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THE REPUBLIC
THE REPUBLIC PLATO Translated by Benjamin Jowett
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception of the
Laws and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer approaches
to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist; the Politicus or
Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of the State are more
clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art the Symposium and the
Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other Dialogue of Plato has
the same largeness of view and the same perfection of style; no other shows
an equal knowledge of the world or contains more of those thoughts which
are new as well as old and not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in
Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater wealth of humour or imagery or
more dramatic power. Nor in any other of his writings is the attempt made
to interweave life and speculation or to connect politics with philosophy.
The Republic is the centre around which the other Dialogues may be grouped;
here philosophy reaches the highest point (cp especially in Books V VI
VII) to which ancient thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks like
Bacon among the moderns was the first who conceived a method of knowledge
although neither of them always distinguished the bare outline or form from
the substance of truth; and both of them had to be content with an
abstraction of science which was not yet realized. He was the greatest
metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in him more than in any
other ancient thinker the germs of future knowledge are contained. The
sciences of logic and psychology which have supplied so many instruments
of thought to after-ages are based upon the analyses of Socrates and
Plato. The principles of definition the law of contradiction the fallacy
of arguing in a circle the distinction between the essence and accidents
of a thing or notion between means and ends between causes and
conditions; also the division of the mind into the rational concupiscent
and irascible elements or of pleasures and desires into necessary and
unnecessary--these and other great forms of thought are all of them to be
found in the Republic and were probably first invented by Plato. The
greatest of all logical truths and the one of which writers on philosophy
are most apt to lose sight the difference between words and things has
been most strenuously insisted on by him (cp. Rep.; Polit.; Cratyl)
although he has not always avoided the confusion of them in his own
writings (e.g. Rep.). But he does not bind up truth in logical formulae--
logic is still veiled in metaphysics; and the science which he imagines to
'contemplate all truth and all existence' is very unlike the doctrine of
the syllogism which Aristotle claims to have discovered (Soph. Elenchi).
Neither must we forget that the Republic is but the third part of a still
larger design which was to have included an ideal history of Athens as
well as a political and physical philosophy. The fragment of the Critias
has given birth to a world-famous fiction second only in importance to the
tale of Troy and the legend of Arthur; and is said as a fact to have
inspired some of the early navigators of the sixteenth century. This
mythical tale of which the subject was a history of the wars of the
Athenians against the Island of Atlantis is supposed to be founded upon an
unfinished poem of Solon to which it would have stood in the same relation
as the writings of the logographers to the poems of Homer. It would have
told of a struggle for Liberty (cp. Tim.) intended to represent the
conflict of Persia and Hellas. We may judge from the noble commencement of
the Timaeus from the fragment of the Critias itself and from the third
book of the Laws in what manner Plato would have treated this high
argument. We can only guess why the great design was abandoned; perhaps
because Plato became sensible of some incongruity in a fictitious history
or because he had lost his interest in it or because advancing years
forbade the completion of it; and we may please ourselves with the fancy
that had this imaginary narrative ever been finished we should have found
Plato himself sympathising with the struggle for Hellenic independence (cp.
Laws) singing a hymn of triumph over Marathon and Salamis perhaps making
the reflection of Herodotus where he contemplates the growth of the
Athenian empire--'How brave a thing is freedom of speech which has made
the Athenians so far exceed every other state of Hellas in greatness!' or
more probably attributing the victory to the ancient good order of Athens
and to the favor of Apollo and Athene (cp. Introd. to Critias).
