The Just City (Thessaly, #1)

by Jo Walton

We cannot change what has happened. We go on from where we stand. Not even Necessity knows all ends.

I read the Symposium and the Protagoras, and then I began the Republic.

The Republic is about Plato’s ideas of justice—not in terms of criminal law, but rather how to maximize happiness by living a life that is just both internally and externally. He talks about both a city and a soul, comparing the two, setting out his idea of both human nature and how people should live, with the soul a microcosm of the city.

balanced the three parts of human nature: reason, passion, and appetites. By arranging the city justly, it would also maximize justic...

Then, in Book Five, I found the passage where he talks about the education of women, indeed about the equality of women. I read it over and over again. I could hardly believe it. Plato would have allowed me into the conversation from which my sex excluded me.