- 01Title page
Republic
by Plato · c. 375 BCE · 28 chapters · 24/7 tutor
Justice, education, politics, and epistemology.
28Chapters
303Lessons
695Topics
Certificate of completion included
This course was produced by Cavua from a public-domain text.
Skills this course leaves you with.
- Explain Plato’s central arguments about justice and the just state
- Analyze the educational role of guardians in the Republic
- Distinguish Plato’s views on knowledge, opinion, and the form of the good
- Interpret the cave allegory and its implications for philosophy and politics
- Summarize the main structure and major themes of the dialogue
- Evaluate key objections raised within the text about community, rulers, and social order
About Republic.
Read Plato's Republic as one long argument answering a single question, whether a just person is better off than an unjust one, and track that argument book by book rather than reading it only as a political blueprint. Write down each claim as Socrates makes it, slow down for the sun, the line and the cave in Books VI–VII, and check at the end whether the original challenge has been met. This Republic study guide maps the ten books, explains the key images and helps you choose a translation.
The Republic is a philosophical dialogue by Plato, written around 375 BCE in Athens. Its Greek title, Politeia, means something closer to the constitution or way of life of a city than a republic in the modern sense; the English title comes through the Latin res publica. Socrates narrates the whole conversation himself, retelling a long discussion held at a house in the Piraeus, the port of Athens.
Its central question is easy to state: what is justice, and is a just person better off than an unjust one, even if no one ever finds out? To answer it, Socrates designs an imaginary city, reasoning that justice will be easier to see written large in a city than small in one soul. Along the way the dialogue takes on education, the arts, women serving as rulers alongside men, the nature of knowledge and the decline of governments.
It is still read because so much later thought argues with it. The cave, the philosopher-ruler and the divided soul all start here. If philosophy is new to you, the general advice in how to read philosophy without giving up pairs well with this guide.
What the book is really about.
The themes overlap, so follow each as a thread across several books rather than a topic confined to one place.
Questions to ask as you read.
- 1Does Socrates actually refute Thrasymachus in Book I, or does Thrasymachus simply give up?
- 2Is Glaucon right that most people are just only because they fear being caught?
- 3Does the city-soul analogy hold, or does Socrates assume what he needs to prove?
- 4Can a city ruled by lovers of truth be founded on a noble lie?
- 5How radical is the proposal that women can be guardians, and what limits does Socrates place on it?
- 6Why must the freed prisoner go back into the cave, and is it fair to require it?
- 7Why does democracy sit so close to tyranny in Plato's order of regimes?
- 8Is the ideal city a political plan or a model for ordering your own soul?
- 9Does Socrates show that the just person is happier, or only that the tyrant is miserable?
- 10Why does a dialogue full of arguments end with a myth?
Curriculum
The full table of contents.
Every chapter, every lesson, every topic — laid out before you enroll. Click any chapter to expand it.
- Chapters
- 28
- Lessons
- 303
- Topics
- 695
- 01Transcriber’s Note
- 02List of Contents
- 01Front matter and contents listings
- 01Title and publication details
- 01Dedication to former pupils at Balliol College and Oxford
- 01Acknowledgments to collaborators
- 02Extent of revisions and exchange offer
- 03Plan for revising remaining dialogues
- 01Plato's Republic as the summit of his philosophy
- 02The Republic within Plato's larger unfinished design
- 01Plato's influence on later thought
- 02The search for justice in the Republic
- 01Natural divisions of the Republic
- 02Two-part structure: Books I–IV and V–X
- 03Unity of justice and the State
- 04Multiple designs and philosophical imagination
- 01Chronology and dramatic setting
- 02Cephalus and Polemarchus
- 03Thrasymachus as the Sophist
- 04Glaucon and Adeimantus
- 01Adeimantus and Glaucon as alternating respondents
- 02Plato's succession of moral characters
- 03Inconsistency in Socrates' portrayal
- 01Use of example and illustration
- 01Socratic allegory and cross-references in the Republic
- 02Socrates as 'not of this world'
- 03Plato's ideal state and Socratic moderation
- 01Introduction
- 01Justice as skill and rule
- 02Injustice, division, and weakness
- 01Justice, happiness, and the analogy of the arts
- 02Critique of the art analogy and the nature of excess
- 01Glaucon's challenge and the three classes of goods
- 02The ring of Gyges and the social case for injustice
- 03The idealized just and unjust man
- 04Adeimantus on rewards, punishments, and religious inducements
- 05The appeal to prove justice in the soul
