*sighs*

This is the term in which I study the history of political thought (to 1700), and everybody starts with Plato's Republic. Which is happily divided into ten 'books', providing comfortable markers of progress: I've read six! And I'd be reading them a lot faster if I didn't stop to try and understand his metaphysics, since it's not really the main focus of the course. But it is interesting, if you accept that something can be 'interesting' without being 'profound'. It's certainly not profound and is based on bonkers logic which, if Plato was still alive, I'd send him a polite but firm e-mail about. But seeing as I'm about 2356 years too late I'll have to make do with secretly imagining that Plato is actually the living, breathing person I know who still believes in moral absolutes, souls and Forms, and roll my eyes at him or her instead. Yeah... this is entirely sane behaviour

Plato does, however, manage to put in some wonderful little moments of characterisation. He should have written flash fiction instead!

(Just at this moment I can very clearly picture Robert reading this post and despairing at the pointlessness of arts students.)