The Intelligent Troglodyte’s Guide to Plato’s Republic, 2016a

PREFACE
Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if
Plato were my townsman and I never saw him, – my next neighbor
and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words.
. . . How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading
of a book! (Thoreau, Walden, ch. 3)
The Republic of Plato is one of the classic gateway texts into the study and
practice of philosophy, and it is just the sort of book that has been able to arrest
and redirect lives. How it has been able to do this, and whether or not it will be
able to do this in your own case, is something you can only discover for yourself.
The present guidebook aims to help a person get fairly deep, fairly quickly, into
the project. You are advised, first, to read the segment of text indicated by the
traditional Stephanus numbers (e.g., “327a-328b”), then to read the commentary,
and then, as time permits, to think through the bulleted questions. These
questions have been devised through years of discussion with students who have
gone before you. Take them or leave them as you please, but they have value and
are recommended.
All quotations from the Republic in this guidebook are to the translation by
C.D.C. Reeve (Hackett, 2004). The links to the text of the Republic are to Tufts
University’s Perseus Digital Library setting of Paul Shorey’s translation from
Harvard’s Loeb Classical Library. And if you would like access to the Greek
text, the same Perseus site links you at the push of a button to John Burnet’s
Oxford edition.
Journey well.
Hays, Kansas
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