Justice in Plato's Republic
The Lessons of Book 1

Offering an in-depth commentary on Plato's Republic Book 1, Weiss's book explores its many insights concerning justice.

Roslyn Weiss (Author)

9781009466523, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 January 2025

218 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

'This book is both a philosophical commentary on the first book of Plato's Republic and a sustained argument regarding the nature of justice throughout the whole dialogue. … Weiss provides a terrific close reading … reconstructions of the book's arguments, helpful philosophical distinctions, interpretations of literary features and abundant connections to secondary literature on each point. The results are illuminating - and impossible to ignore - for anyone wishing to understand and interpret Book 1. And, since the themes of Book 1 extend across the entire dialogue, Weiss's book will be a valuable resource for anyone working on the Republic.' The Classical Review

In Book 4 of Plato's Republic, Socrates introduces what is regarded by scholars as the Platonic account of justice, according to which it is essentially internal and self-regarding, a matter of relations among the parts of a city or soul. In this book, Roslyn Weiss contends that there is another notion of justice, as other-regarding and external, which is to be found in a series of conversations in Book 1 between Socrates and three successive interlocutors. Weiss considers the relationship between justice as conceived in Book 1 and Book 4, and carefully examines what can be learned from each of the arguments. Her close analysis of Book 1 brings to light what Socrates really believed about justice, and extracts and explores this Book's many insights concerning justice—at both the political and the personal level.

1. Appreciating republic 1
2. Cephalus: just-in time
3. Polemarchus: friends and enemies
4. Thrasymachus on 'the just'
5. No one rules willingly
6. The better man, the better life
7. Justice springs internal.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA]