Product Description

Ostensibly a discussion of the nature of justice, The Republic presents Plato's vision of the ideal state, covering a wide range of topics: social, educational, psychological, moral, and philosophical. It also includes some of Plato's most important writing on the nature of reality and the theory of the "forms."

Translated with an Introduction by Desmond Lee

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #308126 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-25
• Released on: 2003-02-25
• Original language: Greek
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Language Notes
Text: English, Greek (translation)

About the Author
Plato (c. 427-347 b.c.) founded the Academy in Athens, the prototype of all Western universities, and wrote more than twenty philosophical dialogues.

Desmond Lee (1908-1993) taught for many years at Cambridge University and also translated Plato's Timaeus and Critias for Penguin Classics.

Customer Reviews

Absolutely necessary, but don't put it on a pedestal
Plato's Republic is the fount from which nearly all Western thought flows. Pretty much everything written in that tradition either borrows from Plato or refutes him, and the Republic articulates his philosophies more fully than any of his other works(although the Timaeus is more mature and the Symposium is an amazing discussion on a single point). I must disagree with both of the main camps on this site; it is neither just a work of political philosophy NOR just a work of moral psychology(how to order your mind). Plato thought that all things should reflect the ultimate good, so that the ideal society would be ordered in the exact same way that the ideal human being would be. Thus, every part of one's psyche would correspond to a part of society(it's a microcosm!), and the "higher" parts of one's mind would be mirrored in the Guardians, the "higher" parts of society.

With that said, it is easy to see that the Republic proposes many things that disgust most modern human beings: censorship for political stability, ostracism of those with "weak" (read: human, sensitive, or some equivalent) emotions, killing young children, government regulation of sexual activity, and such. Even when Plato tries to give women equal rights, an _extremely_ radical idea in Ancient Greece, his ancient prejudices show up when he calls them "equal but weaker in all ways(morally, intellectually, and physically)".

Despite all of its shortcomings, the Republic was the work that singlehandedly separated the real from the ideal in Western civilization, and it also defined the kinds of questions that Western philosophers would try to answer until the 20th century. Pick up a book of Western philosophy at random, and I guarantee you that some issue introduced in the Republic will hit you within the first five pages. Even the Communist Manifesto rips off his discourse on women and his notion of work defining human beings. The Republic was the first work of real philosophy in the conversation of ideals that continues to this very day in fields as diverse as politics, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and religion. (PS: If you think Plato's an idealistic fool, read Aristotle. So did he.)

Philosophy's wellspring of questions.
It has been said that all philosophic work of the past 2400 years stands as footnotes to Plato's writings. 'Do the ends justify the means? What is justice? Whom does it serve? Who should serve as its guardians? Is it absolute or relative?'
Plato's protagonist is his old teacher, Socrates. The arguments are presented as dialogues and thus embody a literary aspect different from many, although certainly not all, subsequent philosophical writings. His object is "no trivial question, but the manner in which a man ought to live." The answers are seen to point to the manner in which a utopian society should be operated.
As a storied mountain calls to a climber from afar, Plato calls to the student of the art of thinking. This is why we read Plato, for the "neo-Platonists" -- Plotinus, Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Whitehead, Gödel, and others -- have certainly propounded improved philosophy. But it is Plato on whom they improve. Most thinkers (perhaps especially most mathematicians and logicians) yet agree with Plato, at least insofar as his understanding of "form" -- often adapted or restated as: ideas / perfection / consciousness / mind / or, 'the thing in itself'.
Plato's realm of [what he calls] "forms" acknowledges the mysterious, yet logically necessary, existence of non-material reality. In Republic he views this as the realm of reference in constructing his understanding of an ideal society. We find in the work of subsequent thinkers (and within Plato's Republic as well) that this non-material reality is perhaps more easily recognized in purer considerations of reason, aesthetics, mathematics, music, love, spiritual experience, and ultimately in consciousness itself, than in idealized human social institutions. Mathematics, for example, although readily practiced in material ways, is not itself material. Thus the understanding of the purity of reason as opposed to the synthetic (and uncertain) nature of empiricism, arises from the work of Plato (and is particularly well developed in Descartes' existentialism).
Modern readers should rightly find that Plato regards the State too highly; in pursuit of an ideal State his supposedly improved citizen is highly restricted and censored. His "utopian" citizens are automatons, bred by the State; unsanctioned infants are "disposed of." Where his ideas are wrongly developed, they are in fact important ideas, i.e., they are issues deserving serious examination. Should the ruling class be restricted to philosophers? Plato says yes, that wisdom and intellectual insight are more desirable in leaders than are either birthright or popularity. Of course we, in the democratic West, tend to see this idea as totalitarianism, but it remains an interesting argument.
Although the product of polytheistic culture, Plato is leery of the tangled accounts of the gods received from the poets, Homer, Hesiod, etc. His view of the divine -- that "the chief good" has one eternal, unchanging and surpassingly superior form -- which he also calls "Providence", hints strongly of the common ground which was to emerge between neo-Platonism and monotheism. Like Plato's proverbial cave dwellers, we perceive this transcendent entity through poorly understood "shadows" of the actual truth. Beside its philosophical, literary, political, and theological aspects, Republic is also important as a treatise on psychology, in fact the science of mind seems to have progressed very little beyond Plato's insights. Books 5-7 are particularly fascinating.

PLATO'S REPUBLIC IS THE ODYSSEY OF PHILOSOPHY!
Plato's The Republic, is not only a classic work of the fourth century B.C., but a masterpiece of utopian literature as a whole. Mr. Lee's translation brings into light the political and poetical wisdom of Plato into English from the original Greek. In The Republic, Plato raises questions that are still at the heart of many modern conflicts and heated debates. What is justice? What is goodness? What is the right political authority? Plato examines these questions as aspects of a single theme. He offers a portrait of an ideal state in which power is entrusted to the philosopher king(s), and other men and women accept the authority of the wise and the good. If no one has read The Republic, then he or she has not read anything!