The Republic - Plato

Consider this the latest book report ever filed. It is about 2400 years overdue. I prefer to think that I should have studied this document sometime in high school, so by that measure, I’m only about a decade tardy. To be quite honest, I am wholly unprepared to write anything resembling intelligence on this matter. The shear depth of Plato’s intelligence renders me into a babbling little girl, crying for my split cone of ice cream, having been shoved by a tyrannical bully. That bully is the Athenian state, who condemn Plato’s teacher – a little known gent known as Socrates – to death. In reverence to his mentor, Plato finishes The Republic, which is essentially a really long and drawn out conversation on the nature of justice. Plato founds the world’s first university – the Academy – where he begins espousing the views found in The Republic. Really, it should be considered a total failure as his only student of any worth is Aristotle. I mean come on, that is like founding a hockey school called Timbits and only having Sidney Crosby graduate the program. For shame.

I don’t really have too much of a recommendation on this one. If you want to learn about Philosophy, don’t read this book – take a philosophy course, in which the main aspects of this book are taught to you. That was my mistake. I didn’t pay attention enough while reading The Republic that now I’m going to embark on reading Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy in hopes that I can make up for lost time. Kind of like buying up Park Place and Broadway and dropping down hotels, except continually landing on Marvin Garden and then having to re-finance said Park Place and Broadway hotels because you are eternally spending time in inferior lodgings. I’m sure you understand the analogy here.

Under the tyranny of erotic love he has permanently become while awake what he used to become occasionally while asleep.