The Republic Essays

The Republic

In book two of Aristotle’s Politics, Aristotle defines his ideal state by criticizing the values put forward in Plato’s The Republic. In doing so, Aristotle censures Plato’s idea of state unification through sharing as much as possible, including...

The Republic

The so-called “Myth of Er” has long puzzled Plato’s readers. Socrates, whose teachings and conversations Plato chronicles, tells the story of Er, who journeyed to the afterlife and came to life again to tell his story. The tale is not found in any...

The Republic

In Socrates’ unnamed thought-experiment of a city, as described by Plato, none of the social classes hold as much intrigue as that of the guardians. Appointed by Socrates as either militaristic defenders or leaders upon birthing, depending on...

The Republic

How far can an ancient ideal stretch? From Euclidean geometry to Plato’s Republic, ancient ideas are still being analyzed and furthered. One example, the fourth book in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, is directly related to Plato’s ideal state,...

College

The Republic

Analysis of Plato’s The Republic, City-Soul Analogy

In an elaborate effort to comprehend individual justice, Socrates engages in a lengthy debate which explores intricate details, structures, and overarching principles of a just city. This...

College

The Republic

The nature of goodness is distinctly disparate between Plato and Aristotle. Plato argues for a higher form of goodness, while Aristotle argues back with a societal form of goodness. Aristotle’s view of goodness is far more realistic to the actual...

College

The Republic

From historical sources it is known that Socrates was Plato’s teacher and that Socrates was Plato’s elder by at least a few decades. Other than this, things become far less clear when examining the relationship between these two founders of...

College

The Republic

While many scholars are of the belief that Vergil penned the Aeneid to provide the Roman people with a propagandized epic glamorizing their own history, there is great evidence for Vergil’s intending the Aeneid to be something vastly more...

College

The Republic

Plato’s Republic utilizes a political approach to answer what is essentially a moral question. In attempting to identify justice in the individual, Socrates takes an unmistakable turn toward the direction of political philosophy, describing the...

College

The Republic

According to Plato, true knowledge originates in the realm of the Forms, or universal, eternal, constant, and absolute truths that only the mind can access, such as the Form of the Good or the Form of the Just. Forms are not part of the visible...

College

The Republic

Stories are an important part of society, an element that provides humanity with a way to connect, separate, cry, laugh, be happy or be sad. In fact, life is nothing but a story. Human history is a story. The universe is just a massive collection...

College

The Republic

Leslie Marmon Silko’s poem, “Ceremony,” is a prime example of how poetry, even simpler to understand ones, can be productive. The poem is productive because it conveys a message: stories are powerful. The message a poem conveys can be used justly,...

College

The Republic

Aristotle, Kant, Mill, and Plato: All influential philosophers with differing opinions on what it means to be marked by morality. One situation in which the opinions of these philosophers could be used to evaluate the morality of a person is in...

College

The Republic

In order to understand the Allegory of the Cave, you must first have a clear understanding of how Ancient Greek democracy functioned. Ancient Greece was the first experiment of direct democracy in human civilization. What direct democracy entails...

College

The Republic

Historically, readers of Plato’s Republic have understood the book to be offering a blueprint of sorts for an ideal political regime, one that might actually be brought into being. Certainly, this view has some evidence to support it. But others...

College

The Republic

The character of Socrates in Plato’s dialogues can be viewed as a distinct form of excellence. However, as seen through comparisons with such works as Aristotle’s Ethics, not all models of excellent people are the same, nor would many people who...