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ROSEN, Stanley. Plato's Republic: A Study. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. viii + 423 pp. Cloth, $45.00-As Stanley Rosen himself declares in the preface, his study of the Republic is intended, in part, to constitute a dialogue with his teacher, Leo Strauss. This dialogue is conducted by Professor Rosen not without disputation. His interpretation of the Republic, while in some way influenced by that of Strauss, is offered in disagreement with it and in an attempt to make up for what Rosen understands to be its lack of "technical detail on such crucial topics as the doctrine of ideas" (p. vii). Given that this is the case it is useful in a review of Rosen's book to begin by calling to mind the broad outlines of Strauss's reading of the Republic as found in The City and Man (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964).
In Strauss's view, the argument of the Republic reveals the essential heterogeneity between justice as it is in truth and justice as the city understands it. It does so precisely through the attempt to unify them in the rule of philosophy over the city in speech. The impossibility of the rule of philosophy brings to light the necessary difference between these two understandings of the just. Political justice claims to provide for both the good of the whole or the common good and the good of the part or the individual. The argument of the Republic shows, first, that for the city to realize a common good would require the institution of total communism which is possible only in abstraction from the body; yet the body and its needs lie at the foundation of the city. It shows, second, that, apart from the philosopher, the city necessarily renders each part of the city or individual citizen unjust in making him serviceable for the city. It shows, finally, that the philosopher can be made the ruling part of the city only in abstraction from eros; yet eros is the core of philosophy. Political justice then is shown to be a necessary evil, and the truth of justice or philosophy to be good for a human being as such: it is a good for the individual and, in a sense,...