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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2830 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 20, 2024

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I've decided to tackle the Platonic dialogues between now and the new year. Anyone have a good YouTube college lecture series on them?

I've read most of them, but not well. That's quite a bit of reading in the next two months.

Some of them are connected to each other (e.g. Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman).

No idea on YouTube. Friends talk highly of Alex Priou. But, a word of advice, look up every (named) character in the dialogues. They don't all matter, but in some cases who they are definitely matters to the meaning of the dialogue. For example, Meno comes across as a clever young gentleman, but he's meant to be hiding that he's an arrogant little shit - Xenophon, another student of Plato's, has him as the worst man among the Greek generals of the Persian Expedition (that is, before he betrays them to the Persians). So to read the Meno you need the context that Socrates completely failed to teach Meno virtue! And then to read the Gorgias, it helps to know that Meno was a student of Gorgias (mentioned in the dialogue), so you have a good sense of the kind of men Plato thinks Gorgias educates. The dialogues are literary philosophy, not just treatises; the characters, setting (e.g. in both the Republic and the Phaedrus, it means something that the discussion is held outside the city), historical context. Imagine someone in the 20th Century writing philosophy as dialogues between well-known political and cultural figures, if that helps.

This is probably overkill, but if you have points in the dialogues that you find confusing or want to deep dive into, you can search an archive of Leo Strauss's courses here, including close readings of several of the dialogues.

That's a good point, bro. I've studied Plato before in college, so I'm not totally foreign to reading the dialogues. I really want to flesh out a lot of the ones I haven't read, rather than being limited to the Symposium, Republic, and a couple others.

For sure. I wanted to raise the point because it's generally undervalued in regular (non-Straussian) academic discussions of Plato. And reading the other dialogues will greatly help your reading of Symposium/Republic/etc. Good luck!

As in, all of the dialogues? My copy of the Complete Works clocks in at 1800+ pages, including notes and introductions but still. I know you're not asking for a list of what to read but here is one I followed (based on this video) and would probably make for a decent couple months worth of reading. Caveat being that the Republic is a beast and might take as much time as the rest of the below list combined.

Ion, Meno (Epistemology)

Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo (trial and death sequence)

Gorgias, Protagoras, Cratylus (Language and rhetoric)

The Republic

Lysis, Symposium, Phaedrus (Friendship and love)

As for youtube resources, Sadler who I linked above has a playlist for Plato: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB0AE9449D5B07340&si=i-m3AmIt2q72X_4b And Michael Sugrue will probably be a top hit for the Republic specifically: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8rf3uqDj00A?si=JQPS5S6p1KTMnrmT

And some supplementary websites: https://www.plato-dialogues.org/tetralog.htm https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/

Ultimately I intend to read all of them. Do you have the Hackett edition? 1800 pages is a lot, but pretty similar to other things I've read. I figure to start with some of the classics and then work my way to the obscure ones.

yeah Hackett is the one. For the Republic I have a separate Allan Bloom translation.

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