Placement

So I've finished The Republic, and not a moment too soon; it's something of a slog. Mainly because of its construction as a dialog where all of the other characters seem to serve no real purpose other than to agree with Plato's Socrates. I started to suspect that they were meant to be avatars for the audience; either as a way of getting the audience to agree with the positions that Plato was taking, or as something of a pander, showing them to be as wise as Socrates was.

In any event, the interesting part of the book was seeing out some of its concepts have lasted through the years, like the idea that there is a better, and "more real," reality out there, and that's where the wise seek to focus their attentions. Or the idea that some people are simply better than others, and therefore they should be given leadership for the good of everyone. Although it could be said that the fact that The Republic's disdain for fiction and artistry never seemed to have caught on is also interesting.

I'm not going to say that the basic insight of The Republic, which seems to be that an autocracy of benevolent Philosopher Kings would make the best form of government (and likewise, the philosophical mindset, presided over by pure Reason makes the most just person), has been debunked, but it quickly becomes evident that it would be a difficult system to maintain in practice, even outside of the communal nature of the place. Plato's understanding is that the everyday world that people inhabit is so corrupting that only constant vigilance for any negative influences will prevent it from degrading. Plato's just state would take a phenomenal amount of effort to enact and relies on the best minds being given the best education at the correct times in their lives. There simply isn't enough room for error for the whole thing to be a human enterprise.