate “the marriage number” (546a–547a) shows an ineliminable conflict between the eros in human nature and the mathematical perfection of a political ideal. But it is also possible to blame the anticipated degeneration on sense-perception (see 546b2–3), not calculation, and to see in Kallipolis’ demise a common fact of life for perceptible entities (546a2). After all, Socrates does not say that eros makes the creation or maintenance of Kallipolis impossible. Finally, the Straussians note that Kallipolis is not sketched as an ideal in a political treatise, exactly, but proposed by Socrates in a long dramatic conversation, which includes twists and turns that come after he stops discussing Kallipolis. This is true, and it renders difficult inferences from what is said in the Republic to what Plato thinks. But it does not provide any reason for thinking that Plato rejects the ideal that Socrates constructs in the Republic .

In fact, Socrates expresses several central political theses in the Republic that appear in other Platonic dialogues, as well, especially in the Gorgias , Statesman , and Laws . First, the best rulers are wise. Second, the best rulers rule for the benefit of the ruled, and not for their own sake. Third, a city is highly unlikely to have the best rulers, in part because there is a gulf between the values of most people and the values of the wise. Fourth, the greatest harm to a city is disagreement about who should rule, since competing factions create civil strife. So, fifth, a central goal of politics is harmony or agreement among the citizens about who should rule. Last, harmony requires that the city cultivate virtue and the rule of law. The consistency of these messages across several Platonic dialogues might well make us so bold as to think that they are the take-home message of the Republic ’s politics.

The standard edition of the Greek text is Slings 2003. The full Greek text also appears with an excellent commentary in Adam 1902. Good translations into current English include Allen 2006, Bloom 1968, Grube 1992, Reeve 2004, and especially Rowe 2012, but Shorey 1935–1937 also holds up well.

Readers coming to the Republic for the first time should appreciate Blackburn 2006, but to wrestle with the text’s claims and arguments, they will benefit most from Annas 1981, Pappas 1995, and White 1979. Other valuable monographs include Nettleship 1902, Murphy 1951, Cross and Woozley 1964, Reeve 1988, Roochnik 2003, Rosen 2005, Reeve 2013, and Scott 2015, and many helpful essays can be found in Cornelli and Lisi 2010, Ferrari 2007, Höffe 1997, Kraut 1997, McPherran 2010, Notomi and Brisson 2013, Ostenfeld 1998, and Santas 2006.

The Republic is central to Plato’s ethical and political thought, so some of the best discussions of it are contained in more general studies of Platonic ethics and politics. See especially Annas 1999, Bobonich 2002, Irwin 1995, Klosko 2007, Mackenzie 1986, Monoson 2000, Pradeau 2002, Samaras 2002, Schofield 2006, and Vasiliou 2008, and the relevant essays collected in Benson 2006 and Fine 2008.

Readers wondering about the context in which the Republic was written will find an excellent introduction in Ferrari 2000. They should also seek out Adkins 1960, Balot 2001, Balot 2006, Carter 1986, Dover 1974, Menn 2005, Ober 1998, and Meyer 2008, and the following essay collections: Balot 2009, Key and Miller 2007, Rowe and Schofield 2000, and Salkever 2009.

I have sprinkled throughout the essay references to a few other works that are especially relevant (not always by agreement!) to the points being discussed, but these references are far from complete. For an excellent bibliographical guide that is much more thorough than this, see Ferrari 2007.

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Aristotle, General Topics: ethics | ethics: ancient | Plato: Callicles and Thrasymachus | Plato: ethics | Plato: on utopia

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Ryan Balot, Richard Kraut, Casey Perin, and Eric Wiland for their comments on an early draft, and the many readers of the earlier versions, some anonymous, who sent suggestions for improvement. He would also like to express more general gratitude to those with whom he studied the Republic when he was in college and graduate school, including Arthur Adkins, Liz Asmis, Allan Bloom, Chris Bobonich, Rachana Kamtekar, Ralph Lerner, and Ian Mueller.

Copyright © 2017 by Eric Brown < eabrown @ wustl . edu >

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Essay Questions for Republic

1.        Socrates and Thrasymachus state that it is just to follow what the rulers call law. Does this hold true in a democracy, even if one does not agree with the laws? When is it more just to try to change the law?   (Matthew Solomon)

2.        Socrates states, “For it is likely that if a city of good men ever came to be, there would be a fight over not ruling” Do not good men inherently wish to live in a just society? Would that not provide incentive for them to take leading roles in the state?   (Julie Kim)

3.        Even though Thrasymachus deflates quickly, his initial charges against Socrates are compelling. Is it easier to ask than to answer? Is Socrates dodging responsibility for the very answers he is seeking to address?   (Evan Smith)

4.        Socrates asks about punishment and how it makes people worse.  Is this true? Does punishing someone make them better or worse?   (Muhammad Tambra)

5.        Why does Socrates constantly refer back to examples of the musical man, medical man, horse trainer, etc., to prove his points? Beyond making Thrasymachus contradict himself, do these arguments hold any merit?   (Andrew Huang)

6.        Do you agree with the statement “injustice, when it comes into being on a sufficient scale, is mightier, freer and more masterful than justice… the just is the advantage of the stronger and the unjust what is profitable and advantageous to oneself?”   (Tammuz Huberman)

7.        “Human beings who have been harmed necessarily become more unjust.” –Socrates

Do you agree with this statement? If so, what does it mean for our current system of justice, with its brutalizing prisons? How should a government balance its obligations to deter, isolate, and, perhaps, punish criminals without making them “worse with respect to human virtue”?   (Esther Schoenfeld)

8.        “The just man is happy and the unjust wretched.”

Do you agree with this statement? Can the inherent value of justice really be measured by the happiness it brings men?   (Esther Schoenfeld)

9.        If one does not believe in God, then does justice matter?   (Daniel Frankel)

10.    “…unwilling himself to teach, he goes around learning from others…” Is this a fair assessment of Socrates’s motives?   (Avril Coley)

11.    Socrates states that “no art or kind of rule provides for its own benefit, but… for the one who is ruled.” Does our modern financial system follow this rule?   (Claire Littlefield)

12.    Do the wealthy and the poor have an equal ability to be content in old age?   (Claire Littlefield)

13.    Is the question of whether or not a leader is willing [to lead] relevant to their competence in deciding matters of justice?   (Michelle Huang)

14.    Thrasymachus states that “just is the advantage of the stronger,” claiming that this is true for all forms of government. Is tyranny as just as democracy? Is there a distinction between justice and legitimacy?   (Tousif Ahsan)

15.    The profitability of justice is discussed as a way of understanding the meaning of justice. Is this a right way to measure use Is justice ever profitable and should justice be decided in terms of profitability?   (Paul Lee)

1.       Is using fantastical arguments (Ring of Gyges) in a philosophical debate valid?   (Philip Yuen)

2.       “All those who practice it do so unwillingly?” Does no one perform just acts intentionally or are people forced into acting justly? Can forced acts of justice really be considered justice?  (Anna Gordan)

3.       What harm does Socrates see in allowing the young to hear stories of gods acting unjustly? Is education about finding virtuous role-models to imitate?  (Julia Kaplan)

4.        “For the extreme of injustice is to seem to be just when one is not.” Why is this so? Can this logic be applied to other concepts like virtue?  (Michelle Huang)

5.       To what extent can “seeming” overpower the “truth?”  (Omika Jikaria)

6.       Glaucon says that justice is “a mean between what is best—doing injustice without paying the penalty—and what is worse—suffering injustice without being able to revenge oneself.” Do you agree? Are these reasonable definitions of the best and worst life?  (Matthew Solomon)

7.       What education can teach a man justice?  (Dominika Burek)

8.       How do the three types of good apply to the larger society?  (Taha Ahsin)

9.       Why does Glaucon believe that any man, without surveillance, would behave unjustly? What is the connection between some of our impulses and their prohibition by justice?  (Kai Sam Ng)

10.   Do you accept Socrates’s assertion that justice is the same in an individual and societal level? Doesn’t Glaucon’s argument seem to imply that the two behave differently?  (Claire Littlefield)

11.   Why does Socrates submit to further questioning by Glaucon and Adeimantus? Why does he continue the argument after his debate with Thrasymachus?  (Tammuz Huberman)

12.   Would you be satisfied with the city of necessity?  (Henry Lin)

13.   Is it okay for some in a society to be unjust for everyone’s greater good? Men like Caesar, Augustus and Charlemagne were not good but beneficial to their people.  (Henry Lin)

14.   Do people comply with justice due to an inability to overpower the system?  (Marley Lindsey)

15.   “The unjust man… pursues a thing dependent on truth and does not live in the light of opinion.” Is injustice more true than justice? Do we live our lives merely because we want good reputations?  (Esther Schoenfeld)

16.   “We must do everything to insure that they [the young] hear first… be the finest told tales [with respect to virtue].” Do you agree with this, considering all the arguments for free speech and press?  (Julie Kim)

17.   Can you really lead a perfectly unjust live and be happy? What about your conscience?  (Cassie Moy)

18.   Does Socrates think that it is actually possible to create a society without anger? Is it?  (Allegra Wiprud)

19. Socrates and Adeimantus agree that a good city should not allow poets to tell untrue stories about the gods. So you think this is a good idea or a breach of one of our natural rights?  (Casey Griffin)

1.        Is Socrates’s conclusion that “wherever the argument like a wind, tends, thither we must go” legitimate?   (Julie Kim)

2.        Is it true that some people are born more fit to rule than others?  (Phillip Yuen)

3.        What do you think of Socrates’s last assertion, that private property is what corrupts the “guardians” of society? Would politicians be less corrupt if they were provided for but never paid? Does such as system make politicians more responsible to the people?  (Sarah Kaplan)

4.        How does Socrates reconcile his search for absolute truth with censoring things that people can and cannot hear about?  (Anna Gordan)

5.        Can those who fear death never be courageous? What about troops going to war? Are they not courageous, or do they not fear death?  (Anna Gordan)

