Agora Editions
5 total works
punishment.
In the notes to this translation, Professor Irwin discusses the historical and social context of the dialogue, expounds and criticizes the arguments, and tries above all to suggest the questions a modern reader ought to raise about Plato's doctrines.
This volume contains new translations of two dialogues of Plato, the Protagoras and the Meno, together with explanatory notes and substantial interpretive essays. Robert C. Bartlett's translations are as literal as is compatible with sound English style and take into account important textual variations. Because the interpretive essays both sketch the general outlines of the dialogues and take up specific theoretical or philosophic difficulties, they will be of interest not only to those reading the dialogues for the first time but also to those already familiar with them.The Protagoras and the Meno are linked by the attention each pays to the idea of virtue: the latter dialogue focuses on the fundamental Socratic question, "What is virtue?"; the former on the specific virtue of courage, especially in its relation to wisdom. An appendix contains a short extract from Xenophon's Anabasis of Cyrus that vividly portrays the figure of Meno.
Originally published in 1979, Plato's Dialogue on Friendship is the first book-length interpretation of the Lysis in English, offering both a full analysis and a literal translation of this frequently neglected Platonic dialogue.
David Bolotin interprets the Lysis as an important work in its own right and places it in the context of Plato's other writings. He attempts to show that despite Socrates' apparent failure to discover what a friend is, a coherent understanding of friendship emerges in the Lysis. His commentary follows the dialogue closely, and his interpretation unfolds gradually, as he is providing a detailed summary of the Lysis itself.
Mr. Bolotin's translation captures the playfulness and rich ambiguities of the Lysis and its effectiveness as conversational drama. His book, written with precision and clarity, should be useful to students of political philosophy and ancient philosophy.
With a masterful sense of the place of rhetoric in both thought and practice and an ear attuned to the clarity, natural simplicity, and charm of Plato's Greek prose, James H. Nichols Jr., offers precise yet unusually readable translations of two great Platonic dialogues on rhetoric.
The Gorgias presents an intransigent argument that justice is superior to injustice: To the extent that suffering an injustice is preferable to committing an unjust act. The dialogue contains some of Plato's most significant and famous discussions of major political themes, and focuses dramatically and with unrivaled intensity on Socrates as a political thinker and actor. Featuring some of Plato's most soaringly lyrical passages, the Phaedrus investigates the soul's erotic longing and its relationship to the whole cosmos, as well as inquiring into the nature of rhetoric and the problem of writing.
Nichols's attention to dramatic detail brings the dialogues to life. Plato's striking variety in conversational address (names and various terms of relative warmth and coolness) is carefully reproduced, as is alteration in tone and implication even in the short responses. The translations render references to the gods accurately and non-monotheistically for the first time, and include a fascinating variety of oaths and invocations. A general introduction on rhetoric from the Greeks to the present shows the problematic relation of rhetoric to philosophy and politics, states the themes that unite the two dialogues, and outlines interpretive suggestions that are then developed more fully for each dialogue.
The twin dialogues reveal both the private and the political rhetoric emphatic in Plato's philosophy, yet often ignored in commentaries on it. Nichols believes that Plato's thought on rhetoric has been largely misunderstood, and he uses his translations as an opportunity to reconstruct the classical position on right relations between thought and public activity.