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Letters


Letters


Democratic Reforms • Philosophy For the People • Fighting Back Religiously • Outside Derrida • Art & Soul • More Happiness From Philosophy • Problem Problems


Democratic Reforms


Dear Editor: In PN 101, Amy Pollard asks whether Plato, in The Republic, was intending to propose a new political system or rather to provoke questioning and reform of Athenian democracy. The overall structure of the book’s argument, however, strongly suggests a third intention as more central to Plato’s concerns.


The central question the dialogue addresses is stated in Book I (331): ‘What is Justice?’. In Book II (368) Socrates asserts that Justice can be an attribute either of an individual or of an entire city. He therefore proposes to consider the question in relation to a city, since “Justice may exist in greater proportions in the greater space, and be easier to discover” than it would be if we probed into a single mind.


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