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Essential Dialogues of Plato (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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Essential Dialogues of Plato (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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Essential Dialogues of Plato (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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Essential Dialogues of Plato (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

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Essential Dialogues of Plato, by Plato, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
  • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
  • Biographies of the authors
  • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
  • Footnotes and endnotes
  • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
  • Comments by other famous authors
  • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
  • Bibliographies for further reading
  • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

Plato is one of those world-famed individuals, his philosophy one of those world-renowned creations, whose influence, as regards the culture and development of the mind, has from its commencement down to the present time been all-important.
G. W. F. Hegel

Western philosophy starts with Socrates and his student Plato. By way of the dialectic that evolved between master and student, Plato invented the philosophical method of inquiry and analysis, and became the first to use a logical framework to ask—and try to answer—the eternal questions about ethics, politics, art, and life that still haunt humanity: What is virtue? What is justice? What is the ideal form of government? What is the individual’s relationship to the state? Do artists have a responsibility to society, or only to their own creative impulse? Plato explores these issues through a series of dialogues, records of supposed conversations between Socrates and other Greek aristocrats. Although Socrates is nominally the main speaker in all of them, only the earlier dialogues document his thoughts, while the latter ones present Plato’s own ideas.

What is often ignored in commentaries on Plato’s work is its unique literary form. The dialogues are neither dramas, nor stories, yet they are skillfully fashioned by means of

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 1, 2009
ISBN9781411432130
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Essential Dialogues of Plato (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
Author

Plato

Plato, one of the most renowned ancient Greek philosophers, was born in 427 B.C. to an aristocratic and wealthy family, which played a prominent part in Athenian politics. Plato in conjunction his teacher, Socrates, and his pupil, Aristotle helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and culture. While primarily influenced by Socrates, Plato’s work was also affected by the philosophies of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Pythagoreans. Under the guidance of Socrates, Plato devoted himself to the pursuit of wisdom and upon Socrates’ death, joined a group of the Socratic disciples gathered at Megara. Later he travelled in Egypt, Magna Graecia, and Sicily. He returned to Athens and founded a school, known as the Academy, which seems to have been his home base for the remainder of his life. While thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters have traditionally been ascribed to Plato, modern scholarship doubts the authenticity of some of them. His early dialogues are also known as the Socratic dialogues and include Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, and Protagoras. He followed these with his transitional dialogues: Gorgias, Meno , and Euthydemus . The Symposium and the Republic are considered the centerpieces of Plato's middle period and are considered some of his most revered work, and other middle dialogues include Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Theaetetus. Plato’s Laws is the best known dialogues of his late period. Plato died in 347 B.C.

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