Tag: Justice

Topics

Major Works

  • Laws

    - Recommended translation: The Laws of Plato, trans. Thomas L. Pangle (Basic, 1980; University of Chicago Press, 1988).
    This is the best edition of the Laws available in English. Thomas L. Pangle’s edition also includes an extended interpretative essay that introduces the work. Excerpt: Athenian To whom do you ascribe the authorship of your legal arrangements, Strangers?… More

  • Statesman

    - Recommended translation: "Statesman" in The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman,  trans. Seth Benardete (University of Chicago Press: 1984).
    Excerpt: Socrates Really I am greatly indebted to you, Theodorus, for my acquaintance with Theaetetus and with the Stranger, too. Theodorus Presently, Socrates, you will be three times as much indebted, when they have worked out the statesman and the… More

  • Republic

    - Recommended translations:
    • Plato. The Republic of Plato. Translated by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1968.
    • Plato. The Republic. Translated by Tom Griffith. Edited by G. R. F. Ferrari. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
    Excerpt: “What you say is very fine indeed, Cephalus,” I said. “But as to this very thing, justice, shall we so simply assert that it is the truth and giving back what a man has taken from another, or is to do these very things sometimes just and… More

Other Works

  • Crito

    - Recommended translation: "Crito" in Four Texts on Socrates,  trans. Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West (Cornell University Press: 1984, rev. 1998).  
    About the dialogue: In the Crito, Socrates discusses with Crito the meaning of justice and injustice—and what a proper response to injustice is.

  • Alcibiades I

    - Recommended translations:
    • "Alcibiades I," trans. C. Lord in The Roots of Political Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Cornell, 1987).
    • Socrates and Alcibiades: Four Texts, ed. David Johnson (Focus, 2003).
     
    Excerpt: Socrates Son of Cleinias, I think it must surprise you that I, the first of all your lovers, am the only one of them who has not given up his suit and thrown you over, and whereas they have all pestered you with their conversation I have not spoken… More

  • Cleitophon

    - Recommended translation: "Cleitophon," trans. C. Orwin in The Roots of Political Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Cornell, 1987).
    Excerpt: Socrates It was told us recently by someone about Cleitophon, the son of Aristonymus, that in a conversation he had with Lysias he was finding fault with the instructions of Socrates and praising to the skies the lectures of Thrasymachus. Cleitophon… More

  • Minos

    - Recommended translations:
    • "Minos," trans. T. Pangle in The Roots of Political Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Cornell, 1987).
    • "Minos," trans. M. Schofield in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997).
    Excerpt: Socrates Tell me, what is law? Companion To what kind of law does your question refer? Socrates What! Is there any difference between law and law, in this particular point of being law? For just consider what is the actual question I am putting to… More

Commentary

  • Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws

    - Morrow, Glenn R., Plato's Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960.
    About the Book: Plato’s Cretan City is a thorough investigation into the roots of Plato’s Laws and a compelling explication of his ideas on legislation and social institutions. A dialogue among three travelers, the Laws proposes a detailed… More

  • On Plato’s Republic

    - Strauss, Leo, "On Plato's Republic," The City and Man, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964, 50-138.
    Excerpt: Generally speaking, we can know the thought of a man only through his speeches oral or written. We can know Aristotle’s political philosophy through his Politics. Plato’s Republic on the other hand, in contradistinction to… More

  • The Republic of Plato

    - Bloom, Allan, The Republic of Plato, New York: Basic Books, 1968, 1991.
    Excerpt: The Republic is the true Apology of Socrates, for only in the Republic does he give an adequate treatment of the theme which was forced on him by Athens’ accusation against him. That theme is the relationship of the philosopher to the… More

  • The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws

    - Strauss, Leo, The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
    Excerpt: In the traditional order of the Platonic dialogues the Laws is preceded by the Minos, the only Platonic dialogue in which Socrates raises the question What is law? It appears that not all laws are good or, at any rate equally good. The Cretan laws… More

  • An Introduction to Plato’s Republic

    - Annas, Julia, An Introduction to Plato's Republic, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
    Excerpt: The Republic is Plato’s best-known work, and there are ways in which it is too famous for its own good. It gives us systematic answers to a whole range of questions about morality, politics, knowledge, and metaphysics, and the book is written… More

