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Plato's Republic is mainly the discussion of justice versus injustice and the task of defining each. To figure out how to grasp a definition, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus set to creating a Just City as a model for the individual. Eventually they come to the point of seizing the land of neighbors, discovering the origins of war (373 e). With war as a factor, they must create guardians not only to fight to gain land, but also to protect the city.
Socrates states that the work of the guardians is most important, it requires most freedom from other things and greatest skill and devotion (374 e). From this quotation, the reader realizes that the guardian class, which contains rulers and the auxiliary, will be one of the primary focuses of the Just City. To better the quality of the city, Socrates creates ideal traits for the guardians. They must have keen senses, speed, and physical strength while being courageous and spirited (375 a-b). This spirited ness, which is known as thomas, includes desire, passion, need for revenge, obedience, longing for honor, and tends to prefer war to peace. While this combination of ingredients makes for a good warrior, it raises some problems for a regular citizen functioning within a city.
According to Socrates, the guardians must be gentle to their own people and harsh to the enemy (375 c). This is one of the most crucial elements of discussion in Republic, the idea of how to make a class of people that is spirited yet gentle, warlike yet peaceful. Socrates attempts to moderate the thomas of the Just Citys guardian class to make them an ideal group of defenders, warriors, leaders and citizens through a very specific education in poetry which includes censorship and brainwashing. Education is the transfer of knowledge from a teacher to a student.
Therefore, the teacher has the ability to control what the student knows. Socrates hopes that the guardian class of the Just City will be like pedigree dogs in that they will be gentle to those they know and violent to those with whom they are unfamiliar (375 e). He decides that this will make them philosophical in nature because they will distinguish between the things with which they are familiar and those of which they are ignorant, loving the former and detesting the latter (376 a-b). It is the philosophical nature built into the guardians that causes them to love learning and makes it easy for teachers to impress patterns upon them when they are most malleable (377 b).
In the Just City, young guardians will adore the study of music and poetry and will be transformed from children with thomas into warriors that function in society. The traditional focus on music and poetry in Greek history is the basis for the education system within the Just City. It includes the telling of stories written by lyric, epic, and tragic poets prior to and throughout Plato's time. When children are young they are told these stories by their mothers and nurses to give them a sense of values and patterns to follow. One of the most important patterns that needs to be impressed upon the guardian class is that the gods, who are essentially society's greatest role models, are good and cannot war, fight, or plot against each other (378 c). Believing that such things never happened will keep citizens from hating each other and committing crimes (378 b) that might otherwise be carried out because of their spirited ness.
To teach this lesson to the young guardian class, Socrates suggests that stories about gods and heroes (the children of the gods) doing the aforementioned negative things be stricken from the city. Also, since children must be courageous and not deviate from their paths in life, they will not be told stories about the gods altering themselves to take on different shapes (381 a-e). Along the same lines, stories of gods performing sorcery or appearing as something false in an illusion will also be forbidden (383 a). Without such stories, guardians will not look up to those who lie and present themselves falsely, but instead to honest, peaceful role models. Another modification on poetry that Socrates offers is that stories be told that will make [guardians] least afraid of death (386 a).
With the passion that comes along with thomas, it is likely that with stories as they are in Plato's time, making death a frightful thing, guardians would be very angered by the deaths of their friends and relatives. Changing the stories to praise Hades would be more beneficial to warriors, making them not only less passionate about the deaths of those close to them, but also making them stronger without fear of their own deaths. Just as death could have a negative effect on a thomas-laden class, passion and spirited ness lead those who laugh to have violent changes in mood (388 e). As such changes are excessive and inappropriate for those guarding a city, stories of the gods or worthwhile people laughing are to be deleted from the education of young warriors (388 e- 389 a). Stories of the gods and honorable men must also be edited to remove examples of their tendency to be bribed with gifts or money (390 d). Part of thomas is desire, and that desire includes a love of money that could be dangerous to the order of communistic society that has been created.
To prevent the love of money and ability of leaders and guardians to be bribed in the Just City is to maintain a less corrupt city. These adjustments in the poems and songs are meant to keep children from gaining traits thought by Socrates to be negative to the general good of the city. However, there are some aspects of this idea that do not add up completely. These guardians are being created with ideal traits from the very start.
Socrates is assuming that human nature is not a factor in his city. It is human nature to desire more than one has, and people in every society throughout history have worked hard to attain their desires. Even when humans had no idea what more was, they strived to make better lives for themselves. Socrates and the others assume that there will automatically be children born who have thomas yet lack human traits, and enough of these children to create an army. If the assumption can be made that these guardians will be created to never have the thought to rebel or strive for a new lifestyle, Socrates could also create guardians with a new kind of spirited ness without modifying poetry at all. Also, if it can be assumed that there will automatically be land available to create this Just City, it could also be assumed that there would be enough land to provide for any size population in the city, and thus war would be unnecessary.
There would not need to be a guardian class, spirited or not. Assumptions aside, Plato's Republic contains the idea of a society that does go to war, and one with a guardian class that is full of spirit. While this thomas could be dangerous and detrimental to the city, Socrates creates a line of education in music and poetry that moderates and tames the guardians to be not only warriors, but citizens as well. The people he has manufactured through rigorous education are not only loyal to their state, but will not fight with their neighbors, will not lie, and will not laugh in excessive amounts. Republics guardian class does not fear death nor long for money or gifts. This society, in its faults and miscalculations, shows us that to achieve perfect justice is impossible while citizens are still humans.
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Research essay sample on Music And Poetry Plato Republic
