Plato’s Republic argues that justice is a harmony of the soul and city, and that the ideal State depends on philosopher-rulers. This deck covers the dialogue’s main arguments, including Cephalus, Thrasymachus, Glaucon, the ideal city, and the banishment of poetry.
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Chapter 1 · Question
What is the argument of the Republic, and how does justice reappear in the ideal State?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
The argument is the search after Justice. It is first hinted at by Cephalus, discussed proverbially by Socrates and Polemarchus, caricatured by Thrasymachus, reduced to an abstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus, and having become invisible in the individual, reappears at length in the ideal State constructed by Socrates.
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BOOK X.4 cards
What is the argument of the Republic, and how does justice reappear in the ideal State?
The argument is the search after Justice. It is first hinted at by Cephalus, discussed proverbially by Socrates and Polemarchus, caricatured by Thrasymachus, reduced to an abstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus, and having become invisible in the individual, reappears at length in the ideal State constructed by Socrates.
Chapter 1
According to the chapter, why is poetry condemned and banished in Book X?
The old quarrel of poetry and philosophy, lightly treated earlier, is resumed and fought to a conclusion. Poetry is discovered to be an imitation thrice removed from the truth, and Homer, along with the dramatic poets, having been condemned as an imitator, is sent into banishment with them.
Chapter 1
What five natural divisions does the chapter identify in the Republic?
(1) Book I and the first half of Book II, introductory, refuting popular and sophistical notions of justice. (2) The rest of Book II through Book IV, constructing the first State and education. (3) Books V–VII, philosophy, communism, philosopher-rulers, and the idea of good. (4) Books VIII–IX, perversions of States and individuals. (5) Book X, the conclusion.
Chapter 1
What does the chapter say about the unity and possible composition of the Republic?
The chapter calls the Republic an imperfect whole, its two points of view opposed and only veiled by Plato's genius. It notes uncertainty over whether the work was composed at one time, since no regular mode of publication existed, but says the numerous cross-references confirm to some degree that it was written uninterruptedly.
Chapter 1
BOOK I.4 cards
Why does Cephalus say the sorrows of old age are not caused by age itself?
Cephalus tells Socrates that the sorrows and discontents of age should be attributed to the tempers of men, not to age itself. He describes old age as a time of peace when the tyranny of the passions is no longer felt. When Socrates notes the world will credit his happiness to wealth, Cephalus partly agrees, replying with Themistocles' answer to the Seriphian that neither a good poor man can be happy in age nor a bad rich man.
Chapter 2
What is Cephalus's first definition of justice, and what exception does Socrates raise?
Cephalus offers that justice means telling the truth and paying your debts. Socrates asks whether exceptions are needed, giving the example of a friend who has gone mad: ought you to return the sword you borrowed from him when he was in his right mind? Cephalus concedes there must be exceptions. Polemarchus then notes the definition has the authority of Simonides, and Cephalus retires to attend the sacrifices, leaving the argument to his heir.
Chapter 2
How does Socrates refute the claim that justice means doing good to friends and harm to enemies?
Socrates asks whether friends and enemies are real or only seeming, and whether we should count only the good as friends and the evil as enemies. He then asks whether we ought to return evil for evil at all, since doing so only makes men more evil. He argues justice cannot produce injustice, any more than horsemanship can make bad horsemen or heat produce cold. The conclusion is that no sage or poet said the just return evil for evil; that maxim came from men like Periander or Perdiccas.
Chapter 2
What does Thrasymachus claim justice is, and how does Socrates use the analogy of the arts against him?
Thrasymachus asserts that might is right and justice is the interest of the stronger, explaining that rulers make laws for their own interests. Socrates objects that a ruler may make a mistake, so the stronger's interest would not be served. After Cleitophon's evasive 'thinks,' Thrasymachus retreats to saying the ruler as ruler is infallible. Socrates then uses the arts: every art has an interest distinct from the artist's accidental interest, concerned with the good of what comes under it—so justice serves the ruled, not the ruler.
Chapter 2
BOOK II.4 cards
Into which three classes does Glaucon divide goods?
Glaucon divides goods into three classes: first, goods desirable in themselves; second, goods desirable both in themselves and for their results; third, goods desirable for their results only. He then asks Socrates where justice belongs, and Socrates places it in the second class—desirable for itself and for its results—while the world generally treats justice as belonging to the troublesome third class.
Chapter 3
What is Glaucon's account of the origin of justice?
Glaucon argues that doing injustice is said to be good and suffering it evil; since the evil of suffering outweighs the good of doing, those who cannot do injustice make a compact to have neither. This compact is called justice, but is really the impossibility of doing injustice—no one would keep it if not obliged, as the ring of Gyges illustrates.
Chapter 3
What does Adeimantus add about why men are taught justice?
Adeimantus says the most important point was omitted: men are taught to be just for the sake of rewards, with parents and guardians making reputation the incentive to virtue. They promise wealthy marriages and high offices, and poets picture gods providing rich harvests for the just, while Orphic prophets offer atonement for sins by sacrifices and charms at small charge.
Chapter 3
How does the chapter describe Plato's own stance in the argument?
The chapter argues that Plato agrees generally with the view implied by the two brothers' argument but is not expressing his own final conclusion; rather he dramatizes one aspect of ethical truth, developing his idea gradually through positions and situations, and exhibiting Socrates for the first time undergoing the Socratic interrogation.
Chapter 3
BOOK III.4 cards
Why must tales of the underworld be banished from the guardians' education?
The author argues no man can be courageous who fears death or believes the poets' tales of the world below. Such stories are both untrue and discouraging, so they must be expunged—including Achilles' wish to be a serving-man among the dead and images of gibbering souls flitting like smoke or bats. These tales may have their use, but they are not proper food for soldiers.
Chapter 4
What three kinds of narrative does Socrates distinguish, and which suits the guardian?
Narrative is simple (pure description), imitative (dialogue/drama), or a mixture of both. The good or wise man prefers the descriptive style with as little imitation as possible, since one man cannot play many parts. Guardians should imitate only the good, never meanness, women, slaves, or animals—because the mask an actor wears is apt to become his face.
Chapter 4
Which harmonies and instruments survive the purgation of music, and why?
Mixed Lydian (lamentation) and convivial harmonies like Ionian and pure Lydian are banished, leaving Dorian for war and Phrygian for peace—courage and obedience. Many-stringed instruments are rejected, especially the flute as most complex; the lyre and harp are permitted in town and Pan's-pipe in the fields. Metres must likewise be simple, conforming to the subject.
Chapter 4
Why does Socrates reject the modern system of nursing diseases?
The author argues Asclepius used a 'kill or cure' method because citizens of a well-ordered State have no leisure to be ill, as artisans and labourers must be at their business. Herodicus the trainer, being sickly, introduced the nursing system, torturing himself and others and living longer than he had any right. Guardians must also abstain from strong drink and keep simple gymnastic and diet.
Chapter 4
BOOK IV.1 cards
What does Socrates say about the size of the state?
Socrates says there is no limit to the size of the state except the necessity of unity; it must be neither too large nor too small to be one. He treats this as secondary to education, which is the great matter. If education is duly regarded, each generation improves, and the guardians need not legislate lesser matters like dress or deportment.
Chapter 5
BOOK V.4 cards
Why does Socrates compare guardian men and women to watch-dogs?
Socrates argues that dogs are not divided into hes and shes: the females hunt alongside the males rather than staying home with puppies, differing only in strength. By analogy, guardian women should share the same employments and therefore the same education—music, gymnastics, and the art of war—even though wits may mock old women exercising naked. He adds that only evil, not the exposure of the body, should be ridiculed.
Chapter 6
How does Socrates answer the objection that men and women have different natures?
Socrates calls the opposition merely verbal: a bald man and a hairy man differ in one point but both can be cobblers. Only differences running through the whole nature, like physician versus carpenter, justify different employments. Since the sexes differ chiefly in begetting and bearing children, and nature scatters the same qualities unevenly in both, women share men's aptitudes in lesser degree; same nature therefore means same education.
Chapter 6
How do the rulers arrange marriages and breeding under the common-family scheme?
Rulers pair the good with the good and the bad with the bad, using an ingenious system of lots so inferior pairings are ascribed to chance rather than design; the rulers may need a strong dose of falsehood. Offspring of the brave and fair are reared in an enclosure, the rest spirited away; mothers suckle without recognizing their own children. Parents must be in their prime: men twenty-five to fifty-five, women twenty to forty.
Chapter 6
What does Socrates call the greatest good and greatest evil of a State?
The author argues the greatest good is unity and the greatest evil discord and distraction. Unity exists where citizens have no private pleasures, pains, or interests, so that if one member suffers all suffer, like a body where hurt to the little finger vibrates to the soul. Common property yields common pleasures and pains, and citizens call one another father, brother, and sister, making these names a reality rather than mere words.
Chapter 6
Book IV, which fall unperceived on the reader’s mind, as…4 cards
What image does the chapter say serves as the plan or scheme of the book?
The chapter states that the image of the waves serves as a sort of scheme or plan of the book: the first wave, the second wave, and the third and greatest wave come rolling in, and we hear the roar of them. The author notes that Plato himself anticipates all that can be said of the extravagance of his proposals through this device.
Chapter 7
What difficulty does the chapter note about Plato's table of prohibited degrees?
The chapter argues the table of prohibited degrees cannot be made out. A child born at one hymeneal festival might marry a sibling or even a parent at another festival. Plato fears incestuous unions but avoids showing that the city would divide into families of those born seven and nine months after each festival, so the prohibition rests only on the accident of shared birth month and year.
Chapter 7
What does the chapter say Plato introduced at the end of the fifth book?
The chapter says Plato introduces the figment of contingent matter, which has greatly influenced modern Ethics and Theology and occurs here for the first time in the history of philosophy. The author argues Plato did not remark that degrees of knowledge in the subject have nothing corresponding to them in the object, and that analogy led him to invent parallels and overlook facts.
Chapter 7
According to the chapter, what confusion does the ambiguity of a Greek term cause in Plato?
The chapter states that through the ambiguity of a Greek term, Plato, attempting to introduce order into the first chaos of human thought, seems to have confused perception and opinion and failed to distinguish the contingent from the relative. The author notes the Theaetetus begins to clear up the first difficulty and the Sophist the second, suggesting both dialogues are later than the Republic.
Chapter 7
BOOK VI. (part 1)4 cards
Why does Socrates compare the philosopher to a ship's captain?
Socrates uses a parable of a tall but slightly deaf and blind captain whose mutinous sailors seize the helm despite knowing nothing of seamanship. The true pilot must master winds and stars whether the crew likes it or not, and they call him a fool and star-gazer. The philosopher is the pilot; the mutinous sailors are the mob of politicians who render him useless.
Chapter 8
What does Socrates call the real corrupter of youth, and why?
Socrates argues that public opinion, not the Sophists, is the real corrupter. It is everywhere present—in the assembly, the courts, the camp, and the theatre's applause and hisses. A young man's heart leaps amid these sounds, and no education saves him from being carried away. The hireling Sophist merely reflects back the monster's own opinions, calling good what pleases it.
Chapter 8
Why do the best natures turn out worst when badly raised?
Socrates compares strong seeds, which need good air and soil, to the best human characters: they turn out worst in unsuitable soil, while weak natures do little good or harm and are not the stuff of great criminals or heroes. So the philosopher is either the best or the worst of men, and numberless causes—health, wealth, strength, rank, even virtues—can destroy such rare beings.
Chapter 8
What education order does Socrates propose for philosophers, and why?
