In case you missed this extremely important passage from Plato's Theaetetus when I posted it in a comment to one of my posts a while back, here it is again. Among other things, this is a perfect summary of Plato's Republic.
"THEODORUS: "if your words convinced everyone as they do me, there would be more peace and less evil on earth.
SOCRATES : But it is not possible, Theodorus, that evil should be destroyed—for there must always be something opposed to the good; nor is it possible that it should have its seat in heaven. But it must inevitably haunt human life, and prowl about this earth. That is why a man should make all haste to escape from earth to heaven; and escape means becoming as like God as possible; and a man becomes like God when he becomes just and pious, with understanding. But it is not at all an easy matter, my good friend, to persuade men that it is not for the reasons commonly alleged that one should try to escape from wickedness and pursue virtue. It is not in order to avoid a bad reputation and obtain a good one that virtue should be practiced and not vice; that, it seems to me, is only what men call ‘old wives’ talk’. Let us try to put the truth in this way. In God there is no sort of wrong whatsoever; he is supremely just, and the thing most like him is the man who has become as just as it lies in human nature to be. And it is here that we see whether a man is truly able, or truly a weakling and a nonentity; for it is the realization of this that is genuine wisdom and goodness, while the failure to realize it is manifest folly and wickedness. Everything else that passes for ability and wisdom has a sort of commonness—in those who wield political power a poor cheap show, in the manual workers a matter of mechanical routine. If, therefore, one meets a man who practices injustice and is blasphemous in his talk or in his life, the best thing for him by far is that one should never grant that there is any sort of ability about his unscrupulousness; such men are ready enough to glory in the reproach, and think that it means not that they are mere rubbish, cumbering the ground to no purpose, but that they have the kind of qualities that are necessary for survival in the community. We must therefore tell them the truth—that their very ignorance of their true state fixes them the more firmly therein. For they do not know what is the penalty of injustice, which is the last thing of which a man should be ignorant. It is not what they suppose—scourging and death—things which they may entirely evade in spite of their wrongdoing. It is a penalty from which there is no escape.
THEODORUS : And what is that?
SOCRATES : My friend, there are two patterns set up in reality. One is divine and supremely happy; the other has nothing of God in it, and is the pattern of the deepest unhappiness. This truth the evildoer does not see; blinded by folly and utter lack of understanding, he fails to perceive that the effect of his unjust practices is to make him grow more and more like the one, and less and less like the other. For this he pays the penalty of living the life that corresponds to the pattern he is coming to resemble. And if we tell him that, unless he is delivered from this ‘ability’ of his, when he dies the place that is pure of all evil will not receive him; that he will forever go on living in this world a life after his own likeness—a bad man tied to bad company: he will but think, ‘This is the way fools talk to a clever rascal like me.’
THEODORUS : Oh, yes, Socrates, sure enough.
SOCRATES : I know it, my friend. But there is one accident to which the unjust man is liable. When it comes to giving and taking an account in a private discussion of the things he disparages; when he is willing to stand his ground like a man for long enough, instead of running away like a coward, then, my friend, an odd thing happens. In the end the things he says do not satisfy even himself; that famous eloquence of his somehow dries up, and he is left looking nothing more than a child".
- Socrates talking to the geometer Theodorus in Plato's Theaetetus, 176a-177b
The passage above seems to indicate that Plato did *not* believe that real political change for the better is possible and, thus, that he did *not* believe that philosophers will ever rule anywhere - and, thus, that his dialogue Republic is not about causing change on earth but about escaping from earth to heaven.
"‘Unless’, I said, ‘either philosophers rule in cities as kings, or those now called kings and princes not only do genuine philosophy but do it sufficiently well – unless there is this coming together of political power and philosophy, and all the many types of people currently trying to move into either without the other are forcibly debarred, there is no respite from troubles, my dear Glaucon, for cities or, I think, for the human race."
"in the running of cities virtually nothing is done by anyone that is conducive to political health, nor is there a single ally with whom one might go to the aid of justice and still remain alive; it would be a case of a solitary human among wild animals, neither wanting to join in their depredations nor able to stand alone against their collective savagery, dead before he’d done any good to his city or friends and useless both to himself and everybody else. Once a person has made all these calculations, he keeps his peace and minds his own business, like someone withdrawing from the prevailing wind into the shelter of a wall in a storm of dust or rain, and as he sees everyone else filling themselves full of lawlessness he is content if he himself can somehow live out life here untainted by injustice and impious actions, and leave it with fine hopes and in a spirit of kindness and good will".
- Socrates talking to Plato's brother Adimantus at Republic 496c-e
The passage above seems to indicate that Plato did *not* believe that real political change for the better is possible and, thus, that he did *not* believe that philosophers will ever rule anywhere - and, thus, that his dialogue Republic is not about causing change on earth but about escaping from earth to heaven.
"‘Unless’, I said, ‘either philosophers rule in cities as kings, or those now called kings and princes not only do genuine philosophy but do it sufficiently well – unless there is this coming together of political power and philosophy, and all the many types of people currently trying to move into either without the other are forcibly debarred, there is no respite from troubles, my dear Glaucon, for cities or, I think, for the human race."
- Socrates in Plato's "Republic", 473d
"in the running of cities virtually nothing is done by anyone that is conducive to political health, nor is there a single ally with whom one might go to the aid of justice and still remain alive; it would be a case of a solitary human among wild animals, neither wanting to join in their depredations nor able to stand alone against their collective savagery, dead before he’d done any good to his city or friends and useless both to himself and everybody else. Once a person has made all these calculations, he keeps his peace and minds his own business, like someone withdrawing from the prevailing wind into the shelter of a wall in a storm of dust or rain, and as he sees everyone else filling themselves full of lawlessness he is content if he himself can somehow live out life here untainted by injustice and impious actions, and leave it with fine hopes and in a spirit of kindness and good will".
- Socrates talking to Plato's brother Adimantus at Republic 496c-e