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A Plato Reader: Eight Essential Dialogues
A Plato Reader offers eight of Plato's best-known works--Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus, and Republic--unabridged, expertly introduced and annotated, and in widely admired translations by C. D. C. Reeve, G. M. A. Grube, Alexander Nehamas, and Paul Woodruff.
The collection features Socrates as its central character and a model of the examined life. Its range allows us to see him in action in very different settings and philosophical modes: from the elenctic Socrates of the Meno and the dialogues concerning his trial and death, to the erotic Socrates of the Symposium and Phaedrus, to the dialectician of the Republic.
Of Reeve's translation of this final masterpiece, Lloyd P. Gerson writes, "Taking full advantage of S. R. Slings' new Greek text of the Republic, Reeve has given us a translation both accurate and limpid. Loving attention to detail and deep familiarity with Plato's thought are evident on every page. Reeve's brilliant decision to cast the dialogue into direct speech produces a compelling impression of immediacy unmatched by other English translations currently available."
The collection features Socrates as its central character and a model of the examined life. Its range allows us to see him in action in very different settings and philosophical modes: from the elenctic Socrates of the Meno and the dialogues concerning his trial and death, to the erotic Socrates of the Symposium and Phaedrus, to the dialectician of the Republic.
Of Reeve's translation of this final masterpiece, Lloyd P. Gerson writes, "Taking full advantage of S. R. Slings' new Greek text of the Republic, Reeve has given us a translation both accurate and limpid. Loving attention to detail and deep familiarity with Plato's thought are evident on every page. Reeve's brilliant decision to cast the dialogue into direct speech produces a compelling impression of immediacy unmatched by other English translations currently available."
575 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2012
69 people are currently reading
205 people want to read
About the author
Plato
4,933 books8,370 followersPlato (Greek: Πλάτων), born Aristocles (c. 427 – 348 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He raised problems for what became all the major areas of both theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Platonic Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the doctrines that would later become known as Platonism.
Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms (or ideas), which has been interpreted as advancing a solution to what is now known as the problem of universals. He was decisively influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself.
Along with his teacher Socrates, and Aristotle, his student, Plato is a central figure in the history of philosophy. Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years—unlike that of nearly all of his contemporaries. Although their popularity has fluctuated, they have consistently been read and studied through the ages. Through Neoplatonism, he also greatly influenced both Christian and Islamic philosophy. In modern times, Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms (or ideas), which has been interpreted as advancing a solution to what is now known as the problem of universals. He was decisively influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself.
Along with his teacher Socrates, and Aristotle, his student, Plato is a central figure in the history of philosophy. Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years—unlike that of nearly all of his contemporaries. Although their popularity has fluctuated, they have consistently been read and studied through the ages. Through Neoplatonism, he also greatly influenced both Christian and Islamic philosophy. In modern times, Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
October 7, 2021
oh what i would give to fist fight socrates. he’s so annoying.
March 26, 2022
Key concepts and takeaways:
The Soul is immortal
Knowledge is remembrance: Our souls remember the forms before birth. So when we learn something it is a remembrance of things known but forgotten at birth.
Philosophy is practice for death as we try and separate our body from our soul so we can better understand the forms and what is really real.
The body hinders the pursuit of truth.
Reasoning is the only way reality is correctly apprehended
Twoness is not when one is joined with another one, but when the subject can be associated with twoness. So an act of virtue is what can be associated with virtureness or Virtue itself.
Euthyphero:
Are things good because they are loved by the gods or do the gods love them because they are good? Socrates is trying to get Euthyphero to tell him what it means to be Pious. In short we don’t find out but it does explore the above question. Things are carried because they are carried and not because they are carried things. So things are loved because they are loved and not because they are lovable things.
The Apology:
Socrates does a very bad job of Apologizing to the City of Athens for corrupting the youth and being an atheist. Socrates uses his Socratic dialectics to show that he was doing neither of those things and the real reason he is being tried is because he has offended people in his search for Truth. Socrates defends himself by pointing out he wouldn’t intentionally harm people and if he was unintentionally doing it then the custom would be to talk to him and not prosecute him. He also shows that if he was harming them then why are those young people and their fathers here now supporting him.
