Abstract
This thesis poses the question, is the Republic (focusing on Books I and V) a work of satire or a sincere work, verging on the utopian? I begin by laying out the basics of the plot and structure of Book I and Book V. In chapter two, I then move to examine a strain of twentieth and twenty-first century thought about the Republic by scholars who adhere to the work of Leo Strauss, a twentieth-century German American political philosopher. I focus primarily on Allan Bloom’s translation of the Republic as well as his accompanying Interpretive Essay, concluding that Straussian method asserts an immutability of human behavior that must interpret the Republic as satire for the work to fit within their general held worldview. Chapter three is an examination of Jo Walton’s 2016 science-fiction and fantasy (SFF) novel, The Just City, which asks the question “What if a group of time travelers actually attempted to create the Republic?” I read Walton’s work through a comparative lens with Strauss and his associates work, as well as alongside Plato’s own writing. I conclude that the Republic is far more beholden to individual human interpretation than most Platonists would like to believe. I also find that these differences in interpretation cause a fundamental crisis of thought: how much of Plato’s work actually contains immutable truth that isn’t subject to human interpretation.