What is justice? What is the ideal type of government? These are the two questions we'll be focusing on in our discussion of the most famous book of philosophy ever.
Look, we realize that if you've ever taken a philosophy class, you've likely already been introduced to this work, and there are many many other places on the Web to find out about it, including some great university lectures and podcasts. By all means, feel free to make use of some of these resources; listen to the book itself, if you'd like.
We'll do our best to add to the pool, with not one but two guest participants personally trained by Plato himself. We'll be focusing our discussion primarily on books 1, 2, and 4, but will delve into other portions of the work as needed in pursuit of an adequate definition of justice and details about Plato's very weird ideal city wherein philosophers rule, everyone stays in his or her little proper career path for life, wives and children are shared in common, and musicians shall not play those damned plaintive minor chords! None of that!
Purchase the translation of the text to be read by 2 out of the 4 participants in the discussion
Nullifidian says
June 6, 2011 at 10:09 pmThere’s also a LibriVox audiobook of the Republic here, for those who don’t subscribe to iTunes:
http://librivox.org/platos_republic/
It’s a group reading, which some people find difficult to adjust to when listening to an audiobook, but I find that most of the group recordings are at least adequate, and some are exceptional.
Mark Linsenmayer says
June 8, 2011 at 2:00 pmI spoke too soon; our high-powered guest had to cancel, but we’ll still have Dylan Casey with us, who’s had to teach this book several times in the recent past.
Any iTunes links posted here will have a corresponding non-iTunes web site, given that iTunes doesn’t actually host anything; usually you just hit “artist website” or whatever the link is from the iTunes-looking web page, or do a quick web search.