6.        Socrates says, “then the man who makes the finest mixture of gymnastic with music and brings them to his soul in the most proper measure is the one of whom we would most correctly say that he is the most perfectly musical and well harmonized.” Is it better to be a well-balanced person, or to specialize in one area?  (Jacob Sunshine)

7.        Do you agree with Socrates’s view on medicine and treatment?  (Angela Han)

8.        The requirements for the guardians’ education seem very rigid. Is Socrates’s Republic a utopian one or a practical one?  (Daniel Frankel)

9.        Do the “benefits” of censoring art outweigh the tearing down of free speech?  (Dominika Burek)

10.    Who would you let into your city: the unmixed imitator, the mixed imitator, or the one who does not imitate at all?  (Matthew Solomon)

11.    Is it beneficial for society to heal the infirm? Should we let them die? Isn’t it a waste because we will all die anyway?  (Maaz Tambra)

12.    Socrates advocates the sacrifice of individual rights for the benefit of society, including the right to freedom of speech. Are his arguments a precursor to modern totalitarianism? Should he have supported his own conviction in Athens? (Esther Schoenfeld)

13.    Do you agree with Socrates that it is justified for rulers to lie in order to protect citizens from enemies or internal disorder?  (Esther Schoenfeld)

14.    Is it still courageous to fight for the good if you are not choosing to do so, but merely following orders?  (Julia Kaplan)

15.    Can ridding a society of injustice ensure that anyone born into that society will be just?  (Julia Kaplan)

16.    How integral is brotherhood to a society?  (Taha Ahsin)

17.    Can a state as Socrates describes, with each individual allowed only one purpose and occupation, truly meet the personal needs of its citizens?  (Claire Littlefield)

18.    Does lying have its place in life?  (Avril Coley)

19.    Is the noble lie fundamentally consistent with the concept of justice? If it is, does that mean that lying is a necessary evil to sustain justice?  (Sandesh Kataria)

20.    When Glaucon asks whether the guardians should learn smithing, crafts, nautical arts or other activities, Socrates replies, “How could that be, since they won’t even be permitted to pay attention to any of these things?” Socrates seeks to limit the expertise of the guardians in many other areas as well, even in mixed music , gymnastic and fine food. How good a model of leadership can such a limited education provide?  (Allegra Wiprud)

1.        Do you agree with Socrates that courage is the “preserving of the opinion produced by law through education about what—and what sort of thing—is terrible?”   (Casey Griffin)

2.        Socrates previously asked for a definition of virtue without breaking it down into facets. How, then, do we treat his virtues of wisdom, courage, moderation and justice?  (Evan Smith)

3.        Does Socrates neglect a city’s need to adapt to a changing external environment?  (Dominika Burek)

4.        Do  you accept Socrates’s definition of justice?  (Avril Coley)

5.        Socrates says that “we are not looking to the exceptional happiness of any one group among us but, as far as possible, that of the city as a whole.” The good of the whole has often served as justification for government actions that would normally be considered unjust. Is it valid justification?  (Allegra Wiprud)

6.        If the values of Greek society were wisdom, courage, moderation and justice, what are the values of our society today?  (Maaz Tambra)

7.        Would Socrates’s system work today? Could we set up this society and be successful?  (Maaz Tambra)

8.        Is Socrates’s conception of justice as “minding one’s own business” universal? Can we apply it to our own society?  (Esther Schoenfeld)

9.        Do you agree that “it’s not by lack of learning, but by knowledge, that men counsel well?”  (Tammuz Huberman)

10.    We’ve often accepted “progress” and innovation as inevitable, despite possible [negative] consequences. Given the choice, should we quell innovation as Socrates suggests?  (Claire Littlefield)

11.    Humanity has always aspired to be better than where it is at present. Does such ambition in people make them unjust?  (Marley Lindsey)

12.    Socrates states, “the regime, once well started, will roll on like a circle in its growth.” After generations of conformity, will the founding principles of the city be forgotten, and the state seen as a hindrance to individual ambitions? Is Socrates’s city doomed?  (Julie Kim)

13.    Is it possible to ignore innovation and survive? Can a city prosper without it?  (Julia Kaplan)

14.    Is there truly no place for law making in Socrates’s ideal republic? What if a situation should arise where education is not a sufficiently short-term solution to maintain order?  (Andrew Huang)

15.    Do you agree with the idea that music is a good measure of political happenings?  (Matthew Solomon)

16.    Do you agree that “it isn’t worthwhile to dictate to gentlemen?” Can such a society exist?  (Angela Han)

17.    Is Socrates’s comparison of justice to health reasonable?  (Angela Han)

18.    To what extent should members of the distinct classes “mind their own business?” Are there circumstances that could arise that would lead to them having to break this convention of justice?  (Omika Jikaria)

19.    Justice often seems to be oftentimes more of a reaction to injustice and wrongdoing than a standard society strives for. How will justice prevail in an institution that theoretically has no injustice?  (Paul Lee)

20.    Is an ideal society worth striving for? Would people be as motivated to work to their fullest potential—no matter their profession—if their society is perfect?  (Sharada Sridhar)

21.    Can a city be happy if the individuals within it are not happy?  (Sarah Kaplan)

22.    Can wealth and poverty only corrupt? Do they not have benefits that may match their shortcomings?  (Michael Huang)

23.    In Book III, Socrates says that the best doctors are those who have experienced illness themselves. Then why are the best guardians not the ones who know tragedy?  (Anna Gordan)

24.    Socrates himself asserts that his execution was an outcome “not of laws, but of men.” Would this sentiment dissuade him from entrusting public policy to the guardians? (Tousif Ahsan)

25.    How would the republic function among other non-ideal societies? (Michelle Huang)

1.        Would individuals still be inclined to care for some people more than others in an absence of an awareness of family?   (Claire Littlefield)

2.        Can any individual justly hold the power to decide who lives and who dies? Does the wisdom of the guardians give them this right?  (Claire Littlefield)

3.        Do you agree with Socrates that “he is empty who believes anything is ridiculous other than the bad, and who tries to produce laughter looking to any other sight as ridiculous other than the sight of the foolish and the bad; or, again, he who looks seriously to any standard of beauty he sets up other than the good?”  (Casey Griffin)

4.        As a woman, would you want to have children in this society?  (Casey Griffin)

5.        Is philosophy the key to resolving all issues that plague society?  (Paul Lee)

6.        Eugenics gets a bum rap but would it not be better for society overall?  (Maaz Tambra)

7.        Should all rulers philosophize?  (Michael Huang)

8.        Is Socrates losing sight of the just with his ever longer “throng of lies and deceptions for the benefit of the ruled?”  (Julie Kim)

9.        Is opinion truly that which is “between ignorance and knowledge?”  (Julie Kim)

10.    How progressive is the Republic with regards to the treatment of women?  (Michelle Huang)

11.    Could corruption be totally abolished by the removal of personal property, wealth and family?  (Angela Han)

12.    Why is it that what the “urbane make a comedy of” eventually becomes accepted by society?  (Angela Han)

13.    Does exposing young children first-hand to the horrors of war make them grow up to be better warriors?  (Julia Kaplan)

14.    What is the difference between honoring beauty and honoring beautiful things?  (Allegra Wiprud)

15.    Does paternalism have a place in society?  (Allegra Wiprud)

16.    Are any means of controlling a population’s growth ever just?  (Daniel Frankel)

17.    Can a person be a productive member of society without procreating?  (Daniel Frankel)

18.    If people only delight in “fair sounds and colors and shapes.” how can we be sure there is a real “nature of the fair itself?”  (Marley Lindsey)

19.    Socrates breaks up thought and existence into three categories: that which is and can be known, that which is not and can never be known, and that which falls in between the two and is a matter of opinion. What implications does this have for many of our societal implications—religion in particular?  (Sarah Kaplan)

20.    Socrates seems to think that philosophers will rule most according to the city’s best interest. Who rules in our society? If we elected [or selected] philosophers, would our society be better off?  (Sarah Kaplan)

21.    Do you think that the way Socrates assigns value to individual lives is unethical?  (Sarah Kaplan)

1.        Are people born with a quickness of learning and love of intellect or does it develop due to the circumstances around them?   (Nadia Hossain)

2.        Would Socrates consider himself one of the candidates for philosopher-king?  (Nadia Hossain)

3.        Socrates implies that someone “endowed with magnificence and the contemplation of all time and all being” could not possibly think human life is anything great. Do you agree?  (Casey Griffin)

4.        Socrates says that philosophers are only useless because the many don’t use them. Do you think this is a valid argument or is the duty of any person to make themselves useful?  (Casey Griffin)

5.        Is Adeimantus’s critique of the dialectic compelling? When pursuing truth, is the part greater than the sum of its parts?  (Claire Littlefield)

6.        Does democracy force leaders to focus more on taking the rudder than on gazing at the stars? Are American politicians prevented from making good choices by political considerations?  (Claire Littlefield)

7.        Is number truly superior to object?  (Maaz Tambra)

8.       Socrates endorses the general over the particular but uses particulars to pick apart the arguments of his opponents.  Is this fair?  (Evan Smith)

9.        If we cannot define the good, how can we define things in the name of the good?  (Avril Coley)

10.    Do you think that intellectuals or passionate (erotic) people and quiet folk can’t live harmoniously, but that one group is continually trying to dominate the other? Is this reflected in Stuyvesant?  (Allegra Wiprud)

11.     Is good pleasure or prudence?  (Allegra Wiprud)

12.     Can we ever truly see what is , or is Socrates right in saying that we can only perceive or “intellect” it?  (Allegra Wiprud)

13.     Is it true that “many men would chose to do, possess, and even enjoy the reputation for things that are opined to be just and fair, even if they aren’t?” Does Socrates give too little consideration to men who wouldn’t choose to do so?  (Julie Kim)

14.     Is our current society the end of the road morally? Is moral progression linear? Is it an asymptote that we are incredibly close to but can’t reach?  (Henry Lin)

