Notes on Plato's "Republic"

Plato

I'll be writing my thoughts and notes on important philosophical and political studies. They will be generally focused important parts of the works. I hope they'll come handy in your research. Have a nice day.

Plato's "Republic", Book VII

In book VII, dialogue starts with explaining more general terms, like “thought”. Then it continues with talking about major conditions present in the soul, which are; understanding, thought, belief and imagining. After these concepts, Socrates gives an example about “cave prisoners”. As events go on in this example, a major conflict is discovered: knowable realm vs. intelligible realm. This conflict leads us to this: If people who had divine study in intelligible realm returns to knowable realm, they’ll have hard time while adapting again and will act awkwardly. Then we get to term “education”, which wrongly explained as “putting knowledge into souls that lack it”. In fact, it is already present in everyone’s soul. Then we get to Plato’s “fine state” and widely talk about qualities of governor and officers of state. As for sciences a governor should know, there are dialogues about geometry, astronomy etc. But it’s also mentioned that we should study these by means of problems. Another important sentence from these dialogues is about difference understanding and thought, belief and imagining; which are opinion and intellect. Opinion’s concerned about becoming while intellect’s concerned about being.

Plato (1997). Republic. In John M. Cooper & D. S. Hutchinson (Eds.). Plato: Compete Works (pp. 1132-1155 | [Book VII; 514a-
541b]). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.