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Apology ''Socrates is a doer of evil, who corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in the gods of the state, but has other divinities of his own. Such is the charge.''
Euthyphro "We agree that what is holy is loved by the Gods because it is holy, and not holy because it is loved by the gods."
Selections from The Republic
Other readings on ethics
Gorgias
Meno
Laches
Laws
Philebus
The Collected Dialogues of Plato including the Letters, Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairnes. Princeton University.
Plato, Gorgias, Robin Waterfield, translator. Oxford University
Press; ISBN: 0192836307; (August 1998)
Plato, Five Dialogues, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo,
translator G.M.A. Grube. Hackett Pub Co; ISBN: 0915145227; (December 1983)
A Roman Mosaic of Plato's Academy
Some modern scholars divide Plato's dialogues into early, middle and late based on stylometric analysis. The early dialogues are often taken to be more reflective of Socrates' beliefs, the latter are more purely Plato's. Some see a literary and philosophical maturing over time consonant with an "evolution" in Plato's thought. The Middle/Late dialogues are a more systematic treatment of philosophical issues of language and reality, and knowledge and explanation.
There has never been agreement on this scheme. All of the dialogues at one time or another have been questioned as to their authenticity. Generally, those who ascribe to the "evolutionary" theory see the dialogues as proceeding in the following order
Early (All after the death of Socrates, but before Plato's first trip to Sicily in 387 B.C.E.):Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthydemus, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Protagoras, Republic Bk. I.
Early-Transitional (end of the early group/ beginning of the middle group, c. 387-380 B.C.E.):
Cratylus, Menexenus, Meno
Middle (c. 380-360 B.C.E.)
Phaedo, Republic Bks. II-X, Symposium
Late-Transitional (end of the middle group/ beginning of the late group, c. 360-355 B.C.E.)
Parmenides, Theaetetus, Phaedrus
Late (c. 355-347 B.C.E.; possibly in chronological order)
Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, Timaeus, Critias, Laws
However we have very little information to go on to support the "evolutionary" theory. Dialogues may have been rewritten at later times. Different literary and philosophical styles are parodied so that stylometric analysis of language in the dialogues yields, at best, mixed results.
For most of history, scholars were less concerned about the order in which the dialogues were written and more concerned about the order in which they should be read in order to facilitate learning Platonic philosophy. At some point in antiquity, it became traditional to arrange Plato's dialogues in groups of four called "tetralogies" after the grouping of Athenian theater: One comedy and three tragedies. Diogenes Lærtius explicitly relates this grouping to that of Greek tragedies and quotes his source for such grouping as attributing it to Plato himself, if not for the reported grouping, at least for the fact of writing them in tetralogies (DL III, 56).
A theory put forth by Bernard Suzanne on the more traditional arrangements, suggests the following schema on the basis of content and meaning.
| Overview of tetralogies | a i t i a (cause) | epithumiai (desires) phusis (nature) |
thumos (will) krisis (judgment) |
logos (reason) kosmos (order) |
| Tetralogy 1 : what is man ? |
ALCIBIADES man |
LYSIS friendship (philo-) |
LACHES manhood (andreia) |
CHARMIDES wisdom (-sophos) |
| Tetralogy 2 : The sophists eikasia (conjecture) |
PROTAGORAS relativism |
HIPPIAS Major illusion of beauty |
GORGIAS illusion of justice |
HIPPIAS Minor illusion of science |
| Tetralogy 3 : Socrates' trial pistis (true belief) |
MENO pragmatism |
EUTHYPHRO letter of the law |
THE APOLOGY law in action |
CRITO spirit of the law |
| Tetralogy 4 : The soul psuche |
THE SYMPOSIUM the driving force: eros |
PHÆDRUS nature of the soul : eros<=>logos |
THE REPUBLIC behaviour of the soul : justice |
PHÆDO destiny of the soul : being |
| Tetralogy 5 : Speech (logos) dianoia (knowledge) |
CRATYLUS the words of speech |
ION logos of the poet |
EUTHYDEMUS logos of the sophist |
MENEXENUS logos of the politician |
| Tetralogy 6 : Dialectic episteme (science) |
PARMENIDES the traps of reason |
THEÆTETUS the limits of reason |
THE SOPHIST the laws of reason |
THE STATESMAN the goals of reason |
| Tetralogy 7 : Man in the world kosmos (order) |
PHILEBUS the good of man |
TIMÆUS contemplating (theoria) |
CRITIAS deciding (krisis) |
THE LAWS acting (erga) |
According to Platonic thought, peoples souls are divided into three parts, desire, will and reason. There are three kinds of people - those dominated by desire, by will and by reason. As in the individual, so in the state there should be three classes based on the natural types of people, with those governed by wisdom and reason at the top. As in the state, so in the universe. The path to reason follows all of the levels of being in Platonic thought - an upward direction from conjecture, to true belief, to knowledge, via dialectic to beautiful harmony - kosmos.
Suzanne suggests that the dialogues in their present form were written late in Plato's life and were conceived and written as a whole, reflecting Plato's ideas about how the world works. He suggests that we follow the more traditional plan in which the dialogues are divided into tetralogies -an introductory dialogue followed by three dialogues - based on each part of the soul. He groups each tetralogy according to the various steps of the journey to knowledge and kosmic harmony with the soul at the center.
Suzanne uses several lines of reasoning to bolster his thesis. He argues the carefully crafted plan of the Apology challenges the idea that this is an early work of Plato, maybe the earliest, written as a kind of "journalistic" report on his trial in response to less faithful accounts by other writers of the time. The names of the characters in the dialogues are often symbolic of aspects of the philosophy.
This structure is reflected in the discussion of the divided line and the myth of the cave in The Republic:
| Faculty (within the soul) | Object (out there) | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| KNOWLEDGE | Reason (Dialectic) | Higher Forms (Beauty, Justice, Truth, etc. | Intelligible
World Lit by the Form of the Good |
| Understanding (based on assumptions) | Forms of Math and Science | ||
| OPINION | Perception, Belief | Particular Things - Living and Artificial | Visible or
Sensible World Lit by the Sun |
| Conjecture, Imagining | Shadows, Images, Reflections, Copies | ||
On Plato from Gordon Ziniewicz's philosophy page
Euthyphro from Anderson and Freund's (Clarke College) The Last Days of Socrates (includes translator's notes)
Euthyphro from Garth Kemerling's philosophypages.com
Apology from Clarke College The Last Days of Socrates
Plato's Apology: The Conscience of a Community from Gordon Ziniewicz
Crito from Clarke College The Last Days of Socrates
[ 43a - 44 b ] [ 44c - 46a ] [ 46b - 49 a ] [ 49b- 50c ] [ 50d - 51c] [ 51d - 53a] [ 53b - 54a ]Plato's Socrates: The Crito: Customs (Nomoi) As Parents and Adversaries from Gordon Ziniewicz
Gorgias from archeologos.com
The Ring of Gyges and the Myth of the Cave from Bernard Suzanne's Plato and his Dialogues
Plato: Republic: Order and Justice: The Divided Line: The Cave Allegory from Gordon Ziniewicz
Democracy at the Crossroads
Athens Chronology
Democracy Debate Documents