Dialogues of Plato
Benjamin Jowett's translation (1871; 4th edition 1892) of Plato's complete dialogues — the standard English version through the early 20th century.
Source context· Greco-Christian stream · Greco-Latin cultural age
- Stream
- Greco-Christian
- Cultural age
- Greco-Latin (4th post-Atlantean cultural age)
- Composed
- c. 380 BCE
- 1Apology (the Death of Socrates) — Apology — Socrates's defence speech
Socrates's defence at his trial in 399 BC. The charge: corrupting the youth and impiety. The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates refuses to escape sentence, accepts the death penalty. The foundation-text of Western philosophy's image of itself as a way of life capable of dying for the truth.
16,107 words - 2Crito — Crito — should one disobey unjust laws?
Socrates in prison awaiting execution. Crito proposes escape; Socrates argues against. The famous personification of the Laws of Athens speaking in their own voice: the citizen who has accepted the city's benefits cannot now disown her judgments. The classic Western statement of the obligation to obey law.
5,361 words - 3Charmides, or Temperance — Charmides — what is sōphrosynē (temperance)?
An early dialogue. Socrates returns from the campaign at Potidaea; encounters the young Charmides; the inquiry into sōphrosynē (self-restraint, temperance, sound-mindedness). Through several proposed definitions to aporetic close. The Socratic discipline of definition-pursuit established.
10,626 words - 4Laches or Courage — Laches — what is courage?
The generals Laches and Nicias are asked about the education of two young men; the discussion turns to courage (andreia). Standard Socratic definitional pursuit; courage as knowledge of what to fear and dare; the difficulty of distinguishing this kind of knowledge from wisdom in general.
10,266 words - 5Lysis, or Friendship — Lysis — what is friendship?
Socrates meets the boy Lysis and his friend Menexenus at a wrestling school. The inquiry into philia (friendship). Through several proposed definitions to aporia. One of the few sustained Platonic treatments of friendship as such, propaedeutic to the deeper erōs doctrine of the Symposium.
9,157 words - 6Euthyphro — Euthyphro — what is piety? — and the dilemma
On the day Socrates goes to file his case against his accusers, he meets Euthyphro on the way to prosecute his own father. The inquiry into to hosion (piety). The famous Euthyphro Dilemma: Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because it is loved by the gods?
6,780 words - 7Ion — Ion — the rhapsode and the divine madness of poetry
The rhapsode Ion has just won a contest reciting Homer. Socrates probes whether Ion's skill is properly technē (art) or theia mania (divine inspiration). The doctrine: the poet is moved by divine madness, not by skill; the rhapsode by inspiration from the poet; the audience from the rhapsode.
5,175 words - 8Gorgias — Gorgias — rhetoric versus philosophy; it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong
Long, dramatic dialogue. Three opponents successively: Gorgias (mild), Polus (harder), Callicles (the philosophical opposition incarnate). Socrates's startling theses: rhetoric is mere flattery; the tyrant is the most miserable of men; it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. Closes with the famous afterlife-myth.
35,697 words - 9Protagoras — Protagoras — can virtue be taught?
Socrates against the great Sophist. The question whether virtue can be taught (Protagoras claims it can; Socrates probes); the unity of the virtues (Socrates argues for; Protagoras resists); the famous discussion of the measurement of pleasures and no one does wrong willingly. One of Plato's liveliest dramatic compositions.
22,867 words - 10Meno — Meno — the doctrine of recollection (anamnesis)
Famous for two doctrinal innovations. The paradox of inquiry (how can you seek what you do not know? — if you know it, why seek; if not, how recognise it?); the doctrine of recollection (all learning is recollection of what the soul knew before birth); demonstrated with the slave-boy's geometrical insight.
12,746 words - 11Euthydemus — Euthydemus — comic sophistical dialectic
Socrates encounters the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, masters of sophistical eristic. Comic exchange of paradoxical arguments and Socratic responses. The dialogue's serious core: the contrast between genuine dialectic (Socrates) and mere verbal trickery (the sophists).
15,590 words - 12Cratylus — Cratylus — the correctness of names
On the philosophy of language. Hermogenes argues names are merely conventional; Cratylus argues they are naturally correct. Socrates mediates: there is some naturalness to names (etymological signification, sound-symbolism) but also conventional element. The most sustained ancient philosophical treatment of language.