He also points out that there are things that are more important than life, such as obeying ones betters, whether they are gods or men, and discussing virtue every day, for the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Socrates also points out that weaker men cannot harm a greater man, even if they banish or kill him.
So even if this trial ends in his death he is unharmed. Meanwhile, they would have defiled themselves by killing an innocent man and a man who was treating them as kin and trying to help them live their best lives.
Death is nothing to fear either since we have no idea what happens after. It is irrational to fear death because it could very likely be a good.
Crito:
Crito comes to Socrates cell as he is waiting for execution. He thinks it is unjust that Socrates is throwing away his life when he could save it, betraying his children by not raising them.
Socrates starts by pointing out that an athlete would harm his body if he listened to the majority instead of the wisest on such matters as to how to train. So it is with justice, we would injure ourselves by listening to the majority instead of the expert on justice.
He answers the rest by pointing out that justice and virtue are the greatest possessions man can have. Athens has raised, taught, and provided a place for him to grow up and have a family and he never left the city except for war and once for a festival, therefore it would be unjust for him to return injustice with injustice.
In this dialogue, Socrates shows that he is willing to die in order to maintain the Laws and the organizational societal structure of Athens. If he fled he would be damaging this structure.
Meno:
Similar but different discussion to the previous ones, as Socrates and Meno try to find out what is Virtue. Meno keeps offering suggestions but Socrates points out that is only a part of Virtue not Virtue itself. For example justice is a part of virtue but not virtue itself much like round is a shape but not shape itself.
Meno then asks a reasonable question: how will they will know the answer when they find it since they don’t know what Virtue is. Socrates then points that that the soul must be immortal and that we learn things pre birth and so when we find the truth it is a remembrance of the truth.
They discuss if truth is knowledge but since there seems to be no teachers of virtue and that good men are not able to teach it to their son’s, virtue is not knowledge.
At the end Socrates concludes that virtue is a true belief that must come by divine dispensation from the gods.
Phaedo:
Socrates is having his last conversation with his friends before he drinks the hemlock.
In prison before his death Socrates started writing poetry, his defense was that he was trying to make sure he fulfilled the gods demand to “practice and cultivate the arts”, for the highest art is the art of philosophy.
Then Socrates tells Cebes that he should tell his friend Evenus “if he is wise, to follow me as soon as possible.” IE follow him in death. This obviously starts a conversation about the correct relationship between a philosopher and death. A philosopher should not kill himself. A master would be upset if his slave did that and so are the gods. However, a philosopher should not fear death and always be preparing for it because after death one can meet the gods and other good men who are better then those living. Death is just the separation of the body. The body hinders the pursuit of truth. So a philosopher’s whole life is to prepare for death as he tries to separate soul from body in pursuit of truth. Reasoning is the only way reality is correctly apprehended.
Cebes says that most men will think that when a person dies their soul vanishes. Socrates points out that smaller things come from larger and vice versa. So the living come from the dead and then return.
Socrates adds to his idea for the source of knowledge, that it is remembrance, much like a lover see’s something associated with his lover and remembers them.
Simmias and Cebes pose two questions to Socrates regarding the argument that the soul is immortal. Simmias likens the soul to harmony, which is invisible and beautiful in a tuned lyre, but the lyre itself is composed of many parts. In this case the soul would die as soon as the body breaks apart, like harmony which ends as soon as the lyre is stretched too much and breaks, so the soul would end before the physical parts did.
Cebes belies that the soul pre-ceases life and lives on after death, but that doesn’t prove that after many births and deaths the soul itself ends, much like a weaver wears out many cloaks, but when he dies, a cloak out lives him.
Socrates answers Simmias by showing that harmony does not pre-cede it’s composite parts but the soul does as was shown in the argument about knowledge and how it comes to be. Our souls learn before birth and in life when we learn something it is a remembrance of the truth.
