SOURCE: Annas, Julia. Introduction to An Introduction to Plato's Republic, pp. 1-15. Oxford, Eng.: Clarendon Press, 1981.

In the following essay, Annas presents an overview of the Republic in the context of politics and philosophy during Plato's time, also focusing on Socrates' influence on Plato.

The Republic is Plato's best-known work, and there are ways in which it is too famous for its own good. It gives us systematic answers to a whole range of questions about morality, politics, knowledge, and metaphysics, and the book is written in a way designed to sweep the reader along and give a general grasp of the way Plato sees all these questions as hanging together. So our reaction to it, at least on first reading, is likely to be over-simplified; we may feel inclined to accept or reject it as a whole, rather than coming to grips with particular arguments.

But the...