PLATO Republic

Reeve-PlatoRepub-00Fnt Page i Friday, July 30, 2004 10:36 AM PLATO Republic i Reeve-PlatoRepub-00Fnt Page ii Friday, July 30, 2004 10:36 AM Reeve-PlatoRepub-00Fnt Page iii Friday, July 30, 2004 10:36 AM PLATO Republic Translated from the New Standard Greek Text, with Introduction, by C. D. C. REEVE Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge iii Copyright © 2004 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved 08 07 06 05 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 For further information, please address: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Cover design by Abigail Coyle Interior design by Jennifer Plumley Composition by William Hartman Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plato. [Republic. English] Republic / translated from the new standard Greek text, with introduction, by C.D.C. Reeve. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-87220-737-4 (hardcover) — ISBN 0-87220-736-6 (pbk.) 1. Political science—Early works to 1800. 2 Utopias. I. Reeve, C.D.C., 1948– II. Title. JC71.P513 2004 321'.07—dc22 2004013418 ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-737-0 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-736-3 (paper) eISBN: 978-1-60384-013-2 (ebook) Reeve-PlatoRepub-00Fnt Page v Friday, July 30, 2004 10:36 AM For Daddy on his 88th birthday, with much love. v Reeve-PlatoRepub-00Fnt Page vi Friday, July 30, 2004 10:36 AM Reeve-PlatoRepub-00Fnt Page vii Friday, July 30, 2004 10:36 AM Contents Preface viii Introduction ix Select Bibliography xxviii Synopsis xxx Note to the Reader xxxiv THE REPUBLIC Book 1 1 Book 2 36 Book 3 66 Book 4 103 Book 5 136 Book 6 176 Book 7 208 Book 8 238 Book 9 270 Book 10 297 Glossary of Terms 327 Glossary and Index of Names 330 General Index 338 vii Reeve-PlatoRepub-00Fnt Page viii Friday, July 30, 2004 10:36 AM Preface I have been a student of the Republic since I first encountered it as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1988 I published a book about it (Philosopher-Kings). Four years later, I published a revision of G. M. A. Grube’s excellent translation. Perhaps I should have rested content with that, but my desire to have a Republic translation of my own proved too strong. The fruit of five years’ work, it is now in print. Naturally, I hope it improves on existing translations. If so, I have their producers largely to thank. Certainly, I have ransacked them for assistance. Tom Griffith has helped greatly, Robin Waterfield too, and also (in the case of Books 5 and 10) Stephen Halliwell. Over the years, my respect has grown for earlier translations—for that of George Grube, from which I learned a huge amount, but also for those of Allan Bloom and Paul Shorey. Every translation, even the most self-consciously and flat-footedly slavish, is somewhat interpretative. There is no avoiding that. But I have tried to make this one as uninterpretative and close to the original as possible. One con- scious deviation from strict accuracy, however, will be obvious at a glance. The Republic is largely in reported speech. Socrates is relating a conversation he had in the past. But I have cast his report as an explicit dialogue in direct speech, with identified speakers. In the Theaetetus, Plato has Eucleides adopt a similar stratagem. “This is the book,” he says to Terpsion; “You see, I have written it out like this: I have not made Socrates relate the conversation as he related it to me, but I represent him as speaking directly to the persons with whom he said he had this conversation.” Decades of teaching the Republic have persuaded me that the minimal loss in literalness involved in adopting Eucleides’ stratagem is more than made up for in readability and intelligibility. I renew my gratitude to John Cooper for his always judicious advice, and to Paul Woodruff for his. I am also grateful to the publisher’s readers, Chris- topher Rowe and the team of Patrick Miller and Christopher Childers. The latter—in particular—saved me from numerous errors and omissions. My debt to their care and scholarship is unrepayable. I am grateful to Hackett Publishing Company itself for trusting me with what is, in many ways, its flagship text; to my editor, Deborah Wilkes, for her encouragement and support; to Jenevieve Maerker for her help with the Introduction and, with Abigail Coyle, for the cover design. Many warm thanks, finally, to Janet Zweig for suggesting the wonderfully appropriate cover photograph. Chapel Hill, June 2004 viii Reeve-PlatoRepub-00Fnt Page ix Friday, July 30, 2004 10:36 AM Introduction No one doubts that the Republic is one of the very greatest works of West- ern philosophy. Like nothing before it and very little since, it combines philosophical and literary resourcefulness of the highest order in an attempt to answer the most important question of all—how should we live