Thinking books · Foundations & philosophy · Plato, c. 375 BC

The Republic — the big ideas

A long argument about what justice is, which turns into an argument about knowledge, education and who should decide.

Free — no account needed to read

The big ideas

It opens by refusing to accept a definition. Every confident answer about justice is taken apart by following it to a case where it fails — which is the method, not a preamble to the answer.

The allegory of the cave says that what you take for reality may be the shadow of something you have never turned around to look at, and that the turning is uncomfortable and unwelcome.

It argues that most opinion is inherited rather than examined, and that the work of education is not filling someone with facts but turning them towards the light.

Its political conclusions are authoritarian and have been argued against for two thousand years. Reading it as a question — who should decide, and on what grounds — is more useful than reading it as an answer.

Practise it — no need to have read it

Define success — yours, in one sentence. Then find a case your definition includes that it should not, and one it excludes that it should. Rewrite it and repeat once more.

A hint: The definition surviving is not the goal. Finding you did not have one is the more common and more useful result.

Where it shows up in real life

• Career decisions
• What you are actually optimising for
• Disagreements where the two sides mean different things by the same word

This book is old enough to be freely available in most countries.

Described in our own words with the source named — never quoted, and not a substitute for reading the book.