Creating a Screenplay for Plato's Republic

I am reposting this from a different thread, because the project strikes me as one with some merit.

The challenge is to film a reading of Plato's Republic, and yet keep it engaging and informative. I am reminded of PBS 12 hour production of "Brideshead Revisited" which seems to include every sentence and scene in the entire novel.

It would be interesting to do an outline and story board. The final book, with Odysseus in the underworld, in the Myth of Er, would be quite sci-fi. And, hey, Plato's works are certainly in public domain.

I wonder if most of the movement of "drama" is "noetic", in the development of concepts and arguments, and would not come through in a film. Which might mean that only costumes and antics would provide entertainment. I wonder if a viewer of such a film could clearly follow the reading. The Republic seems like something one needs to pour over and study. If all this is true, then a two hour video might be either dull, or fatuous in its efforts to avoid dullness. My girlfriend and I took turns reading "The Pooh Perplex" aloud, and it was fun and amusing. We tried the same thing with "Death in Venice" and it didn't work at all. It was too heavy and cerebral. Perhaps if one assembled meaningful notes, commentary, which a narrator reads with shots of paintings or statues to illustrate, and then pan to certain passages where performers narrate the actual dialogue (sort of like a Nova or History Channel documentary), then it might be entertaining and also instructive. Hmm... I wonder what a good producer and director could come uo with for The Republic. Is it proper to say "screenplay" for the production of such a documentary. A story board would be a challenging project. It would be like those cartoon books that illustrate the thought of Sartre, Kant, et al.


I am looking for outlines and synopses to help me create a story board for a movie version of Plato's Republic. This is simply a fun exercise for me, inspired by some Facebook alumni who recall a staged non-stop reading of The Republic, and muse about doing it again, and videotaping it.

Here is a useful synopsis

The movie should allude to the meaning of characters

Polemarchus, which means "leader in battle," and was the name given to the third archon;

Cephalus, meaning "head" as in head of the family; and

Thrasymachus, meaning "schemer."]

Someone like Bernardo Bertolucci would be a good director for our movie version of The Republic

Little Buddha

A crucial move in the development of the argument occurs at this point. Socrates suggests that justice will be easier to recognize and to define in a city-state (POLIS) than in an individual, particularly if we conduct what we in the 20c C.E would come to call a thought experiment. The POLIS is the individual WRIT LARGE. So the argument begins with speculation about the foundation of an ideal POLIS. Initially this will be a small, circumscribed community brought together by the economics of basic material needs. Glaucon in particular finds this vision crude and unsatisfactory: he labels Socrates' idea a "city of pigs." In response, Socrates develops the implications and effects of the introduction of more "creature-comforts" and luxuries, chief among them war. The more luxurious POLIS inevitably is at risk from its neighbors and therefore must raise an army. With luxury and enhanced trade both the threat of war (and the necessity of defense) and the subdivision and specialization of labor inevitably follow. The POLIS requires Guardians (PHYLAKES.) As the argument of the Republic develops, the the role of the Guardians assumes greater and greater significance.

Education (PAIDEIA.) What should children be taught, and when? This in turn leads to a discussion of

Censorship. Are there stories (especially about the gods) that children should not be told.?

The crucial question is:

Who should rule? Those undergoing education must be regularly tested. Only the most devoted should qualify. They must pass all the tests. The Guardian class will eventually be divided into two groups: those who will be trained to rule and their assistants. The nub of the issue is character. Socrates relates the famous myth of the metals. Among human natures there are golden, silver, bronze and iron types. Education & training must identify the golden natures. They will rule. All the Guardians (both the gold and the silver) will be charged with the defense of the POLIS against its enemies, external and internal. There will be a strict conflict of interest provision: Guardians will be prohibited from owning private property, but their needs, not to extend to profligacy or luxury, will be supplied at state expense.

Socrates inventories the

Four Cardinal Virtues:

wisdom, courage, moderation, & justice. Wisdom will be found among the rulers; courage among the guardians; moderation (SOPHROSYNE) in everyone's being content with his own role in the POLIS. Justice (DIAKIOSYNE) is, therefore, the smooth ordering of society that results from everyone fulfilling his own special role and not meddling in the proper functions of others. Injustice, by contrast, consists precisely in such meddling.


justice in the individual will be the harmonious functioning of independent parts, each fulfilling its own appropriate function.

the soul has indeed three parts (reason, spirit, and appetite) that correspond to the three basic classes in the POLIS. Justice in the individual is, therefore, the condition under which each part of the soul fulfills its own special function, governed by reason, with spirit, as reason requires, restraining the passions (appetite.) Injustice in the individual is, by contrast, the state of imbalance and disorder, in which passions and drives rebel against the wise counsel of reason.

