Plato: ‘The Republic’. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
When you approach a text like Plato’s Republic, you need to read the whole introduction for context.
Look at an earlier edition and read that introduction as well.
Socrates and his interlocutors take up the question of justice, and of the ideal state. Themes of education and child raising, roles in the ideal polity.
There is an attempt at a parallelism between the organization of the soul and the polity.
There is a classification of regimes.
It is in this text we have the famous parable of the cave.
We can find new angles on the tension between the philosophical and political life.
The idea of a philosopher King is floated and examined.
