Plato's American Republic : Done out of the original by Douglas Woodruff
QR code
"Plato's American Republic" by Douglas Woodruff is a satirical philosophical dialogue written in the early 20th century. It stages Socrates and his companions debating the character of modern America, skewering its faith in Progress, mass opinion, industrialism, and reformist zeal. In playful Platonic fashion, the work takes aim at cars and commerce, Prohibition, politics, and higher education to question what a good life and a good polity require. The opening of the
work places Socrates in “Athens, 1925,” where Agathon, Lysis, and Phaelon draw him into a comic-earnest inquiry sparked by an American who wants to buy the Parthenon. Agathon recounts Socrates’ disappointing U.S. lecture tour (outshone by Xantippe’s praise of American womanhood), which leads Socrates to dissect America’s worship of numbers and “Progress,” its fixation on automobiles, and the absurdities of parking and speed. The dialogue then widens to the Civil War’s legacy, the dominance of a vast federal machine, and the alliance of manufacturers and preachers (amplified by propaganda) in shaping “public opinion,” treated as a tyrant of souls. Socrates lampoons Prohibition as the product of that alliance (with women’s support), notes how it corrodes respect for law, and contrasts Ellis Island’s “undesirables” with the Statue of Liberty marooned offshore. Turning to education, he attacks swollen universities, fundraising presidents, timid faculties, and the cult of “facts” and experts, and proposes training a female guardian class to reorient the nation’s aims. The section closes with a plan to limit numbers and dethrone the card‑index mentality, all delivered in witty, Plato-like exchanges that mix satire with serious critique. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Download for free
For your e-reader or reading app — Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Calibre etc.
Kindle → Use Send-to-Kindle
Kobo, Nook etc → Transfer via USB
Phone, tablet or computer → Open in a reading app
Other formats & older devices
There may be more files related to this item.
About this eBook
| Author | Woodruff, Douglas, 1897-1978 |
|---|---|
| LoC No. | 26019830 |
| Title | Plato's American Republic : Done out of the original |
| Original Publication | New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1926. |
| Credits | Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 74.7 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | E151: History: America: United States |
| Subject | United States -- Civilization |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 76595 |
| Release Date | Jul 30, 2025 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 421 downloads in the last 30 days. |
Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free!