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In this book a distinguished philosopher offers a comprehensive interpretation of Plato's most controversial dialogue. Treating theRepublicas a unity and focusing on the dramatic form as the presentation of the argument, Stanley Rosen challenges earlier analyses of theRepublic(including the ironic reading of Leo Strauss and his disciples) and argues that the key to understanding the dialogue is to grasp the author's intention in composing it, in particular whether Plato believed that the city constructed in theRepublicis possible and desirable. Rosen demonstrates that the fundamental principles underlying the just city are theoretically attractive but that the attempt to enact them in practice leads to conceptual incoherence and political disaster. TheRepublic,says Rosen, is a vivid illustration of the irreconcilability of philosophy and political practice.

Surveying many of Plato's dialogues from the early, middle, and late periods, prominent philosopher John M. Rist shows how Plato gradually came to realize the need for metaphysics to support his ethical position and that a rigorous ethics required a secure metaphysics grounded in universal values.

The City-State of the Soul: Self-Constitution in Plato's Republicexplores Plato's idea that the moral life consists in the founding of one's own soul. This insight is central to the long argument of the Republic and, in particular, to the complex relation between the city and the human soul. This fruitful picture of the moral life, however, has not received the attention it deserves. As Kevin M. Crotty argues, Plato's distinctive insight is that justice is above all a creative force. Plato presents justice not as a relation amongst fully formed individuals, but rather as the quality that galvanizes a diverse welter of disparate parts into a coherent entity (above all, a soul or a city). Justice, then, is the virtue most closely associated with being—the source of its philosophical stature. Plato presents a conception of justice meant to impress the young, bright and ambitious as a noble pursuit, and a task worthy of their best talents. The City-State of the Soul is written for anyone interested in the Republic, including but not limited to students and scholars of ancient philosophy, political philosophy, ethics, and ancient Greek literature.

Understanding Plato’s Republic is an accessible introduction to the concepts of justice that inform Plato’s Republic, elucidating the ancient philosopher's main argument that we would be better off leading just lives rather than unjust ones Provides a much needed up to date discussion of The Republic's fundamental ideas and Plato's main argument Discusses the unity and coherence of The Republic as a whole Written in a lively style, informed by over 50 years of teaching experience Reveals rich insights into a timeless classic that holds remarkable relevance to the modern world

This book shows how the discussion of Platos' Republic is a comic mimetic cure for civic and psychic delusion. Plato creates such pharmaka, or noble lies, for reasons enunciated by Socrates within the discussion, but this indicates Plato must think his readers are in the position of needing the catharses such fictions produce. Socrates' interlocutors must be like us. Since cities are like souls, and souls come to be as they are through mimesis of desires, dreams, actions and thought patterns in the city, we should expect that political theorizing often suffers from madness as well. It does. Gene Fendt shows how contemporary political (and psychological) theory still suffers from the same delusion Socrates' interlocutors reveal in their discussion: a dream of autarchia called possessive individualism. Plato has good reason to think that only a mimetic, rather than a rational and philosophical, cure can work. Against many standard readings, Comic Cure for Delusional Democracy shows that the Republic itself is a defense of poetry; that kallipolis cannot be the best city and is not Socrates' ideal; that there are six forms of regime, not five; and that the true philosopher should not be unhappy to go back down into Plato's cave.

This volume, the fourth in the series Edinburgh Leventis Studies, comprises a selection of papers from the conference held in Edinburgh in March 2005, when Professor Terry Penner was the visiting Leventis Research Professor of Greek.

The theme of Soul, World, and Idea is the meaning of immortality and eternality for Plato as seen in the Republic and Phaedo. It offers a reinterpretation of the platonic ideas and the immortality of the soul as wholly within lived experience.

In this book, Mary Townsend proposes that, contrary to the current scholarship on Plato's Republic, Socrates does not in fact set out to prove the weakness of women. Rather, she argues that close attention to the drama of the Republic reveals that Plato dramatizes the reluctance of men to allow women into the public sphere and offers a deeply aporetic vision of women’s nature and political position—a vision full of concern not only for the human community, but for the desires of women themselves.

Everything you need to know about Plato's Republic in one volume.

This is the first exploration of how ideas of politeia (constitution) structure both political and extra-political relations throughout the entirety of Greek and Roman philosophy, ranging from Presocratic to classical, Hellenistic, and Neoplatonic thought. A highly distinguished international team of scholars investigate topics such as the Athenian, Spartan and Platonic visions of politeia, the reshaping of Greek and Latin vocabularies of politics, the practice of politics in Plato and Proclus, the politics of value in Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, and the extension of constitutional order to discussions of animals, gods and the cosmos. The volume is dedicated to Professor Malcolm Schofield, one of the world's leading scholars of ancient philosophy.