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Resenha de Arruzza, C. A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato’s Republic (2019).

I examine the role of nature (φύσιs) in the argument of Plato's Republic and demonstrate that the concept plays a more central role in advancing the dialogue's philosophical aims than has been appreciated by scholars. Socrates carefully distinguishes between the nature with which one is born and the nature that one has at the end of education. The former is one's "original nature," and the latter is that same original nature brought to fulfillment, a "fulfilled nature". Both of these are referred to as φύσιs. Distinguishing them aids us in understanding the argument of the dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous commentators on Plato's Republic have relied on mistaken assumptions about the requirements for Plato's theory of justice: that Plato establishes a bi-conditional between proper psychic rule and the performance of conventionally just acts. They believe that if Plato does not establish this bi-conditional, then his theory of justice as a virtue will succumb to the fallacy of irrelevance. I claim Plato need not meet that requirement. A novel interpretation of the arguments of Book IV concerning justice in the soul suffices to dispense with one aspect of the bi-conditional – that conventional justice must imply justice as psychic harmony. Then, situating the theory of justice as psychic harmony in the context of the divided line, and in the dialectical ascent in the education of the philosopher-rulers, I show that the other conditional requirement – that justice in the soul must imply the performance of conventionally just actions – is also mistaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims at studying the meaning in the ancient text Yoga Vasistha that suggests that a ruler should be objective and philosophical. Also, the discussions in the text take place in a dialectic model between various historical characters similar to the Platonic dialogues. The text can be located in a closed environment of a particular group of people reflecting their ideological search for pure knowledge and understanding of the world. Nevertheless, we notice the traces of the political and sociological thought processes of the age in which they lived. The text carries the symbol of human search for superior and objective wisdom in the process of evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that history, both personal and political, plays a crucial role in the manifestation (or concealment) of the Good in Plato's Republic. After an introduction on how to read Plato's dialogues vis-a-vis the problem of history, this article offers a close reading of Books I and VIII of the Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that the strict account of techne agreed to by Socrates and Thrasymachus in Republic I provides a useful framework for addressing a central question of the dialogue as a whole: how philosophy might belong to the polis. This view depends upon three positions: 1) that Plato invites us to interpret the relationship between techne and polis outside the terms of the city-soul analogy, 2) that the strict account contributes to a compelling description of vocational work, and 3) that this description determines what Socrates means by a true polis, and thus frames the problem of philosophy’s political inclusion.

The Rhetoric of Plato's Republic. By JAMES L. KASTELY. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. Pp. xviii + 262. Hardcover, $35.00. ISBN 978-0-226-27862-9. While acknowledging that the [...]

In the Republic, the paradigmatic character of Plato’s best city appears incompatible with the use of deception in the procreative practices of the Auxiliaries and Guardians. I argue that this incongruity, as well as the exact provisions of Plato’s reproduction festival, are explained by three facts: his commitment to eugenics, his insistence on the abolition of the typical Greek household and his belief that there are serious limitations to the type of knowledge that Auxiliaries can achieve.

An understanding of the philosophical genus contributes to the perfection of the act of the philosophical habit of the human soul because reality is constituted by a multitude of overlapping genera. Because genera are constituted by a multitude of species unequally related to their generic aim, St. Thomas’s teaching on virtual quantity facilitates an understanding of the diversity of being. Analogy is an act of judgment that expresses an unequally proportionate relationship between beings. Like genus, analogy has to do with a multitude of beings unequally related to a primary subject; as such, analogy is the language of philosophy. To see ‘a city come into being in speech’ in Book II of The Republic is to be trained to observe the relation between real beings, to make correct judgments about those relationships, and to thereby be properly oriented toward reality.