Plato's Republic

It is the first work in the history of Western political philosophy and, arguably, the most influential—so influential that the entire European philosophical tradition has been described as being nothing more than a "series of footnotes" to its author. Yet Plato's Republic, more than 2,000 years after its appearance, and in spite of the many provocative directions those footnotes have taken, still remains astonishingly relevant in its own right.