Socrates is stopped by Polemarchus while returning from a religious festival and is invited to his house.

Cephalus argues that the greatest benefit of wealth is the ability to pay back debts and avoid wrongdoing.

Thrasymachus argues that morality is an ideology designed to prevent weaker people from challenging those in power.

Glaucon challenges Socrates to prove that living morally is worthwhile regardless of any external rewards it brings.

Glaucon retells the myth of a shepherd who discovers a magic ring that makes its wearer invisible.

Socrates proposes that examining the structure of an ideal community will reveal the nature of individual morality.

Socrates argues that communities arise from human material need and that different people should specialise in different tasks.

Socrates identifies the need for a warrior caste called guardians to defend the community against external threats.

Socrates proposes a 'noble lie' about citizens being forged with different metals to justify their fixed roles in society.

Socrates argues that morality in a community consists in each group keeping strictly to its own proper function.

Socrates identifies a tripartite structure in the human mind — rationality, passion, and physical desire — mirroring the community's three castes.

Socrates concludes that the ideal community could only come about if philosophers became kings or kings became philosophers.

Socrates presents the allegory of the cave, describing people chained in darkness who mistake shadows on a wall for reality.

Socrates ranks all types of government by happiness, concluding that dictatorship is the least moral and least happy.

Socrates tells the myth of Er, a warrior who witnesses the afterlife and the soul's process of reincarnation.

The Republic opens with Socrates being drawn into a debate about morality, which Thrasymachus provocatively claims is merely a tool of the powerful to control the weak. Glaucon and Adeimantus press Socrates to prove morality is good for its own sake, using the myth of a magic ring to sharpen the challenge. To meet this, Socrates constructs an ideal community, introducing the guardian class and a founding 'noble lie' to explain how society is organised and justified. He then identifies morality in both the community and the human mind as each part keeping to its proper function, with the tripartite mind mirroring the three social castes. Socrates argues that philosopher kings alone can establish the ideal state, and uses the allegory of the cave to illuminate the nature of goodness itself. The dialogue culminates in a ranking of all governments by happiness and the myth of Er, which promises rewards for the moral soul in the afterlife.

The central philosophical debate from convention to the afterlife.

Polemarchus defines morality as giving benefit to friends and inflicting harm on enemies.

Socrates refutes Polemarchus with three arguments, including that harming enemies makes them worse human beings.

Socrates argues that immoral people inevitably clash with themselves and with others, making them ultimately ineffective.

Adeimantus argues that people cultivate only the appearance of morality in order to gain its social rewards.

Glaucon dismisses Socrates' simple rustic community as a 'community for pigs' and demands a more advanced model.

Socrates outlines three necessary qualities for guardians: physical strength, passionate courage, and a philosopher's love of knowledge.

Socrates argues that stories by Homer and Hesiod must be censored because they depict gods behaving immorally.

Socrates bans representational narrative — including tragedy and comedy — from the ideal community for encouraging inappropriate role imagination.

Adeimantus objects that guardians will be unhappy without property; Socrates responds that community happiness outweighs individual comfort.

Socrates argues that women with the required character traits should be permitted to serve as guardians alongside men.

Socrates establishes that only carefully selected men and women will be allowed to procreate at specific communal festivals.

Socrates defines a philosopher as someone who loves all knowledge and seeks the essence of things rather than appearances.

Socrates rejects both pleasure and knowledge as adequate definitions of goodness before offering his own view by analogy.

Socrates describes how the ideal community degenerates into timarchy, a system ruled by martial values and the pursuit of status.

Socrates describes how a demagogue rises from democracy by posing as a champion of the poor against the wealthy.

The dialogue begins with competing definitions of morality, starting with Polemarchus's claim that it means helping friends and harming enemies, which Socrates systematically refutes. Glaucon and Adeimantus sharpen the inquiry by insisting that the appearance of morality must be separated from genuine goodness before Socrates can make his case. Socrates then builds his ideal community in detail, specifying the three required qualities of guardians, censoring immoral poetry and dramatic art, and regulating everything from property ownership to procreation. After dismissing pleasure and knowledge as inadequate definitions of goodness, Socrates traces how the ideal state inevitably degenerates through timarchy and oligarchy before collapsing into dictatorship. The pool covers the full arc of the dialogue from the earliest disagreements about morality's meaning through to the final unravelling of the ideal state.

Key arguments and institutions shaping the ideal community.

Cephalus tells Socrates that old age has freed him from physical desires, like a slave escaping a savage master.

Thrasymachus uses the example of a dictator to argue that extreme immorality brings total freedom and the greatest happiness.

Socrates concludes the first discussion by admitting that the group has still failed to determine what morality actually is.

Glaucon and Adeimantus demand Socrates examine the effect of morality on the self with all external rewards stripped away.

Socrates extends artistic censorship beyond literature to music, sculpture, painting, and architecture, requiring all art to promote good character.

Socrates divides the guardian class into rulers and auxiliaries, determined by age, talent, and commitment to the community's good.

Adeimantus challenges Socrates to explain why philosophers are widely regarded as either useless or corrupt by ordinary people.

Socrates introduces the analogy of the sun, comparing goodness to the sun's role in making all knowledge and truth possible.

Socrates introduces the analogy of the divided line, mapping four states of mind that grow progressively closer to true knowledge.

Socrates describes how the person freed from the cave is met with incomprehension and disdain by those who remain chained.

Socrates argues that dialectics — the discipline of rational argumentation — is the most important subject in the philosopher king's education.

Socrates describes the oligarchic personality type as someone who suppresses criminal desires while single-mindedly pursuing the accumulation of wealth.

Socrates argues that poetry is twice removed from truth and undermines reason by inflaming the emotional side of the self.

Socrates argues that the mind is immortal because its specific defect — immorality — is incapable of destroying it.

Er's account reveals that souls must choose their next life from all possible options, making philosophical wisdom the essential skill.

The dialogue's first major turning point arrives when Socrates admits the opening discussion has completely failed to define what morality actually is, before Glaucon and Adeimantus reframe the entire inquiry by demanding all external rewards be stripped away. Socrates then extends his censorship programme to every art form, not just poetry, and formally divides the guardian class into rulers and auxiliaries — structural decisions with deep consequences for the ideal state. The most revelatory stretch of the dialogue follows, as Socrates introduces the sun, divided line, and cave analogies to explain the nature of goodness and the philosopher's unique access to it, culminating in the image of the freed prisoner returning to darkness. The educational programme for philosopher kings reaches its summit in the revelation that dialectics — rational argumentation — is the supreme discipline of the philosophical life. The pool closes with Socrates' argument for the soul's immortality and the vision of souls choosing their next lives, making philosophical wisdom the most urgent practical skill a person can acquire.

Decisive moments, key analogies, and philosophical revelations across the dialogue.