Is the Republic a dialogue on moral psychology, on politics, or on metaphysics? In this course we will read the dialogue against the background of fifth and fourth centuries BCE debates on justice, pleonexia, courage, and on tyranny and Athens’ imperialism in order to fully appraise its political dimension. We will focus on Plato’s redefinition of virtues and its connection to his conception of the nature of the soul, in order to grasp how the dialogue’s political intervention is inseparable from the elaboration of a new moral psychology. Finally, we will discuss the status of philosophy and the theory of Forms, in order to understand the inner connection between Plato’s moral psychology and his metaphysics.