This class will be a close reading of Plato’s masterpiece, the Republic. We will examine the numerous issues that come up in the text, including the conflict between philosophy and rhetoric; the relationship between philosophy, poetry, and politics; the importance of mathematics; and Platonic dialectics. We will encounter numerous famous passages, especially the Allegory of the Cave, the Divided Line, and the Myth of Er. We will engage these things from a number of angles, from logical to historico-political to literary analysis. To this end, Debra Nails’s excellent resource, The People of Plato, will always be at hand to help ground us in who exactly the interlocutors are as well as what references are made.