ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to expose the scandal of Plato’s Republic – we tease out the sexual politics, as well as the moral policing of the sexual instinct, and reread this classical text on justice in terms of erotic justice. Socrates shows that tyranny is consummate injustice, a great overreaching. This overreaching is unnatural, while moderation as shown through harmony or health is naturally pleasing. Accordingly, there is a ‘right eros’, which is contributive of justice and the soul’s health, as well as – by contrast – the frenzied erotic soul of the tyrannical type. The tyrannical type is the most unhappy according to this treatment, where the state is the soul writ large: the state under tyranny is needy, poor and enslaved; so is the soul of the tyrant.
