Why you should read Plato’s Republic

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Plato wrote The Republic around 375 BC, making it 2,400 years old. Yet it has continued to reverberate throughout the entire subsequent history of Western philosophy. Any serious philosopher since has had to reference their ideas to the framework Plato originally set down in ancient Greece.

The Republic is the best known of Plato’s Socratic dialogues. In one sense, it can be thought of as a diatribe against Athenian democracy. It was this democracy that Plato blamed for the death of his friend and mentor Socrates. But it was also this same city, Athens, that allowed Plato to prosper.

What does Plato’s philosophy still have to say to us about the questions we face today? Have we yet managed to find our way out of Plato’s ‘cave’ or are we still flailing about in ignorance in the dark?

SPEAKERS Dennis Hayes founder and director, Academics For Academic Freedom (AFAF); author, The Death of Academic Freedom? Free speech and censorship

David Perks retired head teacher

CHAIR Gareth Sturdy education and science writer; co-organiser, AoI Education Forum