"[How] would Socrates have been born, if he ever were to be born, in my opinion, well said" (The Republic, 510a). The possibility Republic is born is the question that distinguishes the previous Dialogues from The Republic. Although Socrates "[states] it well", the Republic as a possible state appears, in light of his previous writings and in light of political realities, to be simply a mirage Socrates , in the Apology, states that “for a human being the unexamined life is not worth living” (Apology, 92). For Socrates, knowledge of how a man should live his life is the defining characteristic of a life that it is worth living, because without such knowledge man cannot know how to act. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"? dialectics to teach the good to the people he talks to, as well as to learn something about the good himself. He questions all kinds of individuals, in the Euthyphro, Socrates converses with the son of a landowner who claims to have the gift of divination, in the Laches Socrates converses with warriors and fathers, and in the Gorgias Socrates converses with several rhetoricians. All the men he talks to differ not only in their profession, but also in their socioeconomic class and age. Socrates' willingness to converse with these men as well as his statement that "the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being" (Apology, 92) leads the reader to the conclusion that all men are capable of leading life examined. Dialectics is used in the early Dialogues. However, by the time The Republic is written, Socrates has transgressed in giving speeches. There are long passages of his speech every few pages in La Repubblica, where, on the contrary, in the Dialogues; he only makes a few speeches. In the Dialogues Socrates tries to acquire knowledge of the good, but in the Republic he speaks as someone who already knows the good, or at least how it is best to produce that good in the city. In Socrates' model of the city in the Republic, it is only philosophers who are able to contemplate matters of the good, which contradicts Socrates' claim in the Apology that all men should seek to acquire knowledge of the good. In the Republic, all citizens who do not belong to the ruling class must be indoctrinated into their respective positions in order for there to be political stability within the Republic. Socrates intends to tell the citizens: "the god, in molding those of you capable of governing, mixed in gold at their birth; this is why they are most honored; in the auxiliaries, silver; and iron and bronze the peasants and the artisans" (La Repubblica, III 415a). When Adeimantus questions the happiness afforded to these men placed in their hierarchical positions, Socrates states that, "...in founding the city we do not aim at the exceptional happiness of any group among us, but, as far as possible, that of the city as a whole together" (Repubblica, IV 420b). Unlike the Dialogues, Socrates is concerned with the city and not with the individual has "exceptional happiness". approach city building from the point of producing the best individuals (which is the path followed in the Analects), and therefore would not support aristocratic rule, but governmentdemocratic. Socrates argues later in Book IV that the happiness of the individual must be explained by guaranteeing that each citizen «[is] led to what naturally suits him: one man, one profession, so that each man, exercising his own, which is one , you do not become many but one; and so, you see, the whole city will naturally become one and not many" (The Republic, IV 423d)2And Socrates aims to unify the city by assigning to each person the work that naturally suits him and thus placing him in the caste to which he belongs. This clearly contrasts with the objectives of the previous Dialogues in which Socrates attempts through dialectics with men of many different professions, classes and ages to gain a better understanding of the good, attempting to lead all these men to the life examined Socrates in the Dialogues and the Republic presents two conceptions opposites of the individual, the first conception is cynical in which it is only men who "[appear] hard to charm and graceful in all things, good guardians of themselves and music, demonstrating that they possess rhythm and harmony on all these occasions" that «he must be appointed sovereign and guardian of the city» (La Repubblica, III 413e); the second is an optimistic conception of the city's citizens, according to which they are capable of leading an examined life and therefore must have a certain knowledge of the good. If the statements of both texts are to be believed, the arguments of the Analects are the stronger. This is because in the Apology Socrates claims that the only life worth living is the one that seeks the good, and within the Republic the only class capable of leading the examined life are the guardians. This leads the reader to question the truth of the assumption that the "happiest" city is one in which each man has been placed in his respective niche and left there to perfect that art until death. While this may be a kind of happy life, it is not the same kind of happiness that can be achieved through the pursuit of knowledge of the good2E Therefore, either the statement that only the examined life is worth leading, or the statement that the happiest city is achieved through the assigned roles, must fail. Since it is impossible for an individual to lead a meaningful life without seeking the good (if he happened to lead his life according to the good it would be purely accidental and therefore worthless) and it is impossible for a meaningless life to make one happy, then it follows that the happiest city is not achieved by creating roles for individuals and preventing them from considering other alternatives. Thus, although the Republic is "well expressed" (The Republic, 510a), it cannot actually produce the results that Socrates claims it will produce. The Republic's counterargument to this logic is that philosophers are the only people capable of leading examined lives, and therefore there is nothing lost in preventing others from seeking knowledge of the good. The proof of the citizen's inability to seek the good is the acceptance of the laws. Socrates believes that history cannot be relied upon as the foundation of society and that each individual must begin their life trying to determine for themselves what is good. He maintains that in one part the soul, using previously imitated things as images, is forced to investigate on the basis of hypotheses and moves not towards a beginning but towards an end; while on the other hand it moves towards a beginning free from hypotheses; starting from a hypothesis and without the images used on the other hand, by means of the forms themselves he carries out his investigation through them. (La Repubblica, VI, 510b). A true dialectic therefore rejects the images, traditions and laws of the city, and subjects them to examination to obtain knowledge of the good. This belief that laws should be abandoned is.