Socrates says nothing is worse than the present mode: picking up a little philosophy in youth and in intervals of business, never mastering dialectic. He would reverse it—begin with gymnastics in youth, increase the gymnastics of the soul as the man strengthens, and only when active life is over should he finally return to philosophy.
Chapter 8
BOOK VI. (part 2)4 cards
What four faculties correspond to the four divisions of knowledge?
Pure intelligence corresponds to the highest sphere, active intelligence to the second, faith to the third, and the perception of shadows to the fourth. The clearness of each faculty is in the same ratio as the truth of the objects to which it is related.
Chapter 9
How does the text describe the modern philosopher's relation to knowledge?
The author argues the modern philosopher fixes his mind on the laws of nature in their sequence and connexion, on history rather than controversy, and on truths acknowledged by the few. He inquires into only a portion of knowledge because the whole has grown too vast for a single mind or life, yet still has a vision of the unity of knowledge.
Chapter 9
What objection does Adeimantus raise about the Socratic method of reasoning?
Adeimantus objects that Plato extracts the answer because he knows how to put the question. In a long argument words may change meaning slightly, premises may be assumed, and conclusions inferred with too much certainty, so divergence grows unobserved. Language cannot have the precision of numbers, impairing arguments with many steps.
Chapter 9
Why does Socrates say philosophers are useless or rogues?
Socrates admits the charge and explains it through an allegory: the uselessness of philosophers comes from mankind refusing to use them, not from philosophy itself. The world has always been divided between contempt and fear of those who employ the power of ideas and know no other weapons.
Chapter 9
BOOK VI. (part 3)4 cards
According to the chapter, why can the mathematical sciences not reach the idea of good?
The author argues that differences of quantity cannot pass into differences of quality, so the mathematical sciences can never rise above themselves into the sphere of higher thoughts. They may furnish symbols and train the mind in abstraction and self-concentration, but the process by which they are supposed to lead to the idea of good is imaginary.
Chapter 10
How does the chapter describe the idea of good as a sacred word or form of thought?
The chapter says words like being, essence, unity, and good exerted extraordinary influence, their power in inverse ratio to the meagreness of their content. The idea of good meant unity gathering up all time and existence, the truth and light of all things, the cause and power by which they came to be, and universal reason without human personality.
Chapter 10
Where does Plato mention the idea of good in his writings, and did it persist?
The chapter states that although Plato speaks of the idea of good as the first principle of truth and being, it is nowhere mentioned in his writings except in this passage. It did not retain any hold on his disciples in a later generation and was probably unintelligible to them; Aristotle's mention of it seems unrelated to this passage.
Chapter 10
How does the chapter relate the idea of good to God and to the Timaeus?
The chapter says asking whether God made the idea of good or was made by it is like asking whether God could be conceived apart from goodness. The God of the Timaeus is not at variance with the idea of good; they are aspects of the same, differing as personal from impersonal, or as the language of mythology from that of philosophy.
Chapter 10
BOOK VII. (part 1)4 cards
In the cave parable, what do the prisoners see, and what do they name?
Chained from childhood so they can only look into the den, the prisoners see shadows cast on the wall by a fire behind a low wall, where moving figures hold works of art and images of men and animals. The prisoners give names to these shadows, and if an echo returns from the wall, the voices of the passers-by seem to come from the shadows themselves.
Chapter 11
What happens to the freed prisoner who returns to the den?
After ascending and beholding the sun, the returning prisoner cannot compete with the others in measuring the shadows because his eyes are unaccustomed to the dark. The prisoners joke that his visit to the sun ruined his eyes, and if anyone tries to free and enlighten them, they will put him to death if they can catch him.
Chapter 11
According to the chapter, what is education, and what are the two kinds of blindness?
The author argues instruction is not like giving eyes to the blind; the faculty of sight is always present, and the soul only needs turning toward the light—this is conversion. Blindness may come from passing out of darkness into light or out of light into darkness; a sensible man distinguishes them, deems the blindness from fulness of light blessed, and pities the other.
Chapter 11
Why must philosophers descend to rule, and what is the only better life?
The author argues the State was framed not so citizens do what they like but so they serve the common good; philosophers trained by the State owe it a return and must take turns ruling in the den. Those who rule must not desire to rule, and the only life better than political ambition is philosophy, which is also the best preparation for governing.
Chapter 11
BOOK VII. (part 2)4 cards
At what ages does Plato's educational scheme select and advance the guardians?
At twenty, the more promising disciples are selected and begin relating the sciences to each other and to true being. At thirty, a further selection is made of those able to withdraw from sense into abstract ideas. They then spend about five or six years in dialectic, followed by fifteen years of practical experience, returning at fifty to contemplate the idea of good.
Chapter 12
Why does Plato warn against young people studying philosophy too early?
The author argues that a young man is like a puppy who merely plays with arguments, being reasoned into and out of opinions daily until he believes nothing, discrediting both himself and philosophy. A man of thirty argues rather than merely contradicts, adding honour to philosophy through sober conduct. Dialectic studied too early may also unsettle inherited principles and lead to lawlessness.
Chapter 12
What danger does Plato illustrate with the story of the supposititious son?
A person raised in luxury among flatterers, told he is not his reputed parents' son, reverses his loyalties. Similarly, doctrines learned at home exercise parental authority until a troublesome questioner asks what is just and good, or proves virtue is vice. The mind becomes unsettled, ceases to honour those principles, and is seduced into pleasure and lawlessness.
Chapter 12
How does Plato classify the harmonists and what does he demand of harmonics?
Plato distinguishes the Pythagoreans, masters of the art but ignorant of its higher import and relation to the good, from mere empirics who experiment by auscultation on the intervals of sounds. Both fall short of the Platonic idea of harmony, which must be studied abstractly, first by the method of problems, then as part of universal knowledge in relation to the idea of good.
Chapter 12
BOOK VII. (part 3)3 cards
To what does Plato compare the condition of those who discover their reputed parents are not real?
The chapter says their condition is ingeniously compared to that of a supposititious son who discovers his reputed parents are not his real ones, so they lose their authority over him. This illustrates how enlightenment or the recognition of true origins dissolves the hold of previously accepted authority.
Chapter 13
How does Plato distinguish the mathematician from the dialectician?
The chapter notes Plato is well aware that the faculty of the mathematician is quite distinct from the higher philosophical sense which recognizes and combines first principles. The mathematician works within assumptions, while the dialectician grasps and unifies first principles themselves.
Chapter 13
What first step does Plato take in actually creating the State, and why?
The first step is sending out of the city all who had arrived at ten years of age, in order to expedite the business of education by a generation. The chapter calls this gravity truly Platonic and compares it to the third book's expectation that the earthborn-men lie would be believed in the second generation.
Chapter 13
BOOK VIII. (part 1)4 cards
According to Socrates, what four inferior constitutions exist besides the perfect State?
Besides the perfect State, Socrates names four constitutions of note in Hellas: the Lacedaemonian or Cretan commonwealth (timocracy), oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny, which he calls the disease or death of all government. Since States are made of flesh and blood, each constitution corresponds to a human nature: the ambitious, oligarchical, democratical, and tyrannical types.
Chapter 14
How does timocracy arise out of the perfect State, according to the Muses' answer?
The Muses say human things are fated to decay, and even the perfect State will not escape destiny. Because rulers' intelligence is alloyed by sense, they fail to calculate the times of fertility and sterility, so children are born out of season. When the law of generation is neglected, marriages are unpropitious, inferior offspring become rulers, education decays, gymnastic is preferred to music, and the gold, silver, brass, and iron classes fall into division.
Chapter 14
What is the leading characteristic of the timocratic State and its corresponding man?
The leading characteristic of the timocratic State is party spirit and ambition. It resembles the ideal in obedience to rulers, contempt for trade, common meals, and devotion to war and gymnastics, but philosophy and simplicity have decayed, and love of gain has crept in. The corresponding man is self-asserting and ill-educated, fond of literature but not a speaker, fierce with slaves yet obedient to rulers, a lover of power and honour gained by arms, and fond of gymnastics and hunting.
Chapter 14
What is the greatest evil of oligarchy, and how does democracy arise from it?
The greatest evil of oligarchy is that a man may sell his property and have no place in the State, so one class has enormous wealth while the other is destitute; the poor are the drones, some without stings and some with dreadful stings. Insatiable avarice also encourages expensive habits so the rich may profit from ruined youth, leaving men full of hatred and ripe for revolution. Democracy comes to power when the poor win, killing some, exiling some, and giving equal shares to the rest.
Chapter 14
BOOK VIII. (part 2)3 cards
According to the fable of Zeus Lycaeus, what happens to one who tastes human flesh?
The chapter recounts the old fable of the temple of Zeus Lycaeus, which says that whoever tastes human flesh mixed with the flesh of other victims will turn into a wolf. Plato uses this image to illustrate how the people's protector, once he tastes human blood, slays and exiles others, and hints at abolishing debts and dividing lands, must either perish or become a wolf—that is, a tyrant.
Chapter 15
What does the chapter say about the order of Greek constitutional history versus Plato's succession?
The chapter argues there is no trace in Greek history of a Spartan or Cretan polity passing into an oligarchy of wealth, or of that passing into democracy. It says the order was different: royal or patriarchal government, then oligarchy of birth, sometimes a property qualification, and at Athens a path to democracy. Tyranny in early Greek history appears rather as a stage leading to democracy, as with Peisistratus.
Chapter 15
How does the chapter describe Plato's treatment of democracy and the tyrant?
The chapter says Plato exaggerates the follies of democracy in a hyperbolical, serio-comic vein, viewing democracy as individualism or dissolution where everyone does what is right in his own eyes. Yet the chapter argues Plato is no lover of tyranny either: his deeper condemnation is reserved for the tyrant, the ideal of wickedness and weakness, living in helplessness and suspicion.
Chapter 15
BOOK VIII. (part 3)4 cards
What number does the editor identify as the Platonic number of births, and why?
The editor agrees with Dr. Donaldson and Schleiermacher that 216 is the Platonic number of births. Reasons include: it matches the passage's description; 216 is the cube of 6 and the sum of 3 cubed, 4 cubed, and 5 cubed; those numbers represent the Pythagorean triangle; and 216 is the period of the Pythagorean Metempsychosis.
Chapter 16
Where does the editor disagree with Dr. Donaldson's interpretation?
The editor agrees with Donaldson that 216 is the number of births but rejects his claim that the perfect number is the world and the imperfect number the state. He also says Donaldson gave no proof the second harmony is a cube, and disputes reading a term as 'two incommensurables' arbitrarily assumed to be 2 and 3.
Chapter 16
What is Plato's general meaning regarding divine creation and human generation, per the editor?
The editor states Plato's general meaning is that divine creation is perfect and is represented or presided over by a perfect or cyclical number, while human generation is imperfect and represented or presided over by an imperfect number or series of numbers. The editor notes this symbolic use shows how much Pythagorean spirit prevailed in Plato.
Chapter 16
What utilitarian basis does Plato give for the number 5040 in the Laws?
The editor notes that 5040, the number of citizens in the Laws, is expressly based by Plato on utilitarian grounds: the convenience of the number for division. It is also made up of the first seven digits multiplied by one another. The editor contrasts this with the perfect and imperfect numbers discussed elsewhere.
Chapter 16
BOOK IX.4 cards
According to Socrates, what happens to unlawful appetites when reason and law sleep?
Socrates says unlawful appetites awaken when the reasoning powers sleep, walking about naked without self-respect or shame. In imagination they may commit any folly or crime, however cruel or unnatural. Even in good men an irregular wild-beast nature peers out in sleep, though temperate habits and self-knowledge before rest make such visions least irregular.
Chapter 17
How does the tyrannical man treat his parents once his desires exhaust his money?
