The Republic is arguably the greatest of Plato's dialogues. Although its subject is the ideal state, it encompasses education, psychology, ethics and politics. In the Republic's central passage, Plato uses myth to explore the nature of reality, conveying a vision of the human predicament and the role of philosophy in setting us free. He imagines a cave whose inhabitants are chained from birth watching a shadow-play that they take for reality. The role of philosophy, and more specifically what Plato calls dialectic, is to turn us away from the shadow play and orient ourselves towards the real. This is the essence of the pursuit of wisdom without which an ideal state is impossible. Few modern readers will agree with everything that Plato says, yet his rigorous argument and poetic vision still have the power to stimulate and challenge. This enduring power has made The Republic one of the foundation stones of western culture.

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"Must we not acknowledge...that in each of us there are the same principles and habits which there are in the State; and that from the individual they pass into the State?"

What does it mean to be good? What enables us to distinguish right from wrong? And how should human virtues be translated into a just society? These are the questions that Plato sought to answer in this monumental work of moral and political philosophy, a book surpassed only by the Bible in its formative influence on two thousand years of Western thought.

In the course of its tautly reasoned Socratic dialogues, The Republic accomplishes nothing less than an anatomy of the soul and an exhaustive description of a State that both mirrors and enforces the soul's ideal harmony. The resulting text is at once mystical and elegantly logical and may be read as a template for the societies in which most of us live today.

Vintage Classics are quality paperback editions of the world's greatest written works. They are durably bound and are printed exclusively on acid-free paper.

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