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Title: Plato: Republic by Plato, C. D. C. Reeve, G. M. Grube ISBN: 0-87220-136-8 Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Pub. Date: November, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (49 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: PLATO'S REPUBLIC IS THE ODYSSEY OF PHILOSOPHY!
Comment: 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!
Rating: 5
Summary: Absolutely necessary, but don't put it on a pedestal
Comment: 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.)
Rating: 5
Summary: amazing. a must read for everyone
Comment: Just read it. Plato's idea shaped so many other's after him. If you don't understand what Plato was trying to say then you're doing yourself a disservice. Just in readin this, the reader realyl begins to think. You'll get better at thinking by the time the book is done, for this book teaches the reader how to think. All the ideas are presented in dialog, but if you can just look at what is being said you'll begin to understand. If you only read one thing, make it be this.
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Title: The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli ISBN: 0553212788 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 August, 1984 List Price(USD): $4.50 |
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Title: The Politics by Aristotle, T.A. Sinclair, Trevor J. Saunders ISBN: 0140444211 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1992 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Martin Edward Malia ISBN: 0451527100 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford World's Classics) by Aristotle, David Ross, W. D. Ross, J. L. Ackrill, J. O. Urmson ISBN: 019283407X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Utopia by Sir Thomas Moore ISBN: 0486295834 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 05 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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