When many desires drain his funds, the tyrannical man first borrows, then defrauds and deceives his parents for their goods. If they openly resist, he beats them. Socrates says for some new-fangled, unnecessary love he gives up his father and mother, or enslaves them to the fancies of the hour, becoming in sober reality the monster he sometimes was in sleep.
Chapter 17
Why does Socrates rank the philosopher's pleasure highest among the three lives?
Socrates compares the three pleasures tied to reason, passion, and desire. The philosopher alone has experience of all three kinds, having tasted desire and honour as well as truth, while the money-maker and ambitious man never taste the pleasures of wisdom. Since reason is the proper instrument of judgment, the rational life is judged pleasantest, with ambition second and money-making third.
Chapter 17
What simile does Socrates use to explain why relief from pain is mistaken for true pleasure?
Socrates likens it to someone passing from a lower to a middle region who believes he is ascending to the upper world, and would think he was descending if taken back. Likewise, comparing absence of pain with pain, people call the absence of pain pleasure. Such pleasures are shadows mixed with pain, and most bodily pleasures are merely reliefs of pain.
Chapter 17
BOOK X. (part 1)4 cards
Why does Plato's Socrates exclude imitative poetry from the ideal State?
The author argues imitation is thrice removed from truth and deals only with appearances, not reality. It appeals to the inferior, irrational part of the soul, feeding and watering the passions so they rule instead of being ruled. Poetry also injures by exciting feelings we would restrain in ourselves. He permits only hymns to the Gods and praises of famous men, letting law and reason rule rather than pleasure and pain.
Chapter 18
What are the three beds and who makes each?
There are three beds: one in nature made by God, one made by the carpenter, and one made by the painter. God made only one, since a second would imply a third more absolute under which both fall. The carpenter is a maker in a lower sense, but the painter is an imitator of what the others make, producing a creation thrice removed from reality. The tragic poet is likewise an imitator.
Chapter 18
What test does Socrates use to show Homer lacked real knowledge?
He asks Homer what good he ever did mankind: whether any city received laws from him as Sicily and Italy did from Charondas, Sparta from Lycurgus, Athens from Solon; whether any war was carried on by his counsels; whether any invention is attributed to him; or whether there is a Homeric way of life like the Pythagorean. Since none apply, Socrates infers the poets are only imitators of appearances.
Chapter 18
How does Socrates argue the soul is immortal?
He holds everything has its own inherent evil that can destroy it. The soul's corruptions are injustice, intemperance, and cowardice, but these do not destroy her as disease destroys the body. Nothing perishes from external evil unless it is infected within. Since sin, the soul's own evil, cannot destroy her, and no bodily evil can either, the soul must be immortal and everlasting, always existing in the same number.
Chapter 18
BOOK X. (part 2)3 cards
In the myth of Er, what does the interpreter of Lachesis say about responsibility for choosing a life?
The interpreter proclaims that a new period of mortal life has begun and souls may choose what divinity they please; the responsibility of choosing lies with them, and 'God is blameless.' Lots are cast and samples of lives—more numerous than the souls—are laid on the ground, including tyrannies, lives famous for various qualities, and mixed lives of wealth and poverty, sickness and health.
Chapter 19
Which souls does the myth describe choosing new lives, and what does Odysseus choose?
Orpheus chooses a swan out of hatred of being born of a woman; Thamyras a nightingale; Ajax a lion in remembrance of the judgment of the arms; Agamemnon an eagle; Atalanta athletic honours; Thersites a monkey. Odysseus, coming last, seeks the neglected lot of a private man and rejoices, saying he would have chosen the same had he been first.
Chapter 19
What happens to the souls after choosing, before they are reborn?
Each soul receives a genius or attendant to fulfil its lot, is brought under the hand of Clotho and drawn into the spindle's revolution, then to Atropos who makes the threads irreversible. They pass beneath Necessity's throne, travel in scorching heat to the plain of Forgetfulness, and drink from the river Unmindful; whoever drinks more than required forgets all things. Er is prevented from drinking.
Chapter 19
BOOK X. (part 3)4 cards
What does the author say about Plato's attitude toward expelling poets from the Republic?
The author argues Plato does not seriously intend to expel poets from life and society; rather he feels strongly the unreality of their writings and protests against the degeneracy of poetry in his own day. The author notes Plato wavers between insisting youth be raised amid wholesome imagery and banishing poets in Book X.
Chapter 20
How does the author characterize the relative standing of art versus philosophy and religion?
The author states art cannot claim to be on a level with philosophy or religion, and may often corrupt them. He suggests it is possible to conceive a mental state in which all artistic representations are regarded as false and imperfect expressions of either the religious or the philosophical ideal, citing iconoclastic Muslims and Christian sects as proof.
Chapter 20
What does the author identify as the source of the tale of Er and its possible origin?
The vision of another world is ascribed to Er, son of Armenius, whom Clement of Alexandria says was Zoroaster. The author notes the tale has an oriental character comparable to soul-pilgrimages in the Zend Avesta, but finds no trace of acquaintance with Zoroaster elsewhere in Plato, and no reason to call him Er the Pamphylian.
Chapter 20
How does the author describe the spindle and column of light in the vision of Er?
The great sphere of heaven is symbolized as a cylinder or box holding the seven planetary orbits and fixed stars, suspended from an adamant spindle turning on the knees of Necessity, its revolutions guided by the Fates and producing the music of the spheres. The column of light is not the Milky Way but the imaginary axis of the earth.
Chapter 20
BOOK X. (part 4)4 cards
According to the chapter, which Spartan practices likely influenced Plato's ideal State?
The chapter suggests Sparta probably inspired features such as the rule against spoiling the dead or offering arms at temples, moderation in pursuing enemies, emphasis on citizens' physical well-being, and warfare for defence rather than aggression. It adds that the ideal State reverts to the Spartan type in its first decline, and the timocrat's character is borrowed from the Spartan citizen.
Chapter 21
How does the chapter describe the Pythagorean influence on Plato's Republic?
The chapter calls the Republic not only a Dorian State but a Pythagorean league, noting the Pythagoreans, like Plato, enforced a rule of life and moral and intellectual training. It cites the exaggerated influence ascribed to music, the mystical number of the State, transmigration, the music of the spheres, and mathematics in education as slight traces of Pythagoreanism, though Plato goes far beyond them.
Chapter 21
What does the chapter say about whether Plato's ideal State is achievable?
The chapter argues Plato himself does not imagine such a State is possible, repeating this again and again, including in the Laws where he admits perfect communism and philosophy were impossible in his own age though retained as a pattern. It notes his ironic answer about a king's son becoming a philosopher, his 'noble lie,' and that the Republic is a vision only.
Chapter 21
How does the chapter respond to the question of whether Plato was a good citizen?
The chapter says the question is trifling and hardly meaningful for a philosopher writing for all time rather than one age and country. It notes Plato was no friend of democracy or any existing government, calling them 'states of faction,' and compares him to St. Augustine and early Christians whose writings arose from similar motives.
Chapter 21
BOOK X. (part 5)4 cards
Why does Plato think men and women can share the same pursuits?
Plato argues there is no organic difference between men and women, only the accidental one that men beget and women bear children. Natural gifts are scattered indifferently among both sexes, though men may be superior in degree. He meets the objection about decency in shared gymnastic exercises by asserting that existing feeling is merely a matter of habit.
Chapter 22
What is the author's criticism of Plato's denial of sex differences?
The author argues the criticism is just: differences between men and women affect the whole nature, not a single point as Plato supposes. Yet the author concedes we cannot say how far these differences are due to education and opinion or physically inherited, and that characteristics of sex vary by country, rank, and age.
Chapter 22
What does the author say Plato's marriage arrangements aim at, and what is lost?
The arrangements are directed to one object: improvement of the race, selecting the best specimens to breed from, as with animals. The author argues this banishes the world of poetry and fancy that love has called forth, and that Plato separates body and mind, falling from idealism into crudest animalism.
Chapter 22
What does the author claim is the great error in Plato's speculations?
The author argues the great error is that the difference between man and the animals is forgotten: the human being is regarded with the eye of a dog- or bird-fancier, leaving out higher human qualities. The author contends improvement of the race lies in growth and enlightenment of mind, not bones and flesh.
Chapter 22
BOOK X. (part 6)4 cards
What does the author say about great men and women having great parents?
The author argues that great men and women have rarely had great fathers and mothers, and nothing known about their birth or lineage explains their appearance. He notes that of English poets of the last and two preceding centuries scarcely a descendant remains, and none have been distinguished, concluding that nature has deeply hidden her secret.
Chapter 23
According to the author, what fraction of what we are comes from heredity?
The author argues that what we receive from ancestors is only a fraction of what we are or may become. He says the doctrine of heredity may seem to take conduct of our lives out of our hands, but it is the idea, not the fact, that is terrible. Knowledge of family drunkenness or insanity can be the best safeguard against recurrence.
Chapter 23
Why does the author say Plato's children would have perished?
The author argues all children in Plato's state are foundlings, and it never occurred to Plato that most would perish, since children can only be brought up in families. He claims if Plato's plan were as fatal as the foundling hospital of Dublin, more than nine-tenths of his children would have died, so nature protests against destroying the family.
Chapter 23
What does the author say Sparta actually owed its superiority to?
The author argues Plato mistakenly applied Spartan customs to his ideal state. Spartan physical superiority came chiefly not from marriage customs but from temperance and training, and Sparta was great in spite of relaxed morality, by a stronger political principle. Sparta also did not produce the finest Greeks, lacking Themistocles, Pericles, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Socrates, and Plato.
Chapter 23
BOOK X. (part 7)3 cards
How does the author relate Plato's Idea of Good to the conception of God?
The author argues the truer answer is that the Idea of Good is another mode of conceiving God. To the Greek philosopher, God's perfection and unity was a far higher conception than his personality, which he hardly had a word to express. The author notes the Idea of Good is not mentioned in the Timaeus, nor the divine Creator in the Republic.
Chapter 24
Why does the author say the philosopher-statesman has never been popular with the masses?
The author says the philosopher-statesman cannot take the world into his confidence or make people understand his motives, and they are jealous of a power they do not understand. They fear he may disregard common feelings of humanity, looking to the distant future or remote past and missing events 'tumbling out at his feet.'
Chapter 24
What does the author identify as Plato's confusion between the state and the individual?
The author argues Plato assimilates the state to the individual and fails to distinguish ethics from politics, thinking a state is most a state when most like one man with uniform citizens. The author says this analogy is partly fallacious: a nation's will is the balance or surplus of individual wills, and collective movement lacks a single man's pliancy.
Chapter 24
BOOK X. (part 8)4 cards
According to the chapter, what should a physician's own health be like, and why?
The chapter calls it a delicate and subtle observation that the physician should not be a man in robust health. He should have a nervous temperament and personal experience of disease, so that his powers of observation are quickened in the case of others. The perplexity of medicine is paralleled by the perplexity of law.
Chapter 25
How does Plato propose to treat the diseases of a State?
The chapter says the diseases of a State are like the heads of a hydra: they multiply when cut off. The true remedy is not extirpation but prevention, and the way to prevent them is to take care of education, which will then take care of all the rest. Plato is also aware that laissez faire is an important element of government.
Chapter 25
What is true knowledge according to Plato, and what is education's great aim?
The chapter states that true knowledge, according to Plato, is of abstractions and deals with universals only, not particulars or individuals, and with the ideas of philosophy rather than the beauties of poetry. The great aim of education is cultivating the habit of abstraction, acquired through the mathematical sciences, which alone give ideas of relation and arouse dormant thought.
Chapter 25
How does the dialectician rank relative to the mathematician, and what is the idea of good?
