Infantile reading| Plato and his "Republic"

I. Plato's man and the background of the book

Plato, the famous ancient Greek philosopher, socrates, aristotle, all three of them are widely regarded as the founders of Western philosophy. Like many ancient documents, Plato's anthology is fragmented and controversial. His account of Socrates' dialogues became the main source for later generations to study their ideas, but much of it recorded Plato's own views rather than Socrates' original meanings. Plato was born into a wealthier aristocratic family of Athenian slave owners and claimed to be a descendant of the kings of ancient Athens. Plato initially intended to follow the family tradition and enter politics, but the situation later changed. In the war with Sparta, Athenian democracy was defeated, and the "Thirty Tyrants" came to power. The "Thirty Tyrants" were replaced by a new representative government. In 399 BC, when Socrates was tried and sentenced to death, Plato was completely disillusioned with the existing form of government and began to travel throughout Italy, Sicily, Egypt, Cyrene, and other places in search of knowledge. Throughout his life, it can be roughly summarized as a 28-year growth period - 12 years of travel semester - 20 years of lecture semester - 20 years of writing period.

The writing of the Republic must not be divorced from one of the most important epochal contexts—Plato was born during the decline of the Athenian city-state. After the Peloponnesian War broke out, the Athenian city-state was in crisis. At this time, the class struggle between slaves and slave owners became more acute, and the struggle for power between slave owners' democrats and slave owners' aristocrats began. Plato was firmly opposed to democracy and strongly advocated slave-owning aristocrats to control state power. Plato designed the Republic in order to consolidate the dominance of the slave-owning aristocracy.

The Republic was written before Plato's second trip to Italy and was published around 374 B.C., when the "Sorcerers" of ancient Greece were active. The philosopher-philosophers questioned the traditional theology of Homer and Hesiod, contrary to the pre-Socratic pursuit of essence, and promoted relativism, arguing that "man is the measure of all things" (Protagora). The value of human beings has been promoted, and the existence of human beings has received unprecedented attention. The Socrates school influenced socrates that would later emerge. Socrates' turn in ethics can be said to be a continuation of the human-centered philosophical philosophy of the sorcerers. In short, the existence of man became a common concern of the ancient Greek sages.

However, Socrates was not satisfied with the sorcerer's reliance on skill, and instead believed that the content of the argument was more important than the form. In the Republic, Therasimhaus represents the School of The Sorcerers. In the first chapter, Plato arranged his debate with Socrates on the subject of "justice" with the aim of expressing the view that the sorcerers were the greatest rivals of philosophers, who used the rhetoric of speech to infect the townspeople and corrupt and corrupt those who were of good nature and make them degenerate.

In addition, the ancient Greek education that advocated "reason" and "science" also arose in this era. Plato believed that an ideal city-state must have people (including women) educated in music and sports from an early age, and that the outstanding people had to learn mathematics, geometry, astronomy, harmony, and dialectics, and that the rulers of the city-state should concentrate on philosophy in their later years. Plato believed that the speculative life was the best way to live. Plato's Republic not only explores the construction of the perfect city-state, but also pursues the essence of human existence, that is, the human soul. The human soul has a correspondence with the city-state, and only in the righteous city-state will the righteous city-people be born. The human soul is immortal, so the righteous person who lived before death will receive the corresponding reward after death.

Second, the main content and important ideas of the Republic

Plato uses the story as the theme in the Republic, recounting Socrates to the God of Bales, and on his way home he is invited to his home by Parmac, and the guests and hosts talk about it. The debates between the two exposed the philosophical, political, artistic, and educational ideas of the slave-owning class from all angles. Socrates in the story is virtual, fictitious, and in fact platonic spokesman. The text uses socrates to discuss justice with people, analyzes the interconnection between individual justice and city-state justice, and systematically expounds the concept of justice. Plato designed and envisioned the blueprint of the ideal state in his mind, proposing that justice could only be truly achieved in the "ideal country", and the purpose behind this blueprint was to explore the question of man, that is, how man could live better.

The Republic consists of ten volumes. Volumes I and II deal with the issue of justice. In Plato's thought, the state was founded to achieve justice, so these two chapters summarize the main thrust of the book. From the second half to the third volume, the education of the Defenders is discussed, which is also the primary education of the rulers. Volume IV discusses the effectiveness and leadership of education, as well as the meaning of moderation, bravery, wisdom, justice, etc. Volume V deals with pre-school education and women's education. Books VI and VII deal with the cultivation of philosophers, that is, the higher education of those in power. Volumes VIII and IX deal with the form of government. Volume X deals with art. Plato put forward many famous concepts and theories in this book, which have had a profound impact on different angles and to varying degrees, and the following are some of the important ideas that impressed me after reading this book.

