Major Works

• 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

• Statesman

  - Recommended translation: "Statesman" in The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman,  trans. Seth Benardete (University of Chicago Press: 1984).
  Excerpt: Socrates Really I am greatly indebted to you, Theodorus, for my acquaintance with Theaetetus and with the Stranger, too. Theodorus Presently, Socrates, you will be three times as much indebted, when they have worked out the statesman and the… More

Other Works

• Euthydemus

  - Recommended translations: "Euthydemus," trans. S. Lombardo in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997). "Euthydemus." trans. G. McBrayer and M. Nichols in Plato: Euthydemus. Ed. D. Schaeffer (Focus, 2011)
  Excerpt: Crito Who was it, Socrates, that you were talking with yesterday at the Lyceum? Why, there was such a crowd standing about you that when I came up in the hope of listening I could hear nothing distinctly: still, by craning over I got a glimpse, and… More

• Protagoras

  - Recommended translations:
  • Plato: "Protagoras" and "Meno", trans. Robert C. Bartlett (Cornell, 2004).
  • "Protagoras," trans. S. Lombardo and K. Bell in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997).
  Excerpt: Friend Where have you been now, Socrates? Ah, but of course you have been in chase of Alcibiades and his youthful beauty! Well, only the other day, as I looked at him, I thought him still handsome as a man—for a man he is, Socrates, between you and… More

Commentary

• 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

• 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.

• On the Euthydemus

  - Strauss, Leo, "On the Euthydemus," Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983, 67-88.
  Excerpt: From the Crito we are led to the Euthydemus by the consideration that the Euthydemus contains the only other conversation between Socrates and Kriton. The two dialogues stand indeed as opposite poles. The Euthydemus is the most bantering, not to… 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 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 Cambridge Companion to Plato

  - The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut, Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  From the publisher: Plato stands as the fount of our philosophical tradition, being the first Western thinker to produce a body of writing that touches upon a wide range of topics still discussed by philosophers today. In a sense he invented philosophy as a… More

• Protagoras

  - Cropsey, Joseph, "Protagoras," Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995, 3-26.
  Excerpt: Given the dialectical character of the Platonic writings individually, it is not surprising that the Platonic corpus as a whole consists as largely as it does of engagements with one or another alternative to the understandings of Plato/Socrates. It… More

• Plato’s Statesman by Stanley Rosen

  - Rosen, Stanley, Plato's Statesman: Web of Politics, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
  Excerpt: “The Statesman, like Plato’s earlier Sophist, features a Stranger who tries to refute Socrates. Much of his conversation is devoted to a minute analysis of the art of weaving, selected by the Stranger as a paradigm of the royal art of… More

• Statesman

  - Cropsey, Joseph, "Statesman," Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995, 111-44.
  Excerpt: The Stranger begins his colloquy with Young Socrates by proposing to seek out the statesman and to do so by identifying the statesman’s peculiar “science” or knowledge (episteme). If one knows what the statesman singularly knows,… 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

• The Plan of Plato’s Statesman

  - Benardete, Seth, "The Plan of Plato’s Statesman," The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 354-75.
  Excerpt: One one realizes that the unemployed king could be the wise man in charge of himself, it is possible to reinterpret the Stranger’s fourth piece of evidence that politics is a gnostic science. He says that the king’s hands and body… 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

• The Protagoras: A Science of Practical Reasoning

  - Nussbaum, Martha C., "The Protagoras: A Science of Practical Reasoning," The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 89-121.
  Excerpt: Throughout the dialogues that we shall study here, Plato’s elaboration of radical ethical proposals is motivated by an acute sense of the problems caused by ungoverned luck in human life. The need of human beings for philosophy is, for him,… More

• The Philosopher in Plato’s Statesman

  - Miller, Mitchell, The Philosopher in Plato's Statesman, Las Vegas, NV: Parmenidies Publishing, 2004.
  Excerpt: In contemporary writings on Plato it is almost commonplace to remark that he is at once a profound philosopher and dramatist and teacher. Even by its form, however, this remark may confess more about contemporary scholarship and higher education… More

• Metaphysics and Method in Plato’s Statesman

  - Sayre, Kenneth M., Metaphysics and Method in Plato's Statesman, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  Excerpt: The Statesman begins with Socrates thanking Theodorus for introducing him to Theaetetus and the Stranger from Elea. After a bantering interchange on the relative values of sophistry, statesmanship, and philosophy, and after acquiescing to the… More

• Knowledge and Politics: The Statesman

  - Blitz, Mark, "Knowledge and Politics: The Statesman," Plato's Political Philosophy, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, 241-68.
  Excerpt: The Stranger and young Socrates begin to search for the statesman by agreeing that he is characterized by knowledge or art. What, then, defines his art as opposed to other arts? They first divide all knowledge into practical and cognitive science,… 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.

• 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

• Eidos and Diaeresis in Plato’s Statesman

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

Multimedia

• David Roochnik: Introduction to Greek Philosophy

  - Roochnik, David, "Introduction to Greek Philosophy," Audio lectures, The Great Courses, 24 lectures.
  Course description: The first philosophers in Western history—the ancient Greeks—asked the most fundamental questions about human beings and their relationship to the world. More than 2,500 years later, the issues they pondered continue to challenge,… More