What is justice? How should an individual and a society behave justly? And how do they learn how to do so? These are just some of the core questions explored in The Republic, considered by many to be Plato's most important work. Extraordinarily ambitious, The Republic unfolds as a series of conversations in which participants set out a number of different theories of justice, then imagine how these theories might become reality within the political structure of a city. In examining justice, Plato investigates an enormous range of questions in the areas of ethics, politics, and even the nature of existence itself.