The philosopher and the city: Heidegger reading Plato's Republic

Plato’s life is bookended by two great traumas that are ineluctably entangled in his life as a philosopher. In his late twenties, he witnessed how his own city, Athens, convicted and executed by poison his beloved teacher, Socrates. In his late sixties, Plato travels to Syracuse in the hope of teaching a king how to philosophize, and the result was that Plato barely escaped with his life. Wars and the rule of tyrants were a constant during Plato’s life. These events—and others to be sure—left deep marks upon Plato’s work; above all they set the question of the relation of the philosopher to the city in the heart of most every dialogue and letter that Plato wrote. One cannot deny the Plato’s reflections on the relation of philosophy to life are deeply felt and genuinely probing, nor can one deny the deep sense of responsibility that continues to animate Plato’s relentless sense of the obligation of the philosopher to life. In the end, Plato’s work exhibits a deep moral concern, and that concern shapes the most important decisions we find in his work.