Major Works

• Phaedo

  - Recommended translations: Phaedo, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Hackett: 1977) Phaedo, trans. E. Brann (Focus, 1998)
  Excerpt: Echecrates Were you with Socrates yourself, Phaedo, on the day when he drank the poison in prison, or did you hear about it from someone else? Phaedo I was there myself, Echecrates. Echecrates Then what did he say before his death? and how did he… More

• Sophist

  - Recommended translation: Plato. "Sophist." In The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman, translated by Seth Benardete, 123–234. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
  In the Sophist, which takes place the day after the Theaetetus and was written c. 360 BCE, Plato explores what constitutes sophistry and how sophists differ from philosophers and statesmen.   From the publisher: The Being of the Beautiful collects… More

• Parmenides

  - Recommended translations:
  • Plato's Parmenides, trans. Samuel Scolnicov (Berkeley, 2003).
  • Plato's Parmenides,  trans. Albert Keith Whitaker (Focus, 1996).
  • "Parmenides," trans. M. L. Gill and Paul Ryan in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997).
  Excerpt: Cephalus When we came from our home at Clazomenae to Athens, we met Adeimantus and Glaucon in the market-place. Adeimantus took me by the hand and said, “Welcome, Cephalus, if there is anything we can do for you here, let us know.” “Why,”… More

• Republic

  - Recommended translations:
  • Plato. The Republic of Plato. Translated by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1968.
  • Plato. The Republic. Translated by Tom Griffith. Edited by G. R. F. Ferrari. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
  Excerpt: “What you say is very fine indeed, Cephalus,” I said. “But as to this very thing, justice, shall we so simply assert that it is the truth and giving back what a man has taken from another, or is to do these very things sometimes just and… More

Commentary

• Plato: The Man and His Work

  - A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work, Dover Publications, 2011.  Originally published in 1926.
  From the publisher: This outstanding work by a renowned Plato scholar presents the thought of the great Greek philosopher with historical accuracy and objective analysis. A brief introductory chapter about the philosopher’s life is followed by an… More

• Plato and Parmenides

  - Cornford, Francis MacDonald, Plato and Parmenides: Parmenides' Way of Truth and Plato's Parmenides, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1939; repr. Routledge, 2010.
  Excerpt: Parmenides was likely written within the last two decades preceding Plato’s death in 347 BCE. Despite two millennia of documented commentary, scholars struggle to make sense of it. Almost every major discussion of the Parmenides in this… More

• On Plato’s Republic

  - Strauss, Leo, "On Plato's Republic," The City and Man, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964, 50-138.
  Excerpt: Generally speaking, we can know the thought of a man only through his speeches oral or written. We can know Aristotle’s political philosophy through his Politics. Plato’s Republic on the other hand, in contradistinction to… More

• The Republic of Plato

  - Bloom, Allan, The Republic of Plato, New York: Basic Books, 1968, 1991.
  Excerpt: The Republic is the true Apology of Socrates, for only in the Republic does he give an adequate treatment of the theme which was forced on him by Athens’ accusation against him. That theme is the relationship of the philosopher to the… More

• Plato’s Trilogy: “Theaetetus,” “The Sophist,” and “The Statesman”

  - Klein, Jacob, Plato's Trilogy:"Theaetetus," "The Sophist," and "The Statesman", Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

• The Final Proof of the Immortality of the Soul in Plato’s Phaedo

  - Frede, Dorothea, "The Final Proof of the Immortality of the Soul in Plato's Phaedo 102a – 107a," Phronesis, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1978), pp. 27-41.
  Excerpt: Among the arguments presented by Socrates as proofs for the everlastingness of the human soul the last one has greatly puzzled philosophers because it seems that, in opposition to the earlier arguments, Plato considered this last argument conclusive.

• Plato and Nietzsche on Death

  - Davis, Michael, "Plato and Nietzsche on Death: An Introduction to Plato's Phaedo," Ancient Philosophy, Vol. 1 (1980), 69-80.
  Excerpt: The title of this paper is something of a lie. It is a noble lie, but it is a lie. Plato and Nietzsche will not be equally treated here. Still, the title reflects one of the crucial problems of contemporary philosophy, and of contemporary life. For… More

• Socrates’ Pre-Socratism: Some Remarks on the Structure of Plato’s Phaedo

  - Davis, Michael, "Socrates' Pre-Socratism: Some Remarks on the Structure of Plato's Phaedo," Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 33, No. 3 (March 1980).
  Excerpt: To Speak of Socrates’ pre-Socraticism is puzzling. It suggests that there was a time at which Socrates was not Socrates. That is not entirely misleading. There was something special about Socrates, special enough so that Nietzsche, for one,… More

• An Introduction to Plato’s Republic

  - Annas, Julia, An Introduction to Plato's Republic, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
  Excerpt: The Republic is Plato’s best-known work, and there are ways in which it is too famous for its own good. It gives us systematic answers to a whole range of questions about morality, politics, knowledge, and metaphysics, and the book is written… More

• Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of Original & Image

  - Rosen, Stanley, Plato's Sophist: The Drama of Original & Image, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

• The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth

  - Burger, Ronna, The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.

