The Republic summary

After this impasse, Socrates proposes his own definition of justice: minding one’s own business. This, he says, has both a private and a public aspect to it.

To mind our own business is to responsibly play our appropriate role, and thereby benefit both ourselves and our city. The citizens of a city that functions in a just and well-organized fashion each have their role, perfectly suited to them. Because of this, no one person has to take care of everything themselves.

There is a thread that runs through the dialogues on justice – the difference between essence and appearance. That is, how something appears as opposed to what it actually is. The greatest kind of injustice is for someone to seem just, when in actuality he is unjust.

Plato’s brother, Glaucon, now joins the dialogue. Both Glaucon and Socrates attempt to understand justice and present the idea that a just life is more desirable than an unjust life.

Socrates postulates that education should instruct individuals to be just. Therefore, a sound education is one that enables individuals to have a healthy mind and body that can shield and strengthen the city.

For example, musical education paves the way to a healthy mind, and gymnastics leads to a healthy body.

It’s impossible to study someone without also examining their city, Socrates says. Not only does a city create its citizens, but the citizens also form and develop their city. The just person and the just city need each other.

A city forms its citizens in accordance with its laws and institutions. Then, as citizens mature and take on different offices, they can alter laws and devise new ones, helping the city to progress along with them.

How should the just city look and how should it be organized? Socrates uses the noble lie to demonstrate how the city is partitioned, and how the human soul is also divided into the same parts as the city.

The first part of the soul and city is ruled according to reason.

If you had to choose, whom would you want to be ruled by? Socrates posits that philosophers must be made the rulers of the city. This, he says, is the only way that the city’s laws will be just and its oversight rational.

For the philosopher-king, philosophy and authority must go hand in hand. To have a philosopher be king, or king be a philosopher, their souls must be governed by reason and their city must be ruled in a rational way.

Just because something is rational doesn’t mean it’s popular. Sometimes it can be quite the opposite. Rational arguments often struggle against our well-ingrained habits and prejudices. For example, it can be near-impossible trying to persuade someone exercise regularly. Likewise, the rational philosophers trying to organize a city will often be met with irrational resistance.

Socrates demonstrates this point with the myth of the cave. The attempt of philosophers to educate those around them, he says, is like dragging people out of a cave.

Most of us in the West will only have ever experienced one form of government: democracy. But what are the other forms of government? And which is best? Socrates now puts forth his own analysis.

Socrates argues that the life of cities is circular, cycling from the best form of government to the worst, and then returning to the best.