Justice in Plato’s Republic: The Lessons of Book 1 was long in the making. Over many years I have had the privilege of studying and discussing the first book of Plato’s Republic with students, with scholars at conferences and via correspondence, and, most productively, with my colleagues in Lehigh University’s Philosophy department in our fall 2014 faculty seminar. What emerged undeniably from these engagements were Plato’s remarkable insights into human nature as well as his keen and profound understanding of justice, both personal and political. He recognized the crucial importance of justice in shared human life and in governance, as well as its nobility and goodness in itself. These features of justice are revealed, as I argue, in Rep. 1, where we are shown what justice is – both as the technē of the justice-expert or ruler whose job it is to care for “the weaker” and in the lay just person who respects the boundary between what is his and what belongs to another, and neither harms nor wishes to harm anyone.
In writing this book, I consulted a wide variety of translations, old and new, literal and liberal. I refer to them throughout the book; all are listed in the References. I relied most heavily on Allan Bloom’s Reference Bloom1968 translation, modifying it only sparingly. The Greek text cited is the Oxford Slings edition, published in 2003.
I wish to acknowledge and express my appreciation for the support I received – and continued to receive even after retirement – from Lehigh University, where I taught, and learned, for thirty years. My university always encouraged and supported my research, granting me sabbaticals, other research leaves, and several Faculty Research Grants. In 1998 I was appointed to the Clara H. Stewardson chair, which I held from 1998 until my retirement in 2021. A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend in 2020 was instrumental in getting this project off the ground; a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in 2021 enabled me to take it nearly to completion.
I am grateful, too, to my friends and colleagues for their “critical” support, and to my husband, Sam Weiss, my constant companion for fifty years.