• Plato’s Parmenides: The Conversion of the Soul

  - Miller, Mitchell H., Plato's Parmenides: The Conversation of the Soul, University Park, PA: Princeton University Press, 1986.
  Excerpt: Plato’s stage-setting in the Parmenides is remarkably intricate and detailed. This is especially so in the opening pages, in which Plato provides a series of intermediary personae to introduce the conversation proper between Socrates, Zeno,… More

• The Impossibility of Perfection: Socrates’ Criticism of Simonides’ Poem in the Protagoras

  - Frede, Dorothea, "The Impossibility of Perfection: Socrates' Criticism of Simonides' Poem in the Protagoras," The Review of Metaphysics 39, no. 4 (June 1986), 729-53.
  Excerpt: The claim that even Plato could not say everything at once nor could have thought or worked out everything at once is, of course, a platitude. It is generally acknowledged that there is development in Plato’s thought. But what the development… More

• The Life of Philosophy and the Immortality of the Soul

  - Bolotin, David, "The Life of Philosophy and the Immortality of the Soul: An Introduction to Plato's Phaedo," Ancient Philosophy, Vol. 7 (1987), 39-56.
  Excerpt: It is widely acknowledged that Plato’s dialogues are artistic wholes, in which the ‘content’, or the speeches of the various characters, is inseparable from the ‘form’, or the dramatic context within which these speeches… More

• Socrates’ Second Sailing: On Plato’s Republic

  - Benardete, Seth, Socrates' Second Sailing: On Plato's Republic, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
  Excerpt: The title of this book alludes to the phrase Plato has Socrates use in his intellectual autobiography in the Phaedo. Socrates tells his story as a preface to his reply to Cebes’ counterargument to the proof Socrates has given about the… More

• Plato’s Parmenides

  - Meinwald, Constance C., Plato's Parmenides, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
  Excerpt: Plato’s Parmenides today finds itself in a strange position: it is clearly an important work, but its import remains remarkably unclear. The difficulty of analyzing this text is due, in part, to its complicated structure. Within three frames… More

• Socratic Rationalism and Political Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato’s Phaedo

  - Stern, Paul, Socratic Rationalism and Political Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato's Phaedo, New York: State University of New York Press, 1993.
  Excerpt: I undertake this study of the Phaedo in order to understand the rationalism of Plato’s Socrates. It is a striking feature of the contemporary intellectual situation that a study such as this can be of more than simply historical interest. But… More

• On Plato’s Political Philosophy

  - Bruell, Christopher, "On Plato's Political Philosophy," The Review of Politics 56, no. 2 (Spring 1994), 261-82.
  Abstract: This article consists chiefly in an examination of the Republic, but that examination attempts to determine the place of the Republic in relation to Plato’s other works (especially the Laws and the Statesman) as well as their place in… More

• The Death of Socrates and the Life of Philosophy

  - Ahrensdorf, Peter J., The Death of Socrates and the Life of Philosophy, New York: State University of New York, 1995.
  Excerpt: While all of Plato’s dialogues celebrate the philosophic life as a whole and the life of Socrates in particular, none does so more dramatically or more movingly than the Phaedo. There we see the philosopher face death with a nobility which all… More

• Phaedo

  - Cropsey, Joseph, "Phaedo," Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
  Excerpt: Phaedo, so important by reason of its substance and occasion, receives its name from a historical figure about whom little can now be said to be known. Litle enough was remembered of him in later antiquity when Diogenes Laertius wrote his paragraph… More

• Sophist

  - Cropsey, Joseph, "Sophist," Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, 69-110.
  Excerpt: The transition to the Sophist is made complex by the complexity of what precedes it, for this dialogue is preceded in one way by Theaetetus and in another by Euthyphro. As preceded by Theaetetus, the transition is from the atmosphere of… More

• Plato’s Sophist

  - Heidegger, Martin, Plato's Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer, Indiana University Press, 1997.
  Excerpt: This book is a translation of Platon: Sophistes, which was published in 1992 as volume 19 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works). The text is a reconstruction of the author’s lecture course delivered under the same title at the… More

• Plato’s Republic: Critical Essays

  - Kraut, Richard, ed., Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
  Excerpt: Plato (427-347 B.C.) is the first Western philosopher who wrote systematically about the wide range of questions that make up the subject of philosophy, and it is in the Republic that he most fully expresses his conception of what philosophy is and… More

• On Plato’s Sophist

  - Benardete, Seth, "On Plato's Sophist," The Argument of the Action, Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, eds., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 323-52.
  Excerpt: Once the stranger takes over the discussion at the beginning of the Sophist and agrees to discuss the sophist, the statesman, and the philosopher, it is hard to remember that Socrates had arranged to meet with Theodorus, Theaetetus, and young… More

• On Plato’s Phaedo

  - Benardete, Seth, "On Plato's Phaedo," The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, eds. Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
  Excerpt: I wish to discuss four things in Plato’s Phaedo. First, the intention of the dialogue as a whole; second, the plan or structure of the Phaedo, third, some arguments of the Phaedo, and fourth, the reason for the structure of the dialogue.

