The Republic

The most influential book in the history of philosophy. What begins as a conversation about justice at a house in the Piraeus builds, over ten books, into the founding of an imaginary city and an account of everything: the parts of the soul, the education of rulers, the equality of women, the corruption of states, the Ring of Gyges, the Ship of State, the Divided Line, the Allegory of the Cave, and the Myth of Er. Every philosophy written since is, as Whitehead said, a series of footnotes to it — read beside the Greek, section by section, on the Stephanus grid scholars have cited for five centuries.