# Nitpick about Plato's Republic **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 12, 2015, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864 "2015-03-12T22:05:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/1 "2015-03-12T22:05:35Z")
ISTM that Socrates, who expounds [the City in Speech](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Republic_(Plato)), would himself have no place in it. There is an official propaganda system in place to propagate the “noble lies” on which the city’s constitution is based. Art and music are carefully censored, traveling poets are crowned with garlands and ordered to move along. Why would philosophy get a pass? Anyone of any caste who habitually asks unsettling questions and challenges cultural assumptions would be run out of town if not executed. Am I reading it wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/2 "2015-03-12T22:37:30Z")
Because it’s the philosophers who are supposed to be putting this whole system in place, maintaining it and determining which ideas are dangerous. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/3 "2015-03-12T23:40:55Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Because it’s the philosophers who are supposed to be putting this whole system in place, maintaining it and determining which ideas are dangerous. Yes, but, as Bertrand Russell writes in _A History of Western Philosophy,_ “Although the rulers are to be philosophers, there are to be no innovations: a philosopher is to be, for all time, a man who understands and agrees with Plato.” I can’t see a man like Socrates lasting long in that environment, even if he happens to agree with Plato on every point. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/4 "2015-03-13T00:11:29Z")
So this can be fanwanked, but before I fanwank it the actual answer is Plato was probably not heeding a single thought about the actual Socrates’s actual beliefs when he wrote the Republic. The fanwank is, Socrates is giving articulation to an ideal, and sees himself, ideally, as someone who, on grasping truths, will firmly assent to them. So in the ideal city, were he to live in it, he, a philosopher, will have managed to grasp all the truths, and the city will listen to him, and he’ll be right, and so of course will agree with himself (and with all the other philosophers, who will have grasped the same truths themselves). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/5 "2015-03-13T00:34:30Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > So this can be fanwanked, but before I fanwank it the actual answer is Plato was probably not heeding a single thought about the actual Socrates’s actual beliefs when he wrote the Republic In [_Socrates: A Man for Our Times_](http://www.amazon.com/Socrates-A-Man-Our-Times/dp/0143122215), Paul Johnson discusses which of Plato’s dialogues actually express Socrates’ thoughts as Plato remembered them, and which are Plato using Socrates as a mouthpiece for his own original philosophy. He writes as though the nature of each book in that regard is pretty much a matter of settled scholarly consensus – is it? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/6 "2015-03-13T00:39:17Z")
Any philosopher would want to spend his time philosophizing with others of the philosophizing class. Those who annoyed the hoi polloi would get the hemlock. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/7 "2015-03-13T00:39:23Z")
The same is true of pretty much all utopias. I’m thinking of Skinner’s Walden II. Since the place is presumed to be pretty much as good as it can possibly be, innovation is necessarily harmful, and thus to be deterred. Like most utopias – or even Soviet Communism – it works if everyone believes in it. But once anyone doubts or dissents, the idealism fails, the bloom is off the rose, and the secret police coming knocking on doors in the night. I did like the allegory of the cave… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/8 "2015-03-13T00:47:20Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Any philosopher would want to spend his time philosophizing with others of the philosophizing class. Those who annoyed the hoi polloi would get the hemlock. And Socrates was a man who loved to annoy **everybody.** ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/9 "2015-03-13T00:53:52Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > The same is true of pretty much all utopias. I’m thinking of Skinner’s Walden II. Since the place is presumed to be pretty much as good as it can possibly be, innovation is necessarily harmful, and thus to be deterred. > > Like most utopias – or even Soviet Communism – it works if everyone believes in it. But once anyone doubts or dissents, the idealism fails, the bloom is off the rose, and the secret police coming knocking on doors in the night. Or, alternatively, as the late John Reilly once wrote in a [review](http://www.changingthetimes.net/bookreviews/in_the_presence_of_mine_enemies_.htm) of Harry Turtledove’s [_In the Presence of Mine Enemies_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Presence_of_Mine_Enemies), “Popular uprisings rarely overthrow ideologies; rather, even the secret police eventually lose interest.” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/10 "2015-03-13T01:06:13Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And Socrates was a man who loved to annoy **everybody.** That and Plato was probably his least annoying student. Alcibiades was a student of Plato’s, as was Xenophon and a number of the 30. Basically Socrates went around demonstrating that the supposed wise people didn’t know shit of what they were talking about. And did this publicly. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/11 "2015-03-13T01:29:04Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > That and Plato was probably his least annoying student. Alcibiades was a student of Plato’s, as was Xenophon and a number of the 30. You meant “student of Socrates’.” And that is probably the real reason why he got the hemlock. > [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Basically Socrates went around demonstrating that the supposed wise people didn’t know shit of what they were talking about. And did this publicly. That too. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/12 "2015-03-13T01:31:24Z")
Apropos of nothing, [_The Death of Socrates._](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdHp0FmEr78) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/13 "2015-03-13T01:54:31Z")
