Customer Reviews

The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including the Letters (Bollingen Series LXXI)

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This dreadful anthology was once the standard English edition of Plato. I had to assign it when I taught courses on Plato because there was nothing else. Many of the translations are bad. Even the decent ones often are quite old, and their flowery Victorian diction is off-putting. The collection isn't complete, as it leaves out a number of important dialogues from the Platonic corpus. And the introductions are uniformly ghastly; the editors have little understnding of philosophy, and keep saying horrible things like "There's a lot of boring logic-chopping in this dialogue, but at least the personality of Socrates is engaging." There is no longer any need to be subject to the tyranny of Hamilton & Cairns! There is now a far better edition, with excellent introductions, excellent translations, and including all the dialogues. It's the COMPLETE WORKS from Hackett Pub., edited by John Cooper. It will be the standard edition from now on. Go get that one! Don't get this one!

This is generally considered the standard collection of Plato's dialogues. On the whole it's pretty good, and it's certainly convenient. Just two caveats: (1) Edith Hamilton's introductions to the dialogues must be taken with more than a few grains of salt. She has a sentimental attitude that amounts to saying, "Plato was such a wise and good man -- almost as wise and good as we are!" When it comes to the more difficult dialogues (e.g. Parmenides), she is out of her depth. (2) To get a sense of the difficulties in translating Plato, read the preface to Allan Bloom's translation of the Republic (Basic Books). Bloom is particularly hard on Cornford, some of whose translations are reprinted here. Just keep in mind that, if you want to study Plato more closely, you may have to use more literal translations or learn some Greek.

Here is what you get:

CONTENTS

Editorial Note (editors)

Introduction (Huntington Cairns)

Apology

Crito

Phaedo

Charmides

Laches

Lysis

Euthyphro

Menexenus

Lesser Hippias

Ion

Gorgias

Protagoras

Meno

Euthydemus

Cratylus

Phaedrus

Symposium

Republic

Theaetetus

Parmenides

Sophist

Statesman

Philebus

Timaeus

Critias

Laws

Epinomis *

Greater Hippias *

Letters *

* denotes items whose authenticity is seriously doubted.

The most irritating thing about this collection is the moronic, but mercifully short, Edith Hamilton introductions to the dialogues.

Let us take some examples from her introduction to the dialogue "Euthyphro":

"When Socrates asks what then is piety, he [Euthyphro] gives the answer characteristic of the orthodox everywhere - in effect 'Piety is thinking as I do.'"

Is this really the case? Is that all that Moses, Isaiah, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, and Martin Luther, to name only a few, had to say on the subject?

Here is another:

"Socrates makes a distinction fundamental in reasoning and often disregarded, that the good is good not because the gods approve it, but the gods approve it because it is good."

There is several hundred years of intense philosophical and theological debate (still continuing) settled in a pretty summary fashion.

Finally, there is this:

"The real interest of the dialogue, however, is the picture of Socrates just before his trial...keenly involved in a discussion completely removed from his own situation."

One of the charges against Socrates was of course impiety. Also, I guess, it is ridiculous to assume that there is much inherent interest or significance in asking questions about the metaphysical grounding of the good, especially by comparison with Hamilton's fascinating "People" magazine approach to philosophy.

In one sense, the introductions do, however, perfectly introduce Plato. The multiple layers of stupidity in the introductions make a striking contrast with the multiple layers of insight in the dialogues themselves. When the reader goes from Hamilton to Plato, it is wonderfully pleasurable to feel the effect of the author's IQ jumping about 200 points.

As others have noted, if you have a free choice, "Plato: Complete Works", edited by John M. Cooper is the Plato collection to get. The translations are more modern, the introductions are smarter (if not longer), the footnotes identifying people, places and events more numerous, and many more of the works of uncertain authenticity are included, which have historical significance if nothing else.

If you do have to buy this collection for school or because it is used as a reference by some other work you're reading, don't despair. You're still getting Plato. Also, you're getting the better index.

Here, for example, is the index entry for "habit" from this collection:

habit: in education of infants, Laws 7.792e, force of, ib. 4.708c; and nature, ib. 7.794e; and temperament, ib. 2.655e; and virtue, Rep. 7.518e, 10.619c

And here is the entry from the Cooper collection:

habit: L. 2.655e, 4.708c, 7.792e, 7.794e; R. 7.518e, 10.619c.

