ARGUMENT
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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 would
quickly degenerate. To the perfect ideal succeeds the government of
the soldier and the lover of honor, 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, 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 inquiry, 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 analyzed 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, 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 labors
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
he 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
recognize 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
connection 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 ideal. Or, described in Christian language, the kingdom
of God is within, and yet develops 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. 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.
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