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Archive: Plato's Republic

Misha Glenny delves in to the In Our Time archive to select ten episodes for listeners to revisit. His sixth choice is Plato's Republic, an episode first released in June 2017. Is it always better to be just than unjust? That is the central question of Plato's Republic, written in c380BC. Plato applied this question both to the individual and the city-state, considering earlier and current forms of government in Athens and potential forms, in which the ideal city might be ruled by philosophers. The Republic is arguably Plato's best known and greatest work, a dialogue between Socrates and his companions, featuring the allegory of the cave and ideas about immortality of the soul, the value of poetry to society, and democracy's vulnerability to a clever demagogue seeking tyranny. With Angie Hobbs Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield MM McCabe Professor of Ancient Philosophy Emerita at King's College London and James Warren Fellow of Corpus Christi College and a Reader in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic (Oxford University Press, 1998) Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain, Plato and the Divided Self (Cambridge University Press, 2012) G. R. F. Ferrari (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Angela Hobbs, Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good (Cambridge University Press, 2000) Angela Hobbs, Plato's Republic (Ladybird Expert Book, to be published 2018) Thomas More (trans. Dominic Baker-Smith), Utopia 1516 (Penguin, 2012) Grethe B. Peterson (ed.), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values: 18 (University of Utah Press, 1997), especially ‘Culture and Society in Plato’s Republic’ by Myles Burnyeat Gerald A. Press (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Plato (Bloomsbury, 2012) Gerasimos Santas (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Plato's Republic (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006) Malcolm Schofield, Plato (Oxford University Press, 2006) In Our Time is a BBC Studios production Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is ess…

J. Pillay Education research · MEd · · In Our Time

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Pillay, J. [@jpillay]. (2026, September 10). Archive: Plato's Republic [Audio podcast episode]. In In Our Time. CIT.ED. https://cit.education/p/78259feb-d556-4b06-aad6-0b4a084b9af9

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Pillay, J. [@jpillay] (2026) ‘Archive: Plato's Republic’, In Our Time [Podcast]. CIT.ED, 10 September. Available at: https://cit.education/p/78259feb-d556-4b06-aad6-0b4a084b9af9 (Accessed: 3 November 2026).

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Pillay, J. [@jpillay]. “Archive: Plato's Republic.” In Our Time, CIT.ED, 10 Sept. 2026, cit.education/p/78259feb-d556-4b06-aad6-0b4a084b9af9.

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Pillay, J. (@jpillay). 2026. “Archive: Plato's Republic.” In Our Time. CIT.ED podcast episode, September 10, 2026. https://cit.education/p/78259feb-d556-4b06-aad6-0b4a084b9af9.

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Pillay J. Archive: Plato's Republic [podcast episode on the Internet]. In Our Time. CIT.ED; 2026 Sep 10 [cited 2026 Nov 3]. Available from: https://cit.education/p/78259feb-d556-4b06-aad6-0b4a084b9af9

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