This article on Plato’s «Republic», by the very insightful Prof. John Ubersax, makes a point which cannot be repeated frequently enough, considering how often Plato’s greatest dialogue is misunderstood and misconstrued, even by scholars, namely that the Politeia (the ancient Greek title of this work) is in fact an extended metaphor, dealing with the life of the soul, or psychology, and not a political treatise (in the modern sense of that term). As anyone who actually reads the Politeia will see, Socrates explicitly states that the famous (or infamous) «City» is constructed for the purpose of seeing more clearly what the nature of the inner life of the human being actually consists in, and what the Nature of Justice (or Wholeness) is, and Socrates also expressly says that the five types of «Government» correspond to five states of the soul. Moreover, the claim that Plato was some sort of «crazy totalitarian» or «dangerous utopian» is completely absurd, since a significant part of the Politeia is devoted to one of the most profound denunciations of Tyranny ever written. Those who proclaim that Plato’s «Republic» is about the construction of an authoritarian polis, in the external world, have either never read the dialogue themselves, or are deliberately misconstruing its content.
Edmund Schilvold (M.Th.)
Edmund Schilvold: Skribent, fotograf, filosof, friluftsentusiast 