ABSTRACT
Metaphysics, very generally considered, asks: What things are real, and what gives them their reality? Epistemology asks: What can we know, and how do we know it? The two questions may be kept distinct from one another, but in the Republic Plato interweaves questions of reality with questions of knowledge, on the grounds that the kind of reality or being an object has corresponds to the mode of cognition one can have of it. This grand unification of all philosophical inquiries is typical of the middle section of the Republic, and it is one reason for the dialogue’s philosophical importance, though the ambitiousness of this project also produces the Republic’s greatest difficulties.
