THE REPUBLIC
by Plato (360 B.C.)
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
THE INTRODUCTION
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 humor 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
to which ancient thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks,
like Bacon among the moderns, was the first who conceived
a method of knowledge, although neither of them always distinguished
the bare outline or form from the substance of truth; and
both of them had to be content with an abstraction of science
which was not yet realized. He was the greatest metaphysical
genius whom the world has seen; and in him, more than in any
other ancient thinker, the germs of future knowledge are contained.
The sciences of logic and psychology, which have supplied
so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are based upon
the analyses of Socrates and Plato.
The principles of definition, the law of contradiction, the
fallacy of arguing in a circle, the distinction between the
essence and accidents of a thing or notion, between means
and ends, between causes and conditions; also the division
of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible
elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary and unnecessary--
these and other great forms of thought are all of them to
be found in the Republic, and were probably first invented
by Plato. The greatest of all logical truths, and the one
of which writers on philosophy are most apt to lose sight,
the difference between words and things, has been most strenuously
insisted on by him, although he has not always avoided the
confusion of them in his own writings. But he does not bind
up truth in logical formulae,-- logic is still veiled in metaphysics;
and the science which he imagines to "contemplate all truth
and all existence" is very unlike the doctrine of the syllogism
which Aristotle claims to have discovered.
Neither must we forget that the Republic is but the third
part of a still larger design which was to have included an
ideal history of Athens, as well as a political and physical
philosophy. The fragment of the Critias has given birth to
a world-famous fiction, second only in importance to the tale
of Troy and the legend of Arthur; and is said as a fact to
have inspired some of the early navigators of the sixteenth
century.
This mythical tale, of which the subject was a history of
the wars of the Athenians against the Island of Atlantis,
is supposed to be founded upon an unfinished poem of Solon,
to which it would have stood in the same relation as the writings
of the logographers to the poems of Homer. It would have told
of a struggle for Liberty, intended to represent the conflict
of Persia and Hellas. We may judge from the noble commencement
of the Timaeus, from the fragment of the Critias itself, and
from the third book of the Laws, in what manner Plato would
have treated this high argument.
We can only guess why the great design was abandoned; perhaps
because Plato became sensible of some incongruity in a fictitious
history, or because he had lost his interest in it, or because
advancing years forbade the completion of it; and we may please
ourselves with the fancy that had this imaginary narrative
ever been finished, we should have found Plato himself sympathizing
with the struggle for Hellenic independence, singing a hymn
of triumph over Marathon and Salamis, perhaps making the reflection
of Herodotus where he contemplates the growth of the Athenian
empire--"How brave a thing is freedom of speech, which has
made the Athenians so far exceed every other state of Hellas
in greatness!" or, more probably, attributing the victory
to the ancient good order of Athens and to the favor of Apollo
and Athene.
Again, Plato may be regarded as the "captain" ('arhchegoz')
or leader of a goodly band of followers; for in the Republic
is to be found the original of Cicero's De Republica, of St.
Augustine's City of God, of the Utopia of Sir Thomas More,
and of the numerous other imaginary States which are framed
upon the same model. The extent to which Aristotle or the
Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the Politics has
been little recognized, and the recognition is the more necessary
because it is not made by Aristotle himself. The two philosophers
had more in common than they were conscious of; and probably
some elements of Plato remain still undetected in Aristotle.
In English philosophy too, many affinities may be traced,
not only in the works of the Cambridge Platonists, but in
great original writers like Berkeley or Coleridge, to Plato
and his ideas. That there is a truth higher than experience,
of which the mind bears witness to herself, is a conviction
which in our own generation has been enthusiastically asserted,
and is perhaps gaining ground. Of the Greek authors who at
the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato has
had the greatest influence. The Republic of Plato is also
the first treatise 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;
like Bacon, he is profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge;
in the early Church he exercised a real influence on theology,
and at the Revival of Literature on politics. Even the fragments
of his words when "repeated at second-hand" have in all ages
ravished the hearts of men, who have seen reflected in them
their own higher nature. He is the father of idealism in philosophy,
in politics, in literature. And many of the latest conceptions
of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity of knowledge,
the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes, have been
anticipated in a dream by him.
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