Tragic Pharmacy: The ‘Noble’ Lie and the Fall of Kallipolis

Abstract In Plato’s Republic , Socrates takes it that the best regime is doomed to fail. This failure is often attributed to inevitable errors in the rulers’ eugenic calculations. I propose that the city’s constitution must decline not because the eugenic calculations go wrong, but because the calculations must have always been wrong, and this on account of congenital errors in the city’s establishment. In this dramatic arc, from noble founding to destined fall, the reversal arguably reveals the city to be a tragic figure. The Republic , then, would not be, as some read it, a prescription for authoritarianism or totalitarianism, but a reflection on political lies, human sacrifice, and the tragedy of politics.