Comparing Socrates And Glaucon In Plato's The Republic

The perfect king must be just that-perfect. As Plato puts together a dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon in The Republic, their ideas as well as his own thoughts on the perfect ruler for a perfect society form a tightly knit description of a philosopher-king. Because we, as humans, live in “a cave” (Plato, sect. 514a) of our own understanding, there is a great need for a leader who is escaped from the confinement of that limited understanding. There is an element of perfection in the qualities of “ruling men who are wholly fair” (Plato, sect. 540c) that is unaddressed by the speakers themselves. The conversation is capped with a statement that “those who have been preserved throughout and are in every way best at everything, both in deed and in knowledge, must at last be led to the end” (Plato, sect. 540a). As Socrates and Glaucon speak of a man who is an astronomer (Plato, sect. 527d) and “both warrior and philosopher” (Plato, sect. 525b), it comes to question if they believe that this person of such prestige actually exists? Because I am neither Plato, Socrates, or Glaucon, it’s impossible to know for sure, but there was an element of doubt in their conversation. Socrates questions his own stated ideas as he wonders “in what way do[es] [Glaucon] suppose anyone will be willing both to perform the

If the perpetual cave Plato writes of is the confinement of earthly thinking, “it is that ascent to what is which we shall truly affirm to be philosophy” (Plato, sect. 521c). The rise out of the cave is a painful one (Plato, sect. 515c) as eyes are opened to truths that cut deep into an established state of understanding. The key to the climb out of the cave is that a person must then be able to go back into the cave and lead strongly with an outside-of-the-cave wisdom (Plato, sect. 539e). It seems as though that is the true test of true knowledge and