| CONTENTS
FOREWORD
What counts as a great work?
Reading this guide
A note about quotations
Main characters of the dialogue
A great work: Plato's The Republic
Plato's The Republic: special features
INTRODUCTION: THE CAVE
Approaching The Republic
CHAPTER 1: PLATO AND SOCRATES IN THEIR WORLDS
Who was Socrates
Who was Plato?
Plato's involvement with politics
The Plato/Socrates relationship
Plato's Socratic dialogues
Socratic and Platonic irony
CHAPTER 2: TOWARDS JUSTICE
Polemarchus and conventional ideas of justice
The duel with Thrasymachus: Socratic versus Sophistic approaches
Socrates's first defence of justice
Glaucon and Adeimantus restate the case against justice
CHAPTER 3: POLITICS: BUILDING THE JUST CITY
Why build the city?
The minimal community
The civilized city
The nature of guardianship: philosophical dogs
The noble lie
Criticism and justification of the noble lie
Living conditions of the guardians
Happiness, wealth and poverty
CHAPTER 4: EDUCATION AND CENSORSHIP
The overriding importance of education
Education as the context of The Republic
Does it matter what stories we tell our children?
On censorship: Plato and his critics
Ethnical education
CHAPTER 5: PSYCHOLOGY: THE DIVIDED SOUL
The nature of psyche
The soul divided against itself
The three parts of the soul
Plato and Freud
CHAPTER 6: WOMEN, FAMILY AND WAR
The equality of women
Communal arrangements for child-begetting and rearing; selective breeding
Communism and unity
Aristotle’s criticism – plurality not unity
How to humanize war
CHAPTER 7: THE RULE OF PSYCHOLOGY
What is psychology/Who is the philosopher?
The passing show versus essential beauty
Knowledge versus belief
The character of the philosopher
The fate of philosophy
CHAPTER 8: THE GOOD AND THE CAVE
The idea of good
The sun and the good
The Cave
CHAPTER 9: HIGHER EDUCATION
Unity and difficulty
Dialectic
CHAPTER 10:
Timarchy
Oligarchy
Democracy
From the democracy to tyranny – the unhappiness of the tyrant
CHAPTER 11: THE FATE OF POETRY
Poets as skilful imitators
Poetry feeding the worthless part of the soul
The possibility of appeal against banishment
Defence of poetry
The great paradox: Plato as poet
Epilogue: the myth of Er
GLOSSARY OF MAIN GREEK WORDS
GUIDE TO THINERS METIONED IN THE TEXT
FURTHER READING
INDEX
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