PLATO’S REPUBLIC

The Republic is the most complete attempt by Plato to articulate and answer the question, "What is the best way of life for a human being?" It is characteristic of Plato that, in the Republic, questions about human happiness ultimately cannot be separated from questions of education, of the nature of the city, of the various forms of government, of the structure of the human soul, and of the character of the gods and being itself. What begins as a dispute about which is more desirable—to be a just man or to be a tyrant—ranges over the whole landscape of philosophical topics and themes often treated in isolation from one another. Moreover, Plato guides us through this landscape not with a treatise written in his own voice but with a dialogue narrated and led by Socrates, a work that is as much a literary masterpiece as it is a masterpiece of argumentation. In this course, we will strive to read the Republic as a dialogue full of dramatic action and memorable imagery as well as philosophic inquiry, written as a nuanced response to Greek poetry and history and enduring as the wellspring of the Western philosophic tradition.