Pretty well, though not without flaws. Plato in his description of the utopia he has Socrates imagine has more than a few dictatorial tendencies. But the question is one of alternate Aesop interpretation. Is Author Avatar Socrates actually seeking to create the Ideal State or is he simply using it as an allegorical device to define Justice in the soul.
On the one hand, Socrates seems to go into gratuitous detail to assure that it be perfect but on the other he acknowledges to Glaucon that he doesn’t believe it’s something which can exist but he simply wants to have an image of it as an idea that he may define things in relation to the Ideal.
The latter approach enables one to eliminate several of the Unfortunate Implications of Kallipolis’s system of government.
The question Socrates seeks to answer in relation to living the Good Life is “what is Justice?” And he does answer it in the end inasmuch as he defines Justice, essentially as rationality.
And as a rebuttal to Thrasymachus’s argument that Justice is the advantage of the Stronger and Glaucon’s Devil's Advocate that in the absence of external consequences an Unjust Man is better off than a just man is, then that definition is a good one to refute them.
The only problem is that it mandates that a just man be The Spock. And that’s not always just.
For instance, during The Holocaust, there were people who put themselves (and potentially their families) at risk of death by harbouring Jews, who are now rightly hailed as heroes (the righteous gentiles). The mastery of Reason over Passion and Appetite would not explain that behaviour. I know John Stuart Mill would say that the guilt those people would have felt had they not done so would have been so strong that the way to shield themselves from the pain was to shelter those in need. But in the Platonic perspective that sounds like using Reason in the service of Passion, which is not something of which this book approves.
I might be making Plato a straw Vulcan but I don’t think that I am.
That said, the epistemology explored in the Platonic Cave is as brilliant as it always was (though so aped by modern pseudo-philosophers that it can come across to some as "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny). While his discussion of metaphysics and the afterlife is quite impressive and engaging.
Even the discourse on Kallipolis, which I earlier criticized had several good points about political philosophy.
That said, aside from the reliance on the war on straw, Plato’s Republic is still quite good and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in philosophy.
Literature How well does it hold up?
Pretty well, though not without flaws. Plato in his description of the utopia he has Socrates imagine has more than a few dictatorial tendencies. But the question is one of alternate Aesop interpretation. Is Author Avatar Socrates actually seeking to create the Ideal State or is he simply using it as an allegorical device to define Justice in the soul.
On the one hand, Socrates seems to go into gratuitous detail to assure that it be perfect but on the other he acknowledges to Glaucon that he doesn’t believe it’s something which can exist but he simply wants to have an image of it as an idea that he may define things in relation to the Ideal.
The latter approach enables one to eliminate several of the Unfortunate Implications of Kallipolis’s system of government.
The question Socrates seeks to answer in relation to living the Good Life is “what is Justice?” And he does answer it in the end inasmuch as he defines Justice, essentially as rationality.
And as a rebuttal to Thrasymachus’s argument that Justice is the advantage of the Stronger and Glaucon’s Devil's Advocate that in the absence of external consequences an Unjust Man is better off than a just man is, then that definition is a good one to refute them.
The only problem is that it mandates that a just man be The Spock. And that’s not always just.
For instance, during The Holocaust, there were people who put themselves (and potentially their families) at risk of death by harbouring Jews, who are now rightly hailed as heroes (the righteous gentiles). The mastery of Reason over Passion and Appetite would not explain that behaviour. I know John Stuart Mill would say that the guilt those people would have felt had they not done so would have been so strong that the way to shield themselves from the pain was to shelter those in need. But in the Platonic perspective that sounds like using Reason in the service of Passion, which is not something of which this book approves.
I might be making Plato a straw Vulcan but I don’t think that I am.
That said, the epistemology explored in the Platonic Cave is as brilliant as it always was (though so aped by modern pseudo-philosophers that it can come across to some as "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny). While his discussion of metaphysics and the afterlife is quite impressive and engaging.
Even the discourse on Kallipolis, which I earlier criticized had several good points about political philosophy.
That said, aside from the reliance on the war on straw, Plato’s Republic is still quite good and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in philosophy.