15.     Are philosophers useless? Is Socrates’s argument substantial?  (Tammuz Huberman)

16.     Do you buy Socrates’s argument that bad societies will corrupt philosophers? Are philosophers truly defenseless against the excesses of popularity?  (Kai Sam Ng)

17.     Can the masses ever appreciate beauty and wisdom? Why is everything dumbed down for the majority?  (Daniel Frankel)

18.    Socrates disdains the masses for believing that good is subjective; that it is maximization of pleasure. Is the good objective or subjective? Can we have objective good without God?  (Esther Schoenfeld)

19.     Socrates claims that the good is more important than justice. Do you agree? Can the good and justice come into conflict?  (Esther Schoenfeld)

20.    Socrates claims that those who are most fit to rule are considered useless to society.  Does this mean that modern democratic societies tend to elect officials that are in fact the most useless and unfit to rule?  (Tousif Ahsan)

21.     Socrates is critical of the people who only look at the particulars. Is this view necessarily detrimental to a society that inhabits the visible realm of the particulars?  (Tousif Ahsan)

22.    Socrates says that the philosopher is one who by nature loves and seeks after the truth. He also says that the philosopher can know no lie. In today’s world, can there be any true philosophers?  (Paul Lee)

23.    Is the state’s function for the sake of the philosopher, or the philosopher’s function for the sake of the state?  (Jacob Sunshine)

24.    “He applies all these names following the great animal’s opinions—calling what delights it good and what vexes it bad.” By what other standard could we deem actions good or bad ?  (Marley Lindsey)

25.    Do you agree with Socrates’s implication that education is the only determinant of whether a soul becomes good or bad? (Matthew Solomon)

26.    “It is necessary for those … who need to be ruled to go to the doors of the man who is able to rule, not for the ruler who is truly of any use to beg the ruled to be ruled.” What implications does this have for a democracy? Is power a privilege to be earned, or a burden taken up at the request of the ruled? (Sarah Kaplan)

27.    “The man who is really a lover of learning must from youth on strive as intensely as possible for every kind of truth.” How can Socrates reconcile this with the lies he would have told to the citizens of his city about their origins and their natures? (Sarah Kaplan)

28.    Do you agree that it’s impossible for “the multitude” to be philosophic? (Sarah Kaplan)

1.        In our society, who are the prisoners of the cave and what is the equivalent of the sunlight?   (Daniel Frankel)

2.        Is it possible to get children to want to go to school un-slavishly?  (Taha Ahsin)

3.        Is the truth that humans comprehend really “nothing other than the shadows of artificial things?”  (Jacob Sunshine)

4.        Is Socrates’s cave metaphor valid in a society where there is abundant information? Is our problem a lack of understanding or a lack of the will to be understood?   (Tousif Ahsan)

5.        Is education really like the cave metaphor? Is it that hard to get accustomed to truth? Is it that hard to go back to ignorance?  (Matthew Solomon)

6.        “An older man however, wouldn’t be willing to participate in such madness.” Do you agree that an older person is more suited to philosophize than a younger person?  (Matthew Solomon)

7.        Plato defines the goal of education as turning the individual toward the light, not putting knowledge into peoples’ heads. Would he be satisfied with our education system? If not, how would he change it?  (Claire Littlefield)

8.        Is democracy capable of placing societal good above individual good?  (Claire Littlefield)

9.        Do you agree that being is more important than becoming?  (Julia Kaplan)

10.    Socrates believes in turning the education of philosopher kings to-be into a form of play since it is often a characteristic of human nature to comprehend what is not compulsory better. Is this valid?  (Omika Jikaria)

11.    Is math really universal? Do you agree that understanding numbers is necessary to grasp higher truths?  (Sarah Kaplan)

12.    Do you agree that the tangible, visible world is of little importance?  (Sarah Kaplan)

13.    Innovation was involved in the creation of math? How would Socrates balance his discouragement of innovation and devout belief in math?  (Sharada Sridhar)

14.    Do we do EVERYTHING for individual happiness?  (Maaz Tambra)

15.    “But men who aren’t lovers of ruling must go to it; otherwise rival lovers will fight.” How would the existence of philosopher-kings prevent others from loving power?  (Cassie Moy)

16.    Could a government completely devoid of faction rule effectively today?  (Andrew Huang)

17.    Do you agree that “if you discover a life better than ruling for those who are going to rule, it is possible your well-governed city will come into being?”  (Tammuz Huberman)

18.    Can dialectic be dangerous?  (Esther Schoenfeld)

19.    Is it possible to find the truth “by discussion—by means of argument without the use of any of the senses?”  (Esther Schoenfeld)

20.    If we all agree on the shadows’ meaning, is it that bad to just live with them without finding their true meaning? Is finding the truth that valuable?  (Avril Coley)

21.    Do you think it is fair to give the guardians a “worse life when a better is possible for them?”  (Casey Griffin)

22.    America is almost the antithesis of Socrates’s Republic—does its success mean that Socrates is wrong?  (Henry Lin)

23.    Socrates spends a lot of time discovering things that are good or serve the good, yet has so far not addressed the good itself.  What is it?  (Allegra Wiprud)

24.    Socrates says that “according to the way [power] is turned, it becomes useful and helpful or useless and harmful… if this part of [one’s] nature were trimmed in earliest childhood,” people would become better reasoners and leaders. Are people born with the ability or inclination to do ill?  (Allegra Wiprud)

CENTRAL QUESTIONS

1.        How does Socrates reconcile the conclusion that democracies become unjust tyrannies with his belief that his ideal Republic can be achieved by deceiving, and ultimately controlling, the masses?   (Julie Kim)

2.        Is democracy the ultimate relativist government?  (Jacob Sunshine)

3.        Why does Socrates hate democracy so much? Does democracy carry peace or turmoil?  (Daniel Frankel)

4.        “He doesn’t admit true speech or let it pass into the guardhouse if someone says that there are some pleasures belonging to fine and good desires and some belonging to bad desires and that the ones must be practiced and honored and the others checked and enslaved.” Can desires and intent be simplified into good and bad? Are these human features more complex than that?  (Taha Ahsin)

5.        If it will just fail, why go to the trouble of creating an ideal society?  (Marley Lindsey)

6.        Is this degeneration of regimes reversible? Has history not proved that tyrannies may change into democracies?  (Michael Huang)

7.        Do you agree with Socrates’s description of the democratic man? Is doing whatever pleases one at that exact moment a bad thing? Is it a bad idea to live your life without purpose?  (Matthew Solomon)

8.        “Too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery, both for private man and city.” Do you agree? Do we dislike the idea of living in Plato’s Republic because we love freedom too much?  (Cassie Moy)

9.        According to Socrates. The critical flaw of a democracy—the flaw that dooms it to collapse is that it is excessively free.  Is this true? How free are democracies?  (Esther Schoenfeld)

10.    Socrates says that one of the problems the state will have over time is that it will become two cities, one for the rich and one for the poor.  Why does this cause a greater problem than when Socrates divides his original city into the ruling philosopher class and the working class?  (Nadia Hossain)

11.    Do you think Socrates is right that in a democracy, the teachers fawn on their students and the elderly come down to the level of the young? And is this a bad thing?  (Casey Griffin)

INTERESTING QUESTIONS

12.    Nothing lasts forever, but is Plato’s theory of a city’s progression valid today?  (Daniel Frankel)

13.    Does the path of degeneration of a city mean the United States is doomed to result in a tyrannical government?  (Anna Gordan)

14.    Is it true that “when wealth and the wealthy are honored in a city, virtue and the good man are less honorable?” Can one man be wealthy, virtuous and honorable?  (Anna Gordan)

15.    Do you agree “that in a city where you see beggars, somewhere in the neighborhood thieves… and craftsmen of all such evils are hidden?” Does this hold true for New York City? Why are there so many beggars?  (Anna Gordan)

16.    Do you agree that “virtue [is] in tension with wealth, as though each were lying in the scale of a balance, always inclining in opposite directions?” Is it impossible to have wealth/try to gain great wealth and still be virtuous? Does this mean that capitalism is lacking in all virtue?  (Matthew Solomon)

17.    Do we, as Americans, call “insolence, good education; anarchy, freedom; wastefulness, magnificence; and shamelessness, courage?”  (Kai Sam Ng)

18.    Socrates says that as the love of money and wealth grows in a society, the constitution will change so that ruling is based entirely on wealth. Is this true in America, a country considered to be the wealthiest in the world?  (Angela Han)

Central Questions

1.        Do you agree with Socrates’s condemnation of pleasure as absence of pain and vice versa?  Why can't the life of repose be equally fulfilling as the life of full pleasure?   (Andrew Huang)

2.        The soul under tyranny, “always forcibly drawn by a gadfly… will be full of confusion and regret.”  Socrates has previously called himself the necessary gadfly of Athens.  How would he (or we) answer this dichotomy?  (Allegra Wiprud)

3.        Is it fair of Socrates to say that “some terrible, savage and lawless form of desires is in every man?”  (Tammuz Huberman)

4.        729 times better?  Probably not meant to be taken seriously, but is the just life exponentially better than the unjust life?  (Cassie Moy)

5.        Socrates attributes all good to the “calculating, came, and ruling part” of our natures, and all evil desires to base instincts.  Can evil comes from reason?  Can good comes from strong emotions (like love, that has “from old been called a tyrant”)?  (Claire Littlefield)

6.        Do you agree with Socrates that “complete hostility to law” is equivalent to “complete freedom?”  (Casey Griffin)

7.        Do you agree that “a man is like his city”; that the soul of a person who lives under tyranny necessarily is “filled with much slavery and illiberality?  (Esther Schoenfeld)

8.        Do you agree that a tyrannical man who is given the opportunity to rule—with all the wealth and prestige that comes with ruling—is worse off than a man who lives a tyrannic life in private?  (Esther Schoenfeld)

