Disclaimer: This post was originally written in Chinese and translated into English by GPT-5.2.
Book III of The Republic is Socrates’ preliminary construction of his ideal city-state, and therefore it embodies a very strong prescriptiveness—this is from the perspective of reality. From the ideal perspective, Socrates perhaps thinks that he is merely honestly describing the basic form that an ideal city-state ought to have. In any case, these two are, in the end, still the same thing’s different projections on different levels, and the source of the projection is precisely the text of Book III.
The focus and core of this book is in fact the cultivation of the guardians of the city-state, but at the same time it also involves relatively specific issues such as cultural and artistic policy, so the content is rather mixed. What we must realize is that all the discussions in this book are based on the presupposition in Book II that the ideal city-state requires a fine division of labor. It is precisely in a city-state with a well-functioning division of labor, where the various components of the city-state each perform their own duties in an orderly way, that the cultivation of guardians in this book becomes meaningful. And the various requirements and regulations regarding the guardians’ cultivation can, in a certain sense, also be regarded as a kind of demonstration, which can by analogy be applied to other members of the city-state; the only difference lies in the different detailed rules of cultivation. In addition, the cultural and artistic policy discussed in this chapter is in fact an extension of Book II’s discussion of how gods should be depicted in literature and art.
Socrates’ various controls over cultural and artistic policy are the beginning and the main body of Book III. He first discusses the issue of epic poetry, which is a continuation of the previous book’s topic. More than once in The Republic Socrates expresses his admiration and fondness for Homer—this is his personal stance; but proceeding from the common good of the entire city-state, he firmly opposes the various depictions of gods in the Homeric epics. The lines quoted in Book III that need to be deleted are without exception from Homeric epics, because these unfavorable depictions of the perfect and supremely good image of the gods (not discussed in detail here) will have a far-reaching impact in misleading the ways of the world and people’s hearts, setting bad examples; it is better to delete them one by one or simply ban them. Of course, according to Book II, these literary and artistic works that should be abridged or banned are not made to disappear completely; rather, they are preserved in extremely strict limited quantities, allowing “a very few people” to have access to them after secret oaths and rituals. The root of this differentiated policy still lies in the division of labor in society, just as the training methods for guardians differ from those for the ruling class and the laboring class. Mencius has the saying, “Those who labor with their minds govern others; those who labor with their strength are governed by others”; the psychological motive behind Socrates allowing some to access things that most cannot is consistent with this. This point is even more vividly reflected in his discussion of “falsehood.” He says: “Falsehood is of no use to the gods, but as a kind of medicine it is useful for mortals. Then obviously, we ought to leave this medicine to the doctors; ordinary people are generally not allowed to touch it.” Socrates realizes: “A lie is something that anyone, in the most important part of himself—in the most important matters of interest—least of all wishes to accept.” (Book II) But from the perspective of reality, on the one hand lies in fact cannot disappear; the world is originally filled with lies that cannot be washed clean; on the other hand, lies as a means of maintaining social order are indispensable, otherwise the world would not always be filled with lies. Socrates’ way of dealing with this is simple and ideal: strictly control cultural and artistic works, strictly control the division of labor in society, strictly carry out differentiated cultivation, unify the narrative, establish a single authoritative standard—then it no longer matters whether it is a lie or not. From this one can in fact see that Socrates’ construction of the ideal state is, in essence, still to proceed from the purest secular experience, or, in the terms of later scholar Rawls, close to the so-called “veil of ignorance,” or Kant’s moral imperative. The premise may be absolute sincerity toward oneself.
Socrates’ control over cultural and artistic policy, besides abridging or banning the relevant already popular cultural and artistic works, also includes various requirements for cultural and artistic practitioners, requirements for the vocabulary of artistic creation, regulations on style, and so on. In his own words, his cultural and artistic policy in fact involves all aspects of artistic creation and artistic works in terms of content, form, and style.
