Plato's Republic

Glaucon's story about the ring of invisibility in Republic 359d-60b is examined in order to assess the wider role of fictional fabrication in Plato's philosophical argument. The first part of the article (I) looks at the close connections this tale has to the account of Gyges in Herodotus (1.8-12). It is argued that Plato exhibits a specific dependence on Herodotus, which suggests Glaucon's story might be an original invention: the assumption that there must be a lost 'original' to inspire Plato's story of the ring has never accommodated the possibility of Plato drawing, perhaps quite directly, from Herodotus. The next section (II) considers the function of that fable within the larger philosophical and aesthetic structure of the Republic. Appreciation of the entire dialogue as an exercise in fiction, as well as philosophy, helps to reveal the ways in which philosophical argument and fictional invention are closely bound up in the formation of Glaucon's fabulous anecdote. Finally (III), a reading of Cicero's treatment of the story in De Officiis confirms the degree to which philosophical reasoning and fiction can be quite generally interdependent. Although the arguments in Sections II and III are consistent with the opening contention that the ring story was invented by Plato, they do not presuppose it.

The Republic's account of the relation between talking about politics and doing politics illuminates the nature of political action. Plato's Socrates argues that those who ought to govern are those who know about politics and who know what politics is about, since political things are images of ideas. Socrates' alternative to democracy is thus an academic rather than an aristocratic elite—an elite of those who know. Yet the academic elite Plato imagined does not dispute the right of the people to decide between it, the aristocrats, and the men of the people.

The agon of Aristophanes’ Wealth has puzzled scholars for decades, raising some major thematic issues: who wins the agon? Penia’s argumentation seems more rational and easy to be shared; but did Aristophanes really want his audience to sympathize with the antagonist rather than with Chremylus? The question has proven a conundrum for Aristophanic scholarship.
In my paper, I will take one aspect of the question into closer consideration – Penia’s representation: how is she portrayed? Is it a typically Aristophanic personification or can be some precise models be recognized? In my opinion, Aristophanes was consistently drawing from a quite common model in ancient comedy, philosophers: Penia looks, speaks, and acts as a philosopher – or rather, as the comic type of philosopher (with special reference to Socratic thinkers).
This observation can help reach some conclusions about the winner of the agon: Penia’s being in all respects a philosopher is what makes her argue in a rationalistic and more conclusive way; but it is also what makes her a negative character, preventing the audience from sympathizing with her reasons: since (comic) philosophers are usually portrayed as living destitute lives, Penia’s programme is intrinsically philosophical, and profoundly negative in a comic, and Aristophanic, context.
Moreover, an in-depth analysis of Penia’s vocabulary and argumentation also shows that her arguments are hardly unparalleled in 4th-century Greek literature. A close relation can be shown to exist between Penia’s arguments about wealth and poverty and those of Socrates in Plato’s Republic (especially as outlined in Books 4 and 5). It seems therefore possible to hypothesize that Wealth, quite as much as Ecclesiazusae, shows some relevant philosophical and textual similarities to the Republic.

In defending the view that justice is the advantage of the stronger, Thrasymachus puzzlingly claims that rulers never err and that any practitioner of a skill or expertise (τέχνη) is infallible. In what follows, Socrates offers a number of arguments directed against Thrasymachus' views concerning the nature of skill, ruling, and justice. Commentators typically take a dim view of both Thrasymachus' claims about skill (which are dismissed as an ungrounded and purely ad hoc response to Socrates' initial criticisms) and Socrates' latter arguments (which are deemed extremely weak). In this paper, I clarify Thrasymachus' views (and those of several other ancients) concerning qua locutions and the nature of skill and ability and I reconstruct Socrates' arguments against Thrasymachus' views concerning skill and justice. I argue that Thrasymachus' views are not ungrounded or ad hoc and that Socrates' arguments are rather different (and significantly stronger) than often supposed. Links: https://philpapers.org/archive/NAWTUS.pdf (open access preprint) https://philpapers.org/rec/NAWTUS (for full links to published versions

resumo: Ao associar governo à téchne, Trasímaco estabelece que o governo também exige um conheci-mento específico. Esse saber permitiria que o governante pudesse beneficiar-se dos governados, tirando proveito deles. Em sua definição de governo, ele aproximará essa téchne do governo ao governante in-justo, mais especificamente o tirano. Neste trabalho, pretende-se analisar a relevância dos argumentos de Trasímaco para a filosofia política. Palavras-chave: Trasímaco. Sócrates. Governo. Téchne. Filosofia Política.

