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pubOne.info present you this new edition. The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception of the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer approaches to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist; the Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater wealth of humour or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor in any other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave life and speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. The Republic is the centre around which the other Dialogues may be grouped; here philosophy reaches the highest point (cp, especially in Books V, VI, VII) to which ancient thinkers ever attained

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819932734
Langue	English

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THE REPUBLIC
By Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
The Republic of Plato is the longest of his workswith the exception of the Laws, and is certainly the greatest ofthem. There are nearer approaches to modern metaphysics in thePhilebus and in the Sophist; the Politicus or Statesman is moreideal; the form and institutions of the State are more clearlydrawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the Symposium and theProtagoras are of higher excellence. But no other Dialogue of Platohas the same largeness of view and the same perfection of style; noother shows an equal knowledge of the world, or contains more ofthose thoughts which are new as well as old, and not of one ageonly but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or agreater wealth of humour or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor inany other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave lifeand speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. TheRepublic is the centre around which the other Dialogues may begrouped; here philosophy reaches the highest point (cp, especiallyin Books V, VI, VII) to which ancient thinkers ever attained. Platoamong the Greeks, like Bacon among the moderns, was the first whoconceived a method of knowledge, although neither of them alwaysdistinguished the bare outline or form from the substance of truth;and both of them had to be content with an abstraction of sciencewhich was not yet realized. He was the greatest metaphysical geniuswhom the world has seen; and in him, more than in any other ancientthinker, the germs of future knowledge are contained. The sciencesof logic and psychology, which have supplied so many instruments ofthought to after-ages, are based upon the analyses of Socrates andPlato. The principles of definition, the law of contradiction, thefallacy of arguing in a circle, the distinction between the essenceand accidents of a thing or notion, between means and ends, betweencauses and conditions; also the division of the mind into therational, concupiscent, and irascible elements, or of pleasures anddesires into necessary and unnecessary— these and other great formsof thought are all of them to be found in the Republic, and wereprobably first invented by Plato. The greatest of all logicaltruths, and the one of which writers on philosophy are most apt tolose sight, the difference between words and things, has been moststrenuously insisted on by him (cp. Rep. ; Polit. ; Cratyl),although he has not always avoided the confusion of them in his ownwritings (e. g. Rep. ). But he does not bind up truth in logicalformulae, — logic is still veiled in metaphysics; and the sciencewhich he imagines to 'contemplate all truth and all existence' isvery unlike the doctrine of the syllogism which Aristotle claims tohave discovered (Soph. Elenchi).
Neither must we forget that the Republic is but thethird part of a still larger design which was to have included anideal history of Athens, as well as a political and physicalphilosophy. The fragment of the Critias has given birth to aworld-famous fiction, second only in importance to the tale of Troyand the legend of Arthur; and is said as a fact to have inspiredsome of the early navigators of the sixteenth century. Thismythical tale, of which the subject was a history of the wars ofthe Athenians against the Island of Atlantis, is supposed to befounded upon an unfinished poem of Solon, to which it would havestood in the same relation as the writings of the logographers tothe poems of Homer. It would have told of a struggle for Liberty(cp. Tim. ), intended to represent the conflict of Persia andHellas. We may judge from the noble commencement of the Timaeus,from the fragment of the Critias itself, and from the third book ofthe Laws, in what manner Plato would have treated this highargument. We can only guess why the great design was abandoned;perhaps because Plato became sensible of some incongruity in afictitious history, or because he had lost his interest in it, orbecause advancing years forbade the completion of it; and we mayplease ourselves with the fancy that had this imaginary narrativeever been finished, we should have found Plato himself sympathisingwith the struggle for Hellenic independence (cp. Laws), singing ahymn of triumph over Marathon and Salamis, perhaps making thereflection of Herodotus where he contemplates the growth of theAthenian empire— 'How brave a thing is freedom of speech, which hasmade the Athenians so far exceed every other state of Hellas ingreatness! ' or, more probably, attributing the victory to theancient good order of Athens and to the favor of Apollo and Athene(cp. Introd. to Critias).