23,908 words - 13Phaedo — Phaedo — the death of Socrates; the soul's immortality
The dialogue of Socrates's last day. The four arguments for the soul's immortality (cyclical, recollection, affinity, doctrine of forms as essences). The closing scene: Socrates drinks the hemlock, says his last words about the cock owed to Asclepius, dies among his friends. The classic Platonic statement of the immortality of the soul.
27,155 words - 14Phaedrus — Phaedrus — love, rhetoric, the chariot of the soul
Socrates and Phaedrus walking outside Athens. Three speeches on love (the conventional, Socrates's first, Socrates's palinode); the famous chariot of the soul image (the soul as charioteer with two horses, one obedient, one unruly); critique of writing (the famous invention of writing myth of Theuth and Thamus).
22,934 words - 15Symposium — Symposium — the speeches on Eros; the ladder of love
The famous drinking-party. Six speeches on love (Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates) culminating in Socrates's report of Diotima's teaching — the ladder of love ascending from a single beautiful body to the form of Beauty itself. Then Alcibiades bursts in. The greatest of Plato's love-dialogues.
22,043 words - 16The Republic — The Republic — justice; the ideal city; the philosopher-king
The longest and most influential of the dialogues. Ten books on justice — its analogy in the structure of the soul and of the just city; the philosopher-king; the three classes; the noble lie; the analogy of the divided line; the allegory of the cave; the doctrine of the form of the Good. The crown of Plato's middle period.
128 words - 17Theaetetus — Theaetetus — what is knowledge?
Socrates and the young Theaetetus on the question what is knowledge? Three proposed definitions: knowledge as perception (refuted with the Protagoras measure discussion); knowledge as true belief (refuted); knowledge as true belief with an account (left aporetic). The major Platonic engagement with epistemology.
31,189 words - 18Parmenides — Parmenides — the Third Man; the gymnastic of hypotheses
The famous late dialogue. The young Socrates is interrogated by the aged Parmenides about his theory of forms; severe critique of the forms, including the Third Man Argument. Then Parmenides demonstrates dialectical method on the hypothesis that the One is. Plato's most rigorous self-critique.
18,873 words - 19Sophist — Sophist — the Eleatic Stranger; not-being
First of the late critical dialogues. The Eleatic Stranger replaces Socrates as the dialectician. The hunt for the sophist by repeated division; the great metaphysical core: the rehabilitation of not-being as difference; the parricide of Parmenides through the demonstration that not-being in some sense is.
22,034 words - 20Statesman — Statesman — the Eleatic Stranger on rulership
Continuation of the Sophist. The Eleatic Stranger turns to the statesman. The art of weaving the courageous and the temperate dispositions in the citizens; the contrast between rule by law and rule by knowledge; the seven possible constitutions ranked. Late-Platonic political theory.
23,403 words - 21Philebus — Philebus — pleasure and the good life
The good life as the mixed life of pleasure and intelligence. The classification of pleasures (true vs false; pure vs mixed); the fivefold ranking of goods that closes the dialogue (measure, beauty, intelligence, true pleasures, mere relief). One of Plato's most subtle ethical investigations.
23,310 words - 22Timaeus — Timaeus — the cosmogony; the Demiurge
Plato's cosmological dialogue and the most read of his works through late antiquity and the medieval West (in Calcidius's Latin). The Demiurge fashioning the cosmos by reference to the eternal forms; the receptacle (chōra); the world-soul; the four elements arranged in geometrical solids. The cosmological foundation of all later Platonic tradition.
32,312 words - 23Critias — Critias — the Atlantis narrative (unfinished)
The unfinished sequel to Timaeus. The Egyptian priests' narrative of ancient Athens's war against Atlantis 9,000 years before. Detailed description of the Atlantean kingdom and its degeneration. Breaks off mid-sentence as Zeus prepares to address the gods about Atlantis's fate — the most tantalising unfinished work of antiquity.
6,804 words - 24The Seventh Letter — Seventh Letter — Plato's autobiographical apologia
The longest and most important of the Epistles — Plato's autobiographical defence of his political involvement in Syracuse with the tyrants Dionysius I and II. Contains the famous philosophical digression denying that Plato has any written doctrine — only spoken in unwritten conversation. The most direct biographical witness to Plato's self-understanding.
13,501 words
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