We draw on ancient Greek philosophy contemporary psychosocial theorists to analyse the ethical implications of social policies implemented through the welfare state with the espoused objective of achieving social inclusion. We argue that many such policies establish a boundary between domains of inclusion and exclusion that perversely creates and maintains the very problem such policies are designed to solve. They then also provide 'rationalisations' for social exclusion which imply that such states can be explained-that they are ethical, and so legitimate. We illustrate our argument with reference to a specific area of social policy-Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT)-that impacts on our own area of practice as psychotherapists. We analyse how this policy frames aspects of social exclusion (un(der)employment?) as a 'psychological' problem: a move that grants the excluded a specific kind of identity and then locates the problem of exclusion in this identity. We invoke Plato's Republic to show how the subsequent offer of psychological 'help' subliminally suggests that these mental disorders result from individuals' failures to 'know their place' and to 'mind their own business', rather than as a consequence of social (dis)order, exclusions and injustices within which we are all embedded.

In book IX of the Republic, Socrates offers a strange mathematical calculation, which claims to prove that the tyrant lives exactly 729 times less pleasantly than the king. For the first time, a complete and detailed reconstruction of this difficult text and its underlying structure is offered in the present article. It thereby proves that the distinction between ‘pleasure’ and the ‘image of pleasure’ is one among the keys to understanding the passage. It is furthermore shown how the whole calculation is based on Plato’s ontology of dimensions and therefore proves that this theorem can be taken into account at least already for the time of the Republic.

This article analyzes boy viewers as internal audiences in Imperial ekphrastic treatises. The first section traces the origins of the boy viewer to Plato’s Republic and examines early examples in the Tabula Cebetis and Rhetorum praeceptor. The second half of the article then investigates how the Philostrati and Callistratus rework this device in their own texts, focusing on themes of childlike wonder and susceptibility to illusion. I conclude that these treatises use the boy viewer to subvert the distinction between expert and inexpert viewing, and thereby contest the ideal of the cultured gaze inherited from the Second Sophistic.

Several contemporary virtue scholars (e.g. Zagzebski, 1996; Kvanvig, 1992) trace the origin of the concept of intellectual virtues back to Aristotle. In contrast, my aim in this paper is to highlight the strong indications showing that Plato had already conceived of and had begun developing the concept of intellectual virtues in his discussion of the ideal city-state in the Republic. I argue that the Platonic conception of rational desires satisfies the motivational component of intellectual virtues while his dialectical method satisfies the success component. In addition, I show that Plato considers episteme as the primary intellectual virtue. Episteme, which is quite similar to Pritchard's (2010) conception of understanding, is a cognitive achievement that cannot be attained by luck or testimony.

The realization that Plato was the first to conceive of and develop the concept of intellectual excellences is not merely of historic significance. I illustrate, through the example of Zagzebski's (1996) virtue theory, how the Platonic conception of intellectual virtues could prove promising in contemporary debates on virtue epistemology theories.

In the ideal city of the Republic, Plato forbids property ownership for the auxiliaries while he retains private property for the lowest class, including the farmers who will provide the auxiliaries' food. For Plato, agricultural land and practices are the realm of lifelong farmers who are politically dedicated to the upkeep of the ruling class. In his novel Utopia, Sir Thomas More also takes a communalist approach but he extends the ban on private property to the entire community, including those engaged in farming. Furthermore, he includes the practice of agriculture within the regular rotation of living arrangements so that virtually all Utopians have some experience with the land and food production. Thus, although both Plato and More present communalist theories of property, their ideal states show critically different approaches to the role of agriculture and the connection of citizens to the land that supports them.

