The Republic

Before you start

Assumes

no philosophy, but a willingness to follow an argument that advances by question and concession

This translation

Benjamin Jowett's 1871 translation, as with all the Gutenberg Plato. Still the most widely read English version, and Victorian in the way that implies: fluent, decorous, and inclined to smooth Plato's rougher edges.

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If this is the wrong level

Groundwork for

Works in the library that name this one as a prerequisite.

• Nicomachean EthicsAristotle, 340 BCEThe good life is activity in accordance with virtue, and virtue is a disposition trained by habit rather than taught by rule.
• The EnneadsPlotinus, 270All reality emanates in descending stages from a single, ineffable One beyond being itself, and the soul's task is to reverse that descent and return to unity with it.