The Republic

Plato

Feb 2013 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

The question The Republic sets out to define is "What is justice?" Given the difficulty of this task, Socrates and his interlocutors are led into a discussion of justice in the city, which Socrates suggests may help them see justice in the person, but on a grander (and therefore easier to discuss) scale ("suppose that a short-sighted person had been asked by some one to read small letters from a distance; and it occurred to some one else that they might be found in another place which was larger and in which the letters were larger," 368, trans. Jowett). Some critics (such as Julia Annas) have adhered to this premise that the dialogue's entire political construct exists to serve as an analogy for the individual soul, in which there are also various potentially competing or conflicting "members" that might be integrated and orchestrated under a just and productive "government."

Ratings and reviews

Obviously this book has changed the world. As such it deserves more than an 1 star no written review. To find out why and how this became a cornerstone of philosophy. Please read and then reread. Give this book an analytical reading to further compound the information inside so as to better understand what the core message of this book is.

About the author

Plato was the most famous of the Greek philosophers, aside from his teacher Socrates. He founded the Academy in Athens, written dialogue, political philosophy, epistemology, the concept of religion, and many other crucial elements of thought. All were attributed to Plato, which laid the framework for Western philosophy as we know it. He was also credited for famed protégé Aristotle, whose contributions to philosophy and thought are often deemed of equal or greater importance.

Simon Blackburn is a British American philosopher. He has been a professor at University of Cambridge and currently teaches at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a former editor of the journal The Mind and is the author of Plato’s Republic: A Biography.