The Republic by Plato

THE REPUBLIC

By Plato

Plato. The Republic. Ed. G.M.A Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1974. Pp. V-263. Brookhaven College. 04-15-2005

The Republic is a book that showed Plato's views of justice and questions of justice. It consists of a group of different arguments between Socrates, Glaucon and Thrasymachus on a great variety of subjects. They are different issues and items that occur when organizing a government. Justice is the better way to live your life. Only if you are a true justice that is morally educated of the rights and wrongs and trained on how to control the temptations to be unjust.

The main theme of The Republic is to define justice and other virtues and to put forward an idea for a Utopian city-state based on his beliefs on justice and virtue to show how these ideals could be implemented. Plato then goes on to say that all humans have a soul divided in three parts.

Detail of The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio...

English: The School of Athens (detail). Fresco, St...

The "obscene" medieval depiction of Socrates and P...

The first is a rational and wise part. It does the basic thinking. The second was a more spirited section. It loved getting the praise and honor. The last, was known as the base. It was responsible for humans wanting such things as sex, money, power, food, and so on

The main point at the center of The Republic is whether it is better to live justly or unjustly. In the story, Plato constructs a perfectly just and fair city. "...Any individual fares well

or badly; they would all speak in unison the words we mentioned just now..." (463d, p125) The city is in-depth and complex. This city is made up of "guardians", auxiliaries, and the tradesman. The guardians are divided into three groups: guardians, soldiers and workers and they represented wisdom. Those who makes the judgments for the city are the...