Plato's Paragon of Human Excellence: Socratic Philosopher and Civic Guardian

Abstract

Literary and analytical approaches to the study of Plato have seldom converged in anything resembling a consensus. But recent proponents of these divergent modes of interpretation do concur in finding a number of anomalies in the Republic's portrait of the philosopher king. These anomalies, if authentic, would suffice to discredit the dialogue's paragon of human excellence, leaving readers to wonder whether Plato himself could have believed in the existence of any nonarbitrary standard of righteousness. Reexamining the textual evidence, I resolve these supposed anomalies and show that Socrates' account of the model ruler is both logically coherent and perfectly compatible with his own practice of philosophy. The philosopher king is a civic guardian in the most elevated or precise sense and also a genuine Socratic. But even this exalted harmonization of political and philosophical virtue does not constitute the “greatest lesson” of The Republic. That designation is reserved for a still loftier and more desirable good, in relation to which the philosopher king himself stands as a mere stepping-stone.