You could do worse than to buy this collection -- after all, there are translations of the complete works of Plato into English that date to the 18th century. But you could sure do a whole lot better.

By and large -- and with the exception, perhaps, of what is now the standard translation of Laws -- modern translations of Plato are more evenhanded, better researched, and more frank than old ones. And this edition, unfortunately, has some very old ones indeed, like those of Jowett. Moreover, it includes -- according to no particular logic -- a few works many consider spurious, while omitting others whose status is in debate, and it places the dialogues in an order that is not easy to justify.

The edition to buy, if you want a complete Plato without the benefit of the Greek text (if you want the Greek, buy the Loeb, and know that the facing-pages English translations aren't much worse than the ones offered here!), is the one edited by Cooper and published by Hackett. This one will suffice -- but that one is excellent. Few instructors will insist that you buy some edition in particular, and fewer still will insist that you buy this edition -- so don't, buy that one.

First the Good:

This collection includes a wide range of important Platonic dialogues and letters. It is by no means complete, but has enough selection of material to provide the reader a real basis for understanding Plato's thought processes as a whole. The vast majority of dialogues I have found to be of interest are found here.

Now the bad.

I found the language of the translation to be very difficult to get into. In general, a lot of these translations are not only more difficult for the modern reader but they are more difficult than other older translations of Plato's works that I have read. I found it rather difficult to get through this work.

On the whole, I would give the selection 5 stars, and the translation 2 stars. However on the whole, I would give the work a mediocre 3 stars. It may be helpful to fill in some gaps in one's library, but I wouldn't recommend it as a primary Plato text.

This edition of the works of Plato includes translations of the works by scholar such as: Francis Macdonald Cornford, A.E. Taylor, Benjamin Jowett, W.K.C. Guthrie, and Paul Shorey. The edition is probably the most complete available, since it includes "Ion," "Lesser Hippias," "Menexenus," and the "Letters." Most texts omit these works and I find that it is nice to finally have them.

The typeface is readable, and the pages are clean and bright, so that should facilitate ease in reading. The binding appears to be sturdy and should hold-up.

The features include brief introductions (I'll comment on that later) and a rather extensive index. There is also a short introduction by Huntington Cairns. The texts also include the standard line numbering from the Greek text.

The brief introductions are laughable and can (and ought to be) skipped. Edith Hamilton, though a respected woman, is not a Plato scholar. Her little introductions don't impede the reader, though.

I have read several of the translations of Plato's dialogues by different scholars... this is the best one that I have come across. Granted Ms. Hamilton's introductions are a little sparce, but that leaves the reader to form a better opinion... not one jaded. This edition is one of the most complete volumes available... where Letters, Menexenus, Lesser Hippias and Ion are found with a rather extensive index and the standard numbering lines from the Greek text.

We have meaningful translations, translations of what Plato was trying to say in todays English language... I know that over time languages grow and evolve but here we read the dialogues like a short story full of life and viable.

The translations in this volume are from: Lane Cooper, F.M. Cornford, W.K.C. Guthrie, R. Hackforth, Michael Joyce, Benjamin Jowett, L.A. Post, W.H.D. Rouse, Paul Shorey, J.B.Skemp, A.E. Taylor Hugh Tredennick, W.D. Woodhead, and J. Wright.

For being a one volume set, this is about as complete as it gets.

Plato and Socrates Dialogues stand on their own and in a short review attempt to say that they are "good or not worth it" seems a little shallow.

The chapter Gorgias it reaches out and offers some direction. It says "This is the truth of the matter, as you will acknowledge if you abandon philosophy and move on to more important things is perhaps that philosophy is no doubt a delightful thing, Socrates, as long as one is exposed to it in moderation at the appropriate time in life. But if one spends more time with it than he should, it's his undoing.

So maybe it is just a delightful book if you like Plato and Socrates. It is nice to have this all in one book. I recommend it.

Reading all of the dialogues develops thoughts on specific themes best. It helps to have them in this format. I especially like the to follow the question of whether knowledge is discovered or remembered, whether justice is absolute or relative, whether virtue can be taught, and of course a great deal more in these chapters.

It brings together enough to find out what Plato's epistemology is and how his ethics relates to his metaphysical theory. Lots more.

