his allegory of the Cave at the start of Book VII of The Republic. While this is usually taken as his way of letting his listeners understand that what we normally take for reality is actually mere shadow and appearance, the fact that his shadows also include human beings and justice adds another level to the deception: not only are humans normally deluded as to what are the shadows of artifacts and other objects but also as to what is the true nature of justice, the good, nobility and even citizenship. If these shadows are taken to be the laws that are created in order to help citizens to act the way they should, then what Socrates is saying is that even our notions of these virtues are based on appearance rather than their reality.
If this is true, then any model of how a citizen should act in order to be a good human being is itself a distorted objectùbecause the lawgiver can only ascertain imperfect truths about what it means to be just, noble or good:
Now, when a man is in this state, and the questioning spirit asks what is fair and honourable, and he answers as the legislator has taught him, and then arguments many and diverse refute his words, until he is driven into believing that nothing is honourable any more than dishonourable, or just and good any more than the reverse, and so of all the notions which he most valued, do you think that he will still honour and obey them as before? (The Republic, 538d)
The implication here is that any citizen who has been educated in this way which respect to virtue will never actually come to an understanding of what genuine virtue really is. At the same time, although Socrates never really comes out and says as much, The Republic does contain the dialectic seeds to be used to educate citizens so that they are made aware of true virtue. This comes about through the use of reason for rational argument, thus avoiding the problems encountered by having one law to govern the civic vi...