- 01Title page
Republic
Justice, education, politics, and epistemology.
28Chapters
303Lessons
695Topics
Certificate of completion included
This course was produced by Cavua from a public-domain text.
Skills this course leaves you with.
- Explain Plato’s central arguments about justice and the just state
- Analyze the educational role of guardians in the Republic
- Distinguish Plato’s views on knowledge, opinion, and the form of the good
- Interpret the cave allegory and its implications for philosophy and politics
- Summarize the main structure and major themes of the dialogue
- Evaluate key objections raised within the text about community, rulers, and social order
Curriculum
The full table of contents.
Every chapter, every lesson, every topic — laid out before you enroll. Click any chapter to expand it.
- Chapters
- 28
- Lessons
- 303
- Topics
- 695
- 01Transcriber’s Note
- 02List of Contents
- 01Front matter and contents listings
- 01Title and publication details
- 01Dedication to former pupils at Balliol College and Oxford
- 01Acknowledgments to collaborators
- 02Extent of revisions and exchange offer
- 03Plan for revising remaining dialogues
- 01Plato's Republic as the summit of his philosophy
- 02The Republic within Plato's larger unfinished design
- 01Plato's influence on later thought
- 02The search for justice in the Republic
- 01Natural divisions of the Republic
- 02Two-part structure: Books I–IV and V–X
- 03Unity of justice and the State
- 04Multiple designs and philosophical imagination
- 01Chronology and dramatic setting
- 02Cephalus and Polemarchus
- 03Thrasymachus as the Sophist
- 04Glaucon and Adeimantus
- 01Adeimantus and Glaucon as alternating respondents
- 02Plato's succession of moral characters
- 03Inconsistency in Socrates' portrayal
- 01Use of example and illustration
- 01Socratic allegory and cross-references in the Republic
- 02Socrates as 'not of this world'
- 03Plato's ideal state and Socratic moderation
- 01Introduction
- 01Justice as skill and rule
- 02Injustice, division, and weakness
- 01Justice, happiness, and the analogy of the arts
- 02Critique of the art analogy and the nature of excess
- 01Glaucon's challenge and the three classes of goods
- 02The ring of Gyges and the social case for injustice
- 03The idealized just and unjust man
- 04Adeimantus on rewards, punishments, and religious inducements
- 05The appeal to prove justice in the soul
- 01Glaucon’s challenge and the nature of justice
- 02Socrates’ indirect answer and the Republic’s method
- 01Plato’s method: State before individual
- 02The origin of the city and division of labour
- 03Luxury, war, and the guardian class
- 04Education, music, and censorship of poetry
- 01God as author of good only
- 02Primitive state and division of labour
- 03Plato on fiction, truth, and education
- 04Allegory, religion, and the lie in the soul
- 01Purification of religion and fear of death
- 02Poetry, imitation, and dramatic style
- 03Music, metre, and artistic simplicity
- 04Gymnastics and the guardians' diet
- 05Medicine, justice, and the health of the city
- 01Physicians and judges as healing arts
- 02Music and gymnastic in the guardians' education
- 01Selection and testing of guardians
- 02The earthborn myth and the metals
- 01Guardian life without property or luxury
- 02Plato’s use of Homeric authority
- 01Style, subject, and metre in Greek poetry
- 02Plato’s theory of art in the Republic
- 01Physician, judge, and knowledge of vice
- 02Transposition of ranks in Plato's state
- 01Plato’s myth of ranks and the Phoenician tale
- 02Music’s power and the soul-body relation
- 01Plato’s treatment of diet and gradual remedies
- 02Lesser matters of style
- 03Book IV analysis: the guardians’ happiness
- 01The state’s happiness as a whole
- 02Unity, size, and education of the city
- 01Preserving music and gymnastic from innovation
- 02Education as the safeguard of law and order
- 03Limits of legislation and Delphi's role in religion
- 01Duty and happiness in ethics
- 02Utility in politics and statecraft
- 01Wisdom and the guardian class
- 02Courage as preserved right opinion
- 03Temperance as civic harmony
- 04Justice as each doing his own business
- 01Justice, temperance, and the cardinal virtues
- 02The good, law, order, and harmony
- 03Three parts of the soul
- 01Three principles in the soul
- 02Justice, injustice, and the health of the soul
- 01Plato’s division of the soul and the irascible faculty
