ancient

Cornford translates the meaning of Plato's argument, the language is clear and modern and conveys all the crucial material in the text. Allen Bloom's translation in contrast is literal, pedantic, and almost meaningless; it reads like a satire of the founding work of western thought.
Having read Republic in Greek, I can testify that the grammer, worldview, and conceptual universe of Greek is too different from English to allow literal translation--I made the mistake of assigning Bloom in my theory class and the students went out and bought other translations!!. Cornford is a brilliant expositor of Plato'
s metaphysics and epistemology and knows Plato's thoughtworld intimately--there is no translation that compares to the quality of his work. It is also a good read!

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This translation of Cornford is the best one that I've found for clarity and understanding. The translation itself is not exact or literal, as I find strict adhesure to the literal as corrupting the clarity with exactitude and awkwardness. No doubt if you rather a more exact translation then you must look perhaps to Allan Bloom's, which is totally a good one, and much more so it's the 100+ page interpretive essay of Bloom that makes his book totally worthwhile.

Cornford further divides "The Republic of Plato" into 6 Parts with multiple chapters in each part! And to top if off with an introduction in italics before each new topic that he has divided into separate chapters. This is extremely helpful to piece all the thoughts together and I find it a hell of lot more helpful then the traditional 10 books/divisions found in Bloom's translation, and most others.

You can't help but admire Socrates how he reasons so well how truth is always a paradox and not one-sided, as in that of justice verses injustice, how Thrasymachus argues the stronger are the ones who control and benefit, While Socrates argues the weaker are that ones that benefit from requiring the need of the stronger's art of practicing justice in order to receive the injustice he dominates from the weaker. It's incredible paradox and argument. Of course when the stronger becomes less strong and the weaker less weak a balance of justice occurs but not with radical equalitarian methods of communism or totalitarianism, but rather with wise Philosopher Kings and the Guardians that protect the society.

Socrates government has some totalitarian attributes, as in the sharing children and censorship, while other aspects, such as the training of the Guardians, the Philosopher kings, and most assuredly, his analysis of comparison of oligarchy, democracy, timocracy and despotism, including the nature of individuals in such systems makes this highly interesting material. And none of Socrates words in Plato's writing and Cornford's translation are obscure and overly abstract. There is no Immanuel Kant language, or Hegel, here.

What a great thinker Socrates was. It may be more accurate to say what a great thinker Plato was in his description of Socrates. His continual quest for truth, virtue and in the case of Plato's Republic, justice. At first his idea of justice is very noble and always intriguing, thought provoking and honorable. However, what begins as an intellectual idea of what justice is, ends up being a logically formed government that intellectually, or scientifically, measures, analyzes and controls the creativity of man, a government that epitomizes what centuries later labeled as the Enlightenment, which demystified the artistic man into a pragmatic and positivist being. While democracy based on a rational system of "rights" developed from the likes of Hobbes, Locke and Mill, what ultimately resulted was a Marxist censorship government of control that emulated itself much in line with this Plato's Republic, the extreme rule built on scientific and rational means of communism and totalitarianism.

It becomes utterly frightening to hear Socrates speak so eloquently and intelligibly on what reads as good common sense of a cities justice, training, rule and protection that history has revealed as governmental experiments that were tried, tested, enforced, controlled and in turn, destroyed the chaotic, non-rational elements of creative value producing ability in human society. The results of such totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, all built on the seemingly rational and coherent science of common rule and radical equalitarianism have proved themselves horrendously disastrous.

Some examples are: the youth should be trained as soldiers for the city. All scripture, the stories of Homer and the gods, must be censored and altered to shine only a positive or molded light that conforms to the leaders decision. The leaders, while only those of older age would be qualified, would receive a life carefully censored, trained and observed from youth, and would supposedly then become completely wise as philosophers kings, and in this way cannot bring injustice to their rulership. In addition, all music, poetry, art is censored. People who need lifetime medical attention should not receive such and die, (their much better off this way!) as they are nonproductive to the growth and science of what constitutes an ideal and perfect city.

Socrates/Plato's descriptions of the two world view and the allegory of the cave are in themselves absolute masterpieces and have literally shaped Western civilization as we know it and are truly behind the majority of ideas and teachings we currently believe and are raised in.

Ultimately, I found Socrates argument on Philosophy verses Poetry amazing and understand why Nietzsche completely rebelled and attacked Socrates. I then venture to the East as in the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra and Osho's commentary on such, as in some of Krishnamurti, Buddha, Krishna, Mahriavara and the idea of something beyond the mind/Apollonian/head rationalism of Socrates and the heart/Dionysus/emotion irrationalism of Nietzsche. To Socrates the mind and reason are superior to the emotions and feelings. To Nietzsche it is in the realm of emotions, in the passions of irrationalism and the art of creativity where the superior strength of man exists. To the East it is neither, but the mind and heart act as instruments of something of a Higher realm, the Consciousness or the Self, which exists outside the mind. Here I will agree with all three modes of thought: that fundamentalism and one-sided truths are bogus and for lower and ignorant thinkers. However, it was Socrates who failed to understand the depth of significance in the irrational, while Nietzsche recognized the foolishness and stupidity of biblical literalism and morality codes based on fundamental reasoning.

The irrational is what molds the rational, while the rational chisels it's form. It's the passiveness of Yin and the tension of Yang, which when let go and surrender are simply the Tao.

The ending of the Republic is worth the read. It is here Socrates supports immortality of the soul and reincarnation and it's amazing how you can see this is the precursor of the bible. The last book or account is symbolic and mythological on the pattern of the universe, the same as the book of Revelation is in the bible with its judgments of the just and unjust and depiction of a heavenly Jerusalem. Socrates also speaks of the winner of a race receiving the crown and the idea of Tartarus, as repeated in the letters of St. Paul. The men who wrote the bible and decided it's cannon are no doubt imitating the Republic of Plato, not to mention Dante and others who were heavily influenced by this book. And what a book it is!

The seeds of Marxism were sown here and, hence, socialism and all its virulent forms, including communism, fascism, and nazism.