Plato - Plato: Republic

PLATO
REPUBLIC

The Focus Philosophical Library

Aristotle: De Anima M. Shiffman

Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics J. Sachs

Aristotle: Poetics J. Sachs

Athenian Funeral Orations J. Herrman

Descartes: Discourse on Method R. Kennington

Empire and the Ends of Politics (Plato/Pericles) S. D. Collins and D. Stauffer

Four Island Utopias (Plato, Euhemeros, Iambolous, Bacon) D. Clay and A. Purvis

Hegel: The Philosophy of Right A. White

Liberty, Equality & Modern Constitutionalism, Volume I G. Anastaplo

Liberty, Equality & Modern Constitutionalism, Volume II G. Anastaplo

Lucretius: On the Nature of Things W. Englert

Plato and Xenophon: Apologies M. Kremer

Plato: Euthydemus M. Nichols

Plato: Gorgias J. Arieti and R. Barrus

Plato: Gorgias and Aristotle: Rhetoric J. Sachs

Plato: Meno G. Anastaplo and L. Berns

Plato: Parmenides A. K. Whitaker

Plato: Phaedo E. Brann, P. Kalkavage, and E. Salem

Plato: Phaedrus S. Scully

Plato: Republic J. Sachs

Plato: Sophist E. Brann, P. Kalkavage, and E. Salem

Plato: Statesman E. Brann, P. Kalkavage, and E. Salem

Plato: Symposium A. Sharon

Plato: Theatetus J. Sachs

Plato: Timaeus P. Kalkavage

Socrates and Alcibiades: Four Texts D. Johnson

Socrates and the Sophists J. Sachs

Spinoza: Theologico-Political Treatise M. Yaffe

PLATO

REPUBLIC

Translation, Glossary,
and Introductory Essay

Joe Sachs

ST. JOHNS COLLEGE, ANNAPOLIS

with an Afterword by John White

Focus Publishing: An Imprint of Hackett Publishing Company
Indianapolis/Cambridge

PLATO
Republic

2007 by Joe Sachs

Previously published by Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company

Focus Publishing
An Imprint of Hackett Publishing Company
www.hackettpublishing.com

P.O. Box 44937
Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937

Cover image by Emily Kutler

ISBN: 978-1-58510-524-3

Also available in paperback (ISBN: 978-1-58510-261-7).

Some content that appears in the print edition may not be available in other formats.

Imitation John F. White, 2006, used by permission

All rights are reserved.

Last updated February 2012

If a large random group of people were asked to name an important work of philosophy, the answer given most often would probably be Platos Republic. Why it merits such distinction is something fewer people might venture to say. Those whose acquaintance with the book is primarily second-hand, guided by a lecturer or by books about it, could be excused for being puzzled about its enduring power. It is said to be a portrait of an ideal state, but one that no actual government has ever tried to put into practice, and it is said to contain a statement of a famous philosophic theory, but one it would be hard to find anyone who believed in. What, then, makes it more than a strange relic of obsolete thinking? The answer is easily found by anyone who ignores the masses of learned explanations that surround the Republic, and simply plunges into reading it. There has rarely been a book that so successfully grabs a reader and stirs spirited responses.

A number of philosophers over the centuries have written dialogues. That means, in most cases, that they have written arguments and counterarguments, and put them in the mouths of imaginary speakers. Plato went about it the opposite way. He wrote imagined conversations among people whom, for the most part, he knew, and made those conversations rise to the level of philosophic discussion. Plato did not treat philosophy as something that could be delivered or presented or even imitated in a written work. He knew that there is no way to encounter philosophy except from the inside, and he wrote with the purpose of stimulating, provoking, and inspiring the experience of it. He himself had been strongly affected by listening to the conversations Socrates used to have in public, and he made Socrates the primary speaker in most of his dialogues. Even in those dialogues in which Socrates is not present, or says little, a Platonic dialogue is always an imitation of Socrates. Plato made the things he wrote as substitute encounters with Socrates: not depictions of such encounters for us to watch, but evocations of them for us to experience. So great can be the power of imitative fiction that Plato successfully sets in motion philosophic activity every time a reader gives him the slightest chance.

A chance to respond to Platos imitation of Socrates does not depend on being favorably disposed to their words in advance, or even on approaching the dialogues with an open mind. Since the dialogues teach no doctrine, an antagonistic response is as effective as any other kind in making a reader a more active thinker. Within the Republic, Socrates is challenged in Book I by a hostile and angry opponent, and then again in Book II by two friendly but determined young men who think he hasnt given that opponent anything like an adequate answer. All three, and a few other characters who get hooked along the way, have one thing in common: they all put aside everything else they intended to do for many hours, and become absorbed in a conversation about philosophic topics and about philosophy itself. The only person present who is immune to it all is a very old man, intent on preparations for his death. The rest of the characters in the dialogue are a lot like us, a diverse array of people who pick up the Republic, and for one reason or another cant put it down.

The Republic depicts people with different interests and desires being brought together into a shared activity freely chosen by each; this is a reflection not only of our situation as readers of it, but also of its primary theme. The dramatic situation in a Platonic dialogue is never mere literary ornamentation for a set of arguments, but always in some way shows the reader the way to an answer to the question discussed in it. The question that sets in motion the whole discussion in the Republic is, what is justice? That question receives a succession of formal answers, but none of them reveals as much about what justice is as does the human interaction we witness. In the dialogue, one person pressures a second person into joining him and his friends to help them kill a little time, a third person leaves the gathering to pursue his own business, a fourth person tries to break up the discussion as soon as it begins to get somewhere, and a fifth and sixth person insist on imposing their concerns on the group, but with the adroit management of the situation by one of their number, they become a harmonious partnership in an extended activity that in some way satisfies them all. If we can say what makes the Republic possible as a living event, an understanding of what justice is cannot be far away.

The one adroit member of the group who manages to pull them all together is of course Socrates. The Republic is one of Platos longest dialogues, and it is in some ways all Socrates. Every word of it is given to us through Socrates narration, and no other dialogue is so packed with his opinions, his imagination, and his ways of looking at things. At the same time, though, no dialogue so emphatically presents a partnership in learning. Most dialogues of Plato resemble one or more aspects of Book I of the Republic, in which someone is brought to realize he understands less than he thought he did, someone else is provoked to anger, a few others begin to be curious, and the end comes with a question sharpened and unresolved. In the Republic, we are given three more books in which a couple of intelligent listeners initiate a dialogue about the original dialogue, and then six more books in which all those still present commit themselves to remain involved, and state a consensus about how the discussion should proceed. The beginning of Book V is presented as something like a constitutional convention in which those assembled unanimously and explicitly associate themselves into a community and choose a leader. So the