- 01Plato’s unfinished metaphysic of ideas
- 02Transition to Book V analysis
- 01Women as guardians and equal education
- 01Common duties and education for women
- 01Community of wives and children
- 01Common kinship and family terms
- 02Unity through shared property and feeling
- 01Benefits of the guardian community
- 02Military training and honors for brave warriors
- 03Treatment of enemies and Hellenic warfare
- 01The philosopher-kings and the first wave
- 02Opinion, knowledge, and abstract realities
- 03Editorial notes on Book V
- 01Philosophers as natural rulers
- 02The ship captain parable
- 03How philosophers are corrupted
- 01Why philosophy is despised
- 02Reversing the order of philosophical education
- 03The philosopher’s role in the ideal state
- 01Guardians as philosophers and the longer road to knowledge
- 01The idea of the good as the source of truth and being
- 01The divided line and four levels of knowledge
- 02The philosopher as spectator of all time and existence
- 01Adeimantus's objection to Socratic reasoning
- 02Philosophers as useless or corrupt
- 01Plato's higher method of knowledge
- 02Three questions in the latter part of Book VI
- 01A priori knowledge and creative ideals
- 02Plato’s threefold division of knowledge
- 03The four faculties on the divided line
- 01Plato’s idea of good as first principle
- 02The philosopher’s reticent method and the limits of interpretation
- 01The cave as a parable of perception
- 02Conversion of the soul toward light
- 03Philosophers compelled to rule
- 01Arithmetic as a discipline of thought
- 02Geometry and astronomy as upward studies
- 03Harmonics and the mathematical prelude
- 04Dialectic as the culmination of education
- 05Selection of promising disciples
- 06Dialectic and the danger of premature study
- 07Second training of the soul
- 01Divisions of knowledge in the cave allegory
- 01Mathematics as preparation for philosophy
- 02Plato’s abstraction and the idea of good
- 03The sciences of number, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics
- 04Modern assessment of Plato’s mathematical method
- 05Pythagorean influence on number theory
- 01Explanations of vision and harmonics
- 01Political meaning of the cave allegory
- 01Inferior constitutions and corresponding natures
- 02Decay from the perfect state to timocracy
- 01Origin of timocracy from the decline of the ideal state
- 02Character of the timocratical state and man
- 01The oligarchical man
- 02Origin and evils of oligarchy
- 03The oligarchical character
- 01Democratic government and its freedoms
- 02From oligarchic restraint to democratic desire
- 01Democracy’s excess of freedom
- 02From democratic anarchy to tyranny
- 03The tyrant’s rise and rule
- 01Decline from liberty to tyranny
- 02Recapitulation of the ideal state and its declines
- 01Timocracy as the first declining state
- 01The portrait of the tyrant
- 01Plato's critique of democracy and tyranny
- 01Plato’s portraits of political characters
- 02The number of the State puzzle
- 03Perfect and human numbers in the passage
- 01Explanation of the problem's technical terms
- 01Platonic number and the perfect cycle
- 02The two harmonies and the Tetractys
- 01Reasons for accepting 216 as the Platonic number
- 02Perfect and imperfect numbers in Plato
- 03The tyrannical man and unlawful desires
- 01The tyrannical man and the tyrannical State
- 01The rational life as the truest pleasure
- 02Pure pleasure and the illusion of relief from pain
- 03Soul satisfaction, bodily desire, and spurious pleasures
- 01The king and tyrant in happiness
- 02The image of the soul
- 03Self-control and the heavenly pattern
- 01Moderate pleasures and the pleasures of reason
- 02Royal and tyrannical pleasures: the number 729
- 01Arithmetical formula for the tyrant's loss
- 02The heavenly pattern and future life
- 01Imitation and the three removes from reality
- 02Homer as educator of Hellas
- 01Imitation as appearance without knowledge
- 02Poetry’s appeal to the irrational soul
- 03The emotional dangers of poetry
- 01Argument for the soul's immortality
- 01Immortality and simplicity of the soul
- 02Rewards of justice in life and after death
- 01Er's return from the underworld
- 02The cosmic spindle and the choice of lives
- 01The soul's choice of a better life
- 02Examples of mistaken and wise choices
- 01Two divisions of Book X
- 01Decline of poetry in Plato's age
- 02Plato's objections to actors and dramatic imitation