9.        Socrates mentions that there are three types of humans in the world: those who are truth-loving, those who are honor-loving and those who are profit-loving.  Is it possible for there to be a human being who possesses more than one of these traits?  Will that human be happy?  (Omika Jikaria)

10.    Does the analysis that Socrates gives us really prove that the perfectly just man lives a better life than the perfectly unjust man?  If the Ring of Gyges allows the unjust man cannot be caught and his acts, does he still have to fear retribution?   (Anna Gordan)

11.    If given a choice, would you lead the life of a rich and powerful tyrant or a poor but just philosopher?  (Maaz Tambra)

12.    Though erotic love is condemned because it can lead one to pursue idle desires, did we not also establish that it is also required for the lover of knowledge to pursue truth?  Does not Socrates himself exemplified this?  (Julie Kim)

13.    Does Socrates make a convincing argument that the evils which a political tyrant may face (paranoia, envy, isolation) far outweigh the pleasures of ruling and power?  (Julie Kim)

14.    Is the just man more content with life than a tyrant?  (Daniel Frankel)

15.    Is it fair to consider the tyrant a philosopher gone bad?  (Marley Lindsey)

16.    Socrates says that “a man becomes tyrannic in a precise sense one, either by nature or by his practices or bolts, he has become drunken, erotic, and melancholic.” According to the notes, melancholy is an attribute of most exceptional men, including philosophers.  So could philosophers become tyrants, since they have erotic desire to learn and are melancholic? (Angela Han)

17.    Is there really that much of a difference between the Republic and tyranny?  Should we consider them to be on opposite ends of the virtue spectrum?  (Matthew Solomon)

18.    Can pleasure exist without pain?  (Avril Coley)

Interesting Questions

19.    Do the extravagant desires of our society today contain the conditions necessary for the genesis of the tyrannical man?  (Andrew Huang)

20.    Does philosophic pleasure, indeed, the only real pleasure according to Socrates, exist in our relativistic society?  (Kai Sam Ng)

21.    How can a decent side of a soul overwhelm the tyrannical side?  (Dominika Burek)

22.    Do you agree that wisdom is a superior virtue to courage and wealth?  Which of the three do you think American society honors the lowest?  (Sarah Kaplan)

23.    “those that wake and sleep when the rest of the soul slumbers, while the beastly and wild part… is skittish… it dares to do everything as though it were released from… all shame and prudence.  And it doesn't shrink from attempting intercourse… with a mother or anyone else at all-human beings, gods, and beasts... And, in a word, it omits no act of folly or shamelessness.” Is this a precursor to Freudian thought?  (Jacob Sunshine)

24.    Are we all naturally inclined to become tyrants?  (Daniel Frankel)

25.    How is Plato's assertion that happiness comes from understanding the form of the Good similar to the religious assertion that happiness comes from understanding God?  (Tousif Ahsan)

26.    Do our dreams define our desires?  (Angela Han)

1.        How does Socrates’s example of three types of couches translate to ideas such as justice or virtue? What would be the secondary form of these?   (Avril Coley)

2.        Is it a person’s fault if they lead an unjust life?  (Maaz Tambra)

3.        Do the “forms” exist outside human thought? Can knowledge exist independent of man’s of man’s understanding of it?  (Sarah Kaplan)

4.        Do you agree that “the part [of the soul] which trusts measure and calculation would be the best part of the soul?” If not, which is the part of the soul that should be listened to in the pursuit of a good and just life?  (Julia Kaplan)

5.        At the end of the day, would you follow Socrates and “keep to the upper road and practice justice with prudence?” Has justice finally become objective?  (Marley Lindsay)

6.        Is Socrates’s argument against imitation valid? Is imitation really bad?  (Matthew Solomon)

7.        Is the end of Republic satisfying? Is the reader left content?  (Tammuz Huberman)

8.        The Republic ends by talking about an immortal soul and the afterlife as a final justification for living a just life. If you don’t believe in an afterlife of any kind, do Socrates’s arguments still hold power?  (Casey Griffin)

9.        Socrates clearly dislikes poets strongly. Who are the “poets” in our society? How do we view them?  (Omika Jikaria)

10.    Socrates says he would be happy to allow the poets back into the city if anyone could come up with a valid argument. Do you accept the challenge?  (Maaz Tambra)

11.    Like the myth of Er, is it okay to pursue a just life in order to receive an award?  (Angela Han)

12.    Are we less willing to do “the right thing” when nobody is watching? How much do we respect justice, virtue, and courage?  (Allegra Wiprud)

243 Plato Essay Topics & Examples

If you’re writing a Plato essay, look through the topics collected by our team . Explore the philosopher’s relationships with Socrates, the concepts of cave and utopia, and more.

🏆 Best Plato Essay Examples & Topics

👍 good plato’s republic essay topics, 🔍 great topics for plato essays, 🎓 simple & easy plato essay titles, 💡 most interesting plato topics to write about, ❓ essay questions about plato.

