Major Works

• Timaeus

  - Recommended translation: Timaeus, trans. Peter Kalkavage (Focus, 2001).
  Excerpt: Socrates One, two, three,—but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth of our guests of yesterday, our hosts of today? Timaeus Some sickness has befallen him, Socrates; for he would never have stayed away from our gathering of his own free will.… More

• Theaetetus

  - Recommended translation: "Theaetetus" in The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman,  trans. Seth Benardete (University of Chicago Press: 1984).
  About the dialogue: In the Theaetetus, Plato explores the nature of knowledge.

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

Commentary

• Science, Faith, and Politics

  - Weinberger, Jerry, "Preface," Science, Faith, and Politics: Francis Bacon and the Utopian Roots of the Modern Age: A Commentary on Bacon's Advancement of Learning, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.

• The Body of the Speech: A New Hypothesis on the Compositional Structure of Timaeus’ Monologue

  - Brague, Remi, "The Body of the Speech: A New Hypothesis on the Compositional Structure of Timaeus' Monologue," Platonic Investigations, ed. Dominic J. O'Meara, Catholic University of America Press, 1986.

• The Whole as Setting for Man: On Plato’s Timaeus

  - Cropsey, Joseph, "The Whole as Setting for Man: On Plato's Timaeus," Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 17, no. 2 (Winter 1989-90), 165-92.
  Excerpt: Plato’s Timaeus brings together Socrates and three of the four people who had requested, and received, on the preceding day, an account by him of his views on the polity. The review that Socrates gives “today” of the account that… More

• The Soul’s Silent Dialogue: A Non-Apporetic Reading of the Theaetetus

  - Frede, Dorothea, "The Soul's Silent Dialogue: A Non-Apporetic Reading of the Theaetetus," The Cambridge Classical Journal 35 (December 1989), 20-49.
  Excerpt: Our situation with respect to Plato is paradoxical. Here is a philosopher who emphatically insisted on truth and repudiated persuasion. And yet the community of Plato’s admirers finds itself in the predicament that persuasion (or plausibility)… More

• The Rational Enterprise: Logos in Plato’s Theaetetus

  - Desjardins, Rosemary, The Rational Enterprise: Logos in Plato's Theaetetus, Albany, NY: SUNY, 1990.
  Excerpt: “Any discourse ought to be constructed like a living creature, with its own body as it were; it must not lack either heard or feet; it must have a middle and extremities so composed as to suit each other and the whole work.” (Phaedr.… More

• Theaetetus

  - Cropsey, Joseph, "Theaetetus," Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
  Excerpt: The dialogue Theaetetus reports a conversation between Socrates and Theaetetus that occurred when the latter was perhaps fifteen years old. The conversation took place in the weeks or months preceding the death of Socrates, as the end of the… More

• Plato’s “Laws” by Seth Benardete

  - Benardete, Seth, Plato's "Laws": The Discovery of Being, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
  From the publisher: “The Laws was Plato’s last work, his longest, and one of his most difficult. In contrast to the Republic, which presents an abstract ideal, the Laws appears to provide practical guidelines for the establishment and maintenance… More

• Plato’s Theaetetus: On the Way of the Logos

  - Benardete, Seth, "Plato's Theaetetus: On the Way of the Logos," 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: The opening of the Theaetetus is curious. The report we have of another opening of nearly the same length indicates that it was always a curiosity. If both openings are Plato’s, and the rest of the dialogue they preface were not different,… 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

• 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

• 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

• Moral and Criminal Responsibility in Plato’s Laws

  - Pangle, Lorraine Smith, "Moral and Criminal Responsibility in Plato's Laws," American Political Science Review 103, no. 3 (August 2009), 456-73.
  Abstract: In his most practical work, the “Laws”, Plato combines a frank statement of the radical Socratic thesis that virtue is knowledge and vice involuntary with a prudential acceptance of the political community’s need for retributive… More

• Plato’s “Laws”: A Critical Guide

  - Bobonich, Christopher, ed., Plato's Laws: A Critical Guide, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
  About the Book: Long understudied, Plato’s Laws has been the object of renewed attention in the past decade, and is now considered to be his major work of political philosophy besides the Republic. In his last dialogue, Plato returns to the project of… More