The project of this chapter is in outline simple. I first argue (section I) that somehow or other Socrates, and what I shall broadly call the “Socratic conception of philosophy,” are fundamental to Plato's political thinking in all periods of his writing (however these are to be defined), and I try to explain both why that should be so and what the consequences are for our understanding of Plato's political thought. I then (section II) go on to discuss the relationship of this Socrates - the one who, as I shall propose, stands constantly behind Plato as he reflects politically - to Callipolis, the second city of the Republic (second, that is, after Socrates' “city of pigs,” as Glaucon calls it). To put it in a more punchy way, in this second section of the chapter I ask about the precise relationship between Socrates, the main speaker throughout the Republic, and the philosopher-rulers of the second city he is made by the author to construct.

But first, a couple of preliminaries.

The old, simplistic, late twentieth-century account of Plato’s political philosophy is now, in my view, dead and buried: the sort of account that has him starting out (in the Republic) with the ideal of rule by philosophers, then (in Politicus and Laws) rethinking that ideal and becoming a constitutionalist, even if, as he rethinks, he still looks back wistfully to the earlier dream. Closer readings have in my view demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that this account radically misinterprets all three dialogues (i.e., Republic, Politicus, and Laws); it will no doubt persist among the wider public for a time, but it will and should be replaced eventually by a more nuanced story of Plato’s political thought and its evolution.