Rereading Plato's Republic

McCabe, Mary Margaret (ed.)
Trépanier, Simon (ed.)

Examines the subject matter of the Republic and the full internal responsion of its parts
. Includes 24 original papers from an international mix of senior and junior scholars
. Attempts do justice to the astounding diversity of subject matter of the Republic and the way it is composed without prioritizing any one approach, or section(s) of the work
over others
. Engages with standard scholarly debates but also seeks to open new perspectives and connections between favoured and overlooked sections
Plato’s Republic is the master’s masterpiece; but how to go about interpreting it is still disputed. Indeed, it may be a masterpiece just because how to understand it is fiercely controversial. This collection of new essays by junior and senior scholars reconsiders the Republic as a written text and rethinks its philosophical legacy. The volume seeks to explore how the Republic goes about doing philosophy with its reader without importing assumptions as to what counts as a philosophy and what does not, what should be kept and what discarded. The working assumption for uniting these different aspects is that 'Plato writes nothing in vain'. To that end, much can be learned by studying how its sections can take on different meanings between a first and subsequent re-reading.