- 01Plato's objection to imitation in art
- 02Emotional appeal of the imitative arts
- 03Plato's quarrel with poets and philosophy
- 01Plato’s attack on poets as false teachers and allies of tyranny
- 02Poetry, emotion, and the limits of imitative art
- 03The changing place of poetry in history and religion
- 04A possible poetry of truth and moral beauty
- 05Plato’s mixed argument and the immortality of the soul
- 01Er's oriental vision and the heavenly orrery
- 02Choice, chance, and philosophical virtue
- 01The Republic as an Hellenic state and philosopher-kingdom
- 02Spartan elements in the ideal state
- 03Athenian, Hellenic, and anti-Spartan features
- 04Pythagorean influences on Plato's state
- 05The ideal state as an unrealizable vision
- 01Plato and the question of citizenship
- 02The paradox of the perfect State
- 01Plato’s community of property and Aristotle’s objections
- 02The future possibility of common property
- 01Plato’s case for women’s equal training and occupations
- 02Community of wives and children
- 03Objections to Platonic marriage
- 04Effects of polygamy and incest on offspring
- 01Anthropological speculation on the origin of marriage
- 02Marriage and the family as moral progress
- 01Limits of breeding for strength and health
- 02Heredity, ancestry, and human will
- 01Plato’s mistaken view of marriage and foundlings
- 02Population pressure and prudent marriage
- 03Limits of regulating marriage by law
- 04Family attachments versus the higher aims of the state
- 01Plato’s second education for guardians
- 02The idea of good as a metaphysical ideal
- 03The philosopher-statesman and political judgment
- 01Plato's analogy between state and individual
- 01Education as a lifelong preparation
- 02Moral and religious training through music and literature
- 03Gymnastic, medicine, and simplicity in bodily training
- 04Law, prevention, and national education
- 05Mathematics as training in abstraction
- 06Mathematics as preparation for dialectic
- 07Dialectic and the Idea of good
- 08Plato and Hegel on abstraction
- 01Criticisms of Plato’s educational theory
- 02Education as a lifelong philosophical pursuit
- 03Self-education in later life
- 01Platonic education in later life
- 02Ancient views of historical change and political progress
- 03Greek lawgivers and the immutability of fundamental laws
- 01Plato's Republic and the idea of progress
- 02Republic, Laws, and Statesman compared
- 01Plato's Statesman and the rule of law
- 02Cicero's De Republica and Roman adaptations of Plato
- 03St. Augustine's City of God and the Christian ideal city
- 04Dante's De Monarchia and universal empire
- 01More’s ideal commonwealth and communal property
- 02Religious tolerance and Utopian worship
- 03Political, moral, and social paradoxes of Utopia
- 01Bacon's New Atlantis as an imperfect fragment
- 02Campanella's City of the Sun and its social order
- 03Education, science, and religion in the City of the Sun
- 01English ideal-state writings after Plato
- 01Ideals and examples of great men
- 02Plato’s philosophical ideals
- 01Future of the human race and the individual
- 02The divine man and the Christian ideal
- 01The Republic
- 01Socrates’ account of the journey to the Piraeus
- 02Polemarchus stops Socrates and Glaucon
- 01Polemarchus persuades the party to stay
- 02Cephalus welcomes Socrates and his companions
- 01Old age and personal disposition
- 01Cephalus on inherited wealth
- 01Wealth, peace of mind, and justice
- 02Justice as speaking truth and paying debts
- 01Simonides’ definition of justice
- 02Justice as giving good to friends and evil to enemies
- 03Justice’s use in peace and war
- 01Justice in money partnerships and safe-keeping
- 01Justice as usefulness and uselessness
- 02The just man as a thief
- 01Correction of the friend-enemy definition
- 01Justice toward friends and enemies
- 02Injury makes people unjust
- 01Justice cannot mean harming friends or enemies
- 02Thrasymachus interrupts the discussion
- 01Thrasymachus’s challenge and Socrates’s demand for an answer
- 02Justice as the interest of the stronger
- 03Rulers’ mistakes and the problem in the definition
- 01Justice and the rulers' mistaken commands
- 01Strict sense of ruler and physician
- 02Arts as rulers of their subjects
- 01Rulers seek the subject's good, not their own
- 02Thrasymachus on injustice as the stronger's advantage
- 03Tyranny as complete injustice
- 04Socrates urges Thrasymachus to stay and defend his claim