Cebes argument takes the rest of Socrates time to answer. But in answering this question he in my mind also states his opinion of what is virtue. Namely that things are bigger because of their association with Bigness, things are odd because of their association with being odd and not because they are simply 3. Because something that is 5 is also odd. When 5 is changed to 4 the odd does not die or retreat but continues to exist just like the soul when the body dies. For at what point does 1+1 become 2? Does the two die when it is split into one and one? No. Two becomes two when it can be associated with twoness and twoness continues to exist when two is no longer two but 1.
The Problem I see with this argument is that if you remove truth as a remembrance and the soul existing before life, you can say that the opposite of death is life and not the deathless soul. So that when a person dies their soul may be dead as well but the concept of life continues. The association of the deathless soul with twoness is that it may indeed exist but only in the abstract form and will contain no life of its own but only an idea.
Psychologically I found Socrates idea of the different rivers of the world and the underworld to be interesting. A man who values rationality to then reveal his mystical and fanciful idea of the rivers of the world and underworld is very interesting. The self-controlled and rational Socrates suddenly has all those parts of his repressed nature burst forth in a vibrant world of color, water, and motion. This outburst reveals much about the effects of Socrates philosophy.
Did Socrates answer what is virtue? Things are bigger because of their association with Bigness, just like 2 is 2 because of its association with twoness and not 1+1, because when does the one added to another one become two.
Symposium:
Let’s just say it’s strange to say the least to listen to different short speeches from a bunch of homosexual pedophiles about what is the nature of love… It seems that Socrates is at least not part of that.
The setting is that they are at a dinner party celebrating Agathon winning some event. But they decide to not get drunk because many of them had already done that the night before so they decide to take turns discussing love.
Phaedrus spoke first. He argued that the lover win’s highest honor amongst the gods and that the lover is more valued and over higher esteem then the boy he loves.
Pausanias spoke next. He argued there are two Aphrodite’s, a heavenly and a common. No action is better than any other but it matters on how it is performed. Love is not noble in himself but depends on whether what is produced in us is noble. The common Aphrodite partakes of both the male and female. The heavenly likes the male but they prefer the older and not boys because they have their own minds. The customs we have and how difficult it is to achieve the conquest of his young lover is to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Next is Eryximachus the Doctor. Love is in every connection in the Universe IE wisdom.
Aristophanes took over describing the 3 types of people, Male, female, and androgynous. The male is an offspring of the Sun, the female of the earth, and the Androgynous of the moon. So our love is trying to recreate the whole. This one is very interesting psychologically and it explains homosexuality because they were split from a whole male.
Agathon took next. Claims those who came before him did not so much praise the god of love but praised human beings on the good things that came from the god. Agathon claims that love is the youngest of the gods and stays young forever like cupid. Love is delicate and graceful and he does no wrong to gods or men. Love is temperate and has power over pleasures and passions. Love settled the disputes of the gods and he drains all of our divisiveness away.
Socrates then goes next in two parts. The first he shows that love is the desire of something, but that we desire things we need and do not possess. (He does not say this but it sounds like envy, desiring something we do not have). The second part is Socrates recounting a speech by a lady from Mantinea called Diotima. She scolds Socrates for thinking love as either bad or lacking in something. Love is a neutral state and is neither beautiful nor good, it is in between ignorance and wisdom. It’s judging things correctly without being able to give a reason. Like correct judgement. Love was born from a poor mother and a scheming father and is neither mortal nor mortal, as he springs to life and dies all in the same day. There is a distinct difference between what is loved and the lover. People love the good, and love is wanting to possess the good forever and reproduction is a way for people to be immortal. Beauty helps people reach wisdom and understand the form of the beautiful itself by leading them through stages. First they love one body and then two and from two to all bodies that are beautiful, and then to beautiful customs, and then to learning beautiful things, and in the end he learns what it means to be beautiful.
Then Alcibiades bursts into the house drunk and begins to give a speech about Socrates. He attacks Socrates as a spurned lover, calls him vile, impudent, and contemptuous, likens him to a flute player who seduces everyone but he does it with words. Socrates is the only man alive who made him feel shame. Says he considers all possessions beneath contempt and that’s how he views his friends as well, life is one big game, a game of irony. He also describes how Socrates rebuffed his attempt to seduce him. Alcibiades attack reminds me a lot of Nietzsche as I was reading it.