I found the chapter overviews useful. It pointed the way that the chapters would take and suggested some core issues but didn't pretend to have been answers than the chapters themselves did.

A book like this is a better way to own and read "The Collected Dialogues"

The introductions are a little silly. Ms. Hamilton never seems to like a dialouge if it has complex language. But, it's lasted. It's cheaper than the other, and.......How can you give a bad review to Plato?

The famed British philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead was a tremendous admirer of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato's cosmically comprehensive thought and great literary writing talent. For the past thirty five years I have immersed myself as an amateur Plato scholar.
Plato is not only vastly deep and abstract but also commonplace and concrete. Alfred North Whitehead stated that he believed "Plato's thought was analogous to a prism whereas various lights reflect different views and hues" and that "there is hardly a thought or insight Plato did not have" and that "Plato more than any one else had a supreme sense of the infinite possibilities of the universe". Whitehead felt Plato intuitively had direct insights into the cosmos. Whitehead believed that the enormousness of Plato's breadth of thought made Plato more right than anyone else in history although sometimes Plato was so very wrong. I would qualify this statement's assessment with the observation that the true essence of studying Plato and his student Aristotle is the incredible number of topics and ideas that they scientifically scrutinize. Some evaluators have estimated that Aristotle was fifty percent wrong about all his so-called evidentiary assertions. Perhaps so and perhaps Plato was far more wrong than his zealous worshipper Alfred North Whitehead claimed but the gist of their thought quest is their overwhelmingly awesome amplitude of contemplativeness. Alfred North Whitehead felt that Plato was far more willing than most individuals to assert that any one of his conclusions on any subject could be wrong. This in itself could have established Plato as being a far more right thinker than most other thinkers in historical time. Whitehead asserted that "what is needed is an immense feeling for things". If you read Plato you will meet the content of your mind. I would add that Plato was the equal of the greatest writers of all time. His writings are poetical dialogues that compress a stupendous number of ideas into as few words as possible as to how all of space and time have been constructed. While Plato has his feet planted firmly in realism he incessantly interweaves the search for idealism into his thought.
I am a devotee of the cosmologist and process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and his student-disciple Charles David Hartshorne. The complete dialogues of Plato epitomize the academic subject of Philosophy as not being obscurely pedantic academia promulgated by a bombastic "Professor Pomposity" but readily accessible and a relevant topic to most human beings. The definition of Philosophy is that it is "the critical evaluation of all of the factors of experience" seeking ideality while entrenched in reality. "Philosophy is the attempt to express the infinity of the universe within the limitations of language". "Philosophy should become the ultimate intellectual endeavor". Alfred North Whitehead stated that Plato's thought was "an unrivalled display of the human mind in action, with its ferment of vague obviousness, of hypothetical formulation, of renewed insight, of discovery of relevant detail, of partial understanding, of final conclusion with its disclosure of deeper problems as yet unsolved" and took into account every unexpected novelty, every unanticipated change of direction of the cosmos and that "Plato tried so very hard never to mean anything exactly" always assuming truth may at its very best be only 99.9 (with the decimal nine proceeding ad infinitum) percent accurate. Plato's all-encompassing dialogues are HISTORY'S GREATEST CONVERSATION that span the equilibrium of the most valuable tallest of "tall talk" and the most significant smallest of "small talk". There has been no greater literary writer throughout the history of the world than Plato.
The ancient Greeks had a saying about Plato's thought: "Everywhere I go in my mind I meet Plato coming back". This is no surprise since Plato discussed a staggering number of topics amidst incredibly dazzling language. I concur with Alfred North Whitehead's assessment that "Plato was the unparalleled genius of the greatest mind ever developed by western civilization". Plato was the student of Socrates: "He was the Word, the Brain... he was that Socratesian Superman... strange being from a mighty mental mount who came to earth with intellectual powers far beyond those of mere mortal men. That Socratesian Superman who could bend the word with his bare conversation and stretch the ideal with mighty rivers of thought by persuading people to think that they ought".
