The Republic/The Timæus

by Plato

"WHEN I published the first volume of my Platonic Dialogues for English Readers, it was done as an experiment to ascertain whether I was right in supposing that a large portion of the Platonic Dialogues could, by combining translation and comment, be made intelligible and even interesting to ordinary readers of English literature. The reception which that publication met with was such as to encourage me to publish other Dialogues of which I had already, for my own gratification, made translations in the same manner; and even to go on to translate some additional Dialogues, for the purpose of continuing the series. In this manner I have been led to the laborious and difficult task, which I should not at first have had the courage to contemplate, of translating and commenting the Republic and the Timmus; and these I here offer to those who study Plato, whether in Greek or in English, hoping that I have done something to make these remarkable works intelligible.
These Dialogues differ in their aim and substance from those which I have already published, in that they are not negative but positive, not critical merely but constructive. Two previous Classes of these Dialogues—the Dialogues of the Socratic School, and the Anti-Sophist Dialogues —are employed in analysing and disproving definitions."

332 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 29, 2012

About the author

Plato (Greek: Πλάτων), born Aristocles (c. 427 – 348 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He raised problems for what became all the major areas of both theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Platonic Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the doctrines that would later become known as Platonism.
Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms (or ideas), which has been interpreted as advancing a solution to what is now known as the problem of universals. He was decisively influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself.
Along with his teacher Socrates, and Aristotle, his student, Plato is a central figure in the history of philosophy. Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years—unlike that of nearly all of his contemporaries. Although their popularity has fluctuated, they have consistently been read and studied through the ages. Through Neoplatonism, he also greatly influenced both Christian and Islamic philosophy. In modern times, Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."