Machiavellis last successor is Montesquieu, whose great work The Spirit of the Laws is analyzed and its secret design exposed for the first time.

Machiavelli creates the modern world of necessities that can be understood and controlled. He invented a world in the modern sense of a whole by itself, not explained by ideas or essences, and not followed by the next world.

The Cave analogy in Book 7 of the Republic admits of no single consistent interpretation. It communicates not one philosophical vision but two. One is developed in the initial narrative, which tells its own compelling story, dropping plenty of hints – varying in directness or mysteriousness – on how it is to be read. The other vision is articulated mostly in the philosophical commentary on the Cave that Plato’s Socrates supplies when he tells his interlocutor Glaucon how to decode it. We should take the commentary as enunciating inter alia a set of instructions not on what the narrative means as originally articulated, but on how it is to be reread as an allegory of the trainee philosopher’s education. The Cave as narrated begins as a moral and political allegory of the condition of ordinary people in the city – in the first instance, the democratic city – and of their need for redemption from it. The Cave as reinterpreted in philosophical commentary is an image of the reorientation of the soul which can be achieved by the practice of mathematics. Consistency of interpretation as between original narrative and subsequent commentary is therefore not mandatory.

Socrates here draws on the cyclical and kinship arguments to further explain nearly every claim made earlier in the defense speech (Chapter 3). He provides an interconnected account of virtue, happiness, moral psychology, reincarnation, and soul–body interaction. He first describes how coming to know the divine will ultimately allow the philosopher’s soul to spend the afterlife with the gods, eternally happy. By contrast, non-philosophers reincarnate because their desire for the body-like pulls them into a new body after death. Understanding this mechanism requires clarifying how Socrates thinks of the impurities in non-philosophers’ souls. After examining this, the chapter turns to how the body deceives the soul into desiring things that are not good for it. Socrates develops the account of true courage and temperance from the exchange passage (69a–e) to explain how the philosopher avoids and resists the body’s insidious effects so that the soul can pursue wisdom and so be eternally happy.

Socrates argues here that the sole pursuit of philosophers is dying and being dead. In doing so, he introduces most of the key topics in the dialogue, including forms, inquiry, the soul, and the philosophical life. Nonetheless, this section of the dialogue is often overlooked, perhaps because it seems simply to assert many of its claims. I argue that we often must wait until later in the dialogue to find the explanation for these claims, as part of the Phaedo’s unfolding structure. Once we take this section seriously, we can appreciate its tight and careful argumentative structure. Moreover, Socrates’ accounts here, in particular his ethical account, are sophisticated theories in their own right. The section also introduces some unusual and important terminology that Socrates uses later in the dialogue, including “auto kath’ auto” (which I argue should be translated “itself through itself”) and terminology for identifying the forms. The chapter ends with a new account of the famous “exchange passage.”

Equity is a chameleonic word, taking its colour from the context in which it is used. Equity refers to the principles, doctrines and remedies applied by Australian courts exercising the jurisdiction of the English Court of Chancery prior to the enactment of judicature legislation which reformed the structure of the court system in the mid-nineteenth century. Equity, in this sense, is intelligible without having to acquire an understanding of legal history, but the understanding will be deeper if that history is known. This chapter identifies some of the landmarks of that history. The final section summarises some of the more common equitable maxims. The student will occasionally encounter them when reading the cases, and should consider their value in applying equitable doctrine to the circumstances of an individual case.

This chapter considers Molière as an icon of French national identity and a celebrated hero. It sketches the trajectory of this national veneration as it evolved over centuries, from the first years after his death, when he was transformed from ordinary scribbler to a writer of discerning common sense and humanitarian empathy. In the century that followed, Enlightenment thinkers elevated Molière to the status of a philosopher; the secularisation of national honour paved the way for Molière’s investiture in the ‘cult of great men’. Authors of the Romantic movement solidified his reputation as a suffering genius while the efforts of historians secured Molière’s status as a French national treasure worthy of archival investigations. The Molière of the twentieth century became a distinctly more earthy presence. He comes to be viewed first and foremost as a theatre-maker, a ‘man of the theatre’, with his plays, his life and the practicalities of his livelihood now defining him as a working man. The efforts of nineteenth-century historians come to fruition in the twentieth century’s definitive art form, film, where Molière comes alive through leaps of imagination that expose contested French views of his importance.

