The Republic is the most representative work of western political and ideological tradition. Through Socrates' dialogue with others, he showed a perfect and superior city-state to later generations.
Plato divided the country into three classes: the ruling class who received strict philosophical education, the samurai class who defended the country and the civilian class. He despises personal happiness and infinitely emphasizes the whole city-state and his own "justice". In Plato's eyes, people of the third class are inferior and can be deceived. He endowed the ruler with supreme power, and even the ruler "can lie to the enemy or citizen for the benefit of the country"
The theme of The Republic is justice, first of all, the justice of the country. Plato believes that a good country should have four virtues: wisdom, courage, self-control and justice.
The wisdom of a country requires it to have the knowledge to govern the whole country, and only a few people have such wisdom; The bravery of a country belongs to the guards who defend it; A country's self-control is a kind of harmony. When the ruler and the ruled can live in harmony, the state will realize self-control. A country with these three virtues has justice.
Philosophers love wisdom, but those who are curious about everything are not real philosophers. Only those who are keen on seeking truth are philosophers, which involves the question of truth.
Plato divided the world into perceivable worlds and ideas. Those who only like specific things, such as beautiful tone or image, have opinions but no knowledge. Only those who know the idea that beauty itself is beauty and distinguish it from concrete things without confusion are knowledgeable people.
Plato explained through the metaphor of "the sun" that just as the sun is the reason why the visible world is visible, goodness is the reason why all concepts exist in the conceptual world and is the highest concept. He further divided the two worlds into four parts through the metaphor of "line":
First, the image;
Second, the image of the object;
Third, mathematical objects. The soul regards the physical object of the image as the image to study, which can only be reduced from hypothesis to conclusion;
Fourth, the concept. The soul is pushed from hypothesis to first principle, instead of using images, it uses ideas to conduct systematic research.
The first two parts belong to the visible world, and the last two parts constitute the knowable world.
Correspondingly, the state of the soul can also be divided into four stages, namely, imagination or speculation, belief, reason and rationality.
Plato pointed out through the metaphor of "cave" that the four stages of cognition are not the development process of acquired learning, but the "turning of soul". Because the soul itself has a cognitive ability, education only makes this ability grasp the right direction, making it turn from darkness to light, from the phenomenon world to the real world, so education is also one of the important themes of The Republic.
Plato designed an ideal educational curriculum. In addition to the two primary courses of physical education and music, you must also study five courses, such as arithmetic, plane geometry, solid geometry, astronomy and homophonic. According to this order, the soul is gradually led from the visible world to philosophy, with the aim of cultivating national ruling talents and promoting their soul turn.
The theme of The Republic is very rich. Although it is a philosophical classic, its contents include politics, ethics, psychology, pedagogy, sociology, literature and art, etc. This is because philosophy at that time was a comprehensive knowledge, and various natural sciences and social sciences have not yet divided into. The philosophical system contained in the Republic can be said to be a comprehensive theory about human beings, which includes classical theories of various disciplines. Nowadays, when people study western cultural traditions, they must trace back to Greece to find their origins, so there is a saying that "words must be called Greece". Similarly, almost all western philosophy and social sciences can find some original classic expressions in the Republic.
The Republic is the first political science work in the west, in which Plato discusses the origin, nature and structure of the country and other fundamental issues. He also distinguished different regimes, compared their advantages and disadvantages, and looked for their historical development laws. More importantly, Plato designed a set of political blueprints, which not only had the ideal color of utopia, but also had traces of class state, which had an inestimable influence on western political thought.
At the beginning of this book, a very important question is raised: "What is justice?" Justice is "Give something back to others?" Is justice "good for good, good for bad?" . Socrates asked others about the definition of justice. And the viewpoint that justice is the interest of the strong put forward by Trasumaku is refuted and discussed in detail. He thinks that rulers sometimes make mistakes. Rulers can rule themselves and others only if they have the knowledge to prevent themselves from making mistakes. An honest man not only cares about himself. Rule is for the benefit of the ruled, not for the benefit of the ruler.
In order to prove that a just life is a valuable life, Socrates began to discuss the justice of the polis in the second volume, arguing that the justice of the polis is consistent with the justice of the individual. In his view, every city-state has managers, guardians and laborers. These three classes all have their own responsibilities and virtues. When the people of these three classes perform their duties and coordinate with each other, this city-state is a city-state with "justice" as its virtue. Like the polis, everyone's soul has three factors: reason, will and emotion, and correspondingly, there are three virtues: wisdom, courage and temperance. When these three factors are harmoniously unified under the control of reason, they become a just person.
Plato believes that a just city-state or an ideal country must meet three conditions. First of all, rulers should be chosen from talented people, regardless of gender. Second, the ruling class should live a commune life. Third, the king should be a philosopher, or a philosopher should be a king, because only philosophers have the knowledge to govern the country.
In the sixth and seventh volumes, Plato put forward his metaphysical and epistemological theory of idealism, and explained his thoughts with three famous metaphors. He believes that everything has its own characteristics, such as "beauty" for beautiful things and "red" for red things. These similarities are the "* * * phase" or "concept" of things, and the concept is perfect, which is the essence and foundation of perceptual things. Good things are beautiful because of good ideas, and good things are beautiful because of good ideas. Ideas exist independently in the perceptual world. The conceptual world and the perceptual world are separated.
Plato emphasized the difference between feeling and reason and their different functions in the process of cognition. Feeling can only know the external world and its shadow, and only reason can grasp the essence of things and understand thoughts. His understanding of people is divided into: the understanding of the shadow of foreign objects is "speculation"; The understanding of external things is "faith". In the rational stage, people know lower concepts, such as "circle" and "triangle". The rational stage is the highest stage of human spiritual activities, and only at this stage can we grasp the highest idea and gain an understanding of truth. Guess and belief are not knowledge, but opinions. Knowledge is the understanding of ideas. In the famous "cave" metaphor, Plato tells how a person experienced the process of guessing the world, believing the world and thinking about the formal world. Having gained knowledge about ideas, the man felt it his duty to teach those who were still in the cave. Plato thus pointed out that in a just country, philosophers should become kings and govern the country responsibly.
Utopia is the name of a Latin document written by Thomas Moore. Full name is the most complete national system and a useful and interesting encyclopedia of Utopia New Island. Probably published in 15 16. The original word of Utopia comes from two Greek roots: ou means nothing, the other eu means good, and topos means place, which together means "no place" or "good place". It is an ideal country, not a real country, but a fictional country, perfect and harmonious, without disputes.
The Republic involves all aspects of Plato's ideological system, including philosophy, ethics, education, literature and art, politics and so on. , and mainly discusses the ideal country.
Today's utopia often has a broader meaning. Generally used to describe any imaginary ideal society. Sometimes it is also used to describe the attempt to turn some theories into reality in today's society. Utopia is often used to express some good but impossible (or almost impossible) suggestions.
Moore's own utopia is a completely rational republic, all property belongs to * * *, and mercenaries from neighboring belligerents are hired in wartime, instead of using their own citizens. Moore himself is a man of firm belief. He once wanted to be a priest, and his novels may have been influenced by the Jesuits.
Utopia in a broad sense can be ideal or realistic, but generally speaking, the word emphasizes what is optimistic, ideal and impossible to be perfect.