Daily Kos: Plato's Republic (book IV) as window to the Republican mind

by Randolph06
Fri Jul 28, 2006 at 11:29:25 AM PDT

I taught a Philosophy of Education class and it forced me to read Plato's Republic real close. I chose Book IV to assign because it seemed to work well as a stand-alone chapter. Little did I know that that Book would illuminate most basic underpinnings of Republican belief concerning big ideas like the culture, the economy, justice and courage.

An early dialogue (y'know before they had diaries they had dialogues) focuses on regulating the culture:

Then to sum up: This is the point to which, above all, the attention of our rulers should be directed,--that music and gymnastic be preserved in their original form, and no innovation made. They must do their utmost to maintain them intact. And when any one says that mankind most regard

The newest song which the singers have,

they will be afraid that he may be praising, not new songs, but a new kind of song; and this ought not to be praised, or conceived to be the meaning of the poet; for any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State, and ought to be prohibited. So Damon tells me, and I can quite believe him;-he says that when modes of music change, of the State always change with them.