Synopsis of the Republic - Book Report/Review Example

According to him, justice is an application in a state to keep her citizens doing harm to one another. As a state emerges out of the needs of human being, it is also to be included with a state. The responsibilities of a state are described in details in Book III. Socrates never consents to include poetry in education because poetry misleads human being. Socrates allows only literature in people’s education. Then he suggests that education should include a gymnasium. In Book IV Socrates describes, as the sole target of the State is to ensure the good for its people, the strenuous training of the citizens can be justified.

He says that when temperance, courage and wisdom digress, the three principles of the souls such as passion, reason and appetite. All of them together in harmony build up justice. In line with the discussion he describes family, matrimony, community, population. He is of the opinion that a state can be an ideal state if its kings are philosophers. In Book VI Socrates describes the nobility and worth of the Guardians. He makes it clearer with the analogy of the pilot and his crew. Obviously the guardians should have a close relationship with philosophy because it will endow them with enough knowledge to identify good and justice.

For him, knowledge is analogous to visibility, vision, and light. Book-VII deals with the allegory of Cave. The story of the Cave allegorically suggests that truth at its first encounter may seem to be dazzling and the truth speaker may be criticized who are in darkness like the prisoners of the Cave. The man who witnesses the beauty of truth must sacrifice his happiness to bring others to the way of light.