Look, I like Plato, but how is THE REPUBLIC his most famous work? Plato is just using Socrates as a spokesman for his crack political theory and the "opponents" are just strawmen who turn into yesmen. Plato's other dialogues are way more interesting than this—what is a modern reader supposed to even learn from The Republic anyway besides that Plato hates Homer while loving eugenics?
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For me it's the apology.
The Gorgias is one of my favourite ones, i just need to start reading the Symposium and Protagoras and Meno now, Read book 1 of the republic but going to hold off from it for a while considering how long it is.
I’ve always thought that The Republic is a dialogue you need to zoom out from and judge at a distance to find its true meaning. I feel that Plato is trying to show something that the reader must figure out and not tell the reader something
alright professor, what is that "something" he's trying to show?
Also I don't buy it, I get that viewpoint for the other dialogues which have spirited debate, but after Glaucon's argument it's just a de facto monologue.
The overall point of the Republic is in how dystopian the society it portrays is. The society represents the just soul in the dialogue so that the means by which both are achieved can not be the exact same. Regimenting your life strictly to fit within morals is as ludicrous as creating a Fascist regime like the one in the book and calling it the perfect society because on paper it ticks all the boxes of what a society should be but in reality, you probably wouldn’t want to live there.
Pseud freshman-level takes
Plato believes the ideas he expounds in Republic are objective good however, he disagrees with taking them to the extremes and is attempting to show the folly of that. It isn’t as clear cut as saying it is satire but rather it is showing what is possible and realistic vs what isnt.
BAP is a moron and you're a moron for taking him seriously
Wtf are you talking about?
I think he's just trying to show off his ideal city-state and everyone is just overthinking it
>A society that isn't based on pleasure, luxuries, and usury
>Strauss: "It's dystopian! Fascist! Plato can't have meant this! I can't right now, noooooo!
There's nothing in the book to even support the idea that it's dystopian. Literally just one comment by Glaucon about how he won't be able to indulge his senses in a city like that. Such a trash take.
>you probably wouldn’t want to live there.
If you don't want to live there it's because your soul is still unjust or poorly formed and addicted to sense pleasures. This is covered within the very same book.
>Literally just one comment by Glaucon about how he won't be able to indulge his senses in a city like that.
But isn't that the whole point of the city-in-speech, at least in terms of going past being a humble commune?
>Glaucon
>muh city of sows! I need relish!
Socrates:
>okay, let's get some relish
Glaucon:
>wtf, now we have relish, but I can't have any of it or else the whole thing collapses!
Makes it sound like the project is self-defeating. And if it's self-defeating, then why embark on it?
>Literally just one comment by Glaucon about how he won't be able to indulge his senses in a city like that.
What comment are you referring to?
open your book and point to the line please
What?
The Republic was about having a well ordered soul. The city was used as an analogy of how a well ordered soul should work.
He was not a liberal American who wanted to promoted "democracy"
This. The main emphasis of the Republic is that we are all the governer of our own lives, and at any given time we are progressing towards virtue, and thus knowledge and understanding, or sin, which is vice and ignorance, and that the country in the "macro" is a reflection of this in it's people. It says something about the state of America, who once would of abhorred gay marraige, recreational drug use, and abortion, that gay marraige, abortion, and weed are more or less legal nationwide.
No he wanted to promote enlightened despotism and eugenics
>The society represents the just soul in the dialogue
You got that part right at least
>"People" still believe the Republic is an argument AGAINST fascism and eugenics
Lmao
Filtered into cave water.
This ass hole is trying to bait us into writing his essay for him
The Republic is where he describes an ideal, but impossible, state. It's in Laws where he talks about his actual practical ideas for a state.
>what is a modern reader supposed to even learn from The Republic anyway besides that Plato hates Homer while loving eugenics?
You forgot the part about women and men fighting side by side in the same army. And the children soldiers.
I don't agree with his hate of Homer and his distaste for the figure of Odysseus (as I recall).
But I think he's onto something about the importance of music in a society and that we should watch what we listen to.
As you see, I partially agree with daesh.
>I think he's onto something about the importance of music in a society and that we should watch what we listen to.
I thought that too. I think Schopenhauer expresses the thought succintly: “One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.”
>political theory
The Republic is about the individual
Read it again and pay attention
Both wrong by leaning too far in one direction.
Way more to what Strauss says, but it says a lot that you don't take seriously the move from Socrates's healthy city in truth to Glaucon's feverish city that Socrates distances himself from increasingly in book 5. You'd also have to ignore that Socrates pooh-poohs Glaucon's demand that the city be actual, and Socrates's comments at the end of book 9 about it being satisfied if it's a blueprint for the soul.
The Republic is the shittiest part of Plato but the most famous because it has the most apparent purpose (trying to hypothesize the ideal government) instead of being more abstract and meandering like the other more interesting dialogues.
It's still necessary to read because it's a prerequisite for Timaeus and Critias.
Ya plato was moronic
Lets see what philosophical works you have wrote, mighty and wise one.
I'm sorry I'm just not that autistic
Then I don't think you're in a position to be criticizing plato then, are you? Unless there are specific points in Plato's discourses where you think his views are 'moronic', and if that's the case, let's hear about them.
Lmao he tried to live his fantasy out in real life
What fantasy? and in what way?
It's how he embues mythopoetics into it. Gyges and the divine storm, the allegory of the cave, allegory of judgement and the tower in the final book, the striking passages detailing sophistry, sin, ignorance, despair, and dismay; it is sober magnificence and the height of philosophy. It has been admired by men of all generations for a reason, though very few men understand it. If they did, we'd be living in a much fuller, richer, gratifying and virtuous country.
Allegory of the Cave approaches peak western thought
Wait, Straussian reading is supposing Plato didn't believe in virtue, soul, higher dimensions and all that, but was actually a modern liberal?
No, the Straussian reading is just making shit up about what the Straussian reading is without ever having to read Strauss. Much simpler. Accordingly, the Republic is really about invading Iraq and supporting Israel. Probably.
By Zeus, OP. You are right!
it's his most famous work because it lays out his primary worldview and theory of forms most plainly with the allegory of the cave and the nature of knowledge and its importance with the structure of the city/self. the light of the sun (the good) is the illumination that makes all knowledge possible, and it is up to all people to struggle to find it in order to have a just and virtuous soul. it's effectively plato's thesis statement on the entire point of what he's doing with his dialogues and with concept of socrates as a person and character. it's the dialogue that underscores all the others and relays the importance of having a philosophical outlook on life.
The modern era sees that all modern thought like fascism and christianity come from this work. Nothing is new
Your mom is nothing new
If you're seriously asking this question you either need to read Plato again or you need to never read books ever again.