...Plato’s Republic: Metals Metaphor Interpretation In Plato’s The Republic, there are many arguments to what may build a perfect city. Plato offers the reader an in-depth presentation of Socrates’ personal thoughts and philosophical ideas. One concept I thoroughly examined was the Metals Metaphor. This metaphor states, citizens are born with innate metals within them whether it be gold, silver, or iron/bronze. This would be utilized to ensure people would understand which of the classes they are placed within the city. The Metals Metaphor has been interpreted in many different ways. Some believe this would be told to the city to ensure the auxiliaries, or working class, would be pleased with their place in society, while other have interpreted it was a means to maintain the rulers’ happiness considering they lived a life without wealth and possessions. I do not believe this tale would be told to preserve the rulers’ contentment. I disagree with this specific interpretation for a few different reasons. First and foremost, Socrates speaks on how highly valued education is. Socrates presents “The Allegory of the Cave”, and how a leader would need to metaphorically “be dragged out of a cave as far as possible” to rule efficiently. I believe a ruler, with all of the education provided, would understand the importance of their leadership and would place that above possessions and/or wealth. They are born into thinking a “philosopher-king” position is the outmost highest achievement;...
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...Book I What is justice? Why should we be just? Cephalus - Justice means living up to your legal obligations and being honest. - Socrates - Its like returning weapon to a madman.. he'll kill people. Polemarchus - Justice means that you owe friends help, and you owe enemies harm. - Socrates - we are not always friends with the most virtuous, nor are our enemies always teh scum of society Thrasymachus , sophist - Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger-- it does not pay to be just.Justice is a conventon imposed on us, and it does not benefit us to adhere to it. The rational thing is to ignore it. - Socrates 1. This promotes injustice as a virtue. In his view, life is like a continual competition to get more. And whoever is most successful has the most virtue? Thats bullshit! mathematicians dont compete with others, etc 2. In order to reach any of Thrasymachus' goals, you must atleast be moderately just to even follow them. 3. Since justice is a virtue of the soul, and virtue of teh soul means health of the soul, justice is desirable because it means health of the soul. Book II Glaucon - All good can be divided into 3 classes: 1. Things we desire for consequences (physical training, medical treatment) 2. Things we desire for their own sake (joy) 3. Things we desire for own sake and for what we get from them (knowledge, sight, health) - highest class - Most people class justice in the first group, as a necessary evil, allowing...
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...Just individuals : In his book ‘The Republic’, Plato searches for justice within the individual and what makes a person ‘just’. By comparing his sense of what is just at a political level and what is just at a psychological level he suggests three virtues of the individual which will make that particular person just. The virtues of wisdom, courage and moderation are common to both a just and the fictional just city of Kallipolis. This artificial city has the pre-determined virtue of being just – he does this in order to understand what justice is for the individual because Plato thinks that ‘a just man won’t differ at all from a just city in respect to the form of justice; rather he’ll be like the city.’ (Republic 435b) In the just city Plato creates three classes: the producers, the guardians and the rulers. Each of these three classes has a certain virtue it has to display to fulfill the ‘just city’ pre-requisite that Plato has placed upon Kallipolis. The rulers are required to exhibit wisdom so that ‘a whole city established according to nature would be wise because of the smallest class and part in it, namely the governing or ruling one. And to this class, belongs a share of the knowledge that alone among all the other kinds of knowledge is to be called wisdom.’ (428e-429a) The wisdom enjoyed by the rulers would be used to ensure that the city has ‘good judgement and [be] really wise.’ (428d) The guardians (soldiers) of Kallipolis would be educated in order to absorb...
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...Human nature drives individuals to define the most perplexing concepts; however, understanding the true meaning refers to more than its denotation. The definition of justice proves to be a conflicting view point, dating back to Socrates’s attempted explanation in Plato’s The Republic. Within the first book, Socrates finds himself exposing the flaws behind three definitions of justice proposed by the traditionalists of Athens. Through Socrates’s ridicule of physical attributions equating to justice, he disproves these perceived virtues and conveys the necessity for a lack of physicality. Due to Celphalus’s patrician status within the ancient Athenian society, he derives his definition of justice through his high financial position. After speaking...
