Plato

The Dialogues of Plato, written between 427 and 347 b.c., rank among the most important and influential works in Western thought. Most famous are the first four, in which Plato casts his teacher Socrates as the central disputant in colloquies that brilliantly probe a vast spectrum of philosophical ideas and issues. Socrates' ancient words are still true, and the ideas found in Plato's Dialogues still form the foundation of a thinking person's education....

"Benjamin Jowett's translations of Plato have long been classics in their own right. In this volume, Professor Hayden Pelliccia has substantially revised Jowett's renderings of five of Plato's key dialogues, giving us a fresh, modern Plato faithful to both Jowett's best elements and the inimitable original. Ion takes up the question of poetry and introduces the Socratic method. Protagoras discusses poetic interpretation and shows why cross-examination...

In the revised form in which George Grube's distinguished translations appear here, they present Plato's wonderfully vivid and moving - as well as challenging - portrayal of Socrates, and of the philosophic life, in clear, contemporary , down to earth English that nonetheless preserves and accurately conveys the nuances of Plato's and Socrates' philosophical ideas - from back cover.

Socrates spent a lifetime analysing ethical issues, and the Euthyphro finds him outside the court-house, still debating the nature of piety with an arrogant acquaintance. The Apology is both a robust rebuttal to the charges of impiety and corrupting young minds and a definitive defence of the philosopher's life. Later, condemned and imprisoned in the Crito, Socrates counters the arguments of friends urging him to escape. And finally, in the Phaedo,...

Plato's dialogues frequently treat several topics and show their connections to each other. Phaedrus is a model of that skill because of its seamless progression from examples of speeches about the nature of love to mythical visions of human nature and destiny to the essence of beauty and, finally, to a penetrating discussion of speaking and writing. It ends with an examination of the love of wisdom as a dialectical activity in the human mind. Phaedrus...

A translation of the complete texts of "The Republic," "The Apology," "Crito," "Phaido," "Ion," "Meno," and "Symposium" reveals the genius of Plato as he struggled with education, justice, the "philosopher king," and utopian visions of society.

Presents English translations of the surviving works of ancient Greek philosopher Plato, many of which he wrote in the guise of lectures by his mentor Socrates, and includes introductions to each translation, annotations, and a comprehensive index.