Justice -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800; Utopias -- Early works to 1800
The division into books, like all similar divisions, is probably later
than the age of Plato. The natural divisions are five in number;--(1)
Book I and the first half of Book II down to the paragraph beginning,
"I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus," which is
introductory; the first book containing a refutation of the popular and
sophistical notions of justice, and concluding, like some of the
earlier Dialogues, without arriving at any definite result. To this is
appended a restatement of the nature of justice according to common
opinion, and an answer is demanded to the question--What is justice,
stripped of appearances? The second division (2) includes the
remainder of the second and the whole of the third and fourth books,
which are mainly occupied with the construction of the first State and
the first education. The third division (3) consists of the fifth,
sixth, and seventh books, in which philosophy rather than justice is
the subject of inquiry, and the second State is constructed on
principles of communism and ruled by philosophers, and the
contemplation of the idea of good takes the place of the social and
political virtues. In the eighth and ninth books (4) the perversions
of States and of the individuals who correspond to them are reviewed in
succession; and the nature of pleasure and the principle of tyranny are
further analyzed in the individual man. The tenth book (5) is the
conclusion of the whole, in which the relations of philosophy to poetry
are finally determined, and the happiness of the citizens in this life,
which has now been assured, is crowned by the vision of another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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