• Plato and Aristotle on Literature Compare & Contrast Essay The controversy over the effects of literature has made the great philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, to differ in their perceptions of the literature impacts on the society.
• The Concept of Plato’s Ideal State Essay Being a part of a group that had access to knowledge and power, he believed that the state needed to have some people who were cleverer than the others as it was one of the […]
• Compare and Contrast: Plato and Aristotle Essay Aristotle was a “the son of a renowned physician from Thrace” and he began his philosophy studies at the Plato’s academy.
• Plato and Aristotle’s Views of Virtue in Respect to Education Arguably, Plato and Aristotle’s views of education differ in that Aristotle considers education as a ‘virtue by itself’ that every person must obtain in order to have ‘happiness and goodness in life’, while Plato advocates […]
• Plato vs. Aristotle: Political Philosophy Compare and Contrast Essay Plato went further to associate all the parts of the soul to parts of the body with reason connected to the head, will connected to the heart and appetite connected to the abdomen and sensory […]
• Philosophy: Plato’s Republic Versus Aristotle’s Politics Plato as well turns off the partition amid the private and the public and he contends for common kids and wives for the guardians in a bid to create a society amongst the rulers of […]
• Socrates Influence on Plato’s Philosophy He was accused of corrupting the morals of the youth and misleading the citizens with his unorthodox political and religious views. Plato was so attracted to Socrates philosophy that he made him the principal character […]
• Plato’s Theory of Forms: Summary Essay Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to discuss theory of Forms as one of the main contributions of Plato.
• Guardians and Justice in Plato’s “The Republic” The books begin with the discussion of the ideal city and more importantly, the concept of justice. As a result, justice of the soul and the individual is achieved.
• Plato on Death: Comparison With Aristotle Afterlife – Essay on Life After Death Philosophy On the other hand, religion has maintained that the soul is immortal and survives the death of the body. Plato argued that the soul is immortal and therefore survives the death of the body.
• Plato on Knowledge and Opinion The primary division of Plato’s classification is the division of knowledge into sensory and intellectual knowledge. The first category of knowledge, namely sensory knowledge, is perceived as a lower type, and intellectual knowledge is the […]
• Plato’s Philosophy The allegory of the cave can serve in revealing some of the key reasons to mistrust the views of the majority.
• The Role of Gods in Plato’s Philosophy As Plato recounts the episode “Myth of Er” found in the republic dialogue phaedo and the story of time reversal in the statesman, a clear view of the hierarchical arrangement of the cosmos is illuminated.
• Epistemologies of Plato and Aristotle It is also worth mentioning the Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato explains the relationship between people and the world of the Forms.
• Aristotle’s and Plato’s Views on Rhetoric One of the points that Plato expresses in this philosophical work is that rhetoric should be viewed primarily as the “artificer of persuasion”. This is one of the similarities that can be distinguished.
• Lessons From Plato’s Book ‘the Apology’ Though called ‘apology’ by Plato, the speech is not actually an apology- Socrates was attempting use his wisdom to justify his teachings and beliefs, and not to apologize for his actions.[2] First, his concise and […]
• Ideal Society by Plato The task of the social leaders is to orient to interests of the majority in order to avoid the opposition of the public which can lead to revealing the negative qualities of people living in […]
• Why Did Plato Hate the Sophists? – Philosophy He claimed that the sophists were selling the wrong education to the rich people. The methods of teaching that the sophists portrayed in Athens were in conflict with Plato’s school of thought.
• Plato’s Republic and Hobbes’s Leviathan Philosophical Comparison In order to form a solid basis on how the two theories visualize the ability of man to reason, it is important to have a valid understanding of the theories themselves.
• The Affinity Argument in Plato’s Phaedo Religious leaders also pray for the body and the soul of the dead but lay a lot of emphasis on the soul.
• Plato on Power and Republic In philosophy of government, Plato argues that philosophers are the most knowledgeable members of society; thus, they deserve to be rulers because they understand what is right for humanity and government.
• Plato’s “The Apology of Socrates” Speech Analysis He also suggests that the speech could be the real account of the apology of Socrates based on the premise that the people in Athens at the time Plato had written the speech could have […]
• The Film “Soul” by Pixar: Understanding Plato’s Rhetoric Plato believes that the function of the soul in the conception of noble rhetoric is the ability of the orator to understand other people and execute the art of rhetoric.
• Art Theory and Beauty in Plato’s The Symposium The Platonic dialogue in The Symposium epitomizes the progression that Diotima describes as pursuance of beauty in highly refined and generalized forms and each speech in the symposium takes the reader closer to the comprehension […]
• Comparison of Plato’s and Aristotle’s Approaches to the Nature of Reality In contrast to Plato, Aristotle asserted that the senses were necessary for accurately determining reality and that they could not be used to deceive a person. Aristotle and Plato both considered that thoughts were superior […]
• Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and Aristotle’s “High-Minded Man” The concept of a High-Minded man is close to Aristotle’s understanding of success and the contribution of different virtues to an individual’s happiness.
• Social Contract in Plato’s, Hobbes’, Locke’s Works In Plato’s opinion, because the guardian class would be the judge of the people, there would be no need for laws, and this would make it easier to run the city.
• Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” and Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” In general, Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” and LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” address the same theme the truth and how it may affect people’s reality.
• Confucius, Plato, and Aristotle: Views on Society In the video, it is highlighted that both Plato and Confucius shared a commitment to reason and the value of the state.
• Philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Marx The philosophical dilemma is how to do it, because in the overwhelming majority of cases, a human being is driven by the desire.
• Cameron’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and Plato’s “Symposium”: Comparison The plot of the story is unique, while the character of Hedwig and her life story emphasize the difficulties that people can go through.
• The Perspectives of Plato and Augustine on Metaphysics For Augustine, God was the source of all forms, and subsequently, all of the objects and phenomena existing in the physical world were manifestations of the ideals kept in the mind of God.
• Plato’s Ideal State: Self-Enclosed and Unstable Plato’s proposed alternative is the rule of a philosopher-king a wise person able to see the essence of justice and, consequently, have the precise knowledge rather than a mere opinion of what is right.
• Plato’s Imitative View of Art. An understanding of the essence of art is inseparable from the understanding the world of human nature and views on society.
• Philosophical Issues on Plato’s Phaedo Weiss argues that Plato used the argument by Socrates that true philosophers hate the pleasures of the body, for example, drinks, sex, and food.
• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, there is much darkness in the cave and only very little light can be found in this place and it is so hard for a person who is in […]
• Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium His speech has a somber tone and tells the fabled story of the beginning of love. Aristophanes creates the notion that the earliest humans were androgynous a combination of both male and female using his […]
• The Allegory of the Cave by Plato Review First of all, Plato created the people in the cave captives in order to rhetorically appeal to the audience’s emotions and arouse the sensations that already exist in them, which, of course, already produces an […]
• Plato’s Descartes’ and Hume’s Philosophy Also, his philosophy conveys the importance and the beauty of the life of faith in the midst of a discouraging world.
• “Statesman” by Plato: A Critique Plato extols the virtues of a statesman stating that it is not the power of the statesman that is important but his knowledge.
• Plato’s Theory of Natural Depravity Even in times of ancient Jews and peoples which surrounded them the core accent consisted in the purity of spirit, soul and body, but most of all they emphasized the concept of spiritual life minding […]
• “The Apology” by Plato: Socrates Accusations The main accusations that played a significant role in Socrates’ death sentence were the accusations of impiety and corrupting the young people of Athens.
• Plato, the Philosopher: His Life and Times He could have attained the name because of the nature of his forehead or because of his extensive knowledge. Due to the wealth and political influence of his family, his father gave him the best […]
• Plato’s Philosophy in “The Republic” In his description of the ideal society, Plato explains that people in the society are not advised to act without knowledge such that before a city is erected, full understanding of justice should be known.
• “The last Days of Socrates” by Plato It is a follow up of Plato’s ‘The Apology’ and provides a description of the conversations between Socrates, and his disciples, Crito and the jailer.
• Plato’s Visions of Beauty and Déjà Vu From this point, beauty can be discussed as the attribute of things and as the independent form, and deja vu is the example of the reality as illusion because the life is only the reflection […]
• Plato and Socrates on the Ideal Leader’s Virtues In the context of a community, different factors contribute to the definition of this ultimate success. This is important, as people in the community will stand a chance to achieve the higher statuses that they […]
• Plato’s “Parable of the Cave”: The Socratic Method In conclusion, the allegory of the cave by Plato is a parable about knowledge, wisdom, and ignorance. The cave represents a world in which a person is placed initially, but by examining one’s life and […]
• Justice and Ideal Society in Plato’s Republic Thrasymachus argues that the moral values in the society are a complete reflection of the interests of the ruling group and not the society as a whole.
• Comparison of Descartes’ “Meditation” and Plato’s “Phaedo” In general, the Descartes’ philosophy is linked to the church’s connotation of the most significant part of an individual’s body, which is acknowledged as existent, even after the end of physical life.
• “The Republic” by Plato: Book X It is a fundamental theory defining society, and with the theme continuing throughout the book, the reader reconceptualizes their place and purpose in the community.
• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy Allegory by the Cave is one of the widely read and used books of Plato. Plato’s view on a Utopian society is slightly different in the sense that it is aligned more towards religion compared […]
• Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”: Nature of Reality His exceptional and genius ideas included the theory of forms, platonic realism, and platonic idealism.”The Allegory of the Cave” is written in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother Glaucon.
• Plato’s Dialogue Crito Crito insists that a person must listen to the opinion of the majority, and Socrates argues that it is impossible to pay attention to the opinions of all the people because it is important to […]
• Important Virtues in Human Life: Plato’s Protagoras and Hesiod’s Works and Days Plato and Hesiod tried to evaluate the ideas of justice in their worlds and the ways of how people prefer to use their possibilities and knowledge using the story of Prometheus; Plato focused on the […]
• Machiavelli’s vs. Plato’s Justification of Political Lies As we will see, claims of lying and deception and the desire to deceive and mislead seem to be linked to incorrect expectations, false beliefs, and self-delusion on both sides of the political and public […]
• Plato, Augustine and Descartes Views on Religion The decision to return to the cave to enlighten the rest of the prisoners is viewed by Plato as the work of philosophers in enlightening the rest of the population to know the truth.
• Plato’s Concept of the State: The Philosophy of Justice Taking into consideration the fact that Plato was actually trying to create the image of the ideal state and show the means which in his understanding are the key issues to building up the society […]
• Aspects of Justice in Plato’s Republic Or to put it the other way around: For the moneymaking, auxiliary, and guardian classes each to do its own work in the city is the opposite.
• “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato As Plato was a disciple of Socrates and the source of much of the information we have regarding much of what this man had to say, Socrates’ concept of ethics is relevant to an understanding […]
