Eric Riley’s Reviews > The Republic > Status Update

I'm almost through Book 7 now - just to the point where they're discussing other forms of government and why even the perfect setup (rule by philosopher) will eventually decay (spoiler alert - it's the wimminz fault).

I'm shifting more and more to the conclusion that Socrates as portrayed by Plato is just trolling his debating partners...

We're going on vacation, so no more until July...

OK - really, 420 characters is really not enough.

Anyways - this puts the allegory of the cave in a far different light than how I had read it before. In isolation, it's more about the nature of reality, but here it feels more like ... an excuse, perhaps, for why philosophers are more often ignored than heeded. A poor excuse at that - the argument only works if there is really a wider reality that (out of room

The allegory of the cave! What's that doing in a book that's supposed to be about *justice*? Ah - well, a just city would be one ruled by philosophers, see? But they wouldn't really *want* to rule, but should to bring their fellows out of the darkness... Yes - people don't like philosophers because they are like the ones in the cave and refuse to believe the stories about the real world outside.

Also difficult for me is the way Plato frames his arguments - while some refutation exists, it seems to be set up as a bunch of either-or statements, which read (now) as a series of false dichotomies. On the other hand, they may be using specific term definitions, rather than common use words - but there's no commentary in this edition to let the reader know.

A friend at PSU gave me a wonderful piece of advice to keep in mind while reading ancient authors, 'remember that these were smart guys - don't dismiss what they are saying just because it doesn't agree with what we now know to be true. So I am struggling with how to get to something useful while reading about people trying to design 'the perfect society' with about as much sophistication as a H.S. student.

Plato is difficult for me, for a several of reasons - not the least of which is a kind of cultural arrogance that comes with living some 2500 years later and having access to information that did not exist back then.

Well - page 162 of 252, I'm reading the version in "Plato: Complete Works" edited by John M Cooper. I'm at the start of Book VII.