The dialectician is as much above the mathematician as the mathematician is above the ordinary man. The self-proving good, the higher sphere of dialectic, is the perfect truth to which all things ascend and in which they repose. The chapter notes this self-proving unity is a mere vision admitting no distinct explanation, an abstraction under which no individuals are comprehended.
Chapter 25
BOOK X. (part 9)3 cards
According to the chapter, why did Plato oppose innovators in religion and politics?
The author argues Plato's intolerance stemmed from a desire to keep the fundamental laws unaltered, since they were held to be sanctioned by heaven and their inviolable maintenance was thought to secure the state. Yet the author notes a happy inconsistency: Plato also allowed the laws of other countries to be studied and improvements privately communicated to the Nocturnal Council.
Chapter 26
How does the chapter contrast the Republic and the Laws?
The Republic is ascribed to Plato's middle period, full of hope and aspiration, a finished work with dramatic power and poetic grace. The Laws is the work of his declining years, bearing failure and disappointment, imperfectly executed and apparently unfinished, more like a sermon than a poem. In the Laws the community of women and children is renounced, Socrates disappears, and common meals are extended to women.
Chapter 26
How does Cicero's De Republica compare with Plato's Republic, per the chapter?
The chapter says Cicero's De Republica approaches Plato's Republic most nearly among classical works, but does not rival Plato's art: its manners are clumsy, the rhetorician's hand shows at every turn, and Cicero makes speeches rather than conversing. He imitates Plato's democracy passage and tyrant description, and converts the vision of Er into the Somnium Scipionis, which the chapter judges far inferior—only a dream.
Chapter 26
BOOK X. (part 10)4 cards
According to the chapter, what did More believe Christ and Plato both instituted?
The chapter states that More thought Christ, like Plato, 'instituted all things common,' and that this belief made the Utopians more willing to receive Christian doctrines. The community of property is described as a fixed idea with More, though he was aware of arguments on the other side.
Chapter 27
How did the Utopians treat those who denied the soul's immortality?
They barred such a person from sharing in the administration of the state, but put him to no punishment, being persuaded that it is in no man's power to believe what he list. The chapter presents this as evidence that More was far more tolerant than his contemporaries.
Chapter 27
What does the chapter say about the fate of Utopia's location?
More regretted forgetting to ask Hythloday where Utopia lies. A letter from Giles recalls that More's attention was drawn off by a servant, and a companion's loud cough prevented Giles from hearing the location. The secret perished, and the place of Utopia remains unknown to this day.
Chapter 27
How does the chapter compare More's 'Utopia' with Bacon's 'New Atlantis'?
The chapter calls 'New Atlantis' only a fragment, far inferior in merit to 'Utopia.' It says the work is full of ingenuity but wanting in creative fancy and does not impress the reader with credibility. It notes Bacon minutely describes the governor's dress, which More would find simply ridiculous.
Chapter 27
BOOK X. (part 11)4 cards
According to the chapter, how do ideals affect human life and conduct?
The author argues ideals affect life much as the examples of eminent men do: neither is immediately applicable to practice, but a virtue flows from them that raises individuals above the common routine of society or trade and elevates States above mere commerce or self-defence. Like artistic ideals, they are framed partly by omitting particulars and require viewing at a distance.
Chapter 28
What two ideals does the chapter say never appeared in Greek philosophy but float before modern minds?
The author identifies two: the future of the human race in this world, a more perfect realization of present life, limited by experience; and the future of the individual in another world, an abnegation of this life that transcends experience. Both are powerful motives of action, and the author argues the apparent difference between them falls away when resolved into the will of God.
Chapter 28
How does the chapter describe philosophy's abstractions and their effect on most people?
The author argues that to most persons the abstractions of philosophy are cold and vacant: they give light without warmth, like the full moon in the heavens when no stars appear. Men cannot live by thought alone, since the world of sense always breaks in; most are confined to a corner of earth and do not lift up their eyes to the hills.
Chapter 28
What does the chapter say about the Idea of Good as Plato glimpsed it?
The author argues Plato saw dimly in the distance an image he called, in Homer's language, 'the likeness of God' — a nature men in all ages have felt to be greater and better than themselves. In endless forms, from Scripture, nature, history, or the human heart, regarded as a person or not, it is and will always be to mankind the Idea of Good.
Chapter 28
BOOK I. (part 1)4 cards
Why does Socrates go down to the Piraeus at the start?
Socrates says he went down to the Piraeus with Glaucon to offer prayers to the goddess (identified as Bendis, the Thracian Artemis) and to see how they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. He was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants, though he judged that of the Thracians equally, if not more, beautiful.
Chapter 29
How does Cephalus explain old age as a burden or blessing?
Cephalus says the complaints of the aged about lost pleasures and slights from relatives blame the wrong cause. He recalls Sophocles saying he gladly escaped love as from a mad and furious master, and argues old age brings calm and freedom when passions relax. The real cause of complaint, he says, is not old age but men's characters: a calm nature feels little pressure, while the opposite disposition finds youth and age equally a burden.
Chapter 29
What is Cephalus's greatest blessing of wealth?
Cephalus says the greatest blessing of riches, not for every man but for a good man, is that he has had no occasion to deceive or defraud others, intentionally or unintentionally, and when he departs to the world below he is not in apprehension about offerings due to the gods or debts owed to men. He ties this peace of mind to wealth, though Socrates notes he seems indifferent about money as one who inherited it.
Chapter 29
Why does Socrates reject 'speak truth and pay debts' as justice?
Socrates offers a counterexample: if a friend in his right mind deposits arms and then asks for them back while not in his right mind, no one would say one ought to return them or that it would be right, any more than one should always speak the truth to a person in that condition. He concludes that speaking the truth and paying debts is not a correct definition of justice.
Chapter 29
BOOK I. (part 2)4 cards
Why does Socrates argue that the just man cannot harm anyone?
Socrates argues by analogy: injured horses and dogs are deteriorated in their own proper virtue, so injured men are made unjust in human virtue, justice. But the musician cannot make men unmusical, nor the horseman bad horsemen; likewise the just, being good, cannot by virtue make men bad. Therefore injuring anyone is the act of the unjust, not the just.
Chapter 30
What is Thrasymachus's definition of justice, and how does Socrates immediately object?
Thrasymachus proclaims justice is nothing other than the interest of the stronger: governments make laws for their own interest and call obedience to them justice. Socrates first objects that Thrasymachus himself used the forbidden word 'interest,' and then presses the addition 'of the stronger,' asking whether rulers are infallible or may err.
Chapter 30
How does Socrates refute Thrasymachus using the fallibility of rulers?
Socrates gets Thrasymachus to admit rulers may err and that subjects must obey the laws, which is justice. When rulers mistakenly command what harms their own interest, obedience means justice is the injury, not the interest, of the stronger. Cleitophon protests Thrasymachus meant what the stronger thinks is his interest, but Thrasymachus rejects that reading.
Chapter 30
How does Thrasymachus escape the fallibility objection?
Thrasymachus replies that no artist, sage, or ruler errs insofar as he is what his name implies; a mistaken physician is not a physician qua physician. Strictly speaking, the ruler qua ruler is unerring and always commands what is for his own interest, so justice remains the interest of the stronger. He accuses Socrates of arguing like an informer.
Chapter 30
BOOK I. (part 3)4 cards
How does Thrasymachus define justice in this passage?
Thrasymachus claims that justice is "another's good" — specifically the interest of the ruler and the stronger, and the loss of the subject and servant. Injustice is the opposite: it is a man's own profit and interest. He argues the unjust man is lord over the simple and just, and that the just man always loses in contracts, taxes, and office.
Chapter 31
What three modes of payment does Socrates say induce rulers to rule?
Socrates says rulers must be paid in one of three ways: money, honour, or a penalty for refusing to rule. Good men are not attracted by money (they'd be called hirelings) or honour (they're not ambitious), so they rule from fear of punishment — chiefly the punishment of being ruled by someone worse than themselves.
Chapter 31
Why does Socrates reject Thrasymachus's shepherd analogy?
Socrates says Thrasymachus was inconsistent: he defined the true physician exactly but not the shepherd. The shepherd's art, properly considered, concerns only the good of his flock, not the shepherd's own table or profit. Likewise the true ruler, whether in a state or private life, regards the good of his subjects, not his own advantage.
Chapter 31
What does Thrasymachus say about the tyrant who commits injustice on a large scale?
Thrasymachus argues that injustice on a large scale is most advantageous. A tyrant who takes property wholesale by fraud and force — sacred and profane, private and public — is called happy and blessed, while one who does the same on a small scale is called a robber or thief. He claims people censure injustice only from fear of being its victims.
Chapter 31
BOOK I. (part 4)3 cards
How does Socrates use the eye and pruning-hook to argue about the soul?
Socrates argues each thing has an end it alone performs well and a corresponding excellence. The eye's end is seeing, fulfilled only through its excellence, sight. Likewise the soul's ends include ruling, deliberating, and living, and its excellence is justice. A soul deprived of justice cannot fulfill its ends, so the unjust soul rules badly and lives ill.
Chapter 32
What final conclusion does Socrates draw about justice and happiness?
Socrates concludes that justice is the excellence of the soul and injustice its defect. The just soul lives well and is blessed and happy; the unjust lives ill and is miserable. Since happiness is profitable, injustice can never be more profitable than justice. Thrasymachus concedes, and Socrates ends admitting he still does not know what justice is.
Chapter 32
How does Socrates characterize the outcome of the whole discussion?
Socrates compares himself to an epicure who tastes each dish without finishing the one before: he kept moving between questions—whether justice is virtue and wisdom, and whether the just life is happier—without first discovering what justice is. He concludes he knows nothing at all, and cannot say whether justice is a virtue or the just man happy.
Chapter 32
BOOK II. (part 1)4 cards
Into which of Glaucon's three classes of goods does Socrates place justice?
Glaucon divides goods into three classes: those welcomed for their own sake (harmless pleasures), those desirable both in themselves and for their results (knowledge, sight, health), and those pursued only for rewards though disagreeable in themselves (gymnastic, medicine, money-making). Socrates places justice in the highest class, among goods desired both for their own sake and for their results, though he notes the many disagree.
Chapter 33
What is the common view of the origin of justice, as Glaucon reports it?
Glaucon says people hold that doing injustice is naturally good and suffering it evil, but the evil outweighs the good. Unable to avoid one and obtain the other, men agree to have neither, and laws and covenants arise; what law ordains is called just. Justice is thus a mean between the best (wronging others unpunished) and the worst (suffering wrong without retaliation), tolerated as a lesser evil, not a good.
Chapter 33
What does the Ring of Gyges story illustrate in Glaucon's argument?
Gyges, a shepherd serving the king of Lydia, found a ring in a hollow brazen horse after an earthquake; turning the collet inward made him invisible, outward restored him. He used it to seduce the queen, kill the king, and take the kingdom. Glaucon argues that if a just and an unjust man each wore such a ring, both would act alike, proving people are just only by necessity, not willingly.
Chapter 33
How does Glaucon set up the just and unjust men for comparison?
Glaucon isolates each in the extreme: the perfectly unjust man commits the greatest injustice while acquiring the greatest reputation for justice, able to recover from missteps by speech, courage, money, and friends. The just man is noble and simple, wishing to be rather than seem good, stripped of all appearance, thought the worst though being the best, and persisting to death—so judgment can be given on which life is happier.
Chapter 33
BOOK II. (part 2)4 cards
According to Glaucon, why do most people praise justice only for its consequences?
