The Republic: English Text

by Plato

Publishers:

Harvard University Press; William Heinemann

, 1937–1942

Overview

Philosopher and mathematician A. N. Whitehead once claimed that “the safest general characterization of European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” It is difficult to disagree with him. Plato wrote seminal works on ethics, political theory, morality, epistemology, and metaphysics. His concept of forms went on to have a great influence on Christian theology in the post-Apostolic period. Many of the ideas that form the basis for Western democracy come from his Republic. Plato’s works are written as a series of dialogues wherein a number of characters (the chief of which is usually Socrates) discuss various philosophical questions. By both their questions and their answers, the characters explain Plato’s various ideas. Plato’s 25-plus dialogues are the best-known use of the Socratic method—that is, the use of dialogue in teaching. This collection of the works of Plato contains all the dialogues commonly attributed to Plato in their Loeb Classical Library editions, with the original Greek and an English translation side by side. This volume contains Paul Shorey’s translation of Plato’s Republic.

Contents

Top Highlights

“What they will say is this: that such being his disposition the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains, [362] the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified,^c and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what we ought to desire.” (Volume 1, Page 125)

“To do good to friends and evil to enemies,^d then, is justice in his meaning” (Volume 1, Page 25)

“And if you assume that the ascent and the contemplation of the things above is the soul’s ascension to the intelligible region,^a you will not miss my surmise, since that is what you desire to hear. But God knows^b whether it is true. But, at any rate, my dream as it appears to me is that in the region of the known the last thing to be seen and hardly seen is the idea of good, [C] and that when seen it must needs point us to the conclusion that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful, giving birth^c in the visible world to light, and the author of light and itself in the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason, and that anyone who is to act wisely^d in private or public must have caught sight of this.” (Volume 2, Pages 129–131)

“‘By all means.’ ‘This, then, must be our conviction about the just man, that whether he fall into poverty or disease or any other supposed evil, for him all these things will finally prove good, both in life and in death.” (Volume 2, Page 487)

“‘I affirm that the just is nothing else than^a the advantage of the stronger.^b Well, why don’t you applaud? Nay, you’ll do anything but that.” (Volume 1, Page 47)

Product Details

• Title: The Republic: English Text
• Author: Plato
• Series: The Loeb Classical Library: English
• Publishers: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann
• Print Publication Date: 1937–1942
• Logos Release Date: 2014
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Plato › Translations into English
• Resource ID: LLS:WRKSPLT1112
• Resource Type: text.monograph.ancient-manuscript.translation
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T21:10:49Z

About Plato

Plato (427–347 BC) was born in Athens to an aristocratic family. A student of Socrates until the latter’s death, he also studied the works of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Pythagoreans. Following the death of Socrates, Plato spent a number of years traveling around the Mediterranean. He eventually returned to Athens and founded a school of philosophy called the Academy (named for the field in which it was located), where he later taught Aristotle.

Plato wrote works on ethics, politics, morality, epistemology, and metaphysics. He is best known for his theory of forms, the theory that the qualities that define a thing’s existence (redness, beauty) exist in an abstract realm of forms, separate from matter. Plato believed that what was true, and therefore real, must be unchanging. Because the material world is in a constant state of change it is not true reality but a mere illusion. Plato taught that love is the longing for the Beautiful in its purest, most abstract, form. Consequently, love is what motivates all the highest human achievements.