The necessity for political power and philosophical intellect to coincide in the same person. The nature of the philosopher. The Idea of the Good. The Allegory of the Cave. Specific references to education.

The regimes, their deviant forms. Correspondingly, the decline of the state. Tyranny as the gravest illness of the city. Just and unjust life. Happiness and misery.

The moral superiority of justice over injustice. The celestial model. Critique of imitation and imitative arts. Condemnation of imitative art. The "exile of poets." The rewards of the just man. Eschatological myth.