The Romans adaptation of Greek philosophy was illustrated by the Stoics and Epicureans. The Stoics held that humanity is determined by the fates of nature, while the Epicureans believed that happiness came from seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Plato was revived by Plotinus and dominated Roman philosophy during the early years of Christianity. Both the missionary zeal of early Christians and the tranquility of Roman administration rapidly spread Christianity. The teachings of Jesus were bolstered by defenders, who gave Christianity form and content. St. Augustine successfully reinterpreted Platonic thought within Christian theology, and the consequent influence on psychology continued well beyond. With the fall of the Western empire, intellectual life came to a virtual halt, and only the monastic movement preserved remnants of Greek and Roman civilization. The papacy assumed a leading role in spiritual direction and civil administration. The power shift to the East saw the Byzantine Empire assume a distinctive Greek character. The rise of Islam threatened the survival of Christianity in the Middle East and in North Africa. But, at the same time, much of the Greek heritage of scholarship was preserved and extended in the great academic centers of medieval Islam.

Does Plato in the Republic restrict to philosophers alone the possibility of achieving happiness in this life and the next? It is often thought so. But if that were the case, the dialogue would fail on its own terms, in its task of persuading the interlocutors Glaucon and Adeimantus that they should cultivate justice, not (as Thrasymachus argues) injustice. They are not philosophers, nor envisaged as likely to achieve the level of rational understanding that is the precondition of happiness. In truth, however, there is plentiful, if scattered, evidence that an approximation to perfect happiness is available for various categories of people figuring in the Republic who have not attained what the dialogue counts as knowledge, ranging from Socrates himself, to trainee philosophers and warriors, to farmers and craftsmen. The requirement to be satisfied is the habit of respect for the law, not from fear of its punitive powers, but internalised as the way to lead a life of justice.

A discussion of the role of character in Plato, initially focused on Thrasymachus in the Republic, and on arguing that his person is less important to Plato than his view of politics as domination of the weak by the strong. The Socrates of that and other dialogues is certainly one of the most vividly characterised figures in world literature. Nonetheless, when this unique individual speaks of philosophy and the philosopher, he directs our attention away from individuals towards a realm of abstract generalities. Once the magnetism of Socrates has established the legitimacy of philosophy (under that name), Plato has reason to make philosophy independent of his idiosyncratic central figure. Accordingly, in some later writings he relegates Socrates to the margins, and brings on stage a nameless, generic philosopher – a visitor from Elea – to discuss the paradoxes of not-being in the Sophist and political expertise in the Statesman.

In dialogues ranging from the Symposium to the Timaeus, Plato appears to propose that the philosopher’s grasp of the forms may confer immortality upon him.  Whatever can Plato mean in making such a claim?  What does he take immortality to consist in, such that it could constitute a reward for philosophical enlightenment?  And how is this proposal compatible with Plato’s insistence throughout his corpus that all soul, not just philosophical soul, is immortal?  In this chapter, I pursue these questions by applying the distinction between general and earned immortality to the Phaedo and the Symposium.  I argue that, while Plato attributes general immortality to all souls in the Phaedo, he proposes in the Affinity Argument that the philosopher’s soul can achieve earned immortality through contemplating forms.  It is this form of immortality that Plato claims is unavailable to humankind in the flux passage of the Symposium.  At the same time, in the ascent passage, he holds out the possibility – albeit with significant reservations – that the philosopher’s soul may transcend its humanity and achieve earned immortality through its communion with the forms.