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THE REPUBLIC
by 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
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