So basically here is the plot, Socrates and Plato’s brother, Glaucon, are traveling home from a festival when they come upon another brother of Plato, named Adeimantus, who was also traveling with a rich Athenian named Polemarchus. This is, to be sure, a daunting task, particularly for those who are approaching the dialogue for the first time. There are any number of reasons for this, but one of them is the sheer breadth of topics and issues that Plato introduces over the course of the dialogue.Īs you read, you must make sense not only of those issues in their own right but must also understand them in relation to the larger themes and arguments of the work. However there are some very good nuggets in the book. I found it to be devilishly difficult to truly understand. The Republic is said to be one of Plato’s masterworks and one of the most influential and widely read books in the history of philosophy. Given the two central questions of the discussion, Plato’s philosophical concerns in the dialogue are ethical and political. He does this to address the second and driving question of the dialogue: “is the just person happier than the unjust person?” or “what is the relation of justice to happiness?” The first question is “what is justice?” Socrates addresses this question both in terms of political communities and in terms of the individual person or soul. The book is a dialogue among the students. The dialogue explores two central questions:
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