User:Douglas Drabkin/sandbox

Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my t--Douglas Drabkin (talk) 14:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)ownsman and I never saw him, – my next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. . . . How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. (Thoreau, Walden, ch. 3)

The Republic of Plato is one of the classic gateway texts into the study and practice of philosophy, and it is just the sort of book that has been able to arrest and redirect lives. How it has been able to do this, and whether or not it will be able to do this in your own case, is something you can only discover for yourself. The present guidebook aims to help a person get fairly deep, fairly quickly, into the project. You are advised, first, to read the segment of text indicated by the traditional Stephanus numbers (e.g., “327a-328b”), then to read the commentary, and then, as time permits, to think through the bulleted questions. These questions have been devised through years of discussion with students who have gone before you. Take them or leave them as you please, but they have value and are recommended. All quotations from the Republic are in the translation by C.D.C. Reeve (Hackett, 2004). Journey well.

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