Plato's Invisible Cities: Discourse and Power in the Republic

by Ophir,Adi

• ISBN13: 9780415035965
• ISBN10: 0415035961
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1991-05-16
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book offers an original and detailed reading of Plato's Republic, one of the most influential philosophical works in the emergence of Western philosophy.This book offers an original and detailed reading of Plato's Republic, one of the most influential philosophical works in the emergence of Western philosophy.The author discusses the Republic in terms of discursive events and political acts. Plato's act is placed in the context of a politico-discursive crisis in Athens at the end of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth century B.C that gave rise to the dialogue's primary question, that of justice. The originality of Dr. Ophir lies in the way he reconstructs the Republic's different spatial settings - utopian, mythical, dramatic and discursive - using them as the main thread of his interpretation. Against the background of Plato's critique of the organisation of civic-space in the Greek polis, the author relates the spatial settings in the Plato text to each other. This provides a basis for a re-examination of the relationship between philosophy and politics, which Plato's work advocates, and which it actually enacted.

Table of Contents

Preface

Greek, All Too Greek

The Problem of Justice Restated

The Ideal City

From Drama to Discourse

The Space of Discours

Notes

Bibliography

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.