- 01Glaucon’s challenge and the nature of justice
- 02Socrates’ indirect answer and the Republic’s method
- 01Plato’s method: State before individual
- 02The origin of the city and division of labour
- 03Luxury, war, and the guardian class
- 04Education, music, and censorship of poetry
- 01God as author of good only
- 02Primitive state and division of labour
- 03Plato on fiction, truth, and education
- 04Allegory, religion, and the lie in the soul
- 01Purification of religion and fear of death
- 02Poetry, imitation, and dramatic style
- 03Music, metre, and artistic simplicity
- 04Gymnastics and the guardians' diet
- 05Medicine, justice, and the health of the city
- 01Physicians and judges as healing arts
- 02Music and gymnastic in the guardians' education
- 01Selection and testing of guardians
- 02The earthborn myth and the metals
- 01Guardian life without property or luxury
- 02Plato’s use of Homeric authority
- 01Style, subject, and metre in Greek poetry
- 02Plato’s theory of art in the Republic
- 01Physician, judge, and knowledge of vice
- 02Transposition of ranks in Plato's state
- 01Plato’s myth of ranks and the Phoenician tale
- 02Music’s power and the soul-body relation
- 01Plato’s treatment of diet and gradual remedies
- 02Lesser matters of style
- 03Book IV analysis: the guardians’ happiness
- 01The state’s happiness as a whole
- 02Unity, size, and education of the city
- 01Preserving music and gymnastic from innovation
- 02Education as the safeguard of law and order
- 03Limits of legislation and Delphi's role in religion
- 01Duty and happiness in ethics
- 02Utility in politics and statecraft
- 01Wisdom and the guardian class
- 02Courage as preserved right opinion
- 03Temperance as civic harmony
- 04Justice as each doing his own business
- 01Justice, temperance, and the cardinal virtues
- 02The good, law, order, and harmony
- 03Three parts of the soul
- 01Three principles in the soul
- 02Justice, injustice, and the health of the soul
- 01Plato’s division of the soul and the irascible faculty
- 01Plato’s unfinished metaphysic of ideas
- 02Transition to Book V analysis
- 01Women as guardians and equal education
- 01Common duties and education for women
- 01Community of wives and children
- 01Common kinship and family terms
- 02Unity through shared property and feeling
- 01Benefits of the guardian community
- 02Military training and honors for brave warriors
- 03Treatment of enemies and Hellenic warfare
- 01The philosopher-kings and the first wave
- 02Opinion, knowledge, and abstract realities
- 03Editorial notes on Book V
- 01Philosophers as natural rulers
- 02The ship captain parable
- 03How philosophers are corrupted
- 01Why philosophy is despised
- 02Reversing the order of philosophical education
- 03The philosopher’s role in the ideal state
- 01Guardians as philosophers and the longer road to knowledge
- 01The idea of the good as the source of truth and being
- 01The divided line and four levels of knowledge
- 02The philosopher as spectator of all time and existence
- 01Adeimantus's objection to Socratic reasoning
- 02Philosophers as useless or corrupt
- 01Plato's higher method of knowledge
- 02Three questions in the latter part of Book VI
- 01A priori knowledge and creative ideals
- 02Plato’s threefold division of knowledge
- 03The four faculties on the divided line
- 01Plato’s idea of good as first principle
- 02The philosopher’s reticent method and the limits of interpretation
- 01The cave as a parable of perception
- 02Conversion of the soul toward light
- 03Philosophers compelled to rule
- 01Arithmetic as a discipline of thought
- 02Geometry and astronomy as upward studies
- 03Harmonics and the mathematical prelude
- 04Dialectic as the culmination of education
- 05Selection of promising disciples
- 06Dialectic and the danger of premature study
- 07Second training of the soul
- 01Divisions of knowledge in the cave allegory
- 01Mathematics as preparation for philosophy
- 02Plato’s abstraction and the idea of good
- 03The sciences of number, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics
- 04Modern assessment of Plato’s mathematical method
- 05Pythagorean influence on number theory
- 01Explanations of vision and harmonics
- 01Political meaning of the cave allegory
- 01Inferior constitutions and corresponding natures
- 02Decay from the perfect state to timocracy
- 01Origin of timocracy from the decline of the ideal state
- 02Character of the timocratical state and man
- 01The oligarchical man
- 02Origin and evils of oligarchy
- 03The oligarchical character
- 01Democratic government and its freedoms
- 02From oligarchic restraint to democratic desire
- 01Democracy’s excess of freedom
- 02From democratic anarchy to tyranny
- 03The tyrant’s rise and rule
- 01Decline from liberty to tyranny
- 02Recapitulation of the ideal state and its declines
- 01Timocracy as the first declining state
- 01The portrait of the tyrant
- 01Plato's critique of democracy and tyranny
- 01Plato’s portraits of political characters
- 02The number of the State puzzle
- 03Perfect and human numbers in the passage
