自由の創設

概要

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The political thought of Plato's Republic has been long and widely regarded as totalitarianism. On the contrary, I will argue in this paper that the Kallipolis is a state of freedom and all members of the Kallipolis are free, though the freedom of the guardians is different from that of the supporters. To show this, I offer as a textual evidence the lines 395 b 8-c 1 in Book III, which say that "our guardians must give up all other crafts and very precisely be craftsmen of the city's freedom." My interpretation of this "freedom" is that it means "the freedom from fear". While the Kallipolis is free from fear and filled with love between the rulers and the ruled, all the other states - the timocratic, the oligarchic, the democratic, the tyranny - are full of fear and both the rulers and the ruled in these cities hate each other. The freedom of the supporters in the Kallipolis includes, though restricted in some respects, some rights that people in the contemporary liberal and democratic countries are guaranteed to have. The freedom of guardians, which must be adequately clarified through the interpretation of "the cave" simile, is the freedom that only philosophers can enjoy.
神戸女学院大学の論文
2003-03-17