Republic (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

Plato (Author), Robin Waterfield (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0199535760 | ISBN-13: 978-0199535767 | Publication Date: May 15, 2008

The central work of one of the West's greatest philosophers, The Republic of Plato is a masterpiece of insight and feeling, the finest of the Socratic dialogues, and one of the great books of Western culture. This new translation captures the dramatic realism, poetic beauty, intellectual vitality, and emotional power of Plato at the height of his powers. Deftly weaving three main strands of argument into an artistic whole--the ethical and political, the aesthetic and mystical, and the metaphysical--Plato explores in The Republic the elements of the ideal community, where morality can be achieved in a balance of wisdom, courage, and restraint.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'a fine new translation' The Observer

About the Author

Robin Waterfield is a distinguished translator and author. Previously a consultant editor for Collins-Harvill, his translations of Plato include Philebus (1982), Theatetus (1987), Early Socratic Dialogues (1987), and Symposium (WC, Jan, 1994).

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199535760
• ISBN-13: 978-0199535767
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #58,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Government > Constitutions
  • #16 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Philosophy > Ancient
  • #16 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Political Science > General

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Teaching Translation, July 5, 2008

By 

Nathan P. Gilmour "hardlythelastword" (Statham, GA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Republic (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

I've been using the Oxford World's Classics edition of Republic for three years now to teach freshmen, and Waterfield's translation and endnotes are great. His choice to render dikaiosyne as "morality" rather than "justice" allows a range of discussion with American students that travels outside the courtroom and into the purpose of life and what translation means, and his crankiness in the endnotes (he talks about Plato as an old lover talks about his beloved) allows some great lessons about editorial practices and what's involved in the production of a scholarly edition.

Perhaps more important to my students than anything, this edition of Plato is right at ten bucks, a steal compared to their other textbooks and an invitation to mark up, use, and abuse the margins. I'm sitting at my desk, my battered copy of the 1998 printing sitting next to my keyboard, and I'm thinking that perhaps this fall I'll pick up a copy of this blue-sky beauty.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Admirable Achievement in Clarity and Directness, February 25, 2010

By 

Clayton C. Chou (Malden, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Republic (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

Among all the translators of Plato's Republic who claim that their translations are intended to be readable, Robin Waterfield seems to be the only one to have truly fulfilled the pledge. His translation has demonstrated a simple belief that Plato meant for his Greek to be as readable and fluent as in an everyday conversation and that is exactly what Mr. Waterfield is doing with his modern English --- without assuming that there is a built-in difficulty in all the classic literatures. Because, he believes, "reading Plato should be easy; understanding Plato can be difficult." A rare combination of the knowledge of classic philosophy and the writing of children's fiction to his credit must have contributed to the admirable achievement of clarity and directness.

In addition to readability, Waterfield has also made a unique contribution by abandoning the traditional "ten books" design (which was not made by Plato himself anyway) and regrouped them into "fourteen chapters" following the natural flow of the internal arguments in the texts. It is therefore only too logical for him to give each of his fourteen chapters a title and a brief introduction, not only for convenience but also to provide an overall scope of the book, which is in fact the longest and most complicated of all Plato's dialogues. Of course, he has no need to give up the standard means of reference to passages in Plato and the reader still feels quite at home with the conventional setting started as early as in 1578. To an avid reader, this new translation in Oxford World's Classics is an invaluable addition to his existing collection, large or small.

One more point deserves our special admiration. While most translators think Republic is about justice in the sense of politics more or less, Waterfield alone chooses morality for the Greek word dikaiosone, which refers to something larger than justice and that "encompasses all the various virtues and is almost synonymous with virtue in general" (Aristotle Ethics). This intrinsic quality of justice does not, however, show up to give him support until in the last two Books (IX and X), or Chapters 12-14 in our case, where the issues of happiness, or unhappiness, and immortality of the soul are brought up. At this point Waterfield needs waste no time to prove that the book title Republic is rather inadequate, if not a misnomer, for being taken directly from the Greek word politeia, which means the public life of a community and has little or no apparent relationship to the idea of republicanism as we understand it today.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good translation makes the difference, November 29, 2009

By 

steven - See all my reviews

This review is from: Republic (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

I never understood the Republic until I read this translation....there are great notes that go with the text, and the result is you really learn something.