Plato Complete Works [UPD]
Outstanding translations by leading contemporary scholars--many commissioned especially for this volume--are presented here in the first single edition to include the entire surviving corpus of works attributed to Plato in antiquity. In his introductory essay, John Cooper explains the presentation of these works, discusses questions concerning the chronology of their composition, comments on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote, and offers guidance on approaching the reading and study of Plato's works.
Plato Complete Works
"This is clearly the definitive edition in English of the Platonic writings. It replaces completely the Hamilton-Cairns collection. . . . The notes are at just the right level, and the index is very helpful. The translations are both readable and accurate. They are always reliable, and in most cases the best available. It is the one volume of Plato every student of philosophy will want at her or his side." —Michael D. Rohr, Rutgers University
His own most decisive philosophical influences are usually thought to have been, along with Socrates, the pre-Socratics Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Parmenides, although few of his predecessors' works remain extant and much of what we know about these figures today derives from Plato himself.[a]
Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of philosophy.[b] Unlike the work of nearly all of his contemporaries, Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years.[6] Although their popularity has fluctuated, Plato's works have consistently been read and studied.[7] Through Neoplatonism Plato also greatly influenced both Christian and Islamic philosophy (through e.g. Al-Farabi). 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."[8]
Little is known about Plato's early life and education. He belonged to an aristocratic and influential family.[9] The exact time and place of Plato's birth are unknown. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina, between 428[10] and 423 BC.[11] Plato gives little biographical information about himself in his works, but often referred some of his relatives with a great degree of precision, including his brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon, who debate with Socrates in the Republic.[12] These and other references enable us to reconstruct Plato's family tree.[13] Plato may have travelled in Italy, Sicily, Egypt, and Cyrene,[14] but at the age of forty, Plato founded a school of philosophy in Athens, the Academy, on a plot of land in the Grove of Hecademus or Academus,[15] named after Academus, an Attic hero in Greek mythology. The Academy operated until it was destroyed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 84 BC. Many philosophers studied at the Academy, the most prominent one being Aristotle.[16][17] According to Diogenes Laërtius, throughout his later life, Plato became entangled with the politics of the city of Syracuse, where he attempted to replace the tyrant Dionysius,[18] with Dionysius's brother-in-law, Dion of Syracuse, whom Plato had recruited as one of his followers, but the tyrant himself turned against Plato. After Dionysius's death, according to Plato's Seventh Letter, Dion requested Plato return to Syracuse to tutor Dionysius II, who seemed to accept Plato's teachings, but eventually became suspicious of their motives, expelling Dion and holding Plato against his will. Eventually Plato left Syracuse. and Dion would return to overthrow Dionysius and rule Syracuse, before being usurped by Calippus, a fellow disciple of Plato. A variety of sources have given accounts of Plato's death. One story, based on a mutilated manuscript,[19] suggests Plato died in his bed, whilst a young Thracian girl played the flute to him.[20] Another tradition suggests Plato died at a wedding feast. The account is based on Diogenes Laërtius's reference to an account by Hermippus, a third-century Alexandrian.[21] According to Tertullian, Plato simply died in his sleep.[21]
During the early Renaissance, the Greek language and, along with it, Plato's texts were reintroduced to Western Europe by Byzantine scholars. Some 250 known manuscripts of Plato survive.[65] In September or October 1484 Filippo Valori and Francesco Berlinghieri printed 1025 copies of Ficino's translation, using the printing press at the Dominican convent S.Jacopo di Ripoli.[66] The 1578 edition[67] of Plato's complete works published by Henricus Stephanus (Henri Estienne) in Geneva also included parallel Latin translation and running commentary by Joannes Serranus (Jean de Serres). It was this edition which established standard Stephanus pagination, still in use today.[68] The text of Plato as received today apparently represents the complete written philosophical work of Plato, based on the first century AD arrangement of Thrasyllus of Mendes.[69] [70] The modern standard complete English edition is the 1997 Hackett Plato, Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper.[71][72]
No one knows the exact order Plato's dialogues were written in, nor the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten. The works are usually grouped into Early (sometimes by some into Transitional), Middle, and Late period; The following represents one relatively common division.[74]
Whereas those classified as "early dialogues" often conclude in aporia, the so-called "middle dialogues" provide more clearly stated positive teachings that are often ascribed to Plato such as the theory of Forms. The remaining dialogues are classified as "late" and are generally agreed to be difficult and challenging pieces of philosophy.[76] It should, however, be kept in mind that many of the positions in the ordering are still highly disputed, and also that the very notion that Plato's dialogues can or should be "ordered" is by no means universally accepted,[77][e] though Plato's works are still often characterized as falling at least roughly into three groups stylistically.[3]
The most important aspect of this interpretation of Plato's metaphysics is the continuity between his teaching and the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plotinus[f] or Ficino[g] which has been considered erroneous by many but may in fact have been directly influenced by oral transmission of Plato's doctrine. A modern scholar who recognized the importance of the unwritten doctrine of Plato was Heinrich Gomperz who described it in his speech during the 7th International Congress of Philosophy in 1930.[85] All the sources related to the ἄγραφα δόγματα have been collected by Konrad Gaiser and published as Testimonia Platonica.[86]
Plato's thought is often compared with that of his most famous student, Aristotle, whose reputation during the Western Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher". The only Platonic work known to western scholarship was Timaeus, until translations were made after the fall of Constantinople, which occurred during 1453.[87] However, the study of Plato continued in the Byzantine Empire, the Caliphates during the Islamic Golden Age, and Spain during Golden age of Jewish culture. During the early Islamic era, Persian, Arab, and Jewish scholars translated much of Plato into Arabic and wrote commentaries and interpretations on Plato's, Aristotle's and other Platonist philosophers' works (see Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, Hunayn ibn Ishaq). Plato is also referenced by Jewish philosopher and Talmudic scholar Maimonides in his The Guide for the Perplexed. Many of these commentaries on Plato were translated from Arabic into Latin and as such influenced Medieval scholastic philosophers.[88]
Many recent philosophers have also diverged from what some would describe as ideals characteristic of traditional Platonism. Friedrich Nietzsche notoriously attacked Plato's "idea of the good itself" along with many fundamentals of Christian morality, which he interpreted as "Platonism for the masses" in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). Martin Heidegger argued against Plato's alleged obfuscation of Being in his incomplete tome, Being and Time (1927), and the philosopher of science Karl Popper argued in the first volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) that Plato's alleged proposal for a utopian political regime in the Republic was prototypically totalitarian. Edmund Gettier famously demonstrated the problems of the justified true belief account of knowledge. That the modern theory of justified true belief as knowledge, which Gettier addresses, is equivalent to Plato's is accepted by some scholars but rejected by others.[91]
The works that have been transmitted to us through the middle ages under the name of Plato consist in a set of 41 so-called "dialogues" plus a collection of 13 letters and a book of Definitions (1). But it was already obvious in antiquity that not all of these were from Plato's own hand.
To these may be added the following works, that are most likely or certainlynot Plato's : Second Alcibiades, Hipparchus, Minos, The Rival Lovers, Theages,Clitophon, About Justice, About Virtue, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Eryxias,Axiochus. The Definitions and most of the Letters (witha likely exception for the VIIth, as has already been said) are probablynot from Plato either (3). 041b061a72