- 01The ruler’s art serves the subject’s good
- 02Distinct arts and the special function of payment
- 01The ruler serves subjects, not self-interest
- 02Payments and penalties for ruling
- 03Why good men accept office
- 01Justice and injustice as virtue and vice
- 02Injustice as division and self-conflict
- 03Ends and proper excellences
- 04Justice as the soul's excellence
- 05Socrates' closing confession of ignorance
- 01Three classes of goods
- 01Three heads of the argument
- 01Justice as a lesser evil
- 02The story of Gyges and the magic ring
- 01Invisibility and the profit of injustice
- 02The perfectly unjust man and the perfectly just man
- 01The just man who is thought unjust
- 01Adeimantus on the rewards of justice and injustice
- 01Common praise of justice and blame of wickedness
- 02Prose writers, prophets, and poets on virtue and vice
- 01Religious rites and expiations for sin
- 02How these teachings shape the young
- 03Choosing appearance over justice
- 01Why injustice seems advantageous
- 01Justice and injustice as goods in the soul
- 01Justice and injustice as effects on the possessor
- 02Socrates’ response to Glaucon and Adeimantus
- 03The large letters analogy
- 01Justice in the State and the individual
- 01Necessity and the division of labour
- 02Trade, retail exchange, and hired labour
- 03The healthy and luxurious state
- 04Expansion of territory and war
- 01War as a specialized art
- 02Qualities required in guardians
- 03Gentleness and spirit in the guardian
- 01Finding the guardian's nature
- 02Education in music and gymnastic
- 01Censorship of fiction and authorized tales
- 02False stories about the gods and heroes
- 01God as the source of good only
- 02God’s immutability and rejection of divine disguise
- 03Truthfulness of God and the limits of divine falsehood
- 01Principles for theological tales and courage
- 02Homeric descriptions of the underworld to reject
- 03Terrible names of the world below
- 01Banishing lamentations and weeping from poetry
- 02Rejecting Homer’s depictions of Achilles, Priam, and the gods
- 01Guardians, laughter, and truthful speech
- 02Temperance and rejection of indulgent myths
- 03Wealth, gifts, and Achilles' conduct
- 04Theseus, Peirithous, and the moral effect of myths
- 01Poets’ misstatements about men and justice
- 02Transition from subject matter to style
- 03Narration, imitation, and mixed poetic style
- 01Imitation and simple narration in epic poetry
- 02Guardians and the limits of imitation
- 03Permitted and prohibited imitations in narration
- 01Simple style and multiplex style
- 02Admission of the pure imitator of virtue
- 03Single-function roles in the State
- 01Exiling the imitative poet
- 02Words, melody, and rhythm in song
- 01Sorrowful Lydian harmonies
- 02Relaxed Ionian and Lydian harmonies
- 03Warlike and moderate harmonies
- 01Rejected instruments and allowed instruments
- 01Rhythms for expressive character
- 02Good rhythm, harmony, and style
- 01Simplicity as the basis of style
- 02Grace and harmony in art and nature
- 03Regulating artists to protect citizens
- 01Musical training as moral education
- 02Recognizing virtue and vice through music
- 03Reading letters as a model for education
- 01Harmony of soul and body
- 02Temperate and harmonious true love
- 01Transition from music to gymnastic
- 02Early bodily training under the mind's guidance
- 03Guardians and sobriety
- 01Warrior athletes need a finer training regimen
- 02Military gymnastic and soldiers’ fare in Homer
- 01Critique of luxury, litigation, and over-medication
- 02Asclepius and the simple art of healing
- 03Why judges must know evil without practicing it
- 01Music and gymnastic as soul-training
- 01Selection of rulers by lifelong devotion
- 02Trials against theft, force, and enchantment
- 03Guardians, auxiliaries, and the royal lie
- 01The Phoenician tale of autochthonous citizens
- 02The myth of the metals and rank transposition
- 03Warriors’ camp and disciplined education
- 01Education as the safeguard of guardians
- 02Communal living and prohibition of private wealth
- 01Adeimantus’s charge of guardian misery
- 02Socrates’s defense of the whole city’s happiness
- 01The State as a whole, not individual happiness
- 01Wealth, poverty, and the decline of artisans
- 02War against richer enemies
- 03Many cities within one city
- 04The proper size and unity of the state
- 01Education as the foundation of civic character
- 02Limits of legislation in a well-ordered state
