《理想国（英文）》青少年励志教育丛书.pdf

THE REPUBLIC
by Plato
translated by Benjamin Jowett

Introduction
Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV
Book V
Book VI
Book VII
Book VIII
Book IX
Book X

1
THE REPUBLIC
by Plato
translated by Benjamin Jowett
THE INTRODUCTION
THE Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception
of the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer
approaches to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist;
the Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of
the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the
Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other
Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same
perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world,
or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and
not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper
irony or a greater wealth of humor or imagery, or more dramatic power.
Nor in any other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave
life and speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. The
Republic is the centre around which the other Dialogues may be
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grouped; here philosophy reaches the highest point to which ancient
thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks, like Bacon among the
moderns, was the first who conceived a method of knowledge, although
neither of them always distinguished the bare outline or form from the
substance of truth; and both of them had to be content with an
abstraction of science which was not yet realized. He was the greatest
metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in him, more than
in any other ancient thinker, the germs of future knowledge are
contained. The sciences of logic and psychology, which have supplied
so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are based upon the
analyses of Socrates and Plato. The principles of definition, the
law of contradi