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...protect the society from outside dangers. Finally, workers are compared to the desire that pushes individuals to commit or pursue irrational acts. For Plato, a successful just society is one in which the guardians control or rule using reason, the auxiliaries protect the society’s wealth and territory from outside attacks though their courage; while workers will moderate their desires. Therefore, guardians are considered to be as moral experts that have a philosophical thinking, which means that they have the necessary knowledge to ask the right questions about human life and assess what is best for the society as a whole. They are compared to dogs for their intelligence, loyalty, courage and strength; and they are supposed to educate in Plato’s Society in order to establish justice. They need to establish a good educational system that fulfills the needs of every social class according to its function and abilities, through telling myths and making censorship. They also can not have private families or property, and can be from both...
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...Reflection Paper on Plato’s Republic According to Plato, a perfect society is a society that is organized in a superlatively efficient way, a society, which some scholars consider as an aristocratic government (Phylosophypages, 2001). Plato had it that such a society is made up of the rulers, the soldiers, and the people. In this perfect society, Plato claimed that the guardians of the state are supposed to be people with skills to lead. He was however, incredulous by the fact that this may not be achieved in the future of the perfect society. To this fact he gives an ingenious riposte, such societies will be under the guardianship of the offspring of the current guardians. That means what the future society will be under the guardianship of a not skill but the benefits of inheritance. In such a society, dissatisfaction is possibly the way of the day. Plato maintained that for dissatisfaction an understanding of the nature of the human being is the answer. That is, people are naturally different and they have where they fit in the society (Philosophyprofessor). In such a situation, they will be able to rule the society. A perfect society, I believe, is one that is distinctive by leaders who have the interests of the society at hand. That is, a society under the reign of guardians who are in favor of the members of the society and their needs. A society that is simply having rulers who have inherited power is liable to doom. This is because, in most cases, such kinds of people...
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...Sean McLean Economics 3 November 2015 The Allegory of the Cave Plato's ideas in The Republic were truly revolutionary, and far more advanced than anyone during his time had heard. In book seven, the allegory of the cave is introduced. This is one of the most talked about ideas in philosophy. This allegory is Plato's way of showing the effect of education on the souls of humans. A group of people have been stuck in a cave since their birth. Their necks, and legs are bound by chains, so that they may not turn around. Behind them, there is a large fire that never ends, never burns out. In front of the fire, there is a wall, wide enough for humans to walk on. He calls these humans, "puppeteers." The reason why he calls them that, is because they are...
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...The use of force by those who are permitted to command power can be handled in ways that can either help or harm society as a whole. The ways in which force is dictated directly correlates to the problem of violence within society among the works of Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s Republic and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Creon from Sophocles’ Antigone, Thrasymachus from Plato’s Republic and the Melian Dialogue from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War all illustrate how force can be used for personal gain. The characters involved in these three works evidently reveal that those who are awarded with the utmost power may not always be the people who deserve the right to make decisions. Creon, from Sophocles’ Antigone, is a prime...
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...In Plato’s Republic, Socrates is describing the ideal system under which people ought to be educated under to have balance between the three tiers of the soul, with those being the spirited, appetitive, and rational parts. He goes into detail about how some aspects of education must be censored as to not skew people’s spirits out of balance. To critique Plato’s proposals for censorship, first we must outline his plans for education and analyze his proposal for education in his emulation of the “perfect city”. The basic guidelines Socrates provides for governing the education of children and adults are mostly all encompassing. Such rules include the redacted mythology and epics, studying mathematics, geometry, philosophical literature, partaking...
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...In Plato’s “The Republic” Book II, a philosopher by the name of Glaucon is introduced. He believes that the value of justice needs to be examined further. He does not agree with what Socrates’ defines as justice. Socrates believes that justice is a worthy goal as both an end and as a means to an end. Glaucon offers to play the devil's advocate to Socrates’ view of justice by saying that justice has no intrinsic value and only the consequences matter. Glaucon uses Thrasymachus’ argument, from Book I, as the basis for his first point. Thrasymachus believed that anything ‘good’ could be separated into three categories. The first represented anything that was a “good we like for its own sake (Plato 33)”. The second category represents things that are good based...
