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A review by ryanlindbergo
The Republic by Plato
3.0
I find rating Republic very difficult.
To start, I constantly considered that, it was possible, that any fault that I found wasn't in its pages, but within myself. Clearly, I find myself removed almost 2500 years from the world in which Plato wrote Republic. (Not to mention I'm about 12 years out from my last college class in which Plato was even tangentially discussed. Nor was Greek philosophy something I'd actively pursued in my higher education.) I cannot discount the high probability that the waves of time have washed away culturally significant meanings and that my education didn't provide me with a good base of knowledge to contextualize some of the concepts presented.
That said, I found it more surprising when I agreed with a point than when I found the reasoning to be dubious, fallacious, specious, or convoluted. I believe that the issue I had more often than not is that the dialectic is written more as a back-and-forth between Socrates and Glaucon and Adeimantius acting as "hypemen".Can you read more than a few pages without Glaucon or Adiemantius readily agreeing with anything/everything Socrates says?
Impossible.
And I think that the work is worse for it. Socrates' interlocutors spend so much of their time automatically agreeing with a point rather than helping to unpack an idea. Conclusions are often reached by leaps of logic that most people wouldn't accept at face value as Glaucon and Adeimantus do. Often we veer into territory that feels more like "shower arguments". It would have been nice to get a little more pushback outside of the obvious strawman Thrasymachus for his brief appearance in Book One.
The overall structure though is impressive. Topics that are broached early on are reincorporated in a symmetrical nature. Ideas of the earlier sections are masterfully woven into the latter half and callbacks to prior sections of the discussion are plentiful. While initially appearing unrelated, tangential discussion points are later revealed to be key building blocks building up to the final ideological conclusion. A shame though that many of the smaller conversations are only half-baked.
Overall, my impression at this point matches up well with Socrates' multiple comments throughout Republic on the nature of the discussion with his companions: we should not look upon this dialogue as being exhaustive nor should we consider this to be the final opinion of the huge topics of discussion, this should only be considered the starting point of consideration.
To start, I constantly considered that, it was possible, that any fault that I found wasn't in its pages, but within myself. Clearly, I find myself removed almost 2500 years from the world in which Plato wrote Republic. (Not to mention I'm about 12 years out from my last college class in which Plato was even tangentially discussed. Nor was Greek philosophy something I'd actively pursued in my higher education.) I cannot discount the high probability that the waves of time have washed away culturally significant meanings and that my education didn't provide me with a good base of knowledge to contextualize some of the concepts presented.
That said, I found it more surprising when I agreed with a point than when I found the reasoning to be dubious, fallacious, specious, or convoluted. I believe that the issue I had more often than not is that the dialectic is written more as a back-and-forth between Socrates and Glaucon and Adeimantius acting as "hypemen".Can you read more than a few pages without Glaucon or Adiemantius readily agreeing with anything/everything Socrates says?
Impossible.
And I think that the work is worse for it. Socrates' interlocutors spend so much of their time automatically agreeing with a point rather than helping to unpack an idea. Conclusions are often reached by leaps of logic that most people wouldn't accept at face value as Glaucon and Adeimantus do. Often we veer into territory that feels more like "shower arguments". It would have been nice to get a little more pushback outside of the obvious strawman Thrasymachus for his brief appearance in Book One.
The overall structure though is impressive. Topics that are broached early on are reincorporated in a symmetrical nature. Ideas of the earlier sections are masterfully woven into the latter half and callbacks to prior sections of the discussion are plentiful. While initially appearing unrelated, tangential discussion points are later revealed to be key building blocks building up to the final ideological conclusion. A shame though that many of the smaller conversations are only half-baked.
Overall, my impression at this point matches up well with Socrates' multiple comments throughout Republic on the nature of the discussion with his companions: we should not look upon this dialogue as being exhaustive nor should we consider this to be the final opinion of the huge topics of discussion, this should only be considered the starting point of consideration.