SOURCE: O'Rourke, James. “Mythos and Logos in the Republic.” Clio 16, no. 4 (summer 1987): 381-96.

Characterizing the Republic as a “foundational text in Western thought,” O'Rourke contends that the emphasis accorded to logic over myth in this work imbues it with an inherent structural instability.

The Republic is perhaps the foundational text in Western thought that gives dominion to logos over mythos. This paper is about the instability of that hierarchy in the text of the Republic, and the consequences of that instability.

The justifications Socrates gives in the latter part of the Republic for why the philosopher should rule and the poet should be exiled seem quite straightforward. The philosopher, he contends, by “associating with divine order will himself become orderly and divine in the measure permitted to man” (500c),¹ and unless “political power and philosophical intelligence” are joined in the figure of a philosopher king “there can be...