Critical Analysis Of The Republic By Plato
The Republic is one of the most popular works concerning philosophy and politics in history, written by Plato, a Greek thinker within the fourth century A.D. In this book, Plato explores topics such as justice and political systems in great details. While Plato has written this book, most of the concepts are Socrates’, his teacher; Plato acts as a voice for Socrates’ views rather than being the initial source of the ideas. The Republic is consisted of ten books, and it would be extraordinarily difficult to incorporate all of Plato’s ideas in such short essay; however, I will try to discuss the most important ones. In book I of The Republic, Socrates explains the reasons why one should be just and what the advantages of being just are. Socrates offers few arguments in favor of the just life over the unjust life. He said that, “the simple man is just like the wise and sensible; however, the unjust man just like the dangerous and unlearned'. He used an excellent example to support his claim; he uses a doctor and a thief to give an example as to how they may act unfairly at certain times. A thief, for instance, is unjust because he desires to own what's not his own. A doctor who does not care about curing his patients of illnesses is referred to as unjust because he's disregarding his proper role. A killer acts unjustly since he deprives his victim of that which rightly belongs to him, specifically his life. In general, unjust individuals either don't realize the virtues and duties based on their situation in life, or treat somebody worse than they deserve. Similarly, an unfair state will fail to achieve the real purpose of a state. According to Plato, these functions of the state include creating attainable the conditions under which everybody can feed, dress and shelter themselves, as well as seek the good. Socrates believed injustice produces internal disharmony which prevents effective actions. He said, “it's injustice that produces factions, hatreds, and quarrels among themselves, and justice that produces unanimity and friendship”.
Socrates strongly believed that in an unjust city, most are unfair. Soldiers in an unjust army are miserable and are not able to work together against an enemy, as just men could. An unjust individual is always in a shape of unrest, which causes chaos and destruction. In Book II of The Republic, Socrates believed justice must be implemented in a city first before it can be found in an individual. Socrates proposed that each individual has a special natural ability and they should do what they’re good at. In theory, his argument makes a lot of sense but also bear in mind that back then times were a lot simpler and only a few jobs existed and there weren’t many choices available so it was easier to determine what a certain individual was good at. This is basically what we are fighting for in the 21st century. For instance, in today’s society, if a certain person gets to do a certain job that he/she loves, they’re considered “lucky” and it’s kind of sad that people don’t get to do what they desire. Socrates invented this idea in 4th century but over time the idea has been improvised; however though, it’s the same concept. In Plato’s ideal state, there are three major classes, the “guardians”, who are philosophers, govern the city; the helpers are soldiers who defend it; and the third class is made of the “producers” (farmers, doctors, etc.). Basically, it means that everyone should take responsibility for their own role within society, and do as best a job as they can, which will result in benefitting themselves and the city as a whole. So, in a just city, individual and society’s needs are interconnected, and they work for a common cause. Well, isn’t that what we’ve been doing today? Obviously except the fact that the reward has been replaced with money instead of societal needs. Also, the idea as a whole has been improvised and people are given more freedom to choose what they want to do. So yet again, another one of Plato’s idea in real life.
In book seven of The Republic, Plato explains one of his most famous analogies, “the analogy of cave”. Imagine people in a cave who are chained to the wall and have been their entire lives, facing another screen that they look at all day. Behind them, people pass items in front of a fire, casting shadows on the wall that the prisoners see, which results in creating their own personal reality for them. If one of the prisoners were to break free and leave the cave, he’d first be scared and threatened by the light and the outside world, but later on the prisoner discovers that life is better outside and he goes back inside to try to pull out the other prisoners, which they will most likely will reject and maybe even try to kill him for it, because they don’t think going outside is worth the possibility of getting blinded by the light or even kill him for it. He uses this analogy to back up his claim as to why the philosophers must be the rulers. His reasoning is very sensible, for the rulers must know the whole truth and to be able to make decisions for the good of others; to be able to distinct false from the right. Humans are designed to stay in the cave rather than taking the chance to be free, because we are comfortable in the cave. A leader must be someone who is willing to go out there for the answers and to find the truth because the truth is always somewhere in between and is never either black or white; someone who is not afraid to know the truth; someone with wisdom and virtue. Now, we must ask ourselves whether we are still living in our caves, or is there possibly another world that we must discover? One of the other things that Plato did not like was poetry. He did not like poetry for several reasons and he explains why in book 10 of The Republic. According to Plato, the issue with poetry is this thing called imitation or copy; This is just a word that Plato uses to outline the way art imitates life. For example, A character killing another character for money or something else. Plato believed that in the long run this can lead to bad habits. In the book Plato’s Republic, Blackburn concludes that, “Perhaps Plato is right and our minds are imitative, in which case the doings of other people and the nature of other minds are also contagious”. In book three of The Republic, Plato believed that, the first citizens of Socrates' cities will be told that they were not born from mortal parents, from human beings, but in fact were born under the earth, so that the earth itself is their mother. Plato named this theory “a noble lie” It may sound quite extreme because it is. In fact, humans have already lived through this hell, in modern day terminology it is called “totalitarianism”.
So basically, totalitarianism is where the state takes over everything, where there is no family loyalty, where individuality is suppressed, where privacy is replaced by complete public obligation and this system was performed by Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Perhaps they were inspired by Plato’s work, who knows but at least we got to find out that it didn’t work out too well. I believe that religion is another one of those “noble lies” it’s basically a mean to control humans. People in power use religion to mask their horrendous acts. Religion and destruction come hand in hand and there is quite a history of it. Why? Is it because religion is a sort of a disease? Of course not, it’s because humans are corrupt and they will use anything to get to their goal, and religion happen to be one of their greatest weapons. Basically, Plato thinks that if everyone were to mind their business and not interfere with other people’s matters, everyone will live a good and happy life full of harmony. He thinks that if the leaders are wise and just, everything will go accordingly as how it’s supposed to. I don’t particularly disagree with his statement but there are always these questions that must be answered. Who has the virtue to dictate someone? What moral standards do they use? Is it worth the risk to dictate someone? At the end we are humans, and humans will abuse power when they can because naturally we are corrupt based on either our beliefs or our desire to have more and more, and history is the evidence to that. I must admit that Plato’s Republic was a very visionary book but some of his ideas were leaning towards extremism. The “perfect state” he had imagined was an ideological world that is extremely hard to build in real life; for humans are not perfect to begin with. Although, throughout the book, Plato had some amazing ideas that made me wonder as to why we have never implemented these ideas in our real life but then I gradually realized that in fact, we actually have. If we look at the constitution, most of the ideas have been extracted from Plato’s work and that is why it has been so effective so far. Of course, they are not exactly like Plato’s ideas but definitely inspired by The Republic. I think America was basically built on Plato’s idea with some minor and major improvements. So the final question is, would we ever be able build a perfect state, or is it that humans are too corrupt for that?
Work Cited:
- Plato. The Republic. Translated by Shorey, Paul, Harvard University Press, 1946 Blackburn, Simon. Plato’s Republic (Books That Changed the World). New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007.
