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![]() ![]() ![]() For our purposes here, however, we will not take up details of this training program. Of special importance, Plato describes the thirty‑year training program for rulers, "philosopher‑kings," in the ideal state, including fifteen years of training in abstract reasoning (at the two higher levels of The Divided Line). ![]() Having arrived at the meaning of justice in the Republic, Plato proceeds to specify in greater detail the education, discipline, and lifestyle appropriate to the rulers and auxiliaries who are guardians of the state. For example, if persons naturally suited to growing peanuts or movie acting would try to rule the state, Plato would regard their attempts as instances of injustice. Accordingly, injustice occurs when members naturally suited to the functions of one class try to take over functions appropriate to another class or when, in personal matters, individuals try to possess or concern themselves with what does not properly belong to them. And Justice consists in each class performing its own proper function in the best interests of the state. Temperance exists in the ideal state when all classes exhibit the discipline necessary for proper submission to rule by the best. Courage resides with the auxiliaries who, with spirit and determination, carry out the directives of the rulers and protect the state. ![]() Wisdom resides with the rulers, who use their knowledge to prudently direct the affairs of the state. Presuming that an ideal state is also a virtuous one, Plato then considers the three classes with respect to wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. ![]() ![]() When they at last reach their objective, a desolate hill called Watership Down, they feel they have found, and earned, a home.īut then their search for mates to help populate their warren leads to an encounter with a repressive rabbit society, and a gripping undercover plot that culminates in a harrowing stand against the ferocious dictator, General Woundwort. With every incident, however, the value of each individual becomes clear to the others, and they coalesce into a unified band. ![]() But few of them have been far from home, and their journey is perilous: They're attacked by rats in a barn, must cross a creek, and are lulled into a false sense of security in a warren whose rabbits turn out to be fed-and harvested-by a farmer. A worldwide bestseller for more than forty years, Watership Down is the compelling tale of a band of wild rabbits struggling to hold onto their place in the. In 1974 he retired from the civil service and published a series of further books, including Shardik, Tales from Watership Down, Maia, The Plague Dogs, and The Girl in a Swing. When Hazel's clairvoyant brother, Fiver, predicts a catastrophe, Hazel gathers other young rabbits willing to flee to establish a new warren of their own. It was eventually awarded both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award for children's fiction for 1972. Charismatic characters, nail-biting action, and an engrossing plot combine to produce a classic. Never mind that the characters in this long and complex but thrilling epic are rabbits-Beatrix Potter, this isn't. A band of young males, relegated to the fringes of society, set out to find a place where they can live free and proud. ![]() ![]() ![]() It was a hit in New York, too, first on the Lower East Side and, eventually, in an abridged English translation, at the Apollo Theatre, where it featured the first lesbian kiss on Broadway. Asch ignored his mentor’s warnings: he found a star in more permissive Berlin to play the father, and the production became a controversial success, touring across Europe. It’s a shtetl tragedy: a Jewish brothel owner buys a Torah to celebrate his daughter’s wedding to a scholar, but, when he learns that his daughter has fallen in love with one of his prostitutes, he casts her and the Torah down into the brothel. When the Yiddish writer Sholem Asch presented his play “God of Vengeance” at a Warsaw salon in 1906, his mentor, I. PHOTOGRAPH BY TAWNI BANNISTER / NYT / REDUX “The purpose of theatre is to bring into public that which is kept offstage,” Vogel said. ![]() |