Historian and philologist Brendan Cook joins Scott Ferguson for this special 3-part Superstructure in which they examine a keystone of the Western philosophical tradition: Plato’s Republic. In Part 1 of their discussion, Brendan and Scott set up a critical consideration of the influential text’s fraught metaphysical commitments and political implications by situating The Republic within Fourth-Century (BCE) Athenian Democracy and teasing out its complex dialogical approach to the question of justice.