TTC Video – Plato’s Republic

It is the first work in the history of Western political philosophy and, arguably, the most influential—so influential that the entire European philosophical tradition has been described as being nothing more than a “series of footnotes” to its author.

Yet Plato’s Republic, more than 2,000 years after its appearance, and in spite of the many provocative directions those footnotes have taken, still remains astonishingly relevant in its own right. It poses one question after another that might well have been drawn from the headlines and debates of our nation’s recent history:

Plato’s Life and Times
Book I—The Title and the Setting
Book I—Socrates versus Thrasymachus
Book II—The City-Soul Analogy
Books II and III—Censorship
Book III—The Noble Lie
Book III—Socrates’s Medical Ethics
Book IV—Justice in the City and Soul
Book V—Feminism
Book V—Who Is the Philosopher?
Book VI—The Ship of State
Book VI—The Idea of the Good
Book VI—The Divided Line
Book VII—The Parable of the Cave
Book VII—The Education of the Guardians
Book VIII—The Perfectly Just City Fails
Books VIII and IX—The Mistaken Regimes
Book VIII—Socrates’s Critique of Democracy
Books VIII and IX—The Critique of Tyranny
Book IX—The Superiority of Justice
Book X—Philosophy versus Poetry
Book X—The Myth of Er
Summary and Overview
The Legacy of Plato’s Republic

Professor: David Roochnik