CV

ANGELA HUNTER HOBBS M.A., Ph.D. (Cambridge), FRSA

Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy
University of Sheffield

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; Honorary Patron of The Philosophy Foundation; Advisory Board of Plato’s Academy Centre

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Plato’s Republic (A Ladybird Expert Book)
by Angie Hobbs

Part of the ALL-NEW LADYBIRD EXPERT SERIES

- Why do humans form societies and what is needed for them to thrive?
- How can women's potential be actualized?
- How can we protect ourselves from demagogues and tyrants?

IMMERSE yourself in the strikingly relevant questions of Plato's influential dialogue, exploring the age old dilemma: Why should I be just? What is a just society, and how can it be created?

ACCESSIBLE. AUTHORITATIVE. TIMELY.

Written by distinguished philosopher and professor Angie Hobbs, Plato's Republic is the essential introduction to a text that helped shape all Western literature and philosophy.

Plato and the Hero
by Angie Hobbs

Plato and the Hero explores Plato's thinking on courage, manliness and heroism. It examines Plato's developing critique of both the notions and embodiments of manliness prevalent in his culture (particularly those in Homer), and his attempt to redefine them in accordance with his own ethical, psychological and metaphysical principles. It further seeks to locate the discussion within the framework of his general approach to ethics, an approach which focuses on concepts of flourishing and virtue, rather than on consequences or duty. The question of why courage is necessary in the flourishing life in its turn leads to Plato's bid to unify the noble and the beneficial, and I argue that Plato's approach to ethics leads to close structural links between ethical and aesthetic judgements: both kinds of judgement in Plato are concerned with the proper mathematical relations between parts and whole. Nevertheless, this attempted unification still creates tensions between human and divine ideals. The issue of manliness also raises problems of gender: does Plato conceive of the ethical subject as human or male?

Dialogues discussed include the Republic, Laches, Protagoras, Gorgias, Apology, Hippias Minor and Hippias Major, Symposium, Politicus and Laws.