Plato's Republic - Part 1

An Introduction to the Foundational Text of Western Philosophy

It is arguable that next to St. Augustine’s The City of God, Plato’s magnum opus, The Republic, is the finest sustained work of philosophy extant in the Western Tradition.

Both of these fine works were written by thinking giants at a time of significant decline in each of the authors’ respective empires. Actually, it would be more accurate to say they were both writing on the heels of the tragic fall of those empires.

Nevertheless, while the good bishop of Hippo had divine revelation as his aid, this lack, wholly unknown to Plato, did not prevent the latter from exploring the perennial human questions using his God-given gifts of keen observation and acute reason. Further, the scope of Plato’s inquiry in The Republic—as well as the depth and range—is inarguably far broader than St. Augustine’s in The City of God. 

In any event, the categories of thought Plato worked out in The Republic, as well as his other dialogues, laid the foundation for philosophical enquiry for nearly every subsequent generation, including St. Augustine’s. For example, in the Confessions, St. Augustine writes,

But having then read those books of the Platonists, and thence been taught to search for incorporeal truth, I saw Thy invisible things, understood by those things which are made; and though cast back, I perceived what that was which through the darkness of my mind I was hindered from contemplating, being assured “That Thou wert, and wert infinite, and yet not diffused in space, finite or infinite; and that Thou truly art Who art the same ever, in no part nor motion varying; and that all other things are from Thee, on this most sure ground alone, that they are.” 

Here, in his famous autobiography, St. Augustine lauds the Platonists for helping him overcome his incorrect, corporeal vision of God. It is nothing, if not remarkable, that it was the pagan, Plato, that helped him establish a category of thought for the Scriptural understanding of the immutability and eternality of God. But Augustine is by no means the only one who has benefited from the brilliant, pre-Christian pagan.

It is dubious whether there is a western philosopher of any prominence whose works could be found devoid of some interaction with or influence of Plato or his ideas, whether directly or by allusion. It is no wonder, then, no modern critique or investigation of Plato is exempt from Alfred North Whitehead’s now cliché assessment that, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

To leave off here, however, would be a commission of great injustice to the potential Whitehead’s remarks have of capturing the prominence of Plato’s influence on western philosophical thought. Whitehead goes on to say,