In  1942  Gadamer  published  his  essay  Platos  Staat  der  Erziehung.  In  this  article  he  will  interrogate  the  mutual  relationships  between  pólis  and  psyché,  as  well  as  the  relationship  between  politics and philosophy in Plato’s Republic. This paper aims to critically expose the analysis offered by Gadamer of dikaiosýne  understood  as  “doing  one’s  own”  in  Platonic  dialogues,  in  addition  to  the political rank of philosophical education. For this, emphasis will be placed on the role played in his research of the notions of andreía  and  sophrosýne.  Finally,  the  conclusions  will  show  how  in  Gadamer’s reading the philosophical education of the guardians and leaders is inscribed in an essential interpretation of a utopian characterization of kallípolis, which problematizes the question of power in Platonic thought

In this article I discuss Plato’s use of method in the Republic in light of the Socratic method. I show that in Book 4 this method is a key
moment in the conversion from a political way of life (where habits,
tastes and beliefs are conditionally deduced from the dominant
regime) to the philosophic way of life, in that Socrates’s account of
method is never separated from the experience of questioning the
dialogue incites. The Socratic account of method differs from our modern conception of method in that it is never presented abstractly or with finality. It is learned by experiencing its application to the constitution of one’s own soul. Socrates’s use of questioning and agreement (i.e., elenchus) prepares the soul to apply the method in a way that reveals the contradictions between the city and the soul
and the questions these contradictions raise. I conclude that questioning and method taken together constitute a decisive but often overlooked moment in the philosophic conversion presented in the
Republic, and suggest that contemporary political theory would benefit from a return to the method that implicates the questioner herself in the search for knowledge of justice.

RESUMO Em nosso artigo, pretendemos verificar as teses de Trasímaco sobre a justiça e se estas são consistentes entre si. Para isso, há de se observar a relação da justiça com o governo e a força (krátos) que a determina. O intuito é reavivar as discussões hodiernas sobre as teses de Trasímaco dentro da filosofia platônica, assim como demonstrar sua importância para o âmbito da filosofia política. Palavras-chave República de Platão. Trasímaco. Sócrates. Justiça. Injustiça. Téchne.
ABSTRACT This article aims to verify Thrasymachus' theses on justice and whether they are consistent with one another. As such, it is necessary to observe the relation between justice and government, as well as the force (krátos) which determines it. The objective is to revive in actual times the discussions about Thrasymachus' theses within Plato's philosophy, and to demonstrate its importance in the scope of political philosophy.

In the Platonic corpus, bodily diseases are a model to understand vice in the soul; and in a general sense, vice—taken as a defect of a natural being—sheds light on what should be defined as a disease.
In the first section of the paper, I will give an overview of the functioning of the analogy between disease and vice in the Republic; bodily diseases seem to be the model, through the analogy, that accounts for the vice in the soul and in the city: vice, as bodily disease, is a disruption of a hierarchical structure. But we will see that the analogy between vice and disease may point to a stronger metaphor, insofar as there seem to be a privileged connection between physical diseases that come from a bad regimen and diseases of the soul.
In the second section, relying on a passage in book 10 of the Republic, I will try to show however that this analogy rests on an asymmetrical understanding of the two terms that are compared, without allowing any simple causality that links them. Plato does not say that vice can come from a physical disease, whereas some diseases seem to emerge because of a bad condition of the soul.
In the third section, I will confront the use of the analogy in the Timaeus where “diseases of the soul” or vices are said to come from a bad condition
of the body. I will show that this conclusion, which seems to be contradictory with the Republic, is in fact perfectly compatible with it, insofar as the Timaeus says at the same time that some diseases are conditioned by a vicious regime and flawed institutions.

After locating Resp. 5.453b–454c in the wider context of the ‘triple wave’ (τρικυμία) literary motif, Section 1 concentrates on the terminological and argumentative peculiarities of the passage, and raises the central question addressed in this paper : why does Socrates refer to antilogy and eristic in the very context of the first wave concerned with the issue of the equal disposition of men and women to be guards of the ideal city ? Section 2 considers a possible answer to this question by examining the evidence available on the relation between the Republic and Protagoras, and the possible Protagorean background of Resp. 5.453b–454c. This examination turns out to be inconclusive. Section 3 then attempts to restore the original polemical context of the passage by considering some textual evidence on the Socratic discussion of the virtue of men and women

In a way, there is nothing surprising about Plato’s promotion of sport for
women in Republic and Laws; it is logically implied by his philosophical theories. In another way, Plato’s vision of female athletes is among the most radical proposals he makes. The purpose of this paper is to examine Plato’s arguments for women in sport and reflect on its relevance in our modern world. His texts include as many misogynist as feminist comments, but Plato’s consistent view in Republic and Laws is that females deserve equal education in gymnastics (i.e. movement activities) and equal opportunity to participate in athletic contests. This position derives from the convictions that athletics serves as training for
virtue and communities need to maximize the virtue of all their members. It is his vision of women in civic and military roles, specifically their need for aretē (virtue, excellence) to perform those roles, that motivates Plato to include them in sport. In our modern world, where women are citizens and rulers – and regularly participate in sport – it is worth exploring the educational link Plato saw between the two. (paper available via link)

