Plato's Republic: The Limits of Politics

Plato’s Republic, as the dialogue is known in English, is a classic, perhaps the classic investigation of the reasons why human beings form political communities —or “cities” in his terms. In the Republic Socrates inquires into the origins of the city in order to discover what justice “writ big” is. But in the process of constructing his “city”—or, actually, “cities”—” in speech,” Socrates does not offer us a definition of justice so much as he shows us the reasons why no actual city is ever apt to be perfectly just. From Plato’s Republic we thus understand why justice is difficult, if not impossible to achieve for communities, but may be a virtue of private individuals