|
 Building
a home philosophy library
Lyn
May and Steve Deery
The
seventh in a series of articles advising on how to build your own
home philosophy library.
No.
7 Plato, The Republic
Ethics
or moral philosophy is one of the pillars of philosophy, yet is
often considered dull, boring or just plain irrelevant. Hopefully
our recommendations will encourage you to replace the adjectives
'dull' and 'boring' with 'vigorous' and 'fertile'.
Plato's
Republic has much to commend it to the modern reader. The
narrator and chief protagonist in the Republic is Socrates,
now long since succumbed to the worst effects of hemlock. The Republic
is not, as some have supposed, a piece of political theory,
rather it is a book about morality, both what it is, and how it
fulfils one's life as a human being. The use of a republic is an
allegory for the individual human spirit, with the imaginary community
serving as a paradigm to help understand the individual.
What
Plato is trying to get at is how an individual can attain happiness
and flourish or, as the Greek's would say, how we can 'live the
good life'. For Plato the moral life is the 'good life'. But what
is morality? For Plato it is achieved by attaining a balance between
the virtues of wisdom, courage and restraint. So happiness is not,
thinks Plato, a life ruled by the desirous parts of the mind (which
will surely disappoint the pleasure seekers of this world). The
Republic is an excellent example of a complete moral system.
The
Republic, Plato (Oxford University Press) £2.99/$7.95
A
new book will be featured from June 1st 2001.
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