RE READING PLATO

Plato’s Republic is the master’s masterpiece; but how to go about interpreting it is still disputed. Indeed, it may be a masterpiece just because how to understand it is fiercely controversial. This collection of 24 original essays by an international mix of junior and senior scholars reconsiders the Republic as a written text and rethinks its philosophical legacy. The volume seeks to explore how the Republic goes about doing philosophy with its reader without importing assumptions as to what counts as a philosophy and what does not, what should be kept and what discarded. The working assumption for uniting these different aspects is that 'Plato writes nothing in vain'. To that end, much can be learned by studying how its sections can take on different meanings between a first and subsequent re-reading.

Mary Margaret McCabe was Leventis Visiting Professor in Classics at the University of Edinburgh 2019, is Professor of Ancient Philosophy Emerita at King’s College London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She was co-conspirator with Verity Harte on the Yale-KCL Republic project 2007-16. She is proudest of being the recipient of Harte and Woolf, Re-Reading Ancient Philosophy: Old Chestnuts and Sacred Cows (CUP 2017). She is the Chair of Trustees of Philosophy in Prison, www.philosophyinprison.com

Simon Trépanier is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh. His specialties include early Greek philosophy (Empedocles in particular), Plato, literary papyrology, Epicureanism and Lucretius. Recurrent themes of interest are cosmology and physics, the relation of philosophy to literature and ancient society, and the place of religion within philosophical speculation.