Platos Republic, Simon Blackburn
Platos Republic, Simon Blackburn
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Plato's Republic

Author: Simon Blackburn

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 4 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/15/2007


Synopsis

Plato is perhaps the most significant philosopher who has ever lived, and The Republic, composed in Athens in about 375 BC, is widely regarded as his most famous dialogue. Its discussion of the perfect city—and the perfect mind—laid the foundations for Western culture and, for over two thousand years, has been the cornerstone of Western philosophy. As Simon Blackburn writes, "It has probably sustained more commentary, and been subject to more radical and impassioned disagreement, than almost any other of the great founding texts of the modern world."

In Plato's Republic, Simon Blackburn explains the judicial, moral, and political ideas in The Republic. Blackburn also examines The Republic's remarkable influence and unquestioned staying power, and shows why, from Saint Augustine to twentieth-century philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Henri Bergson, Western thought is still conditioned by this most important of books.

About Simon Blackburn

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Reviews

Goodreads review by MacWithBooksonMountains on April 15, 2024

The author, by his own admission, is neither historian nor classicist. Even though it is not mentioned, through the pristine formulations, critical but not arrogant analysis, it becomes perfectly clear that the author is, in fact, a fellow philosopher. A true philosopher does not write a hagiography......more

Goodreads review by Charlie on February 17, 2019

hmmmmm........ Having just read the Republic I read this hoping to gain a clearer, but deeper understanding of it. I rarely read secondary texts and went in with fairly high expectations, thinking that clarifying and expanding was kind of the point of secondary texts. But this book seemed to be aimed......more

Goodreads review by Noah on August 12, 2019

Plato is one of the dominant forces, if not THE dominant force in the history of Western philosophy. It has been said (with a load of exaggeration but also a grain of truth) that Western philosophy consists of nothing but footnotes to Plato. I love Greek history and am an admirer of Greek thought an......more

Goodreads review by C. on June 19, 2017

The Republic is an fascinating and enigmatic book--in many ways, it influence of "Western" philosophy is almost strange given its esoteric calculations, anti-democratic sentiment, obvious theological assumptions, and a mathematical logic that is purely geometric being applied to political and social......more

Goodreads review by Jim on July 13, 2022

(Jim Cook’s review). First, let me say I enjoy the “books that changed the world “ series from Atlantic, of which Blackburn’s Republic is one. The best of these is the one by Francis Whehan on Marx’s Capital. Although Blackburn is not a terribly sympathetic reviewer his account is reasonably balance......more