Before discussing how Republic shook the world, we might ask whether any book shakes the world. Certainly the world changes, and many of its important changes can be plotted using the rise and fall of those ideas by which people live: ideas like freedom and democracy, or justice, citizenship or knowledge. Religions shake the world, and in practice a religion is just a fossilized philosophy a philosophy with the questioning spirit suppressed. Still, there are people who would say that even if changes in the world can be charted through ideas, such as those of Republic, Plato will not have been responsible for the changes themselves.
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