Synopsis

BOOK 1

On his way home from a religious festival, Socrates meets Polemarchus and accompanies him to the house of his aged father, Cephalus. • Socrates and Cephalus discuss the burdens of old age. Cephalus claims that, while these burdens are eased by wealth, it is people’s characters and habits, not their ages, that determine what their lives are like.Wealth is mostly important, he claims, because it reduces the likelihood of being tempted into injustice by poverty and so lessens the fear of what will happen after death.This leads to (a) (a) discussion of justice, which will itself culminate—many books later—in myth about the afterlife (Book 10). • Cephalus claims that justice consists in speaking the truth and paying one’s debts. Before he can respond to Socrates’ criticism of his definition, Polemarchus interrupts. Cephalus hands over the argument to him and goes off to attend to a sacrifice to the gods. An examination of Polemarchus follows, in the course of which he is forced to abandon a number of different views about justice that he has adopted along the way. • Thrasymachus demands that Socrates give his own positive account of justice but is persuaded to give an account himself instead. Justice, he claims, is what is advantageous for the stronger.Thrasy- machus defends it with two separate arguments (338d–341a, 343a–344c), which Socrates then attempts to refute.

BOOK 2

Unsatisfied with the outcome of Book 1, Glaucon and Adeimantus renew Thrasymachus’ views. In response, Socrates must show that justice is choiceworthy (a) because of itself, and (b) because of its consequences (357a–358a). Socrates does not complete his argument for (a) until the end of Book 9. • Socrates shifts the debate from individual justice to political justice. He will describe an ideal or completely good city—Kallipolis. Hav- ing located justice in it, he will then look for it in the soul. • The first city he describes is dismissed by Glaucon as fit only for pigs, not for sophisti- cated Athenians. • The second city is more luxurious. But the presence in it of appetites for more than the necessities provided in its simpler predecessor leads to civil faction and war. To prevent these from destroying the city, soldier-police are needed.These are the guardians. • The natural assets they need and the education they must have are next described. Since musical training begins before physical training, its content—more specifically the sorts of stories that the future guardians should hear about gods and heroes—is the first item of business (377e).

BOOK 3

The discussion of these stories continues. Once complete, Socrates turns to the content of stories about human beings, only to postpone his discussion until Book 10. (He explains why at 392a–c.) • The appropriate style for these stories to have and the appropriate harmonies and rhythms for lyric odes and songs are characterized. • Physical training is next. • The final topic is the selection of rulers (including the “myth of the metals”), and the housing and lifestyles of the guardians (412b–417b).

BOOK 4

A question from Adeimantus about the happiness of the guardians leads Socrates to clarify the goal of Kallipolis, which is not to make any one group of citizens outstandingly happy at the expense of others, but to make everyone as happy as his nature allows (421c).This goal will be achieved, he argues, if the guardians protect the system of elementary education described in Books 2 and 3. For it is what provides the training in political virtue without which no system of laws or constitution can hope to achieve anything worthwhile (423c–427a). • The place of religion in Kallipolis is then very briefly discussed (427b–c). • Kallipolis is pronounced complete (a) (427d). Since it is completely good (427e), it must have all the virtues of city (see 352d–354a): wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. By the time that search for them is concluded (434d), they have all been identified with distinct structural features of Kallipolis. • This leads to the argument for the division of the soul into three elements—appetitive, spirited, and rational—that correspond to the three major classes in Kallipolis—produc- ers, guardians, and rulers (435c–441c). Once this argument is in place, it remains to find the virtues in the soul and to show that they are the same structural features of it as of Kallipolis (441c–444e). • Glaucon is ready at this point to pronounce justice more choiceworthy than injustice, but Socrates is not (445a–b). In his view, the question cannot be answered until much more work has been done on virtue and vice.

BOOK 5

The discussion of that topic is interrupted by Polemarchus and the other interlocutors, all of whom want Socrates to explain the remark he made (423e4–424a2) about the guardians sharing their women and children.