Phaedrus:
Phaedrus and Socrates walk out of the city, where Phaedrus reads to Socrates, under a tree, a speech by Lysias. Lysias argues that boys should choose lovers who are not in love with them. It is basically one of the first arguments made for a FWB situation. A man who is madly In love with you desires your body, doesn’t know your character, will be jealous, will not keep this secret, will eventually grow tired and move on. A man who is not in love with you will be patient for his erotic desires to be satisfied, will never leave you, admires your character and will work to improve it, will not be silly or make this known.
Socrates isn’t the biggest fan of this speech and so Phaedrus convinces Socrates to give one of his own. In it he attacks those who claim to be in love but are in eros(erotic love), although he does not say as much. Love is a desire but even men not in love have a desire for the beautiful, and each of us is ruled by two principles, one desires pleasure and the other desires what is best. Socrates then illustrates all the pitfalls of accepting a man who is ruled by pleasure. How that man will keep a boy weak and ruin him and then abandon him when he falls out of love. He takes a similar approach as Lysias but he carefully distinguished the love he was talking about as erotic love.
In Socrates second speech he goes to the defense of love by defending madness of all things. Madness has 4 beneficial aspects, the madness that inspires the priestesses, the madness that solves ancient guilt of families, the madness of the muses. The 4th madness takes a lot of buildup to address as Socrates talks about how our souls view the divine forms with the gods. When a man falls in love with a boy he is recalling the forms themselves. So love of beauty is madness for the divine. In this section Plato also describes the soul itself. The perfect soul is like a team of winged horses; both horses come from good stock and are good. Our souls have one white horse and one black horse, the white horse is good and is our spirit, the black horse is the opposite, our charioteer is the rational self.
Socrates then asks the question of when is a speech well written? Is it when it is pleasing and wins approval or when it tells the truth? If someone knows the truth of their subject and knows the nature of the soul and can adapt the truth to the souls of his audience (IE. complex speech for complex souls) and can defend it and also show it is of little worth then you are a philosopher. If on the other hand you just make it entertaining then you are a poet, speech writer, or author of laws.
The Soul is immortal
Knowledge is remembrance: Our souls remember the forms before birth. So when we learn something it is a remembrance of things known but forgotten at birth.
Philosophy is practice for death as we try and separate our body from our soul so we can better understand the forms and what is really real.
The body hinders the pursuit of truth.
Reasoning is the only way reality is correctly apprehended
Twoness is not when one is joined with another one, but when the subject can be associated with twoness. So an act of virtue is what can be associated with virtureness or Virtue itself.
Euthyphero:
Are things good because they are loved by the gods or do the gods love them because they are good? Socrates is trying to get Euthyphero to tell him what it means to be Pious. In short we don’t find out but it does explore the above question. Things are carried because they are carried and not because they are carried things. So things are loved because they are loved and not because they are lovable things.
The Apology:
Socrates does a very bad job of Apologizing to the City of Athens for corrupting the youth and being an atheist. Socrates uses his Socratic dialectics to show that he was doing neither of those things and the real reason he is being tried is because he has offended people in his search for Truth. Socrates defends himself by pointing out he wouldn’t intentionally harm people and if he was unintentionally doing it then the custom would be to talk to him and not prosecute him. He also shows that if he was harming them then why are those young people and their fathers here now supporting him.
He also points out that there are things that are more important than life, such as obeying ones betters, whether they are gods or men, and discussing virtue every day, for the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Socrates also points out that weaker men cannot harm a greater man, even if they banish or kill him.
So even if this trial ends in his death he is unharmed. Meanwhile, they would have defiled themselves by killing an innocent man and a man who was treating them as kin and trying to help them live their best lives.
Death is nothing to fear either since we have no idea what happens after. It is irrational to fear death because it could very likely be a good.
