The Vision
Er sees souls completing thousand-year cycles of reward and punishment, arriving at a plain to choose their next lives. They choose from a vast array — human and animal, glorious and obscure, just and unjust. Many souls who lived virtuously but then spent a thousand years being rewarded in heaven rush, still intoxicated by bliss, to choose lives of power — only to discover, too late, that these lives conceal great suffering.
And according to the report of the messenger from the other world this
was what the prophet said at the time: ‘Even for the last comer, if he
chooses wisely and will live diligently, there is appointed a happy and
not undesirable existence.
The Stakes of Philosophy
The souls who chose badly did so from ignorance — not knowing how to evaluate what they were choosing, seduced by surface appearances of power and beauty. The myth makes Plato's educational project urgent: philosophical formation is not a luxury but a survival skill. The soul that has cultivated wisdom will choose well; the soul trained only in opinion will be ambushed by its own desires.
Justice Across Lifetimes
The myth functions as an eschatological argument for justice: in the longest view of all — across many lives and many deaths — the soul that loves wisdom fares better than the soul that chose its lives badly from greed or vanity. The whole of The Republic is preparation for this moment: the moment the soul must choose who it will be, with no guide but itself.
The Myth of Er closes The Republic in Book X. Like the Myth of the Cave it is a story about perception and reality — but where the Cave is about the present life, Er concerns the soul's trajectory across multiple lives.
