The Republic is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 375BC, concerning justice, the order and nature of the just city state and the just man. It is Plato’s best-known work and has proven to be one of the world’s most influential works of philosophy and political theory.
In the dialogue, Socrates talks with various Athenians and foreigners about the meaning of justice and whether the just man is happier than the unjust man. They consider the natures of existing regimes and then propose a series of different, hypothetical cities in comparison, culminating in Kallipolis, a utopian city state ruled by a philosopher king.