The Republic (Dover Thrift Editions)

Customer Reviews

• Plato's bargain  Jul 31, 2006 (23 of 25 found this helpful)

  I won't waste time trying to summarize Plato's "The Republic". Most people (I would guess nine out of ten) who have read this colussus of classical philosophy, read it because they were forced to by their college instructors. This is unfortunate because "The Republic" is a compelling and enduring philosophy of how life should be lived, how justice should be approached, and how leaders should lead.
  
  What recommends this book, really, is the bargain price: under five bucks. As one of those college instructors who makes their students read this, I always recommend this edition. Sterling and Scott's translation is as good as anyone else's, so why not save my students a few bucks? And, if you're one of those one out of ten who is considering reading this on your own, you've only got five bucks to lose, but an awful lot of rewarding reading to gain!
  
  Rocco Dormarunno
  College of New Rochelle

• Interesting Classic  Dec 14, 2005 (8 of 8 found this helpful)

  I got in to this book after reading E. Robert Morse's Justice and Equality and hearing about the parallels and I was pleasantly surprised. The translation wasn't a very difficult read and there are a lot of valid ideas that are still meaningful today. The wide scope of topics prevents boredom and the read is quick. I was interested in the opening questions- what is Justice and why should we be just? If one can gain material things and social prominence not being just and moreover being unjust, why do it? His answers aren't always filled with perspective, but they do open one's mind. Another good book along these lines is Essays by Michel de Montaigne which is an overview of life from a humanist's perspective.

• Read with a critical eye  Nov 14, 2005 (12 of 17 found this helpful)

  Plato's famed Republic is that idyllic land where philosophical principles have re-formed human nature into something grander than ourselves. The fundament that underlies this golden state is an inquiry into the nature of justice, which Plato embodies in the Guardians of this state. They are the elite, a caste apart within the larger commercial society, in which "mean employments and manual arts are a reproach." They lack any of the normal impulses that reward a citizen with love, family, and material comfort. Instead, they are a communalist group, in which even monogamy is too restrictive for the laws under which this elite must live. Eugenic officers put the best to the best to improve the breed, with the eternal goal of elevating this sub-race of gaurdians. Men who distinguish themselves, usually in war, are honored with their pick of the fillies, the only material reward they are allowed. Plato rarely mentions women except at the end of a discussion, with a phrase like, "Oh, yeah, and women too." Presumably, the highest reward for a woman's service is her own say in the choice of stud.
  
  These Guardians, and this society as a whole, are maintained on a rigidly censored information stream. It is subject to broad blacklists, including whole rhythms of music, forms of worship, and essentially all of visual art. In fact, the latter section of this book includes a diatribe against representative art, abstract being unknown. Ivins, in his history of print and the spread of knowledge, claims that the Greeks' condemnation of visual art held back Western civilization for a millenium. They could have invented block printing, except that slave-copied manuscripts were so convenient, and could have created accurate image reproductions, except that philosophical purity raises one above the need to deal with actual objects in the physical world. Instead, knowledge lay locked in medieval scriptoria until Gutenberg and his motley crew set it free.
  
  My two biggest problems with The Republic, however, lie in its first and last sections. The first is a condensed example of more techniques of invalid reason than I have names for. Plato accepts the conclusion as premise, creates false dichotomies, terms the irrelevant as opposite, and generally displays every foul punch and groin kick of disputation that now grace our headlines. The student of debate where viciousness dominates reason must study these first fifty pages.
  
  The last section, of course, is the one in which Plato proposes the Noble Philosopher as the grand lord of his republic. These other-wordly beings would live in their cloister of Truth, occasionally to descend from their Empyrean heights to grace us with more of their dicta regarding the proper functioning of the world. One can only assume that Plato would have taken that burden upon himself.
  
  //wiredweird

• very nice copy  Mar 31, 2009 (1 of 1 found this helpful)

  This version is so far the nicest I have seen, if you don't want to spend the extra five dollar on the Management Laboratory Press version. But this one is great aswell!

• very nice copy  Feb 8, 2009 (1 of 1 found this helpful)

  Very nice book! Plato is and will always be up to date! I like this publishers books, they are nice and of good quality!