Major Works

• Symposium

  - Recommended translations:
  • Plato. Plato’s Symposium: A Translation by Seth Benardete with Commentaries by Allan Bloom and Seth Benardete. Translated by Seth Benardete. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
  • Plato. "Symposium." Translated by A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff. In Plato: Complete Works, edited by J. M. Cooper, 457–505. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997.
  An excerpt- Socrates’ recounting of Diotima’s teachings on the “Ladder of Love”: “He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward… More

Other Works

• Charmides

  - Recommended Translations: "Charmides," trans. R. K. Sprague in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997). "Charmides," trans. Thomas and Grace West in Plato: Charmides. (Hackett, 1986).
  Excerpt: We arrived yesterday evening from the army at Potidaea, and I sought with delight, after an absence of some time, my wonted conversations. Accordingly I went into the wrestling-school of Taureas, opposite the Queen’s shrine, and there I came… More

• Lysis

  - Recommended translations:
  • Plato's Dialogue on Friendship: An Interpretation of the Lysis, with a New Translation, trans. David Bolotin (Cornell, 1979).
  • "Lysis," trans. S. Lombardo in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997).
  Excerpt: Ah well, I said, Hippothales, what an altogether noble and gallant love you have discovered there! Now please go on and give me a performance like those that you give your friends here, so that I may know whether you understand what a lover ought to… More

• Phaedrus

  - Recommended translations:
  • The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus, trans. Seth Benardete (University of Chicago Press, 1991, 2009).
  • "Phaedrus," trans. M. Nichols, A. Nehamas, and P. Woodruff in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997).
   
  Excerpt: Socrates Dear Phaedrus, whither away, and where do you come from? Phaedrus From Lysias, Socrates, the son of Cephalus; and I am going for a walk outside the wall. For I spent a long time there with Lysias, sitting since early morning; and on the… More

• Rival Lovers

  - Recommended translation:
  • "Rival Lovers," trans. J. Leake in The Roots of Political Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Cornell, 1987).
  Excerpt: Socrates I entered the grammar school of the teacher Dionysius, and saw there the young men who are accounted the most comely in form and of distinguished family, and their lovers. Now it chanced that two of the young people were disputing, but about… More

Commentary

• Plato’s Dialogue on Friendship: An Interpretation of the Lysis, with a New Translation

  - Bolotin, David, Plato's Dialogue on Friendship: An Interpretation of the Lysis with a New Translation, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979.
  Excerpt: If we wish to find philosophic discussions of friendship, we are almost compelled to turn to the writings of classical antiquity. The question of friendship was an important one for ancient thinkers. Yet in modern times, philosophers have rarely… More

• Plato’s Phaedrus: A Defense of a Philosophic Art of Writing

  - Burger, Ronna, Plato's Phaedrus: A Defense of a Philosophic Art of Writing, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980.

• Self-knowledge in Plato’s Phaedrus

  - Griswold, Charles L. Jr., Self-Knowledge in Plato's Phaedrus, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
  Excerpt: The Phaedrus presents the appearance of a tapestry that has come partially unraveled into a tangled skein of themes and images. The warp and woof are Socrates and Phaedrus, a pair so ill matched that their relationship strikes us as comic. Their… More

• On the Alcibiades I

  - Forde, Steven, "On the Alcibiades I," The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues," ed. Thomas L. Pangle, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987, 222-39.
  Excerpt: The Alcibiades I was held in the greatest esteem in the Platonic school of antiquity. There was a tradition in fact that placed the dialogue at the head of all of Plato’s works, as the opening to the entire corpus; hence, perhaps, the… More

• On the Original Meaning of Political Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato’s Lovers

  - Bruell, Christopher, "On the Original Meaning of Political Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato's Lovers," The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987, 91-110.
  Excerpt: The Lovers is one of only four dialogues narrated from the beginning to end by Socrates, the others being the Republic, Charmides, and Lysis. This fact may tell us something as to the place of these dialogues within the Platonic corpus. When he… More

• Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato’s Phaedrus

  - Ferrari, G. R. F., Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato's Phaedrus, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
  Excerpt: This is a book about Plato’s Phaedrus, nothing more; but that is quite a lot. I shall dispense with a long preamble as to its contents. Rather, my way of orienting readers to Plato’s concerns in this dialogue, and to my own in writing… More

