PLATO

INTRODUCTION TO The Republic
As a famous philosopher once said, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato”. Alfred Whitehead may not have been exaggerating. Many of the conclusions presented in The Republic may seem, with two-and-a-half thousand years of hindsight, just silly. But its method of reaching those conclusions, by a precise process of honest and careful step-by-step searching after absolute answers, has been, and remains, the one great distinguishing feature of the European way of thinking. It underlies the impossible search for perfection which has given rise to Europe’s science, politics, psychology, education and much of its angst. It stands in valorous contrast to the world’s only other great founder-philosopher, Confucius, whose love of harmony and the certainties of tradition built a very different society.
Socrates, the belligerent Athenian street-corner philosopher, refused to write anything down. It was therefore left to his pupil Plato to record his many discussions, of which The Republic is one. It is presented as a dialog between Socrates and, among others, Glaucon, Plato’s younger half-brother, and Thrasymachus, one of the most famous of the ‘Sophist’ teachers of rhetoric and persuasion who enjoyed such popularity in the Athens of 400BC. We cannot know which of the ideas presented here are genuinely from Socrates, and which are Plato’s idealised revisions, but most of us can see much of what we are now in them.

GLOSSARY:
The Republic was written in Greek, a language rather different from English, making many of Socrates’ ideas terribly tricky to translate. A few of the trickier words are included in the text, italicised in square brackets[techne].
Arete (areth): Appropriateness to or for purpose, translated here as ‘goodness’ or ‘excellence’.
Dikaiosuene (dikaiwsunh): The central theme of The Republic, translated here as ‘doing right’ or ‘justice’ or ‘morality’.
Episteme (episthmh): Science, specialist knowledge.
Glorious Myth: [414] Sometimes translated as ‘The One Royal Lie’ or ‘A Magnificent Myth’.
God or gods (qeos): Plato refers to ‘gods’ ‘the God’ and ‘god’ apparently without distinction. It is likely that, along with most of his fellows, he believed in a single supreme god together with a multiplicity of other spiritual powers which might be described as subordinate gods.
Goeteuo (goeteuo): [413] ‘To cast a spell on’ or ‘bewitch’ has sometimes been translated as ‘propaganda’, I’ve said ‘to spirit away’
Mimesis (mimhsis): Imitation, copying, reproduction. Representation as found in literary, artistic and dramatic works.
Momus: [487] The traditional Greek personification of mockery and ridicule.
Nomos (nomos): Law, convention, custom, ‘that which is expected’.
Paradeigma (paradeigma): Not quite the English ‘paradigm’. An example or pattern, especially an outstandingly clear or typical example. In Plato’s terms, the ‘ideal form’.
Philosopher (jilosojia): Literally, ‘friend of wisdom’.
Plato’s Divine Sign: [496] “A kind of inner voice which sometimes forbade me to do things” (Apology)
Polis (polis): One of the constituent small, self-governing cities, islands or regions of ancient Greece. Translated here as city, State, society or community.
Psuche (yuch): Originally meaning ‘breath of life’, it is less neccessarily religious than the English ‘soul’ as it covers the life principle, the personality, character and the seat of understanding. Translated here as ‘mind’ ‘personality’ and ‘soul’.
Sophists (sojisths): The professional teachers of public speaking, persuasion and what they, if not Plato, called ‘wisdom’.
Techne (tecnh): Technical ability, craft, skill, job, profession.