Book Review: The Republic by Plato

Norhainah S. Mapandi
AB POSC 2

Introduction
The Athenian philosopher Plato (c. 4828-347 B.C) is one of the most important figures of
the Ancient Greek world and the entire history of Western thought. In his written dialogues he
conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates. In the “Republic”,
his most famous work, he envisioned a civilization governed not by lowly appetites but by the
pure wisdom of a philosopher king. In it, Plato through his chief figure in the dialogue, Socrates,
developed a position on justice and its relation to happiness. He provides a long and complicated,
but unified argument, in defense of the just life and its necessary connection to the happy life.
The dialogue explores two central questions. The first one is “what is justice?” and the second is
“is the just person happier or more desirable than the unjust person?” This wide scope of the
dialogue presents various interpretative difficulties and has been studied endlessly by a wide
range of readers, specialist, and amateurs alike.
Summary
The Republic by Plato is divided into ten books which I will then summarize by the
contents of each book. Book one, introduces us the question: “What is justice”. The said question
was given different meanings by Cephalus, Polemarchus and Thrasymachus. For Cephalus, he
defined justice as giving what is owed. Polemarchus on the other hand defines justice as “the art
which gives good to friends and evil to enemies”. Both their arguments were overturned by
Socrates but unknown to them Thrasymachus was quite exasperated by the dilly-dallying of
Socrates on giving the true meaning of what justice is. Not contented anymore with the flow of
the argument, Thrasymachus offers his meaning of what is justice. According to him “justice is
nothing else than the interest of the stronger” and that being unjust is better than being just. But
like Cephalus and Polemarchus, Socrates offered proposals that counter-argued Thrasymachus
claim.
In book two, Glaucon who is dissatisfied by the arguments in the previous discussion asks
Socrates to consider a more carefully developed version of the sort of view Thrasymachus
offered. Glaucon starts by presenting that there are three ways in which things can be good. The
first one, a good everyone likes simply for its own sake; second, a good everyone likes both for
its own sake and because we get something out of it; third, a good everyone likes only because
we get something out of it. Glaucon then asks Socrates where justice belongs and Socrates
answered that justice belongs to the second one. After Glaucon’s speech, Adeimantus adds his
thoughts that the reason why injustice so often appears to be better than justice is because the
nature of justice and injustice are (a) poorly taught by parents and educators and (b) poorly
represented in poetry and literature. Adeimantus wanted Socrates to defend justice on its own
and not by what you can gain from it. Socrates is impressed by their arguments and offers to look
for justice in the city first and then to proceed by analogy to find justice in the individual.
Socrates begins that a city is founded because humans come together for basic survival needs
like food, clothing and housing. He also noted that this city will only satisfies basic human
needs. Glaucon then objects to it for clearly Socrates is founding a “community of pigs”.
Socrates then offered to describe the luxurious city instead. This city then requires an army
composed of professional soldiers and guardians that need to be educated to do their job of
protecting the city’s citizens, laws and customs. Socrates further noted that poetry and stories
that promote revenge, lies and deception to the people will be banned from the city.
Book three continues the discussion on poetry and Socrates enumerates some political
measures of the censorship of poetry. After giving what kind of poetry should and should not be
portrayed, he then moves on to discuss the manner in which stories should be told. He divides
such manners into simple narration and imitative narration. To keep the guardians doing only
their job, Socrates argues that the guardians should only imitate virtuous actions and not
degrading ones. In terms of music, he decided to eliminate forms of music that will not inspire
acts of piety, obedience and devotion to gods to the guardians. In the area of physical health, the
guardians should engage in physical training to prepare them for war and to better protect the
city. Socrates then begins to describe how the rulers of the city are to be selected from the class
of the guardians. Socrates and his friends presented that a candidate ruler needs to be older,
strong, wise and wholly unwilling to do anything other than what is advantageous to the city.
Socrates also suggested a myth in where each human has a precious metal in them in order to
make the people accept their position in the community. He then discusses the living and housing
conditions of the guardians. The guardians will not have private property, they will receive their
wages through taxes imposed upon the other classes and they will live communally and have
common wives and children.
Book four opens when Ademaintus demanded to know how in the world Socrates can
defend creating a city where none of the things that make people happy are available or possible.
