Tag: Poetry

Topics

Major Works

  • 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

  • Ion

    - Recommended translation: "Ion," trans. A. Bloom in The Roots of Political Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Cornell, 1987).
    Excerpt: Socrates Welcome, Ion. Where have you come from now, to pay us this visit? From your home in Ephesus? Ion No, no, Socrates; from Epidaurus and the festival there of Asclepius. Socrates Do you mean to say that the Epidaurians honor the god with a… More

  • Rival Lovers

    - Recommended translation:
    • "Rival Lovers," trans. J. Leake in The Roots of Political Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Cornell, 1987).
    Excerpt: Socrates I entered the grammar school of the teacher Dionysius, and saw there the young men who are accounted the most comely in form and of distinguished family, and their lovers. Now it chanced that two of the young people were disputing, but about… More

Commentary

  • 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

  • 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

  • The Impossibility of Perfection: Socrates’ Criticism of Simonides’ Poem in the Protagoras

    - Frede, Dorothea, "The Impossibility of Perfection: Socrates' Criticism of Simonides' Poem in the Protagoras," The Review of Metaphysics 39, no. 4 (June 1986), 729-53.
    Excerpt: The claim that even Plato could not say everything at once nor could have thought or worked out everything at once is, of course, a platitude. It is generally acknowledged that there is development in Plato’s thought. But what the development… More

  • On the Original Meaning of Political Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato’s Lovers

    - Bruell, Christopher, "On the Original Meaning of Political Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato's Lovers," The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987, 91-110.
    Excerpt: The Lovers is one of only four dialogues narrated from the beginning to end by Socrates, the others being the Republic, Charmides, and Lysis. This fact may tell us something as to the place of these dialogues within the Platonic corpus. When he… More

  • An Interpretation of Plato’s Ion

    - Bloom, Allan, "An Interpretation of Plato's Ion," The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987, 371-96.
    Excerpt: In Xenophon’s Banquet Antisthenes asks, “Do you know any tribe more stupid [or simple] than the rhapsodes?” This question, obviously rhetorical, leads the reader of the Ion to the further question, “Why in the world does… 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

  • The Problem of Socrates

    - Strauss, Leo, "The Problem of Socrates," Interpretation 22, no. 2 (Spring 1995).  Talk given on April 17, 1970, at St. John's College, Annapolis.
    Excerpt: [I was told that the local paper has announced that I lecture tonight on “The problems of Socrates.” This was an engaging printing error; for there is more than one problem of Socrates, in the first place, the problem with which Socrates… 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

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