Polytropy

Index to this series

Our fourth scheduled reading in the Republic is Book III, Stephanus pages 386–417. Socrates continues to direct the construction of the fantastic city. Plato’s brothers, faithful as dogs, agree to two infamous proposals:

1. The deportation from the city of any poet “who is able by wisdom to become every sort of thing and to imitate all things” (δυνάμενον ὑπὸ σοφίας παντοδαπὸν γίγνεσθαι καὶ μιμεῖσθαι πάντα χρήματα, 398a).

2. The teaching of the Noble Lie, that the citizens were formed under ground and distinguished, according to class, with admixture of

   • gold for the rulers,
   • silver for the auxiliaries,
   • iron and bronze for the “farmers and other craftsmen” (414b–5c).

Later in this post, I shall try to analyze the reading into sections; but a serial summary of these seems tedious, and I shall focus on a few remarkable points, such as the ones above.

I shall be quoting

• Homer, whom Socrates loves to hate;
• Adam Kirsch, from the 2016 introduction to Allan Bloom’s Republic translation, on the danger of summarizing Plato;
• Pascal on the will of God as the rule for justice;
• Bruno Bettelheim on fairy tales such as the Three Little Pigs, and perhaps our City in Speech, as opposed to fables;
• Somerset Maugham on the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper;
• Plato, in the Symposium, on the identity of comedy and tragedy, and Socrates as a seductive flute-player;
• Anne Applebaum on “The New Puritans”: the same as the old ones, called Glaucon, Adeimantus, and Socrates?

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