The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic

WHY PHILOSOPHERS ARE EQUIPPED TO RULE

In his blueprint for an ideal society, the Socrates of Plato's Republic emphasizes three especially daring political proposals: first, inclusion of women in the guardian class, on fully equal terms with men; second, abolition of the family for this same elite class; and third, that philosophers should be kings. He speaks of these as three “waves” (5.457b-d, 472a, 473c-d), with the final proposal, that of philosopherkings, heralded as the third and biggest wave within the “triple wave” (trikumia, 5.472a).

Quite how destabilizing these proposals are meant to sound can be appreciated only when we realize that Socrates is referring here not just to stormy waves but to a veritable tsunami of change. Not only have tsunamis been a familiar feature of Mediterranean history in both ancient and modern times, but eyewitness accounts of tsunamis - including the massive one in the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004 - again and again describe a sequence of three waves, an indication that it is this specific phenomenon that Plato is calling to mind. When Socrates speaks of a third and final wave as liable to “drown us in a deluge [katakluzein] of mockery and unbelievability” (5.473c), his reference is, if I am not mistaken, to a philosophical tsunami, a veritable cataclysm of incredulity that threatens to wash away his entire political agenda.