There are a number of reasons every post-adolescent human being would benefit from reading and studying The Republic of Plato. For starters, I just used the unconventional descriptor, human being, intentionally. I used this nomer to emphasize our distinction from the animals by means of our superior mental faculties, power of speech, and soulfulness instead of using the legal or formal nomer, person, which emphasizes our individual selves as distinct from other individuals.
In other words, I wanted to emphasize the fact that we are more than individuals with rights in society; we also have a particular dignity as beings who have been created in the image of God.
As such, we have the capacity for intellectual, spiritual, and physical development. We have the capacity to not only know things but think about how and why we know them. We also have the capacity to think about our choices as a result of what we know. Human beings have the capacity to understand, memorize, and innovate with the body of knowledge we accumulate. We also have the capacity to act virtuously or viciously, wisely or foolishly, as a result of the things we know.
So knowing, understanding, and choosing are things innate to human beings. And thinking through ideas we can know, understand, and make choices about is called philosophizing, or doing philosophy. The word philosophy is made up of two Greek words that can be transliterated as Philo (love) and Sophia (wisdom). Philosophy, at its core, is the love of wisdom. To philosophize, in short, is to seek the good using our mental faculties.
As human beings, we all naturally philosophize. Granted, some philosophize better than others, but in what we can know, understand, and act upon, we all seek the good, or at least what we perceive to be the good.
Putting this all together, this means, as Robert Maynard Hutchins claimed, “Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining.”
Said another way, we cannot change the fact that we are human beings, but we can learn to philosophize better in order to become our most developed self. With this orientation in mind, the following are five reasons to read and study The Republic.
- Reason #1 – The Republic is one of the earliest attempts to write a sustained work of philosophy.
- Reason #2 – The Republic treats the broadest range of philosophical ideas in any single work.
- Reason #3 – The Republic’s influence on Western philosophical thought is inestimable.
- Reason #4 – The Republic, as a playground of philosophy, is an inexhaustible mine of suggestion.
- Reasons #5 – The Republic is the foundational pursuit of justice in the city and soul of man in pre-Christian, philosophical thought.
This very short post is the truncated answer to the question, “Why should everyone read or study The Republic of Plato?”
If you’re interested in exploring these five reasons further, you can read my article on the same topic over at Poiema Institute. In the article published there, I elaborate on these five reasons.
Or, you can enroll in part one of my eleven-week adult education course covering all ten books of this great masterpiece. It’s called The Tale of Two Cites. You can read about the course by selecting the link.