Averroes on Plato's "Republic"

Ralph Lerner is the Benjamin Franklin Professor Emeritus in the College, and Professor Emeritus in the Committee on Social Thought, at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, including Revolutions Revisited: Two Faces of the Politics of Enlightenment and Maimonides' Empire of Light: Popular Enlightenment in an Age of Belief.

• PrefaceIntroductionAbbreviations and SymbolsTHE TEXTThe First TreatiseThe Second TreatiseThe Third TreatiseAPPENDIX ITranslator's ColophonCopyist's ColophonAPPENDIX IINotes to the Hebrew TextAPPENDIX IIIShort Titles and Editions CitedGlossaryIndex

Because of the importance of Averroes (as a Muslim he is significant for both Platonic and Islamic thought), it is good to have Lerner's new and thoughtful interpretation, with lucid introduction, three helpful appendixes, glossary, and index.(Library Journal) It is interesting to note that Plato's tenets were considered profitable also by Averroes, whose world was defined and governed by the Koran.(The Classical Outlook) This is a fine translation of a very difficult and important text, lost in its Arabic original but preserved in the awkward fourteenth-century Hebrew translation of Judah ben Samuel. Even in this summary form, the Republic is one of the exceedingly few works of the Platonic corpus to surface in Islamic philosophy, and this paraphrase is an excellent example of Averroes' technique of doing philosophy in commentary form.(Journal of Near Eastern Studies)