The Form of the Good as the greatest God in Plato’s Republic

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Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Literature and Foreign Languages, University of Tabriz, Iran

10.22080/jre.2024.28103.1227

Abstract

The present essay studies the natural philosophy of Plato in Republic from the perspective of the Form of the Good. The question is this: why and how in Republic the Form of the Good proposed as the greatest god or the first principle? Some subjects in this dialogue are related with natural philosophy; for example, essential-rational goodness of the virtues, critique of the mythology, psychology, eschatology and the Form of the Good. It is worth to mention that Plato is studying some of these subjects in the previous dialogues and others in Republic. In order to examine the mentioned question in the realm of Republic, I am studying some of those subjects that immediately concern with the subject matter. At this dialogue Plato through accepting the ethical virtues as essential goodness and their being reasonable, goes on to the critique of the mythological theology; then Plato founds three laws of the theology and eschatology for his utopia. Finally, he proposes the Form of the Good as the greatest god. The Form of the Good is not a hypothesis but a reasoned principle. A part of the present essay tries to recovery and report a reasoning for this principle. In Republic we encounter an implicit reasoning that proceeds from the gradations of perfections to the most perfect or absolute perfection.

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