‘The similes of the Sun, Line, and Cave in the Republic remain a reproach to Platonic scholarship because there is no agreement about them, though they are meant to illustrate.’ So wrote A.S. Ferguson in 1934, and so he could write to-day. Four decades have produced at least twenty more substantial contributions to the debate, but no agreement. I shall not attempt to arbitrate between existing interpretations, nor shall I offer an account of the ‘simile of light’ as a whole. (...) I shall confine my attention to a single point: the significance of the shadows in the cave, and of the objects which cast them. The suggestion I shall make seems an obvious one, but I have not found it in the literature. I hope to show at least that it deserves serious consideration. (shrink)

In a recent article, C. H. Kahn addresses an ‘old scholarly myth’, namely the idea that Book I of the Republic began life as an earlier, independent dialogue and was subsequently adapted to serve as a prelude to the much longer work that we know. The case for this hypothesis rests both on stylometric considerations and on the many ‘Socratic’ features that Book I, unlike the rest of the Republic, shares with Plato's earlier works. Having disposed of the positive arguments (...) in favour of the ‘myth’, Kahn turns to the contrary—and in his view overwhelming—evidence that Book I was composed from the start as an integral part of the longer Republic. He catalogues 12 passages in Book I, accounting for roughly half its length, whose full significance will, he argues, only emerge if they are seen as instances of prolepsis, deliberate anticipations of what is to come in later books. (shrink)

At the beginning of Book II of the Republic, Glaucon and Adeimantus ask Socrates to tell them what it is to be just or unjust, and why a man should be the former. Socrates suggests in reply that they consider first what it is for a polis to be just or unjust—a polis is bigger than an individual, he says, so its justice should be more readily visible. Now if we were to view in imagination a polis coming into existence, (...) he goes on, we should see also its justice and injustice coming into existence, and this might help us to discover what these qualities are. (shrink)