Book Summary 45 — The Republic

This time I really wanted to read a book which is very, very different to my usual entrepreneurship or behavioural psychology book.

‘The Republic’ is a book I keep hear people mentioning, usually because they read it in school or for some social/political studies — so I tackled that. It really felt like tackling that book, as it’s a hard and long read with very outdated expressions and words, as it’s translated from Ancient Greek.

My Key Insights

• How to ask questions
  My key learning was an insight into logical arguments by solely asking questions. It’s apparently Socrates’ classic way of answering questions with questions and letting the audience work out the answer themselves.

The Content

Content-wise the book is an interesting insight into ancient greek thinking, as Socrates leads his audience down the path to find out what true justice is. Overall, his insights are very questionable (but to a certain extent logical), especially from a moral perspective.

They include:

• Taking away the kids from their parents so nobody knows, whose child is whose
• Central breeding authority and negligence of “not perfect” kids
• Everyone having one job/task the whole life (being a baker/guardian/horseman/seaman)
• All stories/myths about gods with questionable intent should be banished as they are lies, as gods can’t be unjust/evil