Again Plato may be regarded as the 'captain' ('arhchegoz') or leader of a
goodly band of followers; for in the Republic is to be found the original
of Cicero's De Republica of St. Augustine's City of God of the Utopia of
Sir Thomas More and of the numerous other imaginary States which are
framed upon the same model. The extent to which Aristotle or the
Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the Politics has been little
recognised and the recognition is the more necessary because it is not
made by Aristotle himself. The two philosophers had more in common than
they were conscious of; and probably some elements of Plato remain still
undetected in Aristotle. In English philosophy too many affinities may be
traced not only in the works of the Cambridge Platonists but in great
original writers like Berkeley or Coleridge to Plato and his ideas. That
there is a truth higher than experience of which the mind bears witness to
herself is a conviction which in our own generation has been
enthusiastically asserted and is perhaps gaining ground. Of the Greek
authors who at the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato has
had the greatest influence. The Republic of Plato is also the first
treatise upon education of which the writings of Milton and Locke
Rousseau Jean Paul and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante
or Bunyan he has a revelation of another life; like Bacon he is
profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge; in the early Church he
exercised a real influence on theology and at the Revival of Literature on
politics. Even the fragments of his words when 'repeated at second-hand'
(Symp.) have in all ages ravished the hearts of men who have seen
reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the father of idealism in
philosophy in politics in literature. And many of the latest conceptions
of modern thinkers and statesmen such as the unity of knowledge the reign
of law and the equality of the sexes have been anticipated in a dream by
him.
The argument of the Republic is the search after Justice the nature of
which is first hinted at by Cephalus the just and blameless old man--then
discussed on the basis of proverbial morality by Socrates and Polemarchus--
then caricatured by Thrasymachus and partially explained by Socrates--
reduced to an abstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus and having become
invisible in the individual reappears at length in the ideal State which is
constructed by Socrates. The first care of the rulers is to be education
of which an outline is drawn after the old Hellenic model providing only
for an improved religion and morality and more simplicity in music and
gymnastic a manlier strain of poetry and greater harmony of the
individual and the State. We are thus led on to the conception of a higher
State in which 'no man calls anything his own' and in which there is
neither 'marrying nor giving in marriage' and 'kings are philosophers' and
'philosophers are kings;' and there is another and higher education
intellectual as well as moral and religious of science as well as of art
and not of youth only but of the whole of life. Such a State is hardly to
be realized in this world and quickly degenerates. To the perfect ideal
succeeds the government of the soldier and the lover of honour this again
declining into democracy and democracy into tyranny in an imaginary but
regular order having not much resemblance to the actual facts. When 'the
wheel has come full circle' we do not begin again with a new period of
human life; but we have passed from the best to the worst and there we
end. The subject is then changed and the old quarrel of poetry and
philosophy which had been more lightly treated in the earlier books of the
Republic is now resumed and fought out to a conclusion. Poetry is
discovered to be an imitation thrice removed from the truth and Homer as
well as the dramatic poets having been condemned as an imitator is sent
into banishment along with them. And the idea of the State is supplemented
by the revelation of a future life.
The division into books like all similar divisions (Cp. Sir G.C. Lewis in
the Classical Museum.) is probably later than the age of Plato. The
natural divisions are five in number;--(1) Book I and the first half of
Book II down to the paragraph beginning 'I had always admired the genius
of Glaucon and Adeimantus' which is introductory; the first book
containing a refutation of the popular and sophistical notions of justice
and concluding like some of the earlier Dialogues without arriving at any
definite result. To this is appended a restatement of the nature of
justice according to common opinion and an answer is demanded to the
question--What is justice stripped of appearances? The second division
(2) includes the remainder of the second and the whole of the third and
fourth books which are mainly occupied with the construction of the first
State and the first education. The third division (3) consists of the
fifth sixth and seventh books in which philosophy rather than justice is
the subject of enquiry and the second State is constructed on principles
of communism and ruled by philosophers and the contemplation of the idea
of good takes the place of the social and political virtues. In the eighth
and ninth books (4) the perversions of States and of the individuals who
correspond to them are reviewed in succession; and the nature of pleasure
and the principle of tyranny are further analysed in the individual man.
The tenth book (5) is the conclusion of the whole in which the relations
of philosophy to poetry are finally determined and the happiness of the
citizens in this life which has now been assured is crowned by the vision
of another.
