11/27/2023 0 Comments Cave allegory explained![]() How everybody else could be “persuaded” to accept their claims to rule is also unclear - as is grasping just how Plato’s guardians could get ordinary citizens to give up their kids to the state for the greater good. For such people will be least moved by the desires for status and riches that produce civil dissension.īut then, it is almost impossible to imagine how such a ruling elite could ever be created without great injustices. Socrates plausibly suggests that it would seem to be best that our political leaders are people who desire wisdom. In other societies, like our own, the pursuit of money as the means to pleasure, power, and satisfying desires is predominant. For some systems and people, honour and its pursuit is considered the highest good. To answer, The Republic sets up a connection between types and parts of the human psyche (mind, soul) and different political systems. Does being just benefit the just persons themselves, or those whom they aid, or both? Is it good for a person to live a just life? The Republic’s principal concern is the question of what justice is. But, as mentioned, there are many other things the book discusses than Socrates’ seemingly ideal “ city in speech”.Ī Roman copy of the portrait of Plato made by Silanion ca. Why many other defenders of political liberty admire Plato’s text is less clear. Contemporary dreamers of a “ dark enlightenment” wherein techy people “with high IQs” can “opt out” of wider society are also finding their way back to the future as depicted in The Republic Book V. We can understand at this point why Nazi educationalists looked to The Republic as a precedent for some of their programs. ![]() So, they will consider all their fellow-citizens as brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. Each person will not know who their immediate biological family is. More ominously, children born with defects will be “ hidden away” ( katakrypsousin).Įverything is to be arranged so everyone can say “mine” about the same things. There will be rigged “lotteries” so that the lesser-credentialed think it is just bad luck that they cannot “hook up” with the alphas.īabies will be taken from their mothers by the rulers to a kind of state crèche. ![]() The best warriors will get to sleep with the most beautiful women. Less amusing is the proposed power of Socrates’ enlightened guardians to “breed” men and women as breeders selectively mate horses, dogs or fighting birds. When Socrates suggests that justice is only possible if philosophers become kings, or kings philosophers, his young companion Glaucon jokes that most people on hearing this will probably reach for their weapons. The third class are craftspeople and traders more recognisable to us today. Indeed, Socrates depicts men and women as absolutely equal in all decisive senses. The second class will be “auxiliaries” or soldiers who will share everything in common, including wives and children. On top will be a ruling caste of (yes) philosopher-guardians. The Matrix 20 years on: how a sci-fi film tackled big philosophical questionsĭivided into ten “books”, the Republic is mostly taught as a text championing a series of radical prescriptions concerning the best city ( polis) or regime ( politeia).Īt a certain point, Plato’s Socrates tells his young friends that the best city will be one in which the population is divided into three castes. Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures, Groucho Film Partnership Keanu Reeves in The Matrix (1999): the film revisits some of Plato’s ideas outlined in The Republic.
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