So not surprisingly, Socrates is the Republic’s main character, and on this all-important topic for the first time he speaks to the reader in the first person. He describes to his listeners the outline of an ideal government that, although unrealizable in reality, can serve as a model for implementing future change. “It makes no difference whether it exists now,” Socrates says at one point, “or will ever come into being.” By studying the laws of an ideal state, Plato argues, men will learn how to order their lives better in the real ones.
