Becker Bible Teacher Resources

BOOK V

Socrates has just finished defining the one of five regimes that rules the just city and just soul as a kingship/aristocracy.  Polemarchus stops him in the middle of his listing, to challenge him about the problems stirred by Socrates when he spoke about the spouses and children shared by the guardians in a communal relationship. Socrates then answers this challenge with further discourse that speaks about the three waves that must be navigated before virtues can be expressed.

Three Waves

1. The first wave educates women with a Greek education of gymnastics and music with equal status as the nude male students (451e – 457c). Socrates evaluates women and men to be equal with regards to the ruling of the three divisions of the soul; thus, the just city will use the women for their skills as the men are used.

2. The second wave eliminates monogamous marriage, and makes the women and children the possession of the community of guardians, rather than singular family units (457d – 462a). This promotes the pure herd reproduction of the best in the guardian class, and the common giving birth to the common (promoted by the Ruler with established festivals and sacrifices to encourage commoner’s lovemaking) (459e). All children born from the mating festival are gathered up and raised together, without regard to the parentage. To avoid incestual relationships of unknown children, all children able to have been sired (calculated based upon festival dates of active sexual relationships), the adults must consider all of the children as descending from them, and avoid sexual contact (463a-c).

3. The third wave requires a Philosopher-King to be placed in rule (472a-473d).

Socrates deals with different aspects of the development of the guardian’s lifestyles and the development of war.  Of particular oddity is the position to allow young children that seem destined to become guardians to participate in war as observers for the purpose of apprentice training (467b, c, d). Also, Socrates establishes rules of war, to include identifying the differences of vanquishment, enslavery, and destruction of land upon victory from barbarians, but, an avoidance of this if the fight includes Greeks (469c, d, e).

The discussion also moves to the difference between knowledge and opinion (476a – 480a) so that Socrates can argue for the third wave. Knowledge is naturally dependent on what is, to know what is that it is and how it is (476b). It is established that opinion is not ignorance, but lies between ignorance and knowledge. With the rule of the Philosopher-King, he is able to pronounce knowledge without offence to the opinionated, because philosophers are known for searching for the truth in every matter (480a).

Christian Application

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Reference:

Plato, The Republic of Plato - Translated with Notes and an Interpretive Essay by Allan Bloom, trans., Allan Bloom, Second ed. (Basic Books, 1968)