Plato's The Republic

Around roughly 380 BC, Plato composed arguably his most influential political work, The Republic. This dialogue stands out among Plato’s many for several reasons. First, unlike the bulk of Plato’s dialogues, The Republic is more didactic than dialectic. In the dialogue, rather than deconstructing others’ ideas and assumptions, Socrates spends most of the dialogue putting forth his own ideas pertaining to justice and the state, which was highly uncharacteristic. Second, it is Plato’s most political dialogue, with Socrates, constructing what he believes to be the foundations for a successful city-state. Thirdly, and what is mostly overlooked by commentators, is that among Plato’s works, The Republic more resembles a work of fiction than of philosophical argumentation, with the thrust of the work deriving its force from poetic techniques, rather than a priori reasoning. Though Plato was a harsh critic of poetry and rhetoric, in The Republic, his “ideal state” is presented to the reader by developing a new world, with each aspect being described in detail such that the reader may situate themselves within this new world in order to gauge what such a world would “be like.” (Granted, each aspect of The Republic, such as the role of the guardians, is argued fiercely; yet, the reader is left more with a lasting image or experience, rather than mere blunt argumentation.) In this way, The Republic is created, rather than argued, and by doing so Plato began a new method of forwarding political ideas, namely, through the use of fictional prose. Though The Republic was highly regarded and influenced many political thinkers in the following centuries such as Aristotle and Cicero, it was the content of the dialogue that took center stage, not the form. It wasn’t until 1515 that the fictional form of The Republic was adopted and revitalized by Sir Thomas Moore in his Utopia. There were many factors that may have contributed to Moore’s choice to take a page out of Plato’s book, and use the fictional form to forward his political ideas. One primary factor was the controversial nature of Utopia, notably in Book 1 which consists of a subtle yet powerful criticism of the European court system, particularly expansionism. Note that this was a period in which Britain was facing political upheaval following the crowning of King Henry VIII, and though the book was published two years before Martin Luther delivered his thesis upon a church in Wittenberg, Europe as a whole was seething with religious and political tension. Thus, it was not in the interest of a writer with political ambitions–More at this time was a parliamentarian who 6 years later would be knighted–to …show more content…
Fictional prose, unlike the blunt instruments of rhetoric and logos, allows the writer to bring the reader into another world, in which the reader is able to experience the writer’s ideas, rather than merely have them stipulated to them. By engaging the reader in a writer’s ideas through experience, the writer is able to employ pathos much more effectively, which, according to Aristotle, is the most effective–though not the most ethical–means of persuasion, and is the edifice of the entire poetic form. Pathos–the Greek word for “suffering” or “experience”–is often used contemporarily as to be more or less synonymous with “an appeal to emotions;” however, pathos in the Aristotelian sense, has a much broader function, and can be thought of more as an engagement with the reader’s sympathies and imagination. The aim of pathos is to bring the reader–or audience–into another world-view¬¬¬¬, through which they may sympathize with the writer’s intentions through imagination. Pathos and poetics are so closely aligned, they can almost be thought of as interchangeable; pathos being the fundamental aim of poetics, while poetics is the most effective application of Pathos. For More, using poetics and pathos in order to engage his readers’ sympathies and imagination gave his ideas more palpability, allowing for more visceral, rather than intellectual appeal. This, in effect, carries with it another offshoot derived from the use of fictional prose, namely, the ability to reach a broader audience (which, considering the plain style in which Utopia was written, seems to be one of his aims). This is because almost all individuals have the capacity to experience sympathy and imagination, while only a select few are able to comprehend sophistication argumentation–and this discrepancy would have