A number of years back, I created two core concept videos - drawn from my classroom discussions - about some of the key issues in Plato's Republic book 4. This is a particularly important part of the work, for in it, Socrates finally makes good on his promise to tell the other characters of the dialogue his answer to the central question - what is justice?
All of Socrates' lead-up in sketching an ideal city (actually, if you read closely in book 2, the second-best ideal city) - with the idea that the city is a person's soul writ large - bears fruit in Plato's analysis of the soul, its parts, and their functions.
That Republic book 4 analysis of the tripartite soul, and of the four cardinal virtues associated with the parts of the soul, becomes massively influential throughout ancient and medieval philosophy (and theology as well), exercising influence within and without the specifically Platonic tradition. So studying this part of the work - enjoyable in its own sake - is also important for understanding the history of ideas.
Here are those eight videos:
- Happiness of Citizens and the City
- Plato's City and The Parts of the Soul
- Distinguishing Parts of the Soul
- The Cardinal Virtues in Parts of the Soul
- The Virtue of Courage
- The Virtue of Temperance
- The Virtue of Justice
- Injustice, Overreaching, and Faction
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