• “The Republic” by Plato Review The allegory of the cave illustrates the place of the form of the good at the top of Plato’s hierarchy. It addresses the images of education and governance.
• Communication in Plato’s “The Phaedrus” The Phaedrus compares oral and written communication and outlines the advantages of the two forms. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Internet becomes the main and the most popular form of communication.
• Plato’s Theory of Eros in Nussbaum’s Interpretation This is done so that in the end there is a way that the individual can be able to conquer or attain the trust of the other party.
• “The Apology” a Work by Plato I will also aim to explore the validity of a suggestion that, while pointing out that no one is wiser than Socrates, the Oracle of Delphi meant to say that people are being just as […]
• Plato and Aristotle: Criticisms of Democracy To speak of it in our present time, there are only a few people who are given the power of ‘sound judgement about what is right and what is wrong’ and should have the power […]
• Plato and the Allegory of the Caves Occasionally, the carriers of the objects speak to one another, but their voices reach the prisoners in form of echoes from the wall ahead of them.
• Human Excellence From Nietzsche’s and Plato’s Perspectives According to Nietzsche, the highest kind of human excellence is the ability to be oneself and to make one’s own choices, as well as being self-content.
• Plato’s “Republic”: Moderation and Justice In order to understand the relationship of justice and moderation both in a person and a polis, it is vital to assess Plato’s understanding of the soul.
• The Work “Republic” by Plato: Arguments for Democracy The primary argument that democracy is worse than timarchy and oligarchy derives directly from the text of Republic, where Socrates agrees that only tyranny is worse than democracy.
• Allegory of the Cave by Plato Among them is the existence of objective truth, which is independent of people’s opinions; the presence of constant deceptions that make a person stay away from this truth; and the need for qualitative changes to […]
• The Article “Plato on Democracy and Expertise” by R. W. Sharples The central message permeating the writing is that the rigidity of truth on which the conceptual model of democracy is built is a problem since any system needs to acknowledge the malleability of the underlying […]
• The Importance of Education in Plato’s Kallipolis This paper evaluates Plato’s Republic to show how the differentiation between justice and injustice, the worth of a successful beginning, and the exchange of knowledge through education contribute to creating the perfect Kallipolis.
• Machiavelli’s vs. Plato’s Ideas of Political Morality According to him, reconciling the gap between ideal and reality is necessary for the development of a political philosophy capable of guiding the Greeks in their quest for liberty.
• Plato’s Theory of Musical Education Hertzler bestows perfection on utopia, arguing that it is “purged of the shortcomings, the wastes, and the confusion”. It is noteworthy that Sargent shares the opinion of Patrick and considers Hertzler not proper.
• Plato’s, Aristotle’s, and Augustine’s Ideas Although the basis of the ideas of the four philosophers may be different regarding God, it is similar in terms of the creation of the world and, in my opinion, differs only in terminology and […]
• Plato’s Philosophy on Exposure to Education Plato establishes what education is worth for both the individual and the state in The Republic, emphasizing the crucial function of those who select the materials to educate the state’s future guardians.
• Plato’s Account of Socrates’ Trial Though the described behavior might seem as unexpected and uncalled for, Socrates’s actions are justified by his decision to explore the nature of social justice and understand the citizens’ stance on their status and the […]
• Concept of Piety in Plato’s “Euthyphro” Thus, the first answer to the question of piety shows that Euthyphro’s piety is what he is doing at the moment, that is, accusing his father of murder.
• Plato’s and Aristotle’s Works and Their Effects The first insight from these philosophical writings that shifted my viewpoint about this field was the distinctive role of the end goal and action in Plato’s and Aristotle’s works.
• Eros in Plato’s Symposium Speeches Therefore, in most cases, the product of love, or Eros, is the fulfillment of the need for admiration. The role of self-love in Aristophanes’ speech is to inspire people to find lovers that connect to […]
• Plato’s Theory of Forms and Personal Perception In his philosophical dialogues, the thinker divides the divine, unchangeable world of forms and the world of material, physical objects that was constantly changing and existed only as a shadow of the ideas.
• The Gyges Mythology by Plato: Personal Review Over the decades, the intensification in the flow of information and automation of the communication domains provides an opportunity for anonymity.
• Plato’s “Republic” and the Issues of Justice To oppose this, the philosopher offers a discussion to convince the opponents of the need for a passage for himself, receiving in response a symbolic phrase from the Polemarchus who says, “How can you convince […]
• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the Main Features of His Philosophy The sense of opposing the reality and the perceived in the Cave myth is epistemological and is tied to the replacement of reliance on sensory cognition with mental comprehension. The reality of the Cave is […]
• The Freedom Concept in Plato’s “Republic” This situation shows that the concept of democracy and the freedom that correlates with it refers to a flawed narrative that liberty is the same as equality.
• How Plato and Epicurus Viewed Help for People In the Republic, Plato gives a detailed analysis of the “good” while Epicurus describes the notion of “good life” in his Letter to Monoeceus. The conversations between Glaucon and Socrates help the reader equate and […]
• The State’s Role in “The Republic” by Plato Even being unaware of the three categories of people, the reader can learn that the state’s role is to function and create the conditions under which every person is able to exist. One of the […]
• “Euthyphro” Philosophical Book by Plato The setting of the dialogue is near the Athenian courthouse where the two meet to discuss of the notions of holiness and piety.
• Plato’s “Apology” Review In this quote, Socrates makes it clear to the audience that the accusation against him is based not on evidence but rather on the lack of understanding of philosophers by other people.
• Understanding the Concept of ”Beauty” by Plato In his view, beauty is connected to the idea of forms. Plato would consider all three pieces of artwork, including The Creation of Adam, The Persistence of Memory, and Fountain, as an imitation.
• Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” Analysis It would not be an exaggeration to state that Plato’s allegory of the cave only makes perfect sense if one views it in the light of the theory of forms.
• Plato’s Concept of Education and Wisdom For the people in the cave, the only reality they are aware of is the shadows from the figures cast by the fire’s light.
• Discussion Questions for Plato – The Allegory of the Cave Therefore, the inability of individuals to discover the truth and leave the cave makes them unable to choose between actual reality and the world that they falsely believe to be true.
• Plato’s Views on Democracy Plato’s point of view appeared to me as a more appealing out of the two presented opinions on the best course for a political regime within a country.
• Plato’s Justice and Injustice Theory The reading focuses only on the subjective benefits of a particular action and, in most cases, unjust actions that are dishonest towards others, but at the same time, favorable to oneself are more likely to […]
• Euthyphro: Plato’s Notion of Justice in Stratified Societies As among humans, the disagreement between the gods is related to the line between the just and the unjust, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil.
• Plato’s and Aristotle’s Concepts of Political Theory In The Republic by Plato and The Politics by Aristotle, two unique originations of the state, equity, and political investment introduce themselves.
• Philosophy of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle Logic as understood by Socrates was to some extent influenced by the Pythagoreans since he practiced the dialectic methods in investigating the objectivity and authority of the different propositions.
• Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave”: Personal Review The sun represents the realm of knowledge illustrated by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I think that an individual has the power to shape their ideas and perspective of knowledge.
• Examining Plato’s Ideas About the Universe Along with Socrates and Aristotle, Plato is one of the members of the Big Three that made a significant impact on the emergence and development of philosophy.
• Plato’s “Euthyphro” The Euthyphro dilemma refers to the state Euthyphro found himself in after the conversation with Socrates, whereby it was difficult to decide whether God loves holiness because it is holy or whether holiness is holy […]
• Plato’s “Method of Division” According to Plato, rhetoric is an art of philosophy that helps in controlling the minds of the crowd or any kind of meeting such as congregation.
• The Theme of Vocation in “Apology” by Plato Then if I do not think he is, I come to the assistance of the god and show him that he is not wise.
• Wisdom as Discussed in Plato’s Meno and Phaedo In addition, Socrates says that an action may be right and its quality determines whether it is an act of wisdom.
• Plato’s Apology: Is Socrates Guilty? The accusations placed against Socrates include: Studying the activities in the heavens and below the earth. Predicting the things in the heavens and below the earth associates him with the physicists such as Thales and […]
• “Not Knowing”: Plato’s Cave and Descartes’s Meditations And it is not the way of “the sceptics, who doubt only for the sake of doubting”. And a redundancy of information also is a huge power, which confuses people to get the pure Knowledge.
• Democracy Emergence in Ancient Greece and Why Plato Was Opposed to It The result of this war was the defeat of Athens by Sparta at the end of the fifth century which led to the overthrow of many democratic regimes.
• Analysis of Socrates and Plato Theories One element of the Soul, the Nous, or reason, he maintained that has to try to order the irrational part of it by getting it to contribute in the Good.
• Gaines’ “A Lesson Before Dying” and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” This situation resembles the one found in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave discourse whereby the prisoners fixedly stare at the wall.
• Plates Forms and Its Association to Plato’s Cave The theory of forms of Plato portrays to us that abstract non-material forms have the highest kind of fundamental reality as compared to this material world that is known well to us by sensation.
• Plato’s Five Dialogues Importance for the Art of Philosophy Given that Socrates knows that Euthyphro is a good lawyer, he asks him to explain to him so that he can know the whole truth about what is pious.
• Greek Philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle It is argued that the origin of philosophy as a discipline owes its origin to the contribution of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.”Socrates’ contribution to the love of wisdom was manifested by the belief that philosophy […]
• Plato: Redefining Objectiveness in Life According to Kreiss, through the Allergy of the cave, the allergy is presented as the sense in which we reveal our world, yet it is actually not exactly that, rather, an intellectual approach can comprehensively […]
• Twain’s “The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn” and Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” The judge goes to the extent of taking the boy’s father in his own home to help him reform his drinking problem. The father then decides to visit the house of the widow during which […]
• Plato’s Meno: Philosophical Dialogue The discussion begins by Meno asking Socrates whether there is a definition of the word ‘Arete’ because he thinks that it cannot be taught in class because there is apparently no definition of the word.
• Medieval Philosophy of Plato The description of the existence of universals in a domain that is devoid of time and space gives universals an extra-ordinary picture.
• Plato’s Principles in Murray’s Book Real Education Having based the main propositions of his work on the categories of inherent abilities and education of Plato’s Philosophy, the contemporary American scientist adapted them to the present-day realities and used Plato’s ideas as axioms […]
• Plato and Socrates: Differences in Personal Philosophy The question that enters my mind when I read the Republic is in regards to the fact that Plato considers education to be the defining act that separates those who do not know from those […]
• Politics and Ethics in Plato’s Republic After the Peloponnesian war, he was convinced by his uncle to join the oligarchical rules of Athens but as an alternative, he joined his two brothers in becoming a student of Socrates.
• Plato’s and Aristotle’s Views on Oedipus People in the Oedipus play lived in the dark of the unknown meaning of the riddle; until Oedipus answered the riddle.
• Plato, Aristotle and Socrates: Knowledge and Government It appears that Socrates believed in an intellectual aristocracy, where those who had more education and had proven themselves in sophistry the “Socratic method” of exchange and analysis of ideas as a path to all […]
