Plato's Republic: A Study

✍ Scribed by Stanley Rosen

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 431
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In this book a distinguished philosopher offers a comprehensive interpretation of Plato’s most controversial dialogue. Treating the Republic as a unity and focusing on the dramatic form as the presentation of the argument, Stanley Rosen challenges earlier analyses of the Republic (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 the Republic is 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. The Republic, says Rosen, is a vivid illustration of the irreconcilability of philosophy and political practice.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Preface
Introduction
Part One
1. Cephalus and Polemarchus
2. Thrasymachus
3. Glaucon and Adeimantus
Part Two
4. Paideia I: The Luxurious City
5. Paideia II: The Purged City
6. Justice
7. The Female Drama
Part Three
8. Possibility
9. The Philosophical Nature
10. The Good, the Divided Line, and the Cave: The Education of the Philosopher
Part Four
11. Political Decay
12. Happiness and Pleasure
13. The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry
14. The Immortal Soul
Epilogue
Notes
Index