Republic 7 (521c-541b)

Education of the Philosopher-Kings

Contents:

• The Education of Guardian Rulers  (521c-540a)

• Inclusion of Women  (540b-d)

• Is the Ideal City Possible?  (540e-541b)

• Suggestions for Further Reading

The Education of Guardian Rulers  (521c-540a)

• It begins with the education of the Auxiliaries and accordingly music and gymnastics

• (the arts and humanities)

• This can be related to the shadow world of the Cave and the lowest section of the Divided Line.

• Then mathematics, considered very useful to a general or admiral in war.

• Mathematics, as the third level of the Divided Line, is touted as the intermediary way to higher intellection of the Pure Forms, "to draw men toward being."

• Socrates illustrates the studies that draw the mind higher by contrasting the mind’s apprehension of the Form of the finger (Fingerness Itself) as universal, eternal, perfect, common to all particular fingers- and three fingers, middle, ring and forefinger held before one’s eyes. Each visible finger is shaped and sized differently and positioned differently and, depending on the type of work one engages in, soft or rough. But each, the mind perceives, participates in the one unchanging Form of the Finger.

• Mathematics thus can lead the philosopher warrior from practical application to pure formal entities and relationships. These will bring her closer to eternal truth.

• Geometry is added on, and solid geometry would be if more headway can be made in it.

• Astronomy is the next study. Here the position and movement of the planets is useful for navigation and also generalship.

• Socrates is reluctant to say that the study of astronomy has led souls to higher intellection, because stargazing without understanding cosmic laws of motions is as ignorant as shadow gazing.

• One has to understand the lightening fast motion of the sphere of the fixed stars and how it imports motion to the ethereal spheres and their planets below [Aristotle and Ptolemy describe these motions in more depth, but here they are mentioned in the Republic] Motion in depth are the true subject of astronomy. One can only guess what Plato thought of the mythology and astrology associated with the planets and the stars.

• True astronomy leads you to the Demiurge who rationally crafts the universe and sets it on a harmonious continuous direction. That there is a rational cosmic order inspires the philosopher to suspend her contemplation of it and work in public life to establish a civic order that reflects it.

  • They add the study of musical harmony as it relates to astrological harmony (The Music of the Spheres).

  • After qualifying exams, the most proficient enter into five years of philosophy and the study of dialectic.

  • Socrates names the sectors of the Divided Line from the top down:

    • Knowledge

    • Though

    • Trust

    • Imagination

• The guardians picked to enter philosophy must be virtuous and their education should not be forced upon them.

• ‘The free man ought not to learn any study slavishly." (536d)

• Study must be integrated and multi-disciplinary. A capstone course providing an overview of the studies is recommended.

• They begin the study of dialectic at the age of thirty.

• Dialectic can destroy belief in conventional norms and religious myths and tradition. Such a one can have her head turned by Sophists to self-serving vicious aggression. But the philosopher should be able to refocus the dialectic back to the eternal Forms and to the form of the Good which the myths represented about as well as a shadow represents the thing that casts it.

• Then after five years of philosophy they "return to the cave." At the age of thirty five they take command of the military and conduct war for fifteen years. They are observed to see who disgraces themselves in the field out of greed, cowardice, or concupiscence.

• Those who are best at everything take up the rule of the City at age 50. (540a)

Insistence on the Inclusion of Women  (540b-d)

• Glaucon: "Just like a sculptor, Socrates, he said, "you have produced ruling men who are wholly fair."
• Socrates:  "And ruling women too, Glaucon," I said. "Don't suppose that what I said applies any more to men than to women, all those who are born among them with adequate natures."
• Glaucon: "That's right, he said," if they are to share everything in common with the men, as we described it."

Is the Ideal City possible?  (540e-541b)

• If they kidnap and march off to the country all the children under ten to be resocialized away from their parents and the corrupting culture of the City, then they have a shot at producing the Ideally Just City.  (Horrible images of the depopulation of the city by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the resocialization of children in rural settings during the Stalin era and even the presumed kidnapping and chaining of infants in the Cave, intrude upon our reflections.  
• Can Plato be serious?  Commentators are divided on this.  If the Ideal State is practical only if all the children below ten are resocialized in a rural setting, then the Ideal State, for some, is not a serious proposal.  
• What then is this all about?  The State is a metaphor for the individual soul and the individual can be home-schooled at ten apart from popular conventions and prejudices and taught the Cardinal Virtues (Jean Jacques Rousseau would agree).  That is possible.  This view downplays the notion that the Republic is a political treatise at all and is instead primarily a vehicle for teaching virtue.  For that camp, Plato's last work The Laws alone represents his political philosophy.  For those who find it implausible that Plato is offering no practical political advice in the Republic, Plato is interpreted as sincere in his belief that radical educational reform, especially on the collegiate level of the auxiliaries and guardians, is essential if the ideal State is to be approached, no less achieved.

    Suggestions for Further Reading 

• Annas, Julia. An Introduction to Plato's Republic. New York: Oxford, 1981. [16-58] 

• Bernadete, Seth. Socrates' Second Sailing: On Plato's Republic. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1989. [9-32]. 

• Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato. New York: Harper Collins, 1968. [310-337] 

• Irwin, Terence. Plato's Ethics. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. [169-180] 

• Lycos, K. Plato on Justice and Power. Alabany: State University of New York, 1987. 

• Pappas, Nickolas. Plato and the Republic. New York: Routledge, 1995. [27-50] 

• Reeve, C.D.C. Philosopher-Kings: The Argument of Plato's Republic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1988. [3-42] 

• Sallis, John. Being and Logos: Reading Platonic Dialogues. 3rd ed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1996. 
  [312-346] 

• Taylor, A.E. Plato: The Man and His Work. New York: Meridian, 1964. [265-270] 

• White, Nicholas P. A Companion to Plato's Republic. Indianapolis, Hackett, 1979. [61-73]

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