Archive: Plato's Republic

Misha Glenny delves in to the In Our Time archive to select ten episodes for listeners to revisit. His sixth choice is Plato's Republic, an episode first released in June 2017. Is it always better to be just than unjust? That is the central question of Plato's Republic, written in c380BC. Plato applied this question both to the individual and the city-state, considering earlier and current forms of government in Athens and potential forms, in which the ideal city might be ruled by philosophers. The Republic is arguably Plato's best known and greatest work, a dialogue between Socrates and his companions, featuring the allegory of the cave and ideas about immortality of the soul, the value of poetry to society, and democracy's vulnerability to a clever demagogue seeking tyranny.

With

Angie Hobbs Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield

MM McCabe Professor of Ancient Philosophy Emerita at King's College London

and

James Warren Fellow of Corpus Christi College and a Reader in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic (Oxford University Press, 1998)

Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain, Plato and the Divided Self (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

G. R. F. Ferrari (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Angela Hobbs, Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good (Cambridge University Press, 2000)

Angela Hobbs, Plato's Republic (Ladybird Expert Book, to be published 2018)

Thomas More (trans. Dominic Baker-Smith), Utopia 1516 (Penguin, 2012)

Grethe B. Peterson (ed.), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values: 18 (University of Utah Press, 1997), especially ‘Culture and Society in Plato’s Republic’ by Myles Burnyeat

Gerald A. Press (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Plato (Bloomsbury, 2012)

Gerasimos Santas (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Plato's Republic (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006)

Malcolm Schofield, Plato (Oxford University Press, 2006)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.