Plato's Sun-Like Good: Dialectic in the Republic

Description

Plato's Sun-Like Good is a revolutionary discussion of the Republic's philosopher-rulers, their dialectic, and their relation to the form of the good. With detailed arguments Sarah Broadie explains how, if we think of the form of the good as 'interrogative', we can re-conceive those central reference-points of Platonism in down-to-earth terms without loss to our sense of Plato's philosophical greatness. The book's main aims are: first, to show how for Plato the form of the good is of practical value in a way that we can understand; secondly, to make sense of the connection he draws between dialectic and the form of the good; and thirdly, to make sense of the relationship between the form of the good and other forms while respecting the contours of the sun-good analogy and remaining faithful to the text of the Republic itself.

Sarah Broadie is Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. She is author of Aristotle and Beyond: Essays on Metaphysics and Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Nature and Divinity in Plato's Timaeus (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and editor of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: A Philosophical Introduction and Commentary (2002). She has published dozens of book chapters and articles on Plato and Aristotle, and was awarded an OBE in 2019 for services to classical philosophy.

'Sarah Broadie's new book is one of the most exciting and important books I have read on Plato's Republic. Its rigorous and systematic challenge to orthodox ways of understanding what the form of good is, and why mathematics plays a central role in a philosopher's education, will be debated for many years to come.' Richard Kraut, Northwestern University '... exemplary and inspiring.' William Altman, Bryn Mawr Classical Review