"If you knew you could commit any crime and never get caught, would you still choose a righteous life? Does acting justly lead to greater happiness than injustice? These are the questions that launch the inquiry Plato dramatized in his "Republic," a work that in antiquity bore the alternate title "On Justice." The conversation Plato staged in that work, using his former teacher Socrates as leading man and putting his own older brothers into supporting roles, then takes on enormous breadth, veering into discussions of politics, education, the ideal state, and the problem that lies at the root of Platonic philosophy: How do we know what is real and what's merely illusion?
Plato's most far-reaching work is today his most widely read, indeed the most widely assigned text by any author at America's top universities (according to a 2016 study by the Open Syllabus Project). That's surely what Plato hoped to achieve as he composed his "Republic." From stylistic clues we can tell that he kept revising the work through most of his life (that is, through the first half of the fourth century B.C.), far longer than any of his other 30-odd dialogues. An ancient Greek anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, holds that just after his death a tablet was found on which, in his last hours, he had been reworking the opening sentence of the "Republic."
As one might expect of a multi-decade project, the "Republic" is an accretion of multiple segments. Its first book (of 10) forms a kind of overture, in which Socrates debates the nature of justice with Thrasymachus, a fiery defender of injustice, especially the depredations of tyrants. Then Thrasymachus, defeated, falls silent and Socrates turns his attention to Plato's 20-something brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus. The three agree to construct an imaginary city-state and see what would make it just, on the grounds that such a polis would have the same structure as a human soul. By this remarkable parallelism, a perfectly just polity will provide the group with a magnified version of individual justice.
The building of the just city occupies several books. The project requires extensive discussion of education, since the city's political and military class must, in the scheme of the "Republic," be brought up and trained as philosophers. From the ranks of these guards will come rulers who have excelled at this training, those whom we now call philosopher-kings (Plato himself never uses that term). In the highly stratified, state-controlled society Plato envisions, these rulers will exercise absolute power because they act in accord with absolute justice. The guards will obey them implicitly thanks to their shared philosophic education, forming a dictatorship based on virtue.
But are there moral imperatives that ensure a dominant class, or a ruler, will remain virtuous? Plato understands that, as many a modern regime has shown, his extreme statism can lead to disaster if the answer is "no." His "Republic" rises in fervor in its next and most famous segment, as Plato seeks a moral scheme that can compel righteous action.
Plato has Socrates argue that nothing we see around us is "real" in the truest sense. We live as though in a cave, says Socrates; we watch shadows cast on the walls and suppose we have gained understanding if we learn the patterns by which the shadows appear. Outside our cave lies a sunlit realm, accessible only through long philosophic training. There, the mind can perceive "that which is," to use Plato's language -- justice and other virtues in their pure form -- and be guided to choose right over wrong, even absent the fear of punishment. Those who have made that mental leap must then return to the cave (i.e., unenlightened society) in order to serve as leaders.
The celebrated cave passage of the "Republic" illustrates one of Plato's most cherished ideas, what's known as his theory of Forms. Only by grasping perfect, eternal entities -- the Forms -- with our minds, Plato thought, can we attain knowledge and, thereby, true happiness. Illuminating this abstract realm is Plato's allegorical sun, the Form of the Good, which diffuses goodness to all other Forms as the sun itself spreads light. Glimpsing this Form, as a devoted philosopher might eventually do, would bring sublime joy. Platonism here overlaps with Christianity, a religion on which it has had a profound influence; Renaissance artists, under Plato's resurgent sway, often depicted the sun or its light as embodiments of the divine.
Two further segments elaborate the political messages of the "Republic" and bring it to a grand, transcendent finale. Plato, who believed in reincarnation, ends by describing a single soul's journey, after death, through an astral realm where it is purified and readied for rebirth. The breathtaking vision shows us a universe built on moral principles, where perfect justice and happiness can be attained by those who perfect their wisdom.
The cosmic scale of this ending suits the vast scope of the "Republic," the magnificent housing Plato constructed, right up to the hour of his death, for all his most central concepts.
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Mr. Romm, professor of classics at Bard College, is the author of "Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece's Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece," appearing May 13 from Norton." [1]
1. REVIEW --- Masterpiece: Crafting a Perfect 'Republic'. Romm, James. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 10 May 2025: C14.
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