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...In book 2 of Plato's Republic, Glaucon challenges Socrates to explain why he believes it is better to be just than unjust. Using the analogy of Ring of Gyges, Glaucon Socrates to explain why anyone should still desire justice even if there are no further ends to be pursued such as good reputation and honour. Socrates then offers a conception of justice which goes beyond the definitions offered by his previous interlocuters earlier on in the Republic. This essay will first aim to discuss in detail the challenge set forth by Glaucon followed by an analysis of Socrates' conception of justice with reference to his city-soul analogy. Glaucon claims, on behalf of the average Athenian, that justice is purely a social construction, valued by the masses in view of obtaining a good reputation for justice and virtue(358a). He claims that goods are of three kinds: (1)Goods valued only for what they are and not for their consequences, (2)goods valued for what they are and for their consequences, and (3) goods valued only for their consequences(357b-d). After the two agree on justice belonging to the goods of type-2, Glaucon proceeds to give an explanation of the majority's conception of justice by giving an account of its origins: Before any laws came to be...
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...An Ideal Leader: An analysis of Machiavelli’s The Prince, Plato’s Republic, and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations Leadership strategies are a source of great debate in the discussion of Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli’s Prince, and Plato’s Republic when considering the pedagogic approach of each writer or thinker in their ideal understanding of the leadership role in a country or state. Messick agrees with this concept that leadership is hotly discoursed, “Leadership is indisputable one of the most discussed, studies, and written about topics in our society. A keyword search in the Expanded Academic Index for occurrences of the word “leadership” in a title or abstract reveals over 12,000 citation sin the year 2000 alone.” Every country has some sort...
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...When looking at Plato’s Republic there are many similarities to the unique Spartan city-state. Ideas that were similar included, elimination of wealth, the ideas about woman, children, and marriage, and the training for the military soldiers. Another aspect that could have aided Plato’s Republic from the Spartan society was the council of Elders that represented the people. This system would allow the people to become more involved in the government and create a more secure system of checks and balances. The similarities between the Spartan society and the Republic made Plato’s ideal city stronger because it allowed the people to be closer in equality then previous systems of government and because of the acceptance of their social classes. The elimination of wealth in the Spartan society was implemented in Plato’s Republic. Both government ideals about erasing currency, trade, and unnecessary luxuries from the societies, personified people as being more accepting of their social classes. The citizens would not flaunt their riches to others because they did not possess more then they needed to be happy within their social classes. “…they are only fed, and not paid in addition to their food, like other men: and therefore they cannot, if they would, take a journey of pleasure; they have no money to spend on a mistress or any other luxurious fancy, which, as the world goes, is thought to be happiness… (Plat. 241).” The happiness that the people in the Republic will find is aiding...
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...random song that you might encounter on a day to day basis? Questions concerning the effects of music on people have been around for a long time, going back as far as ancient Greece. While this paper will not attempt to cover the complete body of literature this topic entails nor will it attempt to answer these questions, it will examine one of their most notable philosophers, Plato, and see how his opinions concerning music and its effects on behavior on individuals and society at large match up with the beliefs of today. Plato felt that music could have a profound effect on individuals, for good or for ill, and could shape society at large. In Plato's Republic we find Socrates discussing with Glaucon what proper modes of music should be included in the education of the guardians of their ideal state. By this point in the Republic guardians have been defined as individuals who are both fierce to enemies of the state and gentle to its citizens.(Plato) To this end the two men describe at great length the types of music that encourage or accompany all manner of behaviors and proceed to eliminate those that encourage acts unbecoming of such soldiers. For dirges and laments the modes of Mixed Lydian and Hyperlydian were ascribed, for drinking and effeminacy Ionian and Lydian, and those that promote bravery and temperance, namely the modes Dorian and Phrygian.(Plato). Glaucon and Socrates exclude all but the last two as guardians should not behave in any other manner. They go on to...
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...The movie The Queen basically talked about how did the Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Royal Family deal with death of Princess Diana. There are many things about the British political system in the movie, but I would like to mainly identify three things in the movie are role prime minister, election system, and monarchy. First of all, I will start with the role of Prime Minister. There are three major parties and several small parties in UK. The major parties are Labour Party, the Liberal Democrat Party, and Conservative Party. The prime ministers are the most powerful heads of government of any contemporary democracy. They are also responsible for many governmental decisions. Similar to the Italy, even though the head of state is the president, the head of government is still prime minister. They are named by the Queen, and also have weekly meeting with the Queen. They are selected by the people, as the Mrs. Blair said in the movie, “you are a man that’s just been elected by the nation.” Prime Ministers play a very important role in the British government. Like the United States, the United Kingdom uses the single-member system based on plurality. Each of the 646 constituencies elected one Member of Parliament, and that member need to get more votes than any other candidate, but not the majority. The voters in UK select all 646bmembers of the House of Commons during the general election. UK campaigns are short affairs, usually lasting less than a month. Compare...
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