a civil state. What Plato seeks in this dialogue is a definition of the perfect life and the perfect state to promote and sustain that life. The Ideal State is a concept and not a reality, either in Plato's time or since. Much of what Plato embodies in the Ideal State is probably a reaction to imperfections in the government and society of his time. Plato lived in a time of turmoil and warfare, and he created a society that would be free of strife if it lived up to the ideal. To a large degree, Plato ignores or subsumes human nature, and for his perfect society to work to protect the perfect life, it would have to be made up of perfect people. Plato tries to address this through education and other means, but in the final analysis his Republic must remain an ideal only, and to a great extent one man's ideal.
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 embodies his ideas on human behavior and the relationship between the individual and the state.
Plato addressed the issue of change by making a distinction between the imperfect material world and the changeless world of forms. Plato prese...