(1) The concept of justice - justice is the unity of the three virtues of wisdom, bravery and moderation, and at the same time, it is precisely because of the existence of the virtue of justice that the three virtues of wisdom, bravery and temperance will arise in the state and enable them to be maintained in the state. Justice is a virtue and a general principle for the establishment of an ideal state, and justice is in the interest of all citizens of the country, including the ruled. Plato devotes considerable space in the Republic to opposing the idea that justice is the interest of the strong, arguing that justice should be the interest of all citizens of the country, including the ruled.

"In any government, a ruler, when he is a ruler, he cannot only take care of his own interests and ignore the interests of his subordinates, his words and deeds are for the interests of the people." Plato believed that justice is to do only what should be done by oneself and not to do the things of others, in order to maintain the universal harmony of society. As soon as people violate the principle of one person, one thing in the country, the order of the state is broken. He believed that the state was composed of manual laborers with desires, a class of guardians with wills, and a class of rulers with reason, and that these three classes should be divided into divisions of labor and cooperation, in harmony, and that general harmony could be maintained only when the various classes maintained a state of division of labor and cooperation. In Plato's case, justice is both a fourth virtue alongside other virtues and a harmonious unity of temperance, bravery, and wisdom

(2) Philosophers rule – Plato's ideal state is the earliest utopia in human history. In his ideal country, the ruler must be a philosopher, who believes that the existing politics are all bad, that the real way out for mankind lies in the power of philosophers, and that only a true philosopher can save the crisis in which the city-states were in a position. This belief forms the core of Plato's mature system of political philosophy. In his eyes, "philosopher" has a special connotation. He believed that philosophers were the noblest and most learned people, and that this kind of government of the wise men under the rule of the wise men was the best form of government. Therefore, only the establishment of a state with philosophers as kings is the most ideal state. This country is the model state that exists in heaven.

In his view, the essence of the philosopher is to have knowledge, to have the virtues of wisdom, justice, and goodness, and only a philosopher can attain the knowledge of the highest idea of the state, that is, the grasp of "goodness", while others can only grasp "opinion". Governing the country as a knowledge, only philosophers can grasp it, and thus be qualified to govern, that is to say, only philosophers can achieve the understanding of the concept of the state, know how the "ideal state" should be organized and how to govern. Thus the so-called philosopher's reign was understood by Plato as a combination of superior wisdom, true knowledge, perfect virtue, and absolute supreme power. He firmly believed that only philosophers could save the city-state and people, and that philosophers were the inevitable rulers of the Republic.

(3) Cave metaphor – "In a deep cave, there is a long passage leading outward, and some shimmer shines in. There are some people who have lived in this cave since childhood, with their heads and necks tied to their legs and feet, unable to move or turn their heads, and can only look forward at the back wall of the cave. They could only see the shadows of the objects on the wall of the cave opposite them from the fire behind them, and when they talked about the shadows they saw, they thought they were talking about the real thing itself. This is plato's "cave metaphor" in his book.

This metaphor can be said to be the core metaphor in the Republic, and the beginning and end of the whole text respond to its metaphor. The first word originally in Greek in the Republic was "descent.") That is to say, Plato's Socrates fell from the beginning, descending from the "cave" above here. In Socrates' speech, the polity of the city-state is constructed, from the first part to the lowest, the second part begins to rise to the best, the third part is at the highest place, detailing the secrets of the best form of government, and the fourth part begins to descend to the worst form of government and even to the dungeon. Under the construction of the "big cave" of the phantom national dog, we can clearly see that the "cave metaphor" is not a simple literary intention of Plato, it is a "metaphor" that clearly refers to the real world. "Metaphor" is a philosophical method, and the creation and application of its imagery can be regarded as philosophy, while the realistic dimension of the maker of the metaphor embodied in the attribution of metaphor is real life and can be regarded as politics. Therefore, the metaphor of the Republic embodies Plato's political ideals. The important theory of the cave metaphor will be further developed below to understand Plato's thought from more perspectives.

