Dialogue style
In contrast with other more modern political works, Plato’s Republic is foremost a dialogue meant to encourage the reader’s active participation.
Response to the problems of the Athenian polis
David Grene, “a great reader of Plato,” sees the utopianism in Plato’s work as a direct response to his disillusionment with the cultural and political experience of the Athenian polis. The defeat in the Peloponnesian War altered the ethos of the Athenian polis and the perception of individuals such as Plato, who saw the need for a radical makeover of Athens’s political and cultural institutions.
Legacy of political philosophy
“The ambition in some ways to unite philosophy and politics has been a recurring dream of political philosophy ever since Plato.”
The goal of the Republic
Most modern societies focus to varying degrees on enhancing the individual liberties of their citizens. In contrast, the goal of Plato’s Republic is to provide the proper education to help prepare the new generations of politically engaged elites of the polis.
Harmony between individual and polis
While the work is what later authors would categorize as a utopia, the goal of Plato’s Republic is to establish a harmony between the individual and the society, one where the polis seeks to produce the best type of individual citizen. Plato draws one crucial conclusion, namely that the polis cannot be in harmony without featuring the elusive “philosopher-king” as its ruler.
Struggle between reason and the strength of numbers
Continuing the thread from “Apology,” the opening scene of Republic asks a fundamental question about democracy and the purpose of reason: can good decisions be derived from the masses, or is it necessary for a specific individual to use reason and good argumentation to achieve a desirable result.
Friend and foe distinction (Polemarchus’ concept of justice)
One of the essential parts of Republic is the conversation around the definition of justice. One of the ideas that Socrates refutes is Polemarchus’ concept of justice as based on doing good to your friends and harming your enemies, which can be understood at the polis level as a patriotic sentiment towards other citizens of the polis with clear opposition of all other existing citizens and polis. Socrates points the problem that many people face in trying to distinguish friends from enemies reliably.
Later, this important distinction is why the Kallipolis will feature a “warrior” class meant to keep the harmony between individual and state (and relations with other states).
Justice as zero-sum (Thrasymachus’ concept of justice)
The definition of justice proposed by Thrasymachus sees justice as whatever action benefits the ruler, the person responsible for writing the laws of justice of the polis. One of the essential conclusions of this concept of justice is that the natural ruler is the one who is purely interested in the power of domination. For such a ruler, politics becomes a zero-sum game where the rules of society are designed to benefit the person at the top, all while convincing the “many” that it is in their interest to obey the status quo.