The Republic

Plato

Book X
Summary
Socrates has now completed the main argument of the Republic; he has defined justice
and shown it to be worthwhile. He turns back to the postponed question concerning
poetry about human beings. In a surprising move, he banishes poets from the city. He has
three reasons for regarding the poets as unwholesome and dangerous. First, they pretend
to know all sorts of things, but they really know nothing at all. It is widely considered
that they have knowledge of all that they write about, but, in fact, they do not. The things
they deal with cannot be known: they are images, far removed from what is most real. By
presenting scenes so far removed from the truth poets, pervert souls, turning them away
from the most real toward the least.

In Book X, Plato at last pits philosophy-based education in confrontation with traditional

poetry-based education. Plato has justified philosophy and the philosopher and now he
displays them in relation to their rivals—the people who are currently thought most wise
and knowledgeable—the poets.
The myth, in appealing to reward and punishment, represents an argument based on
motivations Plato earlier dismissed. Glaucon and Adeimantus had specifically asked him
to praise justice without appealing to these factors. Why is he now doing exactly that?
Allen Bloom suggests that the inclusion of this myth is connected to the distinction
between philosophical virtue and civic virtue. Philosophical virtue is the kind of virtue
the philosopher possesses, and this kind of virtue differs from the virtue of the normal
citizen. So far, says Bloom, Plato has only shown that philosophical virtue is worthy in
itself. He has not shown that civic virtue is worthy. Since Glaucon and Adeimantus and
countless others are not capable of philosophical virtue, he must provide them with some
reason to pursue their own sort of virtue. With the contrast between philosophical and
civic virtue in mind, Plato describes the thousand year cycles of reward and punishment
that follow just and unjust lives.
Yet on our understanding of what makes any virtue worthwhile—its connection to the
Forms—Plato has sufficiently demonstrated the worth of both sorts of virtue.
Philosophical virtue might be more worthwhile because it not only imitates the Forms,
but aims at and consorts with them, but civic virtue is worthwhile as well because it
involves bringing the Forms into your life by instituting order and harmony in your soul.
Bloom, though, also has another plausible hypothesis for why Plato included the myth of
Er, and this one coheres well with our understanding of justice's worth. The myth of Er,
Bloom explains, illustrates once again the necessity of philosophy. The civic virtues
alone are not enough. Only the philosophers know how to choose the right new life,
because only they understand the soul and understand what makes for a good life and a
bad one. The others, who lack this understanding, sometimes choose right and sometimes
wrong. They fluctuate back and forth between good lives and miserable ones. Since every
soul is responsible for choosing his own life, every person must take full responsibility
for being just or unjust. We willingly choose to be unjust because of our ignorance of
what makes for a just or unjust soul. Ignorance, then, is the only true sin, and philosophy
the only cure.