The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Republic, by Plato

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Title: The Republic

Author: Plato

Translator: B. Jowett

Posting Date: August 27, 2008 [EBook #1497]
Release Date: October, 1998

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Sue Asscher

THE REPUBLIC

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

Note: The Republic by Plato, Jowett, etext #150

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception
of the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer
approaches to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist; the
Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of
the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the
Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other
Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same perfection
of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or contains
more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and not of one age
only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater
wealth of humour or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor in any other of
his writings is the attempt made to interweave life and speculation, or
to connect politics with philosophy. The Republic is the centre around
which the other Dialogues may be grouped; here philosophy reaches the
highest point (cp, especially in Books V, VI, VII) to which ancient
thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks, like Bacon among the
moderns, was the first who conceived a method of knowledge, although
neither of them always distinguished the bare outline or form from
the substance of truth; and both of them had to be content with an
abstraction of science which was not yet realized. He was the greatest
metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in him, more than in
any other ancient thinker, the germs of future knowledge are contained.
The sciences of logic and psychology, which have supplied so many
instruments of thought to after-ages, are based upon the analyses
of Socrates and Plato. The principles