Recording of a lecture delivered on November 3, 2023, by Kevin Kambo as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Professor Kambo describes his lecture: "In Plato's Republic, Socrates suggests that the best regime is doomed to fail.  This failure is often attributed to inevitable errors in the rulers' eugenic calculations.  I propose that the city's constitution must decline not because the eugenic calculations go wrong, but because the calculations have always been wrong, and this on account of congenital errors in the city's establishment.  In this dramatic arc, from noble founding to destined fall, the reversal perhaps reveals the city to be a tragic figure.  The Republic, then, would not be, as some read it, a prescription for authoritarianism or totalitarianism, but a reflection on political lies, human sacrifice, and the tragedy of politics."

Professor Kambo is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas.