Gorgias: 4
Timaeus: 3
This edition:3

I read this book for a history assignment, however I do enjoy learning about philosophy so it was an interesting read! It was also hard because of the language and phrasing and took more concentration than a fiction or modern day book. This made it harder to pick up and read anywhere. It ended up making me think a lot about it’s relevance and effect on its time period along with how it has affected the world since it was written. With Plato being a huge model in philosophy, his works are widely read and I think it is important to educate myself about his beliefs and works. Overall I enjoyed the content this book gave me new ideas to consider. I recommend this book to people who want a slight challenge mentally and technically in book and are interested in older philosophy theories about evil vs good and rhetoric as a mode of writing.

Gorgias: Timeaus

I only read Gorgias, not Timaeus. Don't know what the book is trying to say...

Timaeus is one of Plato's most fantastic dialogues, mainly because of the metaphysical, mystical, and truly Greek elements that are contained in it. Gorgias is also a fantastic look into the nature of rhetoric. It's interesting to see how different Aristotle and Plato are concerning the art of rhetoric. Great read and a great translation.

Brent McCulley

Polykleitos' lost human proportion embodied in Roman copies of his statue of the Doryphoros (spear-bearer) extant in three surviving copies, might be refound by some scholar using the Pythagorean harmonies embodied in Plato's rambling ancient arithmetic in his dialogue Timaeus! Besides that, the rambling ancient four elements' obsolete science is best skipped or skimmed in reading this dialogue. One beautiful thought in mostly Plato's additions to Socrates and his students' thoughts is that the universe must have been created at the same moment as the creation of time! Thus, time is not Man's creation. This suggests that the Creator is the center of the universe created by Him, a subject disputed by Frederick the Great King of Prussia and King Frederick's Sans Souci palace visitor Voltaire (Frederick asked visiting wit Francois-Marie d'Arouet called Voltaire where the center of the universe was and Voltaire, German-French voll-se taire--stuck his cane in the mud and said, "There! Wherever I am, that is my center of the Universe"--man the measure of all things as by Classical Greeks). The first dialogue in the book, Giorgias, is gorgeous with ethics ideas of good and evil as proto-Christian which famously inspired the scholastics and Medieval copyists: that it is better to suffer through evil than to commit evil, think of St. Maximilian Kolbe who would advise us to stay where we are instead of fleeing any injustice. Gorgias also discusses the value of rhetoric but ancient philosophy had not yet divided learning into arts, sciences and trades as with the Enlightenment encyclopedia authors, the greatest work of the Enlightenment in Germany, France, Scotland and the world, an attempt to conquer ignorance by making a cyclopedia of arts, sciences and trades even though free-thinking cancelled the 17th century Classical Era (Poussin and Racine) Age of Reason whereby there was understood to be a moral order to the Universe; the Enlightenment unfortunately led to freethinking libertines of the Reign of Terror. The introductions in this book are also lengthy and repetitive, best skimmed or skipped. I added this volume of Socratic dialogues written by Plato to my library of classical texts as the least-known Platonic document: I adore the Symposium and had read most of the other dialogues in secondary school honors courses. I recommend this book to all, especially classical scholars hoping to fill out their acquaintance with philosophy. This is urgent since the Classics (Greek and Roman studies) have receded since Latin was dropped in Vatican II and in populariser college curriculum changes and in non-classical Modernist art influences.

This book was mentioned in "Jesus and the Lost Goddess" as being a possible source to Christian gnosticism, but I don't see the connection. Perhaps it is the idea of God being the Unmoved Mover, the Source of all being and delegating the creation of the universe and man to His first creation (Greek gods in Timaeus, the demigod in gnosticosm). There is also the concept of the center of the globe and the circumference that mirrors gnosticism's center of the wheel - radius - surface (pneuma/consciousness - psyche/soul - hylic/waking life). Plato depicts men (especially philosophers) as the first order of animals; women as the second order; land animals as third and water animals as fourth. All have souls. All souls started as men. As long as men lived their lives pursuing wisdom, truth and goodness they progressed from one life to the next. If a man lived in ignorance, cowardice and fear they would be reborn as a woman in the next life. If they continued to live each life in ignorance they would move down the scale of animals until they became fish or oysters, the most ignorant of creatures.

Plato's theory of the creation of the universe and his science of man are based upon pure conjecture or, as Timaeus says, "probablities." Aristotle's explanations of human anatomy are much more scientific.