  • On Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Crito by Leo Strauss

    - Strauss, Leo. “On Plato's Apology of Socrates and Crito.” In Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 68–97. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
    From the publisher: “One of the outstanding thinkers of our time offers in this book his final words to posterity. Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy was well underway at the time of Leo Strauss’s death in 1973. Having chosen the title for the… More

  • On the Cleitophon

    - Orwin, Clifford, "On the Cleitophon," The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987, 117-31.
    Excerpt: The Cleitophon is by far the shortest of the dialogues ascribed to Plato. It is also the only one that features an unanswered blame of Socrates. These facts encouraged many critics of the last century to try to pronounce it spurious. None of the… More

  • On the Minos

    - Strauss, Leo, "On the Minos," The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987, 67-79.
    Excerpt: The Minos has come down to us as a Platonic work immediately preceding the Laws. The Laws begins where the Minos ends: the Minos ends with a praise of the laws of the Cretan king Minos, the son and pupil of Zeus, and the Laws begins with an… More

  • Socrates’ Second Sailing: On Plato’s Republic

    - Benardete, Seth, Socrates' Second Sailing: On Plato's Republic, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
    Excerpt: The title of this book alludes to the phrase Plato has Socrates use in his intellectual autobiography in the Phaedo. Socrates tells his story as a preface to his reply to Cebes’ counterargument to the proof Socrates has given about the… More

  • Legislation and Demiurgy: On the Relationship Between Plato’s Republic and Laws

    - Laks, Andre, "Legislation and Demiurgy: On the Relationship Between Plato’s Republic and Laws," Classical Antiquity 9, no. 2 (Oct. 1990), 209-29.
    Excerpt: Glenn Morrow, who did so much to illuminate the historical background of the Laws in his book Plato’s Cretan City, also had a sense, one quite unusual among commentators, of how the Laws really belonged to Plato’s philosophy and was… More

  • On Plato’s Political Philosophy

    - Bruell, Christopher, "On Plato's Political Philosophy," The Review of Politics 56, no. 2 (Spring 1994), 261-82.
    Abstract: This article consists chiefly in an examination of the Republic, but that examination attempts to determine the place of the Republic in relation to Plato’s other works (especially the Laws and the Statesman) as well as their place in… More

  • Crito

    - Cropsey, Joseph, "Crito," Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
    Excerpt: Crito illuminates a theme that is perhaps best known in the Aristotelean formulation that sets side by side the human being as such and the human being as denizen of a civil society—man and citizen. Though he may claim that man is by nature a… More

  • Plato’s Statesman by Stanley Rosen

    - Rosen, Stanley, Plato's Statesman: Web of Politics, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
    Excerpt: “The Statesman, like Plato’s earlier Sophist, features a Stranger who tries to refute Socrates. Much of his conversation is devoted to a minute analysis of the art of weaving, selected by the Stranger as a paradigm of the royal art of… More

  • Statesman

    - Cropsey, Joseph, "Statesman," Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995, 111-44.
    Excerpt: The Stranger begins his colloquy with Young Socrates by proposing to seek out the statesman and to do so by identifying the statesman’s peculiar “science” or knowledge (episteme). If one knows what the statesman singularly knows,… More

  • Plato’s Republic: Critical Essays

    - Kraut, Richard, ed., Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
    Excerpt: Plato (427-347 B.C.) is the first Western philosopher who wrote systematically about the wide range of questions that make up the subject of philosophy, and it is in the Republic that he most fully expresses his conception of what philosophy is and… More

  • On the Intention of Plato’s Cleitophon

    - Davis, Michael, "On the Intention of Plato's Cleitophon," Metis: Revue d'anthropologie du monde greg ancien 13 (1998), 271-85.
    Excerpt: Perhaps the one thing clear about the Cleitophon is that it belongs together with the Republic. Plato has for some reason invited us to pair what is by far his shortest dialogue with his longest dialogue save one. Each is about justice, but in four… More

  • Inside and Outside the Republic

    - Lear, Jonathan, "Inside and Outside the Republic," Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, 219-46.
    Excerpt: An engaged reader of the Republic must at some point wonder how—or if—it all fits together. There seems to be jumbled within that text a challenge to conventional justice, a political theory, a psychology, a metaphysics, a theory of education,… More

