Socrates Allegory Of The Tablets In Plato's The Republic

In The Republic, Plato presents a dialogue of Socrates, in which he seeks to uncover truths about what constitutes justice. Socrates proposes a way to examine these truths by looking at an ideal society, which he likened to a large tablet, and then comparing this to an individual person, which would be the small tablet. While superficially simplistic, Socrates’ analogy of the tablets provides a thorough and correct example of how the same measures of society can be used for an individual. The analogy of the tablets scales down what justice is in an ideal society to what justice is for an individual. The theory behind the analogy is that if a person cannot see something miniscule in something small something can something small in

“When the State is completed there may be a hope that the object of our search will be more easily discovered”(221) It is this step that connects the ideas of the character of the state to the individual justice. For the large tablet in this analogy, Socrates and the rest of the interlocutors design an ideal state to elucidate what justice would be like. Socrates claims that people enter society because “no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants” (222), and that each should do the work for which he is most gifted “there are diversities of natures among us which are adapted to different occupations”{222). Socrates lists the socio-economic classes: the first of the classes would be the ruling class, drawn from best of the guardians; the second class would be the guardian class in general, and the third would be the producer class. The guardian class would be the soldiers that would be in charge of protecting the wealth, valuables, and the city itself. “And the higher duties of the guardian, I said, the more time, and skill and art, and application will be needed by him? No doubt he replied. Will he not also require natural aptitude for his calling? Certainly.”. They would rule they city,