Socrates responded that their city will be the happiest because they are interested in what will
make the most people happy and they are not interested in just a selected group of people being
happy. In order to do this Socrates proposed measures to accomplish this. The just city should
neither be too wealthy or too poor; it should be kept at an exact size, neither too large nor too
small. He also suggested limiting the innovation in terms of education and legislation of laws.
Now, Socrates and his friends decided that they’ve created a city that is perfectly good and it is
also by definition wise, courageous, moderate and just. They thus proceed to search for these
four virtues in the city. First, they found wisdom in the guardians who have the greatest
knowledge. Next they consider courage and found this in the soldiers. Third they found
moderation which by definition involves ordering and mastering desires and pleasures and found
that it exists in the whole city. When it is time to find justice, Socrates realized that it’s been
right in front of them all along that justice exists in the principle that each person should only
kept to the trade they are best suited and injustice will consist of everyone failing to mind their
own business. Now that Socrates found where justice lies it is now time to apply it to the
individual. In his quest to find the answer he concluded that the human soul have a rational,
spirited and irrational part. Socrates apply that the rational part of human soul is the guardian, the
spirited part is the soldiers, who will help the rational part in controlling the irrational part
(desires). After discovering where justice lays both in the city and the individual, Socrates
therefore can conclude that justice could be carried out if the three parts of the soul is balanced
and injustice is when there is an imbalance of the parts of the soul. Socrates is then now ready to
answer the question if what really is more profitable is it being just? Or in being unjust?
 Book five is where Socrates is now ready to discuss the other types of government in
which these kinds of government deviate from the Just City he founded. But before he could
proceed he was interrupted by Adeimantus and Polemarchus in which they insist that Socrates
needs to clarify his view about the guardians possessing the women and children in common.
Socrates then begins that women can also be a part of the guardians. That women can receive
and train the same way male guardians do and he pointed out that if the only differences between
the two is their mode of reproduction then it is a pointless thing to consider. He also made
another suggestion that women will belong to everyone. Similarly children will belong to the
community. In order to produce the best kinds of guardians, Socrates encouraged that only the
best guardian men and women will procreate, he also noted that reproduction of the other classes
should be limited and only the guardians could reproduce in large number. This system will be
done through marriage festival supported by rigid lottery system in favor to the guardian class.
Once a child is born, the child will be taken immediately from the parents and be brought to a
rearing pen it is done to ensure that parents will not know their children. To avoid incest with the
same member of the family, Socrates says that they will base this by the information of their
birth, so that every child born at a certain time will know their brothers, sisters, fathers, and
mothers. This kind of system according to Socrates will promote unity in the city for everyone in
the community considers each other as a whole family. Lastly Socrates end book 5 by pointing
that the city should be ruled by philosopher kings for a philosopher is a lover of wisdom and will
only think of the betterment of the its people.
Book six introduces why the philosophers should rule the city. One obvious reason
according to Socrates is that philosophers are only interested in single, eternal truths that enable
them to truly see while everyone else is metaphorically blind. Another quality is their complete
honesty, it is because philosophers are lovers of truth and because he only pursues wisdom and
truth he has no time for pleasures of the body and money. Adeimantus objected to this for in his
own opinion actual philosophers are either useless or bad people. Socrates answered that those
with the philosopher’s natural abilities and with outstanding natures often get corrupted by a bad
education and become outstandingly bad. After the argument with Adeimantus, Socrates now
wants to consider how a city might become like their Republic and embrace philosophy without
endangering the city. The first thing to be done is to encourage philosophy and to embrace it. It
can be done by making young children study things appropriate for their age and that the only
way to make sure philosophy is properly appreciated is to wipe an existing clean and begin it
anew. Socrates proceeds to discuss the education of philosopher kings. According to him they
should study the Form of the Good. In which he uses the analogy of the sun. As the sun
illuminates objects so the eye can see them, the Form of the Good renders the objects knowledge
knowable to human soul. As the sun provides things with their ability to grow, the Form of the
Good provides the objects with their being. Socrates offers the analogy of the divided line to
explain further the Form of the Good. The divided line has four parts, divided into two main
sections. The two main sections are opinion (“the visible”) at the bottom and knowledge the top.
From the bottom, the other two parts are imagination and belief and thought and understanding
for the realm of knowledge.
