Classical Studies

“Fine translation, good notes—inexpensive, too!”
     —D.A. Rohatyn, University of San Diego

A step by step, passage by passage analysis of the complete Republic. White shows how the argument of the book is articulated, the important interconnections among its elements, and the coherent and carefully developed train of though which motivates its complex philosophical reasoning. In his extensive introduction, White describes Plato’s aims, introduces the argument, and discusses the major philosophical and ethical theories embodied in the Republic. He then summarizes each of its ten books and provides substantial explanatory and interpretive notes.

“A first rate translation at a reasonable price.”
     —Michael Rohr, Rutgers University

"A complete and unified account of Plato’s epistemology . . . scholarly, historically sensitive, and philosophically sophisticated. Above all it is sensible. . . . White’s strength is that he places Plato’s preoccupation in careful historical perspective, without belittling the intrinsic difficulties of the problems he tackled. . . . White’s project is to find a continuous argument running through Plato’s various attacks on epistemological problems. No summary can do justice to his remarkable success . . . "
     —Ronald B. De Sousa, University of Toronto, in Phoenix

“It is great news that this book is available again. It deserves to be better known, both for its pioneering methods of linguistic analysis and for the results to which they lead. It transforms our understanding of the all-important Greek verb ‘to be.’”
     —Myles Burnyeat, All Souls College, University of Oxford