• The Ladder of Love

  - Bloom, Allan, "The Ladder of Love," Plato's Symposium, trans. Seth Benardete, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
  Excerpt: All of this amounts to nothing more than an abstraction, the improbable assertion that thinking is erotic, unless there is some real connection between the activity of thinking and the phenomena everyone recognizes as erotic. This paradoxical… More

• On Plato’s Symposium

  - Benardete, Seth, "On Plato's Symposium," Plato's Symposium, trans. Seth Benardete, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
  Excerpt: Some Platonic dialogues are bound closely to the life and times of Socrates, and some are set at a particular time of day. The Phaedo and Symposium satisfy both criteria; they are also non-Socratically reported dialogues, and both contain… More

• On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues

  - Bruell, Christopher, On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
  Excerpt: Nothing is so well established in our Western democracies today as the right of each to seek happiness in his or her own way. It is as if a pass to that effect had been issued to us at birth. This much is obvious. Less obvious is the fact that… More

• Plato’s Symposium

  - Rosen, Stanley, Plato's Symposium, 3rd ed., South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 1999.
  Book description (from the publisher): This is the first full-length study of the Symposium to be published in English [originally published in 1967], and one of the first English works on Plato to take its bearings by the dramatic form of the Platonic… More

• On Plato’s Lysis

  - Benardete, Seth, "On Plato's Lysis," The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, ed. Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 198-230.
  Excerpt: In the Lysis Plato has Socrates presents himself at his sleaziest. He reports how he undertook to pimp for the silly Hippothales and succeeded first in smashing the false pride of Lysis and then in breaking down the distinction between love and… More

• ‘This story isn’t true’: Madness, Reason and Recantation in the Phaedrus

  - Nussbaum, Martha C., "'This story isn't true: Madness, Reason, and Recantation in the Phaedrus," The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 200-34.
  Excerpt: ‘My dear friend Phaedrus’, calls Socrates. ‘Where are you going? And where do you come from”? So begins this self-critical and questioning dialogue. Socrates has just caught sight of this impressive young person, whose name… More

• Friendship and Human Neediness in Plato’s Lysis

  - Pangle, Lorraine Smith, "Friendship and Human Neediness in Plato's Lysis," Ancient Philosophy 21, no. 2 (2001), 305-23.
  Excerpt: Recent years have seen a striking resurgence of interest in the theme of friendship in classical moral philosophy. This development is but one manifestation of a broader turn in ethical and political thought. Like the current interest in identity… More

• On Plato’s Symposium

  - Strauss, Leo, On Plato's Symposium, ed. Seth Benardete, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
  Excerpt: This course will be on Plato’s political philosophy and it will be conducted in the form of an explanation and an interpretation of the Symposium. by way of introduction I have to answer these two questions: (1) Why do we study Plato’s… More

• The Speech of Alcibiades: A Reading of the Symposium

  - Nussbaum, Martha C., "The Speech of Alcibiades: A Reading of the Symposium," The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 165-195.
  Excerpt: He was, to begin with, beautiful. He was endowed with a physical grace and splendor that captivated the entire city. They did not decline as he grew, but flourished at each stage with new authority and power. He was always highly conscious of his… More

• The Tyrant’s Temperance: Charmides

  - Brann, Eva, "The Tyrant's Temperance: Charmides," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2004, 66-87.
  Excerpt: Let me here bring in the subtitle of the Charmides. We don’t know who supplied it, but it is quite accurate: “Concerning Temperance: Tentative.” The dialogue is certainly tentative; it makes an unsuccessful try at discovering the… More

• Socrates on Friendship and Community: Reflections on Plato’s Symposium, Phaedrus, and Lysis

  - Nichols, Mary P., Socrates on Friendship and Community: Reflections on Plato's Symposium, Phaedrus, and Lysis, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
  Excerpt: Any argument that the philosophic pursuits of Plato’s Socrates exemplify an understanding of love and friendship supportive of political life, as I make in this book, must confront the charges against Socrates made by his own political… More

• The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus

  - Bernadete, Seth, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
  Excerpt: To put side by side an interpretation of one Platonic dialogue with that of another does not make a book; but although Gorgias and Phaedrus are not as matched a pair as Sophist and Statesman are, something can still be said for putting them… More

• On the Timaeus

  - Benardete, Seth, "On the Timaeus," The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, ed. Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 376-95.
  Excerpt: Thirty years ago, when I submitted a paper to Leo Strauss on Timaeus’s science fiction, he wrote back to say that Plato’s Timaeus for him had always been sealed with 77 seals, but he thought he saw two things clearly: Timaeus’s… More