Great Dialogues Of Plato

Presents authoritative translations of six of Plato's dialogues.

Rich in drama and humour, they include the controversial Ion, a debate on poetic inspiration; Laches, in which Socrates seeks to define bravery; and Euthydemus, which considers the relationship between philosophy and politics. Together, these dialogues provide a definitive portrait of the real Socrates and raise issues still keenly debated by philosophers, forming an incisive overview of Plato's philosophy.

Benjamin Jowett's translations of Plato have long been classics in their own right. In this volume, Professor Hayden Pelliccia has revised Jowett's renderings of five key dialogues, giving us a modern Plato faithful to both Jowett's best features and Plato's own masterly style. Gathered here are many of Plato's liveliest and richest texts. Ion takes up the question of poetry and introduces the Socratic method. Protagoras discusses poetic interpretation and shows why cross-examination is the best way to get at the truth. Phaedrus takes on the nature of rhetoric, psychology, and love, as does the famous Symposium. Finally, Apology gives us Socrates' art of persuasion put to the ultimate test--defending his own life. Pelliccia's new Introduction to this volume clarifies its contents and addresses the challenges of translating Plato freshly and accurately. In its combination of accessibility and depth, Selected Dialogues of Plato is the ideal introduction to one of the key thinkers of all time.

Thirteen of Plato's most well-known dialogues are included in the collection "Essential Dialogues of Plato." Plato was a learned student of the early philosopher Socrates. Because Socrates did not write any works before his untimely death, Pluto took Socrates' beliefs and expressed them through imagined dialogues between the philosopher and his students. It was the first time in Western history that a philosophical dialectic between the teacher and student was developed. In the dialogues, Socrates and a student discuss multiple aspects of life through a similar structure. The student, in his ignorance, makes a wide, generalized statement, and Socrates then questions their thought processes. While Socrates was not trying to push his students into thinking a certain way, he wanted his students to discover their own truths through rational thinking and questioning the world. Plato showed this poignantly in his dialogues, which preserved his teacher's legacy while solidifying Plato himself as one of the most unique literary minds in early Western civilization. Plato not only fleshes out the characters and creates narrative story arcs in his dialogues, but he even injects humor and wit into his works. Some of the works included in this text are "Ion," "Gorgias," "Phaedrus," "Crito," and "Laws." "Essential Dialogues of Plato" is a must-read for any serious student of philosophy as well as those with an interest in Western values and beliefs.

All the writings of Plato generally considered to be authentic are here presented in the only complete one-volume Plato available in English. The editors set out to choose the contents of this collected edition from the work of the best British and American translators of the last 100 years, ranging from Jowett (1871) to scholars of the present day. The volume contains prefatory notes to each dialogue, by Edith Hamilton; an introductory essay on Plato's philosophy and writings, by Huntington Cairns; and a comprehensive index which seeks, by means of cross references, to assist the reader with the philosophical vocabulary of the different translators.