플라톤의 국가론.The Book of The Republic, by Plato

플라톤의 국가론.The Book of The Republic, by Plato
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE.
Socrates, who is the narrator.
Glaucon.
Adeimantus.
Polemarchus.
Cephalus.
Thrasymachus.
Cleitophon.
And others who are mute auditors.
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception of the Laws,
and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer approaches to modern
metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist; the Politicus or Statesman is
more ideal; the form and institutions of the State are more clearly drawn out in
the Laws; as works of art, the Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher
excellence. But no other Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and
the same perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world,
or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and not of one
age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater wealth
of humour or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor in any other of his writings
is the attempt made to interweave life and speculation, or to connect politics with
philosophy. The Republic is the centre around which the other Dialogues may be
grouped; here philosophy reaches the highest point (cp, especially in Books V,
VI, VII) to which ancient thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks, like
Bacon among the moderns, was the first who conceived a method of knowledge,
although neither of them always distinguished the bare outline or form from the
substance of truth; and both of them had to be content with an abstraction of
science which was not yet realized. He was the greatest metaphysical genius
whom the world has seen; and in him, more than in any other ancient thinker, the
germs of future knowledge are contained. The sciences of logic and psychology,
which have supplied so many instruments of thought to after- ages, are based
upon the analyses of Socrates and Plato. The principles of definition, the law of
contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the distinction between the
essence and accidents of a thing or notion, between means and ends, between
causes and conditions; also the division of the mind into the rational,
concupiscent, and irascible elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary
and unnecessary―these and other great forms of thought are all of them to be
found in the Republic, and were probably first invented by Plato.