An Introduction to Plato's Republic

by Julia Annas

Used book in good condition, due to its age it could contain normal signs of use

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, History

Paperback

First published June 18, 1981

About the author

Julia Annas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona and author of several books for Oxford University Press, including An Introduction to Plato's Republic and The Morality of Happiness. She is also series editor for the Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy.

Reviews

[Manuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are reading The Republic by Plato, you most likely need a companion book to guide you through it. There are too many things to unpack in Plato's book, and Annas will definitely help you in this. I read The Republic many years ago, but it is only now when I re-read it alongside this Introduction that I could more fully appreciate its strengths and weaknesses (and weaknesses it has aplenty!). It is also useful if your translation of The Republic is old-fashioned, as in my case, and the dialogue becomes very obscure at times, as well as sleep-inducing. This Intro will translate the discussion into more modern terms for ease of understanding. Finally, The Republic suffers from a host of defects in reasoning that even a first-year philosophy student will be able to detect, and if you are as impatient as me, you will want to throw the book away and condemn Plato as a charlatan. But in writing this introductory book, Annas must have gone through Plato's work countless times, paying attention to minutiae and looking at a particular argument from several angles, so that the result is a more sympathetic interpretation of Plato than the one you would be willing to give. Perhaps after reading this book, you won't be condemning him so harshly as before.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good if a bit myopically textualist.

[JR Snow · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very rich introduction to Plato's Republic, though not the first one I'd recommend. Annas is worth reading for her own thoughts, so this is more of a secondary commentary on the Republic in order to understand HER views on Plato, rather than a book to help you understand The Republic itself. While I agree with and have learned much from this book, I don't think she is willing to give the idea of the city-soul analogy enough credit. What I mean is, she seems very frustrated by the inconsistencies from discussions about the soul and analogous ones about the city. Additionally, she points out how silly many of Plato's policy prescriptions are. I think most of this tension goes away when one remembers that the point, as Socrates points out in books 2 and 10, is to see and improve the soul, the individual, etc. The central question is in intensely personal one: Is it worth it for me to be just? The various kinds of cities and their citizens are brought in as a way to explain how the mechanics of the soul work.

I understand that the issue of how literally or metaphorically we are supposed to take these things is more complex than I understand or am explaining. But I wish Annas would at least bring us along a bit more and interact with those more bullish on the metaphorical side of the discussion.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic accompaniment to Republic even though the work stands on its own as well. Annas's insight into a work fraught with both brilliant and frustrating arguments is indispensable. Highly recommend!

[VII · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only read the first half of it but it was more than enough. I can't deny that I learned a few things from it, but I also won't deny that I also wasted a lot of time with her tedious and way too exhaustive analysis for issues that really didn't seem to matter. For example, I can't understand why anyone would choose to spend so much time on the initial definition of justice by Thrasymachus and its compatibility with his second one and in deciding what kind of box we would put it today, only to agree with what everyone reading it and every character in the Republic understood what Thrasymachus meant. I just prefer a pragmatic approach instead of a frequently myopic one that keeps examining arguments instead of trying to understand why these lines are chosen by the author to be there. She does that too sometimes, but much less frequently compared to the boring argument checking.

[Kee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really helped me as I read The Republic. Not only in understanding Plato's ideas as they are written but in the context of modernity, in a world with many schools of thought surrounding morality, ethics and rights. While a good book for the layman, such as myself, the book does have more of a student slant. Like, the type of book you'd cite in an essay. Regardless, it undoubtedly deepened my understanding of Platonic Justice and for that I am grateful.

[Peter McLaughlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fine. Suffers from the problem that Annas wanted to bring in the views of other scholars (and herself), but also didn’t want to scare away her presumably undergraduate target audience with a mass of citations; as a result, there are many locutions like ‘some people argue that…’, without much indication at all as to who the ‘some people’ are and where the scholarly debate might be found. Was useful for me to occasionally consult while reading the Republic.

[Daniel Schotman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the standard studies on Plato's Republic that is always part of (at least the ones I have seen) any further reading list you will come across and perhaps one of the better introduction to Plato's Republic overall.

A mandatory reading for any serious student of Plato's Republic and Plato's work overall.

[Kevin Sood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really good book, and it breaks down and reinterprets Plato's ideas in a new light. The reason I gave it 5 stars is because this book is so concice at explaining complex ideas that it makes you think for a second, "Wow, I could be a philosopher." That's very powerful for a book that deals with complex theory.

[Leyla Zebda · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you really want a thorough companion to Plato’s republic then this is an incredibly clear and concise resource. I originally bought this to help with exams but ended up finding Annas’ insights wonderfully insightful themselves.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

A usually-lucid overview of The Republic's philosophy.

[Masho Shanshashvili · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am surprised to see this book has such low ratings. The people who complain how it is mostly “textualist” or “myopic” need to remind themselves that this is The INTRODUCTION to Plato’s Republic. Annas choses to examine the arguments per se because that is the purpose of the introductory book. You are lying to yourself, especially if you are reading Plato in translation, if you assume that there is no need for this extensive analysis of the text itself.
This is one of the best companions to the Republic and every new reader of Plato will find it immensely useful. Moreover, it is way more interpretative than people here claim.

[Zedder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pappas's introduction to Plato's Republic is much better.

[Alexander]

A very good introduction. Annas is critical but not unfair, and she raises a lot of interesting points that I am confident will yield profits when returning to the primary text.