What Freedom Needs: Democracy and Philosophy in Plato's Republic

Plato's Republic is traditionally thought to present an anti-democratic position. However, I provide an interpretation that, instead, argues that the Republic defends democracy in an important sense. My thesis is that, although offering serious criticisms of democracy and condemning the democratic soul for its appetitive indulgence, the Republic nonetheless locates in democracy the unique possibility of the essential transformation to philosophy that is highlighted in the story of the cave in Book VII, which Socrates refers to as “the turning of a soul”: the turning from an uncritical, habituated disposition to a disposition that is freely oriented towards being. I argue that, unlike the timocratic and oligarchic regimes’ conception of their good, the democratic regime’s interpretation of its good as freedom, conceived of in terms of eleutheria, offers an environment that is distinctly supportive of the transformation of the soul depicted in the story of the cave.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Guelph

Author dc:creator

• Craig, Matthew

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Russon, John

• democracy
• philosophy
• Plato's Republic

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10214/28675

OAI record oai:identifier

https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/server/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=dim&identifier=oai%3Aatrium.lib.uoguelph.ca%3A10214%2F28675