La obra y la figura de Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (1645-1700) presentan recurrentemente un problema doble de inscripción en la literatura de América: en términos críticos, obra y figura son percibidas y concebidas, ya en el vasto y diverso campo histórico que definieran las crónicas de Indias, ya en el todavía difuso pero revolucionario espacio de una ciencia de presunta modernidad; en términos históricos, son puestas, curiosa pero no casualmente, en series que las alejan del siglo XVII y su barroco, tan urbano como letrado. El presente artículo se propone, además de estudiar dicha inscripción, señalar cómo es ella la que adquiere fundamental importancia en la edición de sus textos, en la concepción y práctica de su literatura y en la capacidad de todo ello para articular, en América, redes diversas y renovadas de agentes, acontecimientos e ideas que hoy surgen bajo el signo del archivo.

This monograph offers a novel interpretation of Plato's ethics with a focus on the concept of virtue rather than eudaimonia. It argues that central to the argument of the "early" and "middle" dialogues is a distinction between aiming at virtue as the supreme end of action and determining, metaphysically and epistemologically, what virtue is.  It includes detailed readings of the Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, Gorgias, and Republic and addresses issues including Socrates's Disavowal of Knowledge, the Priority of Definition, the role of the "what is F?" question, the relationship between virtuous action and virtuous character, Thrasymachus's challenge to the value of justice, the restated challenge by Glaucon and Adeimantus, the significance of the educational program in the Republic, the unity of the Republic, and the role of Platonic Forms. It argues that there is much more continuity of thought throughout the "early" and "middle" dialogues than commentators have traditionally thought.

While the reality of human existence may appear to be an unfair and unreasonable arena, we humans are nevertheless called on to live fairly, justly, and morally. If a just and moral action and life includes elements of self-restraint, of waiving of what would seem to be in one’s interests, a question may very reasonably be asked regarding the motivation (not in terms of the general social realm, i.e. fear of social punishment or interest in gaining a social advantage) for acting and living justly and morally in such an unfair and unreasonable reality. From a moral education point of view, it may seem that, as teachers and parents, we have every reason, and even a duty and responsibility, to advise our students and children (face-to-face and behind closed doors—far from the general social realm) that, if they have an option to increase their relative advantage without risk to themselves or of being caught (let alone risking themselves for a big moral idea), they should do so without hesitation. Would you advise your children, students or yourself otherwise? If so, why? What is the rationale for moral education in our prima facie unfair and unreasonable world? After showing the limitations of another recently proposed answer to the question, one based on Meillassoux’s ethic of immortality, I suggest an alternative based on a reading of Plato’s Republic. In my reading I focus on Plato’s idea of the soul and suggest an interpretation of the allegory of the cave.

Le présent article se propose de mettre en lumière non seulement la critique platonicienne de la poésie telle qu’elle se déploie dans les livres II, III et X de la République, mais aussi — et surtout — la lecture qu’en fait le néoplatonicien Proclus dans son vaste Commentaire sur la République. Le principal enjeu de cette lecture est le lien entre le mythe et l’éducation. Nous verrons d’abord comment Platon s’emploie à lier ces deux éléments, puis comment Proclus cherche pour sa part à relativiser ce lien, au point où mythe et éducation en viennent, sinon à s’exclure mutuellement, du moins à n’entretenir qu’un faible commerce.

This article aims to shed some light not only on the Platonic critique of poetry as it is articulated in books II, III and X of the Republic, but also — and chiefly — on the Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus’ very personal reading of that critique in his vast Commentary on the Republic. The crux of this reading is the link between myth and education. We will first witness how Plato tries to tie those two elements together, and then how Proclus attempts to minimize this relationship, to the point where myth and education, although they do not exclude one another, come to share very little common ground.

De part en part traversé par le mythe, le Commentaire sur la République du Néoplatonicien Proclus accorde forcément une attention soutenue au symbole. Cet article se propose de mettre en lumière deux types de symbolisme que l’on trouve dans ce Commentaire. Le premier, « non imitatif », reconfigure significativement l’héritage des Formes intelligibles platoniciennes ; le second, tiré des Oracles chaldaïques, consiste en une « intériorisation » du symbole. Les deux symbolismes se rejoignent en ce qu’ils impliquent une sympathie profonde entre toutes choses, et présupposent la communication préalable des symboles tant dans la genèse que dans l’interprétation du mythe inspiré.