Third, expand and deepen: cave theory

For thousands of years, many philosophers and Plato commentators and interpreters have debated this cave metaphor, providing many interpretations from the perspectives of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and educational philosophy. Among them, there are two more well-known and widely accepted perspectives:

(1) Interpretation of political philosophy. The cave metaphor is not a pure play of words, nor is it the contemplation of philosophers, but has its own special social context. That is, it reflects the death of Socrates and the general social situation of the Athenian city-state at that time. The man who came out of the cave and returned to the cave was eventually killed by the prisoners in the cave, and it has been believed by later generations that Plato was a metaphor for the death of Socrates. And the process of this man "wrestling with those who have been imprisoned in the crypts to 'evaluate the image'" is seen by many as Socrates defending himself in court. The cave metaphor is completed in the form of dialogue, and like most of Plato's dialogue works, he himself never appears in it, and this invisible dialogue genre itself is a narrative strategy of the philosopher's self-preservation, which shows that the dialogue background of Plato's works has a strong political significance.

(2) Heidegger's metaphysical interpretation. According to Heidegger, the prisoner in the cave, the liberated in the cave, and the liberated outside the cave described in the cave parable are the three modes of existence or stages of existence of man. Correspondingly, the presence of the unmasked state of self or existence also goes through three stages, namely the shadow of the artifacts in the cave (the lowest level of the unmasked), the artifacts in the cave (the relatively unscathed), and the cave external type (the most unscathed). Moreover, it is only by progressing to the liberated outside the cave, that is, the person in the light of reason, that the activity of human transfiguration can be completed. The cave metaphor "describes the process of movement from the cave to the daylight and from the daylight back to the cave." What does it mean to be relegated outside the cave by the Liberators and descended into the cave? According to Heidegger, the return of those who are already in the most uncovered realm is to lead the still bound to leave the unmasked and go to the most unscathed.

Plato's philosophy or political philosophy had a profound impact on later generations. There is such a saying in the West, and the philosophers of the whole West are commenting on Plato. Philosophers after Plato were influenced by his ideas to varying degrees. The "cave metaphor" is at the heart of Plato's philosophy, and it undoubtedly had an important influence on later philosophical theories.

(1) Influence on Aristotle's philosophy – Take the relationship between substance and idea as an example: any science has its basis as the basis for this science, and it is impossible to produce a science at will, and that basis is the source, that is, the highest entity. Only by grasping this supreme entity can we learn each specific science well.

(2) Influence on Augustine's philosophy: Augustine divided the state into the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the underground, a division that corresponds to Plato's division of the two worlds through "metaphors."

(3) Influence on Hegel's philosophy - take the "god in the temple" as an example: in Hegel's thought, the cave is the temple, philosophy is the god in the temple, and Hegel believes that only when philosophy shines into the cave (temple), it is the real temple or cave.

It is worth mentioning that the "cave metaphor" has also had an impact on the field of communication studies, taking its influence on Lippmann's thought as an example. Lippmann completed his TheOry of Public Opinion in 1922, and on the title page of the book he deliberately selected Plato's parable of the "cave man": the prisoners in the cave "can only see their own figures or each other's figures appearing on the opposite cave wall by the light of the fire... Lippmann, extending Plato's above thoughts, argues that "like these prisoners, we can only see the reality reflected by the medium, and these reflections are the basis for the image of reality in our minds", in other words, the media projects the "things behind the back" that the audience cannot see onto the cave wall, forming images, and the audience perceives actual existence with these images. This is the well-known "mimetic environment" theory in communication science.

4. Evaluation summary

Wendelban once wrote: "The origin and development of Plato's ideas is one of the most difficult, complex, most influential and fruitful processes in the entire history of European thought" On the one hand, the content of the Republic epitomizes the whole picture of Plato's early and middle periods, and is the first comprehensive summary of Plato's philosophical system after it matured. On the other hand, it shows the inexhaustible connotation of this work, although after thousands of years, there are still countless philosophers and politicians who are keen to study this work. Plato's Republic was written in his middle age and had a far-reaching impact. It concentrates the author's political, moral, and educational perspectives, expresses a romantic idealism, and can be said to be the source of modern "utopian" ideas, reflecting Plato's efforts to pursue perfection.

Plato's ideal form of state became a model for later generations of state institutions and political rule. The principles of many countries described in the book, such as the principle of division of labor and cooperation, the principle of the pursuit of the highest good by the purpose of the state, were valued in the construction of the state in later generations and were absorbed by many forms of government. Another example is the theory of ideas in it, which is still a major school of philosophy to this day; the role of dialectics in education is still an important method of propositional argumentation.

But on the whole, Plato's ideal state is impossible to achieve. There are a lot of unrealistic claims, such as communist wives and the like; there are also many things that are easy to be used by dictators, such as ideological clamping. Therefore, when reading the Republic and understanding its ideas, we must combine the background of the book's times and look at the series of viewpoints and theories put forward by Plato with a dialectical and critical attitude.