(4th tetralogy : The Soul - 2nd dialogue of trilogy)

The (ill named in English) Republic is the most important of all the dialogues. The central dialogue of the central trilogy, it constitutes the logical center of the whole. It deals with the soul, which, as we have known from the beginning, constitutes man (cf. Alcibiades, 130c), at the intermediate level where one is confronted with choices and must decide what one wants to become in this life, and it describes "justice" as the ultimate "idea" of Man (anthrôpos), or better, the "idea/ideal" that one must set for oneself. But justice as conceived by Plato's Socrates is not limited to a social virtue concerning only the relations between human beings, but is an all-encompassing virtue which alone can reconcile spirit and matter, private and public life, inner life and social life, and enable one to attain unity both interior and exterior,  that is to say, it makes it possible for one to build one's own being (which is not given in advance, but is the result of his individual choices, within the limits of the constraints imposed by "necessity", as can be seen in the Timaeus) and to reach true happiness. This is what the Greek title of the dialogue, Politeia, suggests, but which is lost when it is translated into English by Republic, which retains only the political dimension of the title. Politeia is indeed a noun derived from the noun polites, itself derived from polis, the "city" (in the sense that this term had in Greece at the time of Socrates and Plato, where it was not limited to a single urban agglomeration, but included all the territory, urban and rural, which was controlled by the rulers of this "city" and subject to the same laws),  that is to say, in more modern terms, the unit of organization of social life (which would be more like the country or the state today). The polites (politai in the plural) is the inhabitant of the polis, the "citizen", i.e. the human being (anthrôpos), male or female, by nature a social animal (even if, in Athens in Plato's time, only men were properly "citizens" with all the attached rights, which is precisely what Plato calls into question in the Republic). From this original meaning, the word politeia can take on a whole set of meanings in both individual and collective registers: it can simply mean "citizenship" in the strict sense, that is to say the simple fact that a person is a polites of such and such a city (we would rather speak nowadays of "nationality",  the "nation" having replaced the "city" as a political unit); it can also designate the set of rights and duties that are those of a polites; or the way of life that befits a polites; but also the gathering of all the politai; or the organization of the polis which defines the functions of the various politai, that is to say, in the final analysis, the "constitution" which governs the city and the life of the politai, provided that the "constitution" is given a broader meaning than that which it has nowadays, encompassing all the legislative corpus of the city; and in the end, but only late and probably not before Aristotle, and therefore not in Plato's time, the word may refer to a particular form of government of the politai that actually corresponds to what is now called a "republic". The problem is that, if Plato chose this word, politeia, as the title of his dialogue, it is precisely because of the multiplicity of these meanings, both individual and collective, and with the intention of eliminating none of them, but on the contrary of making his readers aware of the interdependencies they had with each other! The English title, the Republic, derives from a work by Cicero written in the manner of Plato in the form of a dialogue and largely inspired by Plato's Politeia, De re publica (word for word: "about the public thing"), which rubbed off on the original and led to the attribution of this title in Latin, contracted to Respublica,  to Plato's work, later transcribed into English as Republic. The least bad translation of the Greek title into English would rather be "Citizenship", taking this word in the broadest possible sense implying the multiplicity of meanings of "citizen", insofar as "citizen" makes the link between the individual and the collective by situating the one to whom it is applied, who is always a person,  as a member of a community in which one has rights and duties.

And in fact, the Republic is not either a political dialogue or a psychological dialogue, but both at the same time, insofar as its purpose is precisely to show that one cannot be separated from the other, that politics is nothing more than the attempts made by man to put things in order,  or disorder, in social life, according to the manner in which one makes use of the reason given to human beings by the god to rise above mere matter, and which alone distinguishes them from other animals, and that it is not possible for man to put one's life in order in society if one does not first put order in one's interior life,  that no one is fit to govern others until one is able to "govern" oneself. Because the unity of the human soul is not given in advance, because this soul is made up of several parts, as we will discover in the course of the reading, it is up to each of us to build harmony and the community of purpose between the parts of one's soul which is the prerequisite for harmony with the others in the city under the guidance of the noblest part of our soul,  this logos that comes to us from the god creator of the ordered kosmos that is our Universe, which Plato calls dèmiourgos (etymologically "working (-ourgos) for the people (dèmos)", i.e. "craftsman") in the Timaeus. Politics is only the speech "in large letters" written by the human souls in this Universe subject to becoming, the image of the order or disorder that reigns in them reflected in their social life. And because a human being cannot live alone, because they are "social animals," because they must act and not just think or speak, politics becomes an integral part of "psychology," but only a part. Politics, as the means of bringing order into the world of human beings by means of laws which are the product of the rational nature of this animal which a human being is, is, here on earth, the ultimate concern of the philosophos, this lover of wisdom, but must be understood in the context of a global vision, in the light of a correct understanding of the becoming of the soul and its telos, its ultimate "destiny" at death or "after".

But then, precisely because Man is a social animal, what he becomes depends on his social environment to the point that it is as difficult to decide whether it is he who makes his environment or whether it is his environment that makes it as it is to decide whether the Republic is more political than psychological or the opposite. And in the end, the decay of man and society are described in intertwined sections to better show how much they depend on each other.

To begin with, you should first consider the commented plans of the Republic.

Several key sections of the Republic translated and annotated by me are available on this site. They are:

• From book II:
  • The ring of Gyges (359b-360b) with a long commentary of this story as it relates to the allegory of the cave and the myth of Er.
• From book VI:
  • The Good and the Sun (504e7-509c4) (translation only; the translation of the notes from the French version is in preparation)
  • The analogy of the line (509c5-511e5) (Introduction to both the analogy of the line and the allegory of the cave and translation of the analogy; the translation of the notes from the French version is in preparation)
• From book VII:
  • The allegory of the cave (514a1-517a7) (translation only; the translation of the notes from the French version are in preparation)
  • Socrates comments on the allegory of the cave (517a8-519d7) (translation only; the translation of the notes from the French version is in preparation)
  • Definition of dialektikè (531c9-535a2) (translation only; the translation of the notes from the French version is in preparation)
• From book X:
  • The three kinds (eidè) of seats (beds) (595c7-598d6)

You may also want to read the following posts in my e-mail archives (dating back from the nineties)  :

• Symbolic roles and names in Plato's Republic
• Keys to Republic's prolog
• Mathematical entities in Plato's Republic
• The discussion with Cephalus (Republic, I)
• Warlords or Perfect Guardians (the conversation with Polemarchus, Republic I)
• Cephalus and the Timæus, on the relationsip between the Republic and the Timæus.