Table Of ContentRoutledge Philosophy GuideBook to
Plato and the Republic
“Admirably clear and accessible…. Throughout, one gets a sense of
a skillful lecturer who is adept at rendering Plato’s thoughts into
terms that contemporary students will understand.”
Mind
“It is a helpful book designed for the beginner, but does not shirk
difficulties. It is difficult to imagine a more helpful book to put in the
hands of a student, and should go immediately onto all reading lists.”
Greece and Rome
Plato’s Republic is perhaps the most significant and important work of
philosophy and is Plato’s most famous work. No other work has made such an
impact on the history of western thought.
In this second edition of the highly successful Routledge Philosophy
GuideBook to Plato and the Republic, Nickolas Pappas extends his exploration
of the text to include substantial revisions and new material. In addition to the
existing text, the chapters on Plato’s ethics and politics have been revised and
enlarged to include two brand new sections. There is further discussion of Plato
on aesthetics including a section of Aristotle’s criticism of Plato on beauty.
Ideal for students coming to Plato for the first time, this GuideBook will be
vital for all students of Plato in philosophy, politics and classics at all levels.
Nickolas Pappas is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the City College of
New York.
Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks
EDITED BY TIM CRANE AND JONATHAN WOLFF
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Plato and the Republic, Second edition Nickolas Pappas
Husserl and the Cartesian Meditations A.D.Smith
Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling John Lippitt
Descartes and the Meditations Gary Hatfield
Hegel and the Philosophy of Right Dudley Knowles
Nietzsche on Morality, Brian Leiter
Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit Robert Stern
Berkeley and the Principles of Human Knowledge Robert Fogelin
Aristotle on Ethics Gerard Hughes
Hume on Religion David O’Connor
Leibniz and the Monadology Anthony Savile
The Later Heidegger George Pattison
Hegel on History Joseph McCarney
Hume on Morality James Baillie
Hume on Knowledge Harold Noonan
Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason Sebastian Gardner
Mill on Liberty Jonathan Riley
Mill on Utilitarianism Roger Crisp
Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations Marie McGinn
Spinoza and the Ethics Genevieve Lloyd
Heidegger on Being and Time Stephen Mulhall
Locke on Government D.A.Lloyd Thomas
Locke on Human Understanding E.J.Lowe
Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to
Plato and the Republic
2nd edition
Nickolas Pappas
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1995
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 1995, 2003 Nickolas Pappas
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pappas, Nickolas, 1960–
Routledge philosophy guidebook to Plato and the Republic/Nickolas
Pappas.—2nd ed. Includes bibliographical references and index, 1. Plato.
Republic. 2. Political science. I. Title: Plato and the Republic. II. Title.
JC71.P6P36 2002
321′.07–dc21 2002037171
ISBN 0-203-42579-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-43910-4 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-29996-9 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-29997-7 (pbk)
To the memory of my father, Steve Pappas (1915–1994)
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION ix
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xii
PART I GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1 Plato and the Republic 2
The Life of Plato 2
Platonic Dialogue 6
The Republic 10
PART II THE ARGUMENT OF THE REPUBLIC
2 What is Justice? (Book 1) 19
The Peculiar Nature of Book 1 19
Cephalus (328b–331d) 21
Polemarchus (331e–335e) 22
3 What Good is Justice? (Books 1–2) 28
Thrasymachus (336b–354c) 28
Glaucon and Adeimantus 36
4 Justice in the City (Books 2–4) 43
The City and the Soul (368b–369b) 43
The First and Second Cities (369b–373e) 44
The Guardians (373e–412b) 47
Class Relations and the Justice of a City (412b–434c) 53
5 Justice in the Soul (Book 4) 60
Justice in the Soul (434d–445e) 60
vii
Further Discussion 64
6 Radical Politics (Books 5–7) 74
The Digression 74
Two Waves of Paradox (451c–471b) 75
Philosopher-Rulers (471c–502c) 82
Philosophers in the Good City (502c–541b) 87
7 Metaphysics and Epistemology (Books 5–7) 93
The Problem with Particulars (475e–480a) 93
The Form of the Good (503e–518b) 101
An Education in Metaphysics (521c–539d) 111
Review of Books 5–7 113
8 Injustice in the Soul and in the City (Books 8–9) 117
Degenerate Forms of the City and the Soul (544a–576a) 117
Three Comparisons Between just and Unjust Lives (576b– 123
587b)
Conclusion (587c–592b) 126
9 Art and Immortality (Book 10) 128
The Argument Against all Poetry (595a–608b) 128
More Consequences of Justice and Injustice (608c–621d) 135
PART III GENERAL ISSUES
10 Plato’s Ethics and Politics 140
What is the Calculating Part of the Soul (reason)? 140
Is the Republic’s Political Philosophy Paternalistic? 144
Is Plato a Theorist of Totalitarian Government? 147
11 Plato’s Metaphysics and Epistemology 152
How Do the Republic’s Treatments of Forms Compare to One 152
Another?
What Sorts of Properties Have Forms Associated with Them? 156
12 Plato’s Abuses and Uses of Poetry 158
viii
How Does the Early Censorship of Poetry in Books 2 and 3 158
Compare to the Final Rejection of All Artistic Imitation?
How is Plato’s View of Art Related to His View of Beauty? 162
How can the Rejection of Poetry be Squared with Plato’s Own 164
Use of Lliterary Devices, Myths, and Images?
Aristotle on Plato and Poetry 166
Appendix: Fundamental Premises in the Republic’s 169
Argument
BIBLIOGRAPHY 170
INDEX 176
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
Why another introduction to the Republic, or rather why any? Plato can engage
unprepared readers without help. His lively dramatic conversations, his constant
nimble references back and forth between mundane phenomena and their
metaphysical significance, his high seriousness before the questions of
knowledge, morality, community, and death—all in supple prose that never
forgets its audience—have made him one of the most widely read philosophers
of Europe’s history.
But Plato’s dialogical style, however enticing, yields poor results when a
reader wants either to get an overview of the territory covered, or to worry a
single point in greater detail than a conversation allows, to isolate the premises
of an argument and discover which ones are doing the work, to find different
ways of putting a single Platonic point and see what consequences follow from
each restatement. The important issues in Plato’s long dialogues appear and
vanish: Plato raises one point only to digress to another, or to attend to a detail of
his argument. Eventually the originating issue comes up again, but transformed or
disguised. The reader who feels lost among the turns of conversation may wish
that Plato had also written a few pedestrian treatises covering the same ground as
the dialogues, but more explicitly, and when it is necessary more tediously.
It is my hope that this book might work as such a guide. For the most part I
have stayed close to Plato’s own arrangement of his arguments. At each point I
spell out his position, then stop to analyze, criticize, or expand on it. (I depart
from Plato’s expository order only in discussing Books 5–7, which I go through
once with an eye to the political theory, then again looking only at the
metaphysics.) Thus most of this book—Part Two—is an exposition of the text,
with pauses for further discussion. Later chapters regularly refer back to relevant
earlier sections, to facilitate the task of putting together different treatments of a
subject into a unified whole. Toward that same end, I have identified and
numbered , etc. what I consider fundamental premises or assumptions in the
Republic’s argument, and collected them in the book’s appendix, both so that I
can allude compactly to important Platonic claims, and so that the reader can see
steps in the first books of the Republic as they function in the later books. Finally,
the last three chapters return to certain general issues that profit from being
discussed with reference to the entire Republic. They are too brief, as they had to
