Lectures on the Republic of Plato (Classic Reprint)

The Republic, though it has something of the nature both^of poetry and of preaching, is primarily a book of philosophy. In studying it, therefore, we have to pay attention above all to the reasoning, the order and connexion of thought. A philosopher is a man with a greater power of thinking than other people, one who has thought more than others on subjects of common interest. All philosophy must be critical and in thinking facts out to their consequences the philosopher necessarily arrives at conclusions different from and often contradictory to the ideas current around him. Often indeed the conclusions he arrives at seem no different from those of plain people, and yet the difference between the philosopher and the mass of mankind remains a great one, for, though starting from the same facts and arriving at similar conclusions, he has in the interval gone through a process of thinking, and the truth he holds is reasoned truth. What seems
Table of Contents
PACE; 1 Introduction 3; II Examination of some Representative Opinions about; Justice 14; [II Statement of the Problem of the ' Republic' 47; IV The Main Elements of Society and of Human Nature; Indicated 67; V Education of Rulers in Early Life:; 1 Introductory 11; 2 Movctikt) : Myths and the Eeliefs Taught in Literature 84; 3 blovaiKt) : the Art of Literature 99; 4 Mown/oj: Music and the Arts generally , , 108; 5 Tv^ivaaitKX} and Digression on Law and Medicine 133; VI Principles of Government in the Ideal State 131; VII Statement of the Principle of Justice 145 VIII Communism and Digression on Usages of War 162; IX Philosophy and the State 184; X The Good as the Supreme Object of Knowlkdge 212; XL The Four Stages of Intelligence 238 XII Education in Science and Philosophy ;; 1 The Existing Want of Education 259; 2 Education in the Sciences 26s; 3 Dialectic