Analogy of the cave

Answer these questions about Plato Republic, Book V 449a – 474c, Book VII 514a – 521b, Book VIII all, and Book IX 571a – 580d

Briefly answer the following questions in your own words (unless directed differently).

1. Socrates argues that both men and women should be guardians. Explain his two arguments for this. (451d-457)
2. Explain briefly the arrangements Socrates recommends for the guardians with respect to marriage, sex, childcare, and families. What is his basic reason for these arrangements? (457c-466c)
3. Glaucon challenges Socrates to show that this ideal republic could possibly become real. Socrates suggest that one change could set a city-state on the path to the ideal republic. What is that change, and why does Socrates recommend it? (471c-474c)
4. Briefly explain how the analogy of the cave helps explain the journey of philosophers as they turn their souls toward the good. Then, explain why Socrates insists that after exiting the cave, philosophers must be convinced or compelled to return down into the cave. (514a-521c)
5. Socrates explains the basic structure of five types of governments and five parallel kinds of individuals: 1 ideal form (aristocracy) and 4 deficient forms (timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny). For each of these five types of government and each of the five types of individuals, explain briefly who or what rules and who or what is ruled over. (Books VIII and IX)
6. In Book I, Thrasymachus challenged Socrates by claiming that injustice on a grand scale is always to the advantage of the stronger. Now that we have read most of Plato’s Republic, you should be able to state simply what Socrates’s rebuttal to Thrasymachus is. In brief, what is Socrates’s argument that a just city is always better off than an unjust one, and that a just individual is always better off than an unjust one?

Sample Solution