ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑ
P. Shorey (Loeb, 1930/1935)
Plato · P. Shorey (Loeb, 1930/1935)
Narrator: SOCRATES of Alopece, son of Sophroniscus
Also present: NICERATUS father of Nicias, EUTHYDEMUS brother of Lysias, LYSIAS an orator son of Cephalus, CHARMANTIDES a contemporary of Cephalus, OTHERS friends attending the festival
Scene: on the road to Athens during the Bendis festival / at the house of Polemarchus in the Piraeus
The Republic is Plato's longest and most ambitious dialogue, ranging across nearly the whole of his thought. It opens with a deceptively simple question — what is justice, and is the just life better than the unjust? — pressed hard by the brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus, who challenge Socrates to show that justice is worth having for its own sake, even for a man who could get away with any crime.
To see justice 'writ large', Socrates builds an ideal city in speech, with its three classes — producers, guardian-warriors, and philosopher-rulers — and famously argues that there will be no end to the troubles of states until philosophers rule or rulers philosophize. The city mirrors the tripartite soul, and justice in both turns out to be the same thing: each part doing its own proper work under the rule of reason. Along the way come some of Plato's most radical and most discussed proposals, on education, the community of wives and property among the guardians, and the role of women.
At its heart stand the three great images of the Good — the sun, the divided line, and the allegory of the cave — which set out the philosopher's ascent from the shadows of the senses to the vision of the Good that lies 'beyond being'. The dialogue closes with the Myth of Er, a vision of judgment after death and the soul's choice of its next life, binding justice to the soul's destiny across many lifetimes.
In the library: the complete Republic, including the Cave, the Divided Line, and the Myth of Er.
From the Plato Scroll Encyclopedia · open this entry in the reader
I went down yesterday to the Peiraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to pay my devotions to the Goddess, and also because I wished to see how they would conduct the festival since this was its inauguration. I thought the procession of the citizens very fine, but it was no better than the show, made by the marching of the Thracian contingent. After we had said our prayers and seen the spectacle we were starting for town when Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, caught sight of us from a distance as we were hastening homeward and ordered his boy run and bid us to wait for him, and the boy caught hold of my himation from behind and said, Polemarchus wants you to wait. And I turned around and asked where his master was. There he is, he said, behind you, coming this way. Wait for him. So we will, said Glaucon, and shortly after Polemarchus came up and Adeimantus, the brother of Glaucon, and Niceratus, the son of Nicias, and a few others apparently from the procession. Whereupon Polemarchus said, Socrates, you appear to have turned your faces townward and to be going to leave us. Not a bad guess, said I. But you see how many we are? he said. Surely. You must either then prove yourselves the better men or stay here. Why, is there not left, said I, the alternative of our persuading you that you ought to let us go? But could you persuade us, said he, if we refused to listen? Nohow, said Glaucon. Well, we won’t listen, and you might as well make up your minds to it.
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The Athenian who turned Socratic conversation into a written philosophy and founded the Academy.
Plato was born around 428 BCE into a wealthy and politically prominent Athenian family; through his mother Perictione the family traced kinship to the lawgiver Solon, and his relatives Critias and Charmides were among the oligarchs of the Thirty. A late tradition says his given name was Aristocles and that 'Plato' — from the word for 'broad' — was a nickname. He grew up during the long agony of the Peloponnesian War and came of age amid the violence and disillusion that followed Athens' defeat.
Plato · P. Shorey (Loeb, 1930/1935). Each edition has its page, the reader and a plain-text file:
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