The Intelligent Troglodyte’s Guide to Plato’s Republic, 2016a

52 The Virtues of the Philosopher
See 484a-487a. Books VI and VII are largely concerned with exploring what it is
to be a philosopher, someone who desires and achieves knowledge of the forms.
In these opening pages, Socrates begins to explain some of the ways such people
are excellent, and why they belong at the helm of a city. As lovers of knowledge,
they are fast at learning things, good at remembering things, and have the greatest
concern for the truth (for getting things right). Their soul “has a natural sense of
proportion and grace,” and so, proportion and grace being “akin” to truth, their
soul is “easy to lead to the form of each thing there is.” And because they are
ruled by the rational part and its desires, they are not swayed by the petty
appetitive desires that cause a person to fall into vices such as licentiousness,
greed, and cowardice.
Do people who are sensitive to “proportion and grace” tend to be sensitive
to truth? If so, why might this be? What is the relation between truth and
beauty?
Socrates says at 485c that philosophers “must never willingly tolerate
falsehood in any form.” What then of the marriage lotteries (459c-460a)
and the myth of the metals (414c-415d)? Is this not the toleration, indeed
the propagation, of falsehood? How might Socrates defend himself against
the charge of inconsistency? Consider what he says at the end of Book II
about lying and the divine (382a-e).
What makes a good political leader? Is the challenge of politics above all
an intellectual problem, a matter of thinking through what is best for the city
and how to achieve it?
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