Given the importance awarded to myth in the Commentary on the Republic by the Neoplatonist Proclus, it should come as no surprise that symbolism is a central issue in that work. This article aims to shed some light on two kinds of symbolism found in the Commentary : the first, “non-imitative” kind, significantly reconfigures the symbolism implied by the Platonic Forms ; the second kind, which comes from the Chaldean Oracles, consists in what we call the “interiorization” of the symbol. These symbolisms converge in that they point to the sympathy that exists between all things, just as they assume the prior communication of the symbols in both the genesis and the interpretation of the inspired myth.

The increasing reliance on drones is threatening our humanity—but not because of the inhumane ways we use Predator drones in warfare. It is a mistake “to use the term “drone” to refer only to these much publicized military devices. Drones, more precisely understood, are intelligent machines that—possessed of the capacity to perform repetitive tasks with efficiency, reliability, and mechanical rationality—increasingly displace the need for human thinking and doing. The trend Jünger and Turkle worry about is unmistakable: we are at risk of losing the rich and mature relationships that mark us as human. The rise of social robots, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other one-dimensional machines that act like humans—without the perceived human weaknesses of distraction, emotion, exhaustion, quirkiness, risk, and unreliability—answers a profound human desire to replace human judgment with the more reliable, more efficient, and more ra- tional judgment of machines. For all the superficial paeans to human instinct and intuition, human beings, in practice, repeatedly prefer drone-like reliability to the uncertain spontaneity of human intuition. In other words, we confront a future in which “human” is a derogatory adjective signifying inefficiency, incompetence, and backwardness.

How important are animals to democracy? In this paper, I reconsider the role and the place of nonhuman animals in the constitution of democratic community by way of a return to Plato’s Republic. While perhaps an unlikely choice of text, the horror and terror exhibited by Plato towards animals compels us to put into question two fundamental truisms: first, that philosophy and politics are uniquely human concerns and, second, that today in the West we already inhabit a democratic society. By turning towards the animal, a number of very different figures emerge that directly challenge the general conception of the Republic as epitomic text of political philosophy and beacon of ancient wisdom. These figures instead reveal the Republic as a blueprint for perpetual power, complete with instructions for forcing the masses into enduring servitude. Moreover, I argue that contemporary societal structures in the West typically accord with Plato’s ancient blueprint, according to which every laboring body must be forcibly given to swallow the ‘Guardian’ of its own servitude. This Guardian has but one function: to safeguard the power, wealth and privilege of the minority ruling class against the instinct for democratic freedoms.

Among Plato’s dialogues, the Timaeus was the most authoritative for Middle Platonists. But the three principles doctrine, which charaterizes imperial Platonism, cannot be stated on the basis of this dialogue alone. In my paper I show that Numenius was influenced by the Republic as well: in the metaphor of the sun he found the Good as first principle and an indication of a second principle which is further subdivided into a Intellect thinking the ideas and into a demiurge ordering the universe. But such an influence raises also difficulties insofar as the causal role of the first principle is concerned.

The word theologia is attested for the first time in Plato’s Republic II, 379a4: Hoi tupoi peri theologias. According to Werner Jaeger (The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, Oxford 1947, 4-13), Plato coined the word to support the introduction of a new doctrine which resulted from a conflict between the mythical and the natural (rational) approach to the problem of God. For Jaeger, the word theologia designates what Aristotle was later to call theologikê or “first philosophy (hê protê philosophia) – whence his translation of hoi tupoi peri theologias by “outlines of theology.” Victor Goldschmidt, for his part, in an illuminating article entitled “Theologia” (in Questions Platoniciennes, Paris, 1970, 141-72) will have nothing to do with such a contention. He argues that the word theologia here used by Plato means nothing more than a species of muthologia. While the principal lexicons agree with Jaeger, that is, that theologia bears the sense of “science of divine things,” the majority of contemporary translators follow Goldschmidt in taking theologia as an equivalent to muthologia or a species of it. In view of the importance of the concept of theologia in the Western tradition, I believe it merits another analysis. The aim of this paper is to show that the word theologia in this passage of the Republic can mean “science of divine things,” contrary to the claim of  Goldschmidt and his followers, but not in the context of natural philosophy as Jaeger seems to imply. The most important thing is to determine whether the element logia should be translated as “science” or “speech,” that is, whether Plato is making a value judgement about theos. I argue that he does, and this is something that contemporary translators continue to miss.