Again, Plato may be regarded as the 'captain'('arhchegoz') or leader of a goodly band of followers; for in theRepublic is to be found the original of Cicero's De Republica, ofSt. Augustine's City of God, of the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, andof the numerous other imaginary States which are framed upon thesame model. The extent to which Aristotle or the Aristotelianschool were indebted to him in the Politics has been littlerecognised, and the recognition is the more necessary because it isnot made by Aristotle himself. The two philosophers had more incommon than they were conscious of; and probably some elements ofPlato remain still undetected in Aristotle. In English philosophytoo, many affinities may be traced, not only in the works of theCambridge Platonists, but in great original writers like Berkeleyor Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas. That there is a truth higherthan experience, of which the mind bears witness to herself, is aconviction which in our own generation has been enthusiasticallyasserted, and is perhaps gaining ground. Of the Greek authors whoat the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato has hadthe greatest influence. The Republic of Plato is also the firsttreatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke,Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants.Like Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life; likeBacon, he is profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge; inthe early Church he exercised a real influence on theology, and atthe Revival of Literature on politics. Even the fragments of hiswords when 'repeated at second-hand' (Symp. ) have in all agesravished the hearts of men, who have seen reflected in them theirown higher nature. He is the father of idealism in philosophy, inpolitics, in literature. And many of the latest conceptions ofmodern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity of knowledge, thereign of law, and the equality of the sexes, have been anticipatedin a dream by him.
The argument of the Republic is the search afterJustice, the nature of which is first hinted at by Cephalus, thejust and blameless old man— then discussed on the basis ofproverbial morality by Socrates and Polemarchus— then caricaturedby Thrasymachus and partially explained by Socrates— reduced to anabstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus, and having become invisiblein the individual reappears at length in the ideal State which isconstructed by Socrates. The first care of the rulers is to beeducation, of which an outline is drawn after the old Hellenicmodel, providing only for an improved religion and morality, andmore simplicity in music and gymnastic, a manlier strain of poetry,and greater harmony of the individual and the State. We are thusled on to the conception of a higher State, in which 'no man callsanything his own, ' and in which there is neither 'marrying norgiving in marriage, ' and 'kings are philosophers' and'philosophers are kings; ' and there is another and highereducation, intellectual as well as moral and religious, of scienceas well as of art, and not of youth only but of the whole of life.Such a State is hardly to be realized in this world and quicklydegenerates. To the perfect ideal succeeds the government of thesoldier and the lover of honour, this again declining intodemocracy, and democracy into tyranny, in an imaginary but regularorder having not much resemblance to the actual facts. When 'thewheel has come full circle' we do not begin again with a new periodof human life; but we have passed from the best to the worst, andthere we end. The subject is then changed and the old quarrel ofpoetry and philosophy which had been more lightly treated in theearlier books of the Republic is now resumed and fought out to aconclusion. Poetry is discovered to be an imitation thrice removedfrom the truth, and Homer, as well as the dramatic poets, havingbeen condemned as an imitator, is sent into banishment along withthem. And the idea of the State is supplemented by the revelationof a future life.
The division into books, like all similar divisions(Cp. Sir G. C. Lewis in the Classical Museum. ), is probably laterthan the age of Plato. The natural divisions are five in number; —(1) Book I and the first half of Book II down to the paragraphbeginning, 'I had always admired the genius of Glaucon andAdeimantus, ' which is introductory; the first book containing arefutation of the popular and sophistical notions of justice, andconcluding, like some of the earlier Dialogues, without arriving atany definite result. To this is appended a restatement of thenature of justice according to common opinion, and an answer isdemanded to the question— What is justice, stripped of appearances?The second division (2) includes the remainder of the second andthe whole of the third and fourth books, which are mainly occupiedwith the construction of the first State and the first education.The third division (3) consists of the fifth, sixth, and seventhbooks, in which philosophy rather than justice is the subject ofenquiry, and the second State is constructed on principles ofcommunism and ruled by philosophers, and the contemplation of theidea of good takes the place of the social and political virtues.In the eighth and ninth books (4) the perversions of States and ofthe indiv