Glaucon argues that no one has ever praised justice for its own sake, only for the glories, honours, and benefits that flow from it. He claims that even those who appear just do so only from cowardice, age, or weakness—lacking the power to be unjust—and that anyone who gains power immediately becomes unjust as far as he can.
Chapter 34
What does Glaucon ask Socrates to exclude from his praise of justice, and why?
Glaucon asks Socrates to exclude reputations—both true and false—from his praise of justice. Otherwise, Glaucon says, Socrates would only be praising the appearance of justice and exhorting people to keep injustice hidden. He wants Socrates to show the essential good and evil that justice and injustice work in the possessor's soul, whether seen or unseen by gods and men.
Chapter 34
Why does Socrates propose examining justice in the State before the individual?
Socrates uses the analogy of reading larger letters before smaller ones: since a State is larger than an individual, justice is likely to be more plentiful and easier to discern there. He proposes to first investigate justice as it appears in the State, then in the individual, proceeding from the greater to the lesser and comparing them.
Chapter 34
According to Socrates, what is the origin of the State, and what are the first necessities?
Socrates argues the State arises from human needs: no one is self-sufficing, and all have many wants. People gather as partners and helpers, exchanging goods for mutual benefit. The first and greatest necessity is food, the condition of life; the second is a dwelling; the third is clothing and the like. The barest notion of a State requires four or five men.
Chapter 34
BOOK II. (part 3)3 cards
Why does Socrates say the guardian needs a professional army?
Socrates applies the principle acknowledged when framing the State: one man cannot practise many arts with success. War is an art requiring as much attention as shoemaking, and no one becomes a good dice or draught player merely by taking up the game as recreation. Just as the shoemaker was assigned one work for which he was fitted, so the soldier's work must be well done by those trained from earliest years, not by artisans who take up a shield in a day.
Chapter 35
What qualities must a good guardian unite, and what image illustrates this?
The guardian must combine philosophy, spirit, swiftness, and strength. Socrates notes the difficulty: spirited natures are apt to be savage with one another, yet guardians should be dangerous to enemies and gentle to friends. He resolves the perplexity with the image of a well-bred dog, which is gentle to familiars and hostile to strangers, and distinguishes friend from enemy by the criterion of knowing and not knowing, making it a lover of learning, or a philosopher.
Chapter 35
Why must tales told to children be censored?
Socrates argues the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially for the young and tender, since character is then being formed and impressions are more readily taken. A young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal, and anything received at that age becomes indelible and unalterable. Therefore censors should receive good fiction and reject bad, and mothers and nurses should tell children only authorized tales, discarding most currently in use.
Chapter 35
BOOK II. (part 4)4 cards
Why does Socrates argue God cannot change?
The author argues that since God is the fairest and best conceivable, any change could only be for the worse, and no one, god or man, desires to become worse. Therefore every God remains absolutely and forever in his own form, and the poets must not depict gods disguising themselves as strangers or transforming in myths.
Chapter 36
What is the 'true lie' as Socrates defines it?
The true lie is ignorance or deception in the soul about the highest realities—the truest and highest part of oneself. Mankind utterly detests being deceived there. The lie in words is only an imitation and shadowy image of this prior affection of the soul, not pure unadulterated falsehood.
Chapter 36
When is the lie in words useful and not hateful?
Socrates says the lie in words is useful in certain cases: in dealing with enemies, when friends in madness or illusion are about to do harm (a sort of medicine or preventive), and in mythology, where because we do not know the truth about ancient times we make falsehood as much like truth as possible.
Chapter 36
Why can no motive apply to God for lying?
God cannot lie from ignorance of antiquity (that would be ridiculous), cannot lie from fear of enemies (inconceivable), and cannot lie for senseless or mad friends (no mad or senseless person is a friend of God). So the divine is absolutely incapable of falsehood, changing not and deceiving not by sign, word, dream, or waking vision.
Chapter 36
BOOK III. (part 1)4 cards
Why must tales describing the underworld as terrible be censored for future guardians?
Socrates argues that anyone who believes the world below is real and terrible cannot be fearless of death, and so cannot prefer death in battle to defeat and slavery. Therefore the narrators must be controlled: they should not revile but commend the world below, and passages from Homer describing Hades as grim, mindless shades, or lamenting souls must be expunged, since the more poetically charming such passages are, the less fit they are for men who should fear slavery more than death.
Chapter 37
According to Socrates, how should a good man respond to the death of a comrade or to misfortune?
The principle is that the good man, being sufficient for himself and his own happiness, considers death not terrible for another good man who is his comrade. So he will not sorrow as though his friend suffered something terrible; loss of a son, brother, or fortune is least terrible to him, and he bears misfortune with the greatest equanimity. Therefore the lamentations of famous men—such as Achilles rolling in ashes—are to be removed and assigned to women or base men.
Chapter 37
Who may lie in the ideal State, and why is lying by private citizens worse?
Socrates holds that a lie is useful only as a medicine, and the use of such medicine should be restricted to physicians—so if anyone may lie, it is the rulers, who may lie for the public good in dealings with enemies or citizens. No one else should meddle with it. For a private man to lie to the rulers is a more heinous fault than a patient lying to his physician or a sailor not telling the captain the ship's condition.
Chapter 37
Which poetic depictions of gods and heroes does Socrates want excluded, and on what grounds?
Socrates would exclude gods lamenting, Zeus overcome by lust, the Hephaestus-Ares-Aphrodite tale, excessive laughter among the gods, and heroes shown as avaricious, insolent to gods, or committing dreadful acts. The grounds are that the young, hearing such tales, will excuse their own vices, lose shame and self-control, and believe gods author evil—though evil cannot come from the gods. Poets must say such acts were not done or that the doers were not sons of gods.
Chapter 37
BOOK III. (part 2)4 cards
What three narrative styles does Socrates distinguish in poetry?
Socrates identifies wholly imitative poetry (tragedy and comedy), the opposite style where the poet alone speaks (the dithyramb), and a combination of both found in epic and other forms. He uses this division to ask whether imitation should be admitted into the State at all, in whole or in part.
Chapter 38
Why should guardians avoid imitating base or mad characters?
Socrates argues that imitation begun in youth and continued into life grows into habit and second nature, affecting body, voice, and mind. Guardians should imitate only courageous, temperate, holy, and free characters, lest from imitation they come to be what they imitate. Madness and vice, he says, are to be known but not practised.
Chapter 38
Which harmonies does Socrates keep and which does he banish?
Socrates banishes the Lydian harmonies as expressive of sorrow and the Ionian and Lydian as soft or relaxed and useless for soldiers. He keeps the Dorian and Phrygian: one for courage in danger and misfortune, the other for moderation in peace and success. He also rejects many-stringed instruments and the flute, leaving the lyre and harp for the city.
Chapter 38
What does Socrates propose doing with the versatile imitative poet?
Socrates says such a poet should be honored as sweet, holy, and wonderful, anointed with myrrh and crowned with wool, then sent away to another city. The law will not permit him, because the State needs the rougher and severer poet who imitates only the virtuous style, for the health of souls.
Chapter 38
BOOK III. (part 3)4 cards
Why does Socrates say musical training is more potent than any other?
The author argues music is most potent because rhythm and harmony enter the inward places of the soul and fasten there mightily, imparting grace to the rightly educated and ungracefulness to the ill-educated. One truly educated in inner being perceives faults in art and nature, and before knowing the reason, praises good and hates bad; when reason arrives he recognizes it as familiar.
Chapter 39
How does Socrates compare gymnastic training to the training of ordinary athletes?
Socrates says ordinary athletes' habit of body is sleepy and perilous to health, since they sleep away their lives and fall dangerously ill at slight departures from regimen. Warrior athletes instead need finer training, like wakeful dogs seeing and hearing keenly, enduring changes of water, food, summer heat and winter cold on campaign without breaking down in health.
Chapter 39
What does Socrates say about true love versus intemperate pleasure?
Socrates holds that excess of pleasure has no affinity to temperance or virtue but the greatest affinity to wantonness and intemperance; sensual love is the keenest and maddest pleasure. True love is love of beauty and order, temperate and harmonious, so mad pleasure must never approach lover and beloved. He would law that a friend use no familiarity beyond a father's toward a son, only for a noble purpose and with consent.
Chapter 39
Why does Socrates criticize the medicine that 'educates diseases'?
Socrates criticizes Herodicus, a trainer of sickly constitution, for combining training and doctoring into a way of torturing himself and others by inventing lingering death: he tended a mortal disease all his life, doing nothing but attending himself. Socrates argues Asclepius omitted valetudinarian arts not from ignorance but because in well-ordered states each person has an occupation and no leisure to be continually ill.
Chapter 39
BOOK III. (part 4)4 cards
According to Socrates, why can the vicious man not recognize an honest man?
The vicious man judges others by himself and has no pattern of honesty within himself. When he meets virtuous men of experience he appears a fool, due to unseasonable suspicions. Since bad men outnumber good and he meets them more often, he thinks himself, and is thought by others, rather wise than foolish. The author argues that vice cannot know virtue, but a virtuous nature educated by time acquires knowledge of both.
Chapter 40
What happens to a man who lets music soften his spirit too long?
At first music tempers his spirit like iron, making it useful rather than brittle. But if he continues the softening and soothing process, he melts and wastes away his spirit, cutting out the sinews of his soul, and becomes a feeble warrior. If his spirit is naturally strong, music weakens it so he grows excitable, flaming up at the least provocation and speedily extinguished—irritable and passionate instead of spirited.
Chapter 40
What are music and gymnastic really designed to train, according to Socrates?
Socrates argues they are not, as often supposed, for training the soul and body separately. The teachers of both have chiefly in view the improvement of the soul. Exclusive devotion to gymnastic produces hardness and ferocity; exclusive devotion to music produces softness and effeminacy. The two arts answer to the spirited and philosophical principles of human nature, so they may be relaxed or drawn tighter like instrument strings until duly harmonized.
Chapter 40
How are rulers and guardians selected and tested in the ideal State?
Guardians are watched from youth to see who eagerly serves the State's good and resists its harm. They are tested with toils, pains, and conflicts, then with enchantments—terrors and pleasures—like colts amid noise, proved more thoroughly than gold in a furnace. He who at every age comes out victorious and pure is appointed ruler and honored in life and death; the one who fails is rejected.
Chapter 40
BOOK IV. (part 1)4 cards
Why does Socrates reject making the guardians individually happy?
The author argues the aim in founding the State was not the disproportionate happiness of any one class but the greatest happiness of the whole. Making guardians wealthy and comfortable would make them anything but guardians, just as painting the eyes purple would make them no longer eyes. The whole State, not a few citizens, must be fashioned happy.
Chapter 41
What two causes does Socrates name for the deterioration of the arts?
Socrates names wealth and poverty. A rich potter grows indolent and careless and becomes worse at his craft; a poor one cannot afford tools or instruments and works badly himself and teaches his sons and apprentices badly. Wealth breeds luxury and indolence, poverty breeds meanness and viciousness, and both produce discontent.
Chapter 41
How does Socrates answer the objection that the poor city cannot fight rich enemies?
He argues trained warriors fighting rich men resemble a skilled boxer against stout non-boxers; by retreating, turning, and striking repeatedly, the expert can overturn several. The city may also ally with one rich city against another, offering them spoils. Further, every city is really two cities, rich and poor, already at war, so treating rivals as many gives many friends.
Chapter 41
What does Socrates say about musical innovation and education?
The author argues guardians must preserve music and gymnastic in their original form and prohibit innovation, since Damon says when modes of music change, fundamental laws change with them. Lawlessness begins as apparently harmless amusement, then penetrates manners and customs, contracts, and finally laws and constitutions. Education and nurture are the one sufficient thing.
