Plato's Republic

I've declared it literature week on this blog, and I am doing my best to keep my promise. The man of the hour is Plato. In addition to "Doesn't he kinda look like John Belushi?" there are many other interesting questions to ask.



For example in his dialogues when Socrates speaks, are we truly hearing the words of Socrates, or is Plato putting words in his master's mouth?

Many people find philosophy unappealing--it leaves them making the same face Tom Hanks made in Big when he was spitting out the beluga. But, verily, I say unto you, if you've never read Plato's Republic, you really should.

Get a decent translation, and it's more than readable, it's downright fun! Through the characters in this dialogue, Plato careens from one important philosophical question to the next, hitting all the big ones in the process.

Ancient Greece was home to a panoply of democratic experiments. Plato himself (can you say "Republic"?) wasn't a particularly big fan of democracy, and his assessment of degenerative societal stages in Book VIII is as unnerving as Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West.

Sample from Plato's Republic, Book VIII:

"True.
And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings her to dissolution?

What good?
Freedom, I replied; which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the glory of the State --and that therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.

Yes; the saying is in everybody's mouth.
I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.

How so?
When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cupbearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of freedom, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful draught, she calls them to account and punishes them, and says that they are cursed oligarchs."