- 03Apollo’s role in religion and the search for justice
- 01Wisdom in the guardian class
- 02Courage as preserved true opinion
- 03Temperance as self-mastery and harmony
- 04Justice still to be found
- 01Justice as each class doing its own work
- 02Class interchange as injustice
- 03Applying the state model to the individual
- 01The soul’s three principles and the State analogy
- 02The principle of contradiction in the soul
- 01Opposites cannot be in the same respect
- 02Desire, hunger, and thirst as simple or qualified
- 03Relative terms and the sciences
- 01Thirst as a relative desire
- 02Reason opposing appetite in the soul
- 01Spirit as a third principle of the soul
- 01The three principles in state and soul
- 02Reason, spirit, and desire in justice and virtue
- 01Commonplace tests of justice
- 02Inner harmony and the just soul
- 01Injustice as disorder in the soul
- 01Virtue and vice as health and disease of the soul
- 02The five forms of the State and the soul
- 01Demand for the community of women and children
- 02Women’s shared education and military training
- 03Reply to the objection from different natures
- 04Women guardians share the same pursuits as men
- 05Selecting women guardians by natural aptitude
- 06Benefits of common education and military service
- 01Common wives and children among guardians
- 02Utility before possibility in the proposal
- 01Sacred marriage and selective breeding
- 02Rulers’ use of deception in marriage regulations
- 01Population regulation and marriage festivals
- 02Pairing by lot and rewards for the brave
- 03Raising the children of guardians
- 01Marriage ages and lawful unions
- 02Kinship rules and common families
- 03Unity as the greatest good of the state
- 01Common feeling and civic unity
- 01Guardians as family and kinship terms
- 01Common language of kinship and concord
- 02Shared pleasures, pains, and common interest
- 03Community of wives and children as the source of unity
- 04Guardians without private property
- 01Community of property and families
- 02Absence of lawsuits and assaults
- 03Respect for elders and family discipline
- 01Blessings of civic peace and freedom from petty evils
- 02Olympic victors and the guardians’ greater rewards
- 03Reply to the charge that the guardians are unhappy
- 01Common way of life for guardians
- 01Children accompanying parents on military expeditions
- 02Honours for brave soldiers and the dead
- 03Rules for warfare among Hellenes and barbarians
- 01The ideal State as a standard
- 02Philosopher-kings and the third wave
- 01Lovers of the whole, not a part
- 02True philosophers as lovers of truth
- 01Knowledge and opinion as distinct faculties
- 02Opinion as intermediate between being and not-being
- 01Opinion between knowledge and ignorance
- 02Lovers of opinion and lovers of wisdom
- 01Philosophers as guardians of the State
- 02Qualities of the true philosopher
- 01Signs of the philosophical nature
- 02Memory, learning, and truth
- 01Adeimantus on the public case against philosophy
- 01The ship and the mutinous crew
- 01Philosopher as the true pilot
- 02Philosophers’ uselessness caused by society’s refusal
- 03Real enemies of philosophy among its followers
- 01The philosopher’s true nature and virtues
- 02Why philosophical natures are corrupted
- 01Virtues and ordinary goods as distractions from philosophy
- 02Public opinion as the true sophist
- 03Violence, compulsion, and divine preservation
- 01The great brute and the many's tastes
- 01Philosophers’ gifts and early flattery
- 02How philosophy is corrupted by the unworthy
- 03The small remnant fit for philosophy
- 01The proper ordering of philosophical study
- 02Philosophers as rulers and the ideal state
- 01Pretended philosophers and public hostility
- 02The true philosopher's gaze on immutable being
- 03Philosophical imitation and civic virtue
- 01Philosophers as constitutional designers
- 02The guardian must be a philosopher
- 01Guardian's longer circuit of learning
- 01The idea of good as highest knowledge
- 02The good as the soul’s end and the guardian’s knowledge
- 01The child of the good
- 01Sight and the need for light
- 02The sun as the eye's source
- 01The idea of the good as source of truth and knowledge
- 01The visible and intelligible realms
- 02The divided line: images, objects, opinion, and knowledge
- 01Dividing the intellectual sphere into two subdivisions
- 02Mathematical hypotheses and the use of visible forms