• Plato’s Republic: An Introduction Plato’s dialogues bring out the nature of justice in the society. The issue of guardian of the society is a major issue in the society.
• Plato’s “Leaving the Cave” The author discusses positive and negative features of the individuals, describes the forms of government, and introduces the idea about the necessity of the education in order to create a perfect state with perfect people, […]
• “Republic” by Plato: Social and Political Philosophy As well, the ruler will do his job in the best way if one does not abstract from one’s responsibilities.”Therefore, I suggest that we first consider the nature of justice and injustice as they appear […]
• Eros in Plato’s Symposium and Sappho’s Poems The truth of love is to follow the way of love like philosophical way and see the soul behind the body, everlasting beauty of virtue, and idea behind the beauty of transient love.
• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in “The Republic” They also are learning the things that I am learning and starting to see dimensions where before there were not any.
• Plato’s “Meno”: On the Nature of Virtue In 95c, the author assumes that Sophists are also not qualified to teach virtue, due to the fact that one of the respected philosophers is quite critical about those who make some promises and believes […]
• Answers to Questions From Plato’s Republic The framers had in mind the preservation of the public good, and not the promotion of private interest. The notation that the motivation to maintain a position of power can be destructive was addressed by […]
• Plato’s and Socrates’s Views on the Immortality of the Soul Such wisdom is useless to a common man who is limited to materialism and lacks the wisdom to see his inner self-understanding that constitutes and provides the ground of Socratic rationalism in the sense of […]
• “Apology” by Plato and the “Plea for Captain John Brown” by Thoreau The Apology by Plato is the account of Socrates’ defense in the court of law, while the Plea for Captain John Brown by Henry David Thoreau is the essay defending the captain who rebelled against […]
• The Life of Plato and His Philosophy One of the founders of Greek ancient thought was Plato whose works became the handbooks of many modern philosophers and scientists.
• Plato’s “Myth of the Cave”: Identification and Assignment of Symbols Of these, he would be able to study the things in the sky and the sky itself more easily at night, looking at the light of the stars and the moon, than during the day, […]
• Philosophy Ideas Ascent: Plato’s and Socrates’s Ideas Their points of view help us to understand history better, the development of people’s thought and the changes which occur in people’s lives for passed times.”A Guided Tour of Five Works by Plato” by Christopher […]
• Plato’s Parable of the Cave and Dennis Carlson In today’s terms, one might say he linked the operations of the germ to the entire system of the disease or the understanding of the student to the entire organization of the literate world.
• Plato’s and Socrates’ Philosophical Views In the light of the current political or social system one can see that Plato’s comments about the involvement of the people in the public sector to destroy the republic is absolutely right.
• Psychological Relevance of Plato’s Parable of the Cave The parable of the cave, the metaphor of the cave, terms describing the same topic commonly known as the Allegory of the cave.
• Plato’s Metaphysical Ideas Validity By utilizing the Theory of Opposites, Socrates suggests that the existence of soul could not possibly end with the death of one’s body, because life and death actually derive out of each other: “Suppose we […]
• “Apology of Socrates” by Plato: Socrates’ Defense He was accused of corrupting the minds of the youths in Athens, creations of his deities, and not respecting the gods of the state.
• “Socrates’s Apology” by Plato The point about his defense is that he wanted to stick to the speech he had prepared and it was planned and was well prepared.
• Plato’s, Aristotle’s, Petrarch’s Views on Education To begin with, Plato believed that acquisition of knowledge was the way to being virtuous in life but he tended to differ with philosophers like Aristotle stating that education to be acquired from the natural […]
• Classical Political Thought. Democracy in Plato’s Republic During Plato’s life, the democratic constitution set the seal on the work of the tyranny, for it ensured the exclusion of the large landowner from a predominating influence on politics, and it put effective power […]
• The Teachings of Plato Socrates and Machiavelli In The Apology, Socrates stands before a jury of his peers accused of “committing an injustice, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument the […]
• Socrates Figure: Based on “The Apology” by Plato This is evidenced within the text of the Apology as Socrates begins his defense of himself against the old enemies that have spoken falsely “telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the […]
• Plato’s Forms and Its Association to Plato’s Cave It is important to note the importance of the term paradigm in analyzing a correlation or link between Plato’s Forms and the Allegory of the Cave.
• Plato and Aristotle Thoughts on Politics Aristotle emphasized that the lawgiver and the politician occupied the constitution and the state wholly and defined a citizen as one who had the right to deliberate or participate in the matters of the judicial […]
• Plato’s Republic: Perspectives on Politics No doubt to avoid engendering such reactions in their first experiences with Plato, Rice has sought to minimize the buzz of controversy virtually to the point of elimination from view and to focus instead on […]
• Logic and Insight in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” The world outside the cave is the logical place; which is reachable to logic but not to insight; the voyage outside of the cave into daylight of the world is the soul’s inclination to the […]
• Life Purpose and Substance in Plato’s Philosophy Maybe she was right, but life is not going the way we want it to; in contrary we are bound ourselves to the circle of life by the stress of existence.
• Theory of Justice According to Plato The next task is to find the existence and nature of justice in this state. Plato adds to this that justice is “the principle of doing one’s own business”.
• Aristotle’s “Knowing How” and Plato’s “Knowing That” The goal of Aristotle is knowledge in action and real knowing, which merge in the higher stratum of existence – the active mind.
• Reasoning in Plato’s “Phaedo” Dialogue The author of this paper will outline all four of the philosopher’s lines of reasoning that a person’s soul is immortal while promoting the idea that it specifically the second one, concerned with one’s possession […]
• Socrates’, Plato’s and Descartes’ Philosophical Ideas In my case, I have always had that striving to be right, get to the root of every problem, and understand the world’s phenomena.
• Plato’s Gorgias Applied to the Pursuit of Power In the pursuit of power, I hold the view that the aim is more valuable than the method or the approach employed.
• Plato’s and Aristotle’s Theories of Human Nature Chapter five of Kupperman’s book “Theories of human nature” looks at great philosophers, namely Plato’s and Aristotle’s points of view in trying to define humanity. The writer tries to illustrate the complexity of defining a […]
• Plato’s and Aristotle’s Philosophical Differences According to Plato, the functioning of every human being is closely linked to the entire society. Therefore, the major difference here is that for Plato, the function of every individual is to improve the entire […]
• Plato’s Apology of Socrates He says that he is not a sophist or physicalist, he is not irreverent, and he does not corrupt the youth.
• Vocation in Plato’s “Apology” and Dostoyevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” I will use the texts of Plato’s “Apology, the Trial and Death of Socrates” and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” in order to comprehensively analyze the theme and consider the questions of who I am, […]
• Conflict in Hobbes’, Marx’s, Rousseau’s, Plato’s Works Therefore, conflict can be defined in terms of the struggle to get wealth and power that are usually the main issues that propel people to fight.
• Puzzles in Plato’s Philosophical Work Therefore, to conclusively draw his philosophical views, it is paramount that we take what the characters say to represent Plato’s stance and view of the world.
• Examined Life in Plato’s and Conners’ Works We should say that Platos Allegory of the Cave could be used to prove the importance of an examined life and the role a person living according to this principle might play in the community.
• Plato’s Cave Analogy in “The Republic”
• Art and Media Censorship: Plato, Aristotle, and David Hume
• Knowledge in Plato’s Dialogue and Pritchard’s View
• Plato’s Eros in Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy
• Plato Diner Restaurant’s Poor Management
• The Cave Analogy in “The Republics” by Plato
• Philosophical Exploration in Plato’s Book ‘The Republic’
• Art Effects on Society: Plato and Nochlin Views
• Political Philosophies: Plato and Hegel Conceptual Differences
• Justice in Human Gene Transfer Therapy: Plato Views
• Socrates in “Phaedrus” by Plato
• Ancient Greek Philosophy: Socrates and Plato Comparison
• “Meno” a Socratic Dialogue by Plato – Philosophy
• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave – Philosophy
• Plato Statements on the Best Moves in Life – Philosophy
• Philosopher Plato and His ‘The Republic’
• Aristotle and Plato: How Do They Differ?
• Addressing Love in Plato’s “Symposium”
• Philosophy Issues in “Euthyphro” by Plato
• Thrasymachus Ideas in The Republic by Plato
• “Crito” by Plato – Politics and Philosophy
• Literature Studies: “Phaedo” by Plato
• Musical Education and The Laws by Plato
• Plato’s Thoughts About Education
• “The Laws” by Plato
• Explaining “The Apology of Socrates“ by Plato
• Views on Writing Style by Plato, Aristotle and Dante
• Socrates by Aristophanes and Plato
• Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and “You, Screws”
• Plato and Nietzsche’s Approaches
• Connections Between Plato’s Allegory of the Cave & Galileo Galilei’s Dialogue of Two Chief World System
• Taxes, Capitalism, and Democracy: Karl Marx vs. Plato
• Plato on Who Should Rule
• “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato
• Parable of the Cave by Plato: The Way Towards Enlightenment
• “Parable of the Cave” by Plato
• Five Worlds of Plato’s Cave
• Essence of Happiness of Indira’s Life According to Plato’s and Aristotle’s Views on Education
• Ancient Political Theory: Plato and Aristotle
• Plato’s and Socrates’s Philosophy
• Meno by Plato: Philosophical Ideas
• Allegory of the Cave: Conception of Education in Plato’s The Republic
• Justice and Leadership as Expressed by Plato and Ibn Khaldum
• Plato’s Story of the Cave
• Comparison Between Descartes’ and Plato’s Notion of “Not Knowing Is at Times Fruitful”.
• Philosophy of Plato’s Ideal City
• Justice as the Advantage of the Stronger: Thrasymachus’s Ideas (plato’s the republic) vs. Charles Darwin’s Principle of Natural Selection: a Comparison
• The Republic by Plato
• Education Concept in “Parable of the Cave” by Plato
• The Truth and Reality in the “Parable of the Cave” by Plato
• Plato and Descartes on Confusion or the Sense of Not Knowing
• Plato’s Parable of the Cave
• The Dangers of Dogmatism With Approaches Adopted by Martin Luther King Jr and Plato
• Plato: Piety and Holiness in “Euthyphro”
• Philosophical Concept of the Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”
• What Is Your Evaluation of Plato’s Accounts on Human Nature?
• Why Plato Thinks Philosophers Should Be Kings?
• What Are the Four Arguments for the Immortality of the Human Soul by Plato?
• What Are the Emotional and Intellectual Revelations in Plato’s Works?
• How Humans Are Afraid of Change in Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave”?
• What Machiavelli Praised about Plato’s Republic?
• How Can Plato’s Allegory of the Cave Be Read in Contemporary Social Environment?
• What Are the Insights Into the World of Ignorance in Plato’s “Myth of the Cave”?
• What Way Did Philosophy of Plato Influence Psychology?
• What Is Plato’s Theory of Reality?
• How Plato and Sophists Would View the World of “Brave New World” by Huxley?
• Why Does Plato Considers Ordinary Human Existence to Thatos Chained Prisoners?
• What Famous School Did Plato Found?
• How Does Aristotle’s View of Politics Differ From That of Plato’s?
• Which Definition of History Was Made by Plato?
• How Does Plato Relate the Soul of Virtuous Individual to Ideal Republic in “Republic”?
• How Does Plato’s Theory of the Psyche Relate to Modern Management Practice?
• Why Thucydides and Plato View Democracy as the Worst Form of Government?
• What Is the Explanation of the Virtues and the Normative Ethical Theory of Plato?
• What Plato Thinks about God?
• What Are the Attitudes Expressed Towards Democracy by Plato?
• How Plato Reconciles the Opposition Between Parmenides and Heraclitus?
• Where the Real Socrates’ Ideas Leave Off and Where Plato’s Own Ideas Begin?
• What Did Plato Expect from Astronomy?
• What Did Plato Say on Knowledge and Forms?
• What Are Plato’s Views on the Individual’s Relationship to Society?
• What Might Plato Say About Delacroix’s “Painting of a Bed”?
• What Is the Relationship Btween Plato and the Mouth-Piece Theory?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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My Attitude Towards Plato’s Republic and The Idea of State’s Justice

