Showing the Many Why Philosophers Should Rule: On Republic 6.500–501

Karel Thein

doi:10.4312/clotho.6.2.29-55

Authors

Karel Thein Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Prague, Czechia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/clotho.6.2.29-55

Keywords:

Plato, Republic, philosophical nature, city and cosmos, philosophers and painters

Abstract

While discussing how true philosophers could rule and make the citizens obey them (Republic 6.499–502), Socrates expands his earlier remarks about philosophical nature and the objects of its interest. The scope of this enlarged argument is not limited to the Forms but includes an effort to translate philosophical knowledge into human souls and, ultimately, to the city. Focusing on the often quoted but rarely analyzed argument that unfolds in several steps at 500–501, the article brings out its complexity and possible role in the unfolding of the dialogue.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Broadie, Sarah. Plato’s Sun-Like Good: Dialectic in the Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Burnyeat, M. F. “Culture and Society in Plato’s Republic.” Tanner Lectures on Human Values 20 (1999), 215–324.

Burnyeat, M. F. “Utopia and Fantasy: The Practicability of Plato’s Ideally Just City.” In Plato, Volume 2: Ethics, Politics, Religious and the Soul, edited by Gail Fine, 297–308. Oxford: University Press, 1999.

Cooper, John M., ed. Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.

Dodds, Eric Robertson. Plato: Gorgias. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.

Gill, Christopher. “The Good and Mathematics.” In Pursuing the

Good: Ethics and Metaphysics in Plato’s Republic, edited by Douglas Cairns, Fritz-Gregor Herrmann, and Terry Penner, 251–274. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.

Granieri, Roberto. “Unmixed Forms and Ordered Sensibles: On Philebus 16c9-d1.” Ancient Philosophy 44 (2024): 83–97.

Halliwell, Stephen. “The Shifting Problems of Mimesis in Plato.” In Platonic Mimesis Revisited, ed. by Julia Pfefferkorn and Antonino Spinelli, 27–46. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag, 2021.

Jenkins, Michelle. “Plato’s Godlike Philosopher.” Classical Philology 111 (2016): 330–52.

Johansen, Thomas K. “Timaeus in the Cave.” In The Platonic Art of Philosophy, edited by Christopher Gill, George Boys-Stones, and Dimitri El Murr, 90–109. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Kraut, Richard. “Return to the Cave: Republic 519–521.” In Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, edited by Gail Fine, 235–254. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.

Kraut, Richard. “The Defense of Justice in Plato’s Republic.” In The Cambridge Companion to Plato: Second Edition, edited by David Ebrey and Richard Kraut, 298–327. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Leigh, Fiona. “The Status and Power of the Good in Plato’s Republic.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (2023): 1269–1278.

Long, Anthony. “Politics and Divinity in Plato’s Republic: The Form of the Good.” In Themes in Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic Philosophy, edited by Fiona Leigh, 63–81. London: University of London Press, 2021.

Männlein-Robert, Irmgard. “Mit Blick auf das Göttliche oder Mimesis für Philosophen in Politeia und Nomoi.” In Platonic Mimesis Revisited, ed. by Julia Pfefferkorn and Antonino Spinelli, 167–192. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag, 2021.

Menn, Stephen. “On the Digression in the Theaetetus.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 57 (2019): 65–120.

Nightingale, Andrea. Philosophy and Religion in Plato’s Dialogues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Pfefferkorn, Julia, and Antonino Spinelli, eds. Platonic Mimesis Revisited. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag, 2021.

Scott, Dominic. Levels of Argument: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Scott, Dominic. Listening to Reason in Plato and Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Shorey, Paul. Plato: The Republic. Books 6–10. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935.

Singpurwalla, Rachel. “Plato’s Defense of Justice in the Republic.” In The Blackwell Guide to Plato’s Republic, edited by Gerasimos Santas, 263–282. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.

Spinelli, Antonino. “Mimoumenoi tas tou theou periphoras: Die Mimesis des Kosmos als menschliche Aufgabe im Timaios.” In Platonic Mimesis Revisited, ed. by Julia Pfefferkorn and Antonino Spinelli, 291–312. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag, 2021.

Thein, Karel. “Le dieu qui est image: Le Timée sur le monde, les humains et la variété mimétique.” In Platon et la pensée de l’image, edited by Anca Vasiliu and Elsa Grasso, 242–272. Paris: Vrin, 2023.

Woolf, Raphael. “Truth as a Value in Plato’s Republic.” Phronesis 54 (2009): 9–39.