 The Republic initiates a further tradition in political philosophy by laying out a template for the integration of ethics and political philosophy into a comprehensive account of epistemology and metaphysics. By making the claim of the philosophers to rule depend on their knowledge of the good and of the other Platonic Forms (in conjunction with their moral character and tested practical experience), the dialogue vindicates the Socratic and Platonic thought that ruling well—what we might call “rule” proper – requires a rare form of expertise rather than lay judgment, rhetorical advice, or common knowledge. In the Republic, the knowledge required for rule is not specialized, but comprehensive: the knowledge of the good and the Forms is somehow to translate into an ability to make laws as well as the everyday decisions of rule. The rulers are philosophers who take turns over their lifetime in exercising collective political authority. They define their vocation as that of philosophizing, engaging in rule out of some sort of compulsion or necessity (see the entry on  Plato’s ethics and politics in the Republic).  To that extent the Republic presents a paradox: if it is widely considered the first major work of political  philosophy,[8]  it is nevertheless a work in which there is no special content to political knowledge nor any special vocation for politics.