City and Soul in Plato's Republic

Tracing a central theme of Plato's Republic, G. R. F. Ferrari reconsiders in this study the nature and purpose of the comparison between the structure of society and that of the individual soul. In four chapters, Ferrari examines the personalities and social status of the brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus, Plato's notion of justice, coherence in Plato's description of the decline of states, and the tyrant and the philosopher king—a pair who, in their different ways, break with the terms of the city-soul analogy.

In addition to acknowledging familiar themes in the interpretation of the Republic—the sincerity of its utopianism, the justice of the philosopher's return to the Cave—Ferrari provocatively engages secondary literature by Leo Strauss, Bernard Williams, and Jonathan Lear. With admirable clarity and insight, Ferrari conveys the relation between the city and the soul and the choice between tyranny and philosophy. City and Soul in Plato's Republic will be of value to students of classics, philosophy, and political theory alike.

• Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato's Phaedrus (Cambridge Classical Studies)
• Beautiful City: The Dialectical Character of Plato's "Republic"
• Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing
• Rhetoric (The New Hackett Aristotle)
• The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)
• Politics: A New Translation (The New Hackett Aristotle)
• Platonic Writings/Platonic Readings
• Metaphysics (The New Hackett Aristotle)