Plato’s Republic: A Study

Professor Stanley Rosen9780300109627, 0-300-10962-8

In this book a distinguished philosopher offers a comprehensive interpretation of Plato’s most controversial dialogue. Treating the Republic as a unity and focusing on the dramatic form as the presentation of the argument, Stanley Rosen challenges earlier analyses of the Republic (including the ironic reading of Leo Strauss and his disciples) and argues that the key to understanding the dialogue is to grasp the author’s intention in composing it, in particular whether Plato believed that the city constructed in the Republic is possible and desirable.
Rosen demonstrates that the fundamental principles underlying the just city are theoretically attractive but that the attempt to enact them in practice leads to conceptual incoherence and political disaster. The Republic, says Rosen, is a vivid illustration of the irreconcilability of philosophy and political practice.

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Table of contents :
Contents……Page 6
Preface……Page 8
Introduction……Page 10
P A R T One……Page 26
1 Cephalus and Polemarchus……Page 28
2 Thrasymachus……Page 47
3 Glaucon and Adeimantus……Page 69
P A R T Two……Page 86
4 Paideia I: The Luxurious City……Page 88
5 Paideia II: The Purged City……Page 118
6 Justice……Page 148
7 The Female Drama……Page 180
P A R T Three……Page 208
8 Possibility……Page 210
9 The Philosophical Nature……Page 236
10 The Good, the Divided Line, and the Cave:The Education of the Philosopher……Page 264
P A R T Four……Page 312
11 Political Decay……Page 314
12 Happiness and Pleasure……Page 342
13 The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry……Page 361
14 The Immortal Soul……Page 386
Epilogue……Page 398
Notes……Page 406
Index……Page 414