Plato's Republic is a dialogue in which Socrates investigates the nature of the city-state and what the ideal city-state should be. The philosophical inquiry in this dialogue can be seen as addressing two primary conceptions, conceptions which are linked under the heading of idealism, with one detailing Plato's epistemology and the other his political philosophy. The first is a more metaphysical consideration of the nature of life and the world and how we can know what we know, while the second is the practical application of various concepts to the state to demonstrate the relationship between the individual and his or her society in a utopian city-state such as Plato would create but which does not exist. The fact that the city-state described here as an ideal relates to the underlying belief Plato has that there are Forms which serve as the ideal originals, the pure concepts, for every object and every person, while the reflections we see in this world are only that--reflections, and often pale reflections when compared to the original Forms.
In The Republic, Plato shows a theoretical perspective in terms of what preoccupies him in his analysis. His major concerns are stability, justice, divine right, and the caste system. The Republic is itself a theoretical perspective on the proper structure and operation of a city-state. In the very creation of the ideal city-state, Plato is referring to his theory of ideal forms, of which the construct in The Republic would be one. This idea holds that there are ideal forms in the abstract that are perfect, while what we see in this world are but imperfect shadows of the original. For Plato, the act of examination itself is a necessary condition for knowledge, and no authority is possible without an enquiry into values and reason. The Socratic method becomes a way of getting to the ideal. In The Republic, Plato offers a theory of administration that is comprehensive and that em...