  • Plato’s Doctrine of Truth

    - Heidegger, Martin, "Plato's Doctrine of Truth," trans. Thomas Sheehan, Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 155-82.
    Whatever one makes of Heidegger’s own views, or his criticism of Plato and what he calls the Platonic tradition, this essay offers a profound meditation on Plato’s Cave and Plato’s “doctrine” of truth. Excerpt: The knowledge that… More

  • On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues

    - Bruell, Christopher, On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
    Excerpt: Nothing is so well established in our Western democracies today as the right of each to seek happiness in his or her own way. It is as if a pass to that effect had been issued to us at birth. This much is obvious. Less obvious is the fact that… More

  • Plato’s “Laws” by Seth Benardete

    - Benardete, Seth, Plato's "Laws": The Discovery of Being, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
    From the publisher: “The Laws was Plato’s last work, his longest, and one of his most difficult. In contrast to the Republic, which presents an abstract ideal, the Laws appears to provide practical guidelines for the establishment and maintenance… More

  • The Plan of Plato’s Statesman

    - Benardete, Seth, "The Plan of Plato’s Statesman," The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 354-75.
    Excerpt: One one realizes that the unemployed king could be the wise man in charge of himself, it is possible to reinterpret the Stranger’s fourth piece of evidence that politics is a gnostic science. He says that the king’s hands and body… More

  • Of Myth, Life, and War in Plato’s Republic

    - Baracchi, Claudia, Of Myth, Life, and War in Plato's Republic, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
    Excerpt: Yet another work on Plato, on that most universally recognized among the Platonic dialogues—the Republic. The Republic of Plato (so we call it, today, in this part of the world): a seminal text, inaugurating an epoch of which we are still… More

  • Why Justice? The Answer of the Republic

    - Brann, Eva, "Why Justice? The Answer of the Republic," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2004, 246-55.
    Excerpt: In literature as in life, justice is taken to be something good, and there are two questions about “good” that are hard to ask. The harder one is “Why is good better than bad?” When Stan leaps over the wall into Milton’s… More

  • Introduction to Reading the Republic

    - Brann, Eva, "Introduction to Reading the Republic," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2004, 88-107.
    Excerpt: The Republic is a dialogue, that is to say, a conversation. Since it is a conversation recorded between the covers of a book we cannot help but begin by reading it, but I think the author wants us as soon as possible to join it, to be converted… More

  • Imitative Poetry: Book X of the Republic

    - Brann, Eva, "Imitative Poetry: Book X of the Republic," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2004, 256-72.
    Excerpt: A mindful reader of the grand finale of Plato’s Republic, the myth of the soul’s fore- and afterlife in the cosmos, might well feel scandalized. Twice in the work Socrates has inveighed against myth-making and vision-inducing poetry.… More

  • The Music of the Republic by Eva Brann

    - Brann, Eva. “The Music of the Republic.” In The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, 108–245. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2004.
    Eva Brann’s The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates’ Conversations and Plato’s Writings offers a rigorous and insightful examination of Plato’s dialogues, providing a valuable resource for engaging with Socratic thought. Brann, a… More

  • The Philosopher in Plato’s Statesman

    - Miller, Mitchell, The Philosopher in Plato's Statesman, Las Vegas, NV: Parmenidies Publishing, 2004.
    Excerpt: In contemporary writings on Plato it is almost commonplace to remark that he is at once a profound philosopher and dramatist and teacher. Even by its form, however, this remark may confess more about contemporary scholarship and higher education… More

  • City and Soul in Plato’s Republic

    - Ferrari, G. R. F., City and Soul in Plato's Republic, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
    Excerpt: In this short book I attempt to say what Plato is getting at in the Republic. That is a grand ambition for a slim volume. My strategy has been to trace one bright thread, the comparison between the structure of a society and that of the individual… More

  • Plato’s Republic: A Study

    - Rosen, Stanley, Plato's Republic: A Study, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
    Excerpt: Plato’s Republic is one of those works in the history of philosophy that is both excessively familiar and inexhaustibly mysterious. It has been studied endlessly by a wide range of readers, specialists and amateurs alike, and has become a… More

