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| タイトル | ： 第四回 |
| 投稿日 | ： 2003/10/11(Sat) 09:34 |
| 投稿者 | ： 惣田正明 <vem13077@> |
第四回テキスト
---はじめ---
Argument
The argument of the Republic is the search after Justice, the
nature of which is first hinted at by Cephalus, the just and
blameless old man --then discussed on the basis of proverbial
morality by Socrates and Polemarchus --then caricatured by
Thrasymachus and partially explained by Socrates --reduced to
an abstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus, and having become
invisible in the individual reappears at length in the ideal
State which is constructed by Socrates. The first care of the
rulers is to be education, of which an outline is drawn after
the old Hellenic model, providing only for an improved
religion and morality, and more simplicity in music and
gymnastic, a manlier strain of poetry, and greater harmony of
the individual and the State. We are thus led on to the
conception of a higher State, in which "no man calls anything
his own," and in which there is neither "marrying nor giving
in marriage," and "kings are philosophers" and "philosophers
are kings;" and there is another and higher education,
intellectual as well as moral and religious, of science as
well as of art, and not of youth only but of the whole of
life. Such a State is hardly to be realized in this world and
would quickly degenerate. To the perfect ideal succeeds the
government of the soldier and the lover of honor, this again
declining into democracy, and democracy into tyranny, in an
imaginary but regular order having not much resemblance to
the actual facts. When "the wheel has come full circle" we do
not begin again with a new period of human life; but we have
passed from the best to the worst, and there we end. The
subject is then changed and the old quarrel of poetry and
philosophy which had been more lightly treated in the earlier
books of the Republic is now resumed and fought out to a
conclusion. Poetry is discovered to be an imitation thrice
removed from the truth, and Homer, as well as the dramatic
poets, having been condemned as an imitator, is sent into
banishment along with them. And the idea of the State is
supplemented by the revelation of a future life.
---終わり---