... stands as one of the cornerstones of the Western philosophical tradition. Characters Plato - Athenian philosopher, author of the Republic. As a young man, Plato was a disciple of Socrates, and his early work bears the mark of Socrates' heavy influence. During his middle period, and particularly with the Republic, Plato began to espouse a more purely personal philosophy based on his own Theory of the Forms. Socrates - We do ... Just because everyone is doing the job that best suits their nature--the guardians lead, the auxiliaries fight, the rest of the people work. Plato then projects t...

• Word Count: 2965
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... numerous and oftentimes rather obscure, so the reader would do well to focus instead on the less numerous justifications that Plato cites for banning things in his aristocracy. In fact, there are only two arguments that Plato presents over the course of The Republic to justify banning things in the city, but each argument is extremely important in its own right. It should ... banish poets and various types of speech from his city. Specifically, he wants poets not admitted into the city because poetry "produces a bad regime in the soul of each private man by making phantoms that are very...

• Word Count: 2504
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... based on a parallel between what he believes to be the soul of man and the state. Plato divides the soul into three parts: the appetitive or of desires, the spiritual or emotional, and the rational part concerned with obtaining wisdom. The highest and best of these three parts is the rational part. Plato then creates a parallel between the soul and the State. The appetitive side ... individuals are told a lie about there past and are told a bigger lie in order to subject them into social classes. I think that this is a great contradiction in Plato's philosophy. In his book The Republic ...

• Word Count: 4292
• Approx Pages: 17
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... . The ruler, therefore, is justified in doing whatever is necessary to maintain the country, even if it is unjust. On the other hand, Plato argues a ruler can never be unjust. In spite of the fact, Machiavelli is greatly influenced by the Greek and Latin classics, and by the ... by its flexibility because the ruler is given the prerogative to mold it in consonance to a given situation whereas "virtue" is more rigid, as Plato would required the just ruler to behave the same all the time. We can clearly see Machiavelli's objective examination of republican leadership. Machiavelli was ... b...

• Word Count: 4508
• Approx Pages: 18
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... property by a revolutionary movement; responsibility for meeting public needs is then vested in the state (Daniels 177). As a concept of an ideal society, communism is derived from ancient sources, including Plato's Republic and the earliest Christian communes. In the early 19th century, the idea of a communist society was a response of the poor and the dislocated to the beginnings of modern capitalism. At ... proclaimed in great historic documents, for example, the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which asserted the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the French Decl...

• Word Count: 6851
• Approx Pages: 27
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate