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The text I will be interpreting is by Plato is The Republic. The Republic discussed equity, order, character of the just city-state, and consequently the just man. The dialogue is predicated off of a Socratic dialogue. Plato’s main argument within the dialogue was that kings should become philosophers or philosophers should become kings. He celebrated this because they have a high caliber of cognizance. This is consequential to the opportunity to rule the Republic. The Republic’s main details are the world of forms and the world of appearances. Before exhibiting what both of those forms contain, I believe it’s consequential to understand what form, generally, consists of. Form is unchanging because it is considered a concept and aeonian, designating it has to subsist during a different authenticity. If we are able to recognise the form of a feline in many different lights, which will be discussed more in The Republic, there must be the true form of a feline somewhere. This true form would be in the world of forms. The world of forms is the true authenticity which only philosophers can perceive. The world of appearances is what humans visually perceive as true authenticity. In this world, there are only shadows and images of the Forms. Ergo, objects imitate the forms. The main reason for him engendering The Republic was to show his view on politics and how it is a manipulative system that did not provide people with sagacity.
The text commences with the Socrates saying, “Imagine men to be living in an underground cavelike dwelling place, which has a way up to the light along its whole width, but the ingress is a long way up. The men have been there from childhood, with their neck and legs in fetters, so that they remain in the same place and can only visually perceive ahead of them, as their bonds avert them turning their heads” (pg 1). The Socrates proceed to verbalize about a fire in front of these prisoners and how the fire casts light on a wall where the prisoners visually perceive shadows of objects on the wall. I interpret this text to show that these prisoners represent the Socrates in a sense. I believe this because the prisoners believe that the shadows are authentic things by connecting as much of the cognizance they ken to what they visually perceive, kindred to how the Socartes’ ask and answer many questions to decipher situations. This relates to society because it shows the indisposition of people to have their views challenged, designating that we would rather believe in things that are unauthentic because it is more comfortable to us.
Another major point in The Republic was the Allegory of the Cave. The cave is a model denoting where we reside and is considered an illusion. The main point of the cave was to show how the prisoners manage to break liberate from their chains one day and come to realize that their authenticity was not what they celebrated it was. Kindred to the fire that cast light on the walls of the cave, the human condition is always connected to the impressions that are received through the senses. This is visually perceived in the dialogue when Plato verbalizes, “How could they visually perceive anything but the shadows if they were never sanctioned to move their heads?” (pg 53). When the prisoners conclusively escape, they feel discomfort and pain. This shows how people feel discomfort when experiencing incipient things. Even if the interpretations are an astronomically misrepresentation of authenticity, we cannot break free of the bonds of our human condition and we cannot liberate ourselves from the extraordinary state, homogeneous to how the prisoners could not liberate themselves from their chains. If we ever did break free, we would come to a world in which we could not comprehend because it is the source of a more preponderant authenticity than the one we have come to ken. The Allegory of the Cave showed the comparison of the effect of inculcation and the lack of it in the world. The cave represents superficial physical authenticity and nescience. This is because Plato shows that those in the cave live accepting what they visually perceive at nominal value. This connects to us today because it shows the entelechy that what we have taken for granted in life is not authenticity. Another part of it all was the shadows. The shadows are the illusions we take as authenticity. The shadows are considered shadows of models in lieu of authentic objects. This shows how the prisoners are even further away from authenticity. We can represent this in today’s society by considering how people take things such as convivial media to be their authenticity in life. The fire, in this case, represents a kind of conditional good, sanctioning authentic world objects to be identified. However, this is not the true good, visually perceiving as though it only provides enough light for credence. The Allegory of the Cave additionally fixated on the outside world. The outside world discussed truth and authenticity. Plato’s cognizance emanates from the world of Forms. The authentic world in Plato’s Cave Allegory corresponds to the world of Forms. The world of Forms is the true authenticity of which only philosophers can perceive. The sun in the dialogue is considered the ultimate Good or enlightenment. The sun can never be directly optically canvassed, but it sanctions an illumination of other things. Considering that the sun is the form of Good, it is visually perceived as the most paramount form. This is because it illuminates all the other forms and gives them value. For example, comeliness is a form of goodness, so they are the more preponderant forms. Goodness is optically discerned as the purest and most perspicacious form. It is the farthest away from the realm of appearances. Albeit goodness is something that we have never optically discerned in it’s true form, we have optically discerned it in role models who society consider to be ‘good’. All of this can be circled back to the Socrates. This is because the Socrates expound how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is liberated from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not authenticity at all, for he can understand the true form of authenticity, rather than the man-made authenticity, much homogeneous to the shadows visually perceived by the prisoners.
At the cessation of Book IV, Plato shows that individual equity reflects political equity. He claims, “Spirited part preserves through both pleasures and pains the commands of reason about what is and is not to be feared” (pg 110). He goes on to verbalize that the soul of every person has a three part structure analogous to the three classes of society. There is a rational part of the soul, that goes after truth and is responsible for our philosophical predisposition, which is the spirited part of the soul. This component desires accolade and is responsible for our feelings of exasperation. It is the desire part of the soul, which gravitates to all many things, but most commonly wealth. The just individual can be defined with the just society. The parallels between the just society and the just individual are very major. Each class of society is controlled by one of the three components of the soul. Engenderers are dominated by their appetites and their urges for mazuma, luxury, and gratification. Warriors are dominated by their spirits, making them intrepid. Rulers are dominated by their rational faculties and long for sapience. Books V through VII accentuate on the rulers as the philosopher kings.
Plato ends The Republic on a turn of events. Having outlined equity and considered it to be the greatest good, he enjoyed poets from his city. He perpetuates on to verbalize that poets appeal to the lowest part of the soul by imitating inequitable tendencies. By emboldening us to wallow in unworthy emotions in sympathy with the characters we aurally perceive about, poetry emboldens us to slake these emotions in life. In closing, Plato relates the path of a soul postmortem. Just souls are remunerated for one thousand years, while the inequitable are penalized for the same duration. Each soul, then, is required to cull its next life.
All in all, The Republic showed many different conceptions that are still germane to this day. Plato’s dialogues, categorically The Republic, sanctioned people in that society to understand how their regime is run and how the conceptions that the regime hold are, in fact, not morally veridical. He shined a light on topics that nobody else had during their era, which sanctioned many people to have a different understanding and perspective during their time and even today. I consider The Republic to be a very well thought out dialogue with many great conceptions and forms that may have not emerged sooner, if it weren’t for Plato and all of his dialogues and theories. To culminate off, I celebrate everyone should at least look deeper into The Republic and understand these theories in more preponderant detail to open more minds.
Works Cited
- Plato, and Benjamin Jowett. The Republic: Plato. The World Publishing Co., 1946.
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