Crito:
Crito comes to Socrates cell as he is waiting for execution. He thinks it is unjust that Socrates is throwing away his life when he could save it, betraying his children by not raising them.
Socrates starts by pointing out that an athlete would harm his body if he listened to the majority instead of the wisest on such matters as to how to train. So it is with justice, we would injure ourselves by listening to the majority instead of the expert on justice.
He answers the rest by pointing out that justice and virtue are the greatest possessions man can have. Athens has raised, taught, and provided a place for him to grow up and have a family and he never left the city except for war and once for a festival, therefore it would be unjust for him to return injustice with injustice.
In this dialogue, Socrates shows that he is willing to die in order to maintain the Laws and the organizational societal structure of Athens. If he fled he would be damaging this structure.
Meno:
Similar but different discussion to the previous ones, as Socrates and Meno try to find out what is Virtue. Meno keeps offering suggestions but Socrates points out that is only a part of Virtue not Virtue itself. For example justice is a part of virtue but not virtue itself much like round is a shape but not shape itself.
Meno then asks a reasonable question: how will they will know the answer when they find it since they don’t know what Virtue is. Socrates then points that that the soul must be immortal and that we learn things pre birth and so when we find the truth it is a remembrance of the truth.
They discuss if truth is knowledge but since there seems to be no teachers of virtue and that good men are not able to teach it to their son’s, virtue is not knowledge.
At the end Socrates concludes that virtue is a true belief that must come by divine dispensation from the gods.
Phaedo:
Socrates is having his last conversation with his friends before he drinks the hemlock.
In prison before his death Socrates started writing poetry, his defense was that he was trying to make sure he fulfilled the gods demand to “practice and cultivate the arts”, for the highest art is the art of philosophy.
Then Socrates tells Cebes that he should tell his friend Evenus “if he is wise, to follow me as soon as possible.” IE follow him in death. This obviously starts a conversation about the correct relationship between a philosopher and death. A philosopher should not kill himself. A master would be upset if his slave did that and so are the gods. However, a philosopher should not fear death and always be preparing for it because after death one can meet the gods and other good men who are better then those living. Death is just the separation of the body. The body hinders the pursuit of truth. So a philosopher’s whole life is to prepare for death as he tries to separate soul from body in pursuit of truth. Reasoning is the only way reality is correctly apprehended.
Cebes says that most men will think that when a person dies their soul vanishes. Socrates points out that smaller things come from larger and vice versa. So the living come from the dead and then return.
Socrates adds to his idea for the source of knowledge, that it is remembrance, much like a lover see’s something associated with his lover and remembers them.
Simmias and Cebes pose two questions to Socrates regarding the argument that the soul is immortal. Simmias likens the soul to harmony, which is invisible and beautiful in a tuned lyre, but the lyre itself is composed of many parts. In this case the soul would die as soon as the body breaks apart, like harmony which ends as soon as the lyre is stretched too much and breaks, so the soul would end before the physical parts did.
Cebes belies that the soul pre-ceases life and lives on after death, but that doesn’t prove that after many births and deaths the soul itself ends, much like a weaver wears out many cloaks, but when he dies, a cloak out lives him.
Socrates answers Simmias by showing that harmony does not pre-cede it’s composite parts but the soul does as was shown in the argument about knowledge and how it comes to be. Our souls learn before birth and in life when we learn something it is a remembrance of the truth.
Cebes argument takes the rest of Socrates time to answer. But in answering this question he in my mind also states his opinion of what is virtue. Namely that things are bigger because of their association with Bigness, things are odd because of their association with being odd and not because they are simply 3. Because something that is 5 is also odd. When 5 is changed to 4 the odd does not die or retreat but continues to exist just like the soul when the body dies. For at what point does 1+1 become 2? Does the two die when it is split into one and one? No. Two becomes two when it can be associated with twoness and twoness continues to exist when two is no longer two but 1.
The Problem I see with this argument is that if you remove truth as a remembrance and the soul existing before life, you can say that the opposite of death is life and not the deathless soul. So that when a person dies their soul may be dead as well but the concept of life continues. The association of the deathless soul with twoness is that it may indeed exist but only in the abstract form and will contain no life of its own but only an idea.
