Republic (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Plato Read Free Book Online Page A

philosophy, and they might have been composed to engage the interest of young Athenian men in the philosophical studies of the Academy.
    We should observe here that Isocrates, too, claimed to teach philosophia, using the term to express the dominant cultural values that Socrates and other Platonic interlocutors vigorously criticize. In a work titled Antidosis (354 or 353 B.C.E.), Isocrates explicitly casts doubt on the relevance of the kinds of studies pursued at the Academy—that is, mathematical sciences that aim at the discovery of absolute truths. Isocrates’ skepticism doubtless reflects the long-running competition between his school and the Academy, and it seems likely, as Nightingale maintains (Genres in Dialogue, pp. 21-59), that the dialogues had the additional function of advancing Plato’s far more exclusive definitions of philosophy and the philosopher. Not only do they counter Isocrates’ definition of philosophy, but they also repeatedly strive to demonstrate how Plato’s “brand” of philosophy is useful to both the individuals who practice it and their communities.
    At times, as in books 5-10 of Republic, Plato has his interlocutors directly define philosophia and expound on its usefulness. Yet the dialogue form has the additional virtue of permitting Plato to define philosophia indirectly as well as directly, through the very drama of his “plays” in prose. In the dialogues he is able to show—and not merely describe—what philosophy is, and the benefits it brings as well as the challenges it imposes. On the latter score, the give-and-take of the conversations, especially those in which Socrates and his interlocutors reach neither satisfactory conclusion nor mutual understanding, highlight how emotional factors such as ambition, pride, anger, and fear affect the cognitive abilities and powers of reason in even the most intelligent people. These conversations seem designed to bear out what is claimed in book 7 of Republic, that the “whole soul” must be moved in order for the mind to “know,” just as the whole body must be turned from darkness toward light for the eyes to see (7.518c). The rewards, however, are made to seem worth the trouble of this arduous psychological reorientation. Readers have only to contemplate the ease and grace of Socrates, even as he faces death in Crito and Phaedo, to find compelling “advertisements” for the supreme value of Plato’s distinctive brand of philosophy.
    The dialogues present Socrates as a paragon of the philosopher’s aretê. They simultaneously permit Plato and his readers to look back at Socrates in a nuanced manner and mark his shortcomings as well as his fine and admirable traits. Socrates may have seen it as his duty to talk to “anyone, young or old” (so Apology 33a), but Plato’s many representations of Socrates’ conversations subtly bring out how such an indiscriminate approach, however commendable in intention, is unrealistic and ultimately self-defeating. Plato himself, we should note, was considerably more selective than Socrates in his contacts; at the Academy he worked only with people eager to study with him, whom he could vet as a condition of their “admission.” In Plato’s hands, then, the Socratic dialogue becomes both homage to a beloved mentor and declaration of intellectual independence.
Republic
    In the manuscripts and ancient citations, the title of Republic is given as Politeia (“Constitution”) or Politeiai (“Constitutions”); Peri dikaiou (literally, “concerning that which is just”) is sometimes listed as an alternative title. The book divisions, as those in Laws, are probably not Platonic, but rather the work of scholars in the third and second centuries B.C.E. The sectional numbers (for example, Republic 327b) found in most modern editions refer to the page and section numbers used in one of the first printed texts of Plato’s dialogues, which was published in the late sixteenth century; like the