Socrates’ lengthy response occupies the majority of the book. In it, he makes the revolutionary proposal that children should be brought up by the city rather than by their biological parents, and that men and women with the same natural abilities should receive the same education and training and do the same kind of work, including guarding and ruling. • The smallest change that would transform an already existing city into Kallipolis, Socrates now argues, is for its kings or rulers to become philosophers, or vice versa.

The remainder of Book 5 is the beginning of Socrates’ portrait of philoso- phers, which continues until the end of Book 7. It consists of a complex argument intended to show that only they can have access to forms, and that without such access knowledge is impossible (474c4–480a13).

BOOK 6

Real philosophers are contrasted with those popularly called philosophers. • The former must master the most important subjects (503e), the ones that lead to knowledge of the form of the good (504e–505b). • Socrates cannot explain directly what this is, but in the sun and line analogies he tries to give an indirect account of them (507a–511e).

BOOK 7

Book 7 begins with the famous allegory of the cave, which is intended to fit together with the sun and line (517b), by illustrating the effects of edu- cation on the soul (514a). • The discussion of the education of the philoso- phers continues. Primary education in musical and physical training and elementary mathematics (535a–537b) is followed by two or three years of compulsory physical training (537b–c), ten years of education in the math- ematical sciences (537c–d, 522c–531d), five years of training in dialectic (537d–540a, 531e–535a), and fifteen years of practical political training (539e–540a). After such education, its recipients are ready to see the good itself and to be philosopher-kings (540a).

BOOK 8

The description of Kallipolis and the person whose character resembles it—the philosopher-king—is now complete. So, Socrates returns to the argument interrupted at the beginning of Book 5. He describes four types of people and four types of constitutions that result when people of these types rule a city. He presents these as four stages in the increasing corrup- tion or decline of Kallipolis, explaining why Kallipolis will decline by appeal to the Muses’ story of the “geometrical number” (546a–547a). • The first of the defective cities Socrates describes is a timocracy, which is ruled by people who are themselves ruled by the spirited element in their souls. • The second is an oligarchy, which is ruled by people ruled by their necessary appetites. • The third is a democracy, which is ruled by people ruled by their unnecessary appetites. • The worst city of all is a tyranny, which is ruled by someone ruled by his lawless unnecessary appetites.

BOOK 9

A lengthy description of the tyrant begins the book. Socrates is then ready to respond to the challenge Glaucon raised in Book 2. • His response con- sists of three complex arguments.The first (580a–c) appeals to the descrip- tion of the five cities and the five corresponding character types. It (a) concludes that a philosopher-king is the happiest and most just of people, timocrat second, an oligarch third, a democrat fourth, and a tyrant least happy and least just.The second argument (580d–583b) appeals to the tri- adic division of the soul. Socrates argues that a philosopher’s assessment of the relative pleasantness of his life and those of money-lovers and honor- lovers is more reliable than their assessments of the relative pleasantness of his life and theirs. The third argument (583b–588a) uses the metaphysical theory developed in Books 5 through 7, together with the psychological theory of Book 4, to develop a complex theory of pleasure. It concludes that a philosopher’s pleasures are truer and purer than those of a money- lover or an honor-lover.

BOOK 10

The kind of poetry about human beings permitted in Kallipolis—post- poned in Book 3 (392a–c)—can now be revisited. Given the importance attributed to musical and physical training (424b–425a), this topic is not anticlimactic, but rather the moment at which Socrates’ new, philosophy- based education confronts the traditional, poetry-based one. Central to the discussion is a new account of mimesis—imitation—based on the metaphys- ical theories of Books 5 through 7. • The next topic is the immortality of the soul. • Finally, by appeal to the myth of Er, Socrates argues that the good consequences of justice, both in this life and the next, far outweigh those of injustice.This completes the argument that justice is choiceworthy both for its own sake and for its consequences, and so belongs in the best of the three classes of goods that Glaucon distinguished.