Plato (429?–347 B.C.E.) is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy. An Athenian citizen of high status, he displays in his works his absorption in the political events and intellectual movements of his time, but the questions he raises are so profound and the strategies he uses for tackling them so richly suggestive and provocative that educated readers of nearly every period have in some way been influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been philosophers who count themselves Platonists in some important respects.

He was so self-conscious about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which he grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived—a rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive method—can be called his invention.

Few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas, and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank.

Translations

• EUTHYPHRO
• APOLOGY
• CRITO
• HIPPIAS MAJOR
• HIPPIAS MINOR
• FIRST ALCIBIADES
• CHARMIDES
• LACHES
• LYSIS
• ION
• PHAEDO
• CRATYLUS
• EUTHYDEMUS
• PROTAGORAS
• GORGIAS
• MENO
• MENEXENUS
• SYMPOSIUM
• THE REPUBLIC
• PHAEDRUS
• PARMENIDES
• THEAETETUS
• CLITOPHON
• TIMAEUS
• CRITIAS
• SOPHIST
• STATESMAN
• PHILEBUS
• LAWS

The Spurious Works

• SECOND ALCIBIADES
• HIPPARCHUS
• THE RIVAL LOVERS
• THEAGES
• MINOS
• EPINOMIS
• SISYPHUS
• AXIOCHUS
• DEMODOCUS
• ERYXIAS
• HALCYON
• ON JUSTICE
• ON VIRTUE
• DEFINITIONS
• EPIGRAMS

The Epistles

The Criticism

• PLATO AND PLATONISM by Walter Horatio Pater
• INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY AND WRITINGS OF PLATO by Thomas Taylor
• Extract from ‘REPRESENTATIVE MEN’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• PLATO: LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT TEACHERS by Elbert Hubbard

The Biographies

• PLATO: LIVES OF THE EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS by Diogenes Laertius
• THE LIFE OF PLATO by Hesychius of Miletus
• THE LIFE OF PLATO by Olympiodorus