AUTHOR: PLATO
DATE: C. 375 BC
The Republic is the most famous treatise of Plato, one of the three behemoths of Ancient Greek philosophy alongside his teacher Socrates and his student, Aristotle. Written in the early part of the fourth century BC, it considers models of the ideal city-state and questions what constitutes a just polity and a just individual. Plato also introduced his concept of ‘Ideal Forms’ in the work, which ponders the nature of reality. While many of The Republic’s core ideas have been disregarded by mainstream philosophy in the millennia since, its methodology and dazzling intellectual virtuosity have informed the discipline more than perhaps any other work. In 2001, a poll by Philosophers’ Magazine of over a thousand philosophers and academics found The Republic to be the greatest work of philosophy ever written.
Plato was born in Athens around 428 BC, into a high-ranking family with access to the very best education. It is suggested that he was born Aristocles and that Plato, meaning ‘broad’, was a nickname, perhaps in recognition of his stocky build and wide forehead, or alternatively as a nod to the breadth of his knowledge. He studied under Socrates in his hometown but left after his master’s execution in 399 BC on charges of corrupting the city’s youth with his teachings. Plato then spent several years travelling abroad but returned to Athens in 385 BC and set up his legendary Academy, where new generations of notable thinkers – Aristotle among them – received the benefit of his wisdom. The Republic was written in the decade or so after the founding of the Academy.
The Republic is structured as a Socratic dialogue between Plato’s former teacher, Socrates, and several other philosophers. With none of Socrates’ own writings having survived, Plato essentially preserved his master’s ideas in the many dialogues he wrote. In fact, academic debate continues to rage as to where Plato’s ideas begin and Socrates’ end in these texts. The dialogue is a vehicle for the Socratic (or dialectic) Method perfected by Socrates – a form of inductive argument in which a subject, concept or argument is investigated through a series of questions and answers. By thorough cross-examination, the durability of the argument or concept under investigation is thoroughly tested. If it collapses under questioning, it must either be discarded or else revised and re-tested. The knowledge of the participants is thus increased until they arrive at an idea that is shown to be resilient even under intense scrutiny. For example, in one of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates asks his companion Euthyphro to define piety. Euthyphro argues that whatever is pious is beloved of the gods, but Socrates counters that the gods are prone to quarrel in respect of objects of love or hatred. Therefore, a thing might exist that is loved by some gods but hated by others. According to Euthyphro’s definition, an object can thus be pious and impious all at the same time – an absurd illogicality. And so the search for a new definition begins. Socrates likened himself to a midwife whose task was to birth ideas.
Despite his adoption of the dialectic method, Plato nonetheless had a very different conception to Socrates as to the ways in which one can arrive at knowledge. Key to Plato’s philosophy was his Theory of Forms. He contended that a realm of idealized forms exists separate to the material world. Moreover, our souls (which he considered the seat of reason, while our material bodies are the seat of the senses) existed in this realm prior to their earthly manifestation, as a result of which we carry with us knowledge of them. So, for instance, we are born with an inherent concept of the ideal flower so that we can recognize a rose or an orchid or a poppy as variants of this form. And as for flowers, so too for dogs or colours or mountains or even concepts like justice and virtue. We judge, for instance, the virtue of another by comparing them to the ideal form of virtue we recognize in our souls.
The realm of the Ideal Forms, he suggested, is the ‘real’ world while our material world is made up of mere shadows of these forms. That is why, for example, Pythagoras could envisage a perfect triangle when no such thing exists in nature. Plato famously explored this notion of reality in ‘the Allegory of the Cave’ in The Republic. It describes a group of people who have spent their lives chained up in a cave, facing a blank wall, their necks manacled to fix their gaze. Behind them, a fire flickers as the shadows of puppets are cast onto the cave wall. This world of shadows becomes the prisoners’ reality and we, Plato said, are like them, drawing our knowledge from the observations of shadows. Instead, he contended, the philosopher should rely on their reason to recognize the true, Ideal Forms of things, just like a prisoner liberated from their shackles and free to turn and see the light behind them. This view changed the direction of philosophical thought, moving the focus from observation of the world around us to rationalism: prioritizing internal reasoning since the ‘truth’ of the Ideal Forms exists within and not external to us.
SO LONG, SOLON!
The family of Plato’s mother, Perictione, claimed descendancy from Solon, a noted lyric poet and social reformer. Living between 630 BC and 560 BC, he was one of the so-called ‘Seven Sages’ – a band of celebrated philosophers and statesmen in Ancient Greece. He was famed for his progressiveness, enacting laws designed to favour the poor and that cemented his city’s democratic traditions. His verse, meanwhile, ranged from patriotic propaganda to graphic erotica. In his Protagoras, Plato acknowledged the association, describing Solon as ‘our own’.
Written against the backdrop of democratic Athens’ recent traumatic defeat by Sparta and its allies in the Peloponnesian War, The Republic sees Plato conclude that philosophers are best suited to holding power on account of having set out to gain understanding and knowledge of the world and morality. He called for the emergence of the philosopher-king: ‘Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide … cities will have no rest from evils … there can be no happiness, either public or private, in any other city.’
He said that the philosopher-king must pass a series of tests in a process of education lasting until he is fifty years old. Moreover, common ownership should be adopted by the ideal society (removing the temptation to acquire private goods) and the ruler should seek to maintain social harmony and justice while eliminating any potential source of corruption.
Prior to The Republic, philosophy was essentially a divided discipline, looking either at the nature of things, ethics or politics. But Plato’s masterwork provided a new overarching approach that brought all of these aspects together, along with others like psychology and epistemology (i.e. the theory of knowledge). Its power has never waned, even as its conclusions have been challenged. As British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) memorably noted, Western philosophy is ‘a set of footnotes to Plato’.