The Republic is often considered one of Plato’s most influential works and like may of his other works, contains conversations with Socrates as the main character. In The Republic, Socrates is mainly concerned with the meaning and nature of justice, and who are best able to dispense or handle justice. As a basis for Socrates’ conversation about justice, he proposes that he and the others imagine a “just city” of which they will define how the city is “just” and this will enable the group to go into further conversations about the just individual. As the conversation continues, Socrates proposes that the ruler of a just city should be a philosopher as humans have the tendency to become corrupt after holding power and Socrates claims that philosophers are the most just of humans; thus, philosophers are less susceptible to corruption than other men. With this, Socrates is stating that philosophers are educated and rational so they must be rulers. He supports this claim by discussing the Theory of Forms through the Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave. However, Socrates’ own admissions of the imperfection of men conflicts with the idea of a “perfect” ruler that only a philosopher can be; thus, the act of ruling and making decisions should not be reserved for one or a few men as the ideal ruler that Socrates describes conflicts with the inherent nature of man.
The Theory of Forms refers to the idea that world is made of reflections wherein that the world we see, the material or visible world, is only a reflection of reality or the intellectual world such that “there are two ruling powers, and that one of them is set over the intellectual world, the other over the visible (Book VI, 509d).” Socrates further dissects these two worlds by saying that each realm or world also has two parts. With this visible realm consisting of images, “by images I mean, in the first place, shadows (Book VI, 510a),” and the reflections in water that are solid and smooth. On the other hand, the intellectual realm is divided into the mathematical knowledge which uses images to make hypotheses and reason, and dialectic knowledge which uses dialectic, or investigating, to analyze hypothesis to achieve a principle, “hypotheses—that is to say, as steps and points of departure into a world which is above hypotheses, in order that she may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole (511c). These four forms in the two realms make up the four faculties with the dialectic form equating to reason, mathematical to understanding, reflections to conviction, and images to perception. Thus, each form has varying levels of clarity of reality with the lowest forms belonging in the visible realm and the highest level of clarity of the “real world” belonging to the forms in the intellectual world. According to Socrates, each object or quality has a form with forms as the essential essences or qualities that an object has to have to considered as a type of object. Going back to Socrates’ argument that philosophers are the best rulers of a just city, he argues that philosophers are the only ones capable of reaching the last form which is the reasoning form in the intellectual world. This shows how philosophers go through extensive training to ascend from the visual world to the intellectual world by going past perception and convictions to real understanding and reason.
Socrates further argues his point by telling the Allegory of the Cave. This is a story about a group of prisoners who were forced to live in a cave since childhood with their necks and legs chained so that they can only see what is directly in front of them. In the cave, there is a fire above and behind the prisoners which allows them to see shadows projected on a low wall in front of them. On the low wall, there are projections of the models of objects that people, who were moving along the wall, were carrying; so the prisoners would see the shadows moving as well as hear the voices of the people carrying the models. However, the prisoners never saw the people carrying the models and they could only see shadows. Thus, “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images (515c).” In this state, the prisoners are trapped in the visible realm and only ever subject to the reflections and images that they perceive. When a prisoner escapes and moves towards the opening of the cave, he then realizes that the shadows inside the cave were just reflections that did not accurately portray reality. However, before the prisoner realizes this he most likely will go through a stage of denial wherein he cannot let go of the convictions and images that he has held on to for so long then slowly the prisoner will “require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world … he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is. (516,b-c).” The prisoner’s transition from the visible world to finally understanding the upper world is an analogy for the education and training that philosophers go through to transcend the line between the visible and intellectual world. Socrates then emphasizes that philosophers should be forced to go back “into the cave” rather than continuing to contemplate the forms in solitude because they were educated by the city; thus, philosophers must give back and return to the city to rule, “but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now (519d).”
Socrates’ argument of a just and effective ruler as someone that has had extensive education to go beyond mere assumptions and surface-level analysis rings true in today’s politics and governance. Perhaps Socrates’ argument is even the more important in present times due to the complex and interwoven nature of politics due to globalization and multifaceted problems like climate change. However, rulers are not just supposed to be educated as the philosophers that Socrates describes rather, they must also be able to balance their soul. As stated by Socrates, all souls have three parts: appetitive, rational and emotional; it is only when the rational part dominates does a man become a just ruler. This balancing of the soul is true as all rulers must be objective rather than appealing to emotions which can cause wrong decisions or appetitive which can result in corruption. However, Socrates’ argument may be true in the ideal sense, but it would be difficult to find such a person that possesses both the education and strong rational soul that would them the perfect just ruler.
The disparity between the ideal ruler that Socrates describes and the reality of men is the crux of his argument as how could one possibly ever find a just ruler when it is so difficult to find a person that possesses all the qualities that a just ruler should have. Moreover, as stated by Socrates, those in power can be corrupted so even when a rational and educated ruler can be found then is there ever a guarantee that absolute power will not corrupt the person over time? The discrepancy between the reality of politics and the ideal ruler that Socrates describes creates the notion that perhaps there is no perfect ruler that will ever create a just city; however, unlike Socrates’ time wherein only one ruler had power many present states are already democratic in nature. Despite Socrates’ disdain for democracy, the rule of many is a solution, although only partially effective, to the inherent imperfections of a single person. As compared to Socrates’ view that only the most intelligent are given the education they need to see the intellectual world, reality points to a possible solution that education and the ability to transcend from the visible to the intellectual world should not be reserved for the philosophers and the intellectual elite rather the rest of the prisoners in the cave must also be freed from their shackles by being given a chance to learn and educate themselves rather than depending on one or a few rulers that may be corrupted over time and lead the prisoners further back into the cave.
Works Cited
Dominick, Yancy Hughes. “Seeing Through Images: The Bottom of Plato’s Divided Line.”
Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 48 no. 1, 2010, p. 1-13. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/hph.0.0193.
Losin, Peter. “Education and Plato’s Parable Of The Cave.” The Journal of Education, vol. 178,
- 3, 1996, pp. 49–65. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42741825. Accessed 2 Mar. 2020.
Plato. “The Republic of Plato” translated into English with Introduction, Analysis, Marginal
Analysis, and Index, by B. Jowett, M.A. The Third Edition revised and corrected throughout (Oxford: Clarendon Pres, 1888). 3/2/2020. <https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/598>
Spencer, Joseph. “Plato in Context: The Republic and Allegory.” Studia Antiqua 4, no. 1 (2005).
