[The Republic by Plato]@TWC D-Link book
The Republic

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS
13/474

In Hegelian phraseology the state is the reality of which justice is the idea.

Or, described in Christian language, the kingdom of God is within, and yet developes into a Church or external kingdom; 'the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,' is reduced to the proportions of an earthly building.

Or, to use a Platonic image, justice and the State are the warp and the woof which run through the whole texture.

And when the constitution of the State is completed, the conception of justice is not dismissed, but reappears under the same or different names throughout the work, both as the inner law of the individual soul, and finally as the principle of rewards and punishments in another life.

The virtues are based on justice, of which common honesty in buying and selling is the shadow, and justice is based on the idea of good, which is the harmony of the world, and is reflected both in the institutions of states and in motions of the heavenly bodies (cp.


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