- 03Ascending beyond hypotheses to the first principle
- 01Dialectic and the ascent to first principles
- 02The four faculties of the soul
- 01The underground den and chained prisoners
- 01Release from the cave and first pain of turning toward the light
- 02Ascent into the upper world and gradual adjustment to sight
- 03Seeing the sun, understanding its nature, and pitying the prisoners
- 01Return to the den and the philosopher's blindness
- 01Conversion of the soul toward the good
- 02Philosophers' return to civic duty
- 03Education of the guardians and the search for knowledge
- 01Arithmetic as a universal study
- 02Contradictory sense impressions and the need for thought
- 03Unity, number, and the turn toward being
- 04Practical and philosophical uses of arithmetic
- 05Abstract numbers and the mathematician's method
- 01Arithmetic as a training for the soul
- 02Geometry and the eternal
- 03Military and intellectual benefits of geometry
- 01The practical value of astronomy and the order of the sciences
- 02Astronomy as a study of true motions and mathematical problems
- 01Harmonics as the counterpart to astronomy
- 02The Pythagorean study of consonance
- 01Mathematical studies as a prelude to dialectic
- 02Dialectic as the ascent to the absolute good
- 01Dialectic as the only path to first principles
- 02The four divisions of mind and opinion
- 03The dialectician and the idea of good
- 01Natural gifts and character tests for the dialectician
- 01Early preparation for dialectic
- 02The dangers of premature dialectic
- 01Philosopher-kings return to public office
- 02Founding the state by rearing children anew
- 01Common wives, children, education, and guardians
- 02Return to the four false forms of government
- 01The four governments and their defects
- 01Timocracy as the first decline from aristocracy
- 02The Muses’ account of civic decline and the perfect number
- 03Mixed metals, bad births, and political discord
- 01Origin of timocracy from the divided classes
- 02Timocratic state and its military character
- 03Formation of the timocratic man
- 01Definition and rise of oligarchy
- 02Defects and social evils of oligarchy
- 03The oligarchical man and his formation
- 01From oligarchy to democracy
- 02The democratic state and democratic man
- 01Democracy
- 01Necessary and unnecessary desires
- 02The democratical man’s formation
- 01The oligarchic young man’s soul overtaken by appetites
- 02The democratic man as a life of shifting pleasures
- 01Tyranny and the tyrant
- 01The common evil of oligarchy and democracy is the class of idle spendthrifts
- 01From protector to tyrant
- 02Tyrannical rule through war and purges
- 01Tragic poets as eulogists of tyranny
- 01Confiscation of sacred treasures and estates
- 02Parricide and the slavery of tyranny
- 03Conclusion on tyranny's transition from democracy
- 01The tyrannical man and the unresolved question of appetite
- 01Recapitulation of the democratic man
- 01The tyrannical soul as a winged drone
- 02Love, drunkenness, and madness as forms of tyranny
- 03Feasts, debts, and the robbery of parents
- 01Tyrannical desire and domestic violence
- 02The tyrant’s criminal life and followers
- 03The tyrant’s rule, treachery, and injustice
- 01The tyrant as the most miserable man
- 02Tyranny in the city and the soul
- 01Misery of the tyrannical state and soul
- 02Public tyrant as the most miserable man
- 03The tyrant’s prisonlike life and worsening wickedness
- 01First proof: the just man is happiest
- 02Three principles of the soul and their pleasures
- 01Comparing the pleasures of gain, honour, and wisdom
- 02The philosopher as the best judge of pleasure
- 03The claim that true pleasure belongs only to wisdom
- 01Intermediate states as relative pleasures and pains
- 01Illustrations of the unreality of certain pleasures
- 01The pleasures of sensual and passionate desire are unreal and mixed
- 01Measure of the interval between king and tyrant
- 01The tyrant's distance from true pleasure
- 02Justice's superiority in pleasure, propriety, and virtue
- 03Return to Thrasymachus's claim about injustice
- 01The soul as a composite beast
- 02Justice as strengthening the man within
- 01The noble and ignoble life of the soul
- 02Justice, temperance, and inner harmony
- 03Rejection of imitative poetry
- 01The idea and the made object
- 02The universal creator
- 03Appearances in the mirror
- 01The painter as a maker of appearances
- 02Three beds and three makers of beds
