The Republic / Plato

From Allan Bloom’s interpretive essay:

“The Republic shows us why Socrates was accused and why there was good reason to accuse him. Not only does he tell us about the good regime, but we see his effect on the young men he was said to have corrupted. Socrates, in leading them to a justice which is not Athenian, or even Greek, but is rather human, precisely because it is rational, shows the way to the truth about political things and develops the extremely complex relationship of that truth to civil society. These questions are most relevant to modern man, although they are perhaps harder for him to understand than for men of any previous generation. They are relevant to him because he admits his need for “values” and because the progress of publicly useful science now threatens him with destruction; they are harder for him to understand because he has been taught that “values” cannot be established by reason and that science is simply salutary for society.”