The Republic Exam Study Questions
Republic:
 What are the two main questions that Plato is trying to answer in the Republic?
 What method does the character of Socrates attempt to use to discover what justice is?
What key analogy is at work here?
 What role in the city do the workers, guardians, and philosopher kings play?
 What plays the role of moderation, courage, and wisdom in the city?
 More importantly, what is justice in the city?
 Be able to explain what the ‘tripartite division of the soul’ doctrine is. Why does Plato
believe that the soul has three parts? What are these three parts, and how can they come
into conflict?
 What is a just soul like for Plato, and how is this illustrated by the relations between the
parts in the just city?
 What are some main problems for Plato’s analysis of justice? Does it seem like he told us
what justice is, or, rather that he told us what some traits of a just person or government
might be like? How is this a problem for Plato? Be able to discuss this, and how this
relates to problems with attempts at definition that we discussed in regards to the
Euthyphro.
 Could Plato’s ideal Republic actually come about? Why does Plato seem to think so?
What’s the smallest kind of change that needs to occur in order for it to come about?
 What does Plato mean by ‘the forms’? What are Platonic forms? Why are they so
important for Plato? Be able to compare the relative values placed by the ancient Greeks
between the eternal vs. transitory, the unchanging vs. changing, and the realm of being
versus the realm of becoming.
 Why does Plato believe in the forms at all? Why believe in an unchanging world of
abstract objects, or properties?
 Why does Plato think that the forms are somehow ‘more real’ than, for instance, physical
objects (which are in turn ‘more real’ than images/reflections)?
 Be able to explain the import and the role of the form of THE GOOD according to Plato.
 Why are people who are focused on particular good things but ignore the good itself like
people in a dream, according to Plato?
 Why does the successful philosopher king have to have knowledge of THE GOOD
according to Plato?
 Be able to draw ‘the line’ of Plato (see footnote 26 on page 183 of the Hackett edition).
Also, be able to match up the faculties on the line with the objects of these faculties (such
as, imagination’s object are images, and so on). Furthermore, be able to explain why,
according to Plato, when one moves up the line in regards to knowledge and
understanding, one achieves more valuable and true insight.
 We can’t have pure access to THE GOOD itself, according to Plato. But, what’s the
‘offspring of the good’ that we can have some access to, according to Plato?
 What kind of knowledge is best, and most important, according to Plato?
 What possible interpretations are there for the phrase “every soul pursues the good and
does whatever it does for its sake” (505e)? Are any of them right, and, which one do you
think Plato means?
 What does Plato mean by this: “do you think that those who express a true opinion
without understanding are any different from blind people who happen to travel the right
road?” (top of page 180)
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What is the sun analogy towards the end of Book VI? What is the sun analogous to, and
how does this help illustrate some of Plato’s principles?
Be able to describe and explain Plato’s allegory of the cave. What do the ‘going up’ and
‘coming back down’ correspond to? How does this illustrate in a different way some of
the same views Plato was discussing with the line and the sun?
What does Plato mean by saying that education is more like ‘turning the head around’ or
getting the individual correctly oriented rather than filling an empty vessel?
Why does Plato believe that the virtue of reason or wisdom is present in an individual in
a different way than courage, honesty, etc.?