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Introduction to Essay 7

from On the Republic of Plato: Essays 7–15

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2022

Edited and translated by
Dirk Baltzly ,
John F. Finamore  and
Graeme Miles
Dirk Baltzly
Affiliation:
University of Tasmania
John F. Finamore
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
Graeme Miles
Affiliation:
University of Tasmania
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Summary

Essay 7 principally concerns Republic IV 427d–444a in which Socrates and his interlocutors first look for justice and the other virtues within the city they have described and then turn to the question of whether the soul admits of a similar tripartite structure with analogous virtues within the individual.1 Plato’s discussion in Book IV is apparently innocent of the metaphysics and epistemology of the middle books – though of course the ensuing discussions of philosophers and Forms will deepen the understanding of what it is for the reasoning part to rule in the soul.2 Nonetheless, as with the function argument of Book I (352c–53e), Socrates’ reasoning proceeds from admissions that the none-too-philosophical Glaucon and Adeimantus make and does not presuppose the theory of Forms or any idea of the soul as an incorporeal substance that is more akin to the Forms than to the body. The same, of course, is at least superficially true of Aristotle’s function argument in Nicomachean Ethics I, chapter 7.

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Chapter
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Proclus: Commentary on Plato's 'Republic' , pp. 17 - 33
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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