Chapter 41
BOOK IV. (part 2)4 cards
In the just city, what knowledge makes the state wise?
The author argues a city is wise not through craft knowledge like carpentry or agriculture, but through the knowledge of the guardians—the smallest class—which advises about the whole state and how it should deal with itself and other states. This presiding knowledge alone is worthy of the name wisdom.
Chapter 42
How does Socrates define courage in the state?
Courage is the preservation, under all circumstances—pleasure, pain, desire, fear—of the law-implanted opinion about what is and is not to be feared. It belongs to the fighting part of the city. Socrates likens it to dyeing wool: education prepares the soul so the color of true opinion becomes fast and cannot be washed out.
Chapter 42
What is temperance, and where does it reside?
Temperance is a harmony or agreement—the ordering and controlling of pleasures and desires, the rule of the better part over the worse. Unlike wisdom and courage, which reside in parts, it extends through the whole state, producing agreement between superior and inferior about who should rule. It is found in both rulers and subjects.
Chapter 42
How does Socrates finally identify justice in the state?
Justice is doing one's own business and not being a busybody—the founding principle that each person practices the one thing his nature fits best. Socrates argues justice is what remains once wisdom, courage, and temperance are abstracted, and that it is the ultimate cause and preservative of the other virtues.
Chapter 42
BOOK IV. (part 3)2 cards
What does the principle of non-contradiction require for something to act in contrary ways?
Socrates states that the same thing cannot act or be acted upon in the same part or in relation to the same thing at the same time in contrary ways. Whenever an apparent contradiction occurs in things that seem the same, they are really not the same but different. He illustrates with a spinning top: its axis is at rest while its circumference moves.
Chapter 43
How does the story of Leontius illustrate the relation between spirit and desire?
Leontius, son of Aglaion, saw dead bodies at the execution place and felt both a desire to look and a dread of them. He struggled, covered his eyes, then forced them open, saying, 'Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.' Socrates uses this to show anger warring against desire, proving spirit is distinct from appetite.
Chapter 43
BOOK IV. (part 4)4 cards
According to Socrates, what makes an action just and the knowledge presiding over it wisdom?
Socrates says that when a person has bound together the three principles of the soul into one temperate, adjusted nature, he acts by thinking and calling that which preserves and cooperates with this harmonious condition just and good action, and the knowledge presiding over it wisdom. Whatever impairs this condition he calls unjust action, and the opinion presiding over it ignorance.
Chapter 44
How does Socrates define injustice within the soul?
Socrates describes injustice as a strife arising among the three principles—a meddlesomeness, interference, and rising up of a part of the soul against the whole. It is an assertion of unlawful authority by a rebellious subject against a true prince, of whom he is the natural vassal. This confusion he identifies with injustice, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance, and every form of vice.
Chapter 44
What analogy does Socrates use to compare justice and injustice to health and disease?
Socrates says just and unjust actions are like health and disease in the body: healthy things cause health, unhealthy things cause disease, just actions cause justice, and unjust actions cause injustice. Health is the natural order and government of the body's parts; disease is their variance from it. Likewise justice institutes natural order in the soul, injustice its disruption. Virtue is the soul's health; vice its disease.
Chapter 44
How many forms of State and soul does Socrates say there are, and what is the first?
Socrates says there are five forms of the State and five of the soul. The first is the one already described, called monarchy or aristocracy depending on whether rule is by one distinguished man or by many. He regards these as one form only, since if the governors are trained as supposed, the fundamental laws are maintained either way.
Chapter 44
BOOK V. (part 1)4 cards
Why do Polemarchus and Adeimantus interrupt Socrates at the start of Book V?
They accuse Socrates of laziness, claiming he is trying to cheat them out of a whole chapter. They say he treated it as self-evident that among friends 'friends have all things in common' regarding women and children, without explaining what kind of community he means. They demand he describe the family life of the guardians, including how children are conceived and reared.
Chapter 45
What analogy does Socrates use to argue women should share men's duties?
Socrates compares guardians to watchdogs, asking whether dogs are divided into males and females or share hunting, watching, and other duties alike. Since female dogs share the work, differing only in strength, he concludes women with the same duties as men must receive the same nurture and education: music, gymnastic, and the art of war.
Chapter 45
How does Socrates answer the objection that men and women have different natures?
Socrates distinguishes relevant from irrelevant differences of nature. He jokes that bald and hairy men differ, yet both may be cobblers; the State only cares about differences affecting one's pursuit. Since the only real difference is bearing versus begetting children, women are not disqualified from the same education. He warns against mere verbal contradiction without defining sameness and difference.
Chapter 45
Why is Socrates reluctant to discuss the community of women and children?
Socrates says the answer is far from easy and raises more doubts than earlier conclusions. He questions both whether the scheme is practicable and whether, even if practicable, it would be for the best. He fears their aspiration may prove a dream, and he dreads missing the truth on matters of beauty, goodness, and justice more than being laughed at.
Chapter 45
BOOK V. (part 2)4 cards
Why does Socrates say the guardians' wives and children should be held in common?
Socrates argues that the greatest good for a state is unity, and the greatest evil is discord arising from disagreement over 'mine' and 'not mine.' When all citizens share pleasures and pains, the city is unified like a single body that feels a hurt in one finger as its own. Common wives and children, he argues, promote this shared feeling among the guardians.
Chapter 46
What breeding principle do the rulers apply to human marriages?
The rulers unite the best of either sex with the best as often as possible, and the inferior with the inferior as seldom as possible, rearing only the offspring of the better unions so the flock stays first-rate. These arrangements must be kept secret to the rulers alone, lest the guardian herd rebel. Festivals, sacrifices, and rigged lots conceal the scheme.
Chapter 46
What ages does Socrates set as the prime for bearing and begetting children?
Socrates defines a woman's prime as twenty to forty and a man's as twenty-five to fifty-five, when physical and intellectual vigour peak. Anyone outside these ages who joins the public hymeneals acts unholy and unrighteous, and any child conceived is 'of darkness and strange lust.' Those within the age need the rulers' sanction; after it, they may range at will except for the listed incest prohibitions.
Chapter 46
How do guardians avoid knowing their own parents and children?
Dating from the day of the hymeneal, the bridegroom calls all male children born in the seventh and tenth month afterwards his sons, and the females his daughters; they call him father, and their children his grandchildren. All begotten at that time are called brothers and sisters and forbidden to intermarry, unless the lot favours them and the Pythian oracle sanctions it.
Chapter 46
BOOK V. (part 3)4 cards
How does Socrates distinguish 'discord' from 'war'?
The author argues that 'discord' names conflict that is internal and domestic, while 'war' names conflict that is external and foreign. Since the Hellenic race is united by ties of blood and friendship and is alien to the barbarians, Hellenes fighting barbarians is war between natural enemies, but Hellenes fighting one another is discord among friends.
Chapter 47
How should Greek soldiers treat Greek enemies in war?
They should not enslave Hellenic states or own Hellenes as slaves, so the race may stay united against the barbarians. They should spare the slain, taking only armour and not despoiling corpses or blocking burial. They should not offer spoils from kinsmen at temples, and should not devastate Hellenic land or burn houses, taking only the annual produce.
Chapter 47
How are children to be introduced to war?
Children strong enough are brought on campaigns as spectators, like artisans' children watching their trade, and help and wait on their parents. Parents take them only on safe expeditions, under experienced veteran commanders. Because danger cannot always be foreseen, children are mounted on tractable, swift horses so they can follow their leaders and escape.
Chapter 47
What honours and punishments does Socrates propose for soldiers?
The coward who leaves rank, throws away arms, or is taken prisoner is degraded to husbandman or artisan, or given to the enemy. The hero is crowned by youthful comrades, receives the right hand of fellowship, may kiss whom he wishes during the expedition, gets more wives and first choices, and receives seats of precedence, meats, and full cups.
Chapter 47
BOOK V. (part 4)4 cards
What single change does Socrates say could reform the State?
Socrates proposes that until philosophers become kings, or kings and princes genuinely take up philosophy, and political power and wisdom unite in one person, cities will never rest from evils. He calls this the greatest wave and admits it is neither slight nor easy, though still possible. Those pursuing either politics or philosophy exclusively must stand aside.
Chapter 48
Why does Plato accept that the ideal State may never be fully realized?
Socrates argues that a word expresses more than the fact, and actual things always fall short of the truth. So he asks Glaucon not to demand the actual State match the ideal in every respect. If they can show how a city may be governed nearly as proposed, that satisfies the demand for possibility. Glaucon agrees to be content with this.
Chapter 48
How does Plato distinguish true philosophers from sight-lovers and art-lovers?
Sight-lovers and art-lovers delight in fine tones, colours, forms, and artificial products, but their minds cannot see or love absolute beauty. True philosophers love the vision of truth and can distinguish the idea from the objects participating in it. Plato compares the sight-lover to a dreamer who puts the copy in place of the real object, while the philosopher is awake.
Chapter 48
What is the difference between knowledge and opinion in Plato's account?
Knowledge and opinion are distinct faculties with distinct spheres. Knowledge is infallible and concerns being; ignorance concerns not-being. Opinion falls between them, concerned with what both is and is not. Plato argues opinion is darker than knowledge but lighter than ignorance, and that knowledge and opinion cannot share the same subject-matter.
Chapter 48
BOOK VI. (part 1)4 cards
According to Socrates, which class should rule the state?
Socrates argues that those best able to guard the laws and institutions should be guardians. Since philosophers alone grasp the eternal and unchangeable while others wander among the many and variable, philosophers qualify. He compares non-philosophers to blind people lacking a clear pattern of truth in their souls, and says those knowing the truth of each thing must have first place.
Chapter 49
What qualities make up the philosophical nature, per Socrates?
Socrates lists: love of knowledge of eternal being, love of all truth and hatred of falsehood, indifference to bodily pleasure, temperance, freedom from meanness, contempt for death, justice and gentleness, pleasure in learning, good memory, and a well-proportioned gracious mind moving toward true being. He insists these qualities go together and are necessary for a soul to participate fully in being.
Chapter 49
What does Adeimantus object about philosophers in cities?
Adeimantus says the argument traps hearers like unskilled draughts players, leaving them unable to reply yet convinced they are right. He reports the common view that most who pursue philosophy into maturity become strange monsters or utter rogues, and that the best of them are made useless to the world by the very study Socrates praises. Socrates agrees they are right.
Chapter 49
What does the ship parable illustrate about philosophers?
Socrates compares the state to a ship with a tall, strong but deaf and poor-sighted captain, and quarrelling sailors who never learned navigation yet claim the helm, drugging the captain and seizing the stores. The true pilot studies seasons, sky, stars and winds, yet mutineers call him a star-gazer and good-for-nothing. So philosophers seem useless through the fault of those who won't use them.
Chapter 49
BOOK VI. (part 2)4 cards
According to Socrates, what do the Sophists actually teach?
Socrates argues that the mercenary individuals the many call Sophists teach nothing but the opinion of the many—the opinions of their assemblies—and this is their wisdom. He compares them to a man who studies the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast he feeds, learning to handle it and interpret its cries, then calls this knowledge wisdom and teaches it as an art, though he has no real notion of what is honourable, good, or just.
Chapter 50
Why does Socrates say the best philosophic natures are often ruined?
Socrates argues that the very qualities making a man a philosopher—quickness, memory, courage, magnificence—can, if ill-educated, divert him from philosophy, no less than riches. Such a youth is honored and flattered by friends and citizens eager for his future power, becoming full of boundless aspirations and vain pride. When someone tells him he must slave for understanding, he will not listen, and his friends use intrigues and prosecutions to keep him from philosophy.