  • Metaphysics and Method in Plato’s Statesman

    - Sayre, Kenneth M., Metaphysics and Method in Plato's Statesman, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
    Excerpt: The Statesman begins with Socrates thanking Theodorus for introducing him to Theaetetus and the Stranger from Elea. After a bantering interchange on the relative values of sophistry, statesmanship, and philosophy, and after acquiescing to the… More

  • Philosopher-Kings: The Argument of Plato’s Republic

    - Reeve, C. D. C., Philosopher Kings: The Argument of Plato's Republic, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2006.
    Excerpt: Book I of the Republic differs markedly in philosophical style from its fellows. In it we find Socrates questioning all and sundry about what justice is, using the elenchus to refute them, and refusing to provide any positive answers of his own.… More

  • The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic

    - Ferrari, G. R. F., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
    Excerpt: When is it that we choose to journey with companions? Most often, I suppose, when we want to make the journey fuller, more pleasant, more vivid. But we may also want a fellow traveler to point out landmarks we might be missing or perhaps to assure us… More

  • The Development of Plato’s Political Theory

    - George Klosko, The Development of Plato's Political Theory, Oxford University Press, 2007.
    From the publisher: The Development of Plato’s Political Theory provides a clear, scholarly account of Plato’s political theory in the context of the social and political events of his time. This second edition has been thoroughly revised to take… More

  • The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus

    - Bernadete, Seth, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
    Excerpt: To put side by side an interpretation of one Platonic dialogue with that of another does not make a book; but although Gorgias and Phaedrus are not as matched a pair as Sophist and Statesman are, something can still be said for putting them… More

  • The Trial and Death of Socrates

    - Zuckert, Catherine H., "The Trial and Death of Socrates," Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
    Excerpt: Alfred North Whitehead’s quip that all subsequent philosophy is merely a footnote to Plato has often been repeated, but those who repeat it do not seem to have thought much about the difference between the source and the scholarship on it.… More

  • Moral and Criminal Responsibility in Plato’s Laws

    - Pangle, Lorraine Smith, "Moral and Criminal Responsibility in Plato's Laws," American Political Science Review 103, no. 3 (August 2009), 456-73.
    Abstract: In his most practical work, the “Laws”, Plato combines a frank statement of the radical Socratic thesis that virtue is knowledge and vice involuntary with a prudential acceptance of the political community’s need for retributive… More

  • On the Timaeus

    - Benardete, Seth, "On the Timaeus," The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, ed. Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 376-95.
    Excerpt: Thirty years ago, when I submitted a paper to Leo Strauss on Timaeus’s science fiction, he wrote back to say that Plato’s Timaeus for him had always been sealed with 77 seals, but he thought he saw two things clearly: Timaeus’s… More

  • Knowledge and Politics: The Statesman

    - Blitz, Mark, "Knowledge and Politics: The Statesman," Plato's Political Philosophy, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, 241-68.
    Excerpt: The Stranger and young Socrates begin to search for the statesman by agreeing that he is characterized by knowledge or art. What, then, defines his art as opposed to other arts? They first divide all knowledge into practical and cognitive science,… More

  • Philosophy and Politics: The Republic

    - Blitz, Mark, "Philosophy and Politics: The Republic," Plato's Political Philosophy, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, 166-90.
    Excerpt: We have now discussed several experiences that are at the root of philosophy, and a phenomenon, beauty, that helps to define both ethical and intellectual virtue. It is therefore reasonable to turn next to Plato’s Republic. For, beyond any… More

  • Divine Law and Political Philosophy in Plato’s Laws

    - Lutz, Mark J., Divine Law and Political Philosophy in Plato’s Laws, DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012.
    About the Book: All over the world secular rationalist governments and judicial authorities have been challenged by increasingly forceful claims made on behalf of divine law. For those who believe that reason—not faith—should be the basis of politics and… More

  • Eidos and Diaeresis in Plato’s Statesman

    - Benardete, Seth, "Eidos and Diaeresis in Plato's Statesman," The Archaeology of the Soul: Platonic Readings in Ancient Poetry and Philosophy, ed. Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, St. Augustine Press, 2012.

Multimedia

  • Leo Strauss Courses on Plato

    - Audio of courses taught by Leo Strauss, 1958 - 1973, provided by the Leo Strauss Center at the University of Chicago.
    Courses include: Plato’s Laws, Symposium, Gorgias, Meno, Apology/Crito, Protagoras, Euthydemus and Republic.