The Republic
“[With] narrator Leighton Pugh…Socrates, who does almost all the talking, comes across as a full person: intelligent, moderate in temper, genial, accommodating to his fellows but someone who commands respect and attention. Pugh also distinguishes the minor characters adequately and switches among them skillfully…The nineteenth-century translation is both graceful and lucid. Pugh’s reading demonstrates that philosophy not only can be comprehensible in audio but also enjoyable.”
AudioFile
In The Republic, Socrates is asked the question “What is justice?” And in order to answer it, he draws a long and detailed analogy between the individual and the city.
Plato’s work forms the foundation of Western philosophy and covers a wide range of topics, including political theory and ethics, with extended digressions into artistic and literary criticism, the theory and practice of education, as well as epistemology and metaphysics.
Deploying straightforward language and metaphors drawn from everyday life, The Republic contains many key ideas including the theory of forms and the concept of the philosopher-king.
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