Do you need help understanding the great books of philosophy? In his podcasts, Professor Laurence Houlgate reads and discusses the classic works of Plato, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and David Hume. His short readings are based on his acclaimed Smart Student's Guides to Philosophical Classics series (learn more at www.houlgatebooks.com). The episodes begin with the dialogues of Plato and will continue week by week through each chapter of Understanding Plato. For...
We have come to the end of Plato's Republic and the end of the podcast. In the final episode, Socrates satisfies Glaucon's challenge to show that a just state is always preferable to an unjust state and being a just person is always better than being unjust. He has previously described the just...
Published 11/23/21
Plato extends his analogy between the constitution of the city-state and the soul of the individual by presenting a theory about how the constitutions slowly devolve from the ideal (kingship or aristocracy) to the most imperfect (tyranny) and how this is mirrored by the slow degradation of the soul.
Published 11/16/21