The Republic of Plato

Plato

  • 427-327 BCE

  • Born in an aristocratic Athenian family

  • Saw Socrates execution

  • Athens at the time was the leading democratic city

Socrates

  • 470-399 BCE

  • Massive influence on Athens

  • Executed by Athenians

  • Wanted to bring more nature into politics

  • He was iffy on writing, it can help but also hurt

The Republic asks the question, “What is justice”

  • “The city in speech”

The Republic

The dialogue takes place in the Piraeus, the port of Athens

  • Socrates is returning from a religious festival

  • He is detained and drawn into the house of Cephalus

Opening question: “What is justice?”

Plato (via Socrates) quickly shows this is not an easy question to answer

Cephalus (old rich man)

  • Justice is telling the truth and paying what one owes

Socrates: Would you return a weapon to a madman?

Polemarchus (son of Cephalus)

  • Justice is helping friends and hurting enemies

Socrates: we can be mistaken about who our real friends and enemies are; justice should not make someone worse; harming people makes them worse

Thraymachus (well known sophist)

  • Bursts into conversation to say that justice is the advantage of the stronger

Justice is what rulers declare to serve their own interest and morality is basically political domination dressed up as legitimacy

Socrates brings up an analogy of the good shepherd, ruling for the sake of the sheep

Book II

Plato’s brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus come in and ask Socrates what justice is

  • They want him to prove that justice is good in itself

  • Socrates says it is best to see the good of justice by looking at the city as a whole

Republic 376-383

Justice in a city emerges from education

  • Socrates asks if we should teach the children the true or false literature

  • Little kids are not ready to know the full truth, they also will repeat what you say

  • S: And shall we just casually allow children to hear anything? Should they believe things any random person can put in their minds?

  • The first thing we’ll do when we build the new city is to censor writers, specifically the writers of fiction

  • We do this because we care about children’s character

  • If I have to talk about the gods I’d do it in a very secret way where less people would hear

  • We can’t walk around letting our guardians think that the gods are fighting

  • God cannot be represented any other way than what he truly is, god must be represented as good. No good thing can be hurtful

What is the god according to Plato?

  • He thinks it’s crazy if you believe god is the creator of all bad things

  • Then we cannot listen to Homer or Hesoid Socrates argues, because they write poems of how gods do good and bad things

  • Such a fiction that the gods crated both good and bad is suicidal, ruinous, and impious

  • God is not the author of all things but only the creator of all good things

  • God would not come down and shape shift, that would be bad

  • The worst thing that you fear is being lied to

  • Lying can be useful and could be good depending on the situation, but none of these reasons can apply to god

The city depends on poetry before it depends on law