CLAS 1104 · Plato's Republic

Led by Plato of Athens Simulacrum

1. Module 4 ○ Open

   Plato's Republic

   Led by Plato of Athens Simulacrum

   The question

   Plato's *Republic* (composed c. 380 BCE) is the most influential single work of philosophy in the Western tradition. The dialogue begins as a question about justice, becomes a project to construct an ideal city as a way of seeing what justice is at the level where it can be examined, and ends with the famous Allegory of the Cave and the doctrine of the philosopher-king. The book is a literary achievement (the *Republic* is set in a Piraeus household one evening in the late fifth century BCE, and the conversational machinery is some of the finest in Greek prose) and a philosophical one. What is the *Republic* really about, and how should the student of the classical world read it?

   Outcome

   The student has read at minimum Books 1-2, Book 5, Book 7, and Book 10 of the *Republic* in modern translation (G.M.A.

   Begin the course → Mark module complete Print certificate of completion

   Practice scenarios

   The Cave

   Plato Simulacrum walks you through the Allegory of the Cave (Book 7, 514a-520a). Read the passage in full. Read also the immediately preceding analogies of the Sun (508a-509b) and the Divided Line (509d-511e); the three together form a sustained argument about knowledge, education, and the philosopher's relation to the city. Then write a 700-word philosophical-analytical essay: what is the Cave allegory claiming about education and about political authority; how does it work as analogy (the bound prisoner ↔ the unphilosophical citizen; the freed prisoner ↔ the philosopher; the sun ↔ the Form of the Good); and what is at stake in the move at 519c-520a where the freed prisoner is required to return to the cave?

   Your goals

   • Read the Sun, Line, and Cave passages consecutively before drafting.
   • Identify the structural elements of the Cave allegory and their referents in Plato's argument.
   • Address the philosophical claim about education being not the implanting of sight in the blind eye but the turning of the eye that already sees toward what is.
   • Engage the political claim at 519c-520a — why must the philosopher return — and what it implies about the relationship between knowledge and rule.
   • 700 words ± 100, scholarly register; engage at least one modern source on the Cave.

   Practise this scenario →