The Just Soul In Plato's Republic

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates describes the just city (Kallipolis) to understand the just soul. In doing this, he creates the auxiliaries to guard the city, acting as soldiers in their youth and rules in their old age. He goes through their education process in Book VII, but leaves his ideas on poetry for Book X. In general, Socrates says that poetry should be banned from the Kallipolis since he thinks of it as a form of imitation. However, if someone were able to prove that poetry was beneficial, it would be allowed into the city. After this, Socrates explains why the soul is immortal and that just people will be rewarded, while unjust are punished. Somehow, this leads to the Myth of Er, which seems to be completely out of place. After having …show more content…
As mentioned briefly before, it seems out of place and even hypocritical based on his previous arguments. Looking at the context it is started in, it is understandable why it is being told. For a short time after discussing what is to be done with poetry, the subject of the immortality of souls is brought up. Socrates explains why souls must be immortal and reacts to an argument made before on the assumption that a just man seems unjust, and an unjust man just. Because of this, it must be that a just person is rewarded by the gods and an unjust punished, if not during life then after. Here is where the Myth of Er comes into play. Socrates is egged on to tell of the rewards for a just man after death, and the best explanation he must have had was this …show more content…
And so they told their stories to one another, the former weeping as they recalled all they had suffered and seen on their journey below the earth, which lasted a thousand years, while the latter, who had come from heaven, told about how well they had fared and about the inconceivably fine and beautiful sights they had seen.” (614e Grube).
Socrates is appealing to his audience by telling them that being just will bring them pleasures after death. He has actually undone his own argument about poets here. His story is a pleasureable one, since it tells just people to be just for a reward, but it also is a reasonable one, since being just is most reasonable. Socrates has, throughout the Republic, been creating the Kallipolis as a way to look at the soul. In other words, he has been creating a story, an imitation of the soul. While he was more focused on this goal in the beginning, eventually he does convert to actually imagining the city and how it would