Philosophy And Politics: A New Visual Threshold Of Interpretation To Plato's Republic

The Republic is the best known and generally considered the foremost work of all Plato's dialogues. An aspect of its significance represent its meaning is inexhaustible. Countless philosophers, politicians and other thinkers have racked their brains on the Republic through thousand years, but the real understanding to the book seems to resort on the exordium forever. This phenomenon urges our eyes to focus the Republic once again in order to expect what we can find out and hold. Or because of this focus, we start to tend towards the dayspring of philosophy study in an attempt to search out the real way of philosophy. If we can do that, we maybe harvest the most what we can.We start with a basic principle of philosophical hermeneutics, established in thekernel of Plato's Republic-the figure of cave in book VII, to hunt after the subjectmatter of Plato's philosophy, and interpret this kernel newly under the kind consideration of this subject matter to expect opening out the connotative profound content in this figure of cave: The tense relation between philosophy and politics, thus excavate Plato's political philosophy thought further.This text is divided into five chapters altogether, and has described five big problems that the author cares about separately. Its content is:In the introduction of chapter one, the author has expounded the writing motive of this text and the main principle at theoretical research of this text based on. According to Heidegger's view, the basic principle that the theoretical research bases on is: we should pay attention to transcendent significance of the interpretation to philosophy text in history, and not adhere rigidly to the word itself. We think this is the standard to judge real philosophical research or only talking about philosophy. The author thinks we must abide by this basic principle of philosophical hermeneutics during the process of studying philosophy. No other than that, we can just walk up the real way of philosophy research.Chapter two solved the problem of subject matter of Plato's philosophy according to the principle that chapter one expounded. The author insists that the subject matter ofPlato's philosophy can't be summarized by one discipline-such as political scienceontology epistemology, etc. We must stand in the height of philosophy to grasp this subject matter. The height of philosophy what is called requires we must transcend those concrete theses which Plato had discussed concretely, so we can see that in Plato, every thesis seeks its own foundation on the review of investigation in people's attitude towards life. The author proves this from seven aspects: Socrates' philosophy position; the concern and background of all Plato's dialogues; the arrangement of the Republics structure; the characteristic personality that Plato possesses of and the influence on his thought from his experience; the detail of the Republic's manner of writing; the connection between every part of Plato's philosophy; the oblivion to the subject matter of Plato's philosophy because of people forgetting the meaning of Socrates' turn in modern times.Chapter three and chapter four focusing on the figure of cave in Vol. seven of the Republic based on the subject matter of Plato's philosophy thought, by the way of Strauss' seeking meaning between the lines, have excavated the theory content contained in this metaphor thoroughly. The philosopher's rising and decline does not only relate with the problem of pure theoretic cognition and temporal political practice, but opens out the relation between philosophy and politics, and there contains motivating function of the love of philosophy on the philosopher in this relation. We investigate carefully the inevitability in the turn of political philosophy and announce further the contradictory but inseparable relation between philosophy and politics. Chapter three lays particular stress on epistemology to understand the figure of cave. From this way, we can see more clearly Plato's contradiction in terms in this parable. Chapter four reviews the cau...