Or a more general division into two parts may be adopted; the first (Books
I - IV) containing the description of a State framed generally in
accordance with Hellenic notions of religion and morality while in the
second (Books V - X) the Hellenic State is transformed into an ideal
kingdom of philosophy of which all other governments are the perversions.
These two points of view are really opposed and the opposition is only
veiled by the genius of Plato. The Republic like the Phaedrus (see
Introduction to Phaedrus) is an imperfect whole; the higher light of
philosophy breaks through the regularity of the Hellenic temple which at
last fades away into the heavens. Whether this imperfection of structure
arises from an enlargement of the plan; or from the imperfect reconcilement
in the writer's own mind of the struggling elements of thought which are
now first brought together by him; or perhaps from the composition of the
work at different times--are questions like the similar question about the
Iliad and the Odyssey which are worth asking but which cannot have a
distinct answer. In the age of Plato there was no regular mode of
publication and an author would have the less scruple in altering or
adding to a work which was known only to a few of his friends. There is no
absurdity in supposing that he may have laid his labours aside for a time
or turned from one work to another; and such interruptions would be more
likely to occur in the case of a long than of a short writing. In all
attempts to determine the chronological order of the Platonic writings on
internal evidence this uncertainty about any single Dialogue being
composed at one time is a disturbing element which must be admitted to
affect longer works such as the Republic and the Laws more than shorter
ones. But on the other hand the seeming discrepancies of the Republic
may only arise out of the discordant elements which the philosopher has
attempted to unite in a single whole perhaps without being himself able to
recognise the inconsistency which is obvious to us. For there is a
judgment of after ages which few great writers have ever been able to
anticipate for themselves. They do not perceive the want of connexion in
their own writings or the gaps in their systems which are visible enough
to those who come after them. In the beginnings of literature and
philosophy amid the first efforts of thought and language more
inconsistencies occur than now when the paths of speculation are well worn
and the meaning of words precisely defined. For consistency too is the
growth of time; and some of the greatest creations of the human mind have
been wanting in unity. Tried by this test several of the Platonic
Dialogues according to our modern ideas appear to be defective but the
deficiency is no proof that they were composed at different times or by
different hands. And the supposition that the Republic was written
uninterruptedly and by a continuous effort is in some degree confirmed by
the numerous references from one part of the work to another.
The second title 'Concerning Justice' is not the one by which the
Republic is quoted either by Aristotle or generally in antiquity and
like the other second titles of the Platonic Dialogues may therefore be
assumed to be of later date. Morgenstern and others have asked whether the
definition of justice which is the professed aim or the construction of
the State is the principal argument of the work. The answer is that the
two blend in one and are two faces of the same truth; for justice is the
order of the State and the State is the visible embodiment of justice
under the conditions of human society. The one is the soul and the other
is the body and the Greek ideal of the State as of the individual is a
fair mind in a fair body. In Hegelian phraseology the state is the reality
of which justice is the idea. Or described in Christian language the
kingdom of God is within and yet developes into a Church or external
kingdom; 'the house not made with hands eternal in the heavens' is
reduced to the proportions of an earthly building. Or to use a Platonic
image justice and the State are the warp and the woof which run through
the whole texture. And when the constitution of the State is completed
the conception of justice is not dismissed but reappears under the same or
different names throughout the work both as the inner law of the
individual soul and finally as the principle of rewards and punishments in
another life. The virtues are based on justice of which common honesty in
buying and selling is the shadow and justice is based on the idea of good
which is the harmony of the world and is reflected both in the
institutions of states and in motions of the heavenly bodies (cp. Tim.).
The Timaeus which takes up the political rather than the ethical side of
the Republic and is chiefly occupied with hypotheses concerning the
outward world yet contains many indications that the same law is supposed
to reign over the State over nature and over man.
Too much however has been made of this question both in ancient and
modern times. There is a stage of criticism in which all works whether of
nature or of art are referred to design. Now in ancient writings and
indeed in literature generally there remains often a large element which
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