Who recommends it
- The Most Important Books on PoliticsReading list
The Republic by Plato is considered one of the most important books on politics. The book discusses the nature of justice and how a just society should be structured. It also tackles the issue of how individuals can harmoniously work together in order to create a beneficial society.
- How Books Changed The WorldArticle
Another book that dramatically changed the world was The Republic by Plato. This book laid the foundations for modern democracy and political philosophy, and it continues to have a major influence on how we think about politics today. Through The Republic, Plato raises important questions about justice, fairness, and…
- Philosophy Books for BeginnersReading list
- Rebecca GoldsteinInterview
I have two quite different careers, as a philosopher and as a novelist. It’s easier to assign three books for the first. They would be The Republic by Plato, Meditations on First Philosophy by Descartes, and Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume. As far as becoming a novelist, I have no specific…
- Jeff KreislerInterview
The Republic by Plato. No, I kidding. I have no idea. Probably something about Dick and Jane.
- Paul RussellInterview
My father was a philosophy professor and I grew up with philosophy books and philosophers all around me. When I was in my early teens I read Republic by Plato and The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. I have stayed in love with philosophy through the years but my attitude to philosophers is more mixed/complicated.
- Hamid DabashiInterview
When I encountered Thrasymachus in the First Book of The Republic by Plato (again in its magnificent Persian translation, which I read as a teenager—to me Plato still speaks Persian, imagine that!) For me Thrasymachus ends European philosophy just when it was getting started, when he puts a puncture into Socrates…
- The Most Important Philosophy BooksReading list
Plato pretty much invented what we now call ‘philosophy’. Whitehead was famously prompted to quip, ‘The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of footnotes to Plato.’ Whitehead’s quip may be hyperbolic, but that’s all it is: it is not absurd.
- Craig HassedInterview
If they could read it with an open mind and real attention, I would recommend Plato’s Republic. His description of democracy in decline seems prescient almost like he is watching and describing current events. It may help people to understand what is happening in the world today, especially where our Western…
- Taisu ZhangInterview
Probably… Plato’s Republic. It was my first serious engagement with philosophy, and at age 15-16, it completely changed the way that I thought about truth, normativity, and existence. I really did feel myself coming out of a cave. The first book one reads that has that kind of effect usually has the largest impact, as…
- MM McCabeInterview
There is only one way, I think, to be introduced to philosophy — that is to do it. So I rather avoid ‘introduction to philosophy’ books if someone asks me this kind of question: far better to find something engaging and learn on that what I described the long and slow process of reading and thinking and going back and…
- Melissa LaneInterview
In the first term of my first year at university, reading Greek scepticism. The question of whether the sceptic could live out the scepticism being avowed brought home the links between one’s ideas and one’s life that I later found so vividly explored in Plato, in the soul/city analogy of The Republic and in the…
- Peter WorleyInterview
It’s not so much about what you read, it’s about how you think. For this reason, I prefer anything that models thinking methods. Read Meditations by Descartes, many of the dialogues of Plato (especially Republic, Meno, Gorgias, Protagoras, Euthyphro, Apology, Phaedo), Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect by…
Often recommended alongside
On Liberty
Symposium
Meno
The Bible
Middlemarch
The Stranger
Apology
The AnalectsMore books by Plato our guests recommend
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