‘Republic’ is the Latin term used to translate the original Greek word πολιτεία (‘politeia’) which means something like ‘the things of a polis’ (e.g., structures and processes for governing, customs and traditions— laws, rights and responsibilities of citizens and non-citizens, etc.), and this Greek word πόλις (‘polis’) means something like ‘independently organized community’— a sovereign country that is the size of a small town (maximum population: 50,000) in which the people (some citizens, some not) set up a community council, not a king.
For ancient Latin speakers, the closest thing they could think of in their experience and knowledge to the Greek experience was the res publica, which means ‘the public thing’ (Rome was a republic for 400+ years before Augustus Caesar transformed it into an empire in 27 BCE). So, ‘republic’ has been the accepted translation of ‘politeia’ ever since the Roman statesman Cicero (who considered himself a philosopher) wrote his dialogue De re publica between 54 and 51 BCE, inspired by Plato’s work.
Plato’s dialogue Politeia (Republic) is titled that way because of a thought experiment. Plato re-imagines Socrates talking to somebody about a long, rich conversation the day before in which Socrates argued that Δίκη (‘dikhe’ or ‘what is proper or deserving for each’) was good for the ψυχή (‘psykhe’ or ‘the thing inside us that is unique to each and with which we interact’) and, in fact, indicates how a person is feeling and thinking and being. For ancient Greeks, the ‘psykhe’ was the delicate presence in sentient beings that moves with breathing, feeling, and thinking— we would call it ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’. In Latin, Δίκη became iusticia (‘justice’) and ψυχή became spiritus (‘breath’), while in Old English spiritus was translated as ‘soul’ with the idea that the presence within ‘came from the sea’ or came from the water’— like in the later myth of the magic sword Excalibur coming from the Lady of the Lake). I digress— it is all poetic association.
Anyway, in Plato’s dialogue two young men, Glaucon and Adeimantus, challenge Socrates to demonstrate that justice is good for the soul by illustrating what it could look like in practice. So Socrates asks them to imagine that the soul is like a self-governing community, and that how justice works in a community could be analogous to how justice works in the soul.
Plato’s famous dialogue has traditionally been read as a clever excuse for speculating with how a country could be set up and run and what kind of people would ideally live in it. So,…
- Is Socrates’s thought experiment about a republic in the way we now think of one (i.e., a country of laws democratically run by its own citizens)? OR…
- Is the thought experiment an ancient idea for a fascist country in which people’s lives are managed by a permanent dictator or king? OR…
- Is the thought experiment an ancient idea for a communist country in which everybody is raised in common and lives under the same circumstances? OR…
- Is the thought experiment about how the soul works?