Psychologically I found Socrates idea of the different rivers of the world and the underworld to be interesting. A man who values rationality to then reveal his mystical and fanciful idea of the rivers of the world and underworld is very interesting. The self-controlled and rational Socrates suddenly has all those parts of his repressed nature burst forth in a vibrant world of color, water, and motion. This outburst reveals much about the effects of Socrates philosophy.
Did Socrates answer what is virtue? Things are bigger because of their association with Bigness, just like 2 is 2 because of its association with twoness and not 1+1, because when does the one added to another one become two.
Symposium:
Let’s just say it’s strange to say the least to listen to different short speeches from a bunch of homosexual pedophiles about what is the nature of love… It seems that Socrates is at least not part of that.
The setting is that they are at a dinner party celebrating Agathon winning some event. But they decide to not get drunk because many of them had already done that the night before so they decide to take turns discussing love.
Phaedrus spoke first. He argued that the lover win’s highest honor amongst the gods and that the lover is more valued and over higher esteem then the boy he loves.
Pausanias spoke next. He argued there are two Aphrodite’s, a heavenly and a common. No action is better than any other but it matters on how it is performed. Love is not noble in himself but depends on whether what is produced in us is noble. The common Aphrodite partakes of both the male and female. The heavenly likes the male but they prefer the older and not boys because they have their own minds. The customs we have and how difficult it is to achieve the conquest of his young lover is to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Next is Eryximachus the Doctor. Love is in every connection in the Universe IE wisdom.
Aristophanes took over describing the 3 types of people, Male, female, and androgynous. The male is an offspring of the Sun, the female of the earth, and the Androgynous of the moon. So our love is trying to recreate the whole. This one is very interesting psychologically and it explains homosexuality because they were split from a whole male.
Agathon took next. Claims those who came before him did not so much praise the god of love but praised human beings on the good things that came from the god. Agathon claims that love is the youngest of the gods and stays young forever like cupid. Love is delicate and graceful and he does no wrong to gods or men. Love is temperate and has power over pleasures and passions. Love settled the disputes of the gods and he drains all of our divisiveness away.
Socrates then goes next in two parts. The first he shows that love is the desire of something, but that we desire things we need and do not possess. (He does not say this but it sounds like envy, desiring something we do not have). The second part is Socrates recounting a speech by a lady from Mantinea called Diotima. She scolds Socrates for thinking love as either bad or lacking in something. Love is a neutral state and is neither beautiful nor good, it is in between ignorance and wisdom. It’s judging things correctly without being able to give a reason. Like correct judgement. Love was born from a poor mother and a scheming father and is neither mortal nor mortal, as he springs to life and dies all in the same day. There is a distinct difference between what is loved and the lover. People love the good, and love is wanting to possess the good forever and reproduction is a way for people to be immortal. Beauty helps people reach wisdom and understand the form of the beautiful itself by leading them through stages. First they love one body and then two and from two to all bodies that are beautiful, and then to beautiful customs, and then to learning beautiful things, and in the end he learns what it means to be beautiful.
Then Alcibiades bursts into the house drunk and begins to give a speech about Socrates. He attacks Socrates as a spurned lover, calls him vile, impudent, and contemptuous, likens him to a flute player who seduces everyone but he does it with words. Socrates is the only man alive who made him feel shame. Says he considers all possessions beneath contempt and that’s how he views his friends as well, life is one big game, a game of irony. He also describes how Socrates rebuffed his attempt to seduce him. Alcibiades attack reminds me a lot of Nietzsche as I was reading it.
Phaedrus:
Phaedrus and Socrates walk out of the city, where Phaedrus reads to Socrates, under a tree, a speech by Lysias. Lysias argues that boys should choose lovers who are not in love with them. It is basically one of the first arguments made for a FWB situation. A man who is madly In love with you desires your body, doesn’t know your character, will be jealous, will not keep this secret, will eventually grow tired and move on. A man who is not in love with you will be patient for his erotic desires to be satisfied, will never leave you, admires your character and will work to improve it, will not be silly or make this known.
