My Reading of Plato's Republic

I read this classic around a year ago, and it made a huge impact on my thinking. I had read the 'Republic' when I was younger and in college. But at that time, the book had little effect on me.Harold Bloom, in 'Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?' puts forth the notion that wisdom comes in two genres. One is of the 'prudential' variety, while the other is of the 'skeptical' variety. Bloom further elaborates in his book that prudential wisdom is arrived at by reading books, while the skeptical wisdom is arrived at by experience.From my college days, I would say my skeptical wisdom had grown, while my prudential wisdom had waned, as I had done comparatively little reading, but a lot of living during those years. Perhaps this imbalance of skeptical as opposed to prudential wisdom was the perfect mode of being to occupy in order for the 'Republic' to suddenly become so meaningful to me. Perhaps the utter desert of ignorance I was living in prudentially was suddenly watered by the intellectual discourse and dialogue of Socrates.The 'Republic', from talking to more learned friends than myself, is currently thought of as out of vogue due to it's politics. The criticism is that Plato sought after a mass of servile people enslaved to an aristocratic class of dogooders. One friend even went so far as to recommend I read 'Das Kapital', saying I would learn that the 'Republic' was realized as a political system under Marxian socialism; the argument being that Marxian socialism was an utter failure, and that therefore the 'Republic' was dangerous if not irrelevant reading.But my reading of the 'Republic' was different. For one, Plato states that the original problem is 'what is virtue'? More specifically, what is virtue on a personal level. How should a person think, and what are the modes of consciousness? It is only to answer these problems for an individual that Plato 'scales the problem up' by deciding how an entire society could live in virtue, with the intention being to apply what is learned from the big picture of civilization to the small picture of the individual person.So Plato, through the dialogue of Socrates, arrives at the 'perfect' society, the ultimate irony being that said society could not be reached in his current political environment. It is here that I make the argument that Plato didn't mean for the 'Republic' to necessarily be viewed as a political diatribe, but rather to have solutions to problems in society encoded into a personal ethos.What does Plato find? First of all that there are four virtues that should be present in a person for that person to be whole and healthy.The first virtue is Wisdom, and is associated with the mind.The second virtue is Courage, and is associated with the heart.The third virtue is Temperance and is associated with the stomach.The last virtue is Justice, which according to Plato amounts to an individual sticking to what he does best.During the great dialogue of the 'Republic', the reader also gets the benefit of learning Plato's theory of the mind. The mind operates in four ways as listed below, ranging from lesser to greater as follows:Imagination = EikasiaBelief = PistisKnowledge = DianoiaIntelligence = GnosisImagination is found in the realm of dream, musings and flights of fancy. Belief is associated with material objects. Knowledge is geometrical reasoning, while Intelligence is union with the 'Forms'.The Forms, or Ideas, work as follows. I can say 'the door is open' whether the door is physically open or not, and the Idea will remain unchanging. The material fact of the door being opened or closed cannot change the Idea of 'the door is open'. In other words, 'the door is open' still means 'the door is open', whether the door is open or not.So, according to Plato, there is a world of unchange and a world of change. The world of unchange is characterized by Idea, while the world of change is characterized by substance. The soul then aspires to the unchanging world of Idea, while the body is trapped in a Heraclitian world of constant change where you can never step into the same river twice.Obviously, Plato's 'Republic' got me questioning how to think and how to approach life. Had I paid or given much attention or credence to Imaginaion? In other words, had I ever wondered over my dreams or flights of fancy? Did I perceive objects as they really were? Did I know the properties of a right triangle? Could I conceive of a notion of a world of unchanging forms from my vantage point of physical change?The answer to all four questions was a resounding yes.Did I think that life may be better if I was Wiser both prudentially and skeptically, followed by exhibiting Courage, Temperance and Justice?Yes, I thought...yes it might be.Then I began to think about how many people had read the 'Republic' down through the ages who would have thought and felt exactly the same way as me, and for the first time, I felt like I had received a Universal message from the secular realm.In short, I felt better for having read the 'Republic', and still think and write about the ideas Plato put forth through the dialogue of Socrates.