Four such ways in which disorder and rebellion can arise in the POLIS and/or the individual.

Gender Differences.

Although men are on average stronger and more capable than women, the skills of political leadership (ruling) are not sex-linked. Thus there will be female Guardians as well as male. All Guardians will have the same responsibilities (including fighting in wars) and must share the same training & education. The traditional family & marriage are obstacles to the education, rearing, and outlook of the Guardians. They must, therefore, be abolished for this class, because they create and foster affection for particular individuals. Unions for the sake of procreation will be temporary and arranged at festivals by subterfuge under carefully guarded conditions that will ensure that the socially most desirable pairings are achieved. For this purpose a rigged balloting system will be engineered by the rulers. Parents will not know their own children. Children will be raised in common. In times of war both women and men will fight, and provisions will be made for the children to witness the fighting from a safe vantage point. Wars between Greek cities must be regarded as civil wars and prosecuted accordingly. Even with barbarians war must be conducted according to what might be called "civilized" rules.

Socrates differentiates most human beings, captivated as they are by changing sights, sounds, and pleasures, from the philosophers, the "lovers of wisdom," who seek the real, unchanging objects of true knowledge.

Imagine a ship on which the crew believes that holding the wheel is true navigating and that consulting the positions of the stars is foolish speculation. As for wickedness,

when a man or woman of great philosophic ability is seduced by power, ambition or gain, the results can indeed be dangerous.

Philosophers must be capable of the most advanced studies, the study of the Good. When asked for an account of the Good, Socrates says he can only point to things most like it. The Good, he says, is to the true world as the sun is to the visible world. This metaphor is immediately followed by another, the Line, which illustrates the upward journey of the philosopher through the ascending scale of reality and knowledge, from passing sensation to the vision of the forms.


Myth of the Cave

The chained prisoners in the dark cave spend their days predicting the order of appearance of shadow images of crude puppets paraded behind them and reflected by the light of a fire at their backs of which they are ignorant on the wall they are forced to face. One of the prisoners eventually escapes his shackles and learns the truth of the shadow theater they observe. Eventually he finds his way out of the cave and, by the light of the sun, sees the "real" world of which their shadowy procession is a pale image, several times removed. Suppose, Socrates now says, that for the sake of his people this visitor from the nether world returns to the cave. His eyes will not readily adjust to his darkened surroundings. He will no longer be adept at predicting what image will appear next. He will have lost his skill at their game. Yet if he dares try to tell his erstwhile fellow prisoners the truth of what he has seen, they will denounce him as mad, and, if he persists, may grow so tired of his tedious tales that they kill him.

Education of a Political Leader:

Mathematics, followed by logic & dialectic, followed by a fifteen year apprenticeship in the practical world of politics (from age 35 to 50.) Only then can the final stages of the education (as the French would say formation) of the philosopher-ruler begin. Book VII ends with a reminder that some of these "philosopher-kings" will be women.

Corruption:

Why the ideal POLIS should suffer decline and erosion at all. The answer, Socrates explains in extremely elevated poetic language, is that whatever is born must die, according to a mathematical principle, which is expressed here as the so-called "Myth of the Platonic number." Complicated astrological calculations will regulate the precise timings of the fertility festivals. Errors in these calculations will result in iron and bronze types mixing with the golden and silver. When this happens the harmony of the ideal city will be compromised. Civil strife (STASIS) will arise from envy and hostility. The rulers, no longer governed by their best natures, seek compromises. They distribute land and private property, and concentrate their own activities on war and defense. Society forms into economic classes: the rich own land and property, the poor become wage-earners and serfs. Emphasis is on honor and martial arts (Socrates seems to have Sparta in mind.) Art " cutlure are neglected and education deteriorates. The rulers now secretly love money, but they cannot admit that they do. In the corresponding individual, the spirited element predominates over the rational.

Greed:

Money is openly prized, desired, and sought after. Wealth is now a sign of honor, and a qualification for high office. The gap between the rich and poor widens. This type of individual must still exercise restraint of the appetites & self-control but for the wrong reasons. By the third and following stage, self-control has disappeared completely. All desires are equal. We have arrived at the stage of democracy. Like the preceding stages in the decline of the POLIS, democracy is inherently unstable. Liberty has turned to licentiousness, and this leads inevitably to tyranny and complete loss of freedom. The people name a champion dictator, and grant him bodyguards. He seizes all power and privilege for himself.