Plato Essays

The Republic

Plato employs a meritocratic logic in his proposal for gender equality in Book V of The Republic. In his ideal community, the kallipolis, comprised of producers, guardians, and rulers, Plato advocates a specialization of employment and status...

The Republic

Since the birth of society thousands of years ago, thinkers have pondered one of the most basic, important questions with which mankind must grapple: How should society be organized? Plato was one of the first to write his response to that...

The Republic

Plato introduces his famous allegory of the cave with the phrase, "like this:" thus establishing that the passage is structured as a metaphor, and therefore must be read both as a figurative description and a symbolic representation of a concrete...

The Republic

Plato thinks that in the Republic Justice is to be found because all persons are treated equally in that each is given a social position and vocational place suited to his/her talents. Do you agree that Plato's arrangement satisfies what may be...

The Republic

Many of Aristotle's views have stemmed from those of Plato. However, in Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, Aristotle criticizes four main arguments in Plato's Republic. They are: the way in which women and children should be held in common, the...

The Republic

Plato's Republic is rife with evidence of, and commentary on, the nature of the Greek religion. Some of the treatment is overt, as in the censorship of canonical works of poets and dramatists or in the references to the powers and functions of the...

The Republic

Very early in Plato's Republic, Thrasymachus argues that "In any and every situation, a moral person is worse off than an immoral one". (343d) Furthermore, that a moral person is a simpleton, while an immoral person exercises sound judgement....

The Republic

In his text, The Republic, Plato takes on the monumental task of elucidating the topic of justice through the discourse of Socrates with his auditors. Adding to the challenge of this task is Socrates' faithfulness to arguments made with reason,...

The Republic

Plato's most precise ethical argument in his Socratic dialogues is that of justice's dual effect; he holds that while a "good" may be pleasant in effect, it must also be good in itself in order to qualify as justice. Justice fills the whole of...

The Republic

The role of art in society has always presented a battle between freedom of expression and decency, as is clearly presented in Book III of The Republic. Plato argues that the purpose of the arts is to promote the virtues of wisdom, justice,...

The Republic

The "noble lie" is perhaps one of the most disturbing and thought-worthy aspects of Plato's Republic. Through its use, the people of the "just regime" are intentionally misled and misdirected in an attempt to make them unified as a group and loyal...

The Republic

In both Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, happiness is a state of stability and harmony that is present both within the individual and in his relations with other people. Furthermore, both philosophers emphasize...

The Republic

In The Republic Plato fosters an idea of the democratic soul which is fundamentally flawed. He posits that a man with a democratic soul "lives his life in accord with a certain equality of pleasures he has established" (The Republic, VIII, 561b)....

The Republic

"Is there any greater evil we can mention for a city than that which tears it apart and makes it many instead of one? Or any greater good than that which binds it together and makes it one?...And when all the citizens rejoice and are pained by the...

The Republic

In his Republic, Plato enlivens the character of Socrates with his own views of how a just and virtuous city would grow into existence. In describing his ideal city-state, a society ruled by an aristocratic Philosopher-king, Plato also makes note...

The Republic

The Alfarabi and Averroes texts take unique approaches to topics discussed by Aristotle in Politics and by Plato in his Republic. It is important to understand these approaches in relation to each other because it is the similarities and...