Book seven, begins with the third and cumulative image, the cave. The Allegory of the
cave, which explains that inside the cave there are prisoners who see shadows cast by artificial
objects. One of the prisoners break free and goes to the outside world where he learned that the
cave is just an illusion and the upper world is the real one. According to Socrates the prisoners
are us and the one who broke free is the philosopher. In this allegory the freed man which is the
philosopher must descend to the cave to lead the other prisoners. After Socrates’ narration
Glaucon was horrified by this idea: he thinks it will punish their philosopher-guardians but
Socrates reminds him that the most important job of the guardians is to care for everyone as a
whole. Next Socrates explained the kinds of education that will enable a soul to make the ascent
from darkness (cave) to light (real world). He also reminds his companions that the guardians
should not only be intellectual but they need to be warlike too. He also laid down the education
program for a philosopher king candidate.
In book eight, Socrates identifies the four government structures that differ from the Ideal
City they just made in Book five when he was interrupted by Adeimantus and Polemarchus. The
first one is Timocracy, those who rule are concerned more with honor, its preservation and
promotion, than with the welfare of the whole city. In an Oligarchy, those who rule are
concerned more with wealth, its cultivation and enjoyment, than with the welfare of the whole
city. Third is Democracy, those who rule are concerned more with popularity and pleasing the
masses, than with what might be good for the whole. Fourth is Tyranny, those who rule are
concerned not with honor, money, popularity, but with satisfying their own unrestricted desires.
Socrates noted that Tyranny arises out of democracy when the desire for freedom to do what one
wants becomes extreme. Socrates points out that when freedom is taken to such an extreme it
produces its opposite, slavery.
In book nine, Socrates now finished with the definition of tyranny as a government in the
previous discussion now considers the tyrannical man. He begins by discussing the necessary
and unnecessary desires. He suggests to counter the unnecessary desire by being moderate and
rational in doing things. The tyrannical individual who comes out of the democratic man is
associated with a man blinded with lust and always lives in fear because he knows that if he ever
loses his power all his so called “friends” will immediately turn against him. This is the first
proof that being unjust is much worse than being just. A tyrannical man is really the most
enslaved person of all. He’s untrustworthy, unjust, impious, friendless and full of bad habits.
Socrates then asks Glaucon to rank the government they just discussed according to the happiest
to least happy. Glaucon answered that it is in the exact order Socrates discussed each
government. Aristocracy which is the system in the Ideal State is the happiest and the worst of all
is Tyranny. Socrates also distinguishes the three types of persons based on the tripartite parts of
the soul. This is now the second proof. The first type is the lover of gain, associated with the
irrational part. Second, a lover of honor, associated with the spirited part. Third is the lover of
wisdom with the rational part. Socrates pointed out that the lover of wisdom should be trusted for
the lover of wisdom has experience and prudence. The third proof Socrates proposed is that the
soul can be misled into experiencing false pleasure. He talked that relief from pain may seem
pleasant and bodily pleasures are merely a relief from pain but it can’t be considered as a true
pleasure. True pleasure is by fulfilling the things that fit one’s nature. The only fulfilling pleasure
is that which comes from understanding since the objects it pursues are permanent. Lastly
Socrates concluded that being just is better by 729 reasons than being unjust.
Book ten, the final book, begins with Socrates returning to the subject of poetry and
imitative art. Imitation is three steps away from the forms and truth. Artists seem to create things
but they only create poor copies of the Ideas. An artist who paints a picture of a bed only makes
a copy of the Idea or Form of the bed. Socrates bans imitative poets from the city because they
tend to tell immoral stories and falsehoods. Socrates says a just life chief reward comes in the
afterlife. Glaucon asks if Socrates believes the soul lives on after the body. In where Socrates
argues that the soul cannot be destroyed by its particular evil, as other things are, since death
does not make one more unjust. Death is not an evil, so it cannot destroy the soul. Even the
tyrant’s soul cannot be destroyed even though they are unjust. Socrates then turns to the reward
of a just life. Since the gods know everything, they won’t leave the just man unrewarded.
Socrates tells a myth about a soldier named Er who is on the funeral bonfire when he comes back
to life. It is a long description of an afterlife, in which all those virtues that Socrates has worked
so diligently to expose and defend are given their proper place.

Analysis