The Allegory of the Cave - American University of Beirut 2017-2018...Plato’s Republicand the Ideal...
Transcript of The Allegory of the Cave - American University of Beirut 2017-2018...Plato’s Republicand the Ideal...
Eric GoodfieldPlato’s Republic and the Ideal City of the Mind
-Thrasymachus: “Justice is nothing else than
the interest of the stronger”
-The purity of the castes is to be preserved at
all costs in “that there is nothing which they
should so anxiously guard, or of which they
are to be such good guardians, as of the purity
of the race.”
-Purpose of the guardians is “the greatest
happiness of the whole.”
-it is only with the “meddlesomeness …and
interference” of the inferior in the “rising up
of a part of the soul against the whole” … that
the soul is rended into corruption and
deformity.
-Justice in the soul as in the state means that
“each part of him is doing its own business,
whether in ruling or being ruled.”
-Where “all [are] of one opinion about what is
near and dear to them, …they all tend towards
a common end.”
-“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings
and princes of this world have the spirit and
power of philosophy, and political greatness
and wisdom meet in one, cities will never
have rest from their evils.”
The Allegory of the Cave
Source: http://dev.classicalwisdom.com/pursuit-good/
Source: http://p-adamek0912-whatisgood.blogspot.com/2010/09/platos-analogy-of-cave.html