Essential Dialogues of Plato

Socrates and his pupil Plato are the originators of Western philosophy. Plato was the first to employ a logical framework to ask—and attempt to answer—the perennial questions about ethics politics art and life that still trouble humanity: What is virtue? This was made possible by the dialectic that developed between master and student. Just what is it? What kind of government is best? What connection does the person have to the government? Do artists have duties to society as well as to their own creative urges? Through a number of dialogues—records of fictitious conversations between Socrates and other Greek aristocrats—Plato explores these topics. Despite the fact that Socrates is the primary speaker in all of them only the older conversations record his ideas while the later dialogues convey Platos own. The distinctive literary form of Platos writing is frequently overlooked in analyses of his works. The discussions are expertly crafted using characters narrative events dramatic moments and—perhaps most surprisingly—a lot of comedy. However they are neither plays nor stories. This collection contains the first three volumes of Platos Laws together with other works that serve as examples of his thinking such as Symposium Apology and Phaedrus.