Is it true that all formative influence is unethical, and that we ought to avoid influencing children (and indeed anyone at all)? There are more or less defensible versions of this doctrine, and we shall follow some of the strands of argument that lead to this conclusion. It seems that in maintaining that all influence is immoral, one is committed to the notion that children have an innate teleology, that these may be frustrated, and that to frustrate the child's innate teleology would be to wrong them. First we consider a strong view of innate teleology exemplified in the writing of Plato. However, even those who favour such a view can approve of those formative influences which lead people to better realise their innate teleology. Next we consider a weaker version of the doctrine, one claiming that we ought to broaden the possibilities available to those that we influence, and never to narrow them. This seems too permissive a strategy, however. Finally Foss and Griffin's worry about a desire for control and domination being embedded in persuasion is explored together with their proposed alternative strategy of 'invitational rhetoric'. Ultimately, this paper argues that we often have good reason to encourage certain formative outcomes and discourage others

Can rational arguments convince a person to change from a commitment to living an unvirtuous life into striving after virtue? Or can rationality, even in the best cases, only help preserve an already existing commitment to virtue? Our paper throws light on this question through a discussion of the form of care for the self that Plato thinks is practiced through the engagement in Socratic philosophy, the practice of giving and asking for reasons. First, the Platonic conception of the soul as the object of care is described. Secondly, we consider what care of the soul is meant to accomplish. Thirdly, we consider the pedagogical role that can be attributed to Socratic philosophy in stimulating such care. This is discussed through a critical analysis of Christine Korsgaard’s interpretation of Plato which we draw upon in our previous reconstruction. The conclusion is that the engagement in rational discourse can at best function as a way of preserving the virtue of already virtuous souls, and not as a way of transforming the unvirtuous by rationally motivating them to pursue virtue for its own sake.  According to Plato’s dialogues, philosophy as care for the soul is at best a preservative form of care.

Republic 596a introduces a One over Many principle that has traditionally been considered as an argument for the existence of Forms, according to which, one Form should be posited for each like-named plurality. This interpretation was challenged by (Smith, J. A. 1917. "General Relative Clauses in Greek." Classical Review 31: 69-71.), who interpreted it rather as a statement that each Form is unique and correlated to a plurality of things that have the same name as it. (Sedley, D. 2013. "Plato and the One-over-Many Principle", in Chiaradonna & Galluzzo 2013, 113-37.) has offered a forceful defence of Smith's interpretation. I argue that Sedley's defence fails and that the traditional interpretation should be preferred.

This essay provides an overview of Plato’s contribution to food ethics. Drawing on various Platonic dialogues, the discussion includes an analysis of the problem of gluttony and the correlate virtue of moderation, the diet of the Republic’s ideal city, and the harmonious order of the tripartite soul.

Three problems threaten any account of philosophical rule in the Republic. First, Socrates is supposed to show that acting justly is always beneficial, but instead he extols the benefits of having a just soul. He leaves little reason to believe practical justice and psychic justice are connected and thus to believe that philosophers will act justly. In response to this problem, I show that just acts produce just souls. Since philosophers want to have just souls, they will act justly. Second, Socrates’ alleged aim is to demonstrate that justice is beneficial, but philosophers, who have to give up a life of philosophy to rule, actually appear to be harmed by ruling. I explain that, since the founders of the city justly command them to rule, philosophers cannot, in fact, obtain a better life, and so ruling does not harm them. Third, it seems incongruous that philosophers, who should, as just people, jump at the opportunity to rule Kallipolis, must be compelled to rule. I show that Plato carefully constructs an educational system that produces rulers who do not want to rule, since such rulers alone will rule best.

In this paper I discuss the translation of a line in Plato's description of the ‘greatest accusation’ against imitative poetry, Republic 606a3–b5. This line is pivotal in Plato's account of how poetry corrupts its audience and is one of the Republic's most complex and interesting applications of his partite psychology, but it is misconstrued in most recent translations, including the most widely used. I argue that an examination of the text and reflections on Platonic psychology settle the translation decisively.

