The Republic

By Plato and H. D. P Lee

Book Overview

Plato's Republic is structured as a dialogue between Socrates and three different challengers, laying out Plato's views on justice, utopia, and the attributes of the ideal citizen within such a society.

Plato purports that true justice provides meaning for both the individual and the community. As a hammer derives meaning from its true purpose of driving home the nail, so too does every person find meaning in their true purpose of creating and maintaining a just society. Broadening his scope, he then posits that the ideal society would consist of three classes: the philosopher kings who dictate laws and morals, the warriors to provide protection, and the producers to keep the wheels turning. Plato's seminal work is still fiercely critiqued and studied within professional and academic circles with the goal of better understanding and improving the opalescent fabric of society. Many influential works of philosophy and literature, including Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984, have taken The Republic as a key starting point for the dissection and discussion of societal norms and trends.

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0G6RKQ88B
• ISBN13: 9798888976784
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: Mint Editions
• Length: 588 Pages
• Dimensions: 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Very good for an inexpensive translation

I'm wrapping up a semester of teaching this translation of Republic, and I've had few complaints. Waterfield's editorial hand is visible, but that in itself, in the hands of a competent teacher, leads to good discussions above and beyond Plato's ideas. With regards to Plato's masterwork, there's no good place to start save reading it for oneself. Plato is dead wrong in places (with regards to poetry and marriage just to get rolling), but his genius is that he's wrong as an idealist philosopher, encouraging readers to assert and refine their own ideals as counter-arguments. In other words, in order to refute Plato, one must out-Plato Plato. Deconstruction is fine for deconstructionists, but a good discussion of this juggernaut of ancient thought is the life for me.