Application of the ideas in plato’s republic to facilitate improvement of life in the contemporary society, understanding plato's forms and the concept of philosopher-kings, a critical analysis of the city-soul analogy as illustrated by plato, let us write you an essay from scratch.

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A Poetry Critique in The Republic by Plato

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The First Book of Plato’s Republic Review

Plato’s republic: analysis of allegories, the allegory of the cave: plato's concept of creating an ideal state, halfway reality or a full-scale fantasy: plato's 'the republic' and 'the allegory of the cave", the human nature and psychology from plato's perspective, a discussion of whether plato was a feminist, plato’s views on the concept of human knowledge, the possibility of utopia: analyzing plato’s republic, refutation of polemarch’s definition of justice in plato’s "republic", debatable notions in plato’s theory of forms, advantages and disadvantages of morality in plato's republic, the third wave in the republic by plato, a contrast between republic and symposium, two works by plato, the writing that helped shaped the world we live in, the allegory of the cave: relationship between human senses and virtual environments, relevant topics.

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Leo Strauss on Plato’s Euthyphro: the 1948 notebook, with lectures and critical writings

Benjamin lorch , james madison college / michigan state university. [email protected].

Leo Strauss identified “the theologico-political problem” as “ the theme” of his “investigations,” and he made the study of classical political philosophy a major part of his scholarly endeavor (Kerber and Minkov 1). Yet despite publishing interpretations of numerous works of Plato and other classical philosophers, Strauss never published an interpretation of the Euthyphro , and he rarely even referred to the dialogue in his published writings. Editors Hannes Kerber and Svetozar Y. Minkov have filled this gap with this book containing Strauss’s previously unpublished writings on the Euthyphro from a period of intensive engagement with the dialogue between 1948 and 1952. For readers without prior familiarity with Strauss’s writings, the book offers, beyond its comprehensive and important interpretation of Plato’s dialogue, an excellent introduction to Strauss’s scholarship and philosophical concerns. For those with such familiarity, it offers a provocative and illuminating discussion of the problem of reason and revelation, and an unprecedented look “behind the scenes” at Strauss’s process of interpreting a Platonic dialogue.

The volume opens with an introductory essay by Kerber and Minkov that details the history of these writings and situates them in the context of Strauss’s scholarly and philosophical endeavors. Three “Parts” follow. Part 1, chapter 1, is the centerpiece of the volume. It provides the transcription of a notebook that contains Strauss’s detailed, line by line commentary on the Euthyphro and Crito , which likely served as the basis for a seminar that he taught in 1948. Chapter 2 is the text of a lecture on the Euthyphro that Strauss delivered in 1952. [1] Then there are four appendices: appendix 1 provides briefer notes on the Euthyphro that Strauss wrote on separate pages and were found inserted in the notebook; appendices 2 and 3 are outlines for two lectures on the Euthyphro from 1950 and 1952; and appendix 4 is Strauss’s marginal comments from his edition of the Greek text of the Euthyphro . Part 2 of the volume consists of three critical essays on Strauss’s writings on the Euthyphro by Kerber, Minkov, and Wayne Ambler. Part 3 concludes the volume with a previously unpublished translation of the Euthyphro by Seth Benardete.

There is something thrilling about seeing inside Strauss’s workshop. Strauss famously made the philosophical “art of writing” a subject of his research, [2] and his own published writings have a high level of polish that can often give them a magisterial authority and seemingly irresistible force of reasoning. The notebook is preoccupied with the same questions as the published writings, most prominently by examining the issues raised in the dialogue under headings such as “the problem of justice” and “the problem of piety,” which appear on almost every page of the notebook. However, compared to the published writings, Strauss’s notebook is remarkably open and searching, raising questions, suggesting hypotheses, and exploring possible answers and interpretations, with a degree of freedom and frankness that the published works do not commonly exhibit. This openness extends to basic interpretative questions, such as why Plato presents his teaching about piety in a conversational treatment and why Euthyphro is chosen as Socrates’ interlocutor even though he is “obviously a fool ” (26). More importantly, the same openness characterizes Strauss’s treatment of the central philosophical issues of the Euthyphro surrounding the relation between piety and philosophy.

Strauss’s examination of the relation between piety and philosophy focuses on two main questions. One is the cosmic question of what is most fundamental and permanent in the world: unchanging natural necessity or the inexplicable and mysterious will of the gods. The other is the moral question of the right way to live. Strauss treats the first question in the form of a discussion of the “ideas,” a subject that he addresses far more extensively in this volume than in any of his published writings about Plato. [3] Knowledge of the ideas is the epistemological alternative to piety. Piety means that we orient ourselves by the commands of the gods and “what the gods love” ( Euthyphro 10a) and the authoritative stories that reveal their will. The philosophical alternative to piety is that we orient ourselves by means of our own reason and knowledge and not obedience to authority. In order for knowledge to be possible, the objects of knowledge must exist necessarily and not depend for their existence on the unpredictable will of divine beings. Hence, “the basis of all knowledge is the knowledge of things that are identical with themselves or unchangeable : i.e., knowledge of ideas ” (34). Strauss’s notebook presents a wide-ranging discussion of the ideas, including topics such as the presuppositions of knowledge and language, an intriguing discussion of the way in which the human individual may participate in the idea of a human being, and searching questions such as, “Why is Plato so certain that there are ideas?” and “What about a theology in agreement with the doctrine of ideas?” (36).

The second dimension of Strauss’s interpretation of the Euthyphro examines the question of the right way to live. Strauss’s discussion of this question focuses on the alternatives of justice or piety. In the same way that knowledge of the ideas is the epistemological alternative to piety, justice is the moral alternative. Euthyphro imitates Zeus who is the most just god, but in order to take a just a god as his model, he must first know what justice is; therefore, he raises the possibility that we do not need divine revelation in order to know what is just and how we should live. The notebook presents an unusually frank discussion of the philosophical attitude to justice, asking questions such as “are the dikaia [just things]… of any interest to the philosopher?” (48), and “why should one act for the advantage of others?” (51), and considering such issues as the philosopher’s relation to the political community (53) and Socrates’ concern for his friends (67). Yet even in his private writings, Strauss does not provide a clear resolution of these issues. While he asserts with finality that “piety and philosophy are incompatible” (42), he also concludes that “S.’s piety remains an open question” (27, 28, 32, 33, 45).

The three excellent interpretative essays are both indispensable guides to Strauss’s fragmentary notes and important scholarly contributions in their own right. Hannes Kerber offers a reading of the notebook on the Euthyphro , discussing both Strauss’s method of reading the dialogue and the substance of his interpretation. Kerber highlights Strauss’s emphasis on Euthyphro’s initial definition of piety: piety is doing what Euthyphro is doing, prosecuting his father for murder, which is nothing other than what Zeus the most just of the gods did to his own father. This definition, defective as it is, constitutes “the dialogue’s hidden center of gravity” (141) in Strauss’s interpretation, because it implies that piety is imitating the gods rather than obeying them, that doing what is just is preferable to obeying the gods, and that we can know what is just without recourse to divine revelation. Kerber follows Strauss’s elaboration of the implications of this definition and concludes with a probing examination of Strauss’s enigmatic suggestion of the possibility of a “philosophical theology” (150).

Svetozar Y. Minkov addresses the notebook’s brief commentary on the Crito , offering six remarks about how it supplements the much more fully worked-out commentary on the Euthyphro . Minkov views the notes on the Crito as a fitting sequel to the Euthyphro interpretation: the Euthyphro establishes the priority of justice to piety and the Crito examines the philosopher’s attitude to justice. He observes that Strauss is attentive to parallels between the two dialogues, such as the regard that Socrates pays in both dialogues to the opinions of the many as well as to the claims of an interlocutor to possess greater competency than the many; by undermining these claims, the Crito reaffirms the conclusion of the Euthyphro that philosophy is “the one thing needful” (160). Minkov also notes continuity between the philosophical issues raised in Strauss’s commentaries on the two dialogues, such as the relation of soul to body and the scrutiny to which the Euthyphro and Crito subject the goodness of the gods and the city, respectively, as well as the importance they ascribe to the power of chance and of the political multitude.

Wayne Ambler interprets Strauss’s lecture on the Euthyphro . The lecture was delivered four years after the notebook was written and it shows Strauss presenting his interpretation in a finished and coherent form. As such, it provides a fuller statement of central themes of Strauss’s interpretation, including the importance that Strauss ascribes to Euthyphro’s contributions to the dialogue, the conflict between philosophy and the city, and the critique of orthodox piety. Yet Ambler interprets the lecture as aiming not to convey an authoritative teaching but to provoke further thinking and questioning. He notes that the lecture offers multiple answers to the question of the relationship between piety and philosophy and leaves the reader to ponder over the relation between them. He notes further that Strauss invites his listeners to reflection by emphasizing the activity of philosophy in his lecture, mentioning words related to philosophy twenty-one times even though it is not mentioned in the Euthyphro at all (164). Thus in addition to elaborating Strauss’s interpretation of the dialogue, Ambler highlights Strauss’s description of philosophical inquiry itself, including the need for courage, the philosopher’s “serenity on the basis of resignation” (94), and the challenge of philosophical wakefulness.

But does Strauss merely raise questions? Does he view philosophy as arriving at a resolution to the fundamental issues raised in his interpretation of the Euthyphro : the possibility of knowledge, the character of the whole, and the right way to live? Or is philosophy merely an activity of questioning and clarifying alternatives without being able to resolve them in a rational way? The scholarly essays in this volume seem divided on Strauss’s position. Ambler does not view Strauss as offering a definitive resolution in his lecture on the Euthyphro (182), whereas Minkov appears more confident that Strauss establishes the priority of philosophy to justice and piety (160) and Kerber seems to view a “philosophical theology” as a possible solution (152). How one resolves these questions will depend on one’s understanding of the issues that Strauss raises in his interpretation – especially, in my opinion, the relation between piety and justice and the possibility of a truly orthodox attitude of obedience to a command whose authority is ultimately based on the fact that it is “loved by the gods.” While the present volume does not definitively resolve these questions, it greatly enriches our understanding of the questions themselves and thereby stimulates the wakefulness that Strauss viewed as the indispensable condition of any genuine resolution.

[1] Previously published as Leo Strauss, “An Untitled Lecture on Plato’s Euthyphron .” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 24:1, Fall 1996, 3–25.

[2] Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing . Glencoe: Free Press, 1952.

[3] Ambler observes that the ideas are the main subject in four out of the 21 paragraphs of Strauss’s lecture on the Euthyphro (175) . By contrast, Strauss’s most extensive treatment of the Republic addresses the ideas in only two out of 78 paragraphs (Leo Strauss, The City and Man . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964, 118–121).