Analysis Of Plato's The Republic

“One of the best known and most influential philosophers of all time, Plato has been admired for thousands of years as a teacher, writer, and student. His works, thoughts, and theories have remained influential for more than 2000 years” (“Plato”). One of these great works by Plato that still remain an essential part of western philosophy today is, The Republic. Ten books are compiled to altogether make the dialog known as The Republic. The Republic consists of many major ideas and it becomes a dubious task to list and remember them all. Just alone in the first five books of the dialogue, many ideas begin to emerge and take shape. Three major ideas of The Republic; Books 1-5 by Plato, are: the question of what causes the inclination of a group,

It isn’t the fact Socrates gave women a role in the ideal society, but rather the fact that he proposed such a controversial idea. The notion of women and their equivalencies to men has been something that has been brought up time and time again throughout history and will always remain a great debate. In The Republic Book 5, Socrates says that even though women are not as physically strong as men, women still have the same abilities and aptitudes as men. Therefore, women should be treated equally with men. Because women have the same mental abilities as men, it is possible for them to become leaders as well. “In this Socratic perspective, basic qualities of the human body and mind such as strength, justice, virtue, temperance, courage, wisdom, etc. exist in both sexes enough to make their inclusion, or the inclusion of anything dependent upon them, in a gender identity distinction into a serious misconception of men and women. This means that the most important and valued attributes of the human heart and mind should never be included in the construction of gender difference. All that is courageous, tender, temperate, virtuous, compassionate, just and wise, all that stands at the heart of our attempts to live well, all that is the very lifeblood of the human spirit’s striving for excellence is never masculine or feminine. It is human” (Maxwell). Maxwell perfectly

In The Republic, Socrates splits the soul into three hierarchal parts, desire, emotion, and reason (being of the highest importance). Socrates says, “It is appropriate that the reasoning part should rule, since it is really wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul, and for the spirited part to obey and be its ally” (The Republic IV.441e4-6). Socrates explains that an individual’s ability to balance these aspects of his/her soul, it leads to justice in the individual. “When the parts are so organized and balanced, they are in ‘harmony’” ("Plato Reason and the Other Parts of the Human Soul"). This notion of having a balance of the soul which causes a man to be just, hence the individual acquiring harmony, leads back to the notion of the inclination of a group. When each individual has balance in his soul and harmony, it leads to the harmony of the