if we want to live well and be happy? Justly or unjustly? Morally or immorally? Moreover, the answer it develops is based on an unusually rich account of our nature and the nature of reality. Ethics, politics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, epistemology, and metaphysics are all woven together in it, and their later developments have been decisively shaped by its contribution to them. Contemporary philosophers read the Republic, as their predecessors did, not out of piety, but because it continues to challenge, disquiet, and inspire. Western philosophy is not, to be sure, simply a series of footnotes to this amazing text, but many of its best stories begin here. PLATO Plato was born in Athens in 429 BCE and died there in 348/7. His father, Ariston, traced his descent to Codrus, who was supposedly king of Athens in the eleventh century BCE; his mother, Perictione, was related to Solon, architect of the Athenian constitution (594/3). While Plato was still a boy, his father died and his mother married Pyrilampes, a friend of the great Athenian statesman Pericles. Hence Plato was familiar with Athenian politics from childhood and was expected to enter it himself. Horrified by actual political events, however, including the execution of his mentor and teacher Socrates in 399 BCE, he turned instead to philosophy, thinking that only it could bring true justice to human beings and put an end to civil war and political upheaval (see Seventh Letter 324b–326b). In the Republic, written around 380 BCE, he lays out the grounds for this at once pessimis- tic and optimistic assessment. Plato’s works, which are predominantly dialogues, all seem to have sur- vived. They are customarily divided into four chronological groups, though the precise ordering (especially within groups) is controversial: Early: Alcibiades, Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Hippias Minor, Hip- pias Major, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Menexenus, Theages Transitional: Euthydemus, Gorgias, Meno, Protagoras ix Reeve-PlatoRepub-00Fnt Page x Friday, July 30, 2004 10:36 AM Introduction Middle: Cratylus, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, Phaedrus, Parmenides, The- aetetus Late: Timaeus, Critias, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, Laws Besides writing his dialogues, Plato contributed to philosophy by founding the Academy, arguably the first university. This was a center of research and teaching, both in theoretical subjects and also in more practical ones. Eudoxus, who gave a geometrical explanation of the revolutions of the sun, moon, and planets, brought his own students with him to join Plato and studied and taught in the Academy; Theaetetus developed solid geometry there. But cities also invited members of the Academy to help them in the practical task of developing new political constitutions. The Academy lasted for some centuries after Plato died, ending around 80 BCE. Its early leaders, including his own nephew, Speusippus, who suc- ceeded him, all modified his teachings in various ways. Later, influenced by the early Socratic dialogues, which end in puzzlement (aporia), the Acad- emy, under Arcesilaus, Carneades, and other philosophers, defended skepti- cism; later still, influenced by Plato’s other writings, Platonists were more dogmatic, less unsure. Platonism of one sort or another—Middle or Neo- or something else—remained the dominant philosophy in the pagan world of late antiquity, influencing St. Augustine among others, until the emperor Justinian closed the pagan schools at Athens in 529 CE. Much of what passed for Plato’s thought until the nineteenth century, when German scholars pioneered a return to Plato’s writings themselves, was a mixture of these different “Platonisms.” Given the vast span and diversity of Plato’s writings and the fact that they are dialogues, not treatises, it is little wonder that they were read in many different ways, even by Plato’s ancient followers. In this respect nothing has changed: different schools of philosophy and textual interpretation con- tinue to find profoundly different messages and methods in Plato. Doctrinal continuities, discontinuities, and outright contradictions of one sort or another are discovered, disputed, rediscovered, and redisputed. Neglected dialogues are taken up afresh, old favorites newly interpreted. New ques- tions are raised, old ones resurrected and reformulated: is Plato’s Socrates really the great ironist of philosophy or a largely non-ironic figure? Is Plato a systematic philosopher with answers to give or a questioner only? Is he primarily a theorist about universals, or a moralist, or a mystic with an oth- erworldly view about the nature of reality and the place of the human psyche in it? Is the Republic a totalitarian

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