So, why this particular translation of the work? This translation offers the best ease in reading while mainting a tight grasp of the original Greek meanings of Plato's text. Besides, it isn't that expensive.

This book is clearly a timeless classic, and if you can't read classical Greek, this translation is probably the best you will get.


Absolutely necessary, but don't put it on a pedestal   January 23, 2001
 69 out of 80 found this review helpful

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.)


Philosophy's wellspring of questions.   July 25, 2002
 28 out of 31 found this review helpful

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, Goedel, 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.


PLATO'S REPUBLIC IS THE ODYSSEY OF PHILOSOPHY!   August 23, 1999
 26 out of 33 found this review helpful

Plato's The Republic, is not only a classic work of the fourth century B.C., but a masterpiece of utopian literature as a whole. Mr. Lee's translation brings into light the political and poetical wisdom of Plato into English from the original Greek. In The Republic, Plato raises questions that are still at the heart of many modern conflicts and heated debates. What is justice? What is goodness? What is the right political authority? Plato examines these questions as aspects of a single theme. He offers a portrait of an ideal state in which power is entrusted to the philosopher king(s), and other men and women accept the authority of the wise and the good. If no one has read The Republic, then he or she has not read anything!


Read this and learn about morality   December 19, 2002
 25 out of 28 found this review helpful

This translation is superb.

This book provokes us with questions. It challenges our assumptions. It asks questions. It also provides few answers. Don't read this thinking that you'll find the ideal government, because you won't, and as the introduction points out, it was never really the point.

Instead, read this to find out about morality. It cannot help but point a person in the right direction. I don't think it answers the question of what morality is completely, but for that matter, I can't do much better. This is one of my sources.

Clearly, I can't take much of this and apply it directly to politics. I value diversity and conflict. I think that those things help us. Truth can only be found when we seek freely in society. In short, I love democracy. That said, it is very applicable for my inner-life. If I fill my mind with garbage, that is exactly what I will give out. I need to censor the citizens of my mind or else my inner polis will be corrupted more than it is.

It's criticisms of democracy, especially the democratic mind, are particularly poignant. Read it side-by-side with Thucydides and an account of the French Revolution and find the limitations of what we take for granted.

If someone thinks they shouldn't read a book like this because they have the Bible, then they would be in error. I am a Christian, and reading the Bible usually leaves me with more questions than answers. If a person thinks that way he aren't reading the Bible, and should begin criticising his own beliefs. Start by reading Ecclesiastes, and then this, for Ecclesiastes teaches one of Socrates' main points: we know nothing, and in the end, all that matters is how we lived. Now when such a person finishes this book, he may find that you think that Paul borrowed some from this text's ideas about the Church as the Body of Christ and every person having a specific part to play through their spiritual gifts, and the Body becoming ill if any one member of the body does not act in his role. I offer such a long statement having to do with Christianity, because reading these works, and those who read them, have been undully criticized by those who have not read them.

It is simply that morality is not an exclusive thing. A Christian should realize that the Bible assumes that much of what is moral can be plainly known. To neglect what has been said elsewhere is to suffer from a myopic vision of morality. This book will make a person ask questions, and that is its goal. It is not all compatable, but some is. Please do not dismiss it just because one is a Christian. I am, and I greatly enjoy Plato's works.