Plato's student was Aristotle who created contemporary science, logic and political science. There have been no greater thinkers throughout the history of the world than Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The ancient Greeks also produced several of the greatest playwrights of all time: Aristophanes, Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. The ancient Greeks begat the physician Hippocrates, the historian Thucydides, the orator Pericles and the poet Homer. The ancient Greeks created the Olympics and western civilization.
The psychoanalytical concept of the UNCONSCIOUS was spoken of in Plato's dialogues over two thousand years before Sigmund Freud. Freud did not become the first person to discover the unconscious. He explored it and refined our knowledge of it.
The concept that the Earth is a globular shaped object with many continents covering it was proven by contemporary satellites but the same idea was propounded in one of Plato's dialogues 2,400 years ago when Socrates stated "I say to you that the earth is like one of those multi-patched leathern balls".
Several hundred years ago the English physician William Harvey was highly acclaimed for allegedly being the discoverer of the circulation of blood in the human body. However Plato was there first two thousand years before William Harvey when in his dialogue entitled "Timaeus" an individual mentions the circulation of the human body's blood.
Do you think the concept of time travel was first created by H.G. Wells or Jules Verne or Einsteinian physics? No, for the concept of time travel was mentioned in Plato's dialogue "Timaeus".
Do you think the "Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy" in physics was first discovered by Albert Einstein or one of his European predecessor scientists who have lived in the last several hundred years? No, for the concept that mass and energy are interchangeable is found in Plato's dialogue "Timaeus". Albert Einstein and some of his recent antecedent theorizers primarily reaffirmed this concept with observational data and mathematical formulae.
Do you think the concept of the relativity of motion was first discovered in Einsteinian physics? No, for this concept is explored in Plato's dialogue "Parmenides". The dialogue in "Parmenides" receives my vote for the most dazzlingly unusual conversation ever written or spoken. It is similar to Abbott & Costello's classical comedy routine "Who's on First?" but "Parmenides" is ever more dazzling and far more sophisticated and deadly serious knowledge. The dialogue "Parmenides" also encapsulates the rudimentary ideas of the fields of "Set Theory" and "Logic" and "Topology" along with the conceptualization of hyper-dimensions in the space-time continuum.
The poetical playwright William Shakespeare's famous quotation "To be or not to be" is in fact strangely reminiscent of Plato's dialogue "Parmenides" where the philosophical concept of "Being" and "Not Being" are discussed.
Do you think that the continent of North America was first discovered by Christopher Columbus, the Vikings, Saint Brendan of Ireland, etc.? Think again, for a dialogue of Plato's refers to the area on earth which we now recognize as North America.
Do you think the concept of an infinite universe in astronomy is a contemporary invention? Think again, for individuals in Plato's "The Republic" and also in the dialogue "Timaeus" postulate the infinite universe theory.
Do you think the biblical legend of Noah surviving the Great Deluge only exists in the Holy Bible? Think again, for Plato's dialogue "Timaeus" describes a survivor of a great deluge. This legend has also been repeated in numerous other countries' tales. The great Christian apologetical and expository commentary writers throughout history borrowed ideas, imagery, etc. from the ancient Greeks. The famous saying attributed to Jesus Christ "Don't cast your pearls before swine" was uttered in the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes's play "Lysistrata" four hundred years pre-dating Christ's advent.
Do you think the concept of a broad liberal education was first formulated during Leonardo da Vinci's "Renaissance" era or during the twentieth century? Think again, for Plato outlined the liberal education thesis in his dialogues.
Do you think the concept of Reincarnation was procreated in recent centuries or in ancient Far East religions? Think again, for the concept of Reincarnation is touched upon in Plato's dialogue "Meno" and a few other dialogues.
Do you think the recreational board game of "draughts" or chess or a child's seesaw and a child's toy spinning top were invented within the last several hundred years? Think again, for "draughts" or chess and a seesaw are mentioned in Plato's "Laws" and a child's toy spinning top is mentioned in Plato's "The Republic".
Do you think the concept of a "model city" or "model utopianary community" was first devised by the city of Columbia, Maryland or B.F. Skinner's "Walden Two"? Think again, for Plato developed this concept
in his book "The Republic" and also in his dialogue "Laws".
Do you think the witty sayings "Handsome is as handsome does" and "Higgledy Piggledy" were coined by literary writers in the last several hundred years? Think again, for Plato incorporated these phrases in his writings.
From the above you can see that in a sense there is truly "nothing new under the sun" for Plato in his own way arrived there first!