Alain Badiou's translation of Plato's Republic is both a work of literary transformation and, implicitly, a powerful and original comme ntary on Plato. Badiou stands virtually alone among major, modern-day philosophers as a self-proclaimed Platonist, the champion of what he calls a "Platonism of the multiple" rejecting anti-Platonism and most contemporary accounts of the thinker. For Badiou, Plato is the first philosopher precisely because he established philosophy's foundation in mathematics and its antagonistic relationship to sophistry. He is the predominant warrior in the eternal battle of philosophy against sophistry, of truth against opinion, and is the progenitor of the living idea of communism. It is also from Plato that Badiou derives his organization of truth into four fields, or sets, of "procedures:" science, politics, art, and love. Some readers may be scandalized by Badiou's liberties in this translation:his systematic modifications of Greek terms, occasional elimination of entire passages, pervasive anachronistic references (such as AIDS, IPods, and Euros), and other conspicuous transformations. His language (and Susan Spitzer's translation) is dramatically vivid, colloquial,colorful, and at times raw and gritty. Socrates and his interlocutors speak like Europeans or Americans of today or the recent past, and their cultural references are both classical and contemporary. Nevertheless, Badiou's remains faithful to the spirit of Plato's text -- and, above all, to Plato's ideas.

阿兰•巴迪欧（1937- ）,法国哲学家,被誉为黑格尔以来最具思辨性的思想家,自卢克莱修以来最具唯物主义精神的哲学家,也是目前在世的最有影响力的激进知识分子。其代表作有《存在与事件》、《世纪》、《第一哲学宣言》、《第二哲学宣言》等。

译者简介：

曹丹红,女,1980年11月生,浙江宁波人。2008年毕业于南京大学外国语学院,获文学博士学位,现为南京大学外国语学院法语系副教授,研究方向为翻译理论与实践,已在国内核心期刊上发表翻译研究和法国文学研究论文十余篇,独立或合作翻译出版了《东方之旅》、《解读杜拉斯》、《批评与临床》、《日常生活颂歌》等多部法国重要文学与社科类著作,其中与刘云虹合译的《批评与临床》（南京大学版）获得2014年江苏省第十三届哲学社会科学优秀成果奖二等奖。

胡蝶,女,1989年10月生,江苏连云港人。2012年毕业于南京大学外国语学院法语系,同年被保送至南京大学外国语学院法语系攻读翻译硕士,专业为法语笔译。译有《那没有伴着我的一个》（布朗肖著）、《拉维斯的〈法国史〉》（皮埃尔•诺拉著）等。