The Republic (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Plato (Author), Desmond Lee (Translator), Melissa Lane (Introduction)

Book Description

Release date: September 14, 2007

Plato's The Republic is widely acknowledged as the cornerstone of Western philosophy. Presented in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and three different interlocutors, it is an inquiry into the notion of a perfect community and the ideal individual within it. During the conversation other questions are raised: what is goodness; what is reality; what is knowledge? The Republic also addresses the purpose of education and the role of both women and men as "guardians" of the people. With remarkable lucidity and deft use of allegory, Plato arrives at a depiction of a state bound by harmony and ruled by "philosopher kings."

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Greek (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; New edition (September 14, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140455116
• ISBN-13: 978-0140455113
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.8 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > History > Ancient > Greece
  • #30 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Greek & Roman

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

87 of 104 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely necessary, but don't put it on a pedestal January 23, 2001

By Michael Alexander

Format:Paperback

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.) Read more ›

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Philosophy's wellspring of questions. July 24, 2002

By Wesley L. Janssen VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

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. Read more ›

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Great book, mediocre translation. October 2, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Sir Desmond Lee's second edition of this, the translation of Plato's Republic, misses the mark it seeks to strike. By using too much contemporary (for the 1970's) English, we lose the feel for what Plato was actually trying to say. This translation would have read much better had it followed the original text more faithfully. This, though, is one of the pitfalls of writing for Penguin: if it's a translated work, it better sound modern--no matter that it was written two millenia ago.

But The Republic itself? Stunningly simple. Beautifully wrought. Criticized as a bone thrown to totalitarianism, this work still remains the core of all modern political, social and philosophical thought. Most powerful is the opening Book, where Socrates definitively refutes the common herd's definition of justice. The masterful reasoning he employs to demolish Thrasymachus's argument that justice is that which is in the interest of the stronger party will enlighten as well as refresh: might does not make right, then or now. The later Books pack comparatively less punch, but nonetheless will give any thoughtful person plenty to sink his teeth into. The philosophical section on the Line, the Sun and the Cave cannot be understood without supplemental reading, as they form an integral part of Plato's theory of Forms, an idea he never fleshed out concretely in any one tract. Modern philosophy departments have consigned this book to the trash heap, to which the objective reader can only say this: If The Republic is trash, then our own generation's literary legacy looks bleak indeed.