- 01The maker, the carpenter, and the imitator
- 02Poets and painters as imitators of appearances
- 03Homer’s lack of public service and disciples
- 01Poets as imitators of appearances
- 02Three arts: using, making, and imitating
- 01Imitation as ignorance of the good
- 02Imitation as thrice removed from truth
- 03Measuring and the rational soul
- 04Imitative art and the inferior part of the soul
- 01Imitation, conflicting impulses, and moderated grief
- 02Poetry’s appeal to passion and its harm to reason
- 01Poetry’s appeal to pity and laughter
- 02Homer and the exclusion of imitative poetry
- 01Poetry's defence and conditional return
- 01The soul's immortality and imperishability
- 01Soul indestructibility and immortality
- 02The soul’s true form and purity
- 01Justice as the soul's true reward
- 02Restoring justice's reputation before gods and men
- 03Earthly rewards of the just and the unjust
- 01Er's tale of the afterlife judgment
- 02Punishments and rewards for souls
- 03Ardiaeus and the incurable sinners
- 04The meadow, the seven-day rest, and the column of light
- 01Whorls of the heavenly spheres
- 01Proclamation of free choice
- 02Samples of lives and the peril of choice
- 01The soul's choice of just and unjust lives
- 02The prophet's warning and the first chooser's mistake
- 03Habit, philosophy, and the effect of prior lives
- 01Examples of the souls’ chosen lives
- 01River of Unmindfulness and the souls' drinking
- 02Return to the body and the saved tale
- 03Counsel to follow justice and virtue
- 01A entries: Abdera through Anacharsis
- 02A entries: Analogy through Athens
- 03Art and the arts
- 01Barbarians, beasts, and beauty
- 02Being, belief, and becoming
- 03Body, state, and physical arts
- 04Brass, breeding, building, and burial
- 01Calculation as a corrective of sight
- 01Children have spirit, but not reason
- 01Colours and poetic colour
- 02Comedy in the state
- 03Common life and communal property
- 04Community of women, children, and feeling
- 05Plato’s communism and the ideal state
- 01Conception of truth by the philosopher
- 02Confidence and courage
- 03Constitution and defective forms of government
- 04Corruption, courage, and related terms
- 01Courtesans
- 01Dialectic as the highest branch of philosophy
- 02Discourse, disease, and division of labour
- 01Common and higher education of the guardians
- 02Fiction and censorship in education
- 03Music, gymnastic, and early training
- 01Plato’s theology of God and the gods
- 02Gold and the good
- 03Good man, goods, and government
- 04Grace, greatness, and grief
- 01Guardians of the state
- 02H entries: habit through health
- 01Homer’s role in Plato’s criticism of poetry
- 02Iliad passages cited for Homeric examples
- 03Odyssey passages cited for Homeric examples
- 01Odyssey xxiv. references
- 01Idea of Good as source of truth
- 01Ideal state
- 01Injustice
- 01Definitions and theories of justice
- 02Justice in the state and the individual
- 03Plato's argument for the happiness of the just
- 01King
- 01Labour, laws, and legislation
- 02Lacedaemon, Lycurgus, and Lydia
- 03Lie and lying
- 04Life, liberty, and luxury
- 05Love and lovers
- 01Alphabetical index entries from Madman to Marsyas
- 02Alphabetical index entries from Mathematics to Multitude
- 03Music and mythology entries
- 01N entries: narration, necessity, and number
- 02O entries: objects, opinion, and opposites
- 01Pain, pleasure, and the soul
- 02Philosopher and philosophy
- 03Poetry and poets
- 04Property, poverty, and political order
- 05Proverbs, punishment, and purgation
- 01Quacks
- 02Quarrels, dishonourable
- 01Rational soul and reason
- 02Rhetoric, rhythm, and ridicule
- 03Ruler and rulers of states
- 01Science, sculpture, and sense
- 02Sex, shadows, sight, and silver
- 03Socrates, soldiers, and sophists
- 01Soul: nature, parts, and analogies
- 02Psychology of the Republic
- 03Soul after death and transmigration
- 04Related index entries: sounds, spectator, spirit, stars
- 01Plato’s ideal state and its features
- 02Related index entries on state and civic life
- 01Temperance in the state and soul
- 01Tyranny and the tyrannical man
- 02The tyrant: rise, rule, and misery
- 01Understanding as a faculty of the soul
- 01Valetudinarianism
- 02War and the warrior
- 03Wealth and the wealthy
- 04Wisdom, the wise man, and women
- 01Xerxes and justice as debt repayment
- 02Young and youth in Plato
- 01Zeus
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