Chapter 50
How does Socrates describe the worthy remnant of true philosophers?
Socrates says the worthy disciples of philosophy will be but a small remnant: perhaps a noble, well-educated person detained by exile; a lofty soul born in a mean city whose politics he contemns; a gifted few who leave the arts they justly despise; or one restrained like Theages by ill-health. Having tasted philosophy's sweetness and seen the multitude's madness, such a man holds his peace like one sheltering from a storm, living pure and departing in peace.
Chapter 50
How should the study of philosophy be ordered in the State, according to Socrates?
Socrates says States should pursue philosophy not as they do now, but in the opposite way. At present students begin hardly past childhood, devote only time saved from moneymaking and housekeeping, and abandon the subject when they glimpse dialectic's difficulty; in old age they are extinguished more truly than Heracleitus' sun, never lighting up again. Instead, childhood and youth should have study suited to their tender years, growing up toward manhood.
Chapter 50
BOOK VI. (part 3)4 cards
What does the philosopher imitate through reverential converse, and what does he become?
The philosopher holds converse with the divine order and imitates it, becoming orderly and divine as far as human nature allows. If compelled to fashion human nature generally, in States or individuals, into what he beholds elsewhere, he becomes a skilled artificer of justice, temperance, and every civil virtue. The author argues no State can be happy unless designed by artists who imitate the heavenly pattern.
Chapter 51
How do philosopher-legislators begin their work on a State?
They take the State and the manners of men as a tablet, rub out the existing picture, and leave a clean surface—no easy task. Unlike other legislators, they inscribe no laws until they have found or themselves made a clean surface. Then they trace an outline of the constitution, looking upward at absolute justice, beauty, and temperance and downward at the human copy, erasing and adding features.
Chapter 51
Why are the natural gifts required in a guardian rarely found together?
Quick intelligence, memory, sagacity, and cleverness seldom grow together with high spirit and magnanimity; those who have them are driven by impulse and lose solid principle. Steadfast natures, dependable and immovable in battle, are equally immovable at learning—torpid, yawning, and sleeping over intellectual toil. Both qualities are necessary for higher education, so the class is rarely found.
Chapter 51
What is the highest knowledge, and why is it necessary for a guardian?
The idea of good is the highest knowledge; all other things become useful and advantageous only by their use of it. Without knowledge of the good, no other knowledge or possession profits us. The author argues that he who does not know how the beautiful and the just are likewise good will be a sorry guardian, and no one ignorant of the good has true knowledge of them.
Chapter 51
BOOK VI. (part 4)4 cards
How does Plato relate the good to science, truth, and essence?
The good is the cause of knowledge in things known and of their being and essence, yet is not itself essence; it exceeds essence in dignity and power. Science and truth resemble the good but are not the good, just as light and sight resemble the sun yet are not the sun. The good holds a place of honour higher than both truth and knowledge.
Chapter 52
How is the divided line cut, and what do its two main parts represent?
A line is cut into two unequal parts, then each part is divided again in the same proportion. The two main divisions answer to the visible and the intelligible. The subdivisions are compared by their relative clearness and want of clearness, with the copy related to the original as opinion is to knowledge.
Chapter 52
What are the two subdivisions of the intelligible, and how does each treat hypotheses?
In the lower subdivision, the soul uses visible figures as images and proceeds from hypotheses, descending to a conclusion without rising to a first principle; this covers geometry and kindred sciences. In the higher, reason by dialectic uses hypotheses only as steps and points of departure, passing beyond them to the first principle of the whole, proceeding through ideas without sensible objects.
Chapter 52
Which four faculties of the soul correspond to the four divisions of the line?
Reason answers to the highest division, understanding to the second, faith (or conviction) to the third, and perception of shadows to the last. The faculties form a scale, and each has clearness in the same degree that its objects have truth. Glaucon assents to and accepts this arrangement.
Chapter 52
BOOK VII. (part 1)4 cards
In the cave allegory, what do the prisoners see, and what do they believe about it?
Chained from childhood so they cannot turn their heads, the prisoners see only shadows cast on the wall by the fire, and hear echoes they attribute to the passing shadows. Since they have never seen the carried objects themselves, the author has Socrates say the truth for them is literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
Chapter 53
What happens to a prisoner who is released and dragged up to the sun?
He suffers sharp pains and is dazzled, and at first judges the shadows he knew to be truer than the objects now shown to him. He must grow accustomed gradually: shadows first, then reflections, then objects, then the stars by night, and last of all the sun itself, which he then reasons is the cause of seasons and of all visible things.
Chapter 53
According to the allegory, what does the idea of the good correspond to, and how is it known?
The author has Socrates interpret the journey upward as the soul's ascent into the intellectual world, with the sun standing for the idea of good. He states his opinion that in knowledge the idea of good appears last of all and is seen only with an effort, and that once seen it is inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right.
Chapter 53
Why must the philosophers be compelled to return to the cave, and is this just?
The author argues the legislator did not aim to make one class happy above the rest but the whole State, so the best minds, once they have seen the good, must descend and share the prisoners' labours and honours. Socrates says there is no injustice in compelling them, since in other States such men are self-taught and owe no debt, but here they were educated to rule.
Chapter 53
BOOK VII. (part 2)4 cards
Why does Socrates say arithmetic suits a warrior?
Socrates argues a warrior needs arithmetic to understand military tactics and to array troops; he mocks the idea that Agamemnon could have been ignorant of number. But he insists the true value of arithmetic is philosophical: it draws the soul toward being and abstract truth, so it should be studied not like a shopkeeper but for the soul's sake.
Chapter 54
Which sense-objects 'invite' thought, according to Socrates?
Socrates distinguishes objects that do not invite thought, because sense judges them adequately, from those that do. A finger seen as a finger raises no question. But qualities like great and small, hard and soft, light and heavy, which the senses report as simultaneously opposite, perplex the soul and compel it to summon calculation and intelligence to decide whether things are one or two.
Chapter 54
Why is arithmetic prescribed for the guardians of the city?
Socrates says the guardian is both warrior and philosopher, so arithmetic has a double use: military, for arraying troops, and philosophical, for rising out of change to grasp true being. He urges that future rulers learn it not as amateurs or traders but until they see the nature of numbers with the mind alone, since it compels the soul to reason about abstract number.
Chapter 54
What does Socrates say geometry should aim at?
Socrates argues geometry should draw the soul toward truth and the eternal, not toward perishing, practical matters. He criticizes geometers who speak only of squaring and applying, confusing the science's necessities with daily life. He also grants geometry's military uses and its indirect effect of making students quicker at every kind of knowledge.
Chapter 54
BOOK VII. (part 3)3 cards
According to Socrates, what error do the Pythagoreans make in studying harmony?
The author argues the Pythagoreans err like the astronomers: they investigate the numbers of harmonies that are heard but never reach problems, never attain the natural harmonies of number, and never reflect why some numbers are harmonious and others are not. Socrates calls this a thing of more than mortal knowledge, useful only if sought with a view to the beautiful and good.
Chapter 55
What does Socrates call dialectic, and what power does he attribute to it alone?
Socrates calls dialectic the coping-stone of the sciences, set over them, with no other science placed higher. Dialectic alone goes directly to the first principle and does away with hypotheses to make its ground secure; it alone can reveal the absolute good, and only to a disciple of the previous sciences. It lifts the eye of the soul upward, using the other sciences as handmaids.
Chapter 55
Why does Socrates insist future rulers must not be like 'posts'?
Socrates refuses to let the future rulers of the ideal State be like posts—having no reason in them—yet set in authority over the highest matters. He would make a law that they receive an education enabling them to attain the greatest skill in asking and answering questions, since dialectic is the coping-stone of the sciences.
Chapter 55
BOOK VII. (part 4)3 cards
What education schedule does Socrates propose for the philosopher-rulers?
After the earlier studies, dialectic replaces gymnastics and is pursued diligently and exclusively for five years. Then from about thirty-five they are sent down into the 'den' to hold military or other offices for fifteen years, testing whether they stand firm under temptation. At fifty, those who survive and distinguish themselves behold the absolute good and take turns ruling.
Chapter 56
How does Plato say the ideal city could actually be founded?
The author argues it is difficult but not impossible: when true philosopher-kings are born, despising worldly honours and esteeming justice above all. They would send out of the city everyone over ten years old, take the children, who are unaffected by their parents' habits, and train them in the given laws. Thus the State would soonest and most easily attain happiness.
Chapter 56
What reward and honour does the city give its philosopher-rulers at the end?
After raising successors to govern, they depart to the Islands of the Blest. The city gives them public memorials and sacrifices, honouring them as demigods if the Pythian oracle consents, and otherwise as blessed and divine. Socrates adds that all this applies to women as well as men, since they share in all things.
Chapter 56
BOOK VIII. (part 1)4 cards
What are the four principal forms of government Plato names, in order?
Socrates lists four defective constitutions: first, the Cretan and Spartan polity (timocracy), which is generally applauded; second, oligarchy, a form teeming with evils; third, democracy, which naturally follows oligarchy; and fourth, tyranny, the worst disorder of a State. He adds that other bought-and-sold lordships are nondescripts found among both Hellenes and barbarians.
Chapter 57
How does timocracy arise out of the ideal aristocracy?
The author has the Muses explain that even the perfect city must decay: rulers ignorant of the law of births will unite brides and bridegrooms out of season, producing inferior children. These fail to preserve music and gymnastic, lose the power of testing the metals of the races, and so iron mixes with silver and brass with gold, causing discord, war, and the division of land into private ownership.
Chapter 57
What character traits distinguish the timocratic man?
The author describes him as more self-assertive and less cultivated than the aristocratic man, yet a friend of culture; a good listener but no speaker. He is rough with slaves, unlike the educated man who is too proud for that, courteous to freemen, and remarkably obedient to authority. The spirited, contentious element predominates in him.
Chapter 57
What features does the timocratic State share with the ideal State, and what is peculiar to it?
It resembles the aristocracy in honouring rulers, keeping warriors from agriculture and trade, common meals, and attention to gymnastics and military training. It is peculiar in fearing to admit philosophers (no longer simple and earnest), preferring passionate, simpler characters fit for war, valuing military stratagems, waging endless wars, and secretly hoarding gold and silver.
Chapter 57
BOOK VIII. (part 2)3 cards
What is the first great defect of oligarchy, according to Socrates?
The first great defect is the property qualification itself: rulers are chosen for wealth rather than fitness, like choosing pilots by property and refusing a poor but better pilot. Socrates argues this would shipwreck any enterprise, and the rule of a city is the greatest and most difficult of all, so the defect is strongest there.
Chapter 58
Why does Socrates call an oligarchical state not one but two states?
Because the inevitable division between rich and poor means the state is not one but two states—one of poor, one of rich men—living in the same place and always conspiring against one another. Socrates presents this internal division as a defect at least as bad as the property qualification itself.
Chapter 58
How does the timocratical man's son become the oligarchical man?
Seeing his father ruined—brought to trial by informers, put to death, exiled, or stripped of property—the son is humbled by poverty and turns to money-making. He seats the covetous element on the throne, makes reason and spirit sit obediently beside it, and values only riches. Socrates says no change is so speedy as the ambitious youth becoming avaricious.
Chapter 58
BOOK VIII. (part 3)4 cards
How does Plato describe the democratic man's life and his view of pleasures?
The democratic man lives from day to day, indulging the appetite of the hour—sometimes drinking, sometimes dieting, sometimes exercising, sometimes philosophizing, sometimes doing politics. He treats all pleasures as equal, refusing to distinguish good from evil desires, and calls this distracted, lawless existence joy, bliss, and freedom. Plato says such a man is an epitome of many lives and is taken as a pattern by many men and women.