Socrates isn’t the biggest fan of this speech and so Phaedrus convinces Socrates to give one of his own. In it he attacks those who claim to be in love but are in eros(erotic love), although he does not say as much. Love is a desire but even men not in love have a desire for the beautiful, and each of us is ruled by two principles, one desires pleasure and the other desires what is best. Socrates then illustrates all the pitfalls of accepting a man who is ruled by pleasure. How that man will keep a boy weak and ruin him and then abandon him when he falls out of love. He takes a similar approach as Lysias but he carefully distinguished the love he was talking about as erotic love.
In Socrates second speech he goes to the defense of love by defending madness of all things. Madness has 4 beneficial aspects, the madness that inspires the priestesses, the madness that solves ancient guilt of families, the madness of the muses. The 4th madness takes a lot of buildup to address as Socrates talks about how our souls view the divine forms with the gods. When a man falls in love with a boy he is recalling the forms themselves. So love of beauty is madness for the divine. In this section Plato also describes the soul itself. The perfect soul is like a team of winged horses; both horses come from good stock and are good. Our souls have one white horse and one black horse, the white horse is good and is our spirit, the black horse is the opposite, our charioteer is the rational self.
Socrates then asks the question of when is a speech well written? Is it when it is pleasing and wins approval or when it tells the truth? If someone knows the truth of their subject and knows the nature of the soul and can adapt the truth to the souls of his audience (IE. complex speech for complex souls) and can defend it and also show it is of little worth then you are a philosopher. If on the other hand you just make it entertaining then you are a poet, speech writer, or author of laws.
September 3, 2025
I'm the other guy who just says 'That's right, Socrates.'
June 13, 2024
Idealism bad lol
October 18, 2019
“GAY RIGHTS” - Socrates
September 10, 2020
I LOVE THIS BOOK. I read all 8 dialogues EVERY. YEAR.
October 30, 2021
WAIT!!! Did you know that ancient philosophical teachings still influence modern-day society today? Now that is some wisdom! I have currently these dialogues in my upper-level Ancient Philosophy Course at Slippery Rock University. My two favorites are the Symposium and the Republic. The symposium speaks on love. I thought I knew what love was until actually had a vibrant discussion on it with Dr. Sparrow and my classmates. Diotima's teaching to Socrates was beautiful. The Republic writes on justice. Justice is a topic that must be talked about. I have pulled so many teachings in this book that I use in everyday life.
October 24, 2023
Excellent print. Vastly more legible than the 'Completed Works of Plato' type collections. Granted, this book 'only' has eight dialogues but that includes the Republic and has the benefit of having much better (and probably more durable) paper, even in paperback.
June 3, 2024
I trudged through this book for class. If I had more of a passion for philosophy, maybe I would enjoy it. As is, some interesting ideas were explored (especially the ideal city) but for every six pages was one line I found worth reading.
Read
May 14, 2025Really enjoyed this. The dialogue format is straightforwardly fun in a way that much philosophical writing isn't. I'm satisfied in having read a decent breadth of Plato with this, though I know there are other dialogues I should get to.
January 3, 2021
A must read for devout thinkers.
February 16, 2022
For graduate ancient philosophy course. A good collection, fairly decent translation.
March 26, 2022
i had to read this for school. i would have been perfectly happy to have never read it.
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October 1, 2023i hate socrates
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October 24, 2023(not rating, read for class)
February 1, 2024
Read: The Apology, The Republic, Phaedo, and Euthyphro
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March 31, 2024for phil 0110: ancient greek philosophy :)
May 14, 2016
I read this in connection with a course: an introduction to Plato. I'm not in a position to say whether the translations are true, but the language was accessible and the dialogs are fascinating.
February 16, 2018
Rating for translation/edition.
January 9, 2025
UGA (TA): Introduction to Philosophy
UGA (Instructor): Logic and Critical Thinking
UGA (Instructor): Logic and Critical Thinking
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April 26, 2017Meh, fuck Plato.
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