Background
Benjamin Jowett was born on April 15, 1817, at Camberwell, London, United Kingdom. The third of nine children.
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Compiled by Apex Ivy, a leading company in assisting students into America's top colleges and universities. Plato's The Republic, translated by Benjamin Jowett is the most authoritative English copy of Plato's greatest work. Dive into the full official translation and discover: In his search to find wisdom and truth, Plato embarks on a mission to engage the wisest men of his time, Athenian or foreign, into Socratic dialogue. The journey shapes Plato's understanding of Justice, and the Order and Character of the individual and state. From stories of existing realms of Plato's time to cities conjured from the imagination of Plato and his counterparts to perhaps one of humanity's original accounts of utopia via a fictional city ruled by a philosopher king, stories that fill Plato's '10 Books' that have set the foundations of Western philosophy and political theory. Today, Plato's The Republic is the most widely read text by students of the world's top universities, including the Ivy League, and helps set the tone of ethics and philosophy that guides the continued development of Western Civilization. Benjamin Jowett, noted to be the most authoritative scholar of Plato's works, spent a decade translating Plato's Dialogues. Commonly called today as The Republic, Jowett provides a full translation of Plato's greatest and most influential work. Benjamin Jowett was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford, a chair that was established in 1514 by Henry VIII, King of England. The Regius professorship is representative of Jowett's influential in Classical Studies as there is only one appointment for Greek. Enjoy Benjamin Jowett's esteemed full translation of Plato's Republic and dive into the mind, wisdom, and adventures of a man who sits among history's greatest philosophers.
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(The Allegory of the Cave, or Plato's Cave, was presented ...)
The Allegory of the Cave, or Plato's Cave, was presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic (514a520a) to compare "the effect of education (???????) and the lack of it on our nature". It is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates, narrated by the latter. The allegory is presented after the analogy of the sun (508b509c) and the analogy of the divided line (509d511e). All three are characterized in relation to dialectic at the end of Books VII and VIII (531d534e). Plato has Socrates describe a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners' reality. Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not reality at all, for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the manufactured reality that is the shadows seen by the prisoners. The inmates of this place do not even desire to leave their prison; for they know no better life. The prisoners manage to break their bonds one day, and discover that their reality was not what they thought it was. They discovered the sun, which Plato uses as an analogy for the fire that man cannot see behind. Like the fire that cast light on the walls of the cave, the human condition is forever bound to the impressions that are received through the senses. Even if these interpretations (or, in Kantian terminology, intuitions) are an absurd misrepresentation of reality, we cannot somehow break free from the bonds of our human condition - we cannot free ourselves from phenomenal state just as the prisoners could not free themselves from their chains. If, however, we were to miraculously escape our bondage, we would find a world that we could not understand - the sun is incomprehensible for someone who has never seen it. In other words, we would encounter another "realm", a place incomprehensible because, theoretically, it is the source of a higher reality than the one we have always known; it is the realm of pure Form, pure fact. Socrates remarks that this allegory can be paired with previous writings, namely the analogy of the sun and the analogy of the divided line.
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(The Plato Complete Work Book Contains: Critias Charmides ...)
The Plato Complete Work Book Contains: Critias Charmides Laches Lysis The Republic Eryxias Theaetetus Timaeus Meno Alcibiades I Alcibiades II Cratylus Protagoras Statesman Gorgias Ion Menexenus Lesser Hippias Phaedrus Apology Euthydemus Phaedo Philebus Laws Parmenides Symposium Sophist Euthyphro
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Benjamin Jowett was born on April 15, 1817, at Camberwell, London, United Kingdom. The third of nine children.
He was educated at St. Paul's School and Balliol College. In 1838, while still an undergraduate, he achieved the unusual distinction of being elected a fellow of Balliol. He received his bachelor's degree in 1839 and his master's in 1842.
In 1842 he was ordained a deacon in the Anglican Church and appointed to a tutorship in Balliol college. In 1845 he became a priest.
In his summers Jowett traveled on the Continent, making the acquaintance of leading German scholars. At that time he was fascinated with the philosophy of Hegel. He was especially attracted by Hegel's published lectures on the history of philosophy. By 1848 Jowett had also become a student of Plato and was lecturing on political economy. In the 1850 he was engaged in university reform, favoring the entry of more poor students, and in the reform of the Indian civil service.
However, Jowett's chief interest during this period was theology. His commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul (1855) is regarded as a landmark in the history of liberal theology. Despite the condemnations of conservative churchmen, Jowett was appointed in the same year to the prestigious regius professorship of Greek at Oxford. Jowett began a series of lectures on Plato's Republic and on the fragments of the early Greek philosophers, the tremendous success of which greatly stimulated Greek scholarship throughout and beyond the university.
In the following 10 years Jowett fell under even greater suspicion for his heterodox theological views. From 1860 to 1870 Jowett accomplished a prodigious amount of work. He sponsored various administrative reforms in the university which relaxed the harsh student regulations, inspired reform of curriculums, and added to the physical plant. He was also influential in introducing reforms of elementary and secondary education throughout England, and in his own administration as master of Balliol he stressed teaching above research.
In 1871 he published his famous four-volume translation of the Dialogues of Plato; a revised edition of five volumes appeared in 1875. He also published a two-volume translation of Thucydides's History (1881). Jowett was vice-chancellor of Oxford from 1882 to 1886.
Despite administrative preoccupations, he put out a translation of Aristotle's Politics with notes, but without the introductory essays which he did not live to finish. The strain of this enormous amount of work led to an illness in 1887 from which he never fully recovered. Neverthless, he was able to put out a third revised edition of Plato in 1892 and to continue work on an edition of the Republic, upon which he had then labored 30 years and which was published posthumously. Jowett died on Oct. 1, 1893.
(The Plato Complete Work Book Contains: Critias Charmides ...)
(The Allegory of the Cave, or Plato's Cave, was presented ...)
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The publication of his essay "On the Interpretation of Scripture" caused an uproar in the Anglican Church and led to Jowett's civil trial for heresy, with the prosecution eventually being dropped.
He argues that since St. Paul's thoughts transcended his power of expression, his meaning must be determined by the context rather than from a strictly grammatical and syntactical analysis of the words, a position which offended not only the more conservative theologians but also the leading philologists of the age.
Jowett's view of Plato's thought, which is one of the leading interpretations, was that no unified or comprehensive systematic philosophy exists in Plato, that his view changes in different dialogues, and that in some no definite conclusion is ever reached. It was therefore better to treat each dialogue separately.
Quotes from others about the person
As has been said of another thinker, he was "one of those deeply religious men who, when crude theological notions are being revised and called in question seek to put new life into theology by wider and more humane ideas. "
He never married.