The Importance Of The Ideal State In Plato's The Republic

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In Plato’s The Republic, the primary focus for a significant portion of the text is establishing the ideal state in order to determine the nature of justice and virtue. In doing so, Socrates, who is the primary speaker in the text, determines several requirements for the existence of the ideal state. The third requirement according to Socrates is that philosophers must rule as kings (or kings must adequately philosophize). Until this occurs, “cities will have no rest from evils” (473d). However, there is some objection, or anticipated objection, to Socrates’ requirement. Adeimantus, one of Socrates interlocutors in The Republic, raises the objection that those who actively philosophize into adulthood are made up of a great number of cranks and, …show more content…

He begins his argument by means of analogy. Just as a vigorous plant suffers most greatly when it is deprived of necessary nutrients and environment and weather, a vigorous soul, as a philosopher must possess according to Socrates, can become the greatest of the wicked if its upbringing should be bad (491d-492a). What then can corrupt such a vigorous soul? Socrates contends that the upbringing of those with a philosophic soul is corrupted by the unphilosophical majority, saying “They object very loudly and excessively to some of the things that are said or done and approve others in the same way, shouting and clapping, so that the very rocks and surroundings echo the din of their praise or blame and double it” (492b-c). By this, Socrates means that societal beliefs act as a sort of echo chamber whereby the loudest opinions are perpetuated and only come to grow in size to the point where dissenting opinion is incapable of breaking through the cacophony. This mob that forms then compels those who dissent by “disenfranchisement, fines, or death” (492d). In this way, mob society forces dissenters to be

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