Yes, Alcibiades student of Socrates, not Plato. And Socrates could easily have proposed banishment and received it as a punishment. He probably could also have fled after the punishment was decided on. But his various assholes students had left a really rotten taste in Athens mouth. Combine that with his speech that Athens should impose a punishment of him living well at state expense and thanking him for all this was calculated to lead to a death sentence. That he didn’t take many opportunities to leave after that was his own doing. Socrates committed suicide. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/14 "2015-03-13T07:01:17Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > In [_Socrates: A Man for Our Times_](http://www.amazon.com/Socrates-A-Man-Our-Times/dp/0143122215), Paul Johnson discusses which of Plato’s dialogues actually express Socrates’ thoughts as Plato remembered them, and which are Plato using Socrates as a mouthpiece for his own original philosophy. He writes as though the nature of each book in that regard is pretty much a matter of settled scholarly consensus – is it? There’s a sort of generally understood default division into early, middle and late works, with later works being purported to be further and further from simple transmission of Socrates’s own ideas. However by “generally understood” I don’t mean “universally agreed to,” just that it’s thought of as a kind of background assumption that is very open to question. And indeed, plenty of writers do question it. [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/#HisSocEarMidLatDia](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/#HisSocEarMidLatDia) ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/15 "2015-03-13T08:07:50Z")
Bertrand Russell made many contributions to mathematical logic. As a historian of philosophy he is utterly useless. i guess you will never accept this, Brain Glutton, but there you have it. There are many ways to read The Republic. I urge you to read the thing on its own, carefully, and with the aid of real scholars of classical Greek philosophy. That’s all I have to say. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/16 "2015-03-13T13:55:06Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > Bertrand Russell made many contributions to mathematical logic. As a historian of philosophy he is utterly useless. i guess you will never accept this, Brain Glutton, but there you have it. There are many ways to read The Republic. I urge you to read the thing on its own, carefully, and with the aid of real scholars of classical Greek philosophy. That’s all I have to say. I have read the thing on its own. I see no reason to disagree with Russell’s assessment. ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/17 "2015-03-13T14:37:49Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > That and Plato was probably his least annoying student. Alcibiades was a student of Plato’s, as was Xenophon and a number of the 30… Alcibiades was 25 years older than Plato, and was one of _Socrates’_ most prominent students. Although a military leader of some greatness Alcibiades eventually became embroiled in numerous political difficulties which lead him to become an exile and turncoat. IIRC Alcibiades’ behavior had much to do with Socrates fatal legal problems. Without looking it up I believe Xenophon was also a student of Socrates, and that he composed Socratic Dialogues in Plato’s style although not of Plato’s quality. His most famous work is _Anabasis_- an account of the retreat of a force of about 10,000 Greek mercenaries from the middle of the Persian Empire, where they had become marooned in the course of servive in a Persian civil war. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/18 "2015-03-13T15:29:59Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I have read the thing on its own. I see no reason to disagree with Russell’s assessment. Specifically, I’ve **studied** the thing, in a college course where _The Republic_ was the only text and we spent the whole semester dissecting it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/19 "2015-03-13T15:33:42Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > Without looking it up I believe Xenophon was also a student of Socrates, and that he composed Socratic Dialogues in Plato’s style although not of Plato’s quality. [Yes.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophon#Socratic_works_and_dialogues) BTW, Socrates, Xenophon and Plato (and Alcibiades and Critias) appear as character’s in Mary Renault’s historical novel [_The Last of the Wine._](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_the_Wine) A much older Plato also figures in [_The Mask of Apollo._](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_of_Apollo) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864/20 "2015-03-13T17:05:41Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I have read the thing on its own. I see no reason to disagree with Russell’s assessment. And BTW, I also agree with Russell’s assessment in this regard: > [@](#): > > When we ask: what will Plato’s Republic achieve? The answer is rather humdrum. It will achieve success in war against roughly equal populations, and it will secure a livelihood for a certain small number of people. It will almost certainly produce no art or science, because of its rigidity; in this respect, as in others, it will be like Sparta. In spite of all the fine talk, skill in war and enough to eat is all that will be achieved. Plato had lived through famine and defeat in Athens; perhaps, subconsciously, he thought the avoidance of these evils the best that statesmanship could accomplish. This is more debatable, but an interesting speculation: > [@](#): > > Plato’s Republic, unlike modern Utopias, was perhaps intended to be actually founded. This was not so fantastic or impossible as it might naturally seem to us. Many of its provisions, including some that we should have thought quite impracticable, were actually realized at Sparta. The rule of philosophers had been attempted by Pythagoras, and in Plato’s time Archytas the Pythagorean was politically influential in Taras (modern Tarento) when Plato visited Sicily and southern Italy. It was common practice for cities to employ a sage to draw up their laws; Solon had done this for Athens, and Protagoras for Thurii. Colonies, in those days, were completely free of control by their parent cities, and it would have been quite feasible for a band of Platonists to establish the Republic on the shores of Spain or Gaul. Unfortunately chance led Plato to Syracuse, a great commercial city engaged in desperate wars with Carthage; in such an atmosphere, no philosopher could have achieved much. In the next generation, the rise of Macedonia had made all small States antiquated, and had brought about the futility of all political experiments in miniature. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitpick-about-platos-republic/714864.md?page=2)