- 01Explanation of the problem's technical terms
- 01Platonic number and the perfect cycle
- 02The two harmonies and the Tetractys
- 01Reasons for accepting 216 as the Platonic number
- 02Perfect and imperfect numbers in Plato
- 03The tyrannical man and unlawful desires
- 01The tyrannical man and the tyrannical State
- 01The rational life as the truest pleasure
- 02Pure pleasure and the illusion of relief from pain
- 03Soul satisfaction, bodily desire, and spurious pleasures
- 01The king and tyrant in happiness
- 02The image of the soul
- 03Self-control and the heavenly pattern
- 01Moderate pleasures and the pleasures of reason
- 02Royal and tyrannical pleasures: the number 729
- 01Arithmetical formula for the tyrant's loss
- 02The heavenly pattern and future life
- 01Imitation and the three removes from reality
- 02Homer as educator of Hellas
- 01Imitation as appearance without knowledge
- 02Poetry’s appeal to the irrational soul
- 03The emotional dangers of poetry
- 01Argument for the soul's immortality
- 01Immortality and simplicity of the soul
- 02Rewards of justice in life and after death
- 01Er's return from the underworld
- 02The cosmic spindle and the choice of lives
- 01The soul's choice of a better life
- 02Examples of mistaken and wise choices
- 01Two divisions of Book X
- 01Decline of poetry in Plato's age
- 02Plato's objections to actors and dramatic imitation
- 01Plato's objection to imitation in art
- 02Emotional appeal of the imitative arts
- 03Plato's quarrel with poets and philosophy
- 01Plato’s attack on poets as false teachers and allies of tyranny
- 02Poetry, emotion, and the limits of imitative art
- 03The changing place of poetry in history and religion
- 04A possible poetry of truth and moral beauty
- 05Plato’s mixed argument and the immortality of the soul
- 01Er's oriental vision and the heavenly orrery
- 02Choice, chance, and philosophical virtue
- 01The Republic as an Hellenic state and philosopher-kingdom
- 02Spartan elements in the ideal state
- 03Athenian, Hellenic, and anti-Spartan features
- 04Pythagorean influences on Plato's state
- 05The ideal state as an unrealizable vision
- 01Plato and the question of citizenship
- 02The paradox of the perfect State
- 01Plato’s community of property and Aristotle’s objections
- 02The future possibility of common property
- 01Plato’s case for women’s equal training and occupations
- 02Community of wives and children
- 03Objections to Platonic marriage
- 04Effects of polygamy and incest on offspring
- 01Anthropological speculation on the origin of marriage
- 02Marriage and the family as moral progress
- 01Limits of breeding for strength and health
- 02Heredity, ancestry, and human will
- 01Plato’s mistaken view of marriage and foundlings
- 02Population pressure and prudent marriage
- 03Limits of regulating marriage by law
- 04Family attachments versus the higher aims of the state
- 01Plato’s second education for guardians
- 02The idea of good as a metaphysical ideal
- 03The philosopher-statesman and political judgment
- 01Plato's analogy between state and individual
- 01Education as a lifelong preparation
- 02Moral and religious training through music and literature
- 03Gymnastic, medicine, and simplicity in bodily training
- 04Law, prevention, and national education
- 05Mathematics as training in abstraction
- 06Mathematics as preparation for dialectic
- 07Dialectic and the Idea of good
- 08Plato and Hegel on abstraction
- 01Criticisms of Plato’s educational theory
- 02Education as a lifelong philosophical pursuit
- 03Self-education in later life
- 01Platonic education in later life
- 02Ancient views of historical change and political progress
- 03Greek lawgivers and the immutability of fundamental laws
- 01Plato's Republic and the idea of progress
- 02Republic, Laws, and Statesman compared
- 01Plato's Statesman and the rule of law
- 02Cicero's De Republica and Roman adaptations of Plato
- 03St. Augustine's City of God and the Christian ideal city
- 04Dante's De Monarchia and universal empire
- 01More’s ideal commonwealth and communal property
- 02Religious tolerance and Utopian worship
- 03Political, moral, and social paradoxes of Utopia
- 01Bacon's New Atlantis as an imperfect fragment
- 02Campanella's City of the Sun and its social order
- 03Education, science, and religion in the City of the Sun
- 01English ideal-state writings after Plato
- 01Ideals and examples of great men
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01How many chapters are in the Republic course?
The Republic course has 28 chapters, each with its own lessons and topics.
02How many lessons are in the Republic course?
There are 303 lessons across the course, and you can ask your 24/7 tutor about any of them.
03Can I see what the Republic course covers before I start?
Yes. The full curriculum is listed on this page, beginning with "REPUBLIC OF PLATO JOWETT".
04Do I get a certificate for the Republic course?
Yes. Finishing the course earns a personal Cavua certificate of completion.
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