8) The City in Speech Radically Reformed

Political Philosophy
Course: An Introduction to Plato’s Republic
Class 8: The City in Speech Radically Reformed
Professor: Jonathan Culp, Ph.D., Director of International Studies & Associate Professor, University of Dallas
Course Description:
The purpose of this class is to introduce students to Socratic-Platonic political philosophy through a careful study of Plato’s most comprehensive work, the Republic. Commonly known as a book outlining a political utopia, Plato’s Republic is in truth a comprehensive reflection on the nature of the human soul, its longing for justice, and its place within the whole. The Republic is also complex, elusive, and often outrageous. In the course of reading the Republic, we shall consider many of the crucial questions it presents to us: What is justice? Is it good to be just? What is the best form of government? the best education? the best way of life? What are the obstacles in the way of these things? What is truth and how do we find it? We will read the Republic slowly and carefully and contemplate Plato’s responses to these questions.
Class 8:
In the reading for this class, Socrates is forced by his companions to return to his description of the city in speech in order to account for its familial and child-rearing practices of the Guardians. Socrates proceeds to lay out the three radical and controversial reforms for which the Republic is well known: (1) male and female Guardians will receive the same education and live the same way of life (equality of the sexes): (2) the traditional, biologically based family unit is abolished and replaced by state-sanctioned sexual liaisons and public rearing of children, where parents do not know who their children are (or vice versa); and (3) the whole city will be ruled by philosopher kings. Dr. Culp discusses the rationales for the first two reforms, while also laying out some of the difficulties in Socrates’ arguments. He discusses Socrates’ seemingly deliberate evasion of the question whether such extreme civic devotion is according to or contrary to nature.