Chapter 59
What virtues does the democratic man's soul rename, and to what does he exile them?
When false conceits seize the young man's soul, modesty is renamed silliness and thrust into exile, temperance is nicknamed unmanliness and trampled, and moderation with orderly expenditure is called vulgarity and meanness. In their place he brings back insolence, anarchy, waste, and impudence, calling insolence breeding, anarchy liberty, waste magnificence, and impudence courage.
Chapter 59
According to Plato, how does tyranny arise out of democracy?
Plato argues that just as oligarchy was ruined by insatiable desire for wealth, democracy is ruined by insatiable desire for freedom. Excessive liberty, in states or individuals, reacts into excessive slavery. When democracy drinks too deeply of freedom, citizens chafe at all authority and cease to care for laws, and out of this extreme liberty the most aggravated tyranny naturally arises.
Chapter 59
Into what three classes does Plato divide the democratic state?
Plato divides democracy into three classes: the drones (idle spendthrifts, the more courageous leading and the timid following), who in democracy are nearly the entire ruling power; the orderly wealthy class, the most squeezable, who yield honey to the drones; and the working people, the largest and most powerful class, who seldom assemble unless they get a little honey.
Chapter 59
BOOK VIII. (part 4)3 cards
How does the tyrant first build his bodyguard from the people?
The tyrant robs the citizens of their slaves, sets them free, and enrols them in his bodyguard. These freed slaves, the chapter says, are the people he can trust best of all, since they are 'quite of his sort.' He also attracts drones from every land who flock to him if he pays them.
Chapter 60
Why does Plato's Socrates say the tragic poets will forgive being excluded from the State?
Socrates says the tragic poets are the eulogists of tyranny, citing Euripides' line that 'tyrants are wise by living with the wise.' He argues the poets, being wise, will forgive the State for not receiving them, since they praise tyranny and are honoured most by tyrants and next by democracies.
Chapter 60
How does the tyrant fund his army once sacred treasures and confiscated fortunes run out?
First he confiscates sacred treasures and spends them, and uses the fortunes of attainted persons to reduce taxes on the people. When these fail, he and his companions, male and female, are maintained out of his father's estate—meaning the people who produced him must support him and his followers.
Chapter 60
BOOK IX. (part 1)4 cards
According to Socrates, what lawless desires appear in everyone during sleep?
Socrates claims that when the reasoning and ruling power sleeps, the wild beast within us awakens, gorged with food or drink, and seeks to satisfy its desires. At such times no folly or crime is beyond a person—including incest, unnatural union, parricide, or eating forbidden food—once shame and sense have departed. He notes this lawless nature exists even in good men.
Chapter 61
How is the tyrannical man generated from the democratic man?
The democratic man's son is raised in moderate indulgence but is drawn by seducers into a wholly lawless life they call perfect liberty. When these 'tyrant-makers' lose their hold, they implant a master passion—a winged drone—as lord of his soul. Aided by Madness, it purges temperance and shame, bringing in frenzy. Love is thus called a tyrant, and the tyrannical man arises through nature, habit, or both.
Chapter 61
How does the tyrannical man treat his parents and others?
Once his own share is spent, the tyrannical man claims more than his parents and takes slices of their property. If they refuse, he first tries to cheat and deceive them, then uses force and plunder. Socrates says he would strike his mother and aged father for the sake of a harlot or a blooming youth. Such men are always masters or servants, never friends, and never taste true freedom or friendship.
Chapter 61
What does Socrates conclude about the happiness of the tyrant?
Socrates argues the wickedest man is also the most miserable, and the one who tyrannizes longest and most is most continually miserable—though this may not be the general opinion. He compares the tyrannical man to the tyrannical state and the democratic man to the democratic state. The king-ruled city is the best and happiest; tyranny the worst and wretchedest form of government.
Chapter 61
BOOK IX. (part 2)3 cards
According to Socrates, how does the actual tyrant's life compare to the privately tyrannical man's?
The author argues the real tyrant is even more miserable than the private tyrannical man. Forced to master others while not mastering himself, he is like a diseased or paralytic man compelled to fight others rather than live in retirement. He is the real slave, flattering the vilest men, unable to satisfy his desires, poor in soul, and full of fear.
Chapter 62
Why does the philosopher have the best claim to judge which pleasure is truest?
Socrates argues judgment requires experience, wisdom, and reason. The philosopher has tasted the pleasures of gain and honour from childhood, while the money-lover has not tasted the sweetness of learning truth. Only the philosopher possesses reason, the instrument of judgment. So pleasures approved by the lover of wisdom and reason are truest, making the intelligent part's pleasure pleasantest.
Chapter 62
Why does Socrates deny that the absence of pain is true pleasure?
Socrates argues pleasure and pain are motions of the soul, while the neutral state between them is rest, not motion. Since rest cannot be both, the absence of pain only appears pleasant by comparison with prior pain—like calling grey white when you've never seen white. Some pleasures, such as those of smell, arise without antecedent pain, disproving that pleasure is merely relief from pain.
Chapter 62
BOOK IX. (part 3)4 cards
How many times more pleasantly does Plato calculate the king lives than the tyrant?
The king lives 729 times more pleasantly than the tyrant, and the tyrant more painfully by the same interval. Socrates reaches this by treating the difference as a plane figure raised to a solid, three times three multiplied out. He calls it a true calculation nearly concerning human life, since 729 nearly equals the days and nights in a year.
Chapter 63
In the image of the soul, what three creatures are joined into one?
Socrates models a many-headed monster of tame and wild beasts, able to metamorphose at will; a lion, smaller than the monster; and a man, smaller than the lion. The three grow into one, and the outside is fashioned as a single human image so that observers who cannot look within believe it is one creature.
Chapter 63
According to the image, what does the supporter of justice do with the inner creatures?
The just person gives the man within complete mastery over the whole creature, watches the many-headed monster like a good husbandman, fosters gentle qualities and prevents wild ones from growing, makes the lion-heart an ally, and unites the parts with one another and with himself. The unjust feeder instead strengthens the monster and lion and starves the man.
Chapter 63
What does Socrates say happens to the unjust person who is detected and punished?
The undetected unjust person only gets worse. The one detected and punished has the brutal part of his nature silenced and humanized, the gentler element liberated, and his whole soul perfected and ennobled by acquiring justice, temperance, and wisdom, more than the body gains from beauty, strength, and health.
Chapter 63
BOOK X. (part 1)4 cards
What are the three kinds of beds and their three makers?
Socrates distinguishes three beds: the one existing in nature made by God, the particular bed made by the carpenter, and the bed painted by the painter. God made only one ideal bed, since a second would require a third as their common idea. The painter is thus third in descent from nature, an imitator of what others make.
Chapter 64
Why does Plato call the imitative poet thrice removed from truth?
The poet imitates appearances rather than reality, as the painter does. The painter imitates the carpenter's bed, which is itself only a particular copy of God's ideal bed. So the imitator is third from the king and truth, touching only a small part of things, and an image at that, without knowledge of what he imitates.
Chapter 64
What test does Socrates apply to Homer's claimed knowledge?
Socrates asks what city Homer governed well, as Lycurgus did Lacedaemon, Charondas Italy, and Solon Athens; what war he won by counsel; what invention he contributed like Thales or Anacharsis; and whether he had disciples who carried on an Homeric way of life, as Pythagoras did. Glaucon concedes none of these can be named.
Chapter 64
How does Socrates argue that poets lack real knowledge?
The author argues that poets color their words with melody and rhythm, imitating the arts without understanding them, and listeners as ignorant as the poet judge by sound alone. Stripped of music and recited as plain prose, the poets' tales look poor, like faces beautiful only in bloom, not truly beautiful.
Chapter 64
BOOK X. (part 2)3 cards
Why does Plato's Socrates refuse to admit the imitative poet into a well-ordered State?
The imitative poet is like the painter in two ways: his creations have an inferior degree of truth, and he is concerned with an inferior part of the soul. He awakens, nourishes, and strengthens the feelings while impairing reason, implanting an evil constitution in the soul by indulging the irrational nature, which has no discernment of greater and less.
Chapter 65
What harm does poetry do even to the good, according to Socrates?
When we hear Homer or a tragedian portray a weeping hero, the best of us delight in sympathy and praise the poet. Yet in our own sorrow we pride ourselves on quiet patience. The better nature, insufficiently trained by reason or habit, lets the sympathetic element break loose because the sorrow is another's, and the sorrow strengthened at others' misfortunes is hard to repress in our own.
Chapter 65
What condition does Socrates set for poetry's return from exile?
Poetry may return only if she defends herself in lyric or some other metre, or if her prose defenders show she is not only pleasant but also useful to States and human life. Until then, the argument serves as a charm against the childish love of poetry that captivates the many.
Chapter 65
BOOK X. (part 3)4 cards
In the Glaucus comparison, why can the soul's true nature not be seen as it is now?
The author argues the soul resembles the sea-god Glaucus, whose original form is hard to discern because his limbs are broken and crushed by waves and encrusted with seaweed, shells, and stones. Likewise the soul we behold is disfigured by ten thousand ills from its communion with the body. To see her truly, one must contemplate her with the eye of reason in her original purity, especially her love of wisdom.
Chapter 66
What does Socrates demand be restored to justice now that the argument is decided?
Socrates asks Glaucon to repay what was borrowed: the assumption that the just man should appear unjust and the unjust appear just, so pure justice could be weighed against pure injustice. Since justice has been shown to confer reality and not deceive those who possess her, he demands the estimation she is held in by gods and men be given back, so she may also win the palm of appearance.
Chapter 66
According to Er's tale, how are the just and unjust judged and punished after death?
Er reports judges seated between two openings in earth and two in heaven. The just ascend by the heavenly way on the right, bearing sentences in front; the unjust descend by the lower way on the left, bearing symbols of their deeds on their backs. Souls from below weep recalling a thousand-year journey; each wrong suffered tenfold penalty, once per hundred years of a man's life, with rewards of beneficence in the same proportion.
Chapter 66
What is the spindle of Necessity and how are its eight whorls arranged?
Er sees a column of light holding the universe together, from which hangs the spindle of Necessity, with shaft and hook of steel. Its whorl has eight fitted hollow whorls, edges showing above, forming one continuous whorl below. The outermost is broadest; then in size come sixth, fourth, eighth, seventh, fifth, third, second. The whole spindle turns one way while the seven inner circles move slowly the other way.
Chapter 66
BOOK X. (part 4)3 cards
In the myth of Er, why did the first soul choose the life of tyranny?
The first chooser seized the greatest tyranny because his mind was darkened by folly and sensuality; he did not think out the whole matter and failed to see that he was fated to devour his own children. He came from heaven and had dwelt in a well-ordered State, but his virtue was habit only, without philosophy.
Chapter 67
Which lives did Odysseus and Ajax choose, and why?
Odysseus, whose lot was last, chose the life of a private man with no cares, disenchanted of ambition by recollection of former toils; he said he would have chosen it even if first. Ajax, obtaining the twentieth lot, chose a lion's life, refusing to be a man out of resentment over the judgment about the arms.
Chapter 67
What happens to souls after choosing, at the plain of Forgetfulness?
Each chosen genius leads the soul to Clotho, then to Atropos, making the destiny irreversible; souls pass beneath the throne of Necessity and march to the barren plain of Forgetfulness. By the river of Unmindfulness all must drink a measure, and those not saved by wisdom drink more than necessary and forget all things.
Chapter 67
Source and licence
Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #1497 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-18. Cards reviewed 2026-10-18.
These cards paraphrase the text for study. They are not a substitute for reading the book, and they do not reproduce long passages.
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