Works by Plato that you have read

[Kyriakos]

I will have to start making the overall plan for the second circle of the library seminars, since that will start in 1,5 months.

And the first half of that second circle will be about Plato's works, so the dialogues (likely also something on the apology of Socrates).

I wanted to ask if people here have read some of the Platonic works, and so can suggest a good dialogue to start with. I have read Protagoras and the Republic, but i am also aware of the themes of Parmenides and Theaitetos ('On science'). Of the rest i know from other philosopher's works and critique, but i will read them in the following weeks.

Anyway, the seminar is building on the previous circle, which was the presocratic philosophers, and most of the themes will be an expansion of the previous ones (notion of the infinite, notion of the atomic, era math, cosmologies of the different philosophical schools).

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Plato was of the habbit to downplay (or even make a caricature) philosophers he did not like, for any reason, and this mostly happened with the school of Abdera and related movement (Democritos/Anaxagoras/Protagoras). He idolised the Eleatics (Parmenides/Zeno). The main focus in the first weeks of the new circle will be Plato's theory of Ideas/Forms/Archetypes, as presented mostly in The Republic, with the famous Allegory of the Cave.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Symposium. Ladder of love is a good way of getting at the theory of forms.

Plus, the whole thing is a hoot.

 

[Tahuti]

I am ashamed to admit The Republic is the only work of him I have ever read.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I forget which works by Plato I read back when I was in school, but in the past year I have listened to Librivox recordings of Alcibiades, Euthyphro, Euthydemus, the Republic, and the Apology.

These were all just English translations of course.

 

[T C]

I am ashamed to admit The Republic is the only work of him I have ever read.

I am the same. What makes it even worse is that I have a book with some of his other works, but I have just never quite stated reading it.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, my plan is to present Plato/Socrates in the context of the aftermath of the Eurymedon River battle, Athenian victory against Persia in Asia Minor and the formation of the Delian League, which was the basis for Philosophy first coming to Athens and then centered there. Their theories will be juxtaposed to the presocratic ones, Milesian/Elean/Abderan mostly, and also some other ones (Heraklitos and Pythagoras).

The first half of the second circle of seminars roughly begins in 469 BC and ends with the burning of the temple of Artemis in Ephesos, by Herostratos of Ephesos (supposedly the night Alexander the Great was born).