This paper focuses on Plato's compressed theodicy in the Republic's Myth of Er, which stems from the famous αιτία λομένου· θεος αναίτιος verdict, found at 617e4–5. Its direct implication is the understanding that the souls of the Myth are autonomous in making their choices, and therefore morally responsible for their decisions and actions. God is thus exonerated of all blame for the disappointments and sufferings they are going through, and his beneficent nature is defended, at least within the confines of the Myth's rudimentary theodicy. It is my opinion that Plato is indeed justified in upholding such views. In order to demonstrate that, I shall try to argue that the claim of individual responsibility – upon which Plato's theodicy in the Myth of Er is exclusively founded – withstands the charges of determinism and infinite regress of accountability, leveled against it by Annas, Halliwell, et al., and McPherran, Inwood, et al., respectively. I shall also try to make a case against Annas' and Thayer's allegations that the memory loss, which is one of the consequences of the reincarnation process, absolves the agent from culpability for the mistakes committed in his/her previous lives, because such loss implicates discontinuity of personal identity. Before engaging with this issues, however, I shall attempt to provide a possible Platonic account of the concept of freedom of choice – the basic precondition for moral responsibility – as employed in the Myth of Er.

The popularity of Jacques Rancière in recent work in educational philosophy has rejuvenated discussion of the merits and weaknesses of Socratic education, both in Plato's dialogues and in invocations of Socrates in contemporary educational practice. In this essay Jordan Fullam explores the implications of this trend through comparing Rancière's educational thought to an analysis of the relationship between dialectic and stultification in Plato's Republic. This task clarifies what is useful in the recent wave of scholarship that brings Rancière's work to bear upon Socratic education, and what we might redeem in the practice of teaching that Plato assigns to the character of Socrates in the Republic. Fullam also draws on the educational literature on Socratic education to provide further context to explore the usefulness of both Rancière and Socrates for contemporary teaching.

Plato's Republic critiques Athenian democracy as practised during the Peloponnesian War years. The diseased city Socrates attempts to purge mirrors Athens in crucial particulars, and his proposals should be evaluated as counterweights to existing institutions and practices, not as absolutes to be instantiated. Plato's assessment of the Athenian polity incorporates two strategies-one rhetorical, the other argumentative-both of which I address. Failure to consider Athens a catalyst for Socrates' arguments has led to the misconception that Plato was dogmatically committed to a single political doctrine for all and for all time. Plato's Republic is an internal, constructive critique of Athenian democracy as it was practised during the years of the Peloponnesian War, the extended dramatic date of the dialogue. 3 While I do not claim to exhaust the purposes of the dialogue with such a sweeping statement, this aspect of Plato's approach has been a bystander in the crossfire between, on the one hand, those who take Plato to be a utopian and his dialogue a blueprint and, on the other, those who take Plato to be an anti-utopian who issues a dire warning against any polis established on such a blueprint. I argue that Plato's Socrates' proposals for a kallipolis, the key features of which contrast sharply with those of Athens herself , are a mark of a deliberate argumentative strategy played out against the background of an equally deliberate rhetorical strategy. I Plato's Rhetorical Strategy The Republic is shaped like a temple pediment or letter L, with aspects of the second half of the dialogue arranged in correspondence to aspects of the first.

In this essay the author offers a reading of mimetic style (lexis) as it is presented in Book three of Plato’s Republic with the aim of disclosing the importance of style in the acquisition and employment of knowledge—whether scientific or ethical. In fact, the author argues that a careful reading of Socrates’ words in the text occasions the idea that reflection on the way that we imitate our inherited content—the ethos, the comportment, in which we exhibit that content—makes visible a potential to appropriate received content and imitated knowledge in original and wakeful ways. In consequence, the author argues that it might be style, not content, that harbors the capacity for us to take a genuine, critical responsibility for our inherited concepts.

In the 7th essay of his Commentary on the Republic of Plato, Proclus supplies the elements of a fairly robust Neoplatonic political philosophy. In general he agrees with Plato’s account of the tripartite soul and the four cardinal virtues, while introducing important nuances into the theory. The idea of the dominance of one part of the soul over another, and the idea of ‘mixed lives’, where two parts dominate at once, extend Plato’s account of the various political types. Further, in his attempt to give various metaphysical explanations for the nature and number of the parts of the soul and the virtues, Proclus inserts Platonic political philosophy more or less whole-cloth into a Neoplatonic cosmic hierarchy.