Socrates not only requires cultural and artistic practitioners not to besmirch the perfect and supremely good image of the gods, but also forbids them to “make mistakes in what they say about human matters.” For example, they give as examples that unjust people are happier than just people, that injustice is more profitable than justice—none of this is allowed; they can only say the opposite. In today’s terms, this means that art and literature must submit to politics; art and literature must sing the main theme. This also better explains why in Book I Socrates insists that “justice is always better than injustice”—it is a prescription in which ideality is higher than reality; to simply believe that claim outside the framework of the ideal city-state is to suffer losses. In addition, regarding performers, Socrates particularly distrusts those actors who are good at imitation, who can “play anything so that it looks exactly like it”; he says, “We cannot let such a person come into our city-state; the law does not permit it; there is no place for him here.” The reasons behind this may be: ① Socrates’ deep-rooted contempt for imitation: he believes that what is imitated is far from the essential, and between artistic creation and the essential there is more than one layer of imitation. In Book X of The Republic he even thinks that “the art of imitation is a lowborn child born of lowborn parents”; see there. ② Socrates distrusts the moral character of those good at imitation, because they are fickle: “the worse his character, the more unscrupulous he is; he imitates everything; he thinks everything is worth imitating.” (It is worth noting that Socrates’ prescriptions for the content of imitation are consistent with the above requirement to be positive and affirmative; he opposes imitating women, slaves, bad people, base fellows, workers, rowers, natural sounds, and so on.) ③ Socrates believes that imitators also need fine division of labor; for dramatic actors he says: “If they are to imitate, they should from childhood imitate characters that have a proper relation to their profession—imitate those who are courageous, temperate, pious, free, and the like.”
Socrates does not say much about his requirements for vocabulary, but it is extremely noteworthy. He mainly proceeds from the negative side, believing that those in vocabulary with negative meanings—“terrifying, miserable names”—should all be abolished, as if in George Orwell’s novel 1984. But Socrates’ purpose is that he wants to change customs and mores, and change people’s view of the world, through altering the vocabulary system of language (traditional linguistics holds that lexical semantics is related to the world). For instance, things originally regarded as negative, such as death and bankruptcy—because there are no corresponding words to express sorrowful emotions, people will become optimistic and accept their fate; and Socrates thinks this is a very good symbol of social order. Similarly, Socrates’ discussion of stylistic distinctions is also extremely limited, but very valuable. For example, his distinctions of imitation/narration, tragedy/lyric poetry: “Poetry and storytelling have two genres in common: one entirely through imitation—that is what you call tragedy and drama; the other is the poet expressing his own feelings—you can see that the hymns to Dionysus are all of this lyric genre.” In addition, there is a mixed genre. Socrates recognizes that this genre is “what everyone likes,” but in the ideal state, this mixed genre does not exist, because each imitator is a single imitator: comedy is comedy, tragedy is tragedy—clearly divided into two.
Besides the above cultural and artistic works (also including performance and storytelling), Book III also involves the issues of musical education and physical training, but in principle it is consistent with the spirit of the above cultural and artistic policy. Simply put: these trainings must vary from person to person and be treated differently; using the most positive and most suitable content, one must from childhood strictly train and inculcate (this also involves the question of how to coordinate physical training with musical and artistic inculcation; omitted here).
But in Socrates’ view, merely training the guardians is not enough; selection and screening before and after training are also crucial, because he wants to ensure that within the ideal city-state, everyone is in the right place and each performs his own duty. There are mainly three methods: the first is, before screening, to choose the right people by nature. Here it may also involve the mating and reproduction issues of the ideal city-state. Socrates believes that the best genes should be paired with the best genes, and those who have major problems in physique and in character should themselves be expelled from the city-state, in order to ensure the purity and advancement of the city-state. Therefore, to choose the right successors to the guardians is nothing more than screening from the descendants of excellent guardians; if the descendants of non-guardians display the qualities of excellent guardians, they too can be admitted as appropriate. (Although operationally this is very difficult.) The second is to examine these guardians at all times, in order to check whether they possess lifelong conviction to guard the state, whether they maintain the ability to guard the state, and to always have those who meet the excellent guardian requirements in both ability and thought undertake guardian work. The third is to proceed from the negative side, using a method of “anti-deception and anti-temptation” for examination, not unlike the Cultural Revolution’s sending-down movement to the countryside. Socrates says: “We must also put the young people into poverty and hardship, and then put them into an environment of fine clothes and rich food… to see whether they are tempted by external things, whether they can remain calm and unmoved, keep themselves pure, and be a good guardian of their own.”
The main content of Book III is roughly like this. Because the content is complex and time is limited, quite a few interesting ideas in Book III cannot be sorted out here, such as Socrates’ discussion of lust and correct love, and the analogy of the qualities of gold, silver, and iron/copper; here we can only leave them aside for the time being. But it must be noted that the method of analogy and the method of elenchus are important constituent parts of the so-called Socratic Method (Socrates’s Method). As for how effective this method is, that too is an interesting question.
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