• The Essence of the Truth: On Plato’s Parable of the Cave

  - Heidegger, Martin, The The Essence of the Truth: On Plato's Parable of the Cave, New York: Continuum, 2002.
  Excerpt: We wish to consider the essence of truth. ‘Truth’: what is that? The answer to the question ‘what is that?’ brings us to the ‘essence’ of a thing. ‘Table’: What is that? ‘Mountain,… More

• Plato’s Parmenides

  - Scolnicov, Samuel, Plato's Parmenides, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.
  Excerpt: Of all Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides is notoriously the most difficult to interpret. Scholars of all periods have disagreed about its aims and subject matter. The interpretations have ranged from reading the dialogue as an introduction to the… More

• Introduction to the Phaedo

  - Brann, Eva, "Introduction to the Phaedo" and "Socrates' Legacy: Plato's Phaedo," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry, 2004.
  Excerpt: In the first book of his Inquiries, Herodotus tells the story of Solon and Croesus. The Athenian wise man gives the Lydian tyrant a piece of advice. “Look to the end,” he says, if you want to know whether a human life has really been… More

• Introduction to Reading the Republic

  - Brann, Eva, "Introduction to Reading the Republic," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2004, 88-107.
  Excerpt: The Republic is a dialogue, that is to say, a conversation. Since it is a conversation recorded between the covers of a book we cannot help but begin by reading it, but I think the author wants us as soon as possible to join it, to be converted… More

• City and Soul in Plato’s Republic

  - Ferrari, G. R. F., City and Soul in Plato's Republic, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
  Excerpt: In this short book I attempt to say what Plato is getting at in the Republic. That is a grand ambition for a slim volume. My strategy has been to trace one bright thread, the comparison between the structure of a society and that of the individual… More

• Philosopher-Kings: The Argument of Plato’s Republic

  - Reeve, C. D. C., Philosopher Kings: The Argument of Plato's Republic, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2006.
  Excerpt: Book I of the Republic differs markedly in philosophical style from its fellows. In it we find Socrates questioning all and sundry about what justice is, using the elenchus to refute them, and refusing to provide any positive answers of his own.… More

• The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic

  - Ferrari, G. R. F., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  Excerpt: When is it that we choose to journey with companions? Most often, I suppose, when we want to make the journey fuller, more pleasant, more vivid. But we may also want a fellow traveler to point out landmarks we might be missing or perhaps to assure us… More

• Plato’s Parmenides: Parmenides’ Critique of Scrates and Plato’s Critique of Parmenides

  - Zuckert, Catherine H., "Plato's Parmenides: Parmenides' Critique of Scrates and Plato's Critique of Parmenides," Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009, 147-79.
  Excerpt: The conversation depicted in the Parmenides between the elderly Eleatic and Socrates is usually thought to have occurred in 450. The Parmenides thus gives Plato’s readers their first view of the young Socrates, when he was eighteen or… More

• Plato’s Sophist 223 b1-7

  - Benardete, Seth, "Plato's Sophist 223 b1-7," The Archaeology of the Soul: Platonic Readings in Ancient Poetry and Philosophy, Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, eds., South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 2010.

• Philosophy and Politics: The Republic

  - Blitz, Mark, "Philosophy and Politics: The Republic," Plato's Political Philosophy, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, 166-90.
  Excerpt: We have now discussed several experiences that are at the root of philosophy, and a phenomenon, beauty, that helps to define both ethical and intellectual virtue. It is therefore reasonable to turn next to Plato’s Republic. For, beyond any… More

• Introduction to the Sophist

  - Brann, Eva, "Introduction to the Sophist," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2011, 278-93.
  Excerpt: The drama of the Sophist is part of a continuing conversation. Three of its participants had talked the day before: Socrates who is known to the world as a philosopher; the brilliant young geometer Theaetetus who so uncannily resembles the ugly… More

• Nonbeing Enfolded in Being: The Sophist

  - Brann, Eva, "Nonbeing Enfolded in Being: The Sophist," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2011, 294-303.
  Excerpt: Parmenides’ discovery of Being as One and as the one and only truth is, I think, the primordial event of First Philosophy. But in named Nonbeing so as to proscribe it as unthinkable and unsayable, he establishes it—an unintended… More

• On Translating the Sophist

  - Brann, Eva, "On Translating the Sophist," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2011, 304-20.
  Excerpt: In 1995, I was asked by the series adviser Keith Whitaker to do a translation for the nascent Focus Philosophical Library; Plato was suggested as a possibility. The Focus Press under its editor Ron Pullins publishes fresh translations, intended to be… More

• Plato’s Parmenides: A Sketch

  - Benardete, Seth, "Plato's Parmenides: A Sketch," The Archaeology of